Difference between revisions of "How to play a thief"

Revision as of 16:03, 8 November 2008

There are all kinds of thieves. Those that sneakily enter buildings when you're not watching, those that steal everything you have and possibly even kill you after they gained your trust and those that steal your only vehicle making them look at you while unable to follow you. This article will help you understand thieves, and how to play them a bit better.

Note that you shouldn't make your thief exactly like explained in this article. Be creative!

Talk like a thief!

Or rather, don't! Thieves are usually smooth talkers that are able to talk themselves out of any situation. Try to blend in with your surroundings. Act like a normal, hard-working villager and when they realized you're not that nice, it's too late.

Stealing

There are a lot of ways to steal, and a lot of things to steal. Varying from vehicles, keys, resources and tools.

• Stealing vehicles
  • Simply trying to enter vehicles to see if they're open can sometimes give interesting results. Note that no one can see you tried to enter the vehicle when it's locked.
  • Gaining a vehicle's owner's trust can be very useful. You can then offer to do a trade far away with that vehicle, for example. Once you got the keys, waved goodbye and are on a good distance you can edit the sign and live on (possibly with another name, as sooner or later they'll find out you stole the vehicle).

• Stealing resources and tools
  • One way of stealing resources with a low risk of getting caught is claiming that your project finished on the ground but announcing a bigger amount than it actually yielded, or not announcing an amount at all and just picking what's on the ground. People don't generally keep track of how much was lying around.
  • Another way is to pick up a pile of resources, then drop a part of it, pretending that was all when you in fact kept the most of it. Combined with suitable roleplaying can help you get away with it.
  • Sometimes you might be able to steal tools by finishing an abbandoned repair project and picking up the tool when it's finished, but this usually works only when no one's watching.
  • Also you might borrow a tool from someone, then keep it for so long that they forget they ever gave it to you. Or just wait that they go inside, then leave town. By the time someone tells them which direction you took, you'll be long gone.

Seizing the moment vs. planning ahead

Perfect timing often separates a good thief from the dead one. If you've spent a while in a town, you might notice that some hours tend to be less busy than others. If you're going to be stealing openly, it's best to do it when most people are asleep to give you a head start. It's also good to see if many people have access to vehicles, since if you're traveling slower than your chasers, you're pretty much doomed to fail.

But there are also moments in which a perfect chance for robbery will present itself and you need to make a fast decision before the chance is lost. If you're the only person awake when someone dies and drops a bunch of keys, there's a good chance one of them is for a vehicle or at least a building.

If you ended up picking keys and none of them are for a vehicle, it might be wise to just claim you grabbed them to keep them safe, since getting away on foot is pretty unlikely. Still if you feel like risking it, check the buildings and if you get lucky, you'll find several ones you have keys for. If you're a good fighter and know the usual online times of the townspeople, you can go out to hit people while they sleep and maybe be able to drag the wounded ones into one of the locked buildings. Having a reserve of healing food is also useful, since if someone manages to hit you and you can't repair the damage, you won't be able to drag anyone or cause them much damage. Then you'll be pretty much trapped until someone breaks through the door.

The more crowbars there are, the smaller the chances of surviving by hiding in buildings. People might also change the lock on one of the buildings you have access to and use it as a trap. Likewise you can trick people into running after you into unlocked buildings, then lock the door after they come inside to trap them in there. However people are likely to learn fast not to follow you into buildings if you do this.

People are also likely to taunt you to make you stop and reply to them. It's better not to fall into this trap. If you have something to say, either drag a note under the door or write what you're going to say in Notepad, wait a while to let everyone think you've stopped running around, then pop out quickly to copypaste your message to the talk to all box and run back to safety.