No appreciable skillgains from picking pockets

[Lemuel]

After several weeks of trying at all angles, the skillgains in Picking Pockets are so miniscule as to be considered a bug. I have not been able to gain the needed 2.5 points needs to take another lesson in weeks.

Yes, I can pick pockets for over two hours without gaining a single point in it.

If I steal from someone who is too low in perception, I gain 0 from it.

If I steal from crowds, I get a rather inadequate gain (0 or sometimes 0.04 or so, but rarely) and in the meantime some angry citizen is spawned chasing me around with a rapier.

If I steal from someone high in perception, almost invariably, this mob will catch me and cut me to pieces, meaning I spend a lot of time in the infirmary. I might even get in one successful steal, but the skillgain is inadequate to the amount of time (seeking the mark then healing up afterwards) which I have to spend to get that small skillgain.


Quite possibly the picking pockets skillgain is the most 'broken' of all the skill gains.

I'm not asking for leaps and bounds, but at the barest minimum, a guaranteed gain of at least a pitiable 0.02 for every successful pick. That way, the character might have a skillgain of one point per hour of practice if he's lucky. In times past, you could train again for another +1 point after 24 hours passed regardless of improvement, but that is no longer possible. There are some guild abilities that are now unreachable for newly-created thieves under this current system.

[Marauder]

In my personal opinion, it seems like someone has a thing against stealthy people and related skills. See the stealth skill itself. It's near impossible to train, especially if you have no abilities to end combat temporarily, and from what you've said, pick pocketing is worse.

On another note, it kind of seems like Utasa agents also get the short end of the stick, and they, too, are heavily based on stealth. My concern is that my agent keeps getting sent off to kill infested in Tarueka, which wouldn't be bad, if they were appropriate for his skill level (see: "GO TO TARUEKA FARM AND KILL OFF SEVEN OF THE MOBS IN THIS AREA!"). That and stealth would be impossible to train if he were a Thief instead, because he'd have to constantly purchase smoke vials to practice it.

Overall? Stealthy characters and Traders (from what I've been reading) have been nerfed a little too much, in comparison to people like the Mummers and the Rook Parlour members.

[Nootau]

Tasks are not meant to be places where you train ever skill. They never have been. If you wish to train skills like stealth, go to locations where hiding is easier and snipe or ambush targets. When I am using a newer account, i target things from the graveyards or creatures that appear with the hunt command. (Some Guilds don't have combat tasks or tasks which one can gain ranks of any skill)

If you are having trouble pick-pocketing, first train stealth to sneak around targets with higher perception, then steal form them. You can steal from mobs, not just from towns. So train up also your combat skills to fight off or kill the mobs that spot you trying to steal from them.

It was a 'nerf' to stealth users gaining ranks quickly, because before you did not use stealth to gain ranks, you only bought the levels and reaped the benefits, which are easier to gain that way than most other skills in the game.

[edit]
Btw, gaining 0.02 gains per action of a ambush or a sword strike is normal for every skill of a closely skilled target for any combat skill. Is this different for your skills?

[Marauder]

...Let me put it this way. With holiday training bonuses during about half of it, I managed to grind my way to 500 Sorcery through intense training in under three weeks. For a person to do the same with stealth, it would take months. Real life months. Because you don't always gain from ambushing something. You have to actually surprise them (probably decently at that) and hit to gain anything, as far as I've seen, and then you have the issue of getting back into hiding.

Sniping may be a decent solution to the issue of having to re-hide over and over, but what if they find you as a Thief? You have to drop riln on smoke vials or something of that sort to hide again, not to mention you're already paying riln for arrows. Keep in mind the "paranoid" status affect works on -everything-, as far as I've noticed, which means once you hit, it becomes incredibly hard to do so again, based on the base perception of what you're targeting.

Edit: Also. Thieves rely -heavily- on stealth skill to gain guild ranks, as their only task is "GO PICK THESE LOCKS AND GET ME THIS ITEM!" or so I've seen. Which means having low stealth is liable to get you tossed into jail several times while you desperately attempt to gain guild ranks and access to further abilities.

[Nootau]

You are missing something very important. '500' sorcery is not worth very much compared to '500' Stealth. Unless the target is [trained in perception to rival the stealth score], their defenses risk turning from 700 or even 1000 defensive rolls down to defensive rolls of 25. The game was never intended have ways of quickly gain hundreds of stat points. With casual play could I gain a five to ten stealth points per day on my Elemancer currently, which does not have any tools nor skills for regaining stealth.

If you are having issues ambushing targets from missing your (!) strike, use dual wielding to increase your amount of strikes. Each strike has its own chance to perform an ambush check. I average five strikes a round and rarely do I not get an ambush at least half of the time. You do not have to spend money of countless arrows, thought the first investment of fifty should last you a life time if you are focused, as you recover them once you kill your target. As I said, once you have been found kill the target. Other mobs do not gain the paranoia bonus, only the ones attacked do.

If you need practice on lockpicking, there are locked boxes in the Infested areas, simply kill everything there and focus on the boxes. If you are trying to train stealth and stealth skills before any others skills or want stealth skills high while remaining weak otherwise, it is going to take you much longer. So over all my advise is, practice where you are willing to kill every person and thing that could notice you, don't practice where you can't afford to be seen. You do not need guild rank or abilities to train stealth. You never have, and I doubt you ever will.

[Acarin]

Actually, I think with the current system, 500 sorcery will get you a lot farther than 500 stealth...

[hadesfire]

Acarin has the most stealth in the game or close to from what i've heard. In a plains room the stealth factor is so lowered that I have a 1/4 chance to see him with less than 100 perception. Stealth has to be higher than the perception of the target in order to gain the real benefits and perception is so much easier to train I just got practice melee and gain perception as a bonus.

[KianTheArcher]

I think it's pretty reasonable that someone that doesn't have special training or a means of camoflauging his or herself has issues hiding in a flat, nearly barren environment. And whether or not Perception is easier to train or Stealth is easier to train is, I think, based on personal preference. Stealth isn't too bad to train I think, because it's something you can actively do, and as soon as you get a small amount of it (and aren't attacking animals, as well as aren't trying to train it in plans environments), it isn't too hard to train from there on out without getting hurt if you're careful.

Whereas with perception, you're more prone to getting hurt if you try to focus on training just perception.

[hadesfire]

Perception is easier because most everywhere has sneaky little creatures and perception is completely passive, with the recent nerfs I haven't made much improvements in stealth and i had 50 stealth, I hunt quite a bit but 2 reasonable days of hunting doesn't improve my stealth regardless of what i hunt.

[Acarin]

[quote=KianTheArcher]I think it's pretty reasonable that someone that doesn't have special training or a means of camoflauging his or herself has issues hiding in a flat, nearly barren environment.[/quote]

While I agree to some extent, I do think that the penalty is very severe. From the skill description:

Stealth is the ability to move and act unseen or unnoticed. It involves both sticking to the shadows as well as adapting to your surroundings to act in a manner that won't draw attention to yourself, effectively hiding in plain sight. If you plan on doing any scouting, spying, elusive game hunting or less-than-reputable acts such as burglary and picking pockets, stealth is a must.

That being said, if we're skilled enough we would find a way to hide in open terrain, drawing attention away or hiding in open sight. Just because the terrain is open doesn't mean that there aren't ways to hide. Kian has access to camouflage, so it doesn't bother him. For non-udemis it's much more difficult. We have an extreme stealth nerf in a large number of rooms and the paranoia effect to deal with. Additionally, lighting conditions often make this worse. It's hard enough to remain unnoticed and many critters have ridiculously high perceptions that don't seem to be consistent with their other abilities. These are big issues, but as GMs and others have pointed out, stealth is quite powerful so some checks are warranted.

I won't address gains, other than that I've noticed that sometimes there is 0 gain from a successful ambush on a challenging critter and that multiple ambushes with shadow strike can sometimes be necessary before skill gains kick over. I don't know if this is a bug, but I'll post it next time I encounter it. If this is the case, it might be what's responsible for the apparently slow stealth skill gains.