Thieving...The Forgotten Skill?

Thieving... The art of stealing money or items from stalls, NPCs, picking locks, and so forth. This is a skill where you make money, with minimal work, and very minimal food. With this, why is thieving one of the most overlooked and under trained skills in the game? I did some research on this, and asked many high level skillers with low level thieving, why they don't train it. After months of looking, I found that 95% of the people I asked said they don't train thieving because "It's a useless skill". The majority of these people only got level 53 thieving for Desert Treasure, and ignored the skill afterwards. Contrary to popular belief, thieving is actually a very useful skill, and helps in many different skills.

I have thieved all the way to level 98, which I am staying at for now. Through these levels, I have experimented with many different features of the skill, and found many useful things this skill presents. This article is dedicated to those who think thieving is useless, and doesn't help in anything but getting to complete the Desert Treasure quest.

In the beginning, thieving can be a very long, boring, and brings little to no profit. This may be a reason why the skill has little popularity in the beginning. What some people don't know, is that with a very low thieving level of only 15, you can get pretty rich, very quickly by pickpocketing one of Runescape's least popular NPCs, the HAM Followers.

HAM Followers are one of the best additions to the thieving world in the game. While thieving them, you will be annoyed, and your fingers may hurt. These fun little people give you a lot of junk that you will never use, meaning you have to constantly drop your items to keep thieving. On top of this, another annoying feature with these guys are that after 3 times of being successfully hit, you will be knocked out and spawn either in the jail cell of the HAM hideout (Which you can just pick the lock to escape), or you will be outside the hideout, at a random place in the Draynor Forest. But after thieving for a while, you will notice that you got a fun little item from these seemingly useless NPCs... A level 1 clue. Now you may think that this is a pretty useless item to get after all that work, but level 1 clues can be completed within only a few minutes, and can contain such items like god pages, black trimmed armour, as well as trimmed wizard robes, which can all be sold for quite a lot of money...

So maybe you don't like to travel to all points of the land, following locations stated on a piece of paper for a few air runes, and studded leather chaps... Well if you continue thieving, you will get to the point at level 38 where you can pickpocket the Master Farmers.

Master Farmers are the main source of farming seeds in the game. They give all varieties of seeds except tree seeds. If you are thieving purely for profit, the ranarr and snapdragon seeds are fairly often thieved, and can sell for over 20k each seed. This seems like a lot of work for a measly 20k, however you also get other seeds that sell for decent amounts, such as watermelon seeds, and other herb seeds. The money adds up very quickly, as well as the thieving experience to get levels which will make much more money. The seeds left over from your thieving can be used to raise your farming level, and is probably the best way to get your farming level up next to Miscellania.

But maybe farming isn't your favorite skill to raise, and maybe you are stubborn and don't train farming at all, because lets face it, you don't play a game to grow plants right? Well never fear! There are plenty more opportunities to put your thieving level to good use!

At level 50 thieving, only 3 levels before you can just abandon thieving and do your precious Desert Treasure quest, you can now steal from another new place, the Wall Safes in Rogues Den, located underneath the pub in Burthorpe.

The Wall Safe in Rogues Den is a huge source of regular gems in the game. While stealing from this, you will get coins, as well as sapphires, emeralds, rubies, and diamonds. Aside from this, being an obvious source of crafting levels, this will also help in a variety of other areas. The sapphires you can thieve could be used to create Rings Of Recoil, which can be a very critical item in duels and death matches in the wilderness. For those who don't know, Rings Of Recoil will take the damage you are dealt by a player or monster, and deal back 10% of the damaged received. The emeralds thieved can be used to make Rings Of Dueling (8), which can be used to teleport to both the Dueling Arena, and to the Castle Wars area. Using these rings can dramatically help with getting fast Runecrafting levels by making fire runes. All you need to do is rub your Ring Of Dueling to teleport you to Al Kharid Dueling Arena, and walk a bit north and make fire runes. After this, just use an Amulet Of Glory to get to Edgeville Bank, or use your Ring Of Dueling again to get to the bank in the Castle Wars area. Once at your bank, just get more essence, and repeat the previous steps to make fire runes very quickly. The rubies you thieve can be used to make Rings Of Forging (notice a pattern here?), which can be used to smelt iron ores 100% of the time, instead of the usual 50%. Each ring breaks after 140 iron ores, so you will need many. This makes Smithing a heck of a lot cheaper than any other method, making it extremely useful to any potential smither who wants to make their own Rune armour. The diamonds you thieve can be used to make, you guessed it, Rings Of Life! These little items will automatically teleport you to Lumbridge / Falador when your hit points fall below 10%. This is useful for using the abyss to craft runes, or fighting high level monsters, so you don't lose everything you have because you died.

So maybe robbing safes isn't your cup of tea, you'd rather live a more "honest" life while thieving. Well you're also in luck! At 55 thieving you can thieve the fastest thieving NPC in the thieving world of thieves! The Knights Of Ardougne are the best thieving exp you can get in the game (to my knowledge), and this includes people who only have level 55 thieving! If you are really focused on getting a high thieving level, then this is the NPC for you! These guys give 50 gp per pickpocket, which may not seem like a lot, and really, it isn't. However, 50 gp every time you pick its pocket does add up in the long run, and you can find yourself with over 7 million gp by the time you hit 99 thieving.

Not interested in fast exp? You just want money or better ways to raise other skills instead? Well my friend, at level 70 thieving, you will now be able to thieve Paladins. These holy warriors give 2 chaos runes AND 80 gp every time you pick their pocket! These chaos runes add up very quickly, and are much easier to obtain than crafting the runes yourself. These chaos runes can either be used to raise your magic level, sell for tokkul to buy those famous Onyx gems for Amulets Of Fury, or can just be sold for profit on the Runescape Forums. Any way you slice it, these babies are great for making money or getting those magic levels you need to freeze your enemies in the wilderness with the infamous Ice Barrage spell.

Tired of doing childish magic tricks on Runescape? Maybe you're more into making potions for pking, or making training faster. Well, at 82 thieving, this is where thieving will really pay off! In the city of Yanille, there is a dungeon, which requires agility to access. In this dungeon contains many herblore related monsters, such as Chaos Druids, Chaos Druid Warriors, and Salarin The Twisted. What some people don't know, there is a door located right beside the Chaos Druids, and guess what? They lead straight to the bank of Yanille! Unfortunately, this door is one way only, and you still need to walk all the way back after each time you bank. But wait, what’s this? "Picklock Door"? That's right! You can skip all that pesky walking around to get to the druids, and basically have your own herblore supply located right beside a bank! This makes gathering herbs much easier than any other method, and combined with those workers you hired on Miscellania, and those herbs you farmed from thieving master farmers, you can watch your herblore level skyrocket! Or, if you are all about the money, you can sell all your ranarrs for 7k + per, or just sell all your unidentified herbs for 1k or more per.

In addition to the things already mentioned, Runescape has introduced very recently a new minigame, the Pyramid Plunder. This minigame lets the users use their thieving levels to find ancient artifacts which can be sold for a variety of prices. Each room requires a certain thieving level to access, but the final room is meant for those hardcore thieves, who managed to get their thieving level to 91. In every room while looking around, you may be able to find the prize you are looking for, the King's Sceptre. This handy weapon adds a decent mage offensive bonus, as well as gives you the ability to teleport to 3 different pyramids around the Runescape world. These pyramids are the Agility Pyramid where you can raise your agility level, the pyramid where you got your sceptre, or the most useful pyramid, the one to switch your magic spells to Ancient Magicks. This is very helpful for those people who frequently change to ancients for clues, or for people who pk / duel. Even though you can find this sceptre in any room of the pyramid, the higher level the room requires, the better chance of finding it.

From what I have said, you can now see that thieving is indeed a useful skill, and can be used to help you in many different skills at once. There are many other things that thieving is good for, but those are the main points for now.

Maybe after you read this article, it will inspire you to train this forgotten skill, and help make the high scores have more than the mere 234 people who have 99 thieving at the time this article has been written.

Happy Thieving!

Written By: Movar Mohktar
Edited By: Runehottie20
Coded By: Whydidijoin