Skyrim talk:Pickpocket/Archive 1

This is an archive of past Skyrim talk:Pickpocket discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page, except for maintenance such as updating links.

Perks

Just in case anybody wants to make this page, here are all the pickpocket perks:

Light Fingers (0/5)Pickpocketing bonus of 20% – Item weight and value reduce pickpocketing odds…

Night Thief Pickpocketing sleeping people almost always works…

Poisoned Place poisons in other people’s pockets silently to harm or kill…

Cutpurse Pickpocketing gold is 50% easier…

Extra Pockets Carrying capacity is increased by 100…

Keymaster Pickpocketing keys always works…

Misdirections You can pickpocket equipped weapons…

Perfect Touch You can pickpocket equipped items…

I'd do it myself but I would probably mess the whole thing up! RIM 13:42, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Done... Don't be worried about making mistakes, we'll clean them up for you. Besides, we're just starting work in Skyrim. It'll be very, very, hard to make mistakes in this namespace right now. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 14:10, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Alright I might try to make the Archery or Destruction page, I just didn't want to give everybody even more work to do. RIM 08:56, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Already beat you to Archery, but destruction is still available. Trust me, no one's complaining about people making mistakes. I've surely made plenty so far on this project alone. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 09:00, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Max Pickpocket Percent Chance

Can't seem to see more than 90% chance to pickpocket. These are my current statuses and perks

• Pickpocket Skill at 77
• Ring of Minor Def Hands (+15%)
• Perk: Light Fingers 3/5 (+60%)
• Perk: Night Thief (+25% if they're asleep)
• Perk: Cutpurse (+50% if pickpocketing gold)

An easy test is for me to remove all my gear (including the +15% ring) and look at someone's inventory via the pickpocket menu. I observe the highest percent is 90%.

When I reequip the ring that grants +15% pickpocket, I observe the item with 90% chance to pickpocket stays the same. No other items are any higher than 90%.

Additionally, I also observe the highest percent chance to pickpocket being 90% on a sleeping person.— Unsigned comment by 66.25.49.136 (talk) on 12 November 2011

Yes, from the game data it looks like there's a cap at 90%. Specifically, one of the game settings is fPickpocketMaxChance=90. --Nephele^Talk 03:05, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Evidence for "Item Type" Note?

"Pickpocketing chances vary between item types. For example, stealing arrows from an open quiver is much easier than stealing a heavy weapon."

I think that's entirely explainable by weight (arrows are zero weight) -- what evidence is there that "item type" matters?

I would say there is no evidence, and I would vote to see any "RP" reasoning, such as quivers being open-face, removed from the article. The factors that matter are item weight and value. High weight and/or value: hard to pickpocket. Obviously, a heavy weapon has more weight and value than any arrow. I also take issue with the statement that jewelry is categorically easy to pickpocket. A basic silver ring has low weight and low value, but an expensive amulet or ring (an item planted for Delvin's Fishing jobs) with a high value (but low weight) is very difficult to pickpocket. PacifistFist 13:34, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Stolen Flag

I can't be the only person to think about repeatedly pickpocketing and reverse pickpocketing a really expensive item to level this skill. I may have screwed up my experiment, but I couldn't seem to get any skill advance doing this (to a sleeping person). This might be because the item I gave him was stolen, or there might be a hidden flag on items which were reverse-pickpocketed. Another reason to suspect a flag; Wouldn't the radiant AI use a poison on a weapon? Perhaps there's a flag to tell it to drink the poison if it had been reverse pick-pocketed. Has anyone tested this further?

Yep, I just tried it a few times and I can confirm it -- stealing something, giving it back then stealing it again does not increase your skill. I stole a ruby ring and gained 2 levels at once, then I placed it back, and stole it 6 times in a row -- the progress bar didn't moved at all. --

189.33.183.203 16:50, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I've read about this before, and personally I don't see any reason to try and find an "easy" way to increase the Pickpocket Skill. Just through normal play (for me normal means saving right before a pickpocket attempt, and reloading if I fail), I was easily able to rapidly rise through the ranks. And I never went above the second rank of Light Fingers. I would simply sneak through every town I got to and pickpocket anything of value. As my skill increased I took some key perks, but didn't go overboard. My current/ending perks were: Light Fingers (Rank 2), Night Thief, Cutpurse, Extra Pockets (the whole reason I focused on picking pockets in the first place), and Misdirection. The thieving skills in general are by far the easiest to rank up, I don't see any need to make it even easier. ~Naberios 14 February 2012

Reverse pickpocketing items does not seem to increase skill at all... However, reverse pickpocketing a decent amount of gold seems to work well. It's taken some reloads when caught, but my 68 gold coins have helped me raise my pickpocket level to 75 so far and I haven't even escaped from Helgen Keep yet. Been placing and removing my gold on the Stormcloak soldier that tags along for a spell after the torture room in the tutorial. Anyway, use gold. So money! Edit: signature (Daedremor 07:16, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Gold works really well. I got to 100 pickpocket using the above method on Dark Brotherhood initiation quest victims. That place is great. At level 90+, ~700 gold guarantee one level up per pick. And if I forget to save and get caught, I get no bounty and I can just go out of shack, fast travel to nearest place, come back and keep on leveling. (ZekunD 10:48, 19 December 2011 (UTC))

Thanks for the advice! Reversepickpocketing gold is probably the easiest and quickest way to farm-level Pickpocket. You just throw ~300 gold onto someone and take it back. You get XP every time for taking it back, and since it weighs nothing, your chances are maximal for the xp gained. It's not as good as training an under 50 skill and stealing the money back, but it's infinitely repeatable. 208.206.3.254 17:23, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Keymaster

Is there some redeeming factor for this perk, or is it just completely worthless? From what I've seen, at 60+ pickpocket skill (the amount required for this perk), pickpocketing keys seems to have a 90% chance of succeeding pretty much always, even without it. Weroj 05:05, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I can only give you my opinion, which is that I agree completely on this perk's pointless existence. I do not use this perk but for somebody who chooses some hardcore roleplaying thief or that sort may be worthwhile. Another idea: maybe if you decide to only carry around a few lockpicks to make things harder for yourself... Then it can be useful but even then only on rare occasions.

There are a few pointless perks (which is good cause there aren't enough perk points as it is for all the ones that are worthwhile), and this is certainly one of those. At least some of the other borderline perks have some sort of "fun" value to them. Like being able to strip a guard naked. But this one? Complete waste of a perk point. ~Naberios 14 February 2012

Idea

I read here that you can scroll through the items to get a better chance to pickpocket something. So if you scroll to an easy-to-get item, you get those odds instead? So what if there's nothing easy to pickpocket in their inventory... Would it then work to reverse-pickpocket an easy item, pickpocket the stuff you want with those odds, and then pickpocket your item back? Or am I missing a point here ~ Dwarfmp 15:36, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Closing the inventory you're stealing from and then reopening it seem to reset the chance of pickpocketting, while pickpocketting multiple items in a row would increase your chance to get caught. I don't know about scrolling through items though--193.252.26.70 09:31, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Sneak skill plus pickpocket skill

Is pickpocketing easier with a high sneak skill? Or are the 2 skills unrelated? I am interested in investing some points in the pickpocketing tree, but not if it is only viable to perform the skill with points in the sneak tree as well.208.84.58.199 19:28, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

No, sneak only affect how well you blend into the shadows. --205.155.154.172 19:30, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

You can't pickpocket during combat, so if you want to pickpocket a bandit's weapons or armor off of him before fighting him, you have to use sneak to get close enough to them undetected. But, if you're just pickpocketing from people in town, sneaking doesn't seem to matter. 208.206.3.254 21:02, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

actually, from my experience, if you are undetected by your target while you try to pickpocket you get much better odds then if you he sees you.

Are you telling me you can actually succeed pickpocketing someone who sees you? ~ Dwarfmp 02:11, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes. You just get a penalty and cannot use the Misdirection or Perfect Touch perks. 208.206.3.254 16:18, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Misdirection and Perfect Touch: Worth It?

I decided to try these out last night, and I have to say, I'm disappointed! They don't seem to work at all like I was expecting. For example, I would expect to be able to pickpocket a Guard's sword and armor, but I was only able to take what was normally available- no sword or armor in his inventory. Is this a bug? Or are these skills only useful in very specific circumstances? Thank you. 209.66.120.3 17:18, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

It does not seem very reliable. I think it may have to do with your sneaking as well. Perhaps you need to pickpocket from an angle where they don't notice you. I've had much success pickpocketing from behind. It's quite fun to pickpocket someone until they're naked.--216.15.123.224 07:18, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks- I tried again while hidden, and I was able to literally rob the guard naked(ish). It's nice to see the guards aren't all identical under their helmets. I'm still not sure this is worth the perk points, but it is quite fun! 209.66.120.3 19:58, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

found it a bit usefull but not enough times to actually invest properly in pickpocket for it. it is possible to rob enemies prior to the combat and make the combat much easier. but the same enemies whom are target for these perks are exactly the enemies a sneaky character has no problem with. unless you can pickpocket bear claws i would rather just sneak attack those bandit leaders

Yeah, I would hardly call them the most useful perks, but Perfect Touch was worth it to me if for no other reason than being able to steal someone's visible clothing. It may have cost me a couple of perks to rob the Thalmor in Markarth Keep of all their clothes, but dammit, the laughs were WELL worth it :-) It's also a unique effect that no item or spell can reproduce, so I don't regret getting it one bit. 209.66.120.3 21:28, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

I've been trying to find out whether to get them or not too. From looking around, it seems that it is impossible to steal heavy armor (too much weight and value for more than 0%) or unique equipment (not even shown) with them. Is this true? And are there still plenty of applications (including just for laughs) if it is? --Liudeius 23:07, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Not true re: heavy armor- you can steal any armor that shows up, though it may be impossible/challenging without a high enough Pickpocket skill. And yes, it's true that certain people's items still don't show up in the list- for example, I was unable to steal the Executioner's Garb off of Ahtar. Jarls and Court Wizards also have clothing that cannot be taken. I'm not certain why this is, but it's definitely the exception, not the rule. The laugh applications are almost unlimited, but the situations where it will actually net you an advantage are pretty rare. You could theoretically pickpocket all the guards in a given city and then wipe them all out with ease, but I can't think of many reasons one would want to do that. I kept it just to humiliate people who annoy me :-) 209.66.120.3 18:55, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm considering starting a character based solely on Pickpocket, followed by Sneak and Lockpick. Are there any characters in the game sleeping while wearing glass armor and carrying Daedric daggers? Misdirection might be a very useful perk at low levels. The guaranteed 10% failure rate might be annoying.

Misdirection, Poisoner and Perfect Touch allow you to play a thief character that never uses a weapon or casts a spell. There's no reason that every 100skill perk has to appeal to every player, but I agree that most people wont spend points on it.

Has anyone started reverse engineering the formulas? NFR 18:59, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I figure you can't pickpocket certain apparel because they're not playable ~ Dwarfmp 02:15, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

There are also a few items that show up in characters' inventory but always have 0% chance to succeed so you can't pick it... This seems to be the case with followers' default armour, haven't noticed with anything else yet. Weroj 12:37, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Heavy armor just weighs too much to pickpocket, I find. Even with 100 pickpocket, level 5 light fingers, +192% pickpocketing equipment, and a +146% pickpocketing enchantment, I can't steal Steel Armor from a follower. This means that I can never outfit the housecarls in light armor. Annoying.

The problem is Light Fingers and that +Pickpocketing equipment/enchantments. If you are planning to steal heavy armor, you would have a better chance to steal if you took off ALL the +Pickpocketing equipment/enchantments and only put one point into Light Fingers. Light Fingers is a hindrance to you once you get 100 skill in Pickpocket. ~ansonmaddox 22:38, 20 December 2011

You can outfit a housecarl in light armor by improving the light armor until it has a higher armor value than the default armor already equipped. You are the only character in the game, AFAIK, that can improve armor, so you only have to make it higher than the base values of what they're wearing. It's not easy, but it's possible.--72.47.10.157 23:25, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Also, Misdirection/Perfect Touch can be quite useful for sneaky characters in human dungeons (you can't pickpocket Falmer, much to my annoyance). Unarmored bandits do little damage with their fists and die very fast. The only problem is that you need to keep all the armor and weapons in the area in your inventory, or they'll run and grab new armor/weapons from the room. They can loot chests and bodies too to find armor and weapons. They'll only do this if they are naked or weaponless, so you can probably reverse-pickpocket some crappy armor or daggers onto them to keep them from looting the room. I haven't tried that out yet. Of course, you need to be not in combat for it to work, but that's what shadow warrior is for!

And yeah, some items cannot be pickpocketed, even if they can be obtained via other means. For instance, General Tullis's armor cannot be pickpocketed, but you can obtain it by killing him at the end of the Stormcloak army quests. Same with Stormcloak Officer Armor - you can't seem to pickpocket it off of the Stormcloak second in command, but you can get it by being in the army for a while. 208.206.3.254 17:19, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Ah yeah, you're right. I thought I saw the 0 percent thing happening with a follower's leather armor before, but it seems to work now. :)

In regards to the usefulness of the perks, they're definitely gimped down from what I hoped to use them for: Pickpocketing unique/hard to find apparel/weapons, and picking followers' armour to equip them with whatever you want (smithing works much better to get them to wear other armour, I find. Too bad that doesn't work with clothing). The stuff you can pickpocket seems mostly limited to the generic stuff you might just as well find in a chest, though there are exceptions too (stuff rare enough not to appear in chests at least... eg. the Tavern Clothes, or the Mythic Dawn apparel). Weroj 04:24, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Free Training in any skill combined with pickpocketing

When you use a trainer in any skill the gold you pay him will go directly into his inventory. It is possible to pickpocket him and get all of your gold back. Do this after each level trained since the chances of pickpocketing large amounts of gold off of someone while they are awake are very slim.--216.15.123.224 07:22, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

When you gain the ability to reverse pickpocket poisons it's a reliable way to get your gold back. I just head to windhelm and use a paralysis potion on the trainer there after I've paid her, she will fall and right before she gets up she's completely vulnerable. Steal all your money back in one go. GearlockT 17:59, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Poisoned

Tried Poisoned yesterday (only clicking required perk for poisoned, means spent 3 on pickpocket), but seems wierd, when I tried murder someone by place 1 of 30 poison into her inventory, the game says my succeed chance is 0%, but actually I succeed murdered her by this...bug possibly?

the game only calculates for the 30 poisens and not just for the one. same as trying to plant 200 gold when you have 2000 gold in your inventory.

Are your chances to reverse pickpocket lowered if you try to give them a more expensive poison, or is it just the weight? NFR 19:02, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I am playing new build based on poisons. With maxed alchemy and maxed enchanted gear for alchemy it is possible to make 65% weakness to poison, 32 dmg per 10sec (320 total) or 162 dmg poisons. One can deal insane and completly silent damage comparable to dagger backstabbing tho it wont work against undead (and poison resistant targets may not suffer as much). It of course ignores armor on the other hand. Someone with better english may put this info on the pickpocket skill page :)

• if reverse pickpocketing (RP) multiple SAME poisons from stack at once then applied effect is same as if you RP only one
• multiple poisons stack additive, remember, RP one by one, each RP attempt is checked against pickpocket skill and may fail which turns target hostile
• it is almost allways preferable to use lingering damage poisons for their higher damage/price, damage/vial_count ratio
• it is advisable to RP "weakness to poison" potions to victiom prior to RP damage poisons, you have to RP weakness porions first, then exit inventory and RP damage poisons, placing all at once wont count weakness effect
• multiple weakness poisons stack additive,
• multieffect poisons with weakness+damage wont count weakness effect (same as RP weakness and damage potions in one step, ie without exiting inventory after weakness potion RP)
• RP chance depends on poison price, pickpocket skill and pickpocket perks (with pickpocket skill 100, light fingers lvl1, odds are 50 % for 1000 gold worth potion, breakpoint for 90% is ~680 gold worth potion). EDITED --Moonraker 15:47, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

I tried to RP a crafted lingering poison worth 1350g and it says 0%. However, it still worked. I'm at 100 skill, light finger lvl 1, and enchanted ring for 62%. It looks like the issue is the same as the bug when you choose light fingers lvl 5 and use other skill boosters. In patch 1.3 the values appear incorrect, but with some testing its still at cap (90%) regardless of what is displayed. 75.80.97.155 07:44, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

I took a closer look to light-fingers-perk-bug in the Creation Kit and noticed, that the value modifier of the 5th stage (LightFingers80) is set to "Multiply" instead to "Add".

Please use a different acronym as RP is reserved for 'Role-Play'. --139.153.52.3 10:36, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually, RP has been used for reverse pickpocket here for a very long while. (Doc Sawbones|Not Registered, Yet) 211.26.203.82 01:43, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Stealing Gold

Is the 2,000 gold limit with or without the Cutpurse perk? Does Cutpurse effect the limit? --Debatra 23:39, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

It appears that number isn't based on anything: without the Cutpurse perk and ~60 skill, my chance to steal gold dropped to 0% at 1500 gold. With 100 skill, the Cutpurse talent, and 2,090 gold to steal, I still have a 20% chance to succeed. I've removed that line. —Itafroma 10:41, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Because of Fortify Pickpocket bugs, I don't trust the percentage shown. 71.132.201.220 07:43, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Even if that were true, if it were 0% past 2,000, one would not be able to steal the gold. This is not the case, and stealing gold past 2,000 is possible (albeit it requires several reloads—where the percentage doesn't change—to accomplish it because the chance to succeed is so low). The screenshot was taken while stealing back my training gold from Grelka with nothing other than Cutpurse and its perk prerequisites (i.e., no Fortify Pickpocket). Each point of training increased the gold required to steal by 30, and I've successfully stolen 2,120 gold from her: I was able to steal at 2,000, 2,030, 2,060, 2,090, and 2,120. —Itafroma 23:37, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Pickpocketing NPC

When I am pickpocketing NPCs' items/clothing/weapons, do they ever respawn their items? If it does, how long does it take for they to respawn?

Some NPCs such as guards do but most people don't respawn clothes or weapons.RIM 16:01, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

It seems that if you take ALL of an NPC's clothing/armor, then all of that clothing/armor comes back after leaving the area and returning. I don't know if weapons behave the same way. At least for followers (specifically Lydia), I've found that stealing everything they have results in their default armor respawning (still hidden from the "trade items" interface) but not their weapons or miscellaneous items. It should be noted that pickpocketing followers' default armor can lead to permanent encumbrance issues (I can no longer directly give Lydia anything to carry except zero-weight items). --username12345 02:28, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Annoying glitch

I just went to pickpocket someone, and reguardless of who it is, it says they already caught me. I question this skill's usefulness entirely, but how do I fix this? I thought waiting 24 hours cleared all atte,pts, and was hoping it'd clear the ones I never made. Never been to this city before, no bounty. Roleplayer242621 23:06, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Levelling

"Most of the time stealing items worth more than 100 at earlier skill levels and 500+ later on guarantee skill level increases."

This doesn't seem right to me. I am level 40 and 40 pickpocketing skill and I have many 1000+ priced items, but pickpocketing them doesn't give me any more exp than iron daggers. Also, even at 0% pickpocketing chance, I'm still able to transfer items to and from anyone. I don't have the rank 5 light fingers perk or any of the other perk glitches mentioned. I have even levelled up several times just using a few iron daggers. I'm on PC version.

I think your correct. However, I do know that this is relatively true with gold though. To power level pickpocketing, I wore x4 +40% pickpocket chance pieces of gear and reverse-pickpocketed gold from bandits. I always gave the bandits just enough gold so that I maintained a 90% chance (the maximum) to steal it back. It turns out, this ratio of how much gold you can take in accordance with your pickpocketing skill is almost 10 to 1. For example, if you have 80 pickpocket skill, with this gear set on (x4 +40% chance), you can steal 800 gold while still maintaining the maximum 90% pickpocket chance. By doing this, your guaranteed a pickpocket level every time you give and take your gold back. In fact, in earlier levels, you can level up pickpocket multiple times in a single exchange via this method (usually two to three level increases). Additionally, if anybody else tries this method I highly recommend storing all but 1,000 of your gold in a owned house. Increasing/decreasing the amount of gold you want to give in each transaction can be very tedious if you don't. Also note by holding both the directional pad and the analog stick on a 360 controller in the same direction you can double the rate at which the gold amount increases/decreases.--69.205.180.81 03:55, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Using both sticks does make the amount selected change faster, but you can also make it jump in increments using the bumpers. Much faster using the bumpers. WhackyGordon 19:38, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm currently at 100 on my Pickpocket, so I can't double-check myself, but as I recall I ended up only stealing things of value (i.e. take the silver ruby ring & leave the iron dagger) because I saw little to no increase when stealing worthless items and saw the most notable increases in skill when going for the more expensive things. ~Naberios 14 February 2012

Easy Training

I have found that one of the best places to train pickpocket is in the Dark Brotherhood Torture Room. To get this, you have to finish the Dark Brotherhood questline, and fully upgrade the Sanctuary, but it seems worth it. The torture victims show several advantages:

1) You can approach from the side, and stay hidden while sneaking 2) They can't run away, and take valuable items with them 3) They can't attack you if you do catch them 4) You get no bounty from pickpocketing them 5) You hide and try again right away after being "caught"

67.158.72.148 19:07, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Pickpocketing Success Chance Function

I've done a decent amount of in-game testing to get a data set which I had hoped to turn into a complete function that defines your % chance for success when pickpocketing. The function I've come up with is:

%Chance = 0 < (36 + Skill + LightFingers% + NightThief% + Cutpurse% - 0.1*Item Value - 4*Item Weight) < 90

This has given me exact answers for my entire dataset when not using any fortify potions or gear (though my set was kinda limited for item weights, I mainly focused on gold). Using fortify potions and gear does not simply add to the percentage as the wording implies. The following function gives a close approximation (within 1%) for most of my data set, including when using fortify gear/potions, but starts to break down for fortify percentages at and above 70%. (Maybe related to the fact that I was using a 50% potion and a 20% ring to achieve the 70% total??)

0 < (36+Skill+LF%+NT%+CP%-0.1*Value-4*Weight + 0.54*Fortify% - Fortify%*Value/1000 + 41/50*Fortify%) < 90

I believe there is a nonlinear dependance between Fortify% and ItemValue that I'm missing, but I can't figure it out. I also think there should also be a cross dependance between weight and Fortify%, but I haven't tried to figure out yet since it already wasn't working for the other case and my weight data is really limited.

If anyone wants to take a shot at improving the fit and finding the real function for Fortify, my data set is in a google docs spreadsheet here

The general conclusions I took away from this were:

• All the perks act like they should and increase percentage to pickpocket as they suggest. (contradicts the second bullet on the Bugs section of the main page)
• Fortify potions and gear enchanted with fortify pickpocket have the same effect (tested at 100 skill with Light Fingers 4 using both a 20% potion and 20% ring)
• Fortify potions do not necessarily lower your chances for pickpocketing. For lower value items they do improve your chances. However, as your item value increases, the value*fortify effects start to dominate and your percent chance starts to reduce.
• To steal the most amount of gold, invest in all the appropriate perks and ditch any fortify gear or potions.

One final thing to note is that all the testing I did was based on giving gold / items to a sleeping person while sneaking and undetected. I don't think the percentages change for giving/taking, but I sill need to confirm this.

When pickpocket "Fails" - please define exact results

I know this seems stupid, but: if you fail to pickpocket something, do you get to keep the item? Does "failure" refer to getting caught or taking the item? I have seen several statements on "notes sections" and in talk pages suggesting the following: Train with a trainer and pickpocket the gold back. Even if you get caught, just pay the bounty. If the bounty is less than the gold you paid/stole, it will still be worth it. This would indicate you get to keep what you stole, even if you fail. I trained with Niruin 10 times in the same room, then pickpocketed the gold while sneaking undetected. I knew it would be 0% chance, but 10 levels worth $38,650 is still be a good deal, for the bounty price of ? 1,000 ? (I wasn't really sure what it would be). He caught me and 'forgave me,' but I didn't get any of the money back. How can these statements to pickpocket gold, pay the bounty, and still get a net profit make any sense? I've seen it in more than one place with no refutation. Is there a random chance to keep what you stole when caught? Is it based on the person? Is it only if they report you? I really think this needs to be clearly outlined in the page.

So far...?

• Success
  • a) You keep item & success rates drop?
• Failure (unable to pickpocket person for 2 days)
  • a) Person reports you & you receive a bounty based on ??? (& you [do/don't] keep the item?)
  • b) Person forgives you & you receive no bounty (& you don't keep the failed item)
  • c) Person is unable to report you & you receive no bounty (such as the tortured victims in brotherhood sanctuary and the remaining victims you didn't assassinate during the brotherhood initiation) (& you [do/don't] keep the item?)

Also, what people are saying about the statistics changing should also be outlined. Even if the exact formula is unknown, a summary statement should be placed on the page. (Such as: While the inventory is open, each successfully-pickpocketed item will reduce the chances of success on remaining items. Exit the inventory and re-attempt pickpocketing to reset the chances. I'm only guessing here, because reading through the talk page has indicated something like this, but it is not clear to me what they are talking about.) --Amsuko 19:19, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

No, you don't keep the item on a failure - you never had it to keep. It's a failure to pickpocket the item, rather than a failure in that you were detected after taking it. I agree, the net profit statement makes no sense, unless it's taking into account the chance if you attempt a pickpocket after each train. If you have a zero percent chance, then it's obviously not worth the attempt. If you have a 70% chance, perhaps it is.

The % chance changing while in the inventory might just be a display glitch. It certainly isn't typical behavior - I see just one mention in the bugs section that it may happen. The percentage chance doesn't decrease if you successfully pickpocket an item.

I suspect the person using the "pickpocket trainer" method is doing a save/reload on fail, since it does make it sound like there's no risk involved. -Vardis 20:08, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Flawed/Flawless Tree Logic

I know I'm going to be called obsessed...but critics like me are what perfect the work of the developers next time a game is made.

Now my beef with pick pocketing is primarily the order in which certain perks are available.

The Night Thief perk should not have been a perk at all. People are easier to pickpocket in their sleep because it's easier to pickpocket when their backs are turned. It's illogical to think that a perk would enable something that is naturally a more vulnerable state.

Flame on. :)

Re-dressing NPCs

I was wondering about a possibility while using Perfect Touch. If you pickpocket an NPC's clothing and then reverse pickpocket a different set of clothing into their inventory, will they wear the new clothes, or will they remain "naked?" Could you, for example, get some laughs by forcing the Jarl Idgrod Ravencrone to wear tavern clothes, or does the game prevent this somehow? (I'd test this myself, but I have yet to attain 100 pickpocketing)

I tried to give my followers better armour by doing this and it didn't work. In Oblivion however, npc's inventories reset every day so that they would wear the best equipment they had so this might be the case with npcs in Skyrim too. RIM 11:03, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

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