Stealing

Attempting to steal an item will reveal you if you are Hidden or Invisible. It is typically considered wise to Stealth over to your target beforehand, then (if your mark is another character), use the Snooping skill to better pinpoint the item you're after. You must have both hands free to steal and will need to wait ten seconds before you can use another skill.

To steal from other players, one must join the Thieves Guild and make all attempts within the Felucca facet.

You may not take items that weigh more then your skill level divided by 10, nor items that are Blessed or Insured. Attempting to steal directly from another player (as opposed to Snooping them first and selecting a specific item) will result in a random item being chosen, which may weigh too much or be Blessed/Insured (resulting in automatic failure).

Attempting to steal from another player, whether the item is taken or not, may make you a Criminal. The chances of this decreases as your skill rises, but the more characters (including NPCs) are nearby, the more likely you'll be "caught in the act". Assuming you are not seen, you will retain your Blue status.

Certain special artifacts and items can only be obtained by stealing in certain areas (such as the Doom Stealables) or by stealing from Monsters.

Training

0 - 30: Train at NPC Thief

You will need a pack animal (Pack Horse, Pack Llama, or Giant Beetle) and a stack of items. Make sure you tell the pack animal to guard you if you train inside the guard zone! Any items will do such as Empty Bottles, Wood, Leather, or Gold. Just as long as the stack weighs 12 stones or more. Stealing is mainly trained on the Felucca facet. However, stealing skill points can be gained in Trammel. The blacksmith shop in Buccaneer's Den is one such Trammel location.

To train, place the specified weight of items on the pack animal and attempt to steal them. No matter whether you fail, succeed, or only steal part of the pile, take the remaining items and restack them. Pull out a new stack of the appropriate weight and put it on the pack animal. Steal again.

Skill Interval	30 - 40	40 - 50	50 - 60	60 - 70	70 - 80	80 - 90	90 - 100	100 - 110	110 - 120
Weight to aim	3 stones	4 stones	5 stones	6 stones	7 stones	8 stones	9 stones	10 stones	11 stones

Joining the Thieves Guild

In order to steal from other players, a character must join the Thieves Guild. To do this, one must find a Thief Guild Master, which are found in random locations in most towns. Once located, a character can join the guild by saying: "(NPC Name) join". If the character is at least 48 in-game hours old and has at least 60 Stealing skill, 500 gold pieces will be requested as payment to join. The payment must then be dragged onto them to complete the joining process. If the character has not met the skill and age requirements, they will be refused membership in the Thieves Guild until they meet the requirements. Being a member of the Thieves Guild also allows a player to buy and use a disguise kit.

Note: While attacking an "Innocent" (blue) member of the Thieves Guild is considered a criminal act, players in the Thieves Guild cannot give Murder Counts and are freely lootable if killed.

Calculations

The calculations for the the success chances when stealing from another are rather complex. It is discussed in depth in Five on Friday - March 16, 2007:

How is the success chance for stealing in town, in a Felucca-based ruleset, figured out?

Here is the formula for stealing when stealing from another player; first we need to determine a couple of things:

$skillModifier=100+Stealing\;Skill\;Value$

Example: GM Stealing, skillModifier = 100 + 1000 = 1100)

$targetingFactor = \left\{ \begin{array}{l l} 1 & \quad \text{for a random steal}\\ 3 & \quad \text{for a planned theft}\\ \end{array} \right.$

$itemWeight=The\;weight\;of\;the\;item$

Example: itemWeight = 7 stones, the maximum weight you can steal is 15 stones.

Then we calculate the difficulty modifier:

$Difficulty = \frac{itemWeight * targetingFactor * 2000}{skillModifier}$

Example: if thief has GM stealing, and the stolen object was a planned theft and weighed 7 stones, the difficulty would be:

$Difficulty = \frac{7 * 3 * 2000}{1100} = 38 \quad \text{(all fractions are rounded down)}$

Still following? It gets more interesting when witnesses are in the area.

If there are witnesses in the area, the game performs a complicated set of calculations to determine if any of them noticed the crime. The difficulty calculation above factors into it, as well as the monetary value of the stolen item - and each NPC or player in the theft area runs the check, so the more people around, the more likely you are to be noticed. The calculation returns a yes or no value - either there are witnesses or there aren't.

If there are no witnesses, the thief successfully steals the item.

However, if there are witnesses, you're not guaranteed to fail - you just need to pass another difficulty check:

$Difficulty = itemWeight * targetingFactor * 30 + 100 \,$

Sticking to our above example of a stolen item weighing 7 stones and a planned theft, here is the calculation:

$Difficulty= 7 * 3 * 30 + 100 = 730 \,$

The difficulty is then plugged in to the following calculation:

$Percent\;Chance\;of\;Success = \frac{500 + 2 * (Thief\;skill - Difficulty)}{10}$

Example: (500 + 2 * (1000 - 730)) / 10 = 104%, or a guaranteed success.

Now, stealing rare artifacts in dungeons uses a different set of difficulty calculations (a much, much simpler one, that doesn't take witnesses into account at all - it's just a linear difficulty progression.) Stealing anything else, though, whether from a player, NPC, pack animal, lockbox, etc, uses the above code.

Pardon me a moment while I help Leurocian into his straitjacket - I'm afraid examining this code has finally driven the poor man over the edge. ;)

UOGuide Note: Check here for tables prepared by Spock the thief on UOThief for additional tables on Difficulty check and Percent Chance of Success

Stealing

Contents

Training

Joining the Thieves Guild

Calculations

See also