Black Market Mogul and Larcenist: A Saner Way

A simple, no-nonsense guide to grinding your way towards the grindiest of thiefy achievements. No add-ons or superhuman agility required, just some skills and Champion bar passives.

What we're going for

Achievements! While this guide is pretty useful for generating gold, I find that a single lucky drop sold at a guild store will typically outperform an average day in thievery - which is true to reality, as petty robbery will always be outperformed by honest work once you factor in the costs; truly profitable white-collar crime is not possible in ESO (thankfully).

What achievements, you ask?


Black Market Mogul (50 points): Sell 1,000,000 gold worth of loot at at Outlaw Refuges.

Grind, grind, grind goes the millstone. I've been playing since the 2015 beta and only now am I getting serious about unlocking it, and that's partially the reason for this guide, to get my notes on optimizing the grind.


(Zone) Larcenist (15 points): Sell 20,000 gold worth of loot at a zone's Outlaw Refuge. These achievements are only available for post-release zones (eg. Necrom, High Isle, Blackwood etc.).

That's 15 zones as of January 2023, and a total of 320,000 in loot to steal. These practices actually helped me unlock most Larcenist achievements in under a month.


Magnanimous Magnate (50 points): Sell 4,000 gold worth of loot at every alliance territory's Outlaw Refuge and Abah's Watch (i.e. every territory in the game at release).


This achievement includes the Dragon's Hoard (Pact), Lion's Golden Pride (Covenant), Eagle's Nest Egg (Dominion), and Merchant Lord's Coffers (Abah's Watch) achievements (15 points each).

That's 16 zones total (five per alliance plus the Watch) and a mere 64,000 gold to steal. Completing these achievements puts us some 384,000 gold or 38.4% of the way towards the Black Market Mogul achievement.

Recommended skills, Champion bar passives, and gear

For sanity, I feel it's best to level up the Thieves Guild skill line first, as this has the first set of useful skills. Number three is a secret tool that will help us later and can be acquired simply by going to Anvil and joining the Dark Brotherhood. Legerdemain skills are upgraded simply by doing thiefy stuff.

• Haggling: +10% loot value at max level, for faster grinding. (Thieves Guild)
  
• Veil of Shadows: -10% detection radius at max level, for convenience. (Thieves Guild)

• Blade of Woe: Special interaction that allows you to kill an NPC, for optimization and convenience. (Dark Brotherhood)

• Light Fingers: +50% chance of pickpocketing an NPC at max level, for faster grinding. (Legerdemain)
  
• Trafficker: +180% number of interactions with the fence at max level (140 loot items total), for faster grinding. (Legerdemain)
  
• Locksmith: +70% chance of forcing locks, for convenience. (Legerdemain)

Champion bar has two must-haves in my opinion from the Craft tree.

• Infamous: +25% loot value, for 25 Craft points, for faster grinding.
  
• Cutpurse's Art: Increased chance to get higher quality loot when pickpocketing, for 75 Craft points.

Both must be slotted to be in effect. This requires unlocking several earlier skills. I find that the cheapest way to unlock both is to get Out of Sight (10 points), Friends in Low Places (25 points), and Fade Away (50 points). A total of 85 Craft points nets you access to both of the Champion bar passives (which means the minimal amount of Champion Craft points you need is 185.

Finally, gear. As suggested by Zo at the Feline Good Meowporium (awesome guild, you should join us it), you can essentially become an invisible Master Sneak Thief with the following gear:

• Night Terror (Stormhaven): 3 pieces, recommend Rings and Necklace slots.
  
• Vesture of Darloc Brae (Northern Elsweyr): 4 pieces, recommend Head, Shoulders and Weapon slots
  
• Night Mother's Embrace (Deshaan): 5 pieces, recommend Chest, Hands, Waist, Legs, and Feet slots.

All sets are overland drops (meaning you can get them just by playing through the zone) and provide a stacking 2 m Sneak Detection Radius Reduction each, together with a 10%/10%/25% reduction in Sneak cost, respectively, Combined with a maxed-out Out of Sight CP passive (the one you already need to pick to gain access to the essential passives for this guide), the total Sneak Detection Reduction is 9 meters.

For context, the default detection radius is in the neighbourhood of 8 meters, so even a non-Khajiit can achieve CHIM and become invisible - or at least as invisible as a keeper who does not wish to be seen, allowing you to rob people, containers, and strongboxes in broad daylight.

In the words of Zo:

Originally posted by Zo:

Even a non-Khajiit is practically invisible to Aggro'd guards!

Yes, this includes enemies. You can get close enough to identify the individual notes of their sweat and count the hairs on their... Well, count the hairs.

Grinding or how I learned to love Fine loot and Easy targets

The following guide assumes that you have all the skills leveled up and the Champion bar contains the necessary passives. The goal is to maximize your acquisition rate by pickpocketing as many characters as possible for the highest quality loot. To recap, there are four basic tiers of loot:

• Normal white, 40 gold, 100 stack.
  
• Fine green, 100 gold, 20 stack.
  
• Superior blue, 250 gold, 5 stack.
  
• Epic violet, 1500 gold, don't stack.

Quality	Base value	Haggling	Cutpurse’s	Both
Normal	40	44	50	54
Fine	100	110	125	135
Superior	250	275	313	338
Epic	1500	1650	1875	2025

Haggling and Cutpurse's Art stack, for a total of +35% bonus to loot value (which means 35% less time to unlock the achievements).

So, that's the worth. How to obtain it? We're going to pickpocket NPCs. A lot of NPCs.

Why pickpocketing?

Every NPC you can rob carries three items that can be stolen, and falls into one of three categories: Easy, Medium, and Hard to pickpocket with the following difficulties:

	1st Item	2nd Item	3rd Item
Easy	50%	45%	40%
Medium	30%	20%	10%
Hard	20%	5%	0%
Easy + LF	100%	95%	90%
Medium + LF	80%	70%	60%
Hard + LF	70%	55%	50%
Easy + LF + Opportunity	100%	100%	100%
Medium + LF + Opportunity	100%	90%	80%
Hard + LF + Opportunity	90%	75%	70%

This is why Light Fingers is so important: With its +50% modifier it makes Hard targets viable, Medium consistent, and Easy turn into free loot (especially if you play a Khajiit, with the Cutpurse racial trait that gives +5% steal chance on top of other modifiers). LF stacks with the opportunity modifier (that sweet, sweet +20% when you wait behind a target and the prompt turns green, complete with a separate audio ping):


Loot quality depends on pickpocketing difficulty:

• Easy targets generally yield Normal quality loot, with a small chance for Fine,
  
• Medium are likely to grant Fine loot, with a chance for better loot,
  
• Hard consistently grant Fine loot, may grant Superior loot.

So, an Easy target like a Drunkard might be pickpocketed with minimal downtime, but you're only likely to see Normal loot.

This is why Cutpurse's Art is important: The loot tables get what's best described as an upgrade, so you get higher quality loot from easier targets. This makes Easy targets like Drunkards, Beggars, Fishers, or Laborers very viable targets, as they can consistently yield Fine loot.

For example, a random Drunkard might normally yield three Normal items for a grand total of 120 gold (162 with the loot value upgrades). With CA, you can consistently get three Fine items for a total of 300 gold (405 with upgrades).

Optimizing thievery

As you can likely tell, the goal is simple: Quantity over quality. The goal is not to get a few high value items (which is not guaranteed due to the way item drops are randomized), but the most amount of decent value items in the shortest amount of time.

How to do it? Find an area with lots of Easy target and start stealing. This might seem counterintuitive, but with the skills and Champion bar above, they are almost free loot (practically free if you run a Khajiit and have a 100%/100%/95% stealing chance), and you get three drops with a high chance for Fine loot and a decent shot at Superior loot.

For grinding purposes, this is ideal: Instead of waiting and stalking the target to get that opportunity modifier, you just go, hide behind a poor person, and rob them blind. The last item can be produced by simply using the secret tool mentioned earlier the moment you take the second item: The Blade of Woe leaves behind a perfectly lootable corpse.


He'll get better.

Some quick testing with a stopwatch shows stealing this way is much faster:

• An Easy target can be robbed twice and killed in under 10 seconds.
  
• A Medium target can be robbed twice and killed in about 12 seconds, if the opportunity modifier appears quickly.
  
• A Hard target can take upwards of 20 seconds to rob twice and kill, due to the success chances.

If you find tickling someone's brain with a pointy object icky, add a couple of seconds to grab that third item.

Focusing on Easy targets has another major benefit: You are much less likely to suffer from efficiency losses due to getting caught. Getting caught is a huge blow to the efficient thief:

• generates bounty and heat,
  
• throws you out of sneaking,
  
• makes your mark suspicious for far too long to bother (unless you use the secret tool),
  
• might make the target attack you.

Bounty is the most annoying, as it makes the guards very interested in you. If you pay the bounty or get killed by them, you lose all your loot. Even if you don't, you lose time running away from them and trying to break line of sight, typically running into another guard on the way, which leads to a conga line of Fun.

That said, if you already get into trouble and the civilians start punching you (particularly nobles and assorted scum), a way to salvage the situation and recover some efficiency is to simply Kill Everyone and Loot Their Corpses. Loot is loot, no?

Good crime spree locations

The precise choice of location for thieving is mostly down to individual preference. The reason why I suggested getting the Locksmith skill is to make locked buildings and strongboxes targets of opportunity: Forcing a lock is generally much quicker and thus more efficient than going through the minigame and failing the attempt doesn't count as a criminal act.

So a decent location for me is one that incorporates a mix of Easy targets, lootable containers, and strongboxes, preferably with a complex geometry (basically, lots of walls and scenery to hide behind) to break up lines of sight and make it easier to remain hidden.

My usual choices:

• Wayrest, Stormhaven: A decent combination of targets, particularly in the Docks and the main square, where you have a mix of strongboxes and lootable containers.
  
• Ebonheart, Stonefallls: A circuit passing through the Argonian village nets a significant number of Easy targets to lootkill.
  
• Lion Guard Redoubt, Glenumbra: One of my favorite places, as there are plenty of Medium difficulty targets, with very few Covenant guards. This is a departure from my usual philosophy, sure, but the Lion Guardsmen don't attack on stealing failure and the tents break up line of sight very effectively.
  
• Anvil, Gold Coast: Lots of buildings and choice targets; especially if you want to use the secret tool to optimize.

If you have any good spots to loot, please share them in the comments and I'll add them to the list of opportunities.

Also, here's a tip on how to keep track of what you've looted so that you don't overshoot and waste (assuming you have enough inventory space and clear out regularly): Divide the target loot value by 100 (so if you have 6000 left for the Larcenist achievement in a Zone, divide it by 100 to get 60). That's the target "point" value. Then, while stealing, only pay attention to the color of the stolen item and add points in your head:

• 0 points for Normal items.
  
• 1 point for Fine items.
  
• 3 points for Superior items.
  
• 20 points for Epic items.

So to meet the 60 point goal you might need 60 Fine items, 20 Superior items, and just 3 Epic items. This calculation assumes that you have both value bonuses present (Haggling and Infamous), so there's going to be some overshoot (since Normal items go for 54 and technically are 0.5 points, while Fine items go for 135 gold, making them 1.35), but you spend less time doing mental calculations that way and that does shave off a fair few minutes.

Plus any spillover can go towards grinding your way towards the next Larcenist achievement!

Closing words

Results may vary.

As a final note, I'd like to add that I highly advise leaving Isobel and Bastian at whatever it is they do when not tagging along, as you lose Rapport with them when stealing. If following the Easy strategy, I recommend also leaving Sharp-as-Night home (he really doesn't like preying on the underclasses).

Ember is a decent choice, as she gains Rapport when you steal from Hard targets - though she also loses Rapport when getting caught. Mirri doesn't seem to care too much and Azandar is, well, Azandar.

Thank you for reading this guide and I hope it'll help you with the grind.

PS: Like Sharp-as-Night, I do not condone preying on the underclasses and stealing from the unfortunate in real life. However, this is a game, so... Happy thieving, taffers!