Quick Fingers and Fast Foot
From Atlantic Roleplay Wiki
Title: Quick Fingers and Fast Foot
Author: U'Risidoenzu
As honorable as any profession, thieving requires iron nerves and a willingness to defy death. While a tailor or lumberjack will work hard to hone their skills, a thief must work doubly harder, the only concession being that monotony is simply not in the thief's vocabulary. While killers, lords and monsters may rule the wilds, YOU-- when advanced to Grandmaster thief as I have--shall rule the towns. In fact, my first advice is this: Never leave the town, save to a moongate. Let the foolhardy do that, and bring the treasures to you! In fact, find a permanent town to practice your skills.
Find a place with many people and many guard towers (which contain much loot in chests). In the beginning, you may settle for Nujel'm, a city virtually lifeless, yet loaded with chested loot.
Here are the other fine towns well populated with victims and chests: Britain, Vesper, Trinsic and perhaps Serpent's Hold (good guard towers there).
You need high stealing skill and snooping! If you're lucky, you may find an open pickpocket's den... though not likely. Find a fellow neophyte thief, and both go outside town. Practice snooping and stealing from each other. Warriors spar or practice on dummies before tackling monsters, so why do so many thieves think that they can just begin stealing from people? This is why, sadly, so many thieves' corpses litter busy streets.
For chests, wait until no one is in sight, then steal. You thus loot the chest unharassed by the vile guards, the thieves' natural enemy.
Steal at random! Why take nasty double hits to your noteriety from snooping? Use your stealing skill, and with the targeting cursor, simply select a person. Here you can steal something at random. This technique is good for the fast rob and run technique. Once you perfect it, the unwary fool won't even know what happened.
Nothing worse than a thief mildly standing next to someone, casually browsing their pack like they're some damned vendor.
Obvious mistake here, yet I see countless neophytes make it. I slap my forehead as a thief walks up to a warrior, stands nose-to-nose and begins rifling thru his pack. He's killed. Make sure NO ONE is facing you when you strike!
Makes sense, doesn't it? Approach a crowd from behind, making sure everyone is facing away from you, then steal from a gimp at the edge.
Once successful, don't try stealing again! Someone may have spotted you anyway, people always moving. Take what you have and run!
Go undercover. Carry a shepherd's crook, or wear bone if you can. No one suspects someone in armor to be a thief! Dress like a thief when you aren't working, or among other thieves. If you're female, dress in pink and look innocent! Then rob them blind.
Remember, give 1 gold coin to a beggar or wandering healer every 15 minutes. Being grey or red is BAD. See a monster fighting someone? Steal from it!
Use the arrow keys to walk, and the mouse to target and steal. Who suspects someone strolling along to be a thief?* And choose your victims well. So many really deserve it!
--U'Risidoenzu