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A few questions here about the line between theft and looting.

1) I have found that when I enter a bandit hangout I can strike first, no murder rap, and can loot anything I like with no repercussions.

However, if a quest-related baddie attacks me I can generally loot their corpse with it being stealing, yet if I am in their house and they attack me, and I kill them in self-defence, everything in their house is still highlighted in red - ie will be regarded as stealing.

Is there some sort of logic to this? In Oblivion I used to enjoy taking the keys of the mythic dawn agents that randomly attacked and heading over to ransack their house.

2) Some of the stuff I give to my followers to carry for me gets marked stolen and when I get it off them to sell at the shop it can't be sold because of this. How does this work? Does stuff they have in their possession when you dismiss them become regarded as their property?

As far as i can tell, all loot is either programmed to be stolen or non-stolen at the beginning of the game. The only way that I know to change this is to become friends with peopel by doing their quests, after which they will let you take a lot of their stuff

- Anything you pickpocket flags the item as stolen. No exceptions. Even pick-pocketing evil thugs yields stolen items.
- Anything you take off a dead corpse is not theft, unless the item has been flagged as stolen beforehand.
- Anything you take from chests/ground/shelves is seen as theft depending on where you are and what item it is.
- If you put your own items in a chest that belongs to someone, the item may become flagged as stolen.

- Killing the owner does not make taking his stuff less of a theft.
- You can remove the stolen tag from any item, but it will cost you some coin. Sell it to a thiefs guild fence and buy it back.
- Doing jobs for the thiefs guild increases the number of fences you can sell to and the amount of cash they carry.
- I can't tell you anything about followers because I rarely use them.

SuperNull wrote:
- You can remove the stolen tag from any item, but it will cost you some coin. Sell it to a thiefs guild fence and buy it back.
.

not all items though. some uniqe items like the second copy of the blade of woe (which you can steal of off astrid if you have the pickpocket perk requiered) will allways retain its stolen staus... sadly:(... atleast thats what i experience when i try to seel it to a fence and buy it back.

Really? We'll that's a shame because taking that 2nd Blade of Woe is probably the most worthwhile pickpocket in the entire game.

I also had a gold necklace that would not lose its stolen tag.

SuperNull wrote:Really? We'll that's a shame because taking that 2nd Blade of Woe is probably the most worthwhile pickpocket in the entire game.

I know right!

Launder it by using the Wooden Mask, put the stolen items in the chest, take the mask off, put it back on, loot the chest.

Worked everytime for me so far.

Just use a follower to loot stuff, that's what I do and it is never counted as 'stolen'. I only just realised the bountiful amount of things you can do with the command mode of followers. I can order them to sleep and sit

Syrkin wrote:Launder it by using the Wooden Mask, put the stolen items in the chest, take the mask off, put it back on, loot the chest.

.

which wooden mask? will any of them work?

There is only one wooden mask, and he is probably talking about the chest in this place:
http://uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Bromjunaar_Sanctuary

The question is if this trick removes stolen tags that aren't removable by the guild fences. Anyone who has the stolen 2nd Blade of Woe care to try this?

You may consider visiting this thread to find more info.

The only thing you can steal and always get away with it (if you aren't caught) is gold. Take any gold coin-purse, or any gold without getting caught, and you just left a little richer!

I can't confirm this, but I remember reading that the Sword Plaque in Honeyside is lightly glitched. If you place stolen Swords on it, and then take them back, the stolen tag is supposedly removed.

Something for the good guys to watch out for: You can pick up Books to read them without committing a crime. When the Book is open, the Button Menu at the bottom of the screen will say Take for unowned Books, and Steal for owned Books. The thing to watch out for here is that the Steal text is rendered in White instead of attention-grabbing Red, so it's easy for a benign book collector to commit an unintentional crime.

Evil-i wrote:I can't confirm this, but I remember reading that the Sword Plaque in Honeyside is lightly glitched. If you place stolen Swords on it, and then take them back, the stolen tag is supposedly removed.

Something for the good guys to watch out for: You can pick up Books to read them without committing a crime. When the Book is open, the Button Menu at the bottom of the screen will say Take for unowned Books, and Steal for owned Books. The thing to watch out for here is that the Steal text is rendered in White instead of attention-grabbing Red, so it's easy for a benign book collector to commit an unintentional crime.

Yeah, my "paladin" ran afoul of that UI quirk. I didn't know I'd stolen the book until the owner sent a group of thugs after me.

BTW, which plaque in Honeyside has the glitch? There are three downstairs, one over the bed and a weapon & shield one over the fireplace.

MathiasFlynnias wrote:Just use a follower to loot stuff, that's what I do and it is never counted as 'stolen'. I only just realised the bountiful amount of things you can do with the command mode of followers. I can order them to sleep and sit

I don't know, I've looted stuff from a dungeon before by having Lydia pick it up or take it from a chest, but when I unloaded it all back at my house a lot of it was marked as stolen, even though it wasn't when Lydia picked it up.

enyamerT wrote:

Evil-i wrote:I can't confirm this, but I remember reading that the Sword Plaque in Honeyside is lightly glitched. If you place stolen Swords on it, and then take them back, the stolen tag is supposedly removed.

Something for the good guys to watch out for: You can pick up Books to read them without committing a crime. When the Book is open, the Button Menu at the bottom of the screen will say Take for unowned Books, and Steal for owned Books. The thing to watch out for here is that the Steal text is rendered in White instead of attention-grabbing Red, so it's easy for a benign book collector to commit an unintentional crime.

Yeah, my "paladin" ran afoul of that UI quirk. I didn't know I'd stolen the book until the owner sent a group of thugs after me.

BTW, which plaque in Honeyside has the glitch? There are three downstairs, one over the bed and a weapon & shield one over the fireplace.

Sorry, I misremembered and passed on some wrong info. The plaques don't remove stolen tags, they remove quest item flags. Here's the text from the Honeyside wiki page, sorry for any confusion:

"If the player owns the house, the trio of red weapon plaques can be used to remove quest marked weapons from your inventory. This is useful for removing the duplicate Red Eagle's Sword that may be generated from a bug or weapons from quests you decide not to do, such as the dagger Nettlebane (confirmed only with those weapons in unpatched game)."

The major thing for me is that I can't sell stolen item's to people who don't know that they're stolen.
It is truly an enigma.

I have to rescind my earlier statements about using the wooden mask to remove stolen tags. I tried it this weekend, put a necklace and ring in the chest.

When you go to pick them up after, they don't show as Stolen before you pick them up, but they do once you have them back in your inventory.

/sigh

There is definitely some bug with things being stolen. I currently have dragon bones marked as stolen. No idea how that happened....

vorenus73 wrote:There is definitely some bug with things being stolen. I currently have dragon bones marked as stolen. No idea how that happened....

Because you parked them in a container that was owned by someone else perhaps?

SuperNull wrote:

vorenus73 wrote:There is definitely some bug with things being stolen. I currently have dragon bones marked as stolen. No idea how that happened....

Because you parked them in a container that was owned by someone else perhaps?

Some void salts in my house Breezehome now show as stolen. These have been stored in my ingredients cupboard. I am reasonably sure I haven't accidentally stolen them. Is there any way to check ownership on a PC?