Dumb AM ranger question 6 - Stealth

[grinrain]

Worth anything to an AM wearing scale or heavier?

[svendre]

Possibly, because you're a ranged character. Even though you may not have great stealth, with ranged characters, you gain a nice advantage in getting the drop on sleeping monsters. You might be too loud to walk all the way up to them and stab them, but if you're quiet enough that they're still asleep the first time you spot them, you can take your first shot with a large bonus to accuracy because they are still asleep. Then, there is shadow dragon armour, which falls into the "heavier" category, yet it boosts your stealth.

All that said, I would probably not advise you put a lot of points into stealth unless you have a clear idea of what you're doing with it. Stealth is one of those things that I find can be as dangerous as it can be helpful, particularly if stabbing, because it's easier to misjudge the danger in advancing deeper into hostile space. For example, the noisy character gets chased right away near the stairs, but the stealthy character that tries to get a stab in might move very close to a lot of sleeping enemies, trying to get a stab in, only to have them all wake up just before you make any stabs, and then you're possibly disadvantaged.

[Sprucery]

I'm one of those players who train stealth more than most good players would advice. But if you're wearing scale or heavier, the armour is killing your stealth so much that it's not really worth training it.

[petercordia]

Look at you '%' screen. If you have a couple of pips of stealth, your stealth is helping you. The first couple of levels of stealth skill do not increase your stealth score above 0 (........), and are almost completely worthless.
In heavier-than-scales armour I think you need quite a lot of stealth skill to reach the point where it starts helping.

[acoolguy]

Stealth is most useful in the early game when you are in light armour. The biggest benefit to high stealth is the ability to simply not engage dangerous enemies. In a recent mummy wanderer game (with the wz book), I primarily wore robes and a ring of stealth for the entire early game and all of lair. I had the advantage of encountering only sleeping enemies which I only engaged after exploring a large portion of the map. Later on, I stopped relying on stealth and used longbows and wore crystal plate to win the game.