I love the new stealth aspects of Skyrim gameplay, but I can't help but notice that thievery itself doesn't seem very... fulfilling.

I've made a couple of thief characters so far. They are "pure", dedicated thieves - not thief/assassins. In other words, I build them to be good at sneaking and stealing, not so they can become throat-slitting, one-shotting death machines. They can hold their own in combat to some extent, but most of the time they would lose a straight-up fight.

Anyway, the Thieves' Guild questline is great, but beyond that there doesn't seem like a lot of opportunity for thievery in Skyrim. The cities are fairly small and don't offer a lot of challenging targets. There's not a lot of reward, and there's not a lot of risk either.

So I'm wondering how people manage to keep their thieves going in the game. There are a lot of radiant quests for the Thieves' Guild, but those aren't a lot of fun.

Does everyone just say screw it and join the Dark Brotherhood?

Do you focus on robbing cities - and if so, how do you keep it interesting, since it's so easy?

Or do you become dungeon treasure-hunters?

I also feel like there are fewer targets in Skyrim. My thieves are usually of the collector/treasure hunter sort anyways.

Recently I went on a pickpocket spree. I basically snuck behind someone and take everything. If I get busted I just say to the guards "I'm with the guild." pay the 12 gold and go back and steal from them again. This made pickpocket extremely easy and very fast to level. I had already finished my thief so I just did this for extra random one time fun before I make my new character.

I've tried a little pickpocketing. Usually I just pay for the training to level it, and live with my bounty when I inevitably get caught.

It's kind of too bad - there are plenty of quests for people who want to kill things (all of the bounties from the jarls), but thief-centered quests - or targets - seem somewhat rarer.

I guess I could just fall back on tomb-raiding, but without some guidance in the form of a quest, it's hard to decide where to go. How would a thief know which dungeon would be profitable?

And as a side question, what do you do with all your money? Seems to me thieves can potentially become the richest character types, but they have the least reason to use all that cash.

I've found thievery to be less rewarding in Skyrim, compared to Oblivion (strangely). So I don't even bother anymore. Perhaps I was under the impression that there are a lot more NPC owned homes/stores in Oblivion, making for more choice in deciding which house to loot.

It's fun to clear a cave/fort/etc. without ever engaging into combat, or at least killing someone, and to take their shinies right under their noses though.

I did this too. I stole everything from everyone that could have some concievable value, including their keys. My key list is enormous. At any rate, I levelled my pickpocket score up to a 100 in a surprisingly short amount of time. The only problem is that now no one has anything of value left to take. Even the Jarls have nothing left but a lockpick and a piece of cheese.

It was fun doing it though. Of course by the end you're sick to death of it but then you move on to something else.

Wel... if you pay for training*, which I do, the money doesn't last very long. At the same time, you're mostly pickpocketing items that'll net you somewhere between 100-200 gold and there are only so many people in each town. I'd also recommend to anyone to never bother to pay for training in pickpocketing once you get your skill to around 25. It levels so fast it's not worth it. When your skill is lower, if you're lifting anything over 50 gold off of someone your level can sometimes increase with each theft. I think one time my skill increased about 7 times in 10 attempts.

*NOT training in pickpocketing. I trained other things while doing this.

I love my theif character, I thought I could easily steal from solitude but I was wrong. I was locked up in jail, I broke out of the first jail cell door, I went to retreive my gear but my lock broke, I need to hide some locks near the dungeon cell so I can grab them then have more to get my gear. The key to enjoying the character is to plan things ahead. If I have a lot of stolen gear on me then I always bribe the gaurd to let it go, the one thing I would like to see is forced conversations from gaurds saying "Wait I know you." Anytime I approach a gaurd that says that I talk to him accordingly.

Has anyone tried a *pure* thief - one who doesn't perk out anything but the "thief" skills? E.g. no one-handed or archery.

Doesn't mean you can't use those skills, just that they aren't the focus of the build.

I'm so torn. On one hand I like the idea of a thief who is effective with dagger and bow, but on the other hand I don't want those to become overpowered.

This may seem unrelated to my initial post, but it's all connected - seems like you're really pushed to be a killer, which is great and all, but I think with fondness back to the Thief games, where on the highest difficulty levels you lost if you killed anyone.

At the very highest levels, Pickpocket seems like it would almost become a pseudo-combat skill - a way of disarming foes. But if you can just stick a dagger in their eye, why bother?

Joined the db

I have gotten a thief to level 22 with perks only in Speech, Lockpick, Sneak, and Pickpocket. All of Skyrim's cities combined make a small town, so if you're a thief who sticks to cities, then you're just a small-town thief, which isn't particularly satisfying. I had to get out of the towns and go sneaking and stealing through bandit- and beast-infested ruins for bigger thrills. Unfortunately, I have no suggestions for making city thieving more interesting. I put my thief into temporary retirement so I could play other characters who are handier at fighting and killing.

One of the best ways to keep busy is sneaking through ruins, forts, dungeons, and caves without being detected. Loot every chest there and check for hidden items. Go for not being seen even once. The towns are ok but most are too small to do any good thieving. I also found there weren't a lot of valuables in most homes. Some of the shops have nice things but even the Keeps are short on loot.

My thief is on a short vacation for two reasons, the first is that I am trying to figure out what would be good for her to do, she's not quite finished with the TG haven't got all the hold's yet. That's because of the second reason, which is she is attatched to my x-box live username. Waiting til after the next patch drops and I know it's ok.

She was suposed to join the DB also, but halfway through the TG I realized that she hadn't killed anyone on a "job" so that became a challenge for her. I can't seem to come up with a good reason for someone to go out of their way not to kill someone then join the DB.

Was thinking about going after all the Dragon preist masks.

There just isn't a whole lot of interesting content for a thief. Or for any other kind of character besides a dungeon-delving killer of one form or another, in actuality. For those with vivid imaginations who can invent a lot of thier own fantasy as they go, I guess that's not a problem. For the rest of us, what questing and roleplaying content there is gets used up and old pretty fast. I have to nod to the guy in another thread who called Skyrim "A mile wide and a foot deep". Nothing about the quests or character classes is fully evolved or built to be lastingly interesting... it's all pretty generic and shallow, 'fast food' RPG'ing.

I have to try this, my character lacks in combat so I would have to resort to fighting as a means of survival.

Role playing is about living your characters day to day life. Don't think of it as "I am a thief and I need to steal today, every day, all day long." You would need to eat, thief's usually like to just "hang out" and talk about their exploits or what they plan to do next (the whole reason for thieves guild). Find targets, whealthy targets, don't just go into random houses and take everything. Shadow people. learn who is rich, learn their patterns, and then try to rob them without being caught. Which is the entire mentality of the class.

Don't think of this as a game, think of it as what you would do in this persons place, eat, sleep, enjoy the company of others, make plans, carry them out, and be stealthy and ruthless to get things done.

I played a thief that I only perked the stealth skills. I used dual daggers and a bow and even just lvling those without perks goes nicely with the sneak skills. You rarely fight face to face, if ever. It was loads of fun and you just have to take your thieving seriously. I "met" Nazeem and stalked him until he was asleep. I obviously pickpocketed him but just because I don't like him, I "stole" all his crops.

I think a thief needs a little RP to make it spicy.

I pretty much maxed out all thief skills in the green and also in archery. My thief is passive and rarely charges into a fight, but if he's forced into an out & out assault, he transforms into a werewolf and rips 'em to shreds.

Mine touched Vittoria Vici's bottom while he pickpocketed her house key near Solitude stables. Then he went into her house, upstairs into her bedroom, and sniffed her knickers before leaving two purple mountain flowers on her bed.

Pervert!