I made a video demonstrating some thief abilities in Into The Inferno.

Today I want to share with you why thieves and classes with thief skills are so special.

You can absolutely win the game without a thief.

But it will be much more expensive.

Number one is the item identification ability, which you can use to identify the random drops you get from killing monsters. It’s based on your intelligence score with a 20 Intelligence having about an 80% chance of success, and failing to identify an item will give your character a headache, which will give a -5 Intelligence penalty. These penalties stack, and they wear off after a while. It’s harder for non-pure-thief classes like mercenary and trickster, think 25% harder or so, but they can still do it.

It was designed so that you’ll probably have to fight a couple battles before being able to identify something with a reasonable chance of success again.

You can always pay for identification, or use items without identifying them. But you can’t sell unidentified items, and some items are cursed, and if you equip a cursed item, you can’t remove it without help.

Another thief ability is the ability to hide.

This offers a few benefits.

Hidden characters cannot be attacked in physical combat. They are not immune to spells like fireball, but they can stay hidden and untouched forever, if they keep clicking “hide”.

Hidden characters become visible when they take certain actions like spellcasting, attacking, blocking, or dodging. But they don’t become visible when attempting to flee, so with a hidden character it’s only a matter of time before they can flee the battlefield. Monsters may block the path for a turn or two, but if you’re hidden, you’ll eventually make it out unscathed.

Being hidden also gives advantages when attacking, namely the notorious “backstab” ability, that does double damage, or in the case of pure thieves, double damage plus a small level-based bonus on top of that.

Thieves are difficult to do well, because a successful thief requires high agility, dexterity, and intelligence to perform well. You might have to roll a lot of dice to get a good thief, but once you have one, they will earn their keep.

Of course, the trickster and mercenary classes have thief skills, but at a slightly lower level of ability. The mercenary trades some of this ability to gain better fighting abilities similar to a warrior, and the trickster trades some of this ability to gain wizard spellcasting abilities.