i have not joined the thieves guild. I'm not really a thief type character but there was one time i needed some steel ingots. it was night there was no one around i checked with aura whisper. and i was in sneak mode. yet still hired thugs were sent after me. i have also been collecting the wolf queen books and was missing one. i happened to find it in the library at the mage college. again i checked no one was around put myself in sneak mode and stole it. again some point later hired thugs came after me. is it even possible to be a thief in this game without being caught?

Hired thugs can appear even if you're not caught stealing. It doesn't happen a lot to me though, even on my thief character who steals everything she sees.

thanks for the reply so its a random event wether u get caught or not. a questuon for the devs... it didnt work like this in morrowind or oblivion so why change it? for skyrim it makes the choice of playing a theif character pointless imo

quickload + ssd is your best friend.

sorry don't know what ssd means

No. My sneak is like level 70 something and I have the Ebony Mail, so I don't have a problem sneaking.

solid state drives reduce load times letting you retry your theft very quickly.

The 3 hired thugs will be sent after you for the first item you ever stole. No matter if you were seen taking it or not.

Only exception I know of seems to be Delphine. I strictly only stole from her inventory on one character and waited and the hired thugs never arrived. I was very disappointed, because I wanted the contract signed by her.

So, if your first theft was from a person who doesn't send the thugs after you, then they'll be sent after you for the next item belonging to someone who does hire the thugs.


Anyway, for the thousands of items I stole afterwards on each character of mine, I've never met the hired thugs again. It's a one-time only event, really.

You will, however, encounter hired thugs again if you start murdering people.

Well, there's a reason they send thugs and not guards. The person you stole from has a hunch you were the one who took it. They don't have proof, but they don't let that bother them. They hire some thugs to teach you a lesson.

That's what I like to think, anyway.

They generally do.

I've never been caught stealing (I've been caught pickpocketing, but I reload) and I've got like 27 murders and I've never seen hired thugs. I'm TG Master so that may have something to do with it?

You know if you want to cheat all you have to do is open the console and turn god mode on.

But God mode doesn't factor into pickpocket success rate, or the chance of you being seen when sneaking, or lockpicking, or any sort of thievery.

Tip, save before you steal anything. Most likely you just got unlucky.

I'm happy when I meet hired thugs because all the cool stuff you get after you kill them. And combat experience.

Those thugs are sent to you because you stole something without being detected. Jaberkaty is dead on in his guess actually.