Low-dex is the idea that’s come around that you can increase your
character’s power by adding points into luck, rather than dex, but though
you still need dex, you can get it from elsewhere. Elsewhere can mean a
couple of things, either through dex equipment (which, by the way, tends to
be much cheaper than luck gear) or through equipment scrolling, specifically
shoes and overalls.

Female rouges have a bit of a better time here, as you guys get the
fruits/avenger overall at level 35, where males get knucklevest sets. This
means that for a male to scroll an overall, they have to use a sauna robe,
but females can scroll their overalls which already add 4-5 stat points,
giving them a level’s stat boost over males. The overalls are also easier
to mass scroll, you don’t get issued with one single avenger, you can buy a
ton of them and they don’t drop too uncommonly.
Moreover, I’ve seen female hermits STILL using their avengers,
so you know how popular this build might be.

If you’re going to go low-dex, you’ll have a couple of disadvantages. For
one thing, you’ll take a little more damage, as sauna robes/level 35 suits
were not intended to have high defence, though that’s not really a huge
problem if you’re an assassin with drain, and bandits will just have to use
another potion or two. For another, you’ll never get a new suit of clothing
unless you drop the low-dex path. You’ll never meet the dex requirements of
anything you wear, apart from shoes, weapons, hats, earrings and gloves, so
unless you like the look of that robe, you might want to invest in some cash
shop clothing, I guess. The flipside is increased damage, since scrolling
your equipment for dex allows you to put all those points you would have
spent into luck, you end up with more stat points overall, too.

If you do want to go low dex, then ideally you want to get a sauna robe or
the female overall, since they’re the only torso items you can scroll for
dex, then scroll them with 60% overall dex scrolls, or try to get a working
10% on the first slot or something. For more stats, get a pair of snowshoes
from El Nath (2 more slots than your average shoe) and use either 60 or 10%
shoe for jump scrolls. Not shoe dex, they add avoidability for some reason,
or 1 dex if you get a 10% to work.

—
Stats and skills for a dagger rogue
BBSTAD
—

5/5 MAX int and strength, unless you plan on being a strength bandit, then
you can have a little more of that str to help you through Maple island.
It’s not hard to roll a 4/5, 5/4 or 5/5, so don’t shoot yourself in the foot
at this early stage. From then on, your dex should be your current level
doubled, your strength should be only what you need to equip your weapons
(if they require it) and every other stat point should be added to luck.

AT LEVEL 40, A SLIGHT CHANGE IS NEEDED.

From level 40, your dex should be your level +40, so at 59 it should be 99
and so on, unless you’d prefer to add +10 at every new equipment level to
maximise damage. If you want to play safe with dex just add as much as you
need for your equipment but make sure to research the item requirements nice
and early.

As for the skills, this will only cover dagger rouges. If you want to make
a banditsin, Firestorm88 has a good thief FAQ on this site over here:
http://db.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/maple_story_thief.txt
you should have a look at that and follow the appropriate section to make
your first advance.

For me, personally I went with the following:

10 -> Double Stab
11 -> 3 Double Stab(4)
12 -> 3 Double Stab(7)
13 -> 3 Double Stab(10)
14 -> 3 Double Stab(13) [I wasn’t funded at that point, but who cares?]
15 -> 3 Double Stab(16)
16 -> 3 Double Stab(19)
17 -> 1 Double Stab(20, maxed) 2 Nimble Body(2)
18 -> 3 Nimble Body(5)
19 -> 3 Nimble Body(8)
20 -> 3 Nimble Body(11)
21 -> 3 Nimble Body(14)
22 -> 3 Nimble Body(17)
23 -> 3 Nimble Body(20, maxed)

From here on you have 2 options:

The Darksight build

24 -> 3 Disorder(3)
25 -> 3 Dark Sight(3)
26 -> 3 Dark Sight(6)
27 -> 3 Dark Sight(9)
28 -> 3 Dark Sight(12)
29 -> 3 Dark Sight(15)
30 -> 3 Dark Sight(18)

The Disorder build

24 -> 3 Disorder(3)
25 -> 3 Disorder(6)
26 -> 3 Disorder(9)
27 -> 3 Disorder(12)
28 -> 3 Disorder(15)
29 -> 3 Disorder(18)
30 -> 2 Disorder(20, maxed) 1 Dark sight (1)

Either way you should end up like this:

20 Nimble Body
0 Keen Eyes
3 Disorder | 20 Disorder
18 Dark Sight | 1 Dark Sight
20 Double Stab
0 Lucky Seven

—
Early double stab or nimble body
BBEAR
—

It doesn’t matter too much since the period at which this is an issue is the
time in which you’ll level very quickly, even if it doesn’t seem that way at
the time. If you take nimble body first you’ll dodge a little more and save
yourself a little cash in hp potions, but if you max out double
stab you’ll
be doing decent damage much earlier on, so you can level quite a bit faster.
Personally, I went max stab as faster leveling lets you get to stronger
monsters
and better drops. While more evasion and accuracy just helps you hit neckis,
really, which at 33 exp, you’re better off stabbing a wild boar.

—
Disorder or dark sight
BBDIS
—

This is somewhat down to personal preference. The main argument put across
is that disorder’s purpose is to scare your opponent, since when you
disorder something it basically ‘forgets’ that you hit it and carries on as
normal like you aren’t there, great for those long-ranged high-powered magic
users (fight a few tauromacis in your 60s, you’ll see what I mean). Although
the -20 defence modifier applies to every hit of your savage (or whatever
attack),again, don’t think of it as one big hit with -120 (20*6 hits) defence
as that’s not exactly correct. I can disorder something really huge and it
won’t act as if I took off 120 defence when I savage it, it’ll just smash my
face in with slightly less effort than before.

If you disorder something, you can’t disorder it again to remove their
defence and attack another time until the timer expires, BUT, you can apply
the effect of having them ignore you as many times as you like, regardless
of the timer. If you felt that way inclined, you could go around killing
things without them realising you were there at all. Handy for hitting
something with a magic attack, disordering, hitting, disordering…

Dark sight’s main attraction is that when you max it, it doesn’t apply any
negative modifiers to your speed. Using haste then dark sight normally negates
the running part of haste but with maxed dark sight you can keep on
sprinting, especially useful if you train in the dead mines or any other map
in deep El Nath. Just a heads up, at higher levels, most monsters can sling a
little magic, which is nearly always stronger than their physical attack (as
we don’t have magic defence), and magic doesn’t need to be able to see you to
hit you. Hiding from that celion you just poked won’t do you a bit of good.

Personally i went the 18 DS(dark sight) path. It just takes 2 more to max,
and half the time you won’t be disordering the stuff you train on(imagine
disordering every single zombie that you face O_O)

I’ll freely admit that disorder isn’t too much better at 20 than at 3. Odd
fact, disorder will spook Jr. Balrog and
lower his stats as normal but Mushmom will just
ignore it, doesn’t affect her at all. Must be the stress of birthing all
those thousands of babies or the whole maternal instinct or something.

My view on disorder is not generally a popular opinion, and I think its
generally held that dark sight is better, is only because you can travel to
the zombie maps in El Nath with little inconvenience. That was just my two
cents (or mesos, as the case may be) on the matter.