Apherius wrote: »

ALWAYS steal 2 times the citizen then kill with the blade of woe.

No. Steal until empty (can be more than 3 items per NPC).

My favourite tactic in crowded places is to quickly tag a bunch of npcs by pickpocketing once, then going about my business. That way, if someone else comes by and kills the npcs I will still get the loot drops. (E.g. if I pickpocket once, then I will still get my two remaining items if someone else knifes the npc; if I pickpocket twice, I get one more item from the corpse.) And I don't have to take as many risks with my declining success chance.

I've pickpocketed two motifs within 15 minutes, and I was banking & fencing in between.

With the new crafting style mats, you can sometimes get more than three items from a single npc. I've only had this happen in Vvardenfell, though - everywhere else in the game I pick-pick-stab. XD

ArvenAldmeri wrote: »

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Apherius wrote: »

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Apherius wrote: »

ALWAYS steal 2 times the citizen then kill with the blade of woe.

No. Steal until empty (can be more than 3 items per NPC).

Depend , both method have the same result, 3 loot.
The difference is that it's easier to kill the target and get the third loot than steal the target a third times.
I never had a 4th item on any NPC , are you sure ?

Yes, 100%. Sometimes 5 or 6 items.

Thats bullcrap, buddy. You can never steal or loot more than 3 items from NPCs. And if you wanna prove anyone wrong its gonna need a video. I picked hundreds of NPCs and never had more than 3 possible items from them. And as Apherius said, its the best to steal 2x and kill the 3rd time instead of risking to fail + then the NPC respawns and you can loot it again, otherwise it would be "empty" the next round you come to it.

Actually it's true. Usually when it happens for me, the 3rd item I pick is a piece of the style crafting material. Then when I stab, I get another piece of crafting material. Doesn't happen very often, but it does happen.

The maximum number of items you can get from an NPC is 3. If you pickpocket them 3 times they don't drop anything more if you stab them afterwards but it's recommendable to do so if possible because it makes them reset with full inventory again. If you stab them outright you only get the 1st item you would have pickpocketted, which is of relatively lower quality. Further pickpocketting tends to yield items of better quality, including motif pages and some furnishings. Your ledgermain skill level also affects the chances of getting higher quality loot. That's why picking only the 1st item or stabbing has a very low rate of motif drops.

I don't think there's a cooldown in getting motifs. I have gotten 2 pages about 30 minutes apart. I usually get only 2-3 per day since I limit my pickpocketting time to about 1h30m because I would have gotten enough green or better quality items to reach the daily fencing limit even with 4/4 trafficker. I can get up to 20K gold from those alone. I usually don't pay off my bounty, but leave it about 5-6K and log off in an outlaw refuge till next evening. It would have cleared by then.

Yesterday I lost all the loot I had, including 3 motif pages and a few furnishings, in addition to a full sack of loot because I got oneshot by a guard with an arrow from long distance. It had never happened to me before so I was quite surprised and pissed off. As a result I stopped farming, got some money from the bank and bought off all motif pages, completing not only the house motifs, but Ashlander, Morag Tong, Buoyant Armiger and Militant Ordinator for the bargain price of 3.75M gold and 2.25M AP. I may farm in the future but now I don't have any reason to. It's tedious and stressful.

I got several times NPCs with only two items in them, meaning pick, pick and stab had me an empty corpse. And I also got several times four or five items on a NPC. As others said above, mostly that happens with stile mats carried, but not all the time. Sometimes it's just four normal items on the NPC.....

I've had more than 3 items from NPCs quite often. However it seems 4,5 or 6 is just as rare for me as in I can get 6 as often as 4 which is weird. I have had it happen twice that I only got 2 items from an NPC so think that might just be a bug.

But more than 3 items per NPC is not that rare for me at least. Know others that have only recieved it once or twice in all their time.

Other NPCs have not had less number of items(or empty) on them when someone has dropped more than 3 so that speculation I don't think hold true.

Apherius wrote: »

Notice that there is probably a cooldown of " 90 minutes " between each motifs that you can steal.

I've been on a mission to see if this 90 minute cooldown was true or myth. I have been able to confirm that you can get the motif more frequently than every 90 minutes. After fine tuning my pick pocketing rout I have been able to get 2 motifs within 30 minutes on a fairly regular basis. I would say on average around 4-5 every 3 hours, mostly depending on how many other players are pick pocketing on my rout.

There seems to be a MUCH lower chance of getting a motif drop for a while after you loot one but the soonest I've gotten one in succession after another is about 25 minutes. Not sure if your chances drop and then slowly increase over time but that feels like what's happening. I suspect that they are back to normal within about an hour.

This is from a bit over a week of me pick pocketing for 3-4 hours a day.

Asardes wrote: »

The maximum number of items you can get from an NPC is 3. If you pickpocket them 3 times they don't drop anything more if you stab them afterwards but it's recommendable to do so if possible because it makes them reset with full inventory again. If you stab them outright you only get the 1st item you would have pickpocketted, which is of relatively lower quality. Further pickpocketting tends to yield items of better quality, including motif pages and some furnishings. Your ledgermain skill level also affects the chances of getting higher quality loot. That's why picking only the 1st item or stabbing has a very low rate of motif drops.

I don't think there's a cooldown in getting motifs. I have gotten 2 pages about 30 minutes apart. I usually get only 2-3 per day since I limit my pickpocketting time to about 1h30m because I would have gotten enough green or better quality items to reach the daily fencing limit even with 4/4 trafficker. I can get up to 20K gold from those alone. I usually don't pay off my bounty, but leave it about 5-6K and log off in an outlaw refuge till next evening. It would have cleared by then.

Yesterday I lost all the loot I had, including 3 motif pages and a few furnishings, in addition to a full sack of loot because I got oneshot by a guard with an arrow from long distance. It had never happened to me before so I was quite surprised and pissed off. As a result I stopped farming, got some money from the bank and bought off all motif pages, completing not only the house motifs, but Ashlander, Morag Tong, Buoyant Armiger and Militant Ordinator for the bargain price of 3.75M gold and 2.25M AP. I may farm in the future but now I don't have any reason to. It's tedious and stressful.

Which brings up a good point. What build/class/race are people finding the most success with?

If guard damage is an issue, there is that one set that lowers guard damage by 40%.

I'm betting the guard hit you with the "Taking aim!" shot.

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Apherius wrote: »

ALWAYS steal 2 times the citizen then kill with the blade of woe.

No. Steal until empty (can be more than 3 items per NPC).

I get 2 from stealing and 2 from BOW sometimes so you still get the extra.