Ember's Rapport and RNG...

Arato

Ember has a great personality, but because she loses more rapport than she gains through pickpocketing, her the whole idea of "a companion to take with you thieving" kind of falls flat. Now you can kinda sorta avoid getting caught sneaking and trespassing (sorta I say, because despite having full medium armor, khajiit, CP perks, and multiple -detect radius gear sets on, I can get spotted from across the room by NPC's facing away from me.. I don't really get it but it it happens), there's not a lot you can do about pickpocketing causing you to lose rapport aside from not trying, because pickpocketing can boil down to RNG aside from the very easiest targets.

so when it comes down to it.. despite her design being a companion for thieves.. it's better not to have her summoned when committing crime, because RNG and janky sneak mechanics can tank your rapport with her and it's just easier to have rapport through mage's guild dailies and high isle delve quests than to try stealing with her out. Even after maxing her rapport using those means.. any time I would go around stealing stuff? I'd put Ember away, because the risk of tanking her rapport is just too high.

Rowjoh

have you tried levelling the 'Light Fingers' Ledgerdermain skill to max so that you always get a 100% Pickpocketing chance?

Do this without your companion to prevent rapport loss, then it's a breeze !

Grizzbeorn

You need more practice if you are having that much trouble.

FluffWit

I find it funny that Mirri- who everyone seemed to thin was a goody two shoes, wouldn't bat an eyelid if I massacred an entire refugee camp but super chill bad girl Ember gets cranky if I shamelessly murder NPCs.

Stanx

What I find annoying is how she always has something to excitedly say whenever I harvest a runestone, but enchanting does nothing to rapport level. I thought making a glyph would be a guaranteed bump, given the amount she harps on about loving enchanting.

Arato

Rowjoh wrote: »

have you tried levelling the 'Light Fingers' Ledgerdermain skill to max so that you always get a 100% Pickpocketing chance?

Do this without your companion to prevent rapport loss, then it's a breeze !

that only works on the easiest targets or the very first attempt on medium difficulty targets, even as a Khajiit.
and in my experience, if you have a 95% chance of success, that means you'll get a bounty every time.
you need 100% chance to not get caught cause RNG is freaking awful.

ReeceLavellan

I have full thieves guild and legerdemain skills, and I’m very careful. But sometimes you do just get caught be it rng or a buggy npc seeing you despite facing the opposite way from you. God help you if your trespassing and you get caught pickpocketing. That’s -20 approval loss for technically being caught doing 2 different crimes.

I think the solution to this would be to lower how much you lose. -5 instead of 10 for trespassing, and only -1 for being caught stealing.

Arato

Grizzbeorn wrote: »

You need more practice if you are having that much trouble.

Yes, practice that RNG.

Arato

But considering I'm in all medium armor (reduced detection range by 35%), and then Khajiit (-3m), the CP passive (-3m), and 2 sets (-2m each) that's -10m detect radius bare bones, so what's the detect radius normally, something like 30m or something? because I can enter a house and be behind someone, and they turn around and detect me at the door.

Grizzbeorn

Arato wrote: »

Grizzbeorn wrote: »

You need more practice if you are having that much trouble.

Yes, practice that RNG.

Practice not getting caught.

If this were a common, wide-spread issue, the forum would be choked with threads about it.

Iselin

And if that weren't bad enough (unless they fixed it recently - I leveled her rapport a few weeks back) if you do the daily heist too well she doesn't gain the +125 rapport from it. You have to actually fail the time bonus deliberately if you're doing that heist to level her rapport.

MasterSpatula

People on here actually pretending they don't know that a 95% success chance in pickpocketing comes out to a 40% success rate.

Arato

But main point is.. It's actually too risky to use Ember as a companion while thieving.
Just like all the other companions if you're going to do DB stuff you have to put them away. Ember was supposed to be the companion to use for criminals.. but you have to put her away when doing crime because her rapport takes a dump due to lousy RNG unless you only limit yourself to the easiest targets where you have 100% chance.

Arato

Grizzbeorn wrote: »

You need more practice if you are having that much trouble.

Yes, practice that RNG.

Grizzbeorn wrote: »

Arato wrote: »

Grizzbeorn wrote: »

You need more practice if you are having that much trouble.

Yes, practice that RNG.

Practice not getting caught.

If this were a common, wide-spread issue, the forum would be choked with threads about it.

Getting caught pickpocketing is RNG.
Have you even played the game?

Grizzbeorn

Arato wrote: »

Have you even played the game?

Yup.
And funny that I don't seem to have the problems you do.

Maybe you take too many chances at times when you shouldn't.

Arato

Let's look though

if you trespass into an area with Ember, you get +1 rapport. But if the NPC bugs out and turns around and sees you from over 10m away, which shouldn't happen but does sometimes.. you lose -10 rapport, so you can only safely trespass with Ember in vanilla zones where the houses aren't actually bounty zones and the house owners just nag at you and don't actually give you a bounty.

If you pickpocket a guard, which with full legerdemain skills and Khajiit racial bonus, is a 75% chance to succeed (95% on the green bonus) on the first item, so it's not even guaranteed to succeed (and 80% on second item and 75% on third item). If you succeed you get +5 rapport. But if your RNG is bad, you get -10 for being caught, a net loss. Pickpocketing a guard and failing doesn't result in them trying to get you to pay a fine so you can't get clemency, so your only option is to run. If you escape you get +1 rapport, if you then use a pardon edict, you get +5. So getting bad RNG still results in a -4 net loss even if you do all the things to try and mitigate it.
+5 gain, -9 to -4 loss.
Not worth having her out to pickpocket guards.

Pickpocketing anyone but a guard, has no benefits for her rapport but you can risk losing rapport if you have bad RNG

Opening a safebox, +5 rapport once an hour, if RNG on forcing the lock fails you and someone sees it, -10 rapport, again, a net loss, not worth risking having her along while you do it unless you manually open every lock and are good at it.

So yeah
put her away when doing crime, it's not worth having her out.
Devs failed pretty hard at making a criminal friendly companion.

Hapexamendios

I didn't have her out while pickpocketing. Not worth the hassle. Just called her when I got a purple item and was using a counterfeit pardon edict. Mainly maxed out her rapport by doing the delve and mage's guild dailies.

Arato

Hapexamendios wrote: »

I didn't have her out while pickpocketing. Not worth the hassle. Just called her when I got a purple item and was using a counterfeit pardon edict. Mainly maxed out her rapport by doing the delve and mage's guild dailies.

exactly.. People just gave up using her for crime and put her away to avoid losing rapport.

But I think ZoS should know this.
Since her design was supposed to be for criminals to use as a companion.
But risk vs reward analysis is a total L.

SammyKhajit

You literally have to be in a room with the NPC as the only one else in order to avoid getting caught. And that’s with all the thieving, sneaking and even med armour maxed out.

Although this one has a theory: if you have a pet indrik out, the chance of getting caught is higher. Snooty pious high elf fauna and flora

VoodooPlatypus

Agreed. I thought Ember would be my shifty sneakthief’s buddy, but turns out the negatives outweigh the positives. As such, my thief goes solo for the actual acts of crime he commits, and then I pull Ember out upon entering the Outlaws Refuge and fence a purple to get the +rapport. Net result is that she’s hardly better than the other companions - it’s just a different type of tedious micromanagement.

[edit: typo]

jaws343

I've found Ember by far the easiest to get to max report out of all of the companions.

Top that off with she doesn't care if you blade of woe enemies you have pick pocketed.

Also, got caught many times pick-pocketing, and still easily got Ember to max report within a week of release.

Snamyap

FluffWit wrote: »

I find it funny that Mirri- who everyone seemed to thin was a goody two shoes, wouldn't bat an eyelid if I massacred an entire refugee camp but super chill bad girl Ember gets cranky if I shamelessly murder NPCs.

Haven't heard a peep out of Ember when using blade of woe or otherwise killing civilians.

CGPsaint

Iselin wrote: »

And if that weren't bad enough (unless they fixed it recently - I leveled her rapport a few weeks back) if you do the daily heist too well she doesn't gain the +125 rapport from it. You have to actually fail the time bonus deliberately if you're doing that heist to level her rapport.

I was wondering about this. I've been doing the heist quest each day trying to level up her rapport and it's not doing anything. So basically you have to suck at the heist in order to earn rapport? That can't be right.

@ZOS_GinaBruno

Arato

jaws343 wrote: »

I've found Ember by far the easiest to get to max report out of all of the companions.

Top that off with she doesn't care if you blade of woe enemies you have pick pocketed.

Also, got caught many times pick-pocketing, and still easily got Ember to max report within a week of release.

not me, Isobel, on my characters that don't do crime was by far easiest. The only thing I got hit on for rapport was entering the outlaw refuge to talk to Remains-Silent on a character that had done the DB storyline, and that's a -1.

The only companion that is easier to lose rapport with through crime, is Bastian, who you'd EXPECT to lose rapport with quickly for doing crime. Even Isobel.. if I steal something from a container, I lose -1 rapport. If I pickpocket with Isobel, no rapport change if I succeed or fail.
Meanwhile Ember is a risk of losing rapport at the same rate as Bastian if RNG is against you.

Iselin

CGPsaint wrote: »

Iselin wrote: »

And if that weren't bad enough (unless they fixed it recently - I leveled her rapport a few weeks back) if you do the daily heist too well she doesn't gain the +125 rapport from it. You have to actually fail the time bonus deliberately if you're doing that heist to level her rapport.

I was wondering about this. I've been doing the heist quest each day trying to level up her rapport and it's not doing anything. So basically you have to suck at the heist in order to earn rapport? That can't be right.

@ZOS_GinaBruno

It can't be right but it is lol. I read it somewhere and just started killing everything in my path to fail the bonus and got the +125 without fail every single time I did that.

Carcamongus

Reading these posts I realized I should have done heists to speed up rapport; I'm very good at failing them.
The way I see it, Ember's a thief companion with zero tolerance for failure. In a game, by the way, in which it's possible to fail a 100% pickpocket. I don't need someone else pointing out I'm bad at being sneaky, as I can do that on my own. Mirri gets a bit upset when I incur a bounty - and is profoundly relieved when I clear it - but no rapport is lost.

Arato

Carcamongus wrote: »

Reading these posts I realized I should have done heists to speed up rapport; I'm very good at failing them.
The way I see it, Ember's a thief companion with zero tolerance for failure. In a game, by the way, in which it's possible to fail a 100% pickpocket. I don't need someone else pointing out I'm bad at being sneaky, as I can do that on my own. Mirri gets a bit upset when I incur a bounty - and is profoundly relieved when I clear it - but no rapport is lost.

when failure is a matter of RNG she might as well be Bastian

xaraan

Just a note in case anyone doesn't know, do the high isle daily delve quest to get a bunch of Ember rapport everyday. (The high isle world boss daily does the same for Isobel)

Arato

xaraan wrote: »

Just a note in case anyone doesn't know, do the high isle daily delve quest to get a bunch of Ember rapport everyday. (The high isle world boss daily does the same for Isobel)

that doesn't at all change the issue.

The problem is not getting Ember to max rapport.
The problem is that you will tank Ember's rapport if you use her while committing crime, which goes against what she was designed for, which was as a companion for criminals.
If you have to offset losses from committing crime and failing RNG with quests, why have her out while committing crime in the first place?

None of you seem to grasp that.
I wonder if any of you peanut gallery play the game when you make comments like that.
None of you suggesting workarounds seem to grasp the issue.

Kelinmiriel

I think it's particularly annoying that she won't give you the +125 rapport for completing a perfect Heist, but she will if you're too slow - and that no one has either officially commented on this, explaining why it might have been intentional (which I'd find hard to believe), or that it's going to be fixed at some point.

So - what's up with the Heist rapport?

I don't need it fixed immediately, although that'd be nice, but an answer sure would be appreciated.

captainwolfos

I got -30 rapport with Ember yesterday, when running through The Sweetroll Killer quest.

I broke into the Gold Coast Trading Company building (+1), but there just happened to be a guy directly left of the door when I went in. -10 rapport.

Then he went hostile and attacked. -10 rapport.

Then a bit later in the quest in the farmhouse where you confront The Sweetroll Killer themself, I looted the building for the couple of drinks on the ground and the cauldron, and there just happened to be a dagger which for whatever reason counts as stolen if you pick it up. Naryu didn't approve, bounty gained, -10 rapport.

So yeah. It's not really worth having Ember around, tbh.

Also. If some other player happens to get caught by a guard, then runs around like a headless chicken while you're doing something in stealth, you'll sometimes get spotted by the guard even if he doesn't actively go after you, which also ends up with a bounty, and -10 rapport. This is especially frustrating doing the Thieves Guild questline in Hew's Bane.