Oblivion:Gripes/Thieving

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This article provides Thieving gripes, as part of the Game Balance section of the Gripes article.

Guards and citizens seem to be psychic. Sometimes guards come running up to you when there is no reason why they would know of what you are doing. Also, you can be wanted in one city, run straight to another and find the law is still after you. If you are riding a stolen horse, dismount in front of a citizen on the other side of the world, and get back on, they know you stole it.

One would expect that the guards have some sort of method of communication, which probably includes wanted criminals.

That doesn't explain how I went into a house (I think I killed the occupant), lock-picked the basement door, and when I entered I hear "Stop!" and there's a guard in the basement! Excuse me officer, but it seems you've broken the law too if you're in the previously locked basement!

The No psychic guards mod changes some aspects of the guard AI, including causing them not to hear through walls and chase you in other cities, though this will lead to unknown bounties, denying you access to Chapel Blessings.

Once you get a hang of the lock picking minigame you can open a "very hard" lock with one-two lockpicks with minimal security skill. This essentially makes the skill useless and rewards players with fast reflexes and punishes those without. Some find the game very unintuitive and frustrating and forces you to use the mouse to control the pick (which may be partly due to interface issues).

There is a mod known as 'Blind Lockpicking', which essentially makes lockpicking an auditory exercise rather than a visual one. Greatly increases the difficulty and realism of lockpicking for those who feel they are too good at it. I've checked but the TESSource page is a broken download, the only reliable source is inside Iradian's Reloaded Modpack at Planet Elder Scrolls. Just open it and extract the blind lockpick mod and you're good to go. I think that some ui mods might have a similar fix.

One quest allows you to obtain the "Skeleton Key" artifact. This object is an unbreakable lockpick and once obtained allows you to use the auto-attempt as often as you want, again eliminating the use of the security skill.

You can't get the Skeleton key until level 10, and even so no one is making you get it. Try using some self-imposed rules to increase your enjoyment of the game; just because it's there doesn't mean you absolutely have to abuse the heck out of it.

The Skeleton key cannot be used in jail as normal lockpicks can so security does have its benefits.

All loot is level based which means that even if you break into a fancy house and pick that 4/5 tumbler lock you'll only end up finding some cheese and 3 gold. By the time you level up enough for the random loot to start dropping decent things you can make far more money and loot easier by killing bandits and looting their Glass/Ebony/Daedric armor and weapons. This essentially breaks the entire purpose of playing a Thief character.

Thieves will find it difficult not to ally themselves with their respective guild in order to progress themselves. Stolen items can not be sold to any merchant outside the Guild, excepting the unemployed fence added by the Thieves Den plugin and lockpicks can only be found by farming goblins, talking to a Guild merchant, or trading with Shady Sam, north of the city.

The proprietor of the Inn of Ill Omen will buy stolen goods, but he only has a small amount of gold.

You'd be surprised where you can find lockpicks. I have found lockpicks on the corpses of mud crabs (poor blokes must swallow them), bandits, and highwayman. Also, it is possible to collect roughly 70 lockpicks from the tutorial, enough to last you through the main quest.

If you get the lockpicks from the tutorial, you can then access houses, many of which have lockpicks in crates, barrels, etc. If you can break into a few houses using maybe 10 lockpicks, then you can steal more and continue on. Many unlocked places also have them in crates and such, including every guild hall I've been to (Not just the thieves guild).

It is easy enough to become a thief, even if you are playing a pure magic and combat character with no stealth or alteration skills whatsoever, thanks to The Skeleton Key. You can abandon your armor, and don it again when you need to go into combat. High sneak skill will come eventually, and is not difficult, you can pick any lockpick with a Security skill of 5 once you get the hang of it, and the other skills are more of a miscellaneous category than a stealth one.

Then don’t use the skeleton key then, it’s there for players who don’t have high security, alteration skills or good player skills but gets tired of not being able to open treasure chests in dungeons, or because they decided to build a warrior character or hybrid character who doesn’t use the security or alteration skills because that would break immersion for that character. If you think the item is overpowered and/or breaks immersion don’t do the quest for it then. Also a lot of players like having their skill affect the game instead of having to rely completely on character skill like in previous elder scroll games; its fun to pick locks in the mini game and also adds more options to what you can do in Oblivion.

It is easier to kill someone (by taking advantage of sneak bonus) when they are sleeping than to pickpocket them, even with a sneak skill as high as 40.

If you're sleeping, when would you most likely wake up: When someone decapitates you, or when someone reaches their hand down your pants?

The security minigame is either easy or impossible. Skills have no effect on it. The only advantage is less tumblers falling, which is not an issue if you don't break a lockpick anyway. The advantage is not useless, but even with a security skill of 100, you can still break 2000 lockpicks without picking a single tumbler on a hard lock if you are bad enough at the game. This is unintuitive and makes the skill pointless (and its trainers, and its status as major or minor).

Remember the "Auto Attempt" button is there. Using this means that your security skill can affect how easy a lock opens and you should be able to open any lock if you have enough lockpicks. If your security skill is high, only a very few auto attempts will open any lock].

On the contrary, the security skill makes the minigame much easier. If you have higher security skill, tumblers will fall down a lot slower, and they will more often be "lockable in position" when you nudge them.

I like having MY skill have an effect on the game, not just my character's. It's much more satisfying to say "I just picked that five tumbler lock and only broke one pick." And if your reflexes are that slow, you shouldn't be playing video games.

If it takes anyone 2000 picks to open any lock, you need to get yourself or your machine looked at. The fact that you got far enough to even find a lock would be surprising.

Thievery is unavoidable. Although the Main Quest does not require any, both the Fighters Guild and the Mages Guild have unavoidable thievery quests (as does the Dark Brotherhood, and of course, the Thieves Guild, but you are already playing an evil character if you are in those). Many quests require it as well. It is truly unavoidable in the game, whereas you can play the game almost entirely without swinging a sword or firing a spell (better have fists or a bow, though, since you need something to kill with).

Welcome to the real world, no-one is perfect, and alliances means ignoring the bad things your allies do.

If you have a problem with stealing, then don't do it. You don't have to join any guild, and don't have to do any quest, so it is avoidable. However, I think it's more realistic, as you're more likely to be asked to steal a book for a prank than give a book, ya'know?

The entire Stealth category should just be renamed Miscellaneous. Sneak and Security actually have to do with Stealth. Light armor, while useful, is not directly stealth, as heavy armor or no armor can be used as well. While a possible weapon for an assassin, Marksman is also not necessary, and thieves can use ranged spells or melee as well. The rest (Acrobatics, Mercantile, Speechcraft) are entirely unrelated.

Acrobatics is completely related to Stealth, ever heard of a sniper on top of the roof? Of course, its a great location, sometimes only attainable by a high acrobatics rating. Also, an assassin mght wind up scaling buildings or jumping from rooftop to rooftop, to avoid the guards and other such things, or a thief might want to climb up to a balcony entrance.

Speechcraft is very useful when playing as an assassin or thief, you need that information and it's mostly only accessible by convincing.

Light armor offers protection, which is very handy for a thief on a botched job, but it also is not as loud AND it allows the user to move much more quickly, which are both very handy for a thief. Life saving, in fact.

At higher levels, the disadvantages of light armor become negligible. A master of Heavy Armor is not encumbered by heavy armor they are wearing. The Journeyman Sneak perk neutralizes penalties because of boot weight. At that point, heavy and light armor become identical, except for the much greater health (and therefore durability) of heavy armor. Therefore, a high-level assassin/thief is better off wearing heavy armor.

A thief would only be better off wearing heavy armor after leveling up both heavy armor and sneak considerably, while they receive the benefits from light armor from the beginning. Until reaching master-level heavy armor, the encumbrance of the armor significantly reduces the amount of loot a thief could carry, and also slows down a character that depends on speed. Light armor becomes weightless earlier on, and once mastery-level is obtained, Heavy Armor is useless as Light Armor gains a 50% efficiency bonus, making it roughly equal to the heavy armor equivalent.

The fact that there are locks that cannot be picked is frustrating. All locks should be unlockable if at least not with a spell, and then if this is the case, locks with five pins should be harder to pick than locks with three pins. This would give the thief more of a sense of accomplishment when successfully picking a lock.

One might notice that sometimes tumblers will come down faster or slower than at other times. Once the player's skill level has increased significantly, the tumblers on locks within a certain range will only fall slowly.

All these skills are related as they would be useful or typical to a "Rogue" character. But, since the game has so many different classes and the ability to make your own, it wouldn't be right to name groups of skills "Warrior" or "Mage" or "Rogue".

Some doors need a key for a reason, most of them are related to quests or areas where you normally would not be able to go, and for this reason, if you were to open a door related to a quest before you actually get the specific quest, it might get broken

If there are spells that unlock a door, you can expect some to be magically locked so that they can't be picked or altered magically. Also, until you really get the hang of the lock picking minigame, 5 tumblers is MUCH harder than 3, since if one of the last two falls, while the first three opened... you're now set back. Each tumbler has separate spring tensions, so you can't just use the same exact technique for all 5.

Thievery is far too easy. While doing an investigation for one of the counts I successfully emptied the castle of everything with monetary value in several trips. none of the items have been replaced so far, and I have not heard one complaint about how everything in the castle has gone missing. all this sometimes literally under the guards nose.

You try coding guards to notice the absence of certain objects without them going ballistic if you just nudge something. If they replaced something, you have to think that it may be possible to get infinite high value objects by waiting for them just to replace something.

How pray tell do Guards and merchants know when my Items are stolen?

Perhaps the owner of the items has made it known to the city that they have had it stolen? Also, maybe people generally do something to differentiate theirs from others. If they had no idea, then you wouldn't ever have to really work for your money, you could just run in, steal EVERYTHING (Castles and Guild Halls worth note) and then sell it back to just anyone, without having to worry about being caught, unless they actually see you doing it.

With armor and weapons it makes sense, but food? how exactly would they differentiate my potatoes from Burglarized in Bruma's or anyone elses?

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