Assassin Guild
The Assassin's Guild is an NPC Guild system built around contract killing; Once a player joins up via the Well Deserved Deaths quest, their primary goal is to pick up Assassination Contracts from drop locations, find and kill the target of the contract via means such as poisoning, luring, and trapping, and return to the next specified drop location to pick up the contract's rewards and the next contract. This system is commonly referred to as AGS for Assassins' Guild System, which is a convention similar to ITS. Assassins will encounter many interesting characters along the way, but be warned!
Contents
Weaknesses and Interrogation
Each assassination target has a set number of weaknesses—things you can use to your advantage—that are known to the NPC vendors within a 100-tile distance. The further away from the mark, the more difficult interrogation becomes, effectively penalizing your Int-vs-Interrogation score by distance / 5. Interrogations may only be conducted on each NPC every 10 minutes. A failed interrogation attempt results in the NPC saying nothing, while a critical failure (1 in 20 failures) will result in being flagged criminal and having guards called on the assassin.
A successful interrogation will yield a random fact about your target; something they like to investigate (luring), something they like to eat or drink (poisoning), or something they have delivered often (trapping).
The following factors may be used to improve your interrogation chances:
- High intelligence. Intelligence is the stat that is "rolled against" for interrogations.
- Incognito spell. Equivalent to about +15 Int versus interrogation.
- Powerful Pheromones. Called "OldSpice" in code, this item grants a 25% Int-vs-Interrogation bonus for 30 minutes.
- Shadowmail Set. The full Shadowmail armor set improves your Int-vs-Interrogation by 10.
Killing the Target
Generally speaking, the method of killing any given target is left up to the player. A target in a guarded area will call guards on the player if they are able to see the player and one other humanoid (including other players). This means that a target in the presence of other NPCs must either be lured out of sight, or killed while the player is out of line of sight.
The easiest way to explain this is that NPCs have eyes in the back of their head; If they can potentially see you (as in no walls obscure you,) they are considered "in line of sight."
Simply draw a straight line between your mark and any NPC in the area, if there is a wall blocking your path, then the NPC is considered "out of sight"
For guard to be called, the target must be able to see you as well as any other NPC . It doesn't matter if YOU can see NPC, only that the target can see them, and thus thinks "Hey, someone I can call for help!"
Indirect Killing Methods
These methods of indirectly killing a target work well at lower difficulties, when the target has lower resists.
- Poisoning - A target may be poisoned by leaving poisoned food or drink around for them to find. The kinds of food/drink they will consume are randomized, and can be determined by interrogation. As targets rise in difficulty, they will begin to cure poisons, necessitating the use of more difficult poisons such as darkglow and parasitic.
- Trapping - A target may open containers that it is expecting, triggering the traps on those containers if they are set. Traps may be set by tinkering. Again, as targets increase in difficulty, their resists will increase, and it may take several traps to kill them.
Direct Killing Methods
The less subtle method of killing a target is to simply stab, blast, or otherwise directly damage the target. This is complicated by the fact that the target may be in a crowded area, so an assassin may need to lure the target to a secluded area by placing desired items on the ground (these items may be discovered by interrogation). Targets will only investigate/consume/open any individual item once, so the amount of luring involved determines how many of an item you need to do that luring.
Once a target is safe to attack, poison damage is most effective. A poison damage weapon capable of inflicting lethal poison with the infectious strike special attack is the assassin's ideal weapon, as targets are incapable of regenerating hit points passively whilst poisoned; This weakness is very important on high level armored targets that may have extraordinarily high resists, making them difficult to slay without removing regeneration from the situation.
Luring Targets Out of Sight
As for luring, when you interrogate vendors for hints, they'll say something to the effect of "He/she likes (some non-food item)". Those are items that you can place on the ground, and your target will go "Ooh!" and go investigate the item. They'll ignore the item once a) they reach it and have a good look, or b) it disappears while they're walking toward it, so you may need more than one item if you're looking to lure them a long ways.
Claiming Rewards
- Marks have theme-appropriate added loot (gold on nobles, lockpicks on thieves, regs on mages, etc). There is also a rare chance of AGS artifact loot dropping on mark corpses, so don't forget to check the body of your mark.
- Assassin's Signet Ring: possible player pack drop from any given target death, gives a significant increase to loot quality.
- Near the bottom of each contract, it will tell you where you can pick up your reward and your next contract. For example:
"Your next drop will be in a farmhouse on a lesser isle of Jhelom, Trammel"
In this case, you will find a Deader's corpse in a farmhouse, southern island Jhelom, Trammel. Deader Corpse Contents decays in 10 mins.
Deader corpse reward contents:
- Gold, which goes up to 8K as prestige increases
- Chance of one of 16 AGS Major Artifact armor/weapon pieces. Major artifacts in AGS loot cannot be insured for 30 minutes after their generation.
- Chance of one of 5 AGS Minor Artifacts
- Chance of one of 4 Shadowmail schematic for the Shadowmail Set
- 4 custom balms/lotions similar in function to those in ITS pouches.
- Potentially rare crafting materials e.g. Shadowscale
- New ancient armor lacquers that will let you give your armor that "old school" feel. (classic armor hues)
- Chance of treasure maps, which goes up to Level 6 maps as prestige increases
- Rare gems drop as alternatives to treasure maps in AGS loot. (50/50)
- Weapon/Armor drops with intensities according to job difficulty.
Purchasable Rewards
- There are purchasable weapons for the top 25% : 6 artifact level weapons, each with poison specials. See AGS Ranked Loot
- These ranked weapons are available for 100k gold, and bind to the purchaser. Bound items purchased via AGS works across linked accounts of the original purchaser.
- Minimum points to be eligible to purchase weapons: 500
AGS Loot Generation Mechanics
Warlocke discusses AGS Loot Generation Mechanics
Prestige and Rankings
- Kills grant you 1-4 points depending on your current prestige, starting at 4.0/kill @ 0 prestiges and falling to 1.0/kill at 10k (Does not affect bonuses).
- Any completed contract may reward a 5pt bonus because the target was particularly despise
- Every 24 hours, everyone's standing is calculated.
- Points decay by 5% once a week.
- Your total points have a direct effect on how difficult your contracts are, and how great the chances rewards are. Once your contracts turn from red to shadow-colored, you're getting into the really tough stuff.
- (still in development) If you should reach the top 5%, you will be able to embark on an epic quest to attain Silence, a legendary assassin's blade. Until this is developed, you can ogle it in the assassins' guild house.
Quests
Needs work.
Q & A
* What seems to be the best template for this activity?
There are a few skills that would be handy for the AGS, including hiding, poisoning, and a combat skill. The rest of the points are really up to your play style, some prefer magery, some prefer combat, some would prefer crafting (If you are really a hardcore AGS fan, put tinkering on). Magery / Chivalry would also be good option for using Recall / Sacred Travel, but there is always the option of using recall scrolls.
There is something rather essential, and that is to have high STR and INT. High INT because you need to interrogate npcs to find out information about your mark, if you have low INT, you will fail to find out information on how to kill them. High STR because as you proceed into 4K mark above, the marks can hardly be killed by poison and you to face to face combat with it.
* I know poisoning needs to be in there but does alchemy need to stay on that char?
No, Alchemy does not need to stay on your character's skill list. You do not have to be the person that makes the poison, but you must be the person who poisoned the food or made the trap.
* Could a tamer be a viable option?
Tamers are not a good option. Pets will not attack marks.
* Would it be necessary to have a weapon skill (ie: fencing) or would casting the poison spell/using poisoned items be enough?
A weapon skill is highly essential, especially when you reach the later stages of in the AGS. Fencing would seem to be a viable option as infectious strike is the only way to achieve lvl 5 poison. Bleed also seems to work well against them. You may also try archery.
Poison spell and other immediate damage spell will most likely get you guard whacked, so food is a safer option.
* If I use an existing character (Tamer or Mage) and they are Glorious Lord/Lady what affect does that have on their standing?
Poisoning and killing people will give you negative karma, most likely you will become malicious.
* Do slayers work on the marks?
Yes, Repond slayers do
* The Changelog 07/05/2012 addition of dungeon marks, How do I complete the contracts?
Go to the guild house and obtain one from the chest labeled "Dungeon". After you killed the mark, the contract is completed and you need to double click the mark's corpse to get the next contract. Your old contract will disappear and a new one will appear in your backpack. If you miss the mark's corpse and it decayed, you will need to discard the one that you have and start over again.
