"Some men rob you with a six-gun, others rob you with a fountain pen."

- Woody Guthrie

In order to access the elusive content of those town chests and crates, the artifacts that spawn in Doom and in the Tokuno Islands or if you want to play a rogue or thief, you will need this skill.  Note however that in order to steal from other players, you will have to join the Thieves Guild and you can only steal from others players in Felucca or if you're a member of a warring guild in Trammel. Your character will need to have spent 48 hours IN GAME and have at least 60 stealing before it will be allowed to join the Thieves Guild. It will cost you 750 gp to do so. Be forewarned that once you join the guild, the criminal warning option will automatically be turned off. Which means if you attack someone by mistake, say while doing a Champ Hunt, you will not get the warning gump hence you could be in a world of trouble. Noto PKs love to kill people who go grey. So be careful. Also note that as a thief, you cannot give murder counts to people. So hide the fact that you're a thief as much as possible or you will get murdered more times than you can count or care to.

You will gain in this skill according to the weight of the items you attempt to steal. You cannot steal objects weighing more than 10 stones, even at GM level. In order to gain faster, always attempt to steal an object 1-2 stones heavier than your skill allows you to. You can buy your first 30 stealing points from a thief NPC. They are a pain to find, but there generally is always one parked in Haven in the building that normally is the bank in Ocllo (Felucca).

Skill	Item Weight
0	1
10	2
20	3
30	4
40	5
50	6-7
60	7-8
70	8-9
80+	9-10

The standard method is to go to Felucca. Get a packhorse and make him guard you. If you're guarded by it, when attempting to stealing from the horse, you will not turn grey.  Make sure your pet is well fed or it will go wild and you will turn grey if you don't notice in time. Since AoS, the only thing that seems to allow you to gain stealing is gold. So just put a bunch of gold piles on your packhorse and steal away.

You can also attempt to gain by stealing in Trammel from NPC chests. If you're noticed (and you often will be), they will call guards on you and that's insta death.
 

Stealing Safely

There is one place where you can work stealing in total impunity, no matter how often NPCs call guards on you and no one can attack you even if you're grey. And that's in Buc's Den, in Trammel. Guards will never attack you there. Place a bag on the ground open it then stand in front of it so no one can see it or try to snatch it from under you. Put gold piles of appropriate weight in the bag then try stealing them. Note that this trick will only work in Buc's Den. In any other Trammel City, you will get a message that you cannot steal this. Same thing will happen if you attempt to steal an object other than gold. This method will work however if you place this bag anywhere outside guard zone. For instance, you can place it on the floor of your house and get gains stealing. You seem to get better gains when there is a larger crowd witnessing the theft though. I cannot say whether or not this is a fact, it just looks that way. So while you could steal your way to GM in your house, it might be faster if you do it in a public place (hence Buc's Den or a Felucca bank).