Thick As Thieves Gadgets Tier List: Best Tools for Ghost Runs

The gear that separates a clean heist from a disaster

Your loadout in Thick As Thieves decides everything before you take a single step into a guarded room. OtherSide Entertainment’s steampunk heist game, set in 1910s Scotland, launched on May 20, 2026, and its AI has teeth. Guards with “Peripheral Memory” will investigate an open door, sweep an entire sector, and ruin a run you spent 40 minutes setting up. Picking the wrong gadgets isn’t just inefficient, it’s a guaranteed reload. This guide ranks every major tool in the current meta, explains exactly why each one lands where it does, and shows you the combos that turn a good thief into a ghost.

The 2026 patches changed how guards process information. The “Peripheral Memory” system means a guard who spots an out-of-place door doesn’t just peek and move on, they lock down the entire sector. This single change made flashbang-style, panic-response gadgets significantly weaker and pushed the meta toward tools that manipulate guards before they have any reason to be suspicious.

Every gadget in Thick As Thieves interacts with three core AI systems: Acoustics, Luminosity, and Pathfinding. The best gadgets in the game touch at least two of those systems. The worst ones only respond to a situation that’s already gone wrong.

The “Ghost” archetype, zero kills, zero detections, has become the benchmark for high-level play, especially with Master Rank rewards tied to it. If a gadget requires you to be in the same room as a guard to work, it’s already operating at a disadvantage compared to tools that work through walls or from elevation.

What’s the full gadget tier list?

S-tier gadgets: what makes them non-negotiable?

Sonic Distractor (Mk III)

The Mk III is the single most powerful tool in the game right now. The basic versions make noise; the Mk III creates a temporary Pathing Node that forces the AI to fully recalculate its route. Time it correctly and you can lock a guard into a “Search Loop,” removing them from the board entirely without any physical contact.

Frequency modulation (exclusive to the Mk III) lets you place guards at specific coordinates with 95% accuracy. In the Grand Bank heist, a well-placed distraction pulls the vault guard off his post for a full 12 seconds, enough time to bypass the biometric scanner. The effective radius is 15 meters through walls, with a duration of 8 to 15 seconds depending on guard rank and a base cooldown of 45 seconds, reducible through perks.

At Tier 4, the Sonic Distractor gains a “Signal Bounce” feature that distracts two guards in separate rooms simultaneously. No combination of lower-tier gear replicates that.

Sonic Distractor Mk III upgrades

Shadow-Weave Cloak

Lighting in Thick As Thieves runs on a 0-to-100 visibility scale. The Shadow-Weave Cloak applies a flat -40 modifier to your luminosity stat. In dim lighting, that’s enough to crouch-walk directly past a guard without the detection meter moving. It doesn’t make you invisible, it breaks the AI’s ability to register you as a threat, which is a meaningful distinction. Use it for repositioning through areas you’d otherwise have to wait out.

Grapple-Hook (Advanced Pulley System)

Guard AI in Thick As Thieves rarely looks above a 45-degree angle. The Grapple-Hook turns that limitation into your primary travel route. Staying on rafters and high ledges bypasses roughly 80% of the game’s patrol coverage. The 2026 update added “Silent Rappelling”, fully silent if you have the Soft Landing skill equipped, which reduces landing noise by 80% and prevents acoustic alerts when dropping behind guards.

A-tier gadgets: strong picks that fill out your loadout

Thermal Vision Goggles are the best starting gadget in the game for one reason: information. Mapping guard rotations through walls before you move a single step prevents the majority of accidental detections. At Tier 2, the “Pulse Scan” upgrade lets you see guard outlines through walls for 3 seconds. Even at Tier 1 they’re worth the slot, especially during the early campaign.

Pneumatic Bolt Launcher is your silent, ranged fallback. When a patrol route doesn’t give you a clean window, a non-lethal takedown from distance keeps the run alive without triggering alerts.

Smoke Bombs are more nuanced than their B or C placement in some tier lists suggests. They break line of sight, cover escapes, and enable silent takedowns inside the cloud even with other guards nearby. The xmodhub source rates them C-tier for noise concerns, while the tposegaming source calls them indispensable for new players. The honest answer: they’re excellent recovery tools and the best starting gadget for players still learning map layouts, but they don’t carry the same proactive power as S-tier options at high levels.

EMP Device shines on any mission with cameras, turrets, or robotic enemies. In a setting where early technology and magic coexist, you’ll encounter electronic security more often as the campaign progresses.

What gadgets should you avoid completely?

The Portable Drill is the most misleading tool in the game. It claims to crack any safe, but its noise output is 85 decibels. Guards can hear a footstep at 30 decibels. Using the drill in any room that isn’t completely isolated is the equivalent of announcing your location over a loudspeaker. The Lockpick Kit is slower but won’t end your run.

Flashbangs look useful but trigger an immediate Sector Lockdown the moment they detonate, even if no guard saw you throw them. Reinforcements arrive regardless of whether you were spotted. In most games, blinding an enemy buys time. In Thick As Thieves, it summons more enemies.

The Remote Drone in its early versions has a 15-second battery life, generates noise, and frequently gets caught on the game’s geometry. Stick to Thermal Goggles for scouting until you can access the Mk IV version.

How do gadget synergies work?

Thick As Thieves uses a physics-based interaction system, and the best plays in the game come from stacking tools against each other rather than using them in isolation.

The “Ghost Echo” combo pairs the Sonic Distractor with a Holographic Decoy. Fire the distractor behind a guard, and as they turn to investigate, they catch a glimpse of the decoy. The AI locks into “High Alert” focused on the decoy’s position, making it functionally blind to anything outside a 90-degree cone. You can walk directly behind them and lift their master key.

The “Water-Electricity” interaction is a developer-intended edge case. Using an EMP Grenade or Shock Bolt on a wet floor (the Sewers level and Rainy Docks are the main locations) increases the conductivity radius by 300%. A single bolt can take out an entire squad of armored guards without any lethal weapon in your loadout.

Smoke plus a Noise Emitter is the cleanest takedown setup available. Lure a guard to a fixed point with the emitter, drop a Smoke Bomb on that position, and sprint in for a silent takedown inside the cloud. Nearby guards won’t register the contact even if they’re in the same corridor.

What’s the right upgrade order for your resources?

Spreading resources across five gadgets to get each one to Tier 2 is the most common mistake in the game. A single S-tier tool at Tier 4 outperforms a full rack of Tier 2 gear because the best abilities are locked behind full investment.

Based on the patch 4.2 economy documented by xmodhub, the most efficient upgrade path runs as follows:

• Phase 1: Thermal Vision Goggles to Tier 2, unlocks Pulse Scan, which gives you 3-second wall outlines and covers early map awareness entirely
• Phase 2: Sonic Distractor to Tier 3, this is the biggest single power spike in the game, converting a basic noise tool into surgical AI manipulation
• Phase 3: Grapple-Hook with the Soft Landing perk, drops landing noise by 80%, enabling silent drops from rafters behind guards
• Phase 4: Shadow-Weave Cloak to max tier, hold off until the Emperor’s Palace arc, where luminosity modifiers in the final missions exceed what standard stealth handles

Thieves’ Marks (the rare endgame currency) are only found in high-risk areas. Don’t spend them on cosmetic gadgets like the Golden Cane, which offers zero tactical value.

What’s the best loadout for each mission type?

Generalist builds get outperformed at high levels. Matching your loadout to the specific map is what separates a clean run from a frustrating one.

The Ghost build is the gold standard for Master Rank rewards. The Infiltrator build is the most forgiving for players still learning patrol patterns, the Grapple-Hook alone removes most of the difficulty from verticality-heavy maps. The Saboteur build requires the most setup but handles large guard clusters better than either of the other two.

How do you handle Hauntstables?

Hauntstables (the floating ghost guards) are slow and can pass through walls, which makes them disorienting on a first encounter. The key is tracking their position before you enter a guarded room, not after. Their wall-phasing ability makes them dangerous specifically when you’re already committed to a position surrounded by other hazards like lasers. None of the standard gadgets hard-counter them, so awareness is the actual tool here.

Build your kit, own the heist

The gadgets you bring into a heist in Thick As Thieves aren’t accessories, they’re your entire strategy. The Sonic Distractor (Mk III) and Shadow-Weave Cloak form the core of every serious Ghost loadout. The Grapple-Hook removes patrol coverage that would otherwise be impassable. Everything else fills specific gaps depending on the mission. Ditch the Portable Drill and Flashbangs permanently. Invest deep into one or two S-tier tools rather than spreading Thieves’ Marks thin across everything in your inventory.

For more strategy across every aspect of this game, the Thick As Thieves guides collection covers heist mechanics, guard patterns, and progression in detail. If you’re drawn to the stealth and heist formula more broadly, there’s a full library of action games on GAMES.GG worth exploring once you’ve cleared the Emperor’s Palace.