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Thieves

Spartacus

Visitor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I recall reading that the Devs are planning to give thieves a little more love soon. When they do, I hope they revamp the loot in dungeon treasure chests, maybe add some new ingredients or something giving the rogues more usefulness. I know people have posted a lot of great ideas in the past on ways of making the dungeon spawn chests useful ... maybe we can toss some ideas around again? :)
 

Tanivar

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
The chests should carry traps that are challenging to get past, with a new style of traps that require a multi-step process of removal, not just clicking a Remove Trap macro, but actually require a few judgement calls be made by the thief as he does a step of the process and sees the result of what he last did, and needs to consider that info to decide what to try next step. Instill a little tension and challenge to the process. This would at least make the training grind my thief is going through more interesting. Perhaps have a selection of tools to choose from while doing the trap removal process of tweaking, twisting, turning, bending, or whatever some part of the trap assembly so it won't go off and do your hide in.
 

Tanivar

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
The biggest thing they need to do to treasure chests of all types is eliminate the junk stuff and just have a few worthwhile items be in it along with gold, gems, and rare materials. These are suppose to be containers of stuff people consider valuable, not their junk boxes. A few might be, but not many. Well made chests and locks cost good gold and wouldn't be wasted by being filled with items of little value.

Add overhead text messages that are comments on the thief's performance such that others get an impression of how he's doing from his movements, expressions, and talk to himself sounds and comments.

Have chest traps do more than go bang or hiss poison at you. Maybe you beat the trap, pick the lock, open the lid, and the doorway out closes behind you, releasing a monster. Or the chest contains several small monsters that opening the lid lets them out. Results that set an atmosphere for the situation, good, bad, annoying, or whatever. Go through reaching a chest, survive defeating the trap, get the lock to open, open the lid and a jack in the box pops out making an awe..... sound and holds a tissue for you. :)
 

Emil Ispep

Sage
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I wish the devs would add quests for thieves.. Like say you go to the npc thief guildmaster, and he gives you a job to go and steal a random item from an NPC/or NPC house (say a silver candelabra in this case). Once you go and steal the item, you bring it to a fence or back to the NPC thief guildmaster for your reward.

The more and more jobs you do, the greater your reward becomes (similar to fishing quests).
 

Kyronix

UO Designer
VIP
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
I recall reading that the Devs are planning to give thieves a little more love soon. When they do, I hope they revamp the loot in dungeon treasure chests, maybe add some new ingredients or something giving the rogues more usefulness. I know people have posted a lot of great ideas in the past on ways of making the dungeon spawn chests useful ... maybe we can toss some ideas around again? :)
We try to keep thieves in mind with each new bit of content, where appropriate. Have you been down to Exodus Dungeon yet? There are some goodies to be had down there. Any chance to give thieves some love in future updates, we do. I'm interested to see, however, any ideas fellow rogues have for future additions.
 

Frarc

Stratics Legend
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
We try to keep thieves in mind with each new bit of content, where appropriate. Have you been down to Exodus Dungeon yet? There are some goodies to be had down there. Any chance to give thieves some love in future updates, we do. I'm interested to see, however, any ideas fellow rogues have for future additions.

Exodus is realy fun for thieves. I got things from there i never got before.

Snooping is very important skill to have . And although you don't snoop the zealots, it makes a big difference! :D
 

Stranger

Lord of the Dance
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I'm interested to see, however, any ideas fellow rogues have for future additions.
I want 100s of new items to randomly spawn in every single shop around the world.

Not inside of chests or crates. I want them to actually spawn on the walls, on the counters, on the display cases, in the bedroom areas, on the dressers, on the tables, and on the floor.

And I want them on crazy random timers that can not be predicted, camped, or scripted. Sometimes it will spawn early in the morning at 6:32am and sometimes it will spawn late at night at 9:47pm.

I want to be able to walk into a tailor shop to get my BOD's like I do every single day but realize today there is a new painting on the wall that I have never seen before. Holy cow it's a stealable! Let me go get my thief!

This might make me want to claim my BODs at tailor shops all around the world instead of just claiming them at Luna. Because you never know, a new item might be somewhere out there waiting for me to find!

Basically it would be a system sort of like Doom/Tokuno/Daily Rares but the timers would be more random and they would not spawn at server up.

I don't want you to be able to know that 'This Item' spawns every 7th day and 'This Other Item' spawns every 16th day. So if I steal the first item on the 1st of a month, its gonna be back on the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th. I want it to be completely random. One item might spawn on the 1st of the month, then the 4th of that month, then not again til the 22nd of that month. Or it might spawn on the 15th of next month and thats all. TOTALLY RANDOM!

And if you steal the item from a certain town it could be tagged with "Stolen from Vesper". So you can use the same items in different shops around the world but it adds a nice bit of charm to see that this one was stolen in Vesper and this other one was stolen in New Haven.

So you could have a certain number of generic items that spawn all over. And a few unique items that only spawn in a specific city. For example, Cove is located near an orc camp. So some sort of orc helmet could be exclusive to Cove. Where as Minoc is a mining community, so the special shovel can only be found there.

Plus it would be nice if you had a groups of items that were related to the type of shop. Like mage/magic themed items spawn in magic shops. And blacksmithing/weapon items spawn in blacksmiths.

So we're talking about 100s of new items that spawn a few times a month in random locations all around the world. Making this system last years if you try to collect them all. And keeping the items unique to display in your house for quite some time.

And if you add the ability to randomly insert new items to spawn into the groups of items this system would never get old. Just cycle some items in/out every couple of weeks/months.

The items don't even have to be that special. Something as simple as a pie dyed brown labeled "Britian's World Famous Chocolate Pie" would be fine.

But you could also throw in some more unique items. Maybe equipment, dyes, or statues that shoot off fireworks or flamestrikes like some EM items do.

Giving players that don't participate in the EM events (Due to time restrictions) to have a chance at randomly stumbling upon a similar item.

Or how about a rare seed for a new plant that only theives can steal? Drive all the gardeners crazy! Make it produce a powder that you can sprinkle on plants to change them to random shades of gray. Similar to the rubble plants but only useable on the standard growable plants. (Must have both the powder and the plant in your backpack of course. We don't want thieves running around ruining everyone's plants! LOL!)

Ok yep I think you get the idea. Bye.

Oh yeah and add a new dye pallete to the game that takes original colored items and splashes them with random dots of red blood. Then put those stealables in Buc's Den. So I can have a painting from shipwrecks splattered with blood.

And did I mention adding an item that causes your character to repeatedly bow and salute and do other in-game animations like casting spells or thrusting a fencing weapon and changing direction randomly automatically non-stop (until you turn it off) so it looks like your dancing? (Or drunk? Or having a seizure?)

*Leaves now*
 

Ducky Momo

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
I would love it is there was more new ideas for thieves that were not just stealing deco and artifacts off the floor....I would love for there to be more to the faction thief than sigils...
 

Gb8719

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
A BOD type system with the thief guildmaster. Just like a BOD, it would be a daily "job" that would send you out into the world to steal a specific item from a specific person or location. Rewards would be random awards that would appeal to thieves and other decorative items that might be geared towards an assassin/thief decoration style.

I like the idea of random daily spawns on items in places like Doom and world spawns, but it seems to encourage camping and botting. I'd like to see spawns of rare items to appear on a completely random basis in dungeon chests or in the pockets of random creatures.

Add more items that cannot be insured. Simple fix.

While we're on the subject of thieves, how about we improve the assassin system? The best way to do this is to improve the tracking skill. The area that you track in should expand greater for the higher the skill goes. This would make it so a potential assassin could enter a dungeon and start tracking to find a potential target that might be on the lower levels of the dungeon. And, since we're talking about thieves, this would benefit the thieves of the world by giving them a chase on a target to potentially steal from.
 

Winter

Lore Keeper
Stratics Veteran
A BOD type system with the thief guildmaster. Just like a BOD, it would be a daily "job" that would send you out into the world to steal a specific item from a specific person or location. Rewards would be random awards that would appeal to thieves and other decorative items that might be geared towards an assassin/thief decoration style....
NO MORE BODs PLEASE! BODS already take up too much room in my house!

But, I do like the idea for a contract stealing quest. Just make it a regular quest idea that expires in 23 hours, add in some danger, and it could be fleshed out into nice new system without a lot of developers time.
 

Gb8719

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
NO MORE BODs PLEASE! BODS already take up too much room in my house!

But, I do like the idea for a contract stealing quest. Just make it a regular quest idea that expires in 23 hours, add in some danger, and it could be fleshed out into nice new system without a lot of developers time.
Good point about BOD storage...
The daily quest that expires in 24 hours is a great idea as an alternative. I just liked the idea of being able to collect a bunch of thief quests and completing them all at once rather than once a day. Almost like treasure maps.
 

SlobberKnocker

Slightly Crazed
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I want 100s of new items to randomly spawn in every single shop around the world.

Not inside of chests or crates. I want them to actually spawn on the walls, on the counters, on the display cases, in the bedroom areas, on the dressers, on the tables, and on the floor.

And I want them on crazy random timers that can not be predicted, camped, or scripted. Sometimes it will spawn early in the morning at 6:32am and sometimes it will spawn late at night at 9:47pm.

I want to be able to walk into a tailor shop to get my BOD's like I do every single day but realize today there is a new painting on the wall that I have never seen before. Holy cow it's a stealable! Let me go get my thief!

This might make me want to claim my BODs at tailor shops all around the world instead of just claiming them at Luna. Because you never know, a new item might be somewhere out there waiting for me to find!

Basically it would be a system sort of like Doom/Tokuno/Daily Rares but the timers would be more random and they would not spawn at server up.

I don't want you to be able to know that 'This Item' spawns every 7th day and 'This Other Item' spawns every 16th day. So if I steal the first item on the 1st of a month, its gonna be back on the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th. I want it to be completely random. One item might spawn on the 1st of the month, then the 4th of that month, then not again til the 22nd of that month. Or it might spawn on the 15th of next month and thats all. TOTALLY RANDOM!

And if you steal the item from a certain town it could be tagged with "Stolen from Vesper". So you can use the same items in different shops around the world but it adds a nice bit of charm to see that this one was stolen in Vesper and this other one was stolen in New Haven.

So you could have a certain number of generic items that spawn all over. And a few unique items that only spawn in a specific city. For example, Cove is located near an orc camp. So some sort of orc helmet could be exclusive to Cove. Where as Minoc is a mining community, so the special shovel can only be found there.

Plus it would be nice if you had a groups of items that were related to the type of shop. Like mage/magic themed items spawn in magic shops. And blacksmithing/weapon items spawn in blacksmiths.

So we're talking about 100s of new items that spawn a few times a month in random locations all around the world. Making this system last years if you try to collect them all. And keeping the items unique to display in your house for quite some time.

And if you add the ability to randomly insert new items to spawn into the groups of items this system would never get old. Just cycle some items in/out every couple of weeks/months.

The items don't even have to be that special. Something as simple as a pie dyed brown labeled "Britian's World Famous Chocolate Pie" would be fine.

But you could also throw in some more unique items. Maybe equipment, dyes, or statues that shoot off fireworks or flamestrikes like some EM items do.

Giving players that don't participate in the EM events (Due to time restrictions) to have a chance at randomly stumbling upon a similar item.

Or how about a rare seed for a new plant that only theives can steal? Drive all the gardeners crazy! Make it produce a powder that you can sprinkle on plants to change them to random shades of gray. Similar to the rubble plants but only useable on the standard growable plants. (Must have both the powder and the plant in your backpack of course. We don't want thieves running around ruining everyone's plants! LOL!)

Ok yep I think you get the idea. Bye.

Oh yeah and add a new dye pallete to the game that takes original colored items and splashes them with random dots of red blood. Then put those stealables in Buc's Den. So I can have a painting from shipwrecks splattered with blood.

And did I mention adding an item that causes your character to repeatedly bow and salute and do other in-game animations like casting spells or thrusting a fencing weapon and changing direction randomly automatically non-stop (until you turn it off) so it looks like your dancing? (Or drunk? Or having a seizure?)

*Leaves now*
I find it very intriguing that of all the suggestions you made not one involved stealing from other players. also none of your ideas looked the least bit of putting you at risk of wearing a deathrobe. I mean, dude your a THEIF!!! This sort of means your the lowest of the low. You could have saved me a lot of reading by just saying. I want a lot of stuff and want no risk attaining such stuff. please put everything in the mailbox located on the front steps of my trammel castle.
 

Nexus

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I find it very intriguing that of all the suggestions you made not one involved stealing from other players. also none of your ideas looked the least bit of putting you at risk of wearing a deathrobe. I mean, dude your a THEIF!!! This sort of means your the lowest of the low. You could have saved me a lot of reading by just saying. I want a lot of stuff and want no risk attaining such stuff. please put everything in the mailbox located on the front steps of my trammel castle.
I'll agree with you in essence, but not in delivery. We have heard over the years that the Devs will be giving something to "Thieves" and they have to an extent by adding new Champ Spawns with the Stygian Abyss, but the majority of the additions have been directly related towards items on the ground that are capable of being stolen, and the ability to steal from monsters. Neither of these benefits the the PvP Thief. No other play style in UO has been trodden on as hard as that of the PvP Thief, and I get it... We're to be the scum of Britannia.

Honestly I don't have a problem with that role, as long as you remember Rule No. 9 from "The Code"
9. Thou shalt retain a sense of humor.
What I do have issue with is this.
  1. Changes made to skills that have been made integral to the life of the PvP Thief are made with no apparent concern for how they effect PvP Thieves, the only consideration is how they effect Melee and Mage Combat in PvP. This isn't a whine, I don't like the lack of concern for PvM bleed over of changes either. One aspect of the game should not determine the balancing for everything.
  2. Lack of a wide reaching solution to the humiliation PvP thieves were handed after AoS and the introduction of insurance. Bards have been given a major overhaul after they were nerfed to point of only being fit to serve as gong farmers (look it up it was a real job) for the 7th circle of Dante's Inferno after Publish 16 in 2002 (yes this was Pre-AoS).
I would be nice for some recompense from the Devs at least in a measure similar to that of Bards, and Tamers (they got Uber Pets!), seriously. Right now unless you are on a shard that spawns heavily a thief is left with few options, steal bandages and hope for a rare nugget of goodness to be overlooked when insuring (Players even got a menu to help prevent this added!), engage in factions where you are blending PvP with Non-PvP stealing (Sigils do not fight back) and quite possibly are built more like a Dexxer or Mage than making use of Thievery tab skills.

Its no wonder that being a PvP Thief is largely a dying art. It's probably as mentally challenging as any PvP out there, and at the same time, the reward is much lower for the risk involved. If I die in combat I'm always freely lootable (regardless of facet), at least PvPer's get the option of being Blue and having people get flagged if they loot them.

Oh and SlobberKnocker, the spoiler is just for you.... :banana:
You misspelled Thief.....
The Code
1. Thou shalt not steal from or loot fellow thieves.
2. Thou shalt not purposely reveal fellow thieves.
3. Thou shalt not identify disguised thieves.
4. Thou shalt not kill fellow thieves.
5. Thou shalt not follow fellow thieves around telling people that they are thieves.
6. Thou shalt offer aid and comfort to fellow thieves when possible.
7. Thou shalt not ask stupid questions that are thoroughly covered in the FAQ.
8. Thou shalt check the forum to see if thine question has already been answered.
9. Thou shalt retain a sense of humor.
10. Thou shalt not call thyself a thief if thou hast not stolen from thine fellow player.
11. Thou shalt remember that thine profession is spelled thief and not theif.
 
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popps

Always Present
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I find it very intriguing that of all the suggestions you made not one involved stealing from other players. also none of your ideas looked the least bit of putting you at risk of wearing a deathrobe. I mean, dude your a THEIF!!! This sort of means your the lowest of the low. You could have saved me a lot of reading by just saying. I want a lot of stuff and want no risk attaining such stuff. please put everything in the mailbox located on the front steps of my trammel castle.
Well, the thing is, at least as I see it, that a thief needs to at least "put away" 440 skill points (120 stealing, 100 snooping, 100 hiding, 120 stealthing) and not much is left to really defend oneself competitively against another character with 720+ points all focused on attack and defense skills....

So, to put it simply, as I see it, a thief just cannot fight against targets, only steal and run away....

If the thief was wanted to be fought against, well, then these 440 points should not count towards the CAP, IMHO...
 

Tanivar

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Well, the thing is, at least as I see it, that a thief needs to at least "put away" 440 skill points (120 stealing, 100 snooping, 100 hiding, 120 stealthing) and not much is left to really defend oneself competitively against another character with 720+ points all focused on attack and defense skills....
The non-pvp thief is even more screwed.

120 Stealing
100 Snooping
100 Detect Hidden
100 Remove Trap
100 Lockpicking
100 Stealth
100 Hiding

720 points with your only hope of survival if spotted is getting far enough away to hide.

My thief is about half those numbers and not at all currently fun to play.
 

Nexus

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Well, the thing is, at least as I see it, that a thief needs to at least "put away" 440 skill points (120 stealing, 100 snooping, 100 hiding, 120 stealthing) and not much is left to really defend oneself competitively against another character with 720+ points all focused on attack and defense skills....

So, to put it simply, as I see it, a thief just cannot fight against targets, only steal and run away....

If the thief was wanted to be fought against, well, then these 440 points should not count towards the CAP, IMHO...
Don't take me the wrong way, but that 440 idea is nonsense...



I'm a full 100 points below that mark in those skills at 340 real skill, the reasoning is so I can have some defensive skills, and a bit of offense for when I find the random individual in a mindless trance. At 831.5 modified skill points I'm not even at the cap yet, having 34.5 points left to distribute before I hit the 720 cap on my character, even a new player with a 700 skill cap could create this identical build as it currently stands.
Lets use my gear as a base point and see exactly how much would be necessary for you to match what I my End Goal is with minimum amounts of real skill.. Meaning 120 Steal/Stealth/Ninjitsu/Magery/Fencing 100 Hiding/Snooping 80 Poisoning

You'd need. Value of Mods I have are in ( )
  1. 59 stealth (+61 in Mods )
  2. 64 Stealing (+56 in Mods)
  3. 90 Snooping (+10 in Mods)
  4. 94 Magery (+26 in Mods)
  5. 94 Ninjitsu (+26 in Mods)
  6. 100 Fencing (+20 in Mods with Dread's Revenge)
  7. 100 Hiding
  8. 80 Poisoning
That's 678 Real Skill 22 points for a 700 cap player 42 points for a Max Cap player to distribute as they see fit.

I'm not losing out on much either, I have some HPR, MR, and LRC (though I carry a small quantity of Regs instead but can recall in an emergency) and 59/64/70/70/75 resists, racial night-sight, racial difficulty to track, racial passive detect.

Poisoning combined with the fencing lets me deal with unattended players, I also have a dagger that lets me do Shadow Strike thanks to Ninjitsu, which through animal form provides me with mounted speed assisting with moving myself out of danager... it's the combination and use that provides a defensive ability while not nearly as good as, but aqueduct for making an escape.

Oh and offhand I paid 2 mil for my suit, everything except the Shadow Dancer Leggings I acquired myself, and it's all blessed!
 

SlobberKnocker

Slightly Crazed
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
great posts nexus. I know I misspelled thief but was too lazy to change it.

I also love how u built your character. almost makes me want to build one.
 

Tanivar

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
You'd need. Value of Mods I have are in ( )
  1. 59 stealth (+61 in Mods )
  2. 64 Stealing (+56 in Mods)
  3. 90 Snooping (+10 in Mods)
  4. 94 Magery (+26 in Mods)
  5. 94 Ninjitsu (+26 in Mods)
  6. 100 Fencing (+20 in Mods with Dread's Revenge)
  7. 100 Hiding
  8. 80 Poisoning
That's 678 Real Skill 22 points for a 700 cap player 42 points for a Max Cap player to distribute as they see fit.
I was under the impression Detect Hidden and Remove Trap were required in some situations, that telekinesis doesn't always work. Am I wrong on that?
 

Nexus

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I was under the impression Detect Hidden and Remove Trap were required in some situations, that telekinesis doesn't always work. Am I wrong on that?
You don't have to have it for PvP Thieves, and they were who I was referring to in reply to Popps since he mentioned how you need to dedicate 440 skill points and was saying the remainder do not leave enough for a good Defense or any Offense to combat players with builds strictly for PvP.
 

Raptor85

Certifiable
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I was under the impression Detect Hidden and Remove Trap were required in some situations, that telekinesis doesn't always work. Am I wrong on that?
tk doesn't disarm traps on siege and mugen, on all other shards it does, doesnt matter though, just stand at max distance with a fire resist suit and toss the lid open for the same result

Disappointed tho, i return for a day or two to post up my ton of old SP pictures in the siege forums and see a post in uhall about FINALLY improving thieving and turns out it's asking for more dungeon/town treasure hunting goodies instead :/ That said...the only required skill points on a real thief are
100 or so stealing (80 is actually more than enough for most uses, i had 120 because i did disarm stealing and often had to grab 10 stone items.)
100 snooping (though for disarm stealing this is actually not required, it's generally taken anyways so you're not a PURE disarm thief which would be exceptionally hard post aos)
100 hiding
65 or higher stealth

My thief ran with magery and necro and was more than capable of defending himself, not " super strong" in pvp but good enogh to defend, get away, and occasionally get a sneaky kill on a pursuer, and i kept swords of prosp on me as my personal bless so i had good melee defense as well. (necessary for escaping stealing at a spawn ALIVE)

They havent really been around for a long time but there used to be something of a "thug" type thief as well that would SPECIALIZE in getting a kill without a count, you'd rock 50 or so stealing and optionally snooping (which i preferred because you could steal something vital for the fight...like bandages) so you'd steal something and be noticed to get them to attack you first, then you could freely kill without a count.

*disappears back into the aether*
 

Nexus

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great posts nexus. I know I misspelled thief but was too lazy to change it.

I also love how u built your character. almost makes me want to build one.

I did forget to mention my secret weapon.

Sandals of Misdirection

Have to do something to appear honest.... :grin:
 
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Petra Fyde

Peerless Chatterbox
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
We try to keep thieves in mind with each new bit of content, where appropriate. Have you been down to Exodus Dungeon yet? There are some goodies to be had down there. Any chance to give thieves some love in future updates, we do. I'm interested to see, however, any ideas fellow rogues have for future additions.
I've had lots of fun in Exodus, even when I didn't want any keys
I've also been doing more stealing from monsters lately, I got a nice haul from Shame (Fel of course) only a couple of days ago.
I'll never be a pvp thief, I don't have the temperment for it, but I do like stealing from npc's more than the dojo etc, and I do like stealing items that have a use rather than just deco.
 

cazador

Grand Inquisitor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Well, the thing is, at least as I see it, that a thief needs to at least "put away" 440 skill points (120 stealing, 100 snooping, 100 hiding, 120 stealthing) and not much is left to really defend oneself competitively against another character with 720+ points all focused on attack and defense skills....

So, to put it simply, as I see it, a thief just cannot fight against targets, only steal and run away....

If the thief was wanted to be fought against, well, then these 440 points should not count towards the CAP, IMHO...
Then your not playing it right :) ..a pvp thief is very viable and can be quite potent against dexxers or mages depending on how you set it up..mind you with artifacts and imbuing you only need 90 snooping/60-80 stealth/100 hiding/90 stealing max..items bump to caps with little worry..my thief has like 350 skill points in thieving skills..where my pure Mage has 580 w/scribe
 

SlobberKnocker

Slightly Crazed
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Then your not playing it right :) ..a pvp thief is very viable and can be quite potent against dexxers or mages depending on how you set it up..mind you with artifacts and imbuing you only need 90 snooping/60-80 stealth/100 hiding/90 stealing max..items bump to caps with little worry..my thief has like 350 skill points in thieving skills..where my pure Mage has 580 w/scribe
true dat. he knows this from 1st hand experience having to put up with slimer stealing his scrolls on a consistent basis down in despise.
 

Stranger

Lord of the Dance
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I find it very intriguing that of all the suggestions you made not one involved stealing from other players.
What players? *smiles*

There are no players in Felucca. (And even if there were, all their stuff is insured.) Except for maybe at the champion spawns. Which is pointless cause you can just kill them and steal all their stuff and finish off the boss. Why bother stealing a few orange petals or potions when you can sit back and wait and get all the powerscrolls? Snooping/Stealing in this case would be a waste of skill points. You'd be lucky if you manage to steal 1 powerscroll and get away. Why bother when you can just chase them on their way out, kill them, and take all of them?

Maybe it would be worth it if stealing a powerscroll tagged it as "Stolen" and you could return it to the NPC thief guildmaster for reward points. The rewards could be a powerscroll, alacrity scroll, or SoT of your choice. Along with some special items or deco items. Or maybe just some kind of exchange. You slip him the powerscroll under the table and he hands off some special item. But how would you stop this system from being exploited? You couldn't. They could put a 5 minute timer on freshly dropped powerscrolls. But everyone would just use their other account or a friend or a guild mate to steal from them as soon as the boss drops. Lame :(

also none of your ideas looked the least bit of putting you at risk of wearing a deathrobe.
What's so special about the risk of getting a deathrobe? Dying is pointless. It's either a 2 minute wait to get NPC resurrected, a 5 minute walk out of a dungeon (Or a help stuck), or having another character follow me around and res me (Or an alternate account). All a waste of time that really doesn't have any effect on me. The only way I would care about getting a deathrobe or think it was worth the risk/reward is if I was whacked it made my character unusable for the next 24 hours.

I mean, dude your a THEIF!!! This sort of means your the lowest of the low.
Sorry if you didn't like my ideas. I guess I am not a "real" thief. Hurting other players is not really my thing.

How does that make me the lowest of the low? I thought being the lowest of the low was stealing from other players. Inconveniencing them and ruining their play time. Plus wait a second, being the lowest of the low is something a thief strives to be. So were you just complimenting me? I am the lowest of the low? Awesome! Thanks!

You could have saved me a lot of reading by just saying. I want a lot of stuff and want no risk attaining such stuff. please put everything in the mailbox located on the front steps of my trammel castle.
I don't own a castle :)

And heres an idea to add risk/reward. You have to steal the items from the shops. And if you get caught instead of getting guard whacked, the guards teleport in, freeze you, and then teleport you to an in-game jail for 24 hours. Where you can talk to fellow thieves. Or just log off and wait out your sentence. HOW IS THAT FOR RISK / REWARD? Are you going to be ok with the chance of not using your thief anymore for the next 24 hours? Ok. Now get out of jail, try it again, and this time your sentenced for 48 hours. PUNK! And do you know what happens the third time your caught? Your character gets executed and you die. Character deleted. All skill points gone. (LOL I'm kidding!)

My idea was more about adventuring around towns. Exploring the shops and trying to find cool items. Not bank sitting in Luna all day.
Add my idea on top of the other ideas suggested here and it could be fun. You go to a NPC thief, get a quest, go steal from NPC Brad the Carpenter in Skara Brae. So you go to Skara Brae, walk into the carpenter store, see Brad, steal the coin purse from him, then see an item on the wall, a rare painting. So you steal it, get caught, get whisked to jail for 24 hours. And fail the NPC thiefs quest because the 24 hour timer ran out. Should of turned it in before trying to steal the painting you greedy little thief.

Or what if some of the NPC quests (not all of them) require certain items from certain towns? Like it HAS to be a painting from Magincia. Which only spawns 3 times per month. Plus the risk of getting thrown in jail? And getting thrown out of the thieves guild when your caught? So you have to fight your way back in before you can start stealing again?

Bleh whatever. I don't really care :)
Peace, love, hugs, and tickles :)
 

Lord Nabin

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Some of this Old Sages best friends are Thieves.

They come in handy from time to time. :)

Not to mention they have some very good story tellers lol
 

Nexus

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What players? *smiles*

There are no players in Felucca. (And even if there were, all their stuff is insured.) Except for maybe at the champion spawns.
This is exactly his point a point that is shared by multiple people in the PvP Thief Community. With all the "We're thinking of Thieves" talk that has been spread around from time to time, all of the results have been related towards PvE Stealing. Where is our nugget of love?


What's so special about the risk of getting a deathrobe?
PvP thieves are the lowest of the low, we are the only players who are freely lootable on each and every facet. Read that again, every facet, not just Felucca. Dying is more of a risk to us than any other character type in the game, no one ever flags looting us, we're also the only individuals who can flag preforming a negative act on a Red. So yea the getting a death robe for us is a sign of failure.

Sorry if you didn't like my ideas. I guess I am not a "real" thief. Hurting other players is not really my thing.
How does that make me the lowest of the low? I thought being the lowest of the low was stealing from other players. Inconveniencing them and ruining their play time. Plus wait a second, being the lowest of the low is something a thief strives to be. So were you just complimenting me? I am the lowest of the low? Awesome! Thanks!
Not one of us that claims to be a PvP thief thinks one way or the other about your ideas. They don't fit our play style, what we are wanting is a bone tossed our way once in a while and to remind the Dev's when they say "We think about Thieves" that there is more to the stealing skill than NPC, crates, barrels and random items on the ground.

I don't own a castle :)
That's ok, I don't either.. but my Keep, Luna House, and Fel Large Classic Smithy are good enough for me. Interestingly enough, I don't make any money off the Luna House, I lease out Vendors for free to people I know, and other than that I rarely visit it.

And heres an idea to add risk/reward. You have to steal the items from the shops. And if you get caught instead of getting guard whacked, the guards teleport in, freeze you, and then teleport you to an in-game jail for 24 hours. Where you can talk to fellow thieves. Or just log off and wait out your sentence. HOW IS THAT FOR RISK / REWARD? Are you going to be ok with the chance of not using your thief anymore for the next 24 hours? Ok. Now get out of jail, try it again, and this time your sentenced for 48 hours. PUNK! And do you know what happens the third time your caught? Your character gets executed and you die. Character deleted. All skill points gone. (LOL I'm kidding!)

My idea was more about adventuring around towns. Exploring the shops and trying to find cool items. Not bank sitting in Luna all day.
Add my idea on top of the other ideas suggested here and it could be fun. You go to a NPC thief, get a quest, go steal from NPC Brad the Carpenter in Skara Brae. So you go to Skara Brae, walk into the carpenter store, see Brad, steal the coin purse from him, then see an item on the wall, a rare painting. So you steal it, get caught, get whisked to jail for 24 hours. And fail the NPC thiefs quest because the 24 hour timer ran out. Should of turned it in before trying to steal the painting you greedy little thief.

Or what if some of the NPC quests (not all of them) require certain items from certain towns? Like it HAS to be a painting from Magincia. Which only spawns 3 times per month. Plus the risk of getting thrown in jail? And getting thrown out of the thieves guild when your caught? So you have to fight your way back in before you can start stealing again?
Couple of issues with these suggestions...
  1. They are all PvE Oriented. The poster you are responding too is lobbying for PvP oriented stealing.
  2. They are close but not quite on the mark.
What would be better, for PvP Thieves, is a bounty system. Thieves can pick up a quest to Target specific Faction members to prove themselves to the thieves guild, any object stolen works. Turn in rewards could be based on Rank of the Faction player you stole from. Or it could be "Steal a Scroll from XXX Spawn" where once you accomplish this you are allowed to keep the scroll and get a gold/fame/Negative Karma reward with a small chance at a SoT or something. Only one quest can be taken at a time, so it might take weeks or more to make that steal.. at least this would make Bandages, Pots, and Orange Petals worth stealing.
 
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Stranger

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Ok what about this idea...
How about we make thieves able to operate in Trammel?
Stay with me for a second :)

It isn't really risk/reward.
And it isn't really PVP based.
It's more of a "thrill of the hunt" type system.

How about a system where a thief doesn't actually steal anything from a player?
But can still pretend like they did?
For example, go to an NPC thief and get a quest to steal from "Player X". (It pulls a random name from a list of every player that has logged on in the last 24 hours)
Now you have to go track that person down. Walk up to them. And "steal" from them. But you don't actually take anything. It just creates a fake token notifying you of your success.
At this point, you flag gray in Trammel if your caught. And you can be killed by the person your stealing from if they don't like that they were targeted.
If they successfully kill you, they get the token, and can turn it into a guard post for a reward.
But if the thief gets away, they get to turn in the token for the reward.
This would be an extremely rare occurrence because pulling from a list of random players might pull a mule or someone you can never find.
So once you do get a name of someone you know...it will be fun trying to lure them out so you can "steal" from them.

This way no honest player gets hurt. No items are lost. And their game play is not ruined. If they don't want to participate they don't have to. Because the thief is not allowed to damage them or kill them if they choose to fight back. All the thief can do is run away.

So if someone hates the system, notices the thief stole from them, and has the opportunity to chase the thief down and kill them. They can just stand there and do nothing if they don't care about the system. It won't effect them in the least. Nobody else has to know what just happened.

Maybe there can also be an option to drop out of the list of names if you want to. But it can't be a thing to sign up for because then the list of targets would be too small and it would be too exploitable. But I guess a sign up thing would make more sense. Then both parties would know whats going on. But I think it would get boring stealing from the same 3 people over and over again?

And maybe if you make the steal/kill in Felucca the tokens double?

I hope I explained that good enough.
 

Stranger

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Or what about this...every time a champion spawn is activated it keeps track of who is killing the monsters. If a thief walks up and clicks the skull it will give them the name of one of the people working the spawn. Go up and "tag" them (steal from them but don't really steal from them) and try to get away. If you are successful you have to leave the dungeon, turn it in, and go back to the spawn. But you can not target the same person again until that spawn is completed. Again awarding tokens to the thief if they get away and tokens to the spawner if they stop to kill the thief.
 

Winter

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What would be better, for PvP Thieves, is a bounty system. Thieves can pick up a quest to Target specific Faction members to prove themselves to the thieves guild, any object stolen works. Turn in rewards could be based on Rank of the Faction player you stole from. Or it could be "Steal a Scroll from XXX Spawn" where once you accomplish this you are allowed to keep the scroll and get a gold/fame/Negative Karma reward with a small chance at a SoT or something. Only one quest can be taken at a time, so it might take weeks or more to make that steal.. at least this would make Bandages, Pots, and Orange Petals worth stealing.
What you described really is a quest system rather than a bounty system.

But I think that a bounty system would be a great idea, if you can figure out how to keep people from exploiting it - you know, running up your own bounty, and then killing yourself off for the reward. Lets say that every time your thief stole something - anything, anywhere - you got a bounty of 10 gold added, and totals would show on a bounty board. The board would also show when each thief is logged in and a general location for that thief. Or maybe town guards would start to notice your thief after a big bounty was posted on your head and guards attack. Once your thief is killed and bounty collected, it resets and starts all over. That would add a bit of excitement and danger.

But, how would you keep people from exploiting this? Maybe just have bounties collected by NPCs, not players?
 

Marquis de Sade 209

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I posted the following on UO Crime some time ago..tell me what you think.

I have really enjoyed stealing refinements from npc shops lately, first time i have dusted off my thief (at least on prodo) in a long time. I was thinking it would be fun if UO could expound on the stealing skill a bit more. Maybe a real thieves guild that gives quests such as stealing certain possessions from NPC's. They could make better use of the lockpicking skills as well to open doors. It would give alot more people incentive to roll thief especially on low population prodo shards. They could run it somewhat like the fishmonger quests, the bigger and better things you steal, the better the rewards. Just a suggestion, not sure how this will be received, I just know that the fun in stealing refinements will most likely die out rather quickly.
 

cazador

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true dat. he knows this from 1st hand experience having to put up with slimer stealing his scrolls on a consistent basis down in despise.
Trololo Stevie..I said pvp thief lol, and we both know slimer can't pvp on any character nm his thief..notice I said "viable to pvp" not run random steal,smoke bomb, stealth away

And for the record I don't even have a spawner, so with that being said nothing was stolen from me...ever lol

Troll harder brother
 
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