Any large scale assault upon a city will require the support of an army and thus must be done via the War System and pushing a supply line to the city gates. However, an individual or a coordinated small group can get within a city for the purpose of espionage or assassination. Any can infiltrate a city, though those of the rogue classes can do more within an enemy city and have a better chance of escaping detection.

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"The mistress? Dead in an alley? Impossible! I let her in to see the master less than an hour ago... Oh Gods have mercy!"
-- Jabar'al'umm personal guard to the late Master Hyrgal

The contest between lock and lockpick, security and subterfuge, light and shadow reaches a new level of ferocity when the players wield the powers of the elements and the arcane. As societies on both sides of the great ocean prospered and grew wealthy, individuals and governments both began to gather treasures and property that needed protection from questing fingers. Many solutions were tried and tested in the search for a cost effective way to guard treasures and doors from foes that could weave magic to frustrate even the most complex mechanism with ease.

The challenge was striking an appropriate balance. It was possible, for smaller objects or at exuberant costs to secure something magically so that it was nigh unreachable. So high were the costs however that all but the wealthiest of merchants and the highest placed of officials could even dream of purchasing that form of security. A cheaper, yet still effective alternative was needed and thus the art of ward-smithing was born. Through the gathering, refining and careful tuning of gems it was possible to craft wards of greatly varying power and effects. Thus, the contest rages on. Lithmeria's rogues hone their craft, fusing magic and dexterity to work their way into places they are not supposed to be. At the same time, ward-smiths search for new gems, new combinations and new effects to guard the property of those who would not be disturbed.

The art of stealth too has seen great changes with the evolution of Phantoms and Marauders. As rogues push the possibilities of the mortal form to the limits and beyond, they become masters of the rooftops and treetops of Lithmeria, running across a second world high above. Perhaps the greatest leap in subterfuge has been the development of magical disguises. Through careful study and no small amount of acting talent and magical power, rogues have learned to mimic the features, clothing and even shape of those they wish to imitate. Though perfection in the art of disguise remains out of reach, the facsimile of perfection has proven more than sufficient for some of the most daring infiltrations in recent memory. The notables of Lithmeria have learned to walk wearily, never knowing when the smiling face of a loyal comrade hides the deadly intent of a merciless killer.

"I've been listening to this idiot try to pick my front door for the last two hours. I'm impressed he still has fingers left... oh, there they go..."
-- Anonymous Merchant

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Gaining Entrance
The first step to infiltrating a city is of course getting within its walls. Every city has some sort of secondary tunnel system under it (or in one rare case over and through it) be it the sewers or New Celadra, the ruins of destroyed Lerythe, or the tunnels of Rhylium. The tunnels are not as easy to traverse as the streets of a city and there are only a few connections between the tunnels and city proper.

This tunnel system provides an alternative means of entrance to the city, as each of the cities has two tunnels that extend beyond the perimeter of the city. One is the "known" tunnel and the other the "hidden". The known entrance is fairly easily accessed in a nearby area capturable via the war system. That close to home it will fall under your control unless the enemy has made a lot of progress pushing into your territory, and therefore can have Squads posted to guard it. The "hidden" tunnel entrance however, lies within a place that is harder to reach. Often through an area filled with high level aggro mobs, and/or requiring special skills to reach.

This means each city has a total of 3 entrances: The main gate which can be breached by a disguised rogue, or a full-scale invasion but not much else, the primary tunnel entrance which is easier to capture during an invasion push, but still usually going to be guarded, though not as heavily and therefore a little more breachable by stealth or force, and the hidden tunnel entrance which can be a bit of a challenge to reach but provides the most secretive way into the heart of a city.

Avoidance
The most effective way to prevent having a half-dozen guards play soccer with your head is to not run into them in the first place. The primary means of surviving in an enemy city for non-rogues, and a very useful part of a rogue's arsenal, avoiding enemies is a very hectic and pulse-pounding art. The main method of avoidance is the ability of Traverse, which rogues get in their Third Tier Infiltration skill, and which others can get as a second tier specialization of the common skill Exploration.

Traverse lets you move over walls, rooftops, and through the branches of trees. It does -not- take you to a seperate elevation which you may be familiar with from other, but instead allows you to move where there are not exits. I think a visual representation will get the usefulness of traverse across best


Imagine you are in the asterisk marked room, getting to the room directly south of you would normally take nearly a dozen movements, and there could easily be guards galore in all those rooms. However assuming you are in an urban area or within a forest, you can merely TRAVERSE SOUTH, and vault the wall and head on to the room directly south of you. Rogues that have Traverse from both their class skill and the common skill can move two rooms in a row this way if there is a building in between allowing you to make it through areas that could otherwise take much longer to walk through, not to mention the added danger.

Stealth
Rogues have additional options for their infiltration of cities, such as stealth. Early on in a Rogue's career they learn to hide, which will make them practically invisible in their room, and to slip which lets them move from one room to another silently and without removing their hide defense (though it does cost them a bit of balance). Using these two abilities together a Rogue can move about unseen to casual observers.

Searching a room carefully will still reveal a hidden rogue and is generally performed with no 3rd party message to alert that you are looking carefully about you. There are also Glyphs of Alarm that a skilled Mage can setup in a room that will alert them to your presence in a specific room regardless of slipping.

However a Master Rogue, trained in infiltration can avoid even these counter-measures. Constant awareness of those around you will allow you to be alerted whenever someone in your room begins a search, giving you that vital chance to slip away before it's completed and reveals your presence. Furthermore by exercising your mystical powers you can make yourself 'magially neutral' which will negate magics intended to detect your presence or location.

Disguise
Another very useful ability for the infiltrating of cities is disguises. A rogue's disguises are not merely a change of clothes or a fake mustache. A rogue's disguises are a mystical illusion cloaking their form and making them appear in all forms as if they truly are that which they impersonate.

Disguises are created by "harmonizing" with either a sentient NPC or another player. There are two ways of doing this, the first requires standing in the same room as them without any actions that throw you off balance or eq for a minute or so. This doesn't cause any third party messages so they have no warning you are doing this. The other method is to take the image from a corpse, this method only take a few seconds and is generally the preferred tactic of a rogue. Only a single image can be stored at any given time, attempting to harmonize another image while storing one will replace it, though you can acquire and store another disguise while currently hiding behind one.

Disguises have a great number of limitations however due to their tenuous nature. If you are too injured to concentrate (below 75% health) the disguise will fall apart. If you attempt to speak or commit a hostile action the disguise falls apart. Being in the same room as the target of your disguise will also cause it to fall apart as the mystical image snaps back to its true position. There is also a time-limit on how long a disguise can be kept in place once activated of around 10 minutes. You'll get a one-minute warning when it starts to waver so you have to time to run for safety.

Despite the limitations of this ability, it remains possibly the best tool for entering enemy territory. Instead of skulking in through secret tunnels you can just stroll in through the main gate in style.

Ward Cracking
The absolute coolest part of the update in my opinion, and I want to give credit where due: The original idea for this concept was suggested by Sani on the forums, and in fact that entire discussion on stealth gave us a real feel for what our players wanted and guided our process when designing the final face of stealth. Our thanks to everyone who participated.

As mentioned in the lore update, physical locks are not used in the main because of their complete ineffectiveness against a skilled mage or rogue. Because of this skilled Wardsmiths are employed in the creation of powerful wards made from gems and knowledge that will seal a door against entry or damage until the ward is unsealed. Of course the rogues just couldn't let this stand...

Wardcracking is the art of unraveling a ward's inner magic with your mind. By laying your hand upon the ward you can bore into it with your mind and attempt to determine the combination that will unlock it. Wards depending on the rarity of the gems made to create them will have anywhere from 1-6 layers. At each layer there are a number of paths leading in different directions, the average layer having 3, and you will send your mental probe down one of the paths. You will repeat this for each layer and have no idea whether you correctly guessed at each junction until you reach the end and force the ward.

When you force a ward after probing your way through all the paths, one of two things will happen. If you got every layer correct the door will unlock. If you missed any layers then those specific layers will fire their "fail effect". Fail effects vary widely and depend on the type of layer used. A backfire layer for example will drain mana and do mental damage to the cracking rogue as the ward flares raw energy down their probe. A few of the other layer types are: Chaos (only has 2 paths, but will re-scramble all ward paths if you miss it. Crack this one first!), Complex (has no fail effect, but 4 paths instead of 3), Klaxon (makes an audible sound alerting all guards and players within 5 rooms), Imprint (captures a mental imprint of the cracker so they can be identified), Signal (sends a signal to the next layer giving it a 50% chance to fire its fail condition regardless), and several others.

These fail conditions while very painful, disruptive, and dangerous to the cracker also provide invaluable clues when attempting to determine the combination. In fact instead of trying to determine a junction at a particular layer you can "flare" your probe which results in an automatic failure for that layer, potentially useful in figuring out what layers are what types, but also exceedingly dangerous.

When making a ward the wardsmith will first choose what type of gem to use in the construction. The ubiquitous quartz provides a laughable one layer, common gems provide 2, uncommon gems 3, rare gems 4, the wryly named keystone gem allows you to create a 5 layer ward, while an Imbued gem (a perk item) allows wards of 6 layers. Normally when designing a ward and choosing the types you can not repeat a type twice in the same lock, though wards of 5 or more layers allow limited repeitition of types.

Wardchests, which use the magical technology of wards are an entirely different matter than warded doors. A wardchest being comparitively small to a house can have ward gems placed entirely around it forming a continuously looping ward which is unbreakable with the rogue's wardcracking technique. This allows you to safely store items within your home, and the wardchest magic is used in a much larger scale for the vault room of each major bank.

And now for an example of ward cracking! This particular ward has 3 layers (Complex, Backfire, and Chaos)


Spying
The final thing we're covering in this update is Voice Crystals and the rogue's ability to Tap into them. The lore behind channels and tells within the game is the Voice Crystals. Powerfully spelled crystals that exist in every city with which the player characters are attuned, as are major NPCs and guards. All channel communication as well as tells sent/received are by means of these Voice Crystals.

Rogues - once again using the same sort of mystical harmony they use to bring forth energy on their daggers, crack wards, or form disguises - can attune themselves in a temporary fashion to an enemy Voice Crystal if they can get within its room. When attuning as such they can eavesdrop on a specific division or city channel served by that Voice Crystal.

Attuning yourself to multiple voice crystals like this greatly hampers your ability to communicate outward. You can not speak on any channels while so attuned, and can only send tells at a limited rate, having a cooldown after each tell before you can send another. You also must stay within a short range to maintain your clandestine connection, staying within a range of around a dozen rooms of the crystal. Once you sever a connection either voluntarily or by going out of range you will be able to communicate normally again, but can not form another tap on a Voice Crystal for a period of 5 minutes.

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We are forgoing an update next week, because I want to take the time to improve a lot of existing functionality and add code for things that don't really have a cool update to accompany them.

BUT, we hate to send you home empty handed for the week so we will be holding a Q&A session sometime next week where you can get all your burning questions about the game answered. It will be held on IRC like the previous Q&As. A time will be narrowed down within a day or so (Reply to this thread with times best for you if you plan on attending so we can narrow it down to a time when the most people can show up)

After the Q&A session is up we're going to turn the tables and hold a Trivia Contest based on the lore released via these announcement posts. The top 3 winners of the Trivia Contest will receive a unique Imbued enhancement (Imbued being our term for those perks bought with RL money, although THIS particular perk can only be won in this Trivia Contest) We look forward to seeing as many of you as can make it! Tell your friends

Edit: The Trivia perks so you can drool over them:
All 3 winners will get enough progress along the Lore award track to earn the title Scholar (and several levels worth of bonus XP from that). There are also 3 special perks which will be selected by the winners in order of their rank (1st place gets first choice, and so forth. Ties will be broken by bonus questions) The items are:

• Worldly Scholar enhancement - A permanent buff that allows you to increase one of your stats by +1 (boosted stat changeable with a slight equilibrium cost)
• Knowledgeable Scholar enhancement - +20% experience gain which will last til level 60 under normal circumstances (assuming you buy 1 bonus lesson with XP per level, your mileage may vary)
• Scholar's Quill - An Imbued quill allowing you to mail letters and packages from anywhere in the world without need of a mailbox

That is all.

...

A little off topic, but not really. Hope on Remand is a "life after college" blog that a friend and I are doing (most posts are about work, law school, or reviews), and today's post was about the behind-the-scenes process of deciding stuff like whether or not to have rogues be able to pick locks. A lot of it is stuff you guys already know, but on the off chance you want to read it, this is the hard link: Game Design Philosophy--Lockpicks?