King of Thieves, a beginer's guide written by a beginer

Okay, so I've been at this cool game called King of Thieves for a month or two. Addictive as all hell. Now I'm the leader of my guild and people are asking me for advice, so rather than post a whole bunch of messages on Facebook, I thought I'd just keep it here, all in one place. This is a primer for people who are familiar with the game so if you haven't played it, you may not understand the terminology.

DISCLAIMER: I am NOT an expert in this game. My advice is based on what I consider common sense and logic applied to what I know about the game.


DISCLAIMER #2: This advice is written for players UNDER level 45. At level 45 you will raid and be raided by everyone level 45 and up, changing the game dynamics drastically. By that point, I can only assume you know what you are doing and this guide is pretty worthless.

First, let's examine the goals of the game. Simply put, the object is to increase your gem count total as high as possible. One doesn't get any rewards for having a higher level, total number of dungeons raided, amount of coins stolen, number of gems stolen... advancement is gained by increasing gem count total points. In fact, its a bit of a disadvantage to having a higher level, as you are facing higher levels opponents then, with higher level (and thus more difficult to beat) dungeons. Also, its a disadvantage in having too many coins, for other thieves will be more tempted to raid your dungeon.

That brings us to TIP #1. Never raid a dungeon unless there is a gain to be made to your game plan. While we all LOVE raiding and plundering, the experience points add up to higher levels, and harder opponents, so use discipline and hit the "skip dungeon" button liberally. When I began the game, I really enjoyed stealing as much as I could -- until I realized that it was putting me at a disadvantage. Some dungeons are so easy to beat that this is difficult, and we all love the thrill of victory, but you must avoid temptation unless there is a clear cut reward to be had.

How do you know when there is a gain to be made? First and foremost, it depends on your current situation. If you need to make upgrades, you obviously need coins, so look for beatable dungeons that have high coin counts. If not, you should have enough coins to search through a number of dungeons to find high level gems. To give it some perspective, I burned through 100k coins in about a half hour this morning searching for gems. I found five dungeons with gems I recognized as valuable to me, passed on one because the dungeon was beyond my ability to figure out a solution, and attempted to raid the other four. Two of them were defeated and then the high gem didn't come up in my spin chance, and two of them I got what I wanted. So in 30 minutes I traded 100k coins for 40k gem points, and got about 50-60 experience points - quite well done I thought.

How do you tell if the gems are valuable you ask? They all have different visual characteristics based on their value. Learn what the gems you want look like! See http://king-of-thieves.wikia.com/wiki/Gems

On the subject of learning, we come to TIP #2. Watch YouTube (or other sources) videos and practice what is shown until you have confidence in your ability to do it yourself. At a minimum, you must learn the "special" jump techniques, such as corner jump and saw jump and others (search "king of thieves jumps https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=king+of+thieves+jumps). There are two good cheap ways of practicing special jumps. First, examine your guild members dungeons to see what they have. Costs nothing but time. Second, hit the "Edit" button on your dungeon, set up different scenarios, and practice practice practice. As long as you don't reach your totem twice, you can always back out of your changes and revert back to your normal dungeon.

More things to learn: Get familiar with Base Projects at http://www.kotdb.com/. They list all known bases along with some possible layouts. Note the number of your base in the brown box on the upper left of the picture of it. If you search Google or YouTube for "king of thieves base XX" or simply "kot base XX", you will find tons of ideas to layout your traps. Be aware - this knowledge is widely known to most players, so if the dungeon is seen here by you, your opponent can find it as well. You can also use this to your advantage by playing near a 2nd device or desktop machine which has kotdb.com and YouTube open, and searching for the desired base prior to picking the locks (remember, unless the base is attacked, search dungeon will bring you to the same dungeon until you press "skip"). Another place for great videos is https://www.facebook.com/groups/1655101604777385/

Yet more to learn: The nuances of the game. There are many little things that can give you that wee little advantage you need to get ahead.

For example, to use the disable trap potion more effectively, be aware that if you use it PRIOR to any attempt, it will disable a random trap. If you wait until you try the dungeon, it will disable the trap that has killed you most. I find this rather handy when there is a dungeon that would be easy to beat if only that one trap wasn't there, suicide on that trap, THEN disable it. For example, one of the dungeons I defeated this morning had a saw lower down on the opposing wall from the door, with traps all above it. I simply walked out the door into the saw, disabled it, and next turn, simply walked out the door and pretty much slid into the totem, rather than go through all the traps above. Easy 20k gem. Was it sporting of me? Hell yea, I'm a THIEF, what do I care about sportsmanship, my goal is loot.

Another nuance is that when you have a ritual going, you can only be attacked four times between log ins. So what I do is pick a time when I don't need to log in for 12 hours (usually 1st thing in AM or last thing in PM) and start ritual then, and MAKE A NOTE OF WHAT TIME IT WAS. Since I have notifications turned on, I know if I was raided, and I know if I had a gem stolen, so I DO NOT LOG ON unless I get a stolen gem notification for those 12 hours. As a result, only four people get a chance to take my precious gems, while the people who feel the need to log in every few hours to check their progress are giving their opponents 3-4 times as many tries.

One strategy for not losing high value gems that I heard about is to use low value gems and hope like hell that one gets stolen, don't try any retrieve, and depending on how much time is remaining, replace it with either another crap gem (if the time left is long) or with the highest possible gem (if the remaining time is short). I don't have enough experience with this technique to speak more on it, but thought it interesting to mention.

The best way to not lose gems is to have guild members and friends who are willing to help retrieve them of course. Since there are only so many people in a guild, its a good idea to have lots of Facebook friends who play the game and can try to help you out as well. There are numerous King Of Thieves groups on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/KingofThievesaskafriend/ that you can get involved in and gain lots of friends that will help you out when you need it. One can never have too many friends, especially true when it comes to retrievals. Be a sport about it though, and do your share of trying to get back their gems as well. What goes around, comes around, and karma is a bitch.

Let's talk about upgrade strategy for a moment. First, ALWAYS BE UPGRADING! You will get to level 45 soon enough, and if you are too far behind the other players, you will not be a happy thief. There are three types of upgrades to concentrate on, traps, skills, and thrones. Patience is key, you will NEVER be happy with where you are currently at, life's a bitch.

Upgrade traps as often as you can, but when a trap is upgrading, don't do rituals with gems you can't afford to get stolen from you. A Guild Battle lasts 3 days. The best time for stealing good gems is usually the first day, because people are less worried about losing gem points and letting down their teammates at that stage of a battle. It therefore makes sense to have slots open for gems by doing rituals while protected on the last day of the previous guild battle. So then, you will be upgrading traps on the first two days of the Guild Battle, and performing two rituals on the 3rd day. Watch your opponents trap levels and try to stay ahead of the average.

Skill levels should constantly be upgrading. Work hard to earn coins and keep them going 24/7. My advice is to get the merchant upgrade done as early as possible, it makes life much easier when you only have to steal half as much coins to do your upgrades.

Thrones. They make all the difference in the game. If there is ONE PLACE that I advise spending some cash in game, it's to upgrade the throne to Foreseer as early and as high as you can afford. Don't waste your mushrooms and eyeballs on lower level thrones.

Okay, that's it for now, I'll edit below this for future thoughts. Leave feedback if you like. Oh, and I should insert a plug for my guild here... join school of thieves guild, we're the one (when you search Leaderboard) that's all lower case letters.

Banshee - Quick views of Rebecca Bowman death

Okay, so less than 5 minutes into episode one, the hottest little Amish girl in Banshee is pronounced dead. At this stage of the series I could only muster up a few minutes of tears, what with all the crying I did over Nola, Siobhan, and Gordon. Looks like one of this season's story arcs is going to be about solving the whodunnit part (and of course - retribution).

I think the key to solving this will be determining the motive.

Two vastly different scenarios come to mind - A) this is a random killing by a psychopath serial killer, or B) someone committed a few gruesome murders in previous months to hide the real reason Rebecca was killed. 

A random serial killing is by definition a motive of it's own, not much to dissect, and we can just assume that Hood will figure out who did it sometime this season. Not much to discuss that is interesting in this case.

However, I do love a good conspiracy, and the second option opens the door to so many juicy possibilities of motives. Let's just spitball a few out here...

Rebecca was possibly pregnant with someone's baby that didn't want that known. A Kai Proctor love child springs to mind, but it ain't like she never slept with others. The large gaping hole in her torso may be to remove the evidence.

The drug business is noted for violence, she may have been side stepping Uncle Kai's distribution network (again) and ran afoul of the competition OR ran afoul of Proctor or someone in his network (oh, hello Burton). Kai did buy a new house because he wanted a more secure location for them to live at.

Another possibility is that she had some information or evidence of some sorts that someone really needed to keep quiet. This makes sense to me mainly because of Kai's dinner time reaction to her death. He pushes his plate to the floor and trashes Rebecca's room. He wasn't so much trashing it as he was searching it, for what I don't know, but it has to be small enough to fit in her dresser drawer.

Now a lot of these motives point to a Kai Proctor involved murder. One has to ask, why is he offering Hood information if he's involved? Who knows, it might be just another psychotic Banshee resident doing their thing.

Does anyone know if Johan Lambrect (Amish teacher, Kai's dental patient) had any kin?