You'll see a dialogue, like "Gwynn attempts to steal. Gwynn whiffs!" just like when you try to steal from someone else.
There has been rampant speculation recently, especially on the subject of essential lost keys, etc., that they were stolen by some creature who ran off, and now the only option is to reload or find & kill the thief.
In all my time with this game, I've never had anything stolen from me -- I see those dialogues, but it's always "whiffs" or "gets nothing". I must kill the annoying creatures before they get anything.
My completely wild-guess and uneducated opinion on the matter? The game goes to extremes to make certain that quest items aren't permenantly lost; you drop one, it stays there; you never get one, it stays there. I can't believe that such an obvious error would've gotten past the beta testers (although I would've sworn about three months ago that, either 1: there *were* no beta testers, or 2: WE, the purchasing public, were to be the beta testers), but I suppose it is possible.
Randomly spawned creatures disappear when they're not killed; one can only assume that, were a quest item to be stolen, it too would disappear.
|