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 unlikely 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: crouching, moving slowly, and walking on soft surfaces (such as moss from moss arrows), all help to reduce noise.
3. Staying in shadows helps to hide you from the enemy. The light gem at the bottom centre of the screen shows how well lit you are. The darker the gem, the more difficult you are 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. 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 flames to make an area darker.
9. You can lean forward to look down and lean around corners to see if anyone is coming.