Boots of the Assassin

Version 0.15: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Some soft boots, specially designed by the Assassin's Guild. They make the wearer more perceptive of potential victims, and more able to find vulnerabilities when attacking unaware opponents.

the +2 pair of boots of the Assassin

+2 boots

+80 Stealth
All weapons count as short blades for purposes of determining stabbing bonuses
Detect Monsters: Similar to the Ashenzari ability.

Desirability

The boots of the Assassin are a definite boon to stabbers, as the monster detection and massive stealth boost make it even easier to reach sleeping opponents and land that lethal hit. They are also amazingly useful for other melee characters, so long as you have some means of generating stabbing opportunities: the short blade-grade stabbing multipliers can be massive, and the much higher base damage of heavier weapons can lead to extremely potent blows. A reliable source of invisibility, the Dazzling Spray spell, or distracting allies are all excellent ways to land stabs even if you're wearing noisy armour, though raising your Stealth skill will still improve your stabbing performance signficantly. Casters and ranged fighters certainly don't suffer for wearing these, but even a pair of boots of running are arguably preferable.

History

The current form of the boots of the Assassin were added in 0.14. However, prior to 0.13, there was a very different version of them: +2 boots which granted +80 stealth, +3 dexterity, and allowed you to evoke invisibility.