Tactics (L12)

Sometimes the art of fighting is not to fight. While DDO doesn't offer many adventures where stealth is a viable way to complete, there are a few.

To completely solo a quest as a Dark Monk creates serious bragging rights, and demonstrates your skill in infiltration and survival.

To use an example, let’s switch to a Dark Monk, going solo in the Level 13 quest, Maraud the Mines.

Here, Ryncletica goes ninja--very ninja. She’s completely alone, not even a hireling Cleric. She’s armed with a crapload of Cure Serious Potions, just in case, and with two great weapons for all Monks (but especially Dark) by Level 12: The Vampiric Stonedust Wraps and the Vampiric Fury Shortswords. If she were to fight, these weapons will suck HP back from what they strike.

Her goal in this quest is to gather up gemstones of specific types. Ryn chooses to try to kill as little as possible and to sneak herself to everything she needs.

Ryncletica moves forward into the center room, already One with Shadow. She realizes she has to stay continually stealthed to avoid the eternal attention of the gnoll archers on unreachable platforms above her. She moves ahead and left into a mine tunnel and stops to find her first cache of gems. However, there are three gnolls, all of them too close to the gems for her to take without them detecting her.

She switches to her life-stealing shortswords, switches to Wind stance for faster cutting, moves in for the kill. Twelve seconds. Three dead gnolls. Three HP lost. Four gems gained. Ryn goes stealth again, regenerating her ki and moving to her next targets.

The next room is a wide, high expanse with more archers. An orange named boss stands atop a wide pedestal. Enemies patrol occasionally at the tunnel’s level into the arena.

Ryncletica ignores them all. She uses a Shadow Fade for insurance, granting invisibility. While still stealthed, she picks up the needed gems just a few feet from the local boss and leaves the area.

In a short time, she completes the quest, having only made a few kills where enemies were too close to her goal. None of the central room’s archers ever discovered her presence.

And that, Grasshopper, is one advantage of a Ninja Spy. Silent, able to complete quests with hardly a peep. If cornered or discovered, her Dark Monk skills will tear through the living like tissue paper.

I did say the living. The Dark Monk uses negative energy for their attacks. While they can be effective against aberrations like beholders, they are weakest against undead, so plan in getting good undead bane/disruption weaponry for your Dark Monk.

For more on the improvements in the stealth system in Update 19, see "The Power of Shadow."