how to assassin?

Eventually someone's psionicist/drovian friend will fuck you over, and everyone will know OOCly who you are.

yeah the best way is to be sponsored by an organization to carry out their dirty business, the bigger/more powerful the organization, the better. that way its fairly known who u are within the organization but ur still covered by their backing and the only ppl trying to oocly sniff u out are ppl that will already have some odds stacked against them

hardmode = playing an unsponsored killer for hire (kills based on $$$ or other offered bennies)
extreme = playing an unsponsored serial killer (listens only to personal whims)

i did tis bfore sum IC shit happened... fuk of...

Assassins are kinda shitty to play. It's also virtually impossible to train one up without engaging in severe twinking. Compared to rangers and warriors who can do it through hunting or sparring, assassins have to routinely attempt to murder people. It takes a few hundred attempts to max backstab, and each one is deliberately classified as an attempted murder even when you're shit at it and couldn't hope to kill a rat.

You can raise backstab on animals, but it's a bit iffy as some players/staff frown upon it, and you'll hinder your vs. humans skill if all you fight is stilt lizards. Assassins also suck at fighting for a long time and it's not that safe to hunt around for animals on your own. The alternative is basically the 'rinth, which is doable but likely to get you in trouble with players and/or staff as you will start to go through a LOT of kills once your backstab is high enough to hit most of the time and do a lot of damage. Sometimes you'll have to go through multiple kills just to get one failure. That kind of mass murder is hard to keep secret in the long run.

I've done both the grasslands hunting thing and the 'rinth massacre. The hunting was fairly easy but left me with maxed backstab and absolute jack shit fighting skills, which meant I'd have to spend a long time sparring before my character became ready to do any serious killing. The 'rinth grind gave better results in that regard but I'm sure it was pretty obvious to staff that I was powergaming to the max. It's hard to go around trying to murder beggars two or three times per IG day for two weeks straight and not get the twink label.

The other problem with assassins is that you're weak as shit defensively and put yourself at a gigantic risk every time you try an actual assassination. Branching parry is only slightly less arduous for assassins than for rangers, their cap is five or ten points lower, and they tend not to get the same kind of defense sparring mileage throughout the skill-up period as a lot of the fights will consist of you backstabbing something to poor condition right off the bat. However, the biggest issue is the enormous delay after backstab, something like twelve seconds where you're just hoping you won't get raped.

If you can make it through all this, next order of business is poisons. This can be a bit tricky if you're not in a group of people that can help supply you. Unlike rangers, assassins aren't terribly well-suited to obtaining poisons themselves. You can get some like berries and leaves in certain places, but you can't really forage shit very well or kill poisonous critters safely. You also branch the ability to make poison cures from the actual poison skill, which is really dumb, so you need an external source of cures throughout the training process as you can poison yourself from failures.

Throw was apparently nerfed since I quit playing so I don't know what the deal is with that anymore. Prior to that, it was a somewhat viable alternative to backstab and a good way to adminster poisons. If your assassin had high strength, the raw damage of throwing was also pretty deadly in addition to the knockdown effect. Can't really speak on its current post-nerf state, but it should still be trained and is pretty easy since you don't lose the throwing weapons like you do with arrows.


On backstab:

Backstab becomes viable at advanced. Prior to that, it's not worth the delay and should only be used to raise the skill, never in an actual fight as you'll either miss or just hit for like 40 damage and be lagged out so long you'll get killed before you can act again. Once you hit advanced, it starts to become a viable option for real fights, although I still would never try to use it in an actual assassination attempt until it's branched from and thus within 10 points of max.

Contrary to popular belief, maxed backstab is not a guaranteed kill. With maxed backstab and one of the good stabbing weapons, you'll backstab anywhere between like 70 and 110. I never managed a clean one-hit kill despite having great stats, maxed backstab, and one of the best of the reasonably obtainable stabbing weapons (i.e. not magick or metal). Be mindful of this if you're trying to backstab a badass fighter -- the lag from backstab is long enough for a warrior to disarm you twice and then bash you.

Also note that backstab has a huge penalty to hit against targets who are in combat. It's best not to try to assassinate someone who's fighting. However, this can be used to generate failures for skillgains if you can get NPCs to fight (mostly relevant in the' rinth). Other than that, agility appears to give a bonus to backstab avoidance so be mindful of this as well.

You will often bring non-combat softies with shit endurance to stunned-ish, or to like terrible condition and then finish them in the subsequent round of combat, but this can be problematic for two reasons: 1) you won't get wanted on a clean backstab kill but will if you have to finish it with attacks, and 2) you really do not want to give the victim a chance to react; people WILL look at you and copy-paste your fulldesc to their AIM buddies.

Anyway, because backstab is not at all a guaranteed one-shot even under optimal mundane conditions, you need to train your combat skills so you can finish the target off immediately. Poisons are key as well, but you still need to hit them. Ideally you could get shadow daggers and stat rings and shit, but you can't really make your assassin career depend on these things unless you know they'll be available when you need them. So you need to spar, and you need to have good agility and strength so you can deal good damage right after the backstab. If you don't, people will just flee.


Poisons:

Poisons are good but are more for throwing knives really. You should always poison your daggers, obviously, but it shouldn't be something you rely on for backstab kills. If you're setting out to kill someone and you know you need to both succesfully backstab them and apply poison in order to land the kill, you're not ready and will probably fail. You should be confident that you can make the kill without proccing poisons, or you should be certain that your poisons will do the job without the need to also land a succesful backstab. Don't gamble on both working out at once.

Generally speaking, if you're not a ranger with the ability to spam arrows from several rooms away, don't try to rely fully on poisons until you have enough experience to be certain if it'll work. It's a great backup tool and you should always poison your weapons, but you can't always deliver poisons reliably enough to make this a consistently safe and effective method of killing people. Sometimes you just won't land those melee hits, or the poison won't deliver, or they'll resist it or some shit.


Making the kill:

It can be almost impossible at times. If your target is a skilled fighter who never sheathes his weapons, don't risk a backstab. If your target is never alone and never in a private place, you probably shouldn't bother unless you seriously know what you're doing, in which case none of this is news to you. The ideal kill is where you shadow someone into their office or whatever, wait for them to sit down unarmed and half AFK, and then you backstab and finish them off with a round of combat before they can put down their coffee and type 'look figure.'

The other option is poisoned (generally peraine) throwing knives. It's never a guaranteed kill. Sometimes the poison just won't take, or you'll miss your throw. Throwing is a bit risky as it leaves you lagged for a few seconds out of stealth, with your main hand empty, and it will flag you wanted if in public.

The damage from throwing is high but not quite high enough to be a reliable killer on its own unless the target is an idiot or AFK, but it can be used to finish off someone who runs at low health. However, the short range makes it hard to do that as people will just speedwalk away. In most cases, even maxed throw won't do much more than ~50 damage tops, and I'm told they made it much harder to stun people with throwing. Before, it was possible to stunlock someone and take them out in a few throws, but it was never a foolproof way to do it as knockdowns weren't guaranteed.

You can also try to poison people via drink or food, but that's kind of a gamble as you never know if they'll just sip it first and resist the poison, or if they'll have any at all. Don't put yourself in a position where you must land the kill in that scene but depend on poisoned food/drink to do it.

Sapping is more or less like backstab except with stun damage. I never used it that much because the delay after sap is insane and because I didn't quite max it. It's supposedly a more random damage spread but with the benefit of the fact that you can manipulate the target into using some stun before doing the sap. For instance, if hidden in a room with your victim, Way them for a bit first and ask them some random shit to make it sound like you're looking for work or whatever, and get them to psi you back a few times before you sap. Even better, have someone else do the Waying so the player doesn't get to tattle your sdesc to all his mates after you kill him.


Subguilds:

It used to be a big no-no to take thug with assassin because it would make you start with sap and thus you'd have no idea when your backstab was near max. Same was true for pickpockets and any subguild with sleight of hand which branches from steal. Since the introduction of visible skill levels, this isn't a big deal anymore.

Extended subguilds weren't a thing when I played assassins so I can't really comment on them. These aside, the big decision for your subguild is: do you want wilderness stealth, do you want flee, or do you want some utility convenience?

If you want wilderness stealth, pick hunter as it will also give you hunt right away, which you otherwise have to branch from hide, and can thus access scan more quickly. Skinning would be marginally useful if you were to try to farm your own poisons, but I wouldn't try to rely on that. Hunter's direction sense has some use as well, though you really shouldn't be putting yourself in situations where you need it. You can also take rebel if for some reason you want to make your own knives, but I don't see why you would.

Wilderness stealth is enabled with any subguild that gets wilderness sneak, and vice versa with city stealth for rangers (and d-elf native stealth) when taking a subguild with city sneak, mainly thief. It will allow you to sneak and hide in both environments without penalty (even if the subguild only gives sneak). I don't know about the extended subguilds, but presumably rogue gets city stealth and outdoorsman gets wilderness.

If you want flee, take thug or thief (could also take acrobat but it sucks). Why flee? Because without it, you can't see which direction you flee. This is a huge fucking nuisance and kind of a problem, especially while training backstab as you will be doing a lot of fleeing and returning to backstab again. Assassin doesn't get flee natively, and without this skill, it doesn't say "you flee west" or whatever.

If you're not going for one of those two things, take either physician so you can make cures while you're raising poison (brew otherwise branches from poisoning) or one of the riding subguilds. I really wouldn't do this, but some people might be more interested in convenience. Either one is useful if you're trying to be completely self-sufficient.

I would take flee if operating out of the 'rinth, or wilderness sneak if going the hunting route. Leaning towards flee as it really is a huge benefit to know where you are immediately without needing to look around as a lot of areas have the same room names in sequence, especially places where you are likely to be doing combat.


Equipment:

This is gonna remain unfinished for now. I can't remember much about what gear gives +hide, and not very much actual armor does. The Guild grey-veined shit is good but you'll be hard pressed to get it unless you actually are in the Guild. Don't worry about sneak bonuses, it's +hide you want for avoiding scan detection.

Throwing shortswords are some of the better throwing weapons. They do more damage than most throwing knives. Also heavier and you can't really justify keeping them in wrist/ankle sheathes even if they can codedly fit there.

Excluding magick or other nigh-unobtainable weapons, these are the better backstabbing weapons that you can realistically get (might not remember precise sdescs):

A long, wickedly-sharp fang - skinned from tarantulae, also looted off certain 'rinth NPCs. You can usually find one in shops around Allanak if the game has been up for a while.

A short stabbing halfspear(?) - loot from the 'rinth and I think halflings used to have them as well. Solid weapon but looks a bit stupid if you're gonna go around carrying out actual assassinations with it. Nice for moonlighting as a hunter.

A well-balanced bone halfsword - ordered from Salarr. Pretty solid weapon, also looks nice and professional unlike the cringeworthy spider fang.

A hawk-etched bone halfsword(?) - no idea where to get this other than an NPC in Tuluk has it and can be killed. He usually hangs around outside the Hunter's Paradise or whatever that shop is called, straight west from the bank in that strip between the market and the park. Usually no soldiers around and he's a pushover, so you can gank him pretty easily and loot it, but be prepared to either hide the body somewhere or gtfo before someone notices. It's best to dump the body down a well or something as otherwise people will notice he's dead and will look for people with the weapon and conclude you did it.

That must be a recent addition. They didn't get it back when I played.

The best answer is below. Use slipknife on a viv.