Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Pickpocketing/thieving

Can someone explain how this is supposed to work? Every time I successfully pickpocket someone they always ask to search my bags. I'm not getting caught. I sneak successfully, pickpocket the person successfully, and sneak away from them a litttle bit for good measure. Then, when I unsneak and start to casually walk away, they run up to me and ask to search my bags. Are you supposed to just run away immediately after pickpocketing? That seems dumb. If I'm successful, how do they know what I did and why would I have to run? Is there a proper way to do this so you don't get searched every time if you don't run like hell the second you SUCCESSFULLY steal something? Thanks.

put the stuff into a chest or box until you get searched, or send it to some team mate who is far away.

They are so all knowing, they will know in Driftwood if you stoll something in Fort Joy, because it has still the stolen tag. ^^

Indeed.

First thing I'll do when I ascend to divinity is to cast a geas on everybody so said guards in Driftwood will wear their pants on their heads -- that way, even if their omniscience is still immutably set in stone, at least they can no longer tell that that sweetroll I picked up in Fort Joy is stolen.

(I shall henceforth call their psychic link "in'SAN'ity" -- 'sweetroll alert network')

It's actually pretty sensible, we find it weird only because of game tropes habits.
See it through the eyes of the guy : he suddenly notice he's missing his stuff, and someone is casually walking away.
He didn't caught you in the act, he doesn't know you're the culprit, but SOMEONE stole from him and just at the same time you're around.

I was surprised at first, but at least this DOES make sense.

I agree, partly at least. I admit that it's nitpicking a bit but I would have hoped for some kind of logic similar to pickpocketing here; it makes no sense for a blacksmith to realise that a handful of nails went missing from his huge stash. Stealing his prize piece of armor from the display stand, however, should rightly trigger the search routine.

Still it's bloody silly that the stolen tag stays on items forever.

I found out from someone else that if you drop the stuff to ground right after stealing they don't find it on you and then you pick it back up and move on. Put what you don't use/sell right away in a container.

Just make sure you’re not around when they notice what happened.

Talk to the person you want to steal from with 1 character, pickpocket with another.
After you’ve done the deed casually wlk away. You need maybe 2 screens of distance.

Your victim will only notice it was robbed after you break off the conversation. But not before enough time goes by to also run away with the final character. It’s really quite simple.

As someone pointed out, you just leave and get far enough away. However if you're in a solo game, all 4 need to leave so don't unchain. If you steal stuff and get far enough away to be safe the vendor will accuse one of the other 3 and even though not finding anything on a search will assume you're "guilty of something" and fight you.

Also you can only pickpocket anyone once. If you try a second time you'll be caught immediately. So do a couple of tests and see what you can get. There is also a limit to how much you can take, I believe it's based on total gold value as I've been able to take anywhere from 2 to 6 things and that's after reloading and trying a few times to test it.

But pickpocketing is basically broke. You can take anywhere from 4 to 6 skill books from each one of them or a ring, amulet, etc. you'd like or some sort of combination. Or take his gold. The problem is you go and pickpocket every vendor and you basically never have to buy anything. Eventually your entire group has the best skills, the best gear and you're sitting on thousands of gold......

The only thing would be that as you level up and the vendors have new/better items you would have to buy them since you can't pickpocket them twice.
However you'll have lots of gold and as the game progresses you find new vendors

indeed what you need to do aswell to get past that is have a con artist in the group whom can sweettalk they way out of it.

Thanks for all the replies. I've basically been doing it right then. I pickpocket what I can then immediately run a good distance away until they're done searching for the robber. It still seems kind of dumb to me that they don't notice me reaching in their pockets and stealing 6k gold, but after I'm done they immediately know they've been robbed. It's like not noticing a strong gust of wind at all but you do notice and complain about a slight breeze. In reality, if they don't notice my hand in their pocket and the movement/shift of gold in the first place, then they shouldn't notice immediately after, 100% of the time. Either you get caught in the act, or you succeed and get away.

I do agree that the stolen tag should probably only apply to the vendor you stole if from, or the immediate area around the market. If I stole something from some random npc in the dungeon of Fort Joy, how would anyone else know about that, even on the island, let alone elsewhere after you leave the island? Ah well, I guess it is what it is.

I don't understand why you make it so difficult for you, except you play solo. Talk to the to-be-victim with one char and steal with another. Slender out of view with the thief with all the time you need. Then change back to the talker and end the dialog. The victim searches your innocent group members and never finds anything. It's called distraction in the real world.

That NPCs find stolen stuff of others and even care for it is strange however. For a time my distraction group was accused for haven stolen goods on them. I searched and searched and found nothing. I was not careful enough, later by coincidence I saw that it was a bloody needle I had stolen in Act 1 for what reasons ever and long forgotten which caused my problems.

The whole system is lazy and bloated.

Especially the forced combat for having nothing but "looking guilty".

Also, I'm sorry, if someone accused me of theft and forced a search, they would not leave with a simple "I'm sorry". They owe me something

even though it's still abusable, i actually commend them on the job they've done trying to balance it. it's probably the most complex stealing system i saw in an RPG. for instance, i was trying to rob a guy on a non-sneakable town square (it looks like it's always fully red regardless of who's watching it), so i teleported him away, but that makes him take damage and run away, calling for help, so i had another guy immediately start a conversation with him, and yet another one keeping the guard engaged. maybe he wouldn't have minded teleporting if the damage had been blocked by armor, but he didn't have any, and fortify makes the target teleport-immune (i wonder if that was one of the reasons for that). also, maybe a smoke cloud could have helped sneaking, but i didn't have the means to create any, apart from setting things on fire and then dowsing it, but that would have caused damage as well.