In Morrowind, we would break into houses, locked doors, chests and the like, never sure of the rare or valuable items we would find. It added an extra layer of fun to the game. Oblivion totally neglected this. In Oblivion, we would break into chests, houses, rooms, etc to find cups, quills, and other worthless generic items and weapons. Bethesda can make the came that much more fun by adding a better sense of mystery to what we may find while looting properties!

I too noticed the lack of much shiny shiny when burgling houses in Oblivion. I blame the too short amount of time they spent on what they called the "clutter pass" before release. Also, I think even the "randomized" containers you opened obeyed the level scaling. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Yeah they did obey the scale. It's lame to be a high level, and find high level valuable goods everywhere you look just because your a high level. You should have to look in the right place for them, and luck should be involved. Oblivion nearly (aside from the legendary armor pieces and few weapons like umbra) did away with the concept of "rare" items and replaced it with "high level items". The high level items should always be rare, and if you somehow manage to best whatever is gaurding them while you are a low level, you should be rewarded for that! Kindof like the vaults in vivec.

I really enjoyed the few times in oblivion finding a diary in someones house, or a note that seemed personable. But I do agree that more should be added.

Oh man I made a fortune just by stealing "junk" in Oblivion.

You have books, wine, other alchohol, silverware, clothes, money, odd jewelry and nick knacks, food that can be made into potions for extra free fense profit.
Then you have, apparatus, armour, weapons, rare ingrediants, scrolls, soul gems if you look in the right places.
Really if you take the second then make it TV's, DVD's and other electronic goods you have what every thief IRL steals.

I'm going with the same loot in Oblivion, than more phat loot tbh.
The good stuff is for quests and special marks, everywhere else should not be loaded down.

I like playing thieves taking on small targets it's more believable for me.
It hones the skills and lets you feel that maybe your choice is not always the best one.
No ones going to feel screwed going to jail for stealing the Vorpal blade of doom +500 from a town house and accidently killing the owner.

You would though if you planned the perfect time to break into Mr Smiths the farmers house.
Only for him to show up, wake his son / daughter and force you to kill him, and then you find out a pair of shoes and 20 gold is all you get.
For players that try to not save and reload when stuff goes wrong this is mana from heaven

As a long time fan of playing thief/spy like characters in Morrowind and Oblivion I must say that there were quite a few disappointments to me how being a thief was handled in Oblivion. The Thieves Guild quest chain was awesome, it had great story, great lore and was a very nice challenge at times. General thievery however was very disappointing, I could rob one shop or a couple of houses in the expensive areas of the Imperial city and then I would be able to fence more than enough stolen goods to qualify me for the top level of Thieves Guild quests. For those of you that don't know you had to fence x gold worth of goods at Thieves Guild fences every couple of quests to unlock the next couple of quests. It was based off your total fenced gold, so one good hall from a shop robbery and you'd never need to steal and fence anything again. Stealing things to sell for gold wasn't really needed in Oblivion, I made more than enough gold in the course of looting for the main story and side quests along the way and so house robbery served no purpose once you'd reached that target. The odd personal effects found in houses were nice to see, but beyond that the appeal wore off very quickly. I really hope Bethesda will do something to improve house robbery, be it in the challenge or the reward or the pure fun factor.

Exactly! In Morrowind there was a totally different sense of mystery when you were snooping around.....although maybe it just felt like it was because it was 8 years ago when I was a naive twelve year old haha.

Yes I agree, worthless thievery disappoint me in Oblivion, since Oblivion have improved sneaking then Morrowind, some changes must be done

No worthless cluter, there must be price for all items, some items must have greater price

Better leveling of loot in houses like in
Phitts Worthwhile Thievery
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4318

There must be secured vaults like
Vaults of Cyrodiil
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=9357
Or vaults in Morrowind

Wow. I like that vaults of cyrodiil mod. Too bad I have the console version : (

I agree, and you can probably rest assured this problem is addressed in Skyrim. Im hoping there will be a lot more locked containers than Oblivion, and with worthwhile loot. The stories for the theives were good, but the overall theivery in the game svcked.

Also, this not only applies to the theives guild but all guilds. When you become a grandmaster, it should be special. I always felt in Oblivion that becoming a grand master had little to no meaning or effect in the game. The only thing that changed is how people addressed you. There should be GREAT rewards for excelling to the highest possible ranks in any guild.

Agreed, the loot should reward your effort properly. I also hope they get rid of the ridiculous "stolen" label on objects, there's no way a trader may know an item is stolen, except maybe if they recognize it being their owns.

As I've said before, there needs to be more easy to carry stuff in my burglar sack, jewels, gold, gems, ores and such, depending where you go.

It's true that in Oblivion being a thief wasn't a lot of fun. Once again, I think the level-scaling is to blame.

In OB I enjoyed sneaking into peoples properties, but there was nothing valuable to steal. Also the red-hand mark annoyed me, as someone else said how would they know its stolen unless its theres.

They did, however, it seemed to me that the leveled loot in containers in house didn't actually scale up to the same level as loot in dungeons, so even at high levels, you wouldn't find anything good while stealing, and even if you did, by the time you could, you would be able to easily get it from fighting a random bandit. In any case, stealing things when not doing quests was usually pretty unrewarding in Oblivion, and was rather pointless when you weren't trying to fence enough loot to get the next Thieves Guil quest. There just weren't enough items that were worth stealing, and it's quite unfortunate too because I felt that Oblivion's stealth mechanics were improved over Morrowind's, and the Radiant AI could have also done a lot to make being a thief more fun, and yet it was ruined by lack of proper rewards for being a thief, in Morrowind, the most rewarding experience for an aspiring thief was probably to break into the vaults in Vivec, which wasn't as hard as it should be, since the Ordinators guarding them didn't care if you walked around in the vault, looking suspiciously at the loot, they only objected if they saw you stealing things. Not to mention if you were strong enough to kill one, you could take care of them without problems by just taunting them until they attack you. You'd think there would be concequences to picking fights with guards given the task of guarding vaults full of expensive items, but hey, I never said that design made sense. But regardless of the problems with their implementation, which mostly came from the AI and stealth mechanics of the game, once you got in them, the rewards would defnitely be worth whatever you did to get you there, provided you could get them all out, that's the sort of thing my thieves never got in Oblivion, not without mods, anyway. But with Skyrim presumably further improving on the stealth and AI, I'm sure breaking into a vault or similar such place could be made into a fun experience, and a profitable one too, assuming the payoff is more than some calipers, a wolf pelt and a couple of carrots. Obviously, not every house should have valuable items, like with dungeon loot, the best items you can steal should be hard to find, but as a general rule, richer homes should have more valuable loot than poorer ones, obviously, this is just a general rule. Not every upper class house should have Daedric armor sitting in it. But you might at least find some expensive clothes and jewelry.



I agree. It makes no sense for plates and bowls and the like to have no value. After all, these are things that characters would buy and sell in the setting, so logically, they should have a value. There's no reason why only items the player can use should have a price, after all, you still have to find and take such items to get them and be able to sell them, so why shouldn't you be able to be rewarded for doing so? It's not like a common plate is going to be worse two thousand Septims. The more expensive clutter would usually be less common and often found in the houses of rich people, and if the game was well designed, would not be extremely easy to steal.

I would prefer more variety of quests....

Some Spy type missions to eavesdrop/steal sensitive information.
Some bandit type missions where you wait for caravans to pass.
An Oliver Twist type pickpocket introduction to the guild.

completely agree wasn't worth stealing after awhile . what would be cool if certain houses/castles had unique items that you could steal and display in ur own home. so later in the game u still wanted to steal from people

I don't think loot should be scaled at all. What you find is what you find. Like in real life, never understood the whole level scaling thing. It shouldn't be there at all imo.

Yes and No. I, personally, would like a timed "hot item"

Have to wait a day or two before the items can be sold in the same town they were stolen from. If you ship your stolen [censored] off to another town they'll buy it there no questions. But it seems silly to steal something of value from one person, and pawn it off at the store next door. They'd hear about it.

u would need to sell ur stole items in a different city . can understand everyone knowing what's been stolen in a town but not another town

There was less fun being a thief in Oblivion than in Morrowind.

In Oblivion, you knew that every chest would contain some clutter item(s), which could be sold for gold, but they were worthless in comparison to most other items. What I loved about Morrowind is that you knew opening a locked container or whatever had some sort of special or highly valuable/important item, which made theiving rewarding and fun. It's true in Oblivion you would find the occassional rare item, but that item wasn't exclusive to that specific chest, and you was just going to sell that item anyway - and probably not use it.

Also psych guards & shop owners ruined it , seriously i needed a fence to sell a stolen goblet ?

How about having items that are enchanted, but also that normal folk would actually use around their house? "Eldritch Broom of the Winds", "Morgon's Calipers of Great Precision", "Cabbage of Divine Justice", that sort of thing?

Would we be able to use the broom to fly? That would be nice.

Remember the locked display cases in the different guilds, with what looked like very nice glass and ebony weapons? Remember the suprise when you opened them after alot of thought and planning only to find out they are worthless display pieces? Yeah, that was ridiculous. I loved all the guarded look like the glass gear in the Ghost gate in Morrowind, and the vaults etc. There were hardly any artifacts you could find either, made exploration boring.

Like so much else, oblivions terrible randomizing and scaling system broke this aspect of the game aswell... hopefullly we'll see it redeemed