Elder Scrolls Online - Tips for Legerdemain and Thieving (Update 23)

In the Elder Scrolls Online, you can get the Thieves Guild DLC to further enhance your Legerdemain gameplay. Here are some tips on developing a thief character.

Racial and Class Choice

• If you want the smoothest time with developing the Thieves Guild skill line, then you want to be a Khajiit for the Cutpurse racial skill Pickpocketing bonus. Every little bit helps because getting caught while pickpocketing wastes a lot of time running away and waiting for heat to die down.
• This said, there are only a few targets where you can get 100% chance of pickpocketing some of the time (you can pick pocket someone three times before they are empty, and each time your chance is reduced) so you may still want to give pickpocketing a pass anyway.
• If one of the items you steal is a Style Material, often they have two units and each unit must be stolen separately, so sometimes you can pickpocket a target more than three times.
• If you are caught, it takes a couple of minutes before you can try picking their pocket again. Until then, their "Suspicious" status will remain. Normally they are only Suspicious for a few seconds between each successful pickpocketing attempt.
• Khajiit also have the Stealthy trait, and it is incredibly good for Dark Brotherhood missions and Thieves Guild Heists.
• The Vampirism passive Dark Stalker gives you the ability to Ignore the Movement Speed penalty while in Crouch and (at night) halves the time it takes to Crouch.
• Nightblades and their Shadow Cloak make the most convenient thieves but you can also use invisibility potions. The main thing here is to not be noticed in the first place.
• When trying to steal something in plain sight, try using some sort of Invisibility then grab it -- often, taking something or opening something will cause you to come out of Stealth so you want to still be invisible when that happens.
• When you are pursued by (PvE) enemies, Invisibility does very little. It does NOT immediately cause them to lose track of you. They just lose SIGHT of you and do not attack for that duration. But they still know where you are and pursue until you are far enough away for them to stop and turn around and reset.
• If you have the Dark Brotherhood DLC, the ability to assassinate targets with the Blade of Woe helps you reset them for more thieving, and helps you sneak around without tedious combat.
• In a Heist you WILL still count as being detected and lose time.

Gear

• For weapons, Restoration Staff is recommended for Regeneration: If you are fleeing and taking hits, this will help keep you alive to keep going. Later on try to switch to Healing Ward.
• Focus on a no-combat espionage character. If you don't get into fights, things will go much more quickly on your missions.
• Some gear sets can give you a reduction to the radius at which you can be detected while Stealthed. Combined with the Khajiit Feline Ambush passive, you can get up to -9 meters. This means SOMETIMES you can literally bump into a creature and still not be detected. But it's really chancy which creatures it'll work on -- the smaller they are, the more likely you'll be detected if you try this.
• You are aiming to have the maximum possible bonus to your Stealth radius, rather than trying to wear full sets. The sets are:
• Night Mother's Embrace 5/5 bonus
• Night Terror 3/5 bonus
• Vesture of Darloc Brae 4/5 bonus
• If you are not a Vampire, you may want to consider some adjustment to the sets and get Night's Silence for the 5/5 bonus to Ignore the Movement Speed penalty of Sneak. Since we are avoiding combat in general, it's quite safe to take Vampirism.
• The Vesture of Darloc Brae's 5/5 bonus works while you are Crouched and not Blocking -- even when Detected.
• You can literally Crouch and run away, and expect to survive, especially while the magicka restoration helps you to keep casting Shadow Cloak if you have that ability.
• When you are not in trouble, depending on your Magicka and Stamina, you can continously move while Crouched almost indefinitely, and/or cast Shadow Cloak an excessive number of times -- possibly enough to basically not need any Stealth radius reduction.
• I recommend being ready with piece of gear to go 5/5 on the Vesture of Darloc Brae, swapping out one piece from the other sets.

Legerdemain - Fencing and Laundering

• Legerdemain skill increases most conveniently by Fencing and Laundering, so whenever you can, maximize your Trafficker skill. More interactions per day equals more skill line levelling per day.
• Once your Legerdemain is maximized, depending on how much time each day you want to devote to finding things to Fence, you may want to respec and get the skill points back.
• When you steal, don't necessarily discount small items. Take everything. You can find a good use for it.
• Treasure - Fence them.
• Recipes, Motifs, Furnishings - You may want to Launder these to give to another character to learn, or to sell in the Guild Store.
• Gear - If the value is low, Deconstruct.
• These don't stack in inventory, so every now and then you will probably want to unload them. Port to SOMEONE ELSE'S home that has amenities such as crafting stations and banking, and do it there. Then log out. Because you are not in your own home, the game will not let you stay there when you are logged out. When you log back in, you will generally be back where you were when you first ported. If you were in a personal quest instance (such as Fulstrom Homestead in the Partners in Crime quest), you will generally be sent back outside that instance, however.
• Another way is to port to a home (yours or someone else's) to do the deconstruction, Preview a home you don't own, then exit that house Preview.
• Food and Drink - Keep stacks of these for Fencing and Laundering on days where you don't have that much time to play. They are easily acquired and they stack to high amounts in inventory so shouldn't take too much space.
• Alchemy Ingredients - If you don't want to Launder and keep, make something with it. You won't get much in resale value but you do get quite a lot of Inspiration.
• Provisioning Ingredients - Instead of Fencing or Laundering, cook or brew something and sell that. If you have the points to spare, developing the Chef and Brewer skills will multiply your profits. If not, just Launder and give the materials to an alt with those traits.
• Finding an unoccupied home and stealing everything there is a fast, safe, way of accumulating your daily quota. You can reset the location by relogging your character.

Legerdemain - Opening Locks

• If you are good at opening locks, you can try to locate a place with an isolated door and repeatedly open that. Enter the building, exit, and you will find the door locked again. The Legerdemain experience is not capped per day like Fencing or Laundering but there's obviously a time investment here and you only get a few points each time.
• Abah's Landing has convenient doors to practice because several are inside an alcove, allowing you to be hidden while you attempt to pick the lock.
• Bludrath's House in Orsinium has a locked door in the basement. No guards and no one nearby, so can take your time. Relog (or Preview a house and exit it) to reset the door.

Legerdemain - Pickpocketing

• Even with 100% Pickpocketing chance, the main issue here is time cost in lining up marks. Unless you have time to spare, I recommend doing this only for the Thieves Guild daily quests.
• You will eventually get caught if you have less than 100% chance of success. Try to run. If you murder your mark you will just increase your Bounty.
• It helps a lot if you are in an area where there are no guards like Reaper's March locations Hadran's Caravan and Pa'alat. Run far enough and civilians will stop pursuit and revert to neutral.
• Once you have been caught pickpocketing by someone, you can attempt it again on them once they are no longer hostile, but it will take several minutes for this to happen. Until then, their status will be "Suspicious".
• Using the Blade of Woe to assassinate someone without a bounty is the fastest no-bounty way to cause a target to respawn and for you to be able to pick their pockets again.
• While waiting for your Bounty to go down, you may want to collect materials or just go fishing. Another way is to just log out and play another character for a while -- Bounty continues to tick down when you are offline.
• If you need to do your daily crafting writs while you have a Bounty, go to Coldharbour. You can do your writs there and there are no guards.
• If you are in a location where there are no guards, only marks, then you might as well just continue thieving since Bounties really only matter when you are accosted by a guard or when you are trying to interact with a merchant.

Thieves Guild - Tip Board

• Like Dark Brotherhood Contracts, you can exit out of the board and look at it again to randomly draw another mission. Once you have some laundered items stored up, The Covetous Countess missions are the easiest. Keep the valid ones from Tip Board missions to keep building your stock so you don't have to go and steal anything. 
• The Pack Masters in Fulstrom Homestead (which you can re-enter after the initial Thieves Guild quest) also have Treasures that might qualify. Since they are initially hostile, their drops are not considered Stolen and do not have to be Laundered first.

Thieves Guild - Heists

• Heists can be abandoned and re-started. You may want to do this if you are about to fail the time objective or if you had bad luck and the locations for the treasures you need to locate are in tough locations or you have spent too long just trying to find your way there. Not every location is marked on the initial map -- there are sometimes hidden paths.
• If the timer is close to running out, a boss will be added near the entrance, and sometimes it also has a detection radius that nullifies stealth. If you restart the heist, that boss will be spawned right at the start of the heist.
• If you are detected and you go into a Hiding Spot, enemies will drop aggression even if you are right in front of them when you hop into the basket.
• Once you have returned to Fa'ren-dar and completed the Heist, you can go back into the heist area and do what you like without penalty.

Dark Brotherhood - Sacraments

• Like Heists, you can restart Sacraments. However, any alert status you have accumulated will carry over. So if you have 5/5 Alert status (which converts to having alerted the residents, and therefore failing one of the challenges), restarting the Sacraments won't let you have a perfect run.
• If the Overseer has arrived, they will also be there at the beginning of a restarted Sacrament.
• If you are detected and you go into a Hiding Spot, enemies will drop aggression even if you are right in front of them when you hop into the basket.
• If you have completed a Sacrament and reached the exit, various optional objectives will be removed and marked as completed. If you successfully reached the exit before the Overseer arrives, they will still appear but that objective is still recorded as completed successfully. You can therefore instead of returning to the Sanctuary, turn back and continue to steal and murder. The only active objective remaining will be the Alert Status.
• If for whatever reason you need to emergency-exit the Sacrament, just abandon the quest and you will be moved out immediately.