Pickpocket Woes..

[Charmy]

Hey all.

My level 7 bard has been attempting pickpocketing lately (his skill is at 20 points) and I haven't been having any luck at all. Most of the NPCs I've encountered attack me once I'm discovered (He'Li, Antone, Myles, etc.) and the others demand I bribe them in order to pickpocket again. So I picked up the Violin D'Amore, hoping its charm ability would help me, and camped myself in front of Lord Brafitt. Then I saved the game, and began a power session. Charmed him, pick pocket. Fail, give him a light healing potion, then try again. Repeat, repeat, repeat. After about 50 failures, and no pickpocketing increases I started getting frustrated. How am I supposed to do this? Am I doing this wrong? I was suggested in various FAQs that pickpocketing is easy to build up once you have it at a decent starting value, allowing your bard/rogue to spend valuable points elsewhere. I have no complaints about my music, the violin improves that stat very quickly, but I'd like to pickpocket something eventually =/ Should I dump MORE points into it? or keep banging my head giving away everything I own until I'm destitute and wearing a cardboard box as armor?

I'm guessing, based on the README File that saving/loading after every pick pocketing attempt doesn't work, because the result has already been predetermined or something like that.. Thats why I tried the 'bribing method'.

Any advice? =( Sorry if this has been asked before.. searching function isn't working.

[Vaprakgruumsh]

Well at 20 points... you might fail quite a bit (as noted above)... what I'd do is dump some more points in there (get it to about 30 to 45). Then pick pocket like mad, and rob'em blind. Question though - do you have the newest patch installed? If so, they remember if you pick pocket them and will act accordingly...

[Charmy]

Okay, I'll get pick pocketing a bit higher with a few more level ups then..

And yeah, I do have the latest patch installed. I thought all the patch did though was randomize the items you can get from them.. What exactly do you mean by 'remember'? They seem to compeltely forget you ever did anything after successfully bribing them. And what the heck does Charm do anyway? It seems utterly useless. They don't detect my pickpocketing any less, and it doens't put them back to Friendly status after they are neutral..

[vesselle]

beleive me friend, they remember. they might take about 6 or 7 times, but they DO catch on.

that's why you shouldn't jump into PP too early. with a very low skill like yours, and all the failures you make by the time you get a good skill, you will be KOS by all the vendors.

bribing only delays the inevitable. i dump points into my bard's PP skill until she gets to 50. then i can have a bit of success with my skill.

one thing to remember. save before you go in. and memorize the pattern.
y'know: fail*fail*get something*fail*fail*get something*fail*CAUGHT!
whatever that particular pattern is at the time of that visit, will be the one used, for that PP attempt. so you can reload, and repeat it up to the 4th or 5th FAIL. that way you avoid the final "CAUGHT" and can take advantage of them longer.

::shakes her head:: boy, i hope that made some kinda sense. LOL!

V***V

[ice3]

Since you have the last patch installed I recommend to not use PP. You will lost tons of skill points for a very bad result. If you want to PP reinstall the game with no patch or patch 001b. With the last patch PP becomes totaly useless.

[vesselle]

well, that's your opinion.

for me, i love the patch. the patched version is how the designers wanted it from the very beginning. besides, it was like, i might just as well use an editor to cheat in tons of money and items, because the bugged version allowed you to take whatever you wanted whenever you wanted to. lame.
where's the skill in that? where's the thrill in that? where's the sense of danger?

and that's just my opinion.

[ice3]

Originally posted by vesselle: well, that's your opinion. for me, i love the patch. the patched version is how the designers wanted it from the very beginning. besides, it was like, i might just as well use an editor to cheat in tons of money and items, because the bugged version allowed you to take whatever you wanted whenever you wanted to. lame. where's the skill in that? where's the thrill in that? where's the sense of danger? and that's just my opinion.

I think both patch or not patched isn't the good version. Don't say to me that such a HUGE change is how it was originnaly designed. That's a MEGA bug that even a developper must have seen. No I think both aren't the best solution but as to choose I prefer the pre-patch.

As for getting tons of money yes and not... Shoplist is much more profitable. But getting tons of items, NO. There is a very specific table of each item a NPC can give, if you loot all the items out of the list the NPC will not give items or gold any more. He/she will be drainned. I posted a full topic on PPing last week I think.

[Rhea]

Pickpocketing is very useful early in the game, because you can pick up potions, scrolls, books and low-level armor that you would have to pay for otherwise. You can't make a major living off of it, though. It's not nearly as spectacular as, say, Arcanum, where you could really get rich pickpocketing. [img]smile.gif[/img]

You do need to put points into it to improve your skill to the point where you're not failing and ticking off the NPC's. In earlier games I had a Bard doing the pickpocket and locks/traps stuff. This game I still have a Bard (who concentrated on music early on) and a Rogue who does the PP and lock/traps stuff. This allowed me to put more points into music for the Bard and have the thief concentrate on the other stuff - both of their most important skills went up faster.

::shrug:: It can work either way. But you do have to put the points into the PP skill (I didn't have a lot of success until I got up into the 50's).

[Charmy]

Hey all, thanks for all the help. My bard is now at about 25 pickpocketing, slowly building it up, and he's having some degree of success. I followed the idea that Vesselle gave me,, seeing how many times I can pickpocket someone without getting caught, then loading and pickpocketing the amount just before being caught. Then next time I gain a level (and subsequent pickpocketing skill) I try again. It seems the "number of times" I can pickpocket is predetermined every time the pickpocketing skill increases.. so I'll drop by Arnika and raid those poor folks every once in awhile. I've never succeeded in shoplifting though.. I wonder if thats hard to do than more standard pickpocketing.

Can someone clarify this for me though? Why is pickpocketing destroyed in the patch? By installing it am I going to miss out on rare and valuable items? I was hoping to pick up an Enchanted Wakazashi from Antone, but he doesn't carry it =/ I wonder if he'll carry it later though, or if I've lost my chance.. oh well...