Rogue Class Guide

*For general class information, see Rogue.*
## Overview

* Rogues are weak in combat until the late game, like most classes that were weak in the original *Majesty* PC game.
* In the late game, the Rogue is more powerful than most classes due to extremely high damage output, allowing the Rogue to defeat a great number of encounters while using multiple stacks of readied invisibility gems.
* Late game Rogues are strong because of the Attack of Opportunity ability, which significantly increases damage at high Artifice values, and also because of the Bolt Spitter (and Bolt Gutter), which provides the "Attack Multiple Foes" and "Double Attack" abilities. with both Attack of Opportunity and the Bolt Gutter, the Rogue can perform 12 attacks during a single combat round.
* Due to reliance on sheer damage output, defense is of less importance in the late game.

## Guide

***Note: The following section has not been edited to conform to Wiki standards.***

The Rogue class is one that shifts to the very extremes of the power scale in Heroes of Ardania. Like most classes that were weak in the original Majesty PC game, the class has a horrid time early on, but gradually improves with the HoA specific items it can obtain, until it reaches heights of power that are beyond most classes (especially concerning XP/Gold gains past level 40 and beating notoriously deadly fights at 0 healing aids cost)

Your early game is that of a pauper, and your number one priority is to claw your way out of Valmorgen. Unlike the classes who have good momentum early on (like Solarii, Wizards, Paladins, WoDs and Dwarves), this class is best played with lots of accumulated turns. Thus, it's a good idea to play it after you have "finished" the game with one or more of the other, easier classes. This need for turns stems from the fact that if you want to go anywhere but the lowliest of early game areas, you will need to pray for blessings.

Starting with one of the lowest Will scores doesn't help your situation much either. Your one redeeming quality is that you start with plenty of Int. For your initial roll of the class, make sure you get max stats for Will and Vit, and posssibly Str as well. Then leave that character and go play something which can actually do anything on its own for the first 30 levels. After you come back, you should have about 10,000 turns. I'm not kidding. Starting actions: steal the cheapest leather and weapon, buy some potions, pray at Dauros until you get one blessing of Vigillance, then with that blessing active (it gives you Will), go and pray for 100 or so turns at Lunord and get Wind Storm. Your Ranged, Parry and Dodge stats are bad, your HP is low, but at least you can wear the best armour in Valmorgen. That's still going to get you bankrupt if you try to beat encounters on your own though - you simply take too long to beat Ratmen fights and thus it costs too much in healing aids. Thus the Wind Storm. To make the early game much easier, recruit 6 Fighters/Oathmen & 3 Skeletons from the Temple of Krypta. Combine with Windstorm & Heal blessings for a very potent combo to get you through the early and mid-game content easily.

Do the Ratcatcher quests and go to the Ratman Kingdom. With Wind Storm and Leather Scale armour you can get to level 7 pretty quickly. Before you leave for Venn's Spire, make sure you've learned Spellcasting and purchased both spells. Use Power Shock as it does more damage than your regular attack.

In Venn's spire, don't tarry very much. Make sure you beat the Daemonwood and Werewolves encounters before you run out of Wind Storm. After you are free, immediately go to the Timekeeper's Basement and get the gold reward. With that, purchase a Green and Blue charms.

Your next priority is to obtain a Medusa Mail. Fortunately it drops in the Ruins encounter in the FP which can be guarded by lowly harpies. Still, you must now consider loading up on Resurrection blessings. Past level 10 dying becomes too costly turn and XP wise. You may even need to get Stone Skin blessings for some of the fights. I'll leave that to you to leverage this, but basically know that until you get the Bolt Spitter, using Windstorm as your main source of damage is the way to go.

The other challenge with this class is managing your healing aids and consumables. Fire Balm is great, but not very useful before the Bolt Spitter and it costs too much for the lowly Rogue. The Shapeshift potion from Lormidia provides valuable armour and hitpoints which will mean the difference between life and death early on. If you ever find yourself starved for gold and having 0 consumables, go to Lormidia and fight some rust monsters in the sewers, just don't go in the lairs as they have Mistresses and spellcasters make you want to cry. Once you get some levels, you can farm the Ratman Battleground with Windstorm as well.

Those Stoneskin Vargs and Invisible Trolls take too much healing to beat, even with Windstorm. If you're going to spend that kind of gold, might as well go and craft the Bolt Spitter anyway. Getting the schematics from the Wild Gardens can happen when you run out of blessings (so you don't waste them since you will be setting flee HP to max). NOTE from ShiftyStomp: I disagree with this advice. Get the non-crossbow items for the Hunter Crossbow by adventuring in the Elven Valley, which can be reached via the Elven Escort quest, and which Rogues can survive at mid-level. ALL treasure boxes in the Elven Valley are Mimics which yield Black Stone, Black Leaf, Carved Claw, etc. None will drop a very large amount of gold or transport you to Leprechaun Valley. They combine with Crossbow of Accuracy which you should be able to farm at this point.

With proper blessings and some early consumables you can beat the Paladin Keep encounter. Choose to fight the Paladins as they don't have great MGR. In the DF, you should find the Amulet of Destruction and use it in tandem with Windstorm, to turn yourself into a pseudo Wizard. The Aura of Victory is your thing.

Then you can get Merlan's quests done, and in between look for things like Quivers and Brashnard Ruins.

Getting the Mystic Crossbow is easy, but the other ingredients are in the Brashnard Ruin encounters, and those will hurt. The 2 gorgons encounter will kill you, so make sure you have ample resurrections. The other ones you can beat with Windstorm and Merlan potions. If you run out of gold, get more Windstorm and go to the Fertile Plains, hoping to get some Ballista and Spider beard rings, and perhaps two pairs of Rumble Mitts. Crafting the foot and arm items will make Brashnard ruins easier, which will be great for you.

After much praying, skulking and going back and forth from farming easy areas for gold and trying your luck in the DF to get all the needed ingredients, you will get a Bolt Spitter. That won't make you a killing machine... yet. But you're getting closer and closer. With a Bolt Spitter, craft the Silverhide Archer Gloves and the Wolfskin Greaves. You'll have to scrounge up the gold to buy the schematics, so be patient. With those items and a Medusa Mail, you can easily get the +4 enchantment quest in Lormidia. Do that, and prepare to farm the absurd 50,000 gold required to obtain the Circlet of Lycanthropy. If you are patient, beat the BOTP and craft the Gate Key, so you get an easy Lunas Staff. Otherwise, go to the HFM: South and farm that until you do. Incidentally, the HFM: South gives great gold per turn while being a breeze with a Bolt Spitter and some side items, unlike the DF which will still kill you on occasion.

You'll need to upgrade a cache to store the gold needed to buy the Circlet schematic. You can hire some cheap followers to help you do the final haul, though by now you should have a Carved Tooth (+15 STR) and you should be using that when extra carrying power is needed.

With the Circlet, Bolt Spitter +4, Arm and Leg wear and Dryad potions (and copious amounts of Invis gems and 50-80 Elixirs) you are ready for Thallis Rogue's Guilds. The best item to get from them is the Sneaking Armor. Embed 3 Spider Beard Rings. That extra Art boost, coupled with some other items like the cloak, and the Art from the Dryad potion, will make you go past the 100 ARt mark which will severely boost your damage per round. The armbands you embed 3 Ballista Beard Rings. The Sneaky Cloak of Greed is one of the best in the game, and provides MGR, so you can be sure it's your best in slot item. The Black Band is also a BIS item for you and relieves you of the need to find more than one Dark Band. Once you obtain all your Thallis gear, go back to the Sunken City, get one Dark Band and one Belt of Godly Finesse. The Sunken City is easy for a Rogue who has his Thallis gear and makes use of Invisibility gems. You'll likely strike such a profit that you'll need to disable gold pick up until you either craft a Gate Key or you find your two items. Make a Belt of Ballistics and embed it with a second Elven Quiver of Slaying. Since you have plenty of Ranged, doing so with a Quiver of Burning (+5 damage) is a solid choice, since later on you will be hitting 12 times per round, more often than not, and even things like Ancient Dragons and Thallis Gnomes and Adepts can't dodge your attacks successfully. Embedding the Dwarven Quiver of Slaying is a good all-round option that is left to your discretion.

After you obtain your full Thallis gear, belts and everything else, it's time to upgrade your Bolt Spitter with the Imp. Now you will witness a paradigm shift in class power - you will be able to slaughter everything in Thallis and KA with just Invis gems equipped, bar Thallis Warriors and Dark Phantoms. For the Dark Phantoms you can switch to MGR gear and still do them, though I advise against it until you get a Belt of Reflection and/or a Dwarven Locket. You can beat the Nomad Champion, Flesh Reapers, Ratman Terminators, Towering Golems - enemies which will make other classes into minced meat or at the very least, cost them 25 TRTs or more. Enjoy!

## Items

Below are the optimal items for each category, as well as other notable items important to this class. For a complete list of usable items, see items usable by Rogue.

* **Weapon**
	+ Bolt Spitter (*Damage: 12, Attack Multiple Foes +50, Double Attack +40, Ranged -15; Dark Forest Abandoned Library Schematic*) → Bolt Gutter (*Damage: 12, Attack Multiple Foes +65, Double Attack +80; Imp workshop upgrade*)
	+ Early on, Hunter Crossbow (*Damage: 13, Ranged +15, Dodge +15, Parry +15; Valmorgen Schematic*)
* **Armor**
	+ Sneaking Armor (*Armor: 8, Artifice +10, Invisibility*)[Thallis item] embedded with 3 Spider Beard Rings (other beard rings can be used on certain occassions)
	+ Early on, the Medusa Mail is useful.
	+ When first entering Thallis, Mithril Studded Leather Armor (*Armor: 6, Dodge +10*) is useful against Thallis Rogues.

* **Cloak**:
	+ Sneaky Cloak of Greed (*Art +10, Armor +2, Luck +5, MGR +5*)[Thallis item]
	+ Early on, use Forest Cloak (*Concealment*), Protective Cloak, Farmer's Cloak or Sneaky Reinforced Cloak depending on the situation
* **Headgear**
	+ Circlet of Lycanthropy (*Wizard Tower Schematic*) → True Werewolf Circlet (*Werewolf Form, Hand-to-hand +15, Ranged +15, Dodge +15, Parry +15, Magic Resist +10; Imp workshop upgrade*)
	+ Bandanna of Frost
* **Belt**
	+ Belt of Ballistics embedded with a Quiver of Venom or Dwarven Quiver of Slaying (even though you cannot use this Quiver, you can still embed it)
	+ The Belt of Rage and Belt of Ravaging are useful for boosting damage and carrying capacity
* **Footwear**
	+ Wolfskin Greaves
	+ Boots of Lunord when you need MGR
* **Glove**
	+ Crossbow Gloves (*Armor: 2, Ranged +20, Parry +10*)[Thallis item] embedded with 3x Spider Beard Rings or Ballista Beard Rings.
	+ Early on, Silverhide Archer Gloves embedded with 2x Beard Rings. Dodge (which is given by the Varg Beard Ring) is needed to beat the first Thallis Rogue's Guilds early on and then obtain the much better Crossbow Gloves
* **Armband**
	+ Modified Bracer of Accuracy (*Ranged +10, Damage +1*)[Thallis item]
	+ Nevryl Bracers embedded with 2x Ratman Beard Rings, if parry is desired
* **Necklace**
	+ Ring Amulet embedded with a Dark Band.
	+ MGR-boosting Necklaces, such as the Dwarven Locket are useful in certain occasions
	+ Neckband of Smashing or Amulet of the Berserker.
* **Ring**
	+ Black Band (*Ranged +15, Dodge +15, Parry +20, Damage +4*)[Thallis item]
	+ Early on, Ring of Protection
* **Accessory**
	+ Quiver of Burning
	+ Elven Quiver of Slaying is useful prior to obtaining the Quiver of Burning
	+ Carved Tooth is useful for boosting strength