Stealing

Stealing is a skill that allows you to take items from another player's backpack and some special items from the world.

The Thieves' Guild

In order to steal from other players, you must be a member of the NPC guild for thieves. Your character must be at least one week old, have spent 40 (forty) hours in game and have achieved a minimum skill in stealing of 60 before you can join the guild. Once you have met these requirements, you must locate the thief guildmaster and give him or her five hundred gold in order to join. You may not join the thieves' guild if you have any murder counts and you will be removed from the guild for a week if you receive any counts while a member of the guild. Effectively, as a thief, this means you cannot take any murder counts regardless of whether they turn you into a player killer or not.

One other benefit of membership is the ability to purchase and use disguise kits. Disguise kits can be purchased for seven hundred gold from the thief guildmaster by saying "<NPC Name> buy disguise kit." The NPC will claim that that "particular item" is available for purchase at seven hundred. Drop the gold on to the NPC (as you would if you were training a skill) and a disguise kit will be placed in your pack.

When you use a disguise kit, you will be asked to select a new hair and/or facial hair style. When you have done this, you will be given a new name and the chosen hairstyle(s). Note that your hair and facial hair will both be white if you change them. This disguise will last for two hours, at which point you will convert back to your normal look and name. (The timer for this keeps running when you are logged out. Death will revert you back to normal.)

Standard Thief Templates

These are two common thief templates that have been used with great success. There are, of course, ways of altering them.

Stealth Thief

This template works best for someone totally focused on stealing and getting away with the goods unscathed. Hiding and stealth aid in getting close to the chosen mark, while magery, magic resist and wrestling allow a safe and quick escape.

Strength - 100

Intelligence - 100

Dexterity - 25

Stealing - GM

Snooping - GM

Hiding - GM

Stealth - GM

Magery - GM

Magic Resist - GM

Wrestling - GM

Dexer Thief

This template forgoes the safety of recalling away for standing up to marks with the possibility of a kill that nets you all of the mark's loot. Macing is the generally preferred melee skill, due to the value of the stamina drain effect.

Strength - 100

Dexterity - 100

Intelligence - 25

Stealing - GM

Snooping - GM

Melee Skill - GM

Tactics - GM

Anatomy - GM

Healing - GM

Magic Resist - GM

How to Raise Stealing

Steal items that weigh one-tenth of your current skill level. For instance, if your stealing is presently at sixty, you should steal items that weigh six stone.

If you are a member of a guild, the best method is to steal from a fellow guild member. If you are not a member of a guild, you will need to steal from a pack animal (a pack llama or pack horse) using the "all guard" command until you are able to join the NPC thieves guild. To do this, pull up your pack animals health/name bar and then type the command "all guard me"; once you have typed this command, your pack animal will be grey and anyone can legally kill/steal from your animal. The command "all follow me" will return your pack animal to blue status.

One method of doing this is to buy a few pouches and some empty bottles. Each empty bottle weighs exactly 1 stone. So for example, if you have 50 stealing skill fill up a few pouches with 5 bottles each. Put all of these pouches except one onto your pack animal, and you are ready to record your razor macro.

Start by saying: "all guard me". Attempt to steal one of the pouches off of your packhorse. After this give your pack animal the command "all follow me". Finally, lift the one remaining pouch in your backpack into the pack animal's backpack and stop recording. Then go into your razor macro and edit the target to "target by type" and the lift to "lift by type," and of course add the 10 second pause at the end.

Your razor macro should look something like this:

Say: all guard me
UseSkill Stealing
Wait for Target
Target by Type pouch (OE79)
Say: all follow me
Lift pouch (OE89) - 1
Drop to 0x4008439B (@(-1, -1, 0))
Pause 10.00sec

If you lag a bit, you may wish to insert a 0.5-1.0 second pause between Target by Type and Lift pouch. Otherwise you may get a "You caught yourself redhanded" or a "You need to be in the thieves guild to steal from players." This is the macro attempting to steal from your own pack because of a lag between stealing and lifting the pouch back. Also remember that other players or NPCs must be present to get skill gains.

Adding the "all guard me" and "all follow me" command in your macro will keep other players from killing your pet and stealing your bottles.

An alternative method is to simply place a stack of stackables, e.g., bottles, in the bag you intend to steal from. Set your macro to steal from that pile and to continually replenish it.

Stealing and Criminal Flags

A member of the NPC thieves' guild cannot report murders. If you steal from an innocent player, then there are a few different possible outcomes.

1. Complete Success: One possibility is that you successfully steal an item and go completely unnoticed (in the sense that the game will not officially count any player or NPC as having noticed you even if a player realizes you stole from him or her). If this is the case, you will remain blue. You will, however, be freely attackable by anyone, even in guarded zones. This is known as being "permagray." Once you are permagray, you remain so until you die.

2. Partial Success: Another possibility is that you successfully steal an item but are noticed by a player or NPC. In this case, you will get a criminal flag and turn gray. If you are in town, the guards may be called on you. If the player you stole from attacks you, you will get a murder count for killing this player, even in self-defense. When your criminal flag wears off, you will be permagray.

3. Failure: You do not succeed in your attempt to steal. You may also go gray, as in a partial failure.

IMPORTANT: Do not fight back against a player that highlights blue to you. If you kill such a player, you will get a murder count and be removed from the Thieves' Guild for a week. Only fight those that appear gray to you. If you find yourself attacked by a person that highlights blue, run away. Come back after two minutes and, if the player attacks you again, you will now be able to defend yourself with lethal force. Do note that you will not auto-defend against an attacking player that highlights blue, so you need only use a little care to avoid getting murder counts.

NOTE:

• Getting caught and difficulty when Stealing considers the difficulty of the steal (item weight) And the number of humans that are in your view (from server patch notes 77).
• The stealing skill success rate is affected by the amount of armor the thief is wearing.(from server patch notes 107).

Tricks of the Trade

• The Double Steal: Use the steal skill, but do not target what you want to steal. Leave your targeting cursor up and wait ten seconds. Now steal what you want. Immediately use the steal skill again. If successful, you will have stolen two items in under a second. This is tricky to pull off, as most people will not stand close to you for long.

• Fast Snooping: Set a hotkey for Last Object. When you see a player you would like to snoop, attempt to open his or her back from afar. You will not be able to do it, but now you will be able to move in and open it with a simple press of a button, which will allow you a quick peek before the player moves.

• The Drive By Steal: Set a hotkey (in Razor) for Set Last Target. You can use it to set objects as your Last Target from afar and run in to steal them without snooping again. An easy method of acquiring targets is to snoop a mark's pack. The mark is likely to run away, but if he or she does not go too far you will still be able to view the contents of the pack and use that to set your Last Target macro. Another method of acquiring targets is to set an equipped item as the Last Target and perform a drive by steal when it is unequipped.

• Disguise Kits: Use them often. Keep using it over and over until you get a name that sounds like a name a player would choose. (Common names for NPC such as 'John' or 'Mary' arouse suspicion from thoughtful players.) Dye your hair. New hairstyles are all white. This is an obvious sign of a thief. Hair dye is cheap and effective. Stock plenty of clothes of various style and colors in your bank box to fully pull off the transformation.

• Work with other thieves. Two heads and four hands are better than one head and two hands.

• Steal light items when in town. You are much less likely to be noticed. Avoid stealing crowded areas if at all possible.

• Inevitably, many players will not like you. But if you steal with a little style and class, then some players will take a liking to you. This can be useful. They may decide to help you in a jam or at least not attack you when you're in trouble.

• On the other hand, angry marks are marks that make stupid mistakes. A taunt at the right moment can be the difference between stealing one item and getting all of the loot of a mark you when he or she overreacts.

• Travel light. If you don't, the guards or other players will make your ventures unprofitable. Frequently dying is simply the cost of doing business.

• Weapons skills: Any of the weapon skills are excellent choices for a dexer thief. Macing is the most popular weapon for thieves even though you may not poison any mace weapons. Poison weapons are expensive and most marks are unprepared for the stamina drain that mace weapons deal out. Also, quarterstaves are excellent and cheap weapons.

• Stealing as a PvP Skill: Steal your opponents weapons, reagents, bandages, runes and potions. No matter how good your opponent is, he or she will not be able to kill you or survive long without the proper equipment.

• Trapped pouches are cheap and useful. It is best to carry a few. If you are paralyzed by a mark, do not immediately open your pouch. Let the mark get an initial mana dump off and then flee while healing up. The mark has wasted quite a bit of mana and will suffer for it when put on the defensive.

• Get a gimmick. Novelty routines, macros of conversation, props, etc. Make it interesting and run a con such that your mark doesn't realize you're snooping his pack. Be creative, don't just be annoying at the bank--instead, be entertaining at the bank. Or better yet: Leave the bank for the better loot of the wider world.

How to Not Be a Mark

There are number of things you can do to avoid having your goods stolen (or worse).

• Do not go to the West Britain bank or any other area frequented by thieves.

• Do not let unknown players stand next to you.

• Do not macro with valuable items in your backpack or on your person.

• Carry all of your items in a locked box.

• Figure out who the commonly encountered thieves are (e.g., chumbucket) and avoid them.

• Do not trade or sell items to people unless you are both seated on opposite sides of a table. You cannot steal across tables. Alternately, you might insist all items be sold through a vendor.

• If a thief manages to steal something of little value from you, let it go. Do not attack the thief unless you are prepared to fight a dexer thief of the sort described above.

• Do not carry your house key or runes to your house on you. Keep them either in the bank or in a secure box on the porch of your house.

• Cast reveal before you enter your house. Use the detect hidden skill once you are in your house. (It will reveal everyone in a house you own\co own\ friended to even if you are at zero detect hidden.)

• Beware players with NPC-like names (e.g., 'John', 'Mary'). They are often thieves that have used a disguise kit.