1) Do most people follow a single path to the end, or do most people mix and match quite a bit? Are there certain skills (thresholds) you'd recommend hitting for each path to make it worth it--if so, which are most important as a strong PKer?

--Most? maybe, A lot, yes. Also to the PK portion, Thug thieves are often cited as pkish thieves as they are typically the most physically potent thieves and as such many of their abilities are taken as multi-path ones.

2) How useful is climb? Where are some examples where it can be used? Can it get to you places like arial city or around the south bend of Hamsah outskirts, etc.?

-- Yes you can get to places like Arial city with it.

4) Does blackjack operate differently than garrotte or weapon butt blackjack? Should a character only take one of these, or does it benefit a binder-focused thief to have various options to knock people out? Are they affected differently by the size of your opponent (what would be best for a gnome that might be fighting bigger opponents regularly)? Which is most reliable?

-- Each knockout ability works differently, and each has it's uses. I would rate weapon butt<blackjack<garrotte for landing knockout in my experience but each has it's use. Also you can't use garrotte for example on 2 size larger opponents, ie-> svirf against giant. Unless it was changed in the past.

5) I'm unclear on when people can see what you're doing as a sneaking thief. Can people see you when sneaking and hidden, anytime you look at them? Thus, is eye of averice a pretty critical one to take?

-- If your hidden, people can't see what your doing for the most part, looking at someone included. If this were the case people wouldn't stick around and get robbed blind by a good thief before they even notice.


6) How important is improved hide?

-- In my opinion, nice to have but not super important because you get used to tell.=someone bla bla=.. *hide* *hide* *sn*sn* to the point where it is natural.

7) Advanced lockpicking/locksmithing...especially when having around average intelligence, are they really useful/needed for getting decent higher level treasures or access to high level areas out there?

-- I enjoyed having advanced lockpick as my last bandit king, as there were very few places I couldn't go, or things I couldn't get to. As a svirf it worked great. Yes, to some treasure, but getting to the places with it normally takes more than just your self anyway.

Take all of these for what they are worth, Opinion and Personal experiences only, not to be confused with Facts from Code.