Playing a Pure Thief in Skryim

Describes the build and playstyle for a thief who is about robbing and stealing rather than dungeon-crawling and killing.

Introduction

This guide outlines my play tips for playing a "pure thief" in Skyrim. By that I mean a character that primarily goes around robbing homes/stores and pickpocketing people for goods and gold. For my playthrough I used Fudgemuppet's Gray Fox modded build, but the advice below works for a vanilla Skyrim build as well.

The Build

The Fudgemuppet video give details about the build, but I'll go through the race, skills, attributes, and standing stones at a high level.

Race

Makes little difference which one you choose. Khajit and Argonians have certain advantages like higher initial skill levels in thieving skills and racial powers that also help with thieving (seeing at night and waterbreathing), but any race really will work. I chose Imperial like in the Fudgemuppet build. I used the Imperious - Races of Skyrim[www.nexusmods.com] mod for fun.

Skills

Note: I used the Ordinator[www.nexusmods.com] mod per Fudgemuppet's build for fun, but it doesn't change any of the advice below.

Sneak - This is the mainstay of your build. Use the money you steal to train this up with Delvin from the Thieves Guild. You have little combat ability so in dungeons and the like you will be trying to sneak past enemies whenever possible. It's actually a fun and challenging playstyle.

Pickpocket - I recommend training this up with Silda the Unseen in Windhelm, then attempt to pickpocket your money back from her. Good times.

Lockpicking - This will level up normally through play, although there are chests in the Thieves Guild you can practice on.

Speech - Again, this will train up when you fence your ill-gotten goods.

Light Armor - This will level up slowly, but it really doesn't matter much. Mostly you're going for the Unhindered perk and you'll be wearing light armor anyway (Thieves Guild, Guild Master, Blackguard).

One Handed - Just taking the first two levels of this for slightly better damage. I went with this to follow the Fudgemuppet build, but I could argue that you would get more mileage putting these two perk points into Archery. See the Combat section below.

Attributes

50% health, 50% stamina. If playing an Imperial via the mod, feel free to use one of the 10/20/30 improvements to drop Magicka to 50, since you won't use it at all*.

* Unfortunately, if you need to burn something for any reason, the game forces you to use the Flames spell. The one exception that comes to mind is that the game does allow you to burn the Goldenglow bee hives with a torch.

Standing Stones

Note: I used the Adromeda - Standing Stones of Skyrim[www.nexusmods.com] mod per Fudgemuppet's build for fun.

Thief Stone to start for faster leveling of those thief skills. Around level 20 or so you can branch out to something else. For vanilla game, the Atronach Stone is the best. For the modded game, the Tower Stone or the Steed Stone are probably best, although I recommend Tower for later since it auto-opens lower level locks so it may slow down your Lockpicking advancement somewhat.

Combat and Gear

Combat

Your goal of course will be to avoid combat wherever possible, but sometimes you don't have a choice. Common situations are: opponent blocking the way, opponent has to be killed as part of the quest, or maybe you just get discovered. Here are some tips to handle those situations.

Snipe - Hit 'em with an arrow and then hide until they lose track of you. Repeat until opponent is dead.

Poison - Not just for killing! A good Fear poison can get rid of an opponent while you hide again, and a Frenzy poison can distract opponents and/or thin the herd a bit. You may wonder why I don't recommend Alchemy above, but frankly you have too many other perks you need to get, plus you'll be surprised how many homes and shops have poisons you can steal.

Enchanted Weapons - Like Poison above, prioritize Paralysis, Fear, and Turn/Banish weapons in that order.

Run Away - Run until you can sneak again. Your stamina will be pretty high plus you'll have Initiative from Light Armor (modded), so you should be able to outrun most opponents.

Use the Environment - Drop that foolishly placed lantern into the oil slick.

Gear

Armor - Use Thieves Guild armor initially. You can if you choose go the route of Improved Thieves Guild and then Guild Master armor as you play through the Thieves Guild questline, but I propose you go straight to Solsteim, find Glover Mallory the smith in Raven Rock, and do his quest to gain access to the Blackguard armor which is better than the above. It's a fairly easy quest that is mainly travelling across the map and then doing a quick sneak to get to a body. Easy for even a low level thief. Honorable mentions to the Armor of the Old Gods boots and gauntlets, or Linwe's Armor boots, gloves, and hood, either of which are more helpful in a dungeon-crawling situation. Other than that, look for Amulets or Rings that boost your thief skills.

Weapons - As part of the Thieves Guild questline you gain access to Chillrend, which has a nice Paralysis feature. Similarly, the Nightingale Bow you get has a Slow effect.

Playthrough

Here are some general tips for playing a "pure" thief.

• Join the Thieves Guild before doing other questlines, including the main questline. It provides you with a messload of thief-related perks. I recommend doing the Guild quests slowly - I spent a lot of time doing the side quests for Delvin and Vex to gain money, training, and skills that way. I didn't get access to Shouts until I was level 16. Doing the special side quests for a town (after you've done 5 jobs there) nets you more fences to sell to.
  
• Try not to save-scum. It's very tempting to quicksave and reload to get out of trouble. But you lose out on the cool jail system. Let youself get caught (although maybe don't do your main pickpocketing when you're doing a quest for Vex/Delvin because they don't pay you if you get caught). Also, it's very cool to get yourself out of situations where you're spotted by an opponent rather than cheating.
  
• Rob houses during the day when the owners are out, and shops at night when the owners are asleep. At least at first people will have a pretty high chance to hear/spot you even if they are asleep.
  
• Spend a lot of your time initially robbing places. You get great loot/money.
  
• Initially, it's much easier to pickpocket gold than anything else like jewelry.
  
• Train up Sneak with Delvin whenever you have the funds. You want Sneak to be high for your level.
  
• Find the jail in each town and pickpocket the key from a guard. Fun and useful.
  
• Challenge yourself to kill as little as possible and sneak your way through/out of situations.
  
• Use your bow and arrow to distract opponents away from where you want to go.

Conclusion

That's it - hope it was helpful!

[mirth81]

I've done Illusion in a thief/assassin build and it is very fun, but with the "pure thief" build I was going for no spells.

[JK]

And if you want to level illusion, for the invisibility spell, paralysis, calm (to avoid killing anyone during the job), or any other spell, just spam-use the Muffle spell (it levels Illusion VERY fast), but just try to enchant your weapons or use poisons instead, since if you use Illusion, you might need to use magicka more than a pure thief, and spend less perk points in sneak and other thief perk trees. **It is optional, NOT RECOMMENDED FOR A PURE THIEF, but still fun to use (on paper, I haven't even tried it out).

[kekmaestro]

the illusion spell invisibillity comes in handy as a thief