You have to know where to farm valuable motifs and limit the time you farm. My hubby and I farm for gold and purple motifs/furnishing patterns. We have seen that although RNG is real, you do four to five rounds of your farming route once a day and if what you're aiming for didn't drop then come back tomorrow. The longer it takes, the more uneconomical it gets.

Great way to make some quick cash. Granted you can make more from certain other activities, but if you just need some extra money ASAP, a little thievery will net you an easy 10-20k, give or take depending on what you sell to the fence. Plus you just might get lucky and net one of the rarer items that sell well on guild traders after a good laundering.

Early on it can be a good source of quick coin, even later if RNG is on your side you can get some motifs chapters in certain locations through pick pocketing that sell fairly well but your just as likely if not more so to get motifs to sell doing daily quests in various zones.


Half an hour a day of stealing/laundering use to be a part of my daily routine a long time ago but over time the profits from doing daily writs on multiple characters covered the gold I needed in game so I stopped bothering with it.


I mostly used thieving when I was starting out in the game as a way to pay the weekly dues in the first few trade guilds I joined while using my profits from both stealing and just selling stuff on the guild traders, to level up the craft skills on my alts until they were all able to do max level writs.


Just think of it as a supplementary source of gold rather than your main source of income.

There are plenty of other ways in game that will make you decent gold but if you enjoy thieving do it, its just another part of the game, if you start worrying about how much gold its making you it will become a lot less fun and seem more of a daily chore though.

Grianasteri wrote: »

I find it hard to believe that someone could make more gold than me soley steeling and pick pocketing, in the same time that I spend in a public delv. Is this really possible? Taking into account the sneaking time, travel to fence to sell etc...

If I spend half an hour in there, I can make thousands.

Note that I am not saying stealing and pickpocketing are not fun, they can be.

In my favorite pickpocket spots, I can make 10-20k in about an hour, YMMV

I like to pickpocket guards

Amisce wrote: »

Grianasteri wrote: »

I find it hard to believe that someone could make more gold than me soley steeling and pick pocketing, in the same time that I spend in a public delv. Is this really possible? Taking into account the sneaking time, travel to fence to sell etc...

If I spend half an hour in there, I can make thousands.

Note that I am not saying stealing and pickpocketing are not fun, they can be.

In my favorite pickpocket spots, I can make 10-20k in about an hour, YMMV

Wow that is lucrative. But I still wonder if I can make similar in a public delv and doing pledges in the same time frame. For the lolz I may go and see how much I can make from a couple of pledges and the rest of the time in a public delv, with a total time of 1 hour. I think it will be close.

You should spend all of your time stealing. It's OP. It's Endgame. Don't think, just do!

Yes, but there's much more lucrative things to waste your time, fishing and mats hunt for example, gives much more money

It's not the most profitable activity in the game but you can make decent money doing it. It's especially good early on because you can do it right from level 1 without needing any skills or equipment.

I don't usually dedicated much time to it, but I'll always check containers as I'm passing and if there's anything good I'll take it (even on my characters who wouldn't actually become thieves, I'm not going to pass up a rare motif just because I've decided this guy obeys the law). And if I need more gold I've got two characters with points in Legerdemain who can go do a thieving run somewhere.

(Incidentally reading this topic I'm wondering if there's a connection between people who use thieving to get gold and people who like Mournoth Keep. That's the house I did daily theft runs to pay for too.)

deviousthevile wrote: »

Don't waste time pickpocketing as there is a higher chance of getting caught. I like going into the Fighters Guild in Mournhold and completely killing every NPC in the Training area. Sure you have to time it so no one sees you, but it's quick, easy, and I finished my Black Market Mogul and a few Thieves Guild achieves just sitting there, killing everyone as they spawned.

If you just kill you lose 2/3 NPC drops. The most valuable ones are usually the last. Ex. if you're aiming for blueprints or motif pages those will always drop as the 2nd or 3rd item, almost never as the first. The most efficient technique is to pickpocket twice, stab once, or pickpocket 3 times, then stab, because some NPCs also have the 4th item on them.

I just went to Rawalkia right before I logged off, store what I could, pickpocketed who I could and used the blade of woe on every NPC I could after the second success. It built up a large bounty but by the time I logged back in the next day it was gone. Made 10k a day or so and occasionally more with good purple drops. There are also about 6 or 7 chests there easy pickens.