How does the crime system work?

[Carface Is My Spirit Animal]

Unity version, having a hard time finding concrete information. I know there's https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall_Mod:Daggerfall_Unity/Bible/Crime but that only answers some things.

1) If you commit a crime, guards spawn, but you aren't caught/the surrender prompt doesn't appear, how long does the crime last until its forgotten?

2) If you commit a crime, the guards spawn, and they do "catch you" with the surrender prompt but you hit no and get away, is it treated differently from #1?

3) Is crime affected by region? Is there a separate crime system from say the Daggerfall to the Alakir Desert regions?

4) It seems like guards always spawn for random / in the streets / wandering NPC murder even if you're stealthed/invis/chameleon when you did it the guards will still find you which doesn't make a lot of sense? Is there a way to kill people to join the Dark Brotherhood without getting caught?

5) Sometimes when I break into a house and come out a guard will be there but there's never a success/fail message when breaking an entering, is there a way to check for sure or is it just random when you leave the building?

6) If you break into a building at night with no NPCs do you have to stay stealthed? Or can you walk around normally? Do you have to be in stealth mode when you leave the building to keep from getting caught or does it not matter?

[fracs]

1 you have travel to another location/town
2 no
3 its the same system but you wont be arrested in another region for crimes you commited in current region
4 no just run away or kill them
5 its random
6 it does not matter

If your regional reputation is too low, guards will appear every time you enter a settlement.

[PhamTrinli]

Good info on the crime system. Thanks

I think they could have handled it a lot better than they did - even with the technology they had available at the time. There are several things they could have done which would have made a lot more sense, logically, than what ended up in the game.

Not sure how much of a crunch they were under to get the game out. Maybe this was a casualty of that?

[Zsrai]

PhamTrinli původně napsal:

Good info on the crime system. Thanks

I think they could have handled it a lot better than they did - even with the technology they had available at the time. There are several things they could have done which would have made a lot more sense, logically, than what ended up in the game.

Not sure how much of a crunch they were under to get the game out. Maybe this was a casualty of that?

It was a small, functionally indie, dev team and there was massive project creep.

[Elthrael]

For #5 and #6, as someone who spent a good amount of time thieving their way around the Iliac Bay:

#5: breaking into a house using Lockpicking shouldn't garner any attention from the guards. Problem is, you can only try once per instance (i.e. when you load a save), so it takes a long time to level Lockpicking and even with Lockpicking and INT 100, you're not guaranteed a successful break-in. Bashing the door down has a random chance of spawning guards though, the longer you do it, the higher the chance of the guards spawning.

#6: Once you're inside a building, and if no guards spawned in the process, you're pretty much free to loot the place (if it's a store, houses and ironically, banks, have worthless loot so don't even bother). Only clicking on containers that pop the "This is private property - are you sure you want to look inside? Y/N" prompt has a chance to spawn the guards. Being stealthed, as fracs said, doesn't matter. If you manage to break into an "Incense and soft music"-level store of any kind, empty the shelves directly into your wagon and leave a rich person.

Another word of warning:
be careful if you get a random quest called "The Escort". If you complete it (i.e. escort your questgiver to a location), it will plummet that regions reputation by a whopping 20 points, since you basically helped a criminal or persona non-grata escape. However, you can complete the quest and not lose rep: you will get attacked by the faction that is looking for your questgiver at some point during the quest, provided you don't immediately fast travel. Just turn the questgiver in and you'll be fine (if the faction happens to be town guards, you'll actually gain +10 regional rep).

You can check your standing with the law in every region by hitting tilde (~) and typing print_legalrep into the console. This will generate a long list of all the "In the eyes of the law of <insert region>, you are <insert reputation description>" and their numerical values. If any value is -20 or lower, you'll get arrested on sight.

Lastly, if you feel the Thief experience in Daggerfall is underwhelming, you could give the mod Skullduggery - A Thief Overhaul a try.
https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/217

I haven't tried it myself but on paper it looks nice.