The default build for this class is not ideal for the beginning of the game. While it is true that eventually we want Scoundrel & Witchcraft to be strong by the end of the game, there are better, more useful Skills to take in the early game. I recommend customizing the class as follows:

Attributes

• DEX +1
  
• INT +1
  
• SPD +1
  
• PER +2

Abilities

• Dual Wield
  
• Bodybuilding [necessary for a Talent later)
  
• Hydro
  
• Aero
  
• Scoundrel

Skills

• Scoundrel: Fast Track
  
• Aero: Teleportation
  
• Hydro: Regeneration

Talents

• Pinpoint [requires Scoundrel]
  
• Backstabber

With this configuration you will be in much better shape to survive in the early game.

Your character will earn 15 Attribute points from leveling. Another two points can be earned with the Talents Bigger & Better and Know-it-All, the latter of which goes to your INT score. This gives the player a total of 17 points to spend over the lifetime of your character. Your final stats will look like this.

STR: 5
DEX: 10 (+5)
INT: 11 (+6)
CON: 7 (+2)
SPD: 7 (+2)
PER: 7 (+2)

Notes
PER gear is common and we're going to take a TALENT to augment this as well. This character can easily be your primary trap & secret finder.

You will receive +1 AP for each 2 points of SPD that you add. However, you won't need to add more than +2 SPD to this build. You will still end up with 15+ AP per turn by the end of the game due to equipment.



Notice the screen shot:

This character has a DEX 17. A 12 is all that is needed to wield the best daggers in the game, but DEX gear is just easy to come by.

This character has SPD 22. They have a maximum of 15 AP per turn and they earn 15 AP per turn. This means you can use all your AP every single turn and still get your max on each turn, unlike a Melee character which would have to save points to reach their max.

This character has INT 13, which is the minimum INT necessary to ensure Invulnerable never fails.

The Shadowblade is a very focused class. You will have some versatility, but for the most part you are going to focus on Scoundrel and Witchcraft skills. By late game you will be using these exclusively on every turn.

Your character will receive 49 Ability points during the game. You can receive an additional 2 points from the Talent All Skilled Up. This guide assumes you will eventually take that Talent, for a total of 51 points to spend.

Dual Wield: 5 (15-points spent)
At level 5 you will reduce your AP cost to attack by a total of 3 points. This allows you to attack a great number of times per turn. You will have a ton of AP due to SPD from equipment, so you will be able to attack like a dervish.

Bodybuilding: 1 (1-point spent)
This is necessary for the Talent Morning Person, which allows you to be Resurrected with full health. For a single point and Talent this is an incredibly powerful ability.

Scoundrel: 5 (15-points spent)
Almost all of your good melee damage will come from this tree. In addition, you will get some great utility here as well. See the Scoundrel section for details on Skill selection.

Witchcraft: 5 (15-points spent)
This tree will provide you with additional versatility and some pretty significant Skills in combat. See the Witchcraft section of this guide for details on Skill selection.

Aerotheurge: 1 (1-point spent)
You want this for three Skills:

• Teleportaiton
  
• Thunder Jump (another great way to get around the battlefield)
  
• Wind of Change (remove status effects from companions)

Hydrosophist: 1 (1-point spent)
You want this mainly for Regeneration. I recommend taking Freezing Touch and Slow Current for the other two Novice choices.

Loremaster: 2 (3-points spent)
With your PER and SPD, you will have the highest Initiative and will act first in almost every battle. Because of this, it pays to put points into Loremaster so you can right-click on enemies and view their resists. You will need one piece of gear with Loremaster on it to get to level 3, where you can see the WILL score of enemies. This will end up being crucial for one of your Witchcraft abilities.

Total Points Spent
Dual Wield: 15
Bodybuilding: 1
Scoundrel : 15
Witchcraft: 15
Aero: 1
Hydro: 1
Loremaster: 3

Total: 51

Scoundrel Skills are where you'll get a significant portion of your damage from, in addition to some utility. I recommend the following:

Novice Skills

• Fast Track
  
• Winged Feet
  
• Walk In Shadows
  
• Trip (Crowd Control is always good)
  
• Player's Choice
  
• Player's Choice

Adreneline
Scoundrel offers the Novice Skill Adreneline which allows you to borrow AP from your next turn at the cost of reduced AP on your next turn (basically, your next turn you're doing nothing). This can be effective for killing off an enemy and not allowing them to do additional damage with another turn. However, if the player wants to use Adreneline I recommend only using it for the first half of the game. You can un-memorize Skills and replace them with new ones. I suggest un-memorizing Adreneline after level 8-11 when you start using +SPD daggers and replace it with one of the damage-dealing skills, like Lacerate, Precise Incision or Venomous Strike, since those Skills also perform additional status effects, like Poison or Bleeding. As you gain levels and AP with this build, "borrowing" AP from your next turn will become less of an issue and should be avoided entirely by end-game.

Adept Skills

• Daggers Drawn (Massive Single-Action Damage Dealer; try to have Oath of Desecration on you before using this)
  
• Cloak and Dagger
  
• Become Air (For those times when Invis is used up and you don't have a potion handy)
  
• Eye Gouge

Master Skills

• Coup De Grace (You kill enemies with less than 20% health left; right-click and do the math. Situational, but awesome)
  
• Shadow Step (You teleport to an enemy, backstab them, and teleport away. This is a great finisher for enemies that are far away from you)

Witchcraft is how this class gets powerful.

Novice Skills

• Oath of Desecration (additional damage for you or an ally)
  
• Malediction
  
• Vampiric Touch (a nice, cheap heal)
  
• Summon Undead Warrior (your first summons)
  
• Decaying Touch
  
• Lower Resistances

Adept Skills

• Drain Willpower (ensures Rapture hits; by late game you can cast this and Rapture at beginning of every battle)
  
• Rapture (one of your most powerful weapons in the game)
  
• Summon Armoured Undead Decapitator (your second summons and a powerful one)
  
• Destroy Summons (great in the late game)

Master Skills

• Invulnerable (nothing can hurt you for two turns; great skill)
  
• Death Punch (a costly damage dealer, but you'll have so much AP by then it won't matter)

Starting Talents are in bold. I recommend taking the Talents in this order. You will want Pinpoint at the beginning of the game when it is most powerful. By late game, you won't be throwing many grenades. Light Footed should be taken early where you can get the most use out of it. And Morning Person should be taken as early as possible due to its power; you will love re-entering a battle at full health.

• Pinpoint (Requires Scoundrel as a starting Ability)
  
• Backstabber
  
• Light Footed (With a 7 PER score and equipment, you should find all secrets and traps)
  
• Morning Person (You can be Resurrected back into battle with full health)
  
• Bigger & Better (Another Attribute point; place where you need it)
  
• All Skilled Up (2 more Ability points)
  
• Know It All (Another INT point)

Perhaps no class in the game is as reliant on gear to make them awesome as the Shadowblade is. Yet it is through gear that this class becomes incredibly powerful.

Daggers
You will find a lot of daggers playing the game and many of them will have nice procs, like "20% chance to set Stun status on an enemy". However, dropped and sold daggers will deal inferior damage to crafted daggers. In addition, crafted daggers have a huge advantage over dropped/sold daggers starting at level 8 (with a crafting skill of 5): they can have +SPD bonus.

SPD bonus is the power of this class. SPD means more AP. More AP means more damage.

Crafted Daggers can have one of three bonuses: DEX, LUCK or SPEED. We don't care about DEX or LUCK. SPEED is where it's at. With SPD, you get more AP.

Bonuses are random when crafting, so you want to Quicksave prior to attempting to craft daggers and reload if you don't get the +SPD bonus.

Speed bonuses are available to crafting at the following minimum levels (this assumes a Crafting skill of 5):

• Level 8: +1 SPD
  
• Level 11: +2 SPD
  
• Level 19: +3 SPD

Equipment
In general, you want to wear anything that improves DEX, INT or SPD. It is advisable to have a piece of gear with +Loremaster on it as well, to get the +3 bonus and view WILL scores.

You need a minimum score of DEX=12 to wield the best daggers in the game. You will need a minimum score of INT=13 for Invulnerable to never fail. Outside of those two minimums, you want to pour the rest of your points into SPD and CON.

Why CON? Because CON affects the maximum amount of AP you can have each turn. It does no good to have 15 AP available every turn if your maximum is capped at 13 AP because of a low CON score. So keep an eye on both scores: your available AP per turn and your total AP per turn.

Finally: you should make every attempt to get the Weresheep armor when you reach the Phantom Forest. It's the ideal armor for DEX-based characters. The full set provides the following bonuses:

+22 All Resists
+1 WILL
+1 Bodybuilding
+3 Initiative
+2 DEX
+2 PER
+2 SPD
+150 HP
+1 Sneak

Early Game [LVL 1-6]
In the early game you will not be a true Shadowblade. Instead, you'll be more like a regular ranged-weapon Rogue. You should equip the best bow in your inventory and upgrade it every time you loot a better one. You should be using special arrows (Knockdown, Flaming, Poison, Shocking, etc.) and Teleportation to manage the battlefield. You should use your Regeneration skill to help your allies. And you want to use your Pinpoint talent to throw grenades on enemies. If you get into a situation where you can backstab someone, fine. But for the first 6 levels you should focus on staying alive and dealing ranged damage with bows and grenades.

Mid Game [LVL 6-12]
At level 6 you can start using Rapture which is a Charm spell in the Witchcraft tree. The saving throw against Rapture is WILL. This is is why it is important to have some points in Lorecraft (and a piece of gear) so that you can inspect enemies and look at their WILL score. At this point in the game you still won't have a ton of AP, so you won't be able to cast Drain Willpower and Rapture on the same turn. So one way to make Charm work is to inspect your enemies and see who has a low WILL score. The lower the WILL score the more likely Rapture is to stick. Enemies with a zero or 1 score are prime candidates for your Rapture. With a summoned skeleton and Charm at your disposal, you turn your one Shadowblade into three foes that your enemies must deal with.

As you progress deeper into the game you're going to have access to better and better daggers. And you're going to bump your Dual Wield score to 2, dropping the AP cost another 1. At level 8 your crafter/mule can make daggers with +1 SPD. At level 11, he/he can craft daggers with +2 SPD. This is how you start to get all those Action Points, by dual-wielding +SPD daggers. Now you can start to forget about the bow and arrows and start concentrating on moving around the battlefield and stabbing the heck out of everyone.

Late Game [LVL 12+]
You should be dual-wielding +2 SPD daggers now. You can move around the battlefield with Invisibility (Walk In Shadows), Thunder Jump and Cloak and Dagger. You will be first to act in nearly every encounter. You should be able to inspect all enemies to find weaknesses in resists and WILL, so your other team members will know who to target with elemental damage and Charm spells. You should have enough AP to cast Drain Willpower followed by Rapture on the enemy of your choice. Now you can start to target the hardest hitters and turn them to your side from the beginning of every battle. You can whip out Daggers Drawn for massive damage.

End-Game [LVL 19+]
At level 19 your crafter should make you a set of +3 SPD daggers and you should have the full set of Weresheep armor which is loaded with bonuses. You should have enough +INT equipment to have an INT score of at least 13, ensuring that Invulnerabilty always works. At level 15 you can start throwing around Death Punch for some additional damage, and because of the huge number of AP you'll have the cost of DP won't matter. You can Charm and Summon and stab the heck out of anything. With your movement abilites there are no enemies you cannot reach.

Enjoy. You're now a juggernaut that no enemies want to fight.