Master of Thieves

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The Master of Thieves, @, is the Rogue quest leader. He is also the Tourist quest nemesis.

Interestingly, since he pulls double duty as quest nemesis and quest leader, he resists stoning and can also steal the Master Key of Thievery (or any other covetable artifact) from a Rogue, though this will not occur in a normal game.[1]

Strategy

A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:

"Update stats, possibly strategy for 3.7.0 - quest leaders have been toughened since killing them no longer makes the game (completely) unwinnable."

As the quest nemesis for Tourists, the Master of Thieves is really no trouble at all to a player who is strong enough to fight through the crowds of soldiers that defend his lair. The most important thing to note is that he will pick up the Platinum Yendorian Express Card as soon as the player disturbs him, and will therefore have magic resistance—so death rays and so forth will not hurt him.

This is scarcely a problem, as he is relatively unimpressive in melee and lacks special attacks beyond being able to steal the PYEC back from you if you get it before killing him. He also lacks any other resistances; if you have any darts on hand (e.g. your starting stack of +2 darts) throwing a flurry of poisoned darts with a sufficient skill level will drop him quickly and possibly even instakill him.

Encyclopaedia entry

There was a flutter of wings at the window. Ymor shifted his
bulk out of the chair and crossed the room, coming back with
a large raven. After he'd unfastened the message capsule from
its leg it flew up to join its fellows lurking among the
rafters. Withel regarded it without love. Ymor's ravens were
notoriously loyal to their master, to the extent that Withel's
one attempt to promote himself to the rank of greatest thief
in Ankh-Morpork had cost their master's right hand man his
left eye. But not his life, however. Ymor never grudged a
man his ambitions.
[ The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett ]

References

  1. The only way to even set up such a scenario would be to kill him in one hit (e.g. with a wand of death), thus preventing him from immediately expelling you from the quest branch. If he then leaves a corpse, you can remove it and revive it if you really want to see him steal the Key.