Pickpocket is lucrative, jarls palace and some shops are also good, one quest in the thief guild is also good, you can to steal hundreds of beer bottles.

Actually this was something that was a problem starting back with Morrowind. In Daggerfall you could steal from the stores and then sell it back and you steal some reallly good stuff. In Morrowind they thought it would break the economy so they started only putting out crap for you steal and that crap wasn't worth much. I didn't get better with Oblivion nor with Skyrim.

They won't put expensive stuff out for you steal anymore and for me it keeps me from enjoying and wanting to play a thief in the game. If I can't steal expensive stuff and then sell it for what's it worth than why even bother stealing anything at all?

Or you can sell Iron Daggers with Banish or Absorb on them for 2500+ a pop by the bucket loads and has a sad because your vendor ran out of money after 2 of the 2000 you have in your pocket.

I dont understand the question. Do you want to know some targets to steal? Or do you want to get rich.

Becoming rich is an universal procedure and does not involve any stealing. Selling selfmade potions and enchanted iron daggers is where the money is. (feels like a cheat, i dont use it)

Becoming rich through stealing is a bit difficult in the beginning since you either need a merchant who buys stolen goods, or invest in the Speech Tree. Just pickpocket everyone. They have lots of relatively expensive items.

That's how mages make money... not thieves.

Also... what I tend to do is keep a stack of enchanted daggers on me (5-10) giving me 10-20k in trade goods I can use to buy anything I want from any smith or general store (usually general stores as they have stuff for mages) Of course, I always sell em off if they have money too... but I don't worry about selling all of them. I just sell what I can, as I can, without going out of my way, and everytime I buy stuff get my money back

It isn't quite that bad. I think at early levels with a low Speech you get around 35%. So a 2,000 coin item will net you somewhere in the neighborhood of 700; which is okay because as far as I know there aren't any shops that carry 2000 worth of gold until you can invest in them, which can't happen until much later in the game.

Find soul gems, enchant loot with them, sell them. You can start doing that from day one.

Go straight to riften... join thieves guild... get instant access to fence who will buy stolen goods.

You get a 2nd fence in Winterhold further down the TG questline as well.

Now that you have a fence, you can steal all kinds of crap and sell it.

The more you sell, the higher your speech.

Before long you can increase your speech perks to use any merchant... adding MUCH convenience and speed to your loot selling runs.

And a good thief always remembers to pickpocket a trainer after purchasing a skill. For example, I would often go to Eorlund (at the Skyforge) to get smithing training, and after I spent that days money on my training I turned around and stole all that money right back. This works for all trainers. And since my character is a thief I have no moral qualms about it.

By thieving?

Alternatively, if on the PC you could try..

1. Press Tilde key, (` button left of 1 on most keyboards).
2. Type "player.additem 0000000F 1000000" (Minus the quotation marks).
3. There is no step 3.
4. Profit.


Seriously though, go with pickpocketing, or just dungeon crawling, i found while leveling my thief/archer (Currently level 48) i actually didn't need much coin anyway, and that what i did need, i just picked up from quests.

Doing bounties the jarls set out is very good for cash as well as doing the Thiefs guild quests.

Ummmmmm there is a perk that allows you to sell stolen stuff to everyone. derp.

Could you offer any more of a boring answer? You could type in something to end the game, but that kind of defeats the purpose of playing a game >_<.

HAHA, what did I say? I told you some kid would still have the nutsack to post that comment. even though I stated that exactly, in my first sentence. Seriously, kids these days

I just break into shops and clean out the safes (houses aren't worth the time). When I want a thrill I use my lurker abilities to slaughter a group of bandits in their sleep . Pretty good loot at higher levels. Also, joining the Thieves Guild is a must, but the Dark Brotherhood is way more fun, I wish it had a more elaborate quest-line .

I didn't read all answers, but I can tell you how i have fun playing as a thief.

- Fight face-to-face only when it's really necessary (Sneak + One Handed \ Archery), i usually use quick save and quick load.
- But to be prepared to a "[censored] just got serious" fight I fight some random Bandit's Fortress to up my One-Handed + Light Armor
- Steal ALL the Jewles that i can find in a city and sell it (Speech {REALLY HIGH} + PickPocket + Sneak)

This and pickpocketing.

I'm in my 50's and I would have said the same thing. If you have trouble getting income as a thief, well then that's just embarrassing...

Joining the thevis guild will access a fence to buy stolen goods.

And