Overview
The Infiltrator is Albion’s pure assassin: a leather-wearing stealth melee built around ambush, poisons, and target selection. High level, the class is about controlling when fights happen. Unlike visible melee classes, an Infiltrator doesn’t have to take every engagement. They stalk, scout, and strike only when the odds favor them. That alone makes them one of the strongest solo classes in DAoC. Players will like Infiltrator if you prefer to play solo and like playing invisible rogue-type archetypes. Be warned: Infiltrators are often not wanted in groups.
Solo Playstyle
This is the Infiltrator’s natural home. Infiltrators excel in the solo/small man world because: They choose engagements, have explosive openers, punish isolated targets, can disengage bad situations, and counter casters extremely well. At high skill, they are one of the purest “hunter” classes and terrifying solo because they dictate the terms of engagement.
A good Infiltrator preys on:
- isolated supports
- low-health stragglers
- careless archers
- casters out of position
They are especially dangerous in stealth wars because Albion’s toolkit is extremely well-rounded.
In 1v1, fights often come down to:
- Who gets the opener
- Which poison landed
- Who controls tempo after Purge/IP
Infiltrators are exceptional here because their damage profile is frontloaded and oppressive.
Picking Your Fights via Stealth
Stealth is the foundation of the class. It allows you to:
- Move unseen in the frontier
- Scout enemy movement
- Avoid bad fights
- Set up positional openers
- Escape after kills
In solo RvR, this is everything. A visible tank or caster often gets forced into whatever fight appears before them, but an Infiltrator chooses.
That’s why Infils are so strong solo: they can watch a target, evaluate buffs/positioning, and decide if it’s worth committing. If not, they vanish and move on.
This ability to pick your fights is one of the strongest mechanics in DAoC PvP.
Critical Strike
This is where your opener burst comes from. Classic opener styles, from stealth, include:
- Backstab
- Backstab II
- Perforate Artery (PA)
PA is the signature assassin opener. It requires stealth and proper positioning and hits extremely hard, often deciding the fight immediately. It also chains into follow-up styles for even more burst.
Typical solo flow:
Stealth → close distance → PA with poisons → follow-up chain → react
Against squishies, a clean PA can erase huge chunks of health before they even respond.
Against tanks, it establishes tempo.
Against casters, it often forces panic or instant defensives.
Envenom (Poisons)
This is what separates assassins from just “stealth melee.” You craft or buy poisons and manually apply them to weapons, making each swing more toxic for your enemy. Generally:
- Apply poison out of combat
- It stays on the weapon until it procs
- Once it lands, it is consumed
- You can weapon swap to apply different poisons mid-fight
Main poison types include:
Damage over Time (DoT)
- Damage over time (DOT): Your bread-and-butter damage poison. Adds enormous pressure and keeps enemies from resetting.
- Disease: Extremely powerful. Cuts incoming healing and reduces natural regen. Great against healers and hybrids
- Strength/Con debuff: Lowers melee damage and survivability. Very strong in assassin mirror fights.
- Snare poison: Underrated utility. Lets you stick targets or disengage.
Many good Infils carry multiple weapon setups:
- Mainhand DoT
- Offhand Disease
- Backup Snare weapon
Poison management is a major skill expression. Good Infils win fights by swapping intelligently.
Infiltrator vs. Nightshade vs. Shadowblade.. how to pick?
Infiltrator has the advantage of Dragonfang, the level 50 Thrust style which is an off-evade 9.0 second stun. Considering how often you will evade, this is essentially like the assassin’s version of Slam. This can instantly end a fight and early on (at lower-to-mid realm ranks) is a large reason why Infiltrators are considered to be stronger than Nightshades, though this power gap decreases as the Nightshade gains higher realm rank.
In terms of unique RAs, Vanish is quite good and allows you to land double-PA’s if executed correctly.
Another advantage of playing the Albion assassin is that you don’t have to fight Minstrels, and in fact can group with them in stealther groups. Minstrels are the best solo class in the game and often a bane of assassin players.
Class | Best At | Power Curve |
Infiltrator | consistency, control | strongest early-mid |
Shadowblade | raw melee damage | strongest early |
Nightshade | scaling and versatility | strongest late |
Spec Options:
Infiltrator character builder:
https://blackthorn-daoc.com/class/Infiltrator
Assassins need to spec in 5 skill lines. Infiltrators have plenty of spec points, but Shadowblades and Nightshades are more limited.
RR1 Dragonfang Infiltrator:
39 Stealth
39 Envenom
50 Thrust
18 Dual Wield
39 Critical Strike
RR6 DW Infiltrator:
34 Stealth
34 Envenom
35 Weapon
50 Dual Wield
34 Critical Strike
The generally agreed-upon fundamentals are:
- Stealth composite 50
- Envenom composite 50
- Weapon composite 51 (minimum)
Stealth effectiveness is based on the level of your stealth skill compared against an enemy that can potentially detect you. Composite stealth above level 50 has no notable benefit against players, but does have improvements against NPCs that are over level 50 (such as keep guards, DF mobs, etc), which is something to consider if you operate near those.
Envenom skill only needs to be high enough to use whatever poison you need and should be composite 50 for lifebane.
It is normal to respec every time you gain a Realm Rank because you get a free +1 to all skill lines and can reduce envenom and stealth spec and add those points to your weapon lines.
If you are primarily using styles from an advanced line like Crit Strike, Dual Wield, etc, composite 51 damage will maximize damage. Points over 51 will still increase defense penetration (weaponskill), but your points are better spent elsewhere in most cases.
If you are using base weapon styles regularly (Slash, Thrust, etc), then getting weapon spec as high as possible will continue to signifcantly increase damage. An example of this is Infiltrators who spec 50 Thrust for the Dragonfang evade stun. 50 Slash for the Amethyst and Diamond Slash anytime chain has also seen success.
Once you have these fundamentals met, there are options.
Generally speaking, you will want to focus on the styles of one or possibly two style lines at the expense of others to maximize your effectiveness. What is most effective will depend on your class and possibly recent balance changes, but your styles will come from your choice of weapon line, your realm's dual wield line, and Critical Strike.
The Critical Strike line is available on all 3 assassins and are generally high damage solid styles, in addition to the from-stealth crit styles themselves. The anytime chain, Garrote and Achilles heel, are famous for hitting hard but having heavy endurance costs. There is an excellent, high-damage evade chain, but no reactional or positional stuns.
Dual Wield and Celtic Dual share mechanics. In addition to the styles themselves, they will increase the swing chance of your offhand weapon (25% base rate, plus 0.5% chance per point invested, effected above 50 composite spec). While leveling you will likely need to neglect this line and raise it higher during your 40s when you get extra points from minidings. Specs in this can range anywhere from 20 to 50 depending on realm rank and the styles in your realm's dual wield line.
Left Axe, Midgard's dual wield line, is much less forgiving. Both weapons always swing, making Shadowblades particularly effective at applying a lot of poison quickly and reliably, but the tradeoff is LA spec reduces damage of both mainhand and offhand weapon based on your LA spec. Shadowblades are heavily penalized for neglecting LA spec to the point that most shadowblades heavily reduce their spec in Critical Strike until higher realm rank.
Alternately, some Shadowblades don't spec Left Axe at all and focus on Crit Strike with a 2-Handed weapon. They are excellent at killing casters, but at a severe disadvantage fighting enemy melees.
While people tend to have strong opinions about how to spec an assassin, generally there are a large variety of specs that can be effective as long as the fundamentals above are respected. You will want to specialize in what you enjoy most: if you like picking off casters and other "squishy enemeies", prioritize Critical Strike. If you want to be best equipped to go toe-to-toe with enemy assassins or melees, prioritize your Dual Wield line. If you want to try to find the "optimal" spec, it will depend on recent balance changes and what enemy assassins are running.
Realm Ability Builds:
- Your most important RA is purge. You lack the armor of a visible melee and depend on Evade for survival. You will fold quickly if you can't evade as stuns will get you killed.
- Your second most important RA is See Hidden. This will let you see Minstrels and Archers that don't have Camoflauge active. This is both offensive and defensive, allowing you to hunt or avoid them at your discretion.
PvE/Leveling
Infiltrator is Albion’s stealth melee assassin, built for high single-target damage and precision strikes. While often associated with solo play and PvP ambushes, in PvE leveling groups the Infiltrator serves a simple but effective role: damage.
Core PvE Role: Stealth DPS Support
In group PvE, you are not the tank, not the puller, and not the primary control class. Your value comes from:
- consistent melee damage uptime
- poison application for sustained pressure
- finishing mobs quickly once aggro is secured
Many Infiltrators, while leveling, will keep their Dual Wield + Weapon spec at their level to maximize damage and group contributions.
Poison Usage: Your Key PvE Value
Poisons are your defining PvE advantage.
Common uses:
- Damage-over-time pressure for sustained fights
- Stat debuffs to reduce mob effectiveness
Poison application should be:
- early in the fight
- consistently refreshed where possible
- applied to primary kill targets
Even if your melee uptime is interrupted, poison continues working in the background.