Played D:OS1 and I loved it, but I didn't play with a rogue since I felt that they were a little underpowered and pickpocketing was relatively pointless.

Has that been changed, or is there actually stuff worth stealing now? I'd rather not deal with the tedium of sneaking around and the risk of pissing off NPC's unless there's a hefty reward for it.

Pickpocketing and Lockpicking are now one combined skill.

Not sure how pickpocketing is in the final release.

Pick pocket was changed so that it no longer scale with your char level. Instead, each pickpocket level will allow you to loot up to X gold and Y weight with a major increase as you level them, from 300 gold, to 450 and on level 3, 1.1k!

Pickpocket on Beta was ridiculous and on release, it's even more useful because you barely make any money from selling items. The game seems to balance the store assuming that you already have a super high level barter for the discount and pick pocket to steal those money and loots back to buy more stuffs.

And with how pickpocket scale with level so well now, expect thievery rings to be even more important because that +2 in total from both ring can result in extra 8000 gold easily if you let everyone steal.

Also, it's hilarious how boss fights can become so much easier if you let your thief go around and pick pocket all the special ammo and bomb while the convo is happening. I'm using this cheese to defeat all the level 4 magister on Tactician at low level to prevent them from using knock down and bombs.

I have an issue with Pickpocketing! It seems everytime i pickpocket, no matter how hidden i am etc, the NPC always seems to noticed that i have stolen something! I have learned that after i steal something i have to run like hell because i know the NPC will notice missing things and somehow know that I did it :(

Basically, if you want to have enough money to actually buy anything you need to steal from every merchant you can. The difference between someone playing normally and someone exploiting thievery is astronomical.

It feels like they've balanced around the fact that something is an option, rather than things being optional. They've made the prices even higher than EA, dropped the sell price of things like paintings by 1/5th, so it feels as though they've balanced around stealing.

Same goes for buying items - they've balanced around you having barter. Heck, the same two items in two different vendors are very likely to be sold for different prices depending on where you are. If you buy a book from a vendor in Fort Joy vs one in the act 1 Encampment, the Encampment book will cost more, as if accounting for the fact you'll have more bartering by then.

Because the option to respec and steal is there, they have to balance around it.
and they support this by giving you a ton of merchants to steal as you do quests. Some of them just stand in the open field when they open the shop and some even go right into a cellar and remain there.

While you don't really need to steal 4x on every merchant as they restock for a whooping 40k - 50k gold on each of them, doing so allow you to upgrade your gears every time they restock which makes life really easy, not necessary though since most gears will easily last you 2 levels before they need to be changed so only stealing once or twice is enough as long as you get the best value out of it (Like stealing the item instead of the gold because items will show their true price when stolen which is like, half or a third of what they normally sell)

Guys, there is only few civil abilities, and 3 of them are based around having more money - bartering gives you better prices, thievery gives you free items from NPCs, and lucky find gives you random items everytime you loot a crate or barrel.. and from luckyfind 7 you will often find legendaries in random barrels

So of course, it had to be balanced around usage of atleast one or two of these skills =)

I really hate how thievery is "balanced". It does not feel fun, it feels like work. I can't steal any gear because it has a stolen tag which will be found, I can steal stuff that can be stacked, but why waste your limited stealing on that? Instead it is better to try and take money (once because you can steal from the same person again) and even then, I have to sit there and wait for the NPC to go through the whole "I HAVE BEEN ROBBED!!!", and THEN go through the whole show and dance to let them search me. EVERY-SINGLE-TIME. Let me repeat, stealing is not fun, but you HAVE to steal if you want to actually buy anything because everything is stupidly expensive.

I don't agree that stealing should be fun and even more easy as it is in this game. There is not the slightest of risk in stealing, at least if you do not solo the game.

And money is the best object of stealing, also in the real world. Why do you think you should be able to walk around in stolen gear in a world without a huge mass of people in huge cities to hide behind?

@ Omgilovesteak: speak with the victim, then change to a different char and pickpocket with all the time you need, slender or run away, no need to hurry, when you are safe, change back to your talking char, end the talk, let the robbed control you, then run to the thief and enjoy the fruits of your ugly deeds.