Ultima Online Stealing - the published formulas, the ten second window, and the weight rule that is not settled

Two modes, and what Snooping buys

Stealing “requires both hands empty”, and there is a 10-second [!] cooldown between uses. There are two ways to use it.

Mode	What uo.com says
Targeted	Activate the skill and target the item you want. Used for crates, dungeon chests and artifacts. Against a player it requires Snooping: “To target steal from players the character must have the skill ‘snooping’ in order to see into your victim’s backpack and select the target item.”
Random	For monsters and Exodus Zealots, which have no accessible backpack. “On the plus side it’s possible to steal heavier objects this way.” Without Snooping, an Exodus Zealot yields only gold.

The trade between them is published as a number in the formula below: a planned theft carries a targeting factor of 3 against random theft’s 1. Choosing your target makes the attempt three times harder, and Snooping is what buys you the right to pay that.

uo.com's published difficulty formulas

These are rare enough to be worth reproducing exactly. For stealing from a player:

• Skill Modifier = 100 + Stealing Skill Value
• Targeting Factor = 1 (random) or 3 (planned)
• Difficulty = itemWeight * targetingFactor * 2000 / skillModifier

uo.com’s own worked example: “if thief has GM stealing, and the stolen object was a planned theft and weighed 7 stones, the difficulty would be: Difficulty = 7 * 3 * 2000 / 1100. Difficulty = 38”.

Note the 1100. The example reads the skill value in tenths — a Grandmaster is 1000, so 100 + 1000 = 1100. The formula and the example belong together and are printed together here; restating it in whole-number skill would silently change it.

Witnesses are a second calculation. uo.com: “If there are witnesses in the area, the game performs a complicated set of calculations to determine if any of them noticed the crime.” The published secondary pair:

• Difficulty = itemWeight * targetingFactor * 30 + 100
• Success percent = (500 + 2 * (Thief skill - difficulty)) / 10

uo.com states “The same formula applies to stealing from NPCs, pack animals, or lockboxes.” From the thief’s side: the chance of being flagged criminal falls as your skill rises, but the more characters are nearby, NPCs included, the more likely you are to be caught. An empty room is mechanically better, not just tidier.

[!] How a difficulty of 38 converts to a success chance for the steal itself is never stated. uo.com prints the difficulty calculation, and separately a witness-detection success percentage, and never joins them.

[!] The dungeon artifact formula is not published. uo.com says only that artifact theft uses “a different, simpler, set of difficulty calculations, there are no witnesses taken into account and no random targeting factor” — and then does not print it.

How heavy an item you can steal - not settled

This is the biggest open question in the thieving group, and it is not about a number. It is about which rule applies.

Version	Rule	Consequence
uo.com	“Maximum weight stealable is 15 stones.”	A flat ceiling. Skill does not move it, so a 60-skill thief and a 120 thief have the same weight limit.
Unpublished	Items heavier than your skill divided by 10 [!] cannot be taken	A scaling ceiling. Grandmaster tops out at 10 stones, a 120 thief at 12, and nothing reaches 15.

uo.com’s 15 stones is the documented rule; the scaling rule is unpublished. Neither is chosen here, though, because uo.com’s own training table stops at 12 stones for 120 skill, which sits closer to the scaling rule than to uo.com’s own sentence — and that table is a training guide, not a stated cap:

Skill	Weight	Skill	Weight
10	1 stone	20	2 stones
30	3 stones	40	4 stones
50	5 stones	60	6 stones
70	7 stones	80	8 stones
90	9 stones	100	10 stones
110	11 stones	120	12 stones

Whichever rule your shard runs, the practical reading is the same: stealing is a light-fingers skill. Weight is in the difficulty formula as a multiplier, so a heavy item is harder as well as possibly forbidden.

What cannot be stolen

uo.com: “You can not steal containers, insured items, blessed items or exceptionally heavy items.”

That single sentence defines the entire target list for a PvP thief. Anything a player cares about enough to insure is untouchable, so the profession lives on what cannot be insured: power scrolls, reagents, potions, regs and resources, rares, and the contents of the packs people carry to and from a champion spawn. A thief who understands insurance does not waste a ten-second window on a weapon.

The reveal, and the ten seconds

uo.com states both halves without hedging: “The act of stealing, whether successful or not, will reveal you.” and, afterwards, “you will not be able to re-hide for 10 seconds.”

That is the thief’s entire risk profile in one figure. Everything else on the template exists to shrink the time spent inside it: Hiding puts you into the state, Stealth carries you across the room, Snooping ensures the ten seconds is spent on something worth having. Stealing spends the window; the rest of the kit pays for it.

Note that it applies on a failure too. A missed steal costs the same ten seconds as a successful one, standing in the open next to the person you just tried to rob.

[!] Nothing is published about the 10 second lockout being reduced by any skill or item. Treat it as fixed, because that is how it is published.

Criminal status, guards, and your corpse

Stealing from a player is a hostile act and “therefore can only be performed in Felucca, or area having the Felucca rule-set.” What follows from it, all from uo.com:

• Criminal status blocks escape magic. A criminal cannot recall or gate away. That is the single most important consequence on the page: the thief cannot leave by Magery. They run, they hide, or they use the Ninjitsu kit — smoke bombs need 50 Ninjitsu, Shadowjump needs a stealth check at the destination.
• Guards kill. Within justice regions a “guard whack” results in death. Contrast Snooping, which cannot be guard-whacked at all — which is exactly why the thief scouts in town and steals where guards are not.
• Your corpse is public property. uo.com, verbatim: “Your poor abandoned corpse, dear thief, is freely lootable on ANY facet by anyone who happens by.”
• The flag spreads. Performing beneficial acts on a thief flags you as criminal. Healing a guildmate mid-heist has a real cost, and it is the published reason thieves work alone.
• Flagging is not certain. Attempting to steal from another player may make you a criminal, with the chance falling as skill rises and rising with the number of characters, NPCs included, nearby. [!] No figures are published for either direction.

The Thieves' Guild

uo.com publishes the terms of entry:

Requirement	Value
Character age	48 hours of in-game time
Stealing skill	60 — “that’s REAL skill, skill from items won’t count”
Joining fee	500gp
Disguise kit	700gp additional

The disguise kit is not decoration: uo.com notes that Forensic Evaluation detects Thieves Guild membership, so the kit exists specifically to defeat the counter-intelligence skill aimed at you.

The membership trade-off [!]: guild members cannot give murder counts, and anyone may loot them freely if they are killed. You give up the ability to make your killers red, and you carry nothing you would mind losing.

In PvP

• It is the only skill that takes another player’s property, and only in Felucca or a Felucca-ruleset area. Everything else in this list follows from that.
• Insurance is the counter, and it is nearly total. Containers, insured and blessed items cannot be taken, so competent opposition is stealable only for the things they cannot protect — which is why thieves live at champion spawns, where people carry power scrolls out in an ordinary pack.
• Ten seconds, always. The steal reveals you whether it worked or not and blocks re-hiding for 10 seconds. The whole craft is arriving so that those ten seconds happen where nobody is looking.
• You cannot recall out. Criminal status blocks recall and gate, so the escape is legwork or Ninjitsu. A thief template without a published escape plan is a thief template that dies with the loot.
• Scout free, commit expensively. Snooping is not criminal and cannot be guard-whacked; Stealing is and can. The asymmetry between the two skills is the profession.
• Witnesses are mechanical. uo.com’s secondary formula, itemWeight * targetingFactor * 30 + 100, applies when people are present; nearby NPCs count too [!]. A bank is the worst place to steal and the best place to look.
• Virtue vs Vice needs 100.0. Stealing a sigil requires 100.0 Stealing together with active Detecting Hidden, which is the one published case where a thief must carry the detection skill as well.
• Expect to be identified. Forensic Evaluation reads guild membership off you; the 700gp disguise kit is the published answer.
• Power Scrolls matter here. Stealing goes to 120, and in the primary formula the skill modifier is the denominator — more skill is lower difficulty on every attempt.

In PvM

• Dungeon artifacts are the headline. uo.com: “Grand master level stealing skill is needed to acquire these items, at which level several attempts may be needed.” They use the simpler, unpublished calculation, with no witnesses and no random targeting factor.
• Exodus Zealots. Random stealing works on them because there is no accessible pack, but Snooping is what separates gold from the special items.
• Town shops first. Crates and barrels are the published low-level income and training source, and uo.com states the arc: “Progression typically moves from town shops to monsters to dungeon artifacts.”
• Random stealing lifts heavier things than targeted stealing can, which is the published upside of not choosing.
• The ten seconds still apply. Being revealed for ten seconds in a live dungeon, next to whatever you just robbed, is what makes artifact runs dangerous rather than tedious — and it is why Stealth is on the template.
• Open the containers first. Lockpicking gets you into the town and dungeon chests that Stealing then empties.

Caps, stats and training

Primary stat Dex, secondary Int. Stealing is a Power Scroll skill — wondrous +5.0 to 105, exalted +10.0 to 110, mythical +15.0 to 115, legendary +20.0 to 120, from champion spawns — against the 720 total skill cap. There is no Stealing mastery. Remember that the Thieves’ Guild’s 60 is measured on real skill only, so an item bonus will not get you through the door.

uo.com’s training method:

• “The most popular method for gaining is to fill a packhorse with suitable items. To do this you must be in Felucca and you must tell the packhorse to guard you.” That last part needs Herding, and the animal itself comes from Animal Taming or a stablemaster.
• Alternatively, “you can steal from a bag at your feet if you train in Bucanneer’s den, where there are no guards to answer the npc’s calls.” Buccaneer’s Den is published specifically as the guard-free ground.
• Use one-stone items — bottles, apples, pears — and use targeted stealing, then follow the skill-to-weight table above as you climb.

An unpublished low-level route [!] is the same idea: pack animals loaded with weighted item stacks, increasing the stack weight as skill progresses.

Underneath it, the Guaranteed Gain System awards a mandatory 0.1 when nothing has been gained inside your bracket’s window, and a Scroll of Alacrity raises each check to 0.2–0.5 for 15 minutes.

What is not published

• [!] Which weight rule is correct — uo.com’s flat 15 stones or the unpublished skill divided by 10 [!]. Neither is chosen above.
• [!] The dungeon-artifact difficulty formula, which uo.com describes but does not print.
• [!] The complete list of stealable dungeon artifacts, and their per-item difficulty.
• [!] How the difficulty number from uo.com’s primary formula converts into a success chance for the steal.
• [!] The exact chance of being flagged criminal at a given skill and witness count.
• [!] Any karma consequence of stealing. uo.com publishes karma loss for Snooping and says nothing about it here.
• [!] Whether the 10 second re-hide lockout is affected by any skill or item.
• [!] Any item property that adds Stealing skill.

Where these come from

uo.com Stealing · uo.com Snooping · uo.com Hiding · uo.com Stealth · uo.com Detect Hidden · uo.com Lockpicking · uo.com Ninjitsu · uo.com Skills, Stats & Attributes · uo.com Scrolls of Power · uo.com Skill Masteries · uo.com Skill Gain Systems. Everything here is from uo.com or the game itself; anything uo.com does not publish is marked [!] as unpublished where it appears.