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Guide: Securing your Pack from Thieves

Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 10:30 am
by Plum
Are you worried about being stolen from? Do you feel like Joe the Thief is being a griefer and should be banned? Well stop whining about it because it's time to fight back!



Tip #1: Hotkey F1 with a "Guards!" say macro! OK, that was a little obvious... Let's try something else.

Tip #2: Are you wearing a cape? Take it off, animations cause lag anyway. Run your cursor over the cape. See the shade of yellow it has when you hover over it? Get a dye tub with inks and dye it that exact color of yellow. Heck, you could get a bunch of yellow capes if you want. Get as many as you like and dye them all target yellow. This way you can put those capes over your gold or bags and they will be covered. Just record a macro of you opening the bag. For effect you could also add a 15s wait timer and close the bag after if you don't want it cluttering your screen.

Tip #3: I'll put this up here because I don't see many people doing it. You can hide while mining and it will not reveal you. You can also use the bank if your bank is open before you hide. 60 or 70 points in hiding is good enough, you don't really need to GM it if you don't want to. Even if you have magery it is good to take hiding because you can bind it to a hotkey and don't need to use regs or cast. What people often use it for is to teleport off screen and hide.

Tip #4: If you are mining and a thief comes up to you snooping around, take all the ore in you pack in sets of 3 and scatter them around your pack entirely. When they snoop your pack they will find a whole mess of ore and nothing else (like your shovels or anything else you happen to need).

Tip #5: If you just want to have some fun, leave a valuable item in your pack where they can see it. Create or buy 3 bags and cover them with target capes you created earlier. Now create 3 macros and bind them to 3 hotkeys. On each macro move the valuable item to another bag. Of course you have to be really quick but if you don't care about the item it is probably a good way to grief a thief that is harassing your pack. Make sure the bag has heavier than 10stones.


Most thieves I have ran into just walk away after seeing my pack full of ore or yellow capes. Only really skilled thieves will still be a threat, but there is nothing you can really do to stop a really skilled & determined veteran thief.

Re: Guide: Securing your Pack from Thieves

Posted: Sat Jan 17, 2009 9:00 pm
by Thesbus
All the theif has to do is have a macro that steals last target, then have a target cursor up for anything, and wait until your valuable item lands in a bag and target it...then you can move it as much as you want...the razor macro set on loop will get it soon enough.

Re: Guide: Securing your Pack from Thieves

Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2009 7:29 pm
by RoadKill
Here's a bit better advice (not saying Plum's methods are failed, just offering a slightly better but requires more work method)

Make a newbie with 50 carpentry, 40 tinkering, 10 lumberjacking. Chop trees for 5 minutes. Craft as many red boxes as you can, they should all be lockable.

Use magic lock/unlock on the box to limit/prevent/gain access to all your goodies. You can also keep the box key in your inventory, if it is stolen, it doesn't matter much (a thief can't unlock a box in your inventory)

NOTE: Any items in the locked box, even if you can see them, will be come unreachable to your character until the box is unlocked again

Re: Guide: Securing your Pack from Thieves

Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2009 12:09 pm
by warmachinex
Seems like it would just be easier to keep an assortment of pouches you can Magic Trap to keep your stuff in. When the thief opens the pouch they may only take 1 point of damage but you will know they are there and can take appropriate action. You can keep the bag open and use it while magic trap is up.

Re: Guide: Securing your Pack from Thieves

Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2009 7:54 pm
by MatronDeWinter
You could put your items in a locked box that weight more than 10 stones. Yes you can still use regs out of it. Also, you could place your regs in a GM tinker trapped box, so thieves die when they snoop you. I will gladly sell you the latter box.

Re: Guide: Securing your Pack from Thieves

Posted: Wed May 27, 2009 1:45 am
by Mephistopheles
This is a useful guide! I don't understand how dying my cape yellow helps though..

Re: Guide: Securing your Pack from Thieves

Posted: Wed May 27, 2009 2:25 am
by noxmonk
Mephistopheles wrote:This is a useful guide! I don't understand how dying my cape yellow helps though..
I wasn't too sure on that either. A locked box from a newbie carp/tinker you can create with 50/50 is the most you'll need. Just keep the key in your bank and add your regs/gold/items to it then drop it in the bank or your house and pop the lock.

If you're not keen on locked boxes or whatever and are carrying a runebook, make sure to 1 stack your regs in multiples so you have more "pack clutter" to decrease the chances of someone randoming you for your book, which should be in your hands, bank, or house anyway.

Re: Guide: Securing your Pack from Thieves

Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2009 6:16 pm
by Rheoric
Seems like it would just be easier to keep an assortment of pouches you can Magic Trap to keep your stuff in. When the thief opens the pouch they may only take 1 point of damage but you will know they are there and can take appropriate action.
As a thief, I usually expect pouches to be trapped which means I'll either: A) check pouches last if I'm worried about being stealthy, or B) pop as many pouches as I possibly can to waste the miniscule amount of regs it requires - that'll show 'em!

Honestly, the best way to protect yourself is to keep all your stuff in a GM Tinker trapped box or to not carry anything you'll miss losing. Even when the trap is used, you can lock it up real nice.
Heck, you could get a bunch of yellow capes if you want. Get as many as you like and dye them all target yellow. This way you can put those capes over your gold or bags and they will be covered. Just record a macro of you opening the bag. For effect you could also add a 15s wait timer and close the bag after if you don't want it cluttering your screen.
There's a method of moving the items in another's inventory that forces them to disappear for a short period of time, allowing the thief to continue moving the items underneath the one that's currently lagged out until they find what they're looking for. Trying to hide your items in bags or containers underneath a stack of items doesn't do much good when this tactic is being used. I saw the example of cloaks being used earlier in this thread - unless it's anywhere between ten and twenty of them, directly on top of each other, it won't do much good, and the consistency of item sizes helps the thief more than you would think. Of course, reaching the bottom of a large number of stacked cloaks, robes, or whatever wouldn't be difficult at all unless the victim is moving, which makes it nearly impossible to employ this strategy. Edit: I did some testing on my own to see how many dye tubs it would take to keep me out of a pouch. Ultimately, what I learned is if a victim is not moving for a prolonged period of time there's probably no limit to how many stacked items a thief could get around. At 10 dye tubs it took me 64 seconds to find the pouch and queque it to the top of the inventory space. At 15 it took 76 seconds, at 20 - 91 seconds, and at 25 - 117 seconds. Granted, dye tubs are a lousy way to protect your goods as they weigh ten stones each, but ultimately this proves that if a player is thinking they can AFK for a moment, or log in the middle of town, they may want to consider putting their things in a trapped / locked chest or bank everything first. Stacking clothes isn't going to cut it.

I also don't see the point in dying the cloth items target yellow. If anything, it could prove slightly confusing, though in most situations a thief using the item lag method is just going to queue everything for movements repeatedly and eventually it won't matter what color they were.

Re: Guide: Securing your Pack from Thieves

Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2009 11:53 am
by Hicha
The only thing I don't like about throwing everything into a single locked box, is that its the best scenario for a pk to be in if he kills you; you've conveniently placed everything into a single carry away item.

Re: Guide: Securing your Pack from Thieves

Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2009 2:39 pm
by Rheoric
I totally agree, though if you take my advice about keeping your possessions in a box that's always GM Tinker trapped / locked, you might be able to kill that PK, resurrect, and loot his things before he knew what hit him. That would probably require some dedication on the players part, and more than likely lead to having their own GM Tinker / Carpenter mule. I think this advice would best serve a townie of sorts, or someone who was wanting to chill within guard protected areas for prolonged periods of time. These deterrents are very one sided and in most cases serve as a hindrance or obstacle unless the players ultimate goal is just to keep thieves out of his inventory. Stealing outside of guard protection is a hassle anyway, and makes things infinitely more difficult since most thieves don't have the combat prowess to be field-worthy. I suppose dungeon thieving would work pretty well if we had more sheep on this server, but almost everyone who I've seen chillin' in Deceit is either a PK, someone looking to become a PK, or has already spent enough time building their character that stealing from them scares me a little. The LL room isn't so hot for thieves here, despite it being a great place to steal on Great Lakes.

Re: Guide: Securing your Pack from Thieves

Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2015 7:37 am
by Kasper_Valentine
I've been wanting to protect my non-thief characters with the trapped box method for quite some time now (as I never snoop said containers when out stealing myself, so I figure s'a good deterrent), but I have a few questions...

Image To start with: How do I do it..? Is the box locked or magic locked, or what? What arms the trap...?

Image Matron said I can still use reagents that are contained within; can I still put items into the box without a lengthy lock/arm process...?

Image Do I need to be careful when logging in to the characters that use the boxes (re: blowing yourself up when the client opens the bags you normally have open)...?

Image If a thief is blown to kingdom come, do I need to get a fresh box...?

Image I can craft the GM Tinker boxes myself and while thieves cannot give counts, is it still the case that if you trap the box while it is on the floor it will not give murder counts...?

Image Can I use pop pouches that are inside the trapped box...?

Image Is there anything else I should know...?

Thanks in advance.

Re: Guide: Securing your Pack from Thieves

Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2015 12:19 pm
by JBURNS
Hicha wrote:The only thing I don't like about throwing everything into a single locked box, is that its the best scenario for a pk to be in if he kills you; you've conveniently placed everything into a single carry away item.

The most effective way to stave off thieves, without a ridiculous amount of items or being bothered with locking/unlocking boxes, is to grab 20 or so pouches from the provisioner (usually need trapped pouches anyway.) Trap 18 of them and line them up in columns (I like 3ea) inside one pouch. The last pouch is where all your items such bandies, regs, weps etc. go into. You can "hide" your equipment pouch under other trapped pouches. Easiest way to hide it is to drag the pouch containing your gear to the corner and drop it and repeat with a trapped pouch. Just don't forget which one has your equipment under it. While it isn't 100% safe, the time required by a thief to look under all the pouches will stave off most attacks. Chances are, they will try to snoop all the "top" layer pouches and not even think to look under a random pouch. A trapped pouch will not show how many items are inside with a left click so the thief will be forced to guess what pouch has your stuff. And if you do get taken down by a PK, he will get your stuff no matter what. At least this way, you can cause him a little frustration trying to figure out where your stuff is. Another good tip is to have separate piles of regs/bandies. Thieves can only steal 1 stack of items at a time.

*EDIT* You can also trap the pouch that holds all your other pouches and equipment. You can still access all of your gear with hotkeys/macros, or just open the pouch before you trap it. This way, you know if a thief is snooping around your pouches trying to find your equipment pouch. Also, not 100% sure on this, but I don't a think a thief is able to use a macro targeting specific items (i.e. bandages) when they reside inside a trapped pouch.

There are a few variations you could use, like incorporating some the ideas from above ^^. Use trapped boxes instead of pouches. Get a GM tinker and trap a couple of them, while leaving the rest just magically trapped incase you get paralyzed. If you do this, just make sure to remove the GM tinker trapped boxes from your useonce agent lol

Re: Guide: Securing your Pack from Thieves

Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2015 12:00 pm
by Kasper_Valentine
Can anyone help with my trapped box questions (see above)...?

I'd much appreciate any pearls of wisdom. Image

Re: Guide: Securing your Pack from Thieves

Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2015 2:15 am
by Soma
Kasper_Valentine wrote:Image To start with: How do I do it..? Is the box locked or magic locked, or what? What arms the trap...?
Any "lockable" container can be magically locked, the spell "magic lock" is super useful as it means you don't need to carry around a key. Keeping the container trapped means that you can never reopen it without triggering the trap.

The latter method is more preferable if you are just out to grief thieves.
Kasper_Valentine wrote:Image Matron said I can still use reagents that are contained within; can I still put items into the box without a lengthy lock/arm process...?
You can put items within a container inside the box, not directly inside the container.

In the below example you can place items INSIDE container B and C. However you cannot remove items from any of the containers.

Image

Kasper_Valentine wrote:Image Do I need to be careful when logging in to the characters that use the boxes (re: blowing yourself up when the client opens the bags you normally have open)...?
If you are trapping your container with a tinker trap and Razor's "Auto-search" feature is activated, you are likely to die upon login.
Kasper_Valentine wrote:Image If a thief is blown to kingdom come, do I need to get a fresh box...?
Yes, or re-trap the existing one.
Kasper_Valentine wrote:Image I can craft the GM Tinker boxes myself and while thieves cannot give counts, is it still the case that if you trap the box while it is on the floor it will not give murder counts...?
If you trap a locked down box in a house you are friended to, you will never get a murder count.
People used to set up "decoy" characters with a handful of regs with the purpose of dying and then hoping the trapped chest would kill the aggressor without getting a count themselves.
Kasper_Valentine wrote:Image Can I use pop pouches that are inside the trapped box...?
Yes
Kasper_Valentine wrote:Image Is there anything else I should know...?
You CAN still use potions within locked containers.
You CANNOT move anything within the locked container.
If you choose to lock containers with a key, you can axe the container should you lose the key.
It pisses thieves off
You cannot equip jewlery/clothing from within the container, however invis rings can still be used via double click macro.

Re: Guide: Securing your Pack from Thieves

Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2015 6:48 am
by Kasper_Valentine
Thanks for the information Soma, s'great stuff. I'll experiment with it shortly.