Although two pieces of loot were missing from the Hunting Guard's tomb, the high-level players who had come to tackle the scenario battle weren't too disappointed or angry once the truth came out.
After all, they'd pulled it off through sheer skill. Everyone there was a true high-level player, so they knew it wasn't something you could accomplish just by flapping your lips. They soon launched into a heated discussion: how had Yaya and Little Hand managed to sneak all the way in without alerting the cave's crazed undead gnolls, then make off with the loot?
It sounded pretty damn cool, didn't it?
It would definitely kick off another wave of posts on the forums, tempting newbies to take up the paths of assassins and thieves.
The problem was, the stealth—or Shadowmeld, as it was called—in this game wasn't a very pleasant experience. It took real skill. Without talent, you had to grind away at it over time. Until a player's affinity with shadows reached the Master level, novice assassins' attempts at stealth kills failed nine times out of ten.
How to tread lightly, how to use shadows, how to slip through the cracks—all of it involved tedious training. Even the basic pickpocketing skill was enough to keep inexperienced "righteous players" practicing for days.
There weren't many assassins and thieves in the game yet, and their combat styles were sharply divided between two extremes.
High-level thieves like Yaya and Little Hand could sneak into this deadly place and steal its loot without anyone noticing. At the other extreme were berserker-style assassins like Sister Pomegranate.
Why bother with stealth?
Why waste time planning a route and preparing an escape path? What a hassle. Just charge in, slaughter everyone who saw you make your kill, and you'd still have achieved perfect stealth,