Video: Skyrim's pickpocketing gets sort of ridiculous

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I'm a level 40 stealth character in Skyrim, and I've now honed my pickpocketing skill to the point that I can steal weapon from your hand and the the shirt off your back. In the Imperial castle at Solitude, where guards are using their weapons to practice and their armour to not be naked, this is funny. So I made a video.

Actually, it wasn't quite that easy. Here's why.

Before you reach Pickpocketing 100, you get access to a perk that lets you steal people's weapons. I did this, to all the guards in Solitude, and laughed quite a lot. Then I moved on, and kept stealing everything from everyone I ever met.

At 100, you get access to the perk that lets you steal what people are wearing. This is when it gets insane. I wanted a video of it, but I also wanted a video of stealing someone's bow while they're practising with it. And I couldn't find anyone left who was still practising with a bow - just those few rubes in Castle Dour looking empty handedly at their straw targets.

I didn't have a recent save before I stole those bows, and I couldn't find any working cheats that would let me level an old save up to the point where I could do it. So there was really only one thing I could do. I had to break into Castle Dour, get into the dungeons, find the evidence chest, and steal back the bows I'd stolen from everyone. Then I'd have to go around the courtyard slipping them back into the guards' inventories, just so I could steal them back on camera.

It worked. So the bows you see me stealing here do belong to the guards, but they've only recently discovered them back in their inventories, after being missing for about two months.