And, yes, I've done all the extra jobs and won influence in all the hold capitals. I'm officially Thieves Guild master and have the armor and everything. The problem, as far as I can tell, is that the vault remains boring and empty. There should be display stands, weapons stands, armor stands, and chests. IIRC, you can't even use any of the chests in the vault. Am I missing any extra steps?

To bump this back up (and add an additional post), I'm really hoping I'm missing something here. This seems like a HUGE failed opportunity on Bethesda's part if there truly is no way to utilize your vault. IT'S A FREAKING TREASURE VAULT! Let us use it!

If Bethesda just utterly failed on this, I know the first personal mod I'm going to make. It's going to be to remodel the vault.

- There should be useable bookshelves lining one wall.
- There should be numerous weapon and armor stands.
- There should be numerous case displays.
- There should be numerous chests filling up any other empty space.

I finished the Thieves questline minus becoming a full fledged Guildmaster, but I have wondered this as well. I've started piling gems, rings, necklaces, weapons and armor into the open chests. I'm fairly wealthy now and have two homes so I don't really mind how I spend my money. In my mind, I came into wealth because of the Thieves guild-I have no problem giving back.

With that said, your suggestion of being able to use the treasure vault as a storage and display area is BAD ASS.

I'll become Guild Master soon so I'll be able to verify whether or not it stays empty, but if it does stay empty, I hope someone like yourself makes a mod to change that. It'll probably have to be a mod you enable AFTER you finish the guild's quests otherwise when Vex and others open it, they'll find it full and proclaim it empty.

EDIT: I should mention that if you include several bookcases, you'll want to make the vault MUCH larger. Or you could instead make an addition to the college of Winterhold. Story wise, it would make more sense that the mages guild holds the largest library.

I just fired up the game real quick to confirm things and my original guess was correct. The vault sits useless. The only thing you can really use for storage (without manually picking up and dropping things into the existing chests) is a barrel. Not only that, but if you close the vault doors, they re-lock themselves and become unpickable. You need a key that doesn't exist. I had to use the console to unlock it again. The more I think about it, the more butt hurt I get at Bethesda for really dropping the ball on the Thieves Guild.

Another thing that bugs me is Mercer's old mansion, Riftweald Manor. Riftweald Manor should have been given to you as Guildmaster. Instead it just sits empty as if Mercer is going to come back soon.

I'm extremely agitated now just thinking about it. I'll do my quick plugins once the Creator's Kit comes out, but somebody with far more experience is going to make an awesome mod with the Thieves Guild. All the places are in place waiting for somebody to put them together.

Yeah, I think it does.

Yeah... Skyrim's my favorite game of all time, but your pretty right. There are a number of things kinda left almost unfinished with almost all of the questlines. I never feel like anything I do has real weight. No one recognizes what I do, the game world doesnt really change much, eh, I try not to think about the negatives and focus on the positives.

The treasure vault reminds me of Fable 3's treasure vault.. That mountain of gold.
On topic: I don't think it's ever going to change and its going to stay empty unfortunately.