This guide was originally written in the playtest 3, and is in the process of being updated.

I am Ice, often times The Sojourner, knife enthusiast and pathologic backstabber.
If you aren't interested in watching several hours of content on Twitch or else to get the gist of the class, this guide is just as good for you.

A rogue is a pragmatic utilitarian, a realist with little care for principles and beliefs when you are surrounded by unreliable people and creatures that want to turn your insides out.

Therefore, the rogues' first regard goes to their own skills, to their proficiency with their tools and the keen of their steel. That is not to say that rogues are loners, but they are certainly self-reliant.


As you have noticed, Dark and Darkest is a slow game. Ironmace wanted a dungeon crawl, and they put the crawl in big bolded letters. Combat is slow, movement is slow, interaction is slow, but death can come very fast.

Fast is what rogues do.

Rogues are good at:

• Interacting with objects
  
• Stabbing and backstabbing
  
• Dying to mosquito bites

Rogues suck at:

• Fighting head on
  
• Approaching stabbing distance in large rooms against ranged characters
  
• Living to retirement

The rogue presents a binary compromise for any player.
Having one of the highest speed scores in the game, they also have a crippingly low health pool.

This means that while you have the tools to certainly tackle any encounter, you also have the ability to die faster than any other character if you can't use your only true advantage - your speed.


Only shields and a select amount of weapons have the ability to block. That means that your only reliable way to avoid an Early Forced Extraction (or an F) is to dodge. Dodge the swings, dodge the arrows, dodge the traps, dodge your taxes, dodge because your life depends on it.

Movement speed is tied according direction, so backstepping is slower than moving forward.
However, swinging the camera around to engage in a French Charge (running in the opposite direction) will give you enough speed to get out of the range of most attacks.
Sidestepping and strafing incoming blows is also a possibility, but consider many weapons have very wide swing angles and it falls on exactly what you are against.

Speed is not only essential in immediate combat, but also in how you approach those battles.
We will go into strategies for solo and party rogues later on.

You should know that all characters have the same base movement speed value, and this is further modified by the equipment. This means rogues don't move intrinsically faster than other characters, but their equipment tends toward levity - and this is something important to consider if you want to remain faster than other classes.

As a game that is constantly underdoing changes, the state of rogues varies greatly. From being frankly overpowered to potentially unplayable, it's all based on their current state.

As of mid 2024, rogues are arguably the hardest, weakest class in the game.
Certainly, if you can get to stabbing distance and land 3 stiletto headshots you are reliably to kill almost anybody, but you have to work hard to it. Ranged characters will chew you up and spit you out if you aren't the literal personification of the night, and melees will cleave you in twine faster than you can switch from your throwing knives to your daggers. Any fight you play without having the first strike is usually a fight lost.

PvE is also not made easier in any regard. You have acceptable damage, indeed, but you depend entirely on your movement speed to dodge, and your only strategy is more often than not strafing, baiting for attack animations and punching your dagger in while you can. Your lack of sustain means that you also have to play with a very generous amount of healing supplies in your inventory, which you must use readily and greedily, lest you are caught injured, by either mobs or players.

Considering all this, other classes often have more varied and more generous kits that allow them to make mistakes, or approach encounters from more ways - on top of having the stats to generally outmatch rogues in a melee. That is not to say that other classes are better in every aspect, but they certainly tend to be broadly more flexible - with chagrining irony - than the rogue.

All classes must utilize the full width of their kit, their tools, and the knowledge of the map to push encounters into a situation that is favorable for them - but for rogues, if you don't have this favorability, your chances of survival are far lower. Timmies will make plenty of mistakes to give you some easy victories, but any seasoned player knows exactly your weaknesses and they will not get mentally stunlocked trying to decide what to do the moment they feel an unwelcomed poke in their spine.

At the time of writing this, I can only recommend the rogue as an addition to 3 man parties, or if you relish in being the underdog, and figuring how to come out on top anyway.

Getting started as a rogue is hard.
While you have your incredible speed naked, your initial dagger does damage comparable to a love peck, your skill selection is limited at best, and your bag of tricks is practically empty.

However, as they level up, their skill path becomes very obvious, and so does their ability to survive without good equipment.

There are currently 7 active skills for rogues, of which - like all classes - you can only take 2 with you to use from the Q and E buttons. Rogues are incapable of spellcasting.


Hide makes you invisible as long as you do nothing. You cannot move, you cannot attack, you cannot heal, you cannot interact with anything. The only thing you can do is move the camera.

Without certain passives, it is very hard to use reliably: as you hide, you leave a misty swirl of particles that is easily seen in the dark, and anybody that played a rogue knows that you are pretty much standing there.

Hide has about 45~ second cooldown and lasts for about a minute 8 seconds. The cooldown only starts when Hide has run out.

Modified By:


Upon exiting Hide, you gain 10% movement speed and 50% physical damage bonus for 3 seconds or until you land a hit.

Given that the damage of the rogues is often a matter of quantity more than quality, wasting a passive to add 50% damage to a single attack is quite lame. I would advise to avoid it.


Increases the duration of Hide to 24 seconds.

This may not sound great, but waiting patiently, invisible in the middle of a room for 20 seconds can give you an excellent opening into an enemy party, or enough time to let people think you are long gone. If you play with Hide, this is pretty much essential.


Move up to 10 steps while crouching or slow walking (pressing Shift) without breaking Hide.

The use of Stealth is to be able to position yourself in the exact spot where you need to be, avoid getting bumped, and perform frankly undodgeable backstabs. That said, it is extremely limited and if you are coming out of Hide, nobody should be expecting your backstab to begin with. It has some use according your playstyle, but generally you can do without.

An instant-cast skill with about 25 second cooldown, and 12 second duration.
It generates a thick smoke cloud on the spot where you cast it, which reduces enemy movement by 10%. It also reduces everyone's visibility.

Not my recommended skill of choice, as I find its use very limited.


Drop a small trap in the shape of caltrops directly behind you. Anybody stepping on the trap takes 10 points of damage and loses 50% movement speed for 3 seconds.

Has 4 charges and a significant cooldown. The charges are per run and you cannot recharge this skill in the dungeon.

Either for setting ambushes or for running away, the caltrops are very straightforward and very efficient and easy to use. Just try to not step on them, and if you are in a party, note that they are also not immune to your caltdrops. For that reason, it's more useful for solo rogues than party rogues.


Backflip to show your dominance.
Hilarious, generally useless.


These Skills share method of application.
That is to say, they are abilities that you apply to your weapons rather than cast directly.

Once you activate any of these 'imbue' skills, your next hit will discharge all currently cast imbues.
You can switch weapons and tools without losing your imbues.
You can stack all imbues together and they will be discharged simultaneously.
The imbues last indefinitely.
You can discharge the imbues with a melee or ranged hit.
Missing - hitting only air - does not discharge the imbues.
Hitting a surface will discharge the imbues harmlessly, so you can waste your abilities on shields and walls.
Most imbues have visual effects which make them easy to see in the dark.

Adds 20 magical damage to be applied as DoT over 5 seconds.

Simply put, the best rogue active skill.
More damage is more better.

And this is a cooldown skill without limited charges. You can and should use it constantly, to clear mobs or harass players. Coat one of your throwing knives and it will do effectively 5 times more damage than it normally does by itself. Stab somebody when they are low and they will have to decide very quickly whether heal now or die in the span of the next 5 seconds.

There's no reason not to take Rupture.


Upon landing a hit, silence the target for 3 seconds.

Gives you an edge to finish off cornered mages, or an opening if you can land your hit from a throwing knife. The latter is risky, the former prevents mages from immolating themselves when they realize they are alone in a room with a rogue.

Having an increased familiary of other classes and knowing their rhythms and their usual skill rotations can tell you when it's a good time to disable them, which can throw people off their game and give you a good kill. However, if you are at that point, you probably didn't need this guide at all.


Reduces the armor of an enemy by about half for a few seconds.

One of the rogue abilities that was nerfed to the ground. However, as Thrusting daggers have a tiny innate armor piercing value, and you can take the Thrust passive for some additional percentage, pairing this attack with those passives lowers the armor value of your enemies by a considerable amount.

Even if its duration is short, paired with your other methods of armor penetration, this allows you to deal almost true damage to your opponents. Whether you are fighting an opponent which armor merits bypassing or you'd deal more damage by stacking more additional base power is a gamble in itself.

Personally, I prefer more damage before armor penetration.

*Exact numbers are not provided as they change with every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ patch.

At level 1, 5, 10, and 15 you unlock passive slots to fill with these abilities. Some of these are mild, and some are game changers.

Note that Ambush, Hide Mastery and Stealth are above as they pertain to the Hide skill.


15% more physical damage with daggers.
As it was established, more damage is more better, and almost all your arsenal is comprised of daggers.


Adds 4 points of magical DoT to every attack. It stacks with itself!
More damage! What's not to like?

This exacerbates your already dangerous Rupture, and most people that die to rogues die to either poison rather than a stab to the face. The stab helps though.

However, this also adds a bright visual effect on your daggers that makes you easier to see in the dark. Keep that in mind when you are skulking.

30% more damage on backs.
For that complete rogue feel.

Shift-walking while crouching makes no sound.

Considering that you move very, very slowly while crouch walking, you have more odds of somebody turning to see you skulking than hearing you speeding directly to their backs, thus, I recommend the more direct approach of running to get what you want rather than soundlessly crawling to it. If you want to be a stab-maggot and spawn inside people's pockets, I very much recommend taking Hide rather than this.

Hohohoohohohoh
HAhaha
Heeeeeeee-...
hehe...

*Ahem*
Reduces your speed in 18 (this is about 6%) , but gives you an extra jump.

Its use is limited by your creativity.

Previously these were 2 separate skills.
Gives you the ability to see traps as a very bright and obnoxious red paint, even through walls, in a range of about 10 meters.
Gives you the ability to disarm those traps. There's a lot of things you don't think that may be disarmable, but if it's a trap, you can disarm it, Entirely for free.
Gives you the ability to open locked objects - doors, chests - performing a small QTE.

This perk does so much to help you navigate the dungeon that it is almost expected for any rogue to take it. Any other class has to purchase expensive and very limited trap disarm kits and lockpicks to do what this does for free, without cooldown, without requirements.

Only extremely wealthy rogues or those that are so familiarized with the dungeons that know all the traps by memory have no use for this skill.

Previously a crappy skill, now fairly good.

Allows you to steal items from nearby enemies - which is extremely hard to pull off without Hide, but wait, there's more!
Hides the items in your belt.
You won't lose Hide when you are bumped onto.

This may not sound like much, but your belt flasks are bright as ten thousand suns - you can spot people from 4 rooms away if you do so much as glance one of their potions. Not having to worry about keeping your potions in your belt reduces drastically your visibility and allows you to quickswitch without fiddling with the inventory in a tight situation. The other effects are mild, but if you are playing with Hide, it may be hilarious to yoink an unwary player.

Makes your daggers ignore 20% armor value.

It's ok against extremely armored targets.
Since thrusting daggers have a small armor penetration value, this increases it further to negate a 1/3 of your opponents armor entirely. Against certain opponents, it may end up having better damage value than the Dagger mastery.


+2 to all attributes to all the members of your party.
This does include you. The increased stats only apply once you enter the dungeon.

It is... passable. If it is not particularly useful for your party members as it has a very limited 6~ meter range. For yourself, it boosts everything slightly, but not enough to be significant.

Rogues have a very limited set of equipment.
They wear Cloth and Leather armor.
They wield daggers, shortswords and rapiers.
They can shoot hand crossbows.


Rogues are innately built for Dual Wielding.
Keep in mind that each weapon has a specific hand where they belong and they cannot be used simultaneously. Dual wielding is all about having more attack options, as you may have both slashing and stabbing weapons at the same time - stabs may be harder to land, are easier to use in cramped spaces, while slashes may be the opposite.

However, more weapons in hand means also less movement speed. Consider this carefully when building your kit - light as the daggers may be, you will feel that missing 5% when you need to dodge or catch a ranger on the run.

Rogues use Cloth and Leather armor. Armor value is secondary; what matters the most is what stat they provide. For rogues, Agility is most valuable, following Strength, Dexterity and Vigor.


Main hand weapon.
Your initial dagger, it has a 2-stab combo.

Don't underestimate the Rondel for being the 'starter' dagger; it is arguably one of your best daggers.

Stabs are better than you'd think; without the wide swing, you can attack in small spaces and corridors with little chance of getting your weapon stuck on the walls. However, stabs can also be harder to land, and it's considerably harder to multihit with them.

However, almost all your other weapon feature increased 150% damage combo finishers, which paired with a well aimed headshot are huge factors in determining a victor.

As a thrusting dagger, it receives a passive 10% armor penetration bonus.

Offhand
A dagger with 2 slashes followed by powerful overhead stab.
The slowest dagger - the first two attacks have base damage equal to any other dagger, but the last stab has a 150% damage bonus. Quite strong if you can reliably headshot with it.
The slash attacks are very wide, which allows you to hit several enemies at once, gives you better chance to land a hit in low visibility situations, but also it is next to impossible to use in small spaces.

While it is not a bad weapon, I tend to avoid it given the chance.

Main Hand Weapon
It has a slash-slash-stab-twist combo, with an unique feature.

The slashes are completely normal - if a bit too wide and easy to be blocked by terrain - , but the last stab ends in a twist that deals another tick of full damage, much faster than any single attack. This makes the Kris potentially the weapon with the highest DPS in the rogue arsenal.
It, however, has a very limited reach.

Offhand
A purely stab based dagger with a quick 3 hits combo.
It a reliable and fairly easy to use weapon. However, its pressence in the offhand slot inhibits the use of a crossbow or a lantern.

The last stab has about a 150% damage bonus, on par with the Castillon stab.

As a thrusting dagger, it receives a passiv

Main hand weapon.
One of the few non-dagger weapons rogues can use. It has a stab-slash-slash-slash pattern.
The rapier is considerably slower than most daggers, with near identical damage, but it has something that the rogue sorely lacks: range. Paired with the rogue's dual wielding ability, the rapier serves only as an additional attack option to use when the situation demands reach, while you can rely on your offhand dagger to provide you the most damage when you can afford to get as close as possible.

Since it doesn't benefit from the dagger passives, it may have less DPS than your other weapons - however, the rapier is a very easy weapon to use, and its second and third attack are both overhead swings, thus it is more likely to headshot with it. Given the difficulty of headshotting with the daggers, the rapier may end up outperforming them merely due to its moveset.

At the very least, its range makes dealing with common monsters fairly easy, as you can consistently head-stab them while backwalking without allowing them to attack back. For stronger monsters that require constant sidestepping, I'd still recommend the daggers.

The damage of the rapier increases slightly with each swing of the combo, by about 10% each.

Offhand.
The highest base-damage weapon available to rogues.
In essence, it feels like a big dagger, featuring a slash-stab-slash combo.
It, however, is not classified as a dagger and does not benefit from dagger passives.

It's hard to say what niche this weapon is supposed to fulfill, as the slash attacks make it harder to use in cramped spaces, it is not any faster than daggers, neither it has a significantly longer range.
It does have one fast, mean overhead swing, though.

Offhand.
The hand crossbow is unique in many aspects.
It's a one-handed, offhanded ranged weapon featuring a single shot.
The shot deals less damage than a stab, but it is fired instantly and it reloads fairly fast - almost fast enough to use between the beats of a fight.
Despite its mediocre damage, its existence as an offhand weapon makes it worthwhile and dangerous to complement your main hand, and it is invaluable as your only consistent ranged option, as throwing knives run out very fast. However, it will definitely lose against specialized ranged opponents such as wizards, warlocks and rangers in 1:1 encounters. This is a weapon to complement your damage, not to rely on it.

Needless to say, you can Rupture your bolt to deliver one mean poisoned strike.

Its range is not fantastical and the bolts have a bit of traveling time - they also fall with distance, so you need to elevate your aim if and account for the arc in the flight if you are aiming for mid-long distance.

It is also considerably heavy.


As a rogue, you do not have any way to replenish your health, thus you depend on your items.

Healing potions are extremely visible - if you don't plan to take Pickpocket - but you need to take them and sufficient amounts of bandages to use before, during and after the fights. Know that you can hide your potions in the inventory if you are worried about their visibility, and quick-switch on the run when you need to take a swig.

Remember that your health is critically low, and aptly equipped delvers can dispatch you in 2 to 3 well-landed hits. Getting into a fight with anything less than 95% of your health is perilous at least.

If you run out of healing material, memorizing the location of healing shrines and striding to their location might be your only salvation, or cowering and waiting for the chance to escape as soon as time allows.

Campfires are also an excellent choice, if you don't mind the wait. Just try to find a quiet enough corner, or a space with enough visibility so that you may see any incoming threat, for they will certainly notice you immediately.

Protection potions will give you away when you use them - but if and when the fight is inevitable and you know you are going to take damage, they are the difference between dying to 2 hits of a barbarian or killing them before they land a third.

Throwing knives are your only quick-ranged option, beside a single crossbow bolt, but their damage is abyssmal, and they are more useful to harass or catch wounded targets in the run than for anything else.

Rogues have very different playstyles depending on whether they are alone, or in a party. Let's start with everybody's favorite.

Solo Rogue
First rule: Run.

Don't think the solo rogue a loot rat that is incapable of a fight.
A rogue is only incapable of a fair fight. Go one on one with a fighter in the middle of his Second Wind and you will die.

No, sir. You are a rogue. You must stalk, evade, reposition and backstab at your leisure.

As a rogue, you have the speed and the abilities to get away from any situation. This is your greatest strength to keep the situation always to your advantage. With your reduced sound, you are less likely to draw the attention of wandering parties, so it should be your call whether you decide to engage them or not.

So let's say you WANT to engage them, because stabbing people is fun.

First of all, know your opponents:

• Barbarian: Can 1-hit you, slow af, tanky. Avoid, weaken, harass, outlast. Remember, big guys like big weapons, and big weapons are bad in tight spaces.
  
• Fighter: Same as barbarian, but their Dash ability gives them considerable chase potential for a short time. Keep that in mind if you plan a stab-and-go.
  
• Cleric: CAN be dangerous, do not underestimate them, abuse them if you have the advantage, run away if you don't. Only engage them if you plan to kill them, as they will heal themselves and their party in any free time they have.
  
• Ranger: If they have a melee weapon, they can be formidable. If they are at range, you shouldn't be in the same room as them. Watch out for their traps, and don't stop running if a ranger is on your tail: rangers can track your footsteps so ambushing them at the edge of a corner is not an option. Rotate and go the full way around them.
  
• Rogue: Other rogues are just as dangerous to you as you are to them. Every fight with a rogue depends on your equipment, your resources and your ability to consider whether you want them deader than they need you to be.
  
• Wizards: A wizard at range is a menace. A wizard in close quarters is dead meat.
  
• Warlocks: A warlock is an unpredictable mess of spells, but you can be certain they will have plenty of ranged options, and they will heal a lot from them. The worst thing you can do against a warlock is let them harass you, so either commit to stabbing their eyes out or avoid the fight altogether.
  
• Bards: Bards are surprisingly dangerous - if you catch them without buffs they are weaker rogues, but fully buffed bards deal more damage than fighters, are more durable than barbarians and move faster than you. So, don't give them time to buff.
  
• Druids: The day I find a competent druid that gives me half a fight, I'll update this.

Target priority:
Clerics>Ranger>Warlock>Wizard>Rogues>Bard>Druid>Fighter>Barbarian
Always leave barbarians and fighters for last. They take the longest to kill.
Depriving a party of their healing source allows you to harass them.
Depriving a party of their ranger makes you untrackable.
Depriving a party of their rogue makes you uncatchable.

Success for a rogue relies heavily on opportunism, rather than carving a path through your opponents. It's about turning back to go all the way around your opponents to find their backs when they don't expect it. It's about activating everything you can do your advantage.

One of your most conspicuous abilities is your Item Interact Speed.
A cleric can take several seconds to pull a lever.
You do it in 1.
A fighter takes about 3 to open a door.
YOU DO IT IN 1.

This small advantage gives you the ability to block the path behind, scurry between mobs, skeletons and zombies and just find another path to engage your targets. You are hard to pin down, other classes don't have the same luxury and risk getting stuck in the level geometry or mobs if they try to mindlessly pursue you.

Memorize traps, memorize spawn locations, lure Wraiths, use everything you must to your advantage, because a rogue has both the speed and the means to leap from around a corner and kill an entire party before they realized they were under attack. Sound is your greatest ally and worst enemy; information is the name of your game, and improvization is only what you must rely on when everything else fails.

Remember, an open door is both an escape route, and an invitation for unannounced guests.

In a party, you serve a role similar as that of the ranger. You are eyes and ears, you are a wayfinder and a scout. You shouldn't stick too close to your teammates, instead, use your speed to always keep an eye on neighboring rooms and keep them informed of danger nearby.

Your friends do not have your speed, generally. Anything but rangers will be left behind if you stride, so you must always keep an eye on where they are and how long will you take to reach them.

If a fight breaks loose, they may not have the luxury of running away, so positioning along your frontliners - with due mind of their weapons, as to not take friendly fire - and swarming opponents whenever you are given the chance to deal any amount of damage is your modus operandi.
It is risky, but all head-on fights are.

In these fights, you have to decide quickly whether you are a help or a liabiltiy to your frontline, and whether you are more useful trying to get a stab in their frontline, or rushing through to pursue their backline support, healer clerics, rangers and wizards. Given the chance, sinking a dagger in the squishy targets is usually the best choice.

Skeletons and zombies can be a nuisance for an ungeared rogue, but they are nothing you can't handle without taking damage. Liberal use of abilities like Rupture will dispatch skeletons quickly, and your general speed will allow you to land combos of 2,3 and 4 attacks against different enemies before they have had the chance to recover and land swing again.

Mummies are incredibly slow and they have a comically small attack range, however, they do hit like a truck so avoid getting unnecessary slaps.

Most skeletons are easy to deal with, but if you are used to other classes killing them in 2 and 3 strikes, boy you have to get used to the rogue life. Until you have a good weapon, you might have to land more than 10 stabs in a single skeleton to get rid of it. So patience, and always get any green+ from the market if you have the money to spare for a good start.

Be wary of two-hander skeletons; their attack is faster than it looks and they can take half your healh away in a single slash.

Skeleton knights are a solid no for you alone. If you have empty space, by all means, use it and punish the skeletons as they are busy in their 3 attack combo, but otherwise they can spell doom for you.

Wraiths can be sidestepped, so, again, fight them in any space where you can make liberal use of your speed.

Mimics are a least concern for the most part, but their attack pattern is erratic, so do not try to land more than one strike every time they attack.

Dragonflies are the bane of existence. Poison a throwing knife or avoid the fight. Trust me.

Skeleton heads present little challenge, as they are easily dodged and easily dispatched in 2 stabs with a half-decent weapon.

Skeleton wizards and archers: Incredibly annoying, surprisingly dangerous.
These ranged undead move at their prefered distance before attacking, so pull yourself back until they are face first against the nearest corner. Wait for them to attack (skeleton archers sometimes fire 2 arrows in quick sequence, so try to not eat the second arrow), lean out the corner, stab, hide again, repeat to your satisfaction.

It was a blast to write this guide, and it was once again a delight to update it, and I hope you find it even remotely useful, to either play as a rogue, along or against them.

There's still a lot of uncertain data and things I have yet to test, as the numbers and systems have changed since when I originally took the measures during the Playtest 3, so kindly point out any kind of errata and I'll promptly correct it.

Happy Delving, dungeoneers, and don't take your hands off the keyboard when you are opening a chest!