Stealing
Stealing lets you lift items straight out of other backpacks — NPCs, monsters, and (if you join the Thieves Guild) other players. It is the classic high-risk playstyle: good loot, permanent enemies. Stealing caps at 100; there are no Skill Scrolls for it.
How it works ↑ top
Both hands must be free. Target an item in someone's pack (use Snooping to see what's inside first), or target the victim to grab a random item.
- Weight decides difficulty. Roughly, an item's weight in stones × 10 is the skill needed: a 1-stone item is trivial, a 10-stone item takes Grandmaster skill. Nothing above 10 stones can be stolen.
- Stacks: you steal a random amount, larger with more skill and lighter items.
- Blessed and newbied items cannot be stolen, nor can equipped items, nor anything from shopkeepers, player vendors or corpses.
- After a steal attempt the skill is locked for 10 seconds.
- Stealing is disabled in some protected areas (event zones and the like).
Getting caught ↑ top
Every attempt — success or failure — rolls whether you are noticed. The chance shrinks with skill but never disappears: even at 100 skill you are caught about a third of the time. When caught:
- Everyone within 8 tiles sees "You notice [name] trying to steal from [victim]."
- If the victim was innocent, you turn criminal (grey, freely attackable — and guards will respond in town). See Player Killers for how criminality works.
Stealing from players — the Thieves Guild ↑ top
You must be in the Thieves Guild to steal from other players. Join by finding a thief guildmaster and asking to join; requirements:
- character at least 7 days old, not a Young player
- Stealing 60+
- no murder counts at the time of joining
Guild members can also buy the disguise kit (700 gp, say "disguise" to the guildmaster) to change their appearance.
Player-stealing consequences:
- Stealing (or trying to) from an innocent player makes you perma-grey to the victim: they may attack you freely from then on.
- If you die within 2 minutes of the theft, the stolen item is returned to the victim from your corpse.
Stealable rares ↑ top
Some decorative rares around the world can only be obtained by stealing them from the ground — this requires 100.0 Stealing. See Spawning Rares.
Training 0 → 100 ↑ top
Difficulty is pure item weight, so you train by stealing ever-heavier items:
- 0–30: buy points from an NPC thief trainer, then steal 1–2 stone items.
- 30–90: work up the weight ladder (3 stones ≈ 30 skill, 6 stones ≈ 60 skill, and so on). Monsters' and NPCs' packs work; remember stealing from innocents flags you criminal when caught, so train away from guards or on hostile creatures.
- 90–100: 9–10 stone items only.
See Skills Overview for gain modifiers.
Related ↑ top
- Snooping — see what's worth taking
- Hiding / Stealth — get in and out unseen
- Player Killers — criminality and consequences
- Spawning Rares — stealable world rares
- Rares — every source of rare items