Stealing and pickpocketing are basically useless outside of doing the Thieves Guild questline IMO

Dovakhan

With so many other ways of making gold in-game (trading, farming sought-after items, scrying, even zombie killing...), I feel that stealing and pickpocketing are seriously underwhelmed right now.

Besides, no matter how good you're at pickpocketing, you ALWAYS end up with a substantial bounty at the end of the day. I've a Khajiit (+5% bonus), 3/4 Light Fingers, and I never pickpocket anything at less than 60% chance (and usually at 80% or more, plus green marker), and I've still racked up a bounty of 8k in my last pickpocketing spree attempt. Stealing should be a high-risk, high-reward activity, but there's a lot of risk involved, and very low reward, unless you go crazy farming counterfeit writs (killing dragons are a good source of them). And add to that the completely SENSELESS fence items limit, and the mostly useless fence bonuses from the Thieves Guild skill tree (from 4 to 25 extra gold per item after spending 4 SKILL POINTS on it, and that having in mind that blue items (the 25 ones) are very rare...wow, what a fortune :P).

IMO, they should do something to balance it out, idk, boost all of the stolen item's value, add chances for really valuable items (2k or so), boost A LOT the fence passives, add unique items avaliable only by stealing/pickpocketing, etc.

AlnilamE

I don't know, man. That's your opinion.

My opinion is that you need to become a better thief.

The only time in my lawless career where I racked up a bounty of 8k was when I was killing people in plain sight to get the Mass Murderer achievement.

You need to work on your technique. :-)

Tammany

Stealing is already profitable, making 24k/day and never end with more than 700 bounty as a bosmer
100 steal - 90 steal - BoW

3/4 Light Fingers

Maybe you have to try 4/4 out ?

Dovakhan

AlnilamE wrote: »

I don't know, man. That's your opinion.

My opinion is that you need to become a better thief.

The only time in my lawless career where I racked up a bounty of 8k was when I was killing people in plain sight to get the Mass Murderer achievement.

You need to work on your technique. :-)

Yeah, and when an 80% green pickpocket attempt fails and gives you a 3-figures bounty, that's the player's fault as well, no? :P

Tammany wrote: »

Stealing is already profitable, making 24k/day and never end with more than 700 bounty as a bosmer
100 steal - 90 steal - BoW

And how many 40-100-250 items do you have to steal for that?

In the meantime, I can do 24k in one morning, by either scrying or farming. 24k a day is ridiculous.

Besides, believe it or not, there are people who'd prefer doing something varied during his playing hours, and not to dedicate them all 100% to something concrete.

And I doubt that 1 extra skill point would make any substancial difference, much less in the mechanic as a whole.

MKintr

It's an old wisdom:
Crime doesn't pay

AlnilamE

Dovakhan wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

I don't know, man. That's your opinion.

My opinion is that you need to become a better thief.

The only time in my lawless career where I racked up a bounty of 8k was when I was killing people in plain sight to get the Mass Murderer achievement.

You need to work on your technique. :-)

Yeah, and when an 80% green pickpocket attempt fails and gives you a 3-figures bounty, that's the player's fault as well, no? :P

I usually get 92 gold bounty if I'm seen, so I'm not sure what's happening to you.

As for your reply to Tammamy, there are other things you can pickpocket, like motifs and furnishings/plans that are worth more than the standard fare.

And they are saying "a day" because there's a hard limit per character on how much you can fence. They can probably get that done in less time than several hours of scrying for blue 1000 items.

The thing is, it's comparable to other activities, so you can switch around to do what you feel like.

Tammany

Dovakhan wrote: »

And how many 40-100-250 items do you have to steal for that?

Noone fencing white items for profit.
Try a honest work, maybe stealing is not urs ?

Guthix_of_the_Green

Tammany wrote: »

Stealing is already profitable, making 24k/day

24k is pushing it - No one has that amount of time to ONLY sell blue items. I have 2 maxed thieves and legerman characters and it is more like 20k a character and that is about 1 -1.5 hours of pocket farming and destroying white items.

The original poster makes a great point in that pickpocketing is very time consuming and little reward. I can easily get a lockpicks and 1. guarantee a blue or green item 2. get 117 gold a chest at a lockchest spawn point.

So why even bother picking pockets when it is more time efficient , profitable, to pop chests instead of getting junk out of pockets.

Dovakhan

AlnilamE wrote: »

Dovakhan wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

I don't know, man. That's your opinion.

My opinion is that you need to become a better thief.

The only time in my lawless career where I racked up a bounty of 8k was when I was killing people in plain sight to get the Mass Murderer achievement.

You need to work on your technique. :-)

Yeah, and when an 80% green pickpocket attempt fails and gives you a 3-figures bounty, that's the player's fault as well, no? :P

I usually get 92 gold bounty if I'm seen, so I'm not sure what's happening to you.

As for your reply to Tammamy, there are other things you can pickpocket, like motifs and furnishings/plans that are worth more than the standard fare.

And they are saying "a day" because there's a hard limit per character on how much you can fence. They can probably get that done in less time than several hours of scrying for blue 1000 items.

The thing is, it's comparable to other activities, so you can switch around to do what you feel like.

I don't remember now the exact bounty per getting caught, but anyway, they're so frequent that I wasn't that far away after all :P And besides, if you decide to "go careful" as you suggest, then you're lowering your cadence even more. But of course, if you think that 24k per day is "a lot of money"...rofl, you better never discover scrying, or farming in Craglorn/Deshaan.

Also, I've pickpocketed for quite a long time, cos I was kinda hooked to it for a time, and I only got ONE or two purple items that I remember.

As per the hard limit you mention, my words exactly :P

Tammany wrote: »

Dovakhan wrote: »

And how many 40-100-250 items do you have to steal for that?

Noone fencing white items for profit.
Try a honest work, maybe stealing is not urs ?

Then you're losing even more time per attempt. And yes, I also had the habit of dropping white items, for your info :P

Tammany

Guthix_of_the_Green wrote: »

Tammany wrote: »

Stealing is already profitable, making 24k/day

24k is pushing it - No one has that amount of time to ONLY sell blue items

How hard is it to calculate that ONLY BLUE items will cost much higher than 24k ?
Iam stealing green/blues in between RDF ques, and its usually 22-24k per day.

You should know how to steal and where to steal, robbing beggars wont bring you fast moneys.
Pickpocketing is fine, it should not be the most profitable money sorce when every casual player able to hop on khajit nightblade and do the stuff.

AlnilamE

Dovakhan wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

Dovakhan wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

I don't know, man. That's your opinion.

My opinion is that you need to become a better thief.

The only time in my lawless career where I racked up a bounty of 8k was when I was killing people in plain sight to get the Mass Murderer achievement.

You need to work on your technique. :-)

Yeah, and when an 80% green pickpocket attempt fails and gives you a 3-figures bounty, that's the player's fault as well, no? :P

I usually get 92 gold bounty if I'm seen, so I'm not sure what's happening to you.

As for your reply to Tammamy, there are other things you can pickpocket, like motifs and furnishings/plans that are worth more than the standard fare.

And they are saying "a day" because there's a hard limit per character on how much you can fence. They can probably get that done in less time than several hours of scrying for blue 1000 items.

The thing is, it's comparable to other activities, so you can switch around to do what you feel like.

I don't remember now the exact bounty per getting caught, but anyway, they're so frequent that I wasn't that far away after all :P And besides, if you decide to "go careful" as you suggest, then you're lowering your cadence even more. But of course, if you think that 24k per day is "a lot of money"...rofl, you better never discover scrying, or farming in Craglorn/Deshaan.

Also, I've pickpocketed for quite a long time, cos I was kinda hooked to it for a time, and I only got ONE or two purple items that I remember.

As per the hard limit you mention, my words exactly :P

I'm level 10 in scrying. But I don't do activities for money. I do them because they are interesting to me. I have enough gold.

I pickpocketed a lot in Morrowind to get the house motif pages. I had a pretty good rotation there where I could pick-pick-stab NPCs and they'd be respawned by the time I got back to them. I'd usually get a motif page in 20 minutes or so.

Right now, I'm working on lockboxes because they drop the lead for the music box, as well as looking for other leads that I haven't got yet. But outside of leveling alts, I would not spend time just scrying vendorable items. That would get boring real fast.

Dovakhan

Tammany wrote: »

Guthix_of_the_Green wrote: »

Tammany wrote: »

Stealing is already profitable, making 24k/day

24k is pushing it - No one has that amount of time to ONLY sell blue items

How hard is it to calculate that ONLY BLUE items will cost much higher than 24k ?
Iam stealing green/blues in between RDF ques, and its usually 22-24k per day.

You should know how to steal and where to steal, robbing beggars wont bring you fast moneys.
Pickpocketing is fine, it should not be the most profitable money sorce when every casual player able to hop on khajit nightblade and do the stuff.

And how often do you get BLUE ITEMS by pickpocketing?

I usually steal everybody without distinction mostly cos I've inventory capacity to spare, and after a full raid, I'm lucky if I've one or two of them.

In the meantime, you can have the same 250 items (plus one 1000 one) in less than 5 minutes of scrying.

Also, I love people who thinks that 24k per day is A LOT OF MONEY OLOLO, and thus acting like if they're such elites. So I suggest you drop the attitude already before you get into evidence even more.

Sheridan

How can pickpocketing possibly be a high-reward activity? Do you expect all that average citizens' pockets stuffed with gold bars and ancient artefacts during their everyday routine? Most street thieves simply do it so they can have something to eat at the end of the day.

Ragged_Claw

I only pickpocket in Vvardenfell, that way there's a chance of getting the motifs to sell, although they've dropped in price quite a bit. I've very rarely got a blue or purple furnishing plan and have never got any of the bounty sheets etc. I have a specific route I take and know which NPCs I can pick/pick/stab without getting spotted, but there's always a chance of failure (I've failed on 100% before, lag?). I also only sell blue items, I trash everything else (unless it's an alt that I'm levelling).

If you run low on counterfeit pardon edicts, I find just running the 'covetess countess' quest from the tip board over and over is useful for getting those, then you've also got the chance to get the Abah's watch motif.

I am disappointed that there were no scrying leads added to pickpocketing, and I'd like to see more added to the loot table overall, some new motifs or something. It isn't the fastest way of making gold, so I wouldn't do it if I didn't enjoy it

Dovakhan

Sheridan wrote: »

How can pickpocketing possibly be a high-reward activity? Do you expect all that average citizens' pockets stuffed with gold bars and ancient artefacts during their everyday routine? Most street thieves simply do it so they can have something to eat at the end of the day.

If we go that "realism" way, we should also ban any character from carrying fountains and stone walls weighting a ton around while sprinting at 200% speed :P

redlink1979

Dovakhan wrote: »

(..) no matter how good you're at pickpocketing, you ALWAYS end up with a substantial bounty at the end of the day. I've a Khajiit (+5% bonus), 3/4 Light Fingers, and I never pickpocket anything at less than 60% chance (and usually at 80% or more, plus green marker), and I've still racked up a bounty of 8k in my last pickpocketing spree attempt (...)

Pickpocketing n stealing are very profitable if you know where/who to pickpocket.

All my legerdemain/TG/DB passives are maxed on my main char, a DK, so I don't get caught easily. Bounties are kinda low and go away pretty fast if I ever get caught. And I never use any sets for decreasing radius detection or increase stealth.

Advise: level up all your passives related the mentioned skill lines, even the ones you might think are "useless"

VaranisArano

I prefer to have a route where I'm pickpocketing the same type of NPCs, that way at least some of the items stack up. I only pick up the green and blue items, so its fairly lucrative by the end.

Sure, I make more gold farming Craglorn, but sometimes its fun to play around on my Master Thief and Silencer. Pick, pick stab! Hail Sithis!

Dovakhan

redlink1979 wrote: »

Dovakhan wrote: »

(..) no matter how good you're at pickpocketing, you ALWAYS end up with a substantial bounty at the end of the day. I've a Khajiit (+5% bonus), 3/4 Light Fingers, and I never pickpocket anything at less than 60% chance (and usually at 80% or more, plus green marker), and I've still racked up a bounty of 8k in my last pickpocketing spree attempt (...)

Pickpocketing n stealing are very profitable if you know where/who to pickpocket.

All my legerdemain/TG/DB passives are maxed on my main char, a DK, so I don't get caught easily. Bounties are kinda low and go away pretty fast if I ever get caught. And I never use any sets for decreasing radius detection or increase stealth.

Advise: level up all your passives related the mentioned skill lines, even the ones you might think are "useless"

Good for you. Go make your "24k in a day". I'll make 200k+ in about the same time.

Truth is, unless you're a dedicated RPer or you're kinda in the mood for pickpocketing, you mostly steal for gold or profit. And as much as I like stealing myself and have in fact a dedicated infiltrator char, most of the times I find myself thinking "What for, if I can just do about 20 other activities that brings me way more gold with way less trouble?"

THAT'S why I think that it's seriously underwhelming. No interesting rewards whatsoever. No motivation to do so.

Luke_Flamesword

Pickpocketing can't be too good otherwise we will have constant wipeout of NPC nad that's not fun and immersive to see ocean of dead bodies in cities all the time

Tammany

Dovakhan wrote: »

Also, I love people who thinks that 24k per day is A LOT OF MONEY OLOLO

Where did i say that a lot of moneys ?
I said it might be profitable if you know where and how to steal, as for my example these 24k per day are PROFITABLE FOR ME because i steal inbetween RDF/BG ques in casual mode and browse internet till NPCs are spawning.
Today is 29k + motif, not bad.

Dovakhan wrote: »

So I suggest you

Once i need a suggestion from a 8k bounty complaining dud ill whisper you, promise.

Nestor

I recently finished off the Felonious Recompense for the Purple Dye. I pick pocketed 300,000 in items in 15 evenings and never racked up more than a few hundred in total bounty, and that was the few times i got caught. And i was killing every NPC i stole from, so they would reset faster. BTW, each session was about 20/25 minutes to do.

Learn to Play.

ZOS does not need to make the game easier for you to steal. It is easy enough already. If more gold payoff is what you seek, pick another activity that pays more. Or has less risk.

Danikat

For me the advantage of stealing as a way of making money is that it's really simple to get started. You can do it in almost any settlement for as long as you like (until you reach the fence limit anyway) and you don't need to level up, train skill lines, get the right equipment, find a group or any of that. (The skill line and knowing good locations helps, but it's not essential to make a profit.)

It might not be the most profitable farm in the game, but if you're new or normally avoid farming because you find it boring so you don't have a dedicated build or know good spots but then as a one-off you want to get gold faster it's something you can start doing immediately on any character (or as many characters as you have time for) and apart from the fence limit you can spend however long you want on it and you'll get something.

Dovakhan

Tammany wrote: »

Dovakhan wrote: »

Also, I love people who thinks that 24k per day is A LOT OF MONEY OLOLO

Where did i say that a lot of moneys ?
I said it might be profitable if you know where and how to steal, as for my example these 24k per day are PROFITABLE FOR ME because i steal inbetween RDF/BG ques in casual mode and browse internet till NPCs are spawning.
Today is 29k + motif, not bad.

Dovakhan wrote: »

So I suggest you

Once i need a suggestion from a 8k bounty complaining dud ill whisper you, promise.

I care a crap that they're profitable FOR YOU and that you do in between quests. You can say exactly the same about a bunch of other activities, especially gathering.

Also, thank you for expecting me to be stupid enough to bite the bait of you bragging about something that you get extremely once in a while, mr. 24k elite. You clearly need no suggestions from anybody. But I'll have to remember to brag like that every time I find a motif somewhere while questing or so.

Enjoy your 24k's. Zenimax clearly isn't gonna improve this outdated and lackluster system thanks to the likes of you. Fortunately, not like I especially care, because fortunately it isn't even my thief-like char's main role.

mairwen85

There's a certain church in Daggerfall where you can rob and murder on a set circuit that by the time you finish you can start again without detection if you're good enough; you can get several days worth of fencing goods in an hour.

BlueRaven

Tammany wrote: »

Stealing is already profitable, making 24k/day and never end with more than 700 bounty as a bosmer
100 steal - 90 steal - BoW

3/4 Light Fingers

Maybe you have to try 4/4 out ?

Remember when bosmers were good at stealth? 😞

Sindala

Well i don't do PvP or trials or belong to a guild so no guild trading either....

I find the Thieves Guild to be a fun way to make some extra gold, also strangely satisfying when i get to pocket dip that NPC that's been shadowing a Guard for half an hour.
And as always it would be rude not to follow up a successful dip with a little stab stab too for a double win

SpacemanSpiff1

get better at stealing. if you're committed, you shouldn't be getting bounties often.

faeeichenlaub

It bought me bouldertree refuge when I was just a young and po' Bosmer pre-guild trading millionaire.

It had its rewards and glad I made an effort.

Daemons_Bane

I steal stuff because I like it.. In the end, some day, it will unlock the achievements that allow me to buy some cool furniture for my house too

CMDR_Un1k0rn

Goes on a robbery spree with his Nord DK in heavy armour.

UrQuan

Dovakhan wrote: »

And I doubt that 1 extra skill point would make any substancial difference, much less in the mechanic as a whole.

With 4/4 skill points I'm usually pickpocketing at a 100% chance as long as I wait for it to go green (and if you don't wait for it to go green, you're doing it wrong). A 100% chance means 0% chance of getting that bounty you're complaining about (assuming you're not pickpocketing in plain sight of other NPCs... You're not doing that are you?). No risk, all reward.