Sil: stealth melee assassin

[BlueFish]

I've been trying this. There are a few skills that seem to go well with it:

Melee: Finesse (+1 crit chance), subtlety (+2 crit chance w/o shield)
Stealth: Disguise, Assassin, cruel blow
Perception: Focused attack
Song: Lorien

But I'm having a hard time keeping this guy alive if I take stealth or perception or song over evasion and melee, in the early game (<400 ft)

I think maybe an "assassin" needs to start out as your typical brawler with melee and evasion. Am I wrong? Maybe I'm just not playing well enough?

[T-Mick]

Hold off on the assassinations 'til later in the game. Until you can one-hit stuff, choose your fights with the utmost care.

[half]

Zone of Control also works well with Cruel Blow, as if they are confused, they often spend the turn moving adjacent to you and you get a free hit in.

[Starhawk]

When I started playing Sil, I played stealth/stabbers exclusively, eschewing points in Archery/Song/Smithing in favor of a Melee/Evasion/Stealth build (with Perception sufficient for Loremaster).

What I found is that it's a FUN class to play... but very, very gear dependent. If you don't get quality weapons and armor dropping quickly, you'll be roflstomped.

I had good luck starting as a pure Melee/Evasion stomper as you described, but I also had some good characters going very heavy Stealth and picking my fights as much as possible. Sprinting is a good choice for getting away from large groups of orcs/wolves/whatever in the early levels.

[andrey]

You should take "keen senses" and "listen" as soon as possible to survive - you don't want to miss that Orc in a dark corridor.

Assassination is not that important till ~300-400Ft, instead I choose "disguise" to evade the monsters.

Also consider archery - it really goes well with assassins skills.

Also you should start with 5 dexterity, it really helps.

[debo]

Getting a stealth-stabber to work is really tricky. Starting melee-and-evasion heavy gives you more XP in the early game, but you'll have an awkward midgame where you can't kill anything and you can't hide from anything either, unless you know how to play cleverly and use 'S' a lot.

The other way around (stealth emphasis first) means you won't be able to kill much in the beginning, and so you'll be XP starved right when things start to get tough, IMO.

I'd agree that this sort of character is relatively gear dependent. It's also very 'mage'-ish in the sense that you are very weak for a very long time, and then suddenly you are mega powerful.

E.g. a stealth-stabber with a good light sword, Subtlety, Finesse, Assassination, and sharpness is devastating, but losing even one of those makes you much less effective.

For this reason, I tend not to take assassination until 800' or so, just because it's really not worth the risk for me -- I'd rather convince myself that it's easier to sneak around the guy than it is to try to stab him in the back

[clouded]

There are two methods, either start as melee/evasion until you get subtlety and then get assassination/cruel blow and go from there or play pacifist until extremely deep and then return to a shallower depth to stab things and work back down. Here are some of my characters, you can look at my skill progression and when I get them:

Starting as melee: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=13328
Starting as pacifist: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=13553

I like to play Sindar Doriath, but Noldor Finarfin would work too. These are from before momentum was in the game, you probably want that at some point. Hold off on vanish until ~20 stealth.

Other than general stealth play, most important is choosing what to kill, ask these questions:

* Can I just kill it normally
* If I can't kill it normally, can I kill it in one stab
* If I can't kill it in one stab, is it going to shout and wake things up
* If I can't kill it in one stab, can I finish it off while it is confused
* If I can't kill it in one stab or finish it off, do I have a safe path to retreat into

Generally this means you only pick on things that appear alone, I almost never kill orcs (maybe champions), stay the hell away from wargs, werewolves are very risky, cats are doable because they have low health, but you need to make sure you can kill them, anything with critical resistance is out (sulrauko, wights, kemenrauko, others), trolls aren't very risky, giants are somewhat risky so I usually don't try, dragonflies are all good targets, spiders are too but make sure you don't get entranced by a spider of gorgoroth, serpents are all easy targets, so are vampires if you use lorien, ururauko are easy to kill, gwathrauko usually are too, don't think about stabbing dragons, just steal their items while they snooze.

Importantly, you should never move next to something that isn't sleeping, if you do, you run the risk of it bumping into you especially if you try and wait next to it to focus attack, always wait until it moves next to you or sing lorien. Lorien works on everything by the way, even things that don't normally sleep. Once you have it you should put everything you can to sleep.

It is a somewhat difficult build, but it is very satisfying.

[BlueFish]

Thanks for the excellent advice everybody!

[Psi]

Lorien works on everything by the way, even things that don't normally sleep.

I'm not sure that is true. I had a char with around 46 song and she was nearly killed by a deathblade on the ascent because it wouldn't sleep.

[clouded]

I'm not sure that is true. I had a char with around 46 song and she was nearly killed by a deathblade on the ascent because it wouldn't sleep.

Good point, I guess there are things with a no_sleep flag. Looking it up, the list is all molds, all 'W', deathblades, grotesques and silent watchers. For some reason I feel like some of these things (grave wights, deathblades) do start sleeping though, or maybe they are just dormant.