Introduction

Thieving has always been one of the most lackluster Skills in the game. Providing no real benefits to the game apart from a few items, as well as having no purpose late game other than to pickpocket the Farmer was a sure enough factor to rework the Skill. The aim of this rework is to transition the Skill into an early to mid-game Skill, providing unique bonuses and content that you cannot find anywhere else. We also wanted to ensure Thieving remained viable and somewhat important late-game by the use of consumable items you can only obtain via this Skill. Due to the nature of this rework, it was will not be possible to award any Thieving Offline Progress if you were doing so when the update drops. You will be greeted with some flavour text upon your return. I am very sorry about this, and it is an unfortunate issue of reworks and games that have not finished development. I hope the below changes make up for the potential lost progress during this time.

New NPCs and Unique Drops

We are introducing 15 brand new helpless NPCs for you to pickpocket, many of which are home to unique items that can only be found in Thieving. These unique items will assist in pretty much all areas of the game, providing some impressive bonuses for you to explore. NPCs also now reside in different areas or locations (Kind of like Fishing). Alongside the unique drops from the NPC themselves, you are also able to find unique "area" items which only drop from NPCs within the respective location.

Unique Drop Examples

Here are some bonuses you can find with the new Thieving unique drops:

• Unique items only found in Thieving to allow for high level Crafting for late game players
• Increased Combat Stats
• Increased Food Healing
• Increased Skill & Mastery XP
• Increased Farming Yields
• Increased Item Doubling
• Increased GP gained from various sources
• Increased Fishing items

This is just a small list of what you could find. There is so much more for you to explore with these new unique items.

The Art of Stealth

This rework introduces two new mechanics known as Stealth and Perception. Perception is a measure of how difficult an NPC is to steal from, while Stealth is how good you are at stealing. Your Stealth competes against an NPC's Perception The above will determine your:

• Success rate to pickpocket.
• Chance to double items.
• Chance to receive an NPC's unique item.

This information and the % numbers/chances are displayed in the new Thieving Interface. Stealth can be increased in a number of ways:

• Increasing your Thieving level
• Increasing your Mastery level
• Filling your Thieving Mastery Pool
• Equipping items with Stealth bonuses
• Potions from Herblore
• Agility Courses
• Balance Changes

Thieving has been completely rebalanced. The old NPCs have had their level requirements and Skill XP amounts readjusted. Combining this with the addition of new NPCs, leveling Thieving should now be much smoother, a lot faster to level than old Thieving (roughly 3x faster) and you make a decent amount of GP along the way. Furthermore, anything that used to provide bonuses to Thieving "success rate" or "success rate cap" have been changed to provide increases to Stealth or other bonuses.

Interface Overhaul

The interface for Thieving has been completely redone. NPCs are now displayed in areas, similar to Fishing. Information, such as doubling chance and Thieving interval, are now also shown, similar to Smithing or Fletching. The interface will also show information around Unique Item drop chance. A "Show Drops" button has been added. This allows you to see your potential GP gains, as well as loot drops from an NPC. Drops are hidden by the use of a question mark until you find them at least once.

Thieving is Now Tick Based

Thieving has now been transitioned to be tick-based system, just like Combat. This has resulted in the following benefits:

• Thieving now has the same resistance to browser throttling that combat has
• Offline and Online thieving are now consistent with each other as they use the same codebase.
• Mastery now levels up offline and provides the benefits instead of using the fixed Mastery Level you had when you went Offline
• Food is now consumed while Thieving Offline
• You can now offline thieving even if your success rate isn't 100%; however, it is now also possible to die

Dying in Thieving

Just like the introduction of Offline Combat provided - it is now possible to die while Thieving Offline. You will be greeted with an alert on the Thieving Page mentioning this, while providing the option to enable or dismiss this feature (Yes, dismissing this alert will keep it dismissed for that character). The Setting to enable or disable Offline functionality will be present on the Thieving Page as well. The inclusion of this means:

• Auto Eat from the Shop is required to survive Offline.
• You no longer require 90% Success Rate to Thieve Offline. You can do it whenever you are prepared.
• Food is used Offline in Thieving.
• Damage Reduction does still reduce the Max Hit of NPCs.

Will these new NPCs cause Mastery to take longer to achieve?

No, it will not. A common misinterpretation is that new Masteries introduced for Skills into the game means it will now take you longer to achieve 100% Mastery. I blame myself for this misinterpretation due to the lack of explanation in game regarding the Mastery System. The Mastery System is designed to automatically balance itself whenever new items or intervals in the game are changed. If I add new items to a Skill, the Mastery XP you get per action is automatically increased to accommodate. If I increase the interval of something, like how long it takes to Cook Food for example, then again the Mastery XP per action is automatically increased. This means if I add 100 new items to a Skill, it won't actually take you longer to achieve 100% Mastery. I could even increase the intervals of everything by 1000%, but it would still take the same amount of time to achieve 100% Mastery as the original interval. I'm personally not okay with the thought of adding new Masteries to the game that causes Mastery to take longer to complete. This is why I designed it to automatically balance itself so this does not occur.

Hardcore Characters with the inclusion of new Items

It's very hard for Hardcore players when so many new items are introduced into the game, specifically around the Bank limitation they face. This update, just like the last one, will further increase the limit of Bank Slots you can purchase. You'll probably find that this increase will occur for future updates, as it is a limiting factor of the gamemode that becomes somewhat annoying when there are a lot of items to manage.

Existing Progress

In case anyone is concerned with Skill Reworks - No progress is reset. All items/NPCs that exist are still in the game, and you still have all your individual Mastery progress on this Skill.

Conclusion

This rework, which is included in the next Major Update, will finish off all the planned reworks from the Development Roadmap. Other lackluster Skills are still receiving changes in future updates, but not to the point where they require a full rework. I hope this rework brings a new and interesting play style to you, and provides a much nicer experience than the existing Thieving Skill. The Major Update is not far away! Speak soon! - Malcs