Skyrim:Pickpocket

Skill: Pickpocket
Specialization: Stealth

The Pickpocket skill allows you to steal items off of a person. As perks are gained in this skill, you gain abilities that make pickpocketing attempts more likely or guaranteed to succeed, silently kill people with poisons, increase your maximum encumbrance, and the ability to steal equipped items. The Pickpocket skill tree has a total of 8 perks, requiring a total of 12 perk points to fill.

In-game Description: The stealthy art of picking an unsuspecting target's pockets. A skilled pickpocketer is less likely to be caught and is more likely to loot valuables.

Skill Perks

Light Fingers

Night Thief

Cutpurse

Keymaster

Misdirection

Perfect Touch

Extra Pockets

Poisoned

Pickpocket Perk Tree

Perk	Rank	Description	ID	Skill Req.	Perk Req.
Light Fingers	1	Pickpocketing bonus of 20%. Item weight and value reduce pickpocketing odds.	000be124
	2	Pickpocketing bonus of 40%. Item weight and value reduce pickpocketing odds.	00018e6a	20 Pickpocket
	3	Pickpocketing bonus of 60%. Item weight and value reduce pickpocketing odds.	00018e6b	40 Pickpocket
	4	Pickpocketing bonus of 80%. Item weight and value reduce pickpocketing odds.	00018e6c	60 Pickpocket
	5	Pickpocketing bonus of 100%. Item weight and value reduce pickpocketing odds.	00018e6d	80 Pickpocket
Night Thief		+25% chance to pickpocket if the target is asleep.	00058202	30 Pickpocket	Light Fingers
Cutpurse		Pickpocketing gold is 50% easier.	00058204	40 Pickpocket	Night Thief
Keymaster		Pickpocketing keys almost always works.	000d79a0	60 Pickpocket	Cutpurse
Misdirection		Can pickpocket equipped weapons.	00058201	70 Pickpocket	Cutpurse
Perfect Touch		Can pickpocket equipped items.	00058205	100 Pickpocket	Misdirection
Extra Pockets		Carrying capacity is increased by 100.	00096590	50 Pickpocket	Night Thief
Poisoned		Silently harm enemies by placing poisons in their pockets.	00105f28	40 Pickpocket	Night Thief

Skill Usage

If you are sneaking when you approach a person, you will be given the option of viewing the person's inventory. Simply viewing an inventory is not considered to be a crime.

The chance of successfully pickpocketing an item is computed as follows:

Factor	Effect on pickpocket chance
Base chance	40%
Pickpocketer's Pickpocket skill	+1% per point
Target's Pickpocket skill	-0.25% per point
Pickpocketer is hidden	+25%
Item's gold value	-0.1% per point
Item's weight	-4% per point
Perks	add the perk percentage
Alchemy	multiply chance by 100% + total alchemy bonus percentage
Enchantments	multiply chance by 100% + total enchantment bonus percentage

The maximum chance for success is 90%.

The maximum amount of gold pickpocketable on an awake target is 3,102 (1% chance on a 15 Pickpocket skill target). 1,500 of this comes from perks. If you want the maximum chance (90%) of success, reduce the amount by 890 gold. Alchemy and Enchantments will increase the chances of a successful Pickpocket, but will not allow you to pickpocket more gold at small chances.

If you have the Poisoned perk activated, you can reverse-pickpocket a paralysis potion into the target's inventory, which the target will subsequently drink. The character will become stiff and fall to the ground for the duration of the effect, during which time you will be unable to interact with them (save for attacking of course). As the effect wears off and the character starts to get up, immediately pickpocket them again. Though the % probability displayed will be the same, the game will treat it as a corpse looting instead of a pickpocket, which means the actual success rate will be 100% for all items and all gold amounts and you won't run any risk of incurring a bounty. This is especially useful for training skills at higher levels and getting all your money back.

If you fail, the target will detect you and you will receive a bounty. Even if successful, there is also a chance that the target will hire thugs to kill you.

After investing in the Poisoned perk you can reverse-pickpocket poisons onto targets to damage them. Giving multiple poisons to a target will make them "take" the poisons until they are either all gone or the target dies. Remaining poisons will be left on the corpse and are retrievable.

Skill Increases

Character Creation

The following races have an initial skill bonus to Pickpocket:

• +5 bonus: Argonian, Bosmer, Khajiit

Trainers

• Silda the Unseen in Windhelm (Expert)
• Vipir the Fleet of the Thieves Guild (Master)

Skill Books

• Aevar Stone-Singer
• Beggar
• Guide to Better Thieving
• Purloined Shadows
• Thief

Free Skill Boosts

• +1 Pickpocket reward (as well as +1 to all other stealth skills) from Inge Six Fingers (Bards College) for completing the quest Finn's Lute.
• +5 Pickpocket reward (as well as +5 to all other stealth skills) by selecting "The Path of Shadow" from the Oghma Infinium after completing the quest Discerning the Transmundane.

Gaining Skill XP

• Pickpocket skill gains are based on value of stolen items.
• Training Pickpocket must be planned carefully, as it levels extremely fast, potentially advancing your character level too far at low levels. It is possible to master the Pickpocket skill on your first visit to Riverwood, leaving you at level 17 or so, without improved combat skills to handle the tougher enemies.
• Easy ways of training your Pickpocket skill include:
  • Stealing jewelry; high success rate (low weight), big skill gains (high value).
  • Trainer pickpocketing: Pay a trainer to train a skill, steal your gold back, pay again, and repeat for as long as you're able to "buy" new levels of training. This way, you can gain as many levels of the skill as you wish to learn from the trainer, and gain levels of Pickpocket with a net cost of 0 gold. With a high Pickpocket skill, you can train up to level 51 without Pickpocket perks, or to 76 with all of the perks. After this, the gold cost becomes too expensive to pickpocket back.
  • Reverse pickpocketing: Reverse-pickpocket gold onto someone and steal it back. The bound NPCs found during the quest With Friends Like These... will not report you for any crime for the duration of the quest and are thus excellent targets. This is a good method if your Pickpocket level is over 90. 1500 gold is a good amount to do this with if you have the Cutpurse perk. Store the rest of your gold somewhere before doing this.

Achievements

One achievement is related to Pickpocket:

• Thief (30 points/Silver) — Pick 50 locks and 50 pockets

Notes

• There is a maximum percentage chance to steal displayed in game of 90%.
• The Misdirection and Perfect Touch perks will only work if you are attempting to pickpocket while not detected by your target. It is sometimes possible to steal equipped items while still being "detected" by a different NPC.
• The difficulty of pickpocketing gold is proportional to the amount of gold you are attempting to steal.
• You gain more experience when you steal higher value items.
• Characters that are recovering from events such as paralysis or being frozen experience a moment of complete susceptibility to pickpocketing while they are getting up. This means that a player that pickpockets a character while they recover from said events will be able to take anything that character holds (even if the chance of pickpocketing is 0%). However, this has been remedied by patches released.
• After unsuccessfully attempting to pickpocket an NPC, the NPC cannot be pickpocketed again for 2 days. The NPC will not reset if the player waits two days in the same room. This can also be reset if your unsuccessful attempt causes you to be approached by a guard and you are able to make them go away quietly (Bribe, announcing your "status", or paying them as "part of the Guild".) A third solution is available to master Illusionists; casting Harmony will cause all affected targets to "forget" if they have been pickpocketed recently. This does not work with other Pacify spells.
• The Cutpurse perk says "Pickpocketing gold is 50% easier". This can be a little misleading, as the bonus you gain can be much higher than half of your "chance to steal". What it actually means, is that Cutpurse adds the number 50 to your "chance to steal", although the number will still max out at 90%. At Pickpocketing level 100, trying to steal 1250 gold from an NPC trainer increased from 6% to 56% with the Cutpurse perk.
• Reverse pickpocketing a poison using the Poisoned perk does not count as a crime, even if the magical effect of the poison (e.g. "damage health") would otherwise be considered a criminal act if applied any other way. This makes it entirely possible to kill or weaken innocent enemies, right in front of everyone, without incurring a bounty.

Bugs

• After taking Rank 5 of the Light Fingers perk, instead of raising the stealing chance, this perk can instead drop it to zero when trying to steal large amounts of gold (around 1600-1700). For example, if you use a trainer to train Archery from 57 to 58, you can use Pickpocket to get your money back. When you have Rank 4 of the Light Fingers perk, the odds are about 62%, but if you take Rank 5, they suddenly drop to zero.
  • This bug is fixed by version 1.1 of the Official Skyrim Patch.
• Fortify Pickpocket bonuses from apparel and potions may reduce your pickpocketing chance rather than increasing it.* The odds of pickpocketing may change when you scroll through the items in an NPC's inventory; therefore, it is sometimes better to scroll through the inventory until the displayed chance for the item you want to steal satisfies you the most. ^?
• On rare occasions, you may be unable to pickpocket any NPC in an area with no clear cause, instead receiving the message you normally see when trying to pickpocket someone who has already caught you. Waiting 48 hours in a different location seems to fix this issue. ^?
• If you save before pickpocketing, and reload after you are caught, you may continue to hear people yelling at you for pickpocketing, even though they're perfectly friendly when you talk to them. This will continue until you leave the area. ^?
• Sometimes when you get caught pickpocketing, the target will attack you, but the guards won't attempt to arrest you. ^?