Thief/Now What?
Congratulations on becoming a thief, we are the best guild on the Disc. You may be wondering what to do now that you are a thief. As noted elsewhere you start your career on leave in Ankh-Morpork so you do not have to worry about your quota yet (see Thief/The Quota and you). The best thning to do right now is go explore, maybe do a couple quests and get to know your surroundings. There is no need to worry about Thief/Rearranging or Thief/Specialisations yet. Get some experience points accumulated.
Once you have some XP go visit Kordane for some advancement. Skills like covert.manipulation.stealing are your best target for advancement. At level 5 you will be able to acquire the snatch* command SYNTAX: tell me about commands please. That's when your life of crime really starts.
Contents
Get snatch
When you get this command do not start stealing in Ankh-Morpork yet (more on that below)! This is a basic theft command where you grab someone's purse and make a dash for it. This is not a subtle tactic and you will anger the (hopefully) previous owner of your new money.
Notice that I am talking about snatching money; while you can go for other items an NPC is carrying with the snatch command stick to money. That way you will not have to worry about fencing or repairing the items to pay your quota dues. An exception to this "rule" is when there is an item you really want, and plan on keeping it for a bit.
If you are on leave stealing in Ankh-Morpork is not advised, our enforcers do not have a sense of humour (or mercy). You have two choices: Come off leave (see below) or leave town to practice your new skills.
Return from leave
When you are ready to truly become a thief head up to Kordane's office and let him know. As it mentions in the Thieve's Gyde, Kordane is big on manners. There is a plaque in his office that tells you how to take a leave or return.
Once you have returned, grab a licence from his desk, you will need to check quota often. Stealing too much, or too little lead to Bad Things ©
Never steal from guild NPCs or shoplift in the guild shops, you will be sorry.
Some thoughts on your quota
First, Thief/The Quota and you is essential reading. At some point, and probably more than once, you will go over quota. It happens. The quota page explains what to do, rasing your guild level by advanicing primaries is an option if you have a lot of time and / or experience poitns at hand (every guild level raises your max quota by $1AM). Do not worry too much about your quota, if you have at least snatch, and ideally steal too you can easily fufill the requirements.
Remember, there are a lot of experienced thieves on the talker who can help you out if you have any questions (about almost anything).
What to steal
From the beginning, you might only have the snatch command or can only steal things that are being carried. Thus it is recommended to steal or snatch money as a new thief. Its also recommended to steal while hiding, without anything else in your hands and preferably at night or in the dark as these can increase the chance of success of covert activities.
You can usually just type steal money from [target] or snatch money from [target] leaving [direction]
See steal and snatch or type syntax steal and syntax snatch for more information.
From whom
Always try to consider the npc before stealing. If it says "<target> is into the don't think about it region" or "You would have to be utterly insane to attack <target>", then you might not want to steal from them as there is a higher chance of these targets detecting your stealing and also able to damage much of your health when they attack you.
Otherwise depending on your area and your melee-related or covert-related levels, its recommended to steal from npcs such as:
- Accountants
- Merchants/traders/dealers
- Beggars/tramps/bums
- Farmers/peasants
Other skills to consider advancing
For new thieves, it would be very useful to advance both adventuring, fighting and other covert-related skills aside from the skills related to stealing.
Combat
For combat and gaining experience from fighting, it is recommended to focus on one melee skill such as:
and one defensive skill such as:
However advancing these fighting skills should match with the thief specialization you want to try after reaching guild level 50. For example, for a specializations like smugglers, one of their primary skills is fighting.melee.sword and thus it is easier for them to keep advancing sword skills.
See: Thief/Specialisations for more info.
Adventuring
For adventuring skills, it is recommended to advance your adventuring.health skill to 25 so that you can increase your hp. You should also try to advance some swimming skills just in case you end up having to swim or fall into water by accident.
Covert
For other covert skills aside from stealing, you should consider advancing these:
- Covert.hiding.person
- Covert.stealth.inside
- Covert.manipulation.sleight-of-hand
- Covert.stealth.outside
as they can help with both other covert activities and stealing.
Quota satisfied
- (Thieves) Ilik wisps: Hur, hur. You said snatch!
