The quest proceeds in several phases, few of which have only one solution.

For the gate guard, there is a Persuade option (requires the Mages Guild passive). But there are also a couple of distractions which will move him away from the gate. You decided on the pickpocket distraction, but there is another which only requires some stealth to swipe some food and lure a particular dog to a particular location. You have to move farther in to the area to hear a conversation which makes that option available, but it requires nothing more than grabbing something when people aren't looking.

Your next task is to speak with Magnifica Falorah, which requires finding out where she is and then gaining access to the palace. For finding out where she is, you can do a bit of mingling to overhear what kinds of wine and cheese are to her cousin's tastes and then convince the cousin of your equally refined tastes to reveal Falorah's whereabouts. Alternatively, you can move to the bottom of the social heirarchy and find a disgruntled servant who will share that information in exchange for stealing something for them. You will need stealth and a small bit of skill with a lockpick to get it. Getting the key to the kitchens will require a successful pickpocket, but there are a couple or three targets who have keys (look for trays on heads) and a failed pickpocket puts that target on cooldown (can't pickpocket them) for a minute or two.

After speaking with Falorah, your next task is to get out of the room. It's a puzzle and needs absolutely no thiefy skills to get out, but solving the puzzle is the only way to progress the mission. Getting out of the palace after crashing the wedding and showing Cosh as a fraud will require some stealth and/or combat, but it's mostly just being careful to not be seen.

It's a guild of thieves, so being able to do thiefy stuff to complete a mission isn't much of an ask. You have the option of using some other skills (like Persuade) at a couple of points if you don't want to bother with the thiefy stuff, but there isn't anything special about this in comparison to other missions. To paraphrase Velsa, "You're supposed to be a thief. Get into someplace you're not supposed to be, take something that isn't yours, and leave." BTW and if you're planning to do the Daggerfall story stuff, you will also be expected to pick locks, pick pockets, be unseen, and steal stuff. Just sayin'.

DoofusMax wrote: »

The quest proceeds in several phases, few of which have only one solution.

For the gate guard, there is a Persuade option (requires the Mages Guild passive). But there are also a couple of distractions which will move him away from the gate. You decided on the pickpocket distraction, but there is another which only requires some stealth to swipe some food and lure a particular dog to a particular location. You have to move farther in to the area to hear a conversation which makes that option available, but it requires nothing more than grabbing something when people aren't looking.

Your next task is to speak with Magnifica Falorah, which requires finding out where she is and then gaining access to the palace. For finding out where she is, you can do a bit of mingling to overhear what kinds of wine and cheese are to her cousin's tastes and then convince the cousin of your equally refined tastes to reveal Falorah's whereabouts. Alternatively, you can move to the bottom of the social heirarchy and find a disgruntled servant who will share that information in exchange for stealing something for them. You will need stealth and a small bit of skill with a lockpick to get it. Getting the key to the kitchens will require a successful pickpocket, but there are a couple or three targets who have keys (look for trays on heads) and a failed pickpocket puts that target on cooldown (can't pickpocket them) for a minute or two.

After speaking with Falorah, your next task is to get out of the room. It's a puzzle and needs absolutely no thiefy skills to get out, but solving the puzzle is the only way to progress the mission. Getting out of the palace after crashing the wedding and showing Cosh as a fraud will require some stealth and/or combat, but it's mostly just being careful to not be seen.

It's a guild of thieves, so being able to do thiefy stuff to complete a mission isn't much of an ask. You have the option of using some other skills (like Persuade) at a couple of points if you don't want to bother with the thiefy stuff, but there isn't anything special about this in comparison to other missions. To paraphrase Velsa, "You're supposed to be a thief. Get into someplace you're not supposed to be, take something that isn't yours, and leave." BTW and if you're planning to do the Daggerfall story stuff, you will also be expected to pick locks, pick pockets, be unseen, and steal stuff. Just sayin'.

Right, for the dog scenario, I never received any prompts or anything which indicated the possibility of interaction. I was aware that this was an option but there was never, at any point, a way to interact with anything. I ran around the entire courtyard multiple times and found nothing. And I mentioned that I successfully pickpocketed keys twice, and they didn't work on the door. I'm stuck, it's bugged, and this all happened the last time I played through this questline. I appreciate you trying to help, but if you fully read through my post you would have noticed that this I'm not missing things. It's just broken.