[Rogues Folio] Thieves' Maps (All Cities) & Thievery Guide [Updated 1/14/16]

Anemonean

THE THIEVES' MAPS ARE NOW COMPLETE! JUST ADDED A NEW(IN PROGRESS) GUIDE TO LEGERDEMAIN, THIEVERY, AND ALL THINGS JUSTICE SYSTEM & A NEW LORE HEAVY FICTION SECTION FOR THE THIEF'S BACKSTORY

Hail all you depraved guttersnipes, prowlers and thieves!
Ever wanted to plan a lockbox stealing circuit, make the rounds stalking hard pickpocketing targets, or avoid buildings where guards lie in wait to trap you? Now you can with my new(ish) blog/guide:

THE FACTS:
Legerdemain & Thievery: An Illustrated Guide(In progress)

THE FICTIONS:
Ahezzar The Thief Part 1(Chapters 1-8, COMPLETE)
Ahezzar The Thief Part 2(updated serially every week, chapters 9-11 so far)

THE MAPS:

ALDMERI DOMINION
Vulkhel Guard - Auridon
Marbruk - Greenshade
Eldenroot - Grahtwood
Velyn Harbor - Malbal Tor
Rawl'kha - Reapers March

EBONHEART PACT
Davon's Watch - Stonefalls
Mournhold - Deeshan
Stormhold - Shadowfen
Windhelm - Eastmarch
Riften - The Rift

DAGGERFALL COVENANT
Daggerfall - Glenumbra
Wayrest - Stormhaven
Shornhelm - Rivenspire
Sentinel - Alik'r Desert
Evermore - Bangkorai

OTHER:
Belkarth - Craglorn
Orsinium - Wrothgar

ABOUT:

This guide seeks to give you locations for as many lockboxes and pickpocketing targets as I can find (hopefully all of them but omissions are possible). The difference, however, is in the presentation. Unlike normal game guides it does not seek to hold your hand, giving you this data on a silver platter, but instead follows in the traditions of past Elder Scrolls games and presents you with a collection of cryptic annotated maps, complete with a key book and added illustrations for a more immersive guided experience. The guide is presented from an in-character perspective, as if the maps themselves were made by a thief from the dark alleys of tamriel's septic underbellies. Each map is complemented by a small description of the city/province/etc. from the views of the (no longer totally) anonymous narrator.

Example map of Elden Root

Please report errors and omissions here in the comments(I'll see them first), through the "report error" link on the blog, or by email at Anemoneanic@gmail.com. Omissions are quite possible even with my cross testing on PTS and your help is much appreciated.More info on the guide's about page!

Thanks so much for your support and in game company, here's to the best community I've had the pleasure to play with in a while. oh, and happy hunting!!


UPDATES:

[5/5] Added Stormhold in the pact and Wayrest in the covenant
[5/7] Changed Betinikh to Belkarth in the Craglorn section, because derp. Am derp.
[5/7] Added more tags to the maps, now you can use the blogs search bar to search by:
City name, Zone name, Province name, Faction name, and Faction abbreviation (EP,AD,DC)
[7/23] Added Map for Rawl'kha - Reaper's March
[11/9] Added Belkarth in Craglorn & Daggerfall in Glenumbra
[11/20] Added map for Orsinium
[12/15] Added a new illustrated guide to thievery section(in progress) & a small fiction piece & backstory
[1/14/16] Happy new year! Just added part two to the fiction section!
[1/26/16] Added Pickpocketing, Looting furniture & containers, & Fencing, Laundering, Paying Bounties to the Guide. Added 3 new chapters to the fiction

kimboh

Wow, this is fantastic! Nice work.

Anemonean

Thanks, glad you dig! I've been posting these over on Our subreddit for the last month but I thought I wanted to reach as broad an audience as I can especially now that I've got a large portion of them done. I'll update this guide as I add more maps to the site

Shader_Shibes

Agree, this is great! I commend your time and effort in this.

phreatophile

Amazing. Nice work.

aco5712

this is next level work. Good job. You should get something for this xD

Davadin

Wooooooooooooooooow...

Jeezus, ZOS, somebody POST THIS STUFF ON THE MAIN PAGE!

@ZOS_GinaBruno

Anemonean

aco5712 wrote: »

this is next level work. Good job. You should get something for this xD

Thank you! I really wanted to bring a guide to the table, something informative, well designed, immersive, and engaging. I don't want anything from it, as I said in the about page, just to get it out to as many people as I can. I'd love to see hardcore min/maxers and rpers alike using it, I'd love to see it used on guild websites and have no problem with people hosting the maps themselves for personal projects.
If anyone does feel like they want to support me though, I'm always appreciative of in-game gold donations to @Anemonean . I'm a pretty good thief but sometimes I do rack up a hefty bounty. Donations of gold help keep me ON the streets, and that's where I belong!

Davadin wrote: »

Wooooooooooooooooow...

Jeezus, ZOS, somebody POST THIS STUFF ON THE MAIN PAGE!

@ZOS_GinaBruno

Wow, thanks so much!! A front page shout out would be amazing if only to get more exposure for this (and of course stroke the ol' e-ego in the process, hah)

Wisler89

Holy....
You, sir, are a gift to us.

No, srsly, this work is awesome. I'm looking forward to the remaining maps.

Xael

Great job @Anemonean I really like this. I love how you used shadowmarks

DeLindsay

Very well done, I have added this to my Legerdemain thread with a link in the OP!!

Cogo

This is well done and got the best intentions to help.

But following a guide have only shown to harm players by not finding out themselves. People starting to look for guides before trying themselves.

Everyone have different views of course. But going down the thief path, stealing and avoiding the law is player experience. (and fun too).

I get hated for this, but its my view that the fun is doing it yourself and not let someone play for you...by following a guide or addon.

Good quality work though.

Note: The map in player writing is awesome!! More of that! Tips are not guides in my view.
ZoS should add that map to this site at the justice system area.

Anemonean

DeLindsay wrote: »

Very well done, I have added this to my Legerdemain thread with a link in the OP!!

Thanks so much @DeLindsay, your guide and your early lockbox maps both inspired me and helped me cross reference my own data! Thanks for the shout out

Cogo wrote: »

This is well done and got the best intentions to help.

But following a guide have only shown to harm players by not finding out themselves. People starting to look for guides before trying themselves.

Everyone have different views of course. But going down the thief path, stealing and avoiding the law is player experience. (and fun too).

I get hated for this, but its my view that the fun is doing it yourself and not let someone play for you...by following a guide or addon.

Good quality work though.

Note: The map in player writing is awesome!! More of that! Tips are not guides in my view.
ZoS should add that map to this site at the justice system area.

Thats why I wanted to add intentional vague-ness to the map, sure it tells you what buildings are "hot" and what buildings have loot, but the excitement of discovery is still there as the player still has to do the work and make the discoveries.

I hope my maps dont make lockboxes an easy grind for everyone, what I hope is that it helps more frustrated players get a leg up in a way that's immersive and tells a story. I appreciate your feedback!

Davadin

Anemonean wrote: »

I hope my maps dont make lockboxes an easy grind for everyone, what I hope is that it helps more frustrated players get a leg up in a way that's immersive and tells a story. I appreciate your feedback!

that is very true.

i agree with both the above, but as for this specific guide, it acts more like a tips and hints and a LOT of the work is still around not being caught.... finding them is a fairly small portion of the experience.

personally, i barely use this guide at all.... BUT it's super handy for those "where was it again?" moments.

Anemonean

Hey guys,
Added: Velyn Harbor in Malabal Tor, first post updated accordingly

WebFeat

This is brilliant, @Anemonean! A very handy (and beautiful) guide indeed. Thanks very much!

Zouni

Piece of Art, well done!

Cuyler

+100

I'm not a thief myself but I sure can appreciate the work that went into this. Your love for the game and creative vision have really shown through in what you've presented here....Great work!

Turelus

These look fantastic, awesome job! Thank you for sharing!

Anemonean

Just added two new maps:

Windhelm - Eastmarch on the EP side
Wayrest - Stormhaven on the DC side

First post updated accordingly

maryriv

What's with all the eyes in triangles, you some kind of illuminati or something?

Anemonean

No...........?

Auricle

This is amazing. +1 karma.

Zlater

This is really amazing, keep up the great work

Frawr

This is a beautiful piece of work. Well done.

However

You are giving people 'the answer'. This is the sort of information that causes areas to become overpopulated and ultimately spoils it.

Just like with grind spot posts, everyone goes there and the spot becomes rubbish.

I beg you to keep this sort of information private in order to maintain the natural order of things.

Anemonean

Thanks for the input @Frawr
Now, I might be mistaken on the actual mechanics behind it but I have stolen from ALOT of cities and lockboxes. I've stolen from popular cities, dead cities in vet zones, and on the pts with no competition. I think I have a pretty good handle on lockbox respawns, I've picked hundreds and I mean hundreds of them.

It seems anecdotally that it's EASIER to find lockboxes in cities where people are actively making the rounds. This seems weird I know but hear me out.

The way these lockboxes seem to respawn isn't just on individual timers (if that was the case I could log on to the PTS and go to a random city and every lockbox would be there where it should be (because there's no one else there looting them) but it seems that's not the case. Only a certain number of lockboxes spawn in a city at any given time, this is evidenced by the fact that when I cross check my work on PTS I only find 4-5 lockboxes at first and then have to retrace my steps to find ones that before were not spawned. This actually makes my work documenting the lockboxes way more tedious on the PTS and in empty vet zones because I'm constantly having to re-enter "empty" buildings to check if a lockbox has spawned.

Now when I go to say, Wayrest(the DC version not vet version) or Windhelm (The ep version not vet version) I find WAAAAAY more lockboxes even though I see other players running around (and sometimes getting to them first). This leads me to believe that up to a certain threshold you actually DO want more players hunting lockboxes, especially if you're making a large loop in the city (let's say stealing from 10 places as opposed to 2-3). Yes you still find empty buildings a lot when there's competition but far less so than if there was no competition.

I know this seems counter-intuitive (And it is compared to earlier experience with normal treasure chests which do seem to just be on individual timers) but lockboxes seem to be respawning differently than the older chests did.


in short, I prefer to steal in cities with more competition, they seem to provide more loot at the end of the day.
These are just my personal opinions and experiences on the matter, sorry we disagree on this.

Frawr

That is an interesting and plausible mechanic. I hadn't considered that it could work that way. I will give it a test! If that is true then yes there is some merit in encouraging it.

Casdha

Kudos

Anemonean

New map, The city of Stormhold in Shadowfen in the Ebonheart pact. That finishes up all the main cities in EP, woohoo!
First post updated accordingly

Thanks again for all the support, criticism, help with omissions, and sparked discussions!

UrQuan

Wow, I just found this thread, and I freaking love the work you've done on these maps... So very cool.

Of course, to be truly immersive they wouldn't have the legend telling you what the symbols all mean - you'd have to be taught that by other members of your thieves' guild, and keep it in memory. That way, any authorities who found the map would have no incriminating evidence of what the symbols meant, and you might be able to talk your way out of some time in the stocks, or losing a hand.

But I think the convenience of being able to know what symbol means what probably outweighs that little bit of immersiveness

Anlaemar

These are wicked cool. Very immersive. A huge thumbs up for those who helped make these.