Basics of Stealth Gaming

Stealth Gameplay: The Basics

Note: If you are familiar with stealth gameplay already (ie, you have played Thief before), then you can skip this section.

1. You are a Thief, not a Warrior. Your best path to success is to avoid being seen by your opponents. You are lucky to survive a toe-to-toe fight with a guard, and you’re almost certainly not going to survive two.
2. Noise can give away your position: When you walk on hard or noisy surfaces (like metal or gravel) AI will hear you more easily. Running and jumping make lots of noise. Creeping or crouching reduces the amount of noise you make while moving, and walking on soft surfaces like moss or carpet is the safest.
3. Staying in shadows helps to hide you from the enemy. The light gem at the bottom center of the screen shows how well lit you are. The darker the gem, the more difficult you are to see. Moving or taking out bulky weapons (like the sword or bow) make you easier to see. Crouching makes you harder to see.
4. Listen to the guards around you. They will give you verbal cues if they are suspicious or if they think they see something.
5. If you are spotted but get away, guards will eventually stop searching for you (though they will be more suspicious in the future).
6. To manipulate something, center the object in your view and move towards it. This will cause it to highlight. If you click your "Frob" key, you interact with that object (called ‘frobbing’). For many objects, that means picking them up. It also flips switches and opens doors.
7. You can pickpocket items visible on other characters, like keys or purses, by sneaking up to the character and frobbing the object.
8. Water arrows can be used to extinguish open flames to make an area darker.
9. You can lean forward to look down and lean around corners to see if anyone is coming.