Stealing

Introduction

Stealing in Ultima Online can take several forms, stealing from crates and barrels in town shops, from monsters in dungeons, from Exodus Zealots in Exodus Dungeon or even stealing from other players. The specifics of some of these, with information of the possible rewards, are dealt with in the pages linked below.

Other characters should be aware that performing beneficial acts upon a thief will flag you ‘criminal’. To see if someone is in the Thieves Guild use the Forensic Evaluation skill on them. The higher your Forensic Evaluation skill, the more chance you have of finding out who’s in the Thieves Guild.

Methods

Stealing requires both hands to be empty and is done in two ways:

1. ‘targeted’, this is done when stealing from crates or dungeon chests, or when stealing artifacts. In the classic client click on the blue gem beside the skill in your skills list, drag the skill off to the desktop or create a macro ‘use skill – stealing’. In enhanced client drag the icon from the skills list to a hotbar slot or macro. Using the skill will give you a target, target the item you wish to steal. To target steal from players the character must have the skill ‘snooping’ in order to see into your victim’s backpack and select the target item.
2. ‘random’, this is mostly done when stealing from monsters or exodus zealots, they don’t have a backpack to open, so just target the creature and hope you’ll grab something worthwhile. On the plus side it’s possible to steal heavier objects this way. In the case of stealing from Exodus Zealots ‘snooping’ is also required, though not used actively. A character without snooping will be unable to steal the special items listed on the page ‘Stealing in Exodus Dungeon’ and will instead only be able to steal gold. It is possible to ‘random’ steal from players (if the criteria below are met), but the target may fall on a container, something insured, blessed or simply too heavy in which case nothing will be stolen.

Hazards

Whether monster or player, approaching a potential target is most often done in stealth mode, but the act of stealing, whether successful or not, will reveal you. To complicate matters further you will not be able to re-hide for 10 seconds, which is more than enough for a monster to notice you. A swift retreat and/or the invisibility spell (or invisibility potion) is highly recommended – but don’t forget invisibility wears off! Be sure to re-hide as soon as you can as you stealth away.

If your stealing attempt is noticed you will be classed as ‘criminal’, unable to recall or gate away, and if you are within a ‘justice region’, the target of a ‘guard whack’; doomed then, to wander as a ghost until the criminal status wears off, for the town and wandering healers will not resurrect you until it has. Your poor abandoned corpse, dear thief, is freely lootable on ANY facet by anyone who happens to pass by.

Your first forays as one of the ‘light fingered’ may be Stealing from Town Shops, later you may progress to Stealing from Monsters and finding Dungeon Artifacts.

Dungeon Artifacts

Stealable artifacts of variable rarity spawn on the floors and walls of several dungeons. Approximate spawn times for the artifact levels and maps for locations can be found on the Stealing in Dungeons page. Grand master level stealing skill is needed to acquire these items, at which level several attempts may be needed.

Stealing from Players

In order to steal from players there are a few requirements that must be met. First you must join the NPC Thieves’ Guild. This is done via the Thief Guild Master – one such can be found in each Britannia town, but he will not accept your application until you have met the two qualifying criteria:

1. The character must 48 hours of in-game time (that’s time logged in, if the char is 2 weeks old but has only been logged in 2 hours per day it will not qualify).
2. The character must have at least 60 stealing skill, that’s REAL skill, skill from items won’t count.
3. The joining fee is 500gp

Once you have met these criteria find a thief guild master. Cove is usually the easiest to find, being the smallest town. Simply address him by name: [name] join and drop the fee on him when he asks for it. For a further 700gp he will also sell you a disguise kit. (quitting the guild is done in much the same way, ie [name] quit.)

Stealing from a player is a ‘hostile’ act and therefore can only be performed in Felucca, or area having the Felucca rule-set (eg the two Stygian Abyss champion spawns) with one exception. This in turn means your victim may also extract revenge by performing a ‘hostile’ act on you. Thieves are unable to give murder counts!

It is possible to steal from a player in the same guild on any facet and without being flagged as criminal.

You can not steal containers, insured items, blessed items or exceptionally heavy items. In order to steal an item of your choice you will also need the skill of snooping. Snooping is also used passively in the pvm encounter Stealing in Exodus Dungeon.

Difficulty & Success Formulas

Stealing from another player:

This formula requires three pieces of information.

• First: skillModifier
  • = 100 + Stealing Skill Value.
    (Example: GM Stealing, 100 + 1000 = 1100).
• Second: targetingFactor
  • 1 for a random steal,  3 for a planned theft.
• Third: itemWeight
  • the weight of the item (the maximum weight you can steal is 15 stones)
    (Example: 7 stones).

This gives the information to calculate the difficulty modifier:
Difficulty = 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 = 7 * 3 * 2000 / 1100.
Difficulty = 38 (all fractions are rounded down).)

Witnesses

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 and remains ‘blue’.

However, if there are witnesses, you’re not guaranteed to fail – you just need to pass another difficulty check.

Difficulty = itemWeight * targetingFactor * 30 + 100.

(Using the same example as above here is the calculation:

Difficulty = 7 * 3 * 30 + 100
Difficulty = 730)

The difficulty is then plugged in to the following calculation:

500 + 2 * (Thief skill – difficulty)) / 10 = percent chance of success

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

This formula also applies to stealing from NPC, pack animal or lockbox.

Stealing Rare  Artifacts in Dungeons

This activity uses a different, simpler, set of difficulty calculations, there are no witnesses taken into account and no random targeting factor.

Training

Difficulty in stealing is determined by the weight you are attempting to steal and is also affected by the chance of your attempt being noticed. Therefore in order to gain in skill you must steal items of increasing weight.

The most popular method for gaining is to fill a packhorse with suitable items. To do this you must be in Felucca and you must tell the packhorse to guard you. The ‘guard’ command will prevent you from being guardwhacked. If you prefer not to drag a packhorse around you can steal from a bag at your feet if you train in Bucanneer’s den, where there are no guards to answer the npc’s calls. Fill your packhorse or bag on the floor with stacks of items weighing one stone each – bottles, apples or pears will work, but don’t eat the apples! Open the pack and use ‘targeted’, not ‘random’ stealing. The table below gives an indication of what weight to aim to steal at what skill level.