I've been trying to think if there is anything I'M doing to cause this and they only other thing I can think of is that if I go to another room and it's the library I have more of a tendency now to go back and go to the other room which is always the bedroom and search there instead. I do it fast enough to not be a factor, but I'm wondering if moving around the house more makes it easier to be "noticed".
Having said all that, I'm pretty sure I'm getting less time than I used to even when the bedroom is the first room I enter off the kitchen.

Agree with Hanryu. Grouping is what impact time before footsteps. I'll add the other variable is lag. I consistently can get 2 grab attempts without getting caught on both a f2p character straight out of the character manager as well as my ranger nearing 1650 ranks. If its very laggy, that is the only time I might get caught.

Jalika

>I was not searching three rooms, but rather up to three searches in two rooms.

I'm still shocked. I don't get nearly enough time for 3 round time activities while in a microseg.

~Hunter Hanryu
>I would like to avoid the collection of broken dreams and sorrow that is the Ranger guild.~Agalea

>>I'm still shocked. I don't get nearly enough time for 3 round time activities while in a microseg.

You are getting enough time, you just underestimate how generous the warning timer is. Keep yourself under a hard cap of 16-18 seconds after the warning message and you'll be fine.

* 3 seconds of RT to move to another room (non-stealth-primary)

* 10 seconds max potential RT on another search.

That leaves us five seconds. I always do a third search if the RT on the second search is < 5 seconds. Make it 3 seconds if you want to be super safe and account for a little lag spike.

>But what I have learned from your replies is it sounds like I should be going back into hide/sneak mode after entering? Then I will get more stealth? No, I wasn't doing that before, so that will definitely change things.

Hide before you burgle. It's a best-practice anyways, and means you will get some stealth experience upon exiting the instance.

You will also get some stealth experience searching from hidden, and if you hide before typing BURGLE you will be hidden upon entering.

And burgle in the clans. No fine, you'll just get beat up if you mess up. Play with it and have fun!
Jalika

>And burgle in the clans. No fine, you'll just get beat up if you mess up.

Getting your hand chopped off = "just get beat up"? LOL!!!

I saw someone get caught and hand lopped. I told them if they could sit after they stop being stunned I could probably tend them. They did and I did. Then they immediately burgled again and I saw them get decapitated. Yuck! I think they did it on purpose?

Anyways, I THINK I can handle loosing a hand with 30 stamina and currently 268 first aid?
That no fine does sound attractive. Thanks for the advice.

>Hmm... The penalty for getting caught in the clans should probably scale with level, too.

Finally, my dream of roleplaying the Black knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail can come true.

I just started using burgle a few days ago (it's neat!), and I definitely opt for doing it in Clan-lands because legal-system stuff in towns themselves feel obnoxious, from the jail time to what appears to be an incredibly high fine given what you're getting as a reward. If I have a wifi hiccup I'd rather deal with what feels like failing a box trap than what would take a few hours/days of hunting to make up.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

If I had to guess (I don't, but I will!), the fines probably reflect the quality of the items dropped during B&E and how often you can essentially get a "free" one.

The items from B&E are really good. I'd equate some of them with the kind of stuff you can get from treasure maps - I'd say "all of them" if the combat gear was T5 instead of T4. And you can arguably get 2-3 of them per hour, as opposed to getting one every 2-8 hours if you have the HE gift that creates champion mobs, or luck your way into a treasure map (that has its own challenges!).

At the same time, the "wow" factor of the items from B&E probably diminish the more runs you go on, so when the appeal leans more and more toward "it's a good way to train" the cost of failure seems more and more excessive. I'm sure this is even moreso the cast for very high level players who probably have a full kit of T6 gear, masterful tools, more cambrinth than they'd ever need, etc etc etc. At that point the only value the items have is a possibly flooded player to player resale market or the pawnshop, where you'll probably have to rob hundreds of homes just to pay off the fine for failing at one.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

>See, that is the kind of thing that makes us scared to talk to each other here for fear of giving some sadistic GM evil ideas!

The whole reason I said that second line about having permission, is so that you would know I didn't get the idea from these posts. I already knew that people steal in clan justice to avoid the fines, and had permission to escalate the penalties based on what the fine would be in normal justice. Nothing in this thread so far has been news to me, so you should feel free to talk about it.

>Ok, seriously now. I too think the penalties should scale with level. Scale DOWN.

For gameplay reasons, penalties will always scale up with level/ranks.

>Consider the poor desperate smuck who gets caught shoplifting and goes to jail while the high powered banker commits fraud and crashes the stock market and the justice department just shrugs.

Consider also, our game does not take place in America, or any other modern country. Elanthia is a series of provinces with royalty. The royalty presumably wants to watch out for their citizens/peasants, as that's where all their food comes from. If you're a big and scary adventurer, and you get caught inside someone else's home, with unclear intentions... They're going to come down on you hard.

I will say... some of the large fines are due to having lots of priors. Priors do drop off over time, but that's time not getting caught.

Javac
That one guy

If you have questions or comments in regard to this post please email me at DR-JAVAC@play.net.

>>I will say... some of the large fines are due to having lots of priors. Priors do drop off over time, but that's time not getting caught.

This is probably more of a critique of the justice system as a whole, but on the other side of the tracks for this, and not to give anyone ideas, NPC Empaths don't charge more for repeat customers.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

Is there even any difference between picking PLEAD INNOCENT or PLEAD GUILTY? I have no way of telling since I have no way of knowing if the fine would have been more or less if I had done the other. And an argument could be made for either as to why high charisma should help you. (Convincing the judge you didn't intend anything wrong in one case, convincing the judge you are contrite and it'll never happen again until it does on the other) :D

Is there any way for players to know their reputation with the burgle system?

>The justice system remembers all of your prior crimes

Do priors currently decay? I know for regular stealing fines can go up and down, but does the system remember every time I've ever been busted?

~Hunter Hanryu
>I would like to avoid the collection of broken dreams and sorrow that is the Ranger guild.~Agalea

>>I will say... some of the large fines are due to having lots of priors. Priors do drop off over time, but that's time not getting caught.

I have a new character in TF that never got caught burgling until one bad day in Leth about 2 weeks ago. I don't remember the exact specifics, but the character was around 15th circle and the fine was half his total bank accounts (all of them)*. I'm just don't think the fines are dialed in correctly.

Even if you make clan justice start murdering people, at some point everyone will still be stealing in the clans because getting a few favors is easier than 1000 plat. I don't see how increasing clan justice penalties can possibly bring them in line with these really high fines, but I think that's partly because the fines are too high. Can you possibly comment more on the fines? Does the formula involve multiplying the circle with prior charges? That seems like it could get very high very fast.

Thanks,

* (As a bonus, the character was then stuck in Leth with no money and no equipment to hunt for money.)