who currz :/ lol. the very fact that you're red flagging yourself and using one of your (your only?) item replacement is pretty much enough to balance off neatly with this exploit
Yeah it's cheating. D: I think you can do it with CoP rings too. I don't want to waste my item restores on that though, I'm sure someday I'll get my account hacked/stolen. /nods.
Even if all the OP is Thf-only, the judge is out (so to speak) on what's best--str or dex merits. There's no true consensus in the thief community. They're quite close. I'd say most of the veterans lean towards Str (I do--I used to have 5/5dex and changed to 5/5str later), but there's certainly nothing wrong with dex merits either. This is strictly thf-speaking.
I'm just about to start meriting my stats for my Thf, and I was going to merit Dex, but people have stopped me saying that I should merit Str instead.
After asking a few other people, I've been getting an equal difference in people suggesting Str and Dex merits, so I thought I'd ask here to get a few more ideas.