Thief Simulator – Basic Rules to Follow

Other Thief Simulator Guides:

• Beginner’s Guide.
• Tips and Tricks.
• Level Up Guide.
• Lockpicking Guide.

Basic Rules to Follow #1

All credit goes to Cap\'n Saccade!

Here’s some fundamentals for you.

See this screen here..?

See this screen here..?
Don’t ever use it. Never ever. Not once after the tutorial.
It doesn’t exist if you want to be a pro and want to enjoy being a thief to the limit and hone your skills to join the ranks of the grandmasters.

Anyone can buy the information for a few bucks, but that defeats the whole point of 75% of the game.

You’ll get all the stuff you can find out yourself, have no need for a bunch of equipment and – most importantly – you won’t know when the occupants are downstairs in the kitchen, while you crawl out from under the bed to rob their bedroom, smash their upstairs toilet and jump out the bathroom window before robbing next door, who’ve just gone out for the day, before coming back to rob these guys who just went out for the night, gathering intel on the way, like a real thief and not some drool-monkey who watches loading screens progression bars instead of lifting weights at the desk.

You might find out “routines” and “high value loot places” and “security tips”, like that there’s a really obvious place you can get in or whatever – but you won’t know what their actual routines are, where they are at any given time of the day. Only if they’re “at home” or “out”.

You won’t know what time of day that guy gets out of bed to go take a quick tinkle before heading or what route he takes to the front door on his way out, meaning you’ve got a bunch of extra time to get in and grab some stuff before no-one’s home and you can ransack the place.

You won’t know what kind of locks are on the doors, if they have an alarm system on the windows, or if their neighbours are going to be peeping out the window that looks out over the garden, as you’re carrying their massive TV out the back door in broad daylight.

Look at this bint:

She’s always peeking out when I want to get into the back garden, so I can have a butcher’s through her neighbours’ windows (cos they have electronic shutters at night) and I ain’t getting caught and having to hide in that stinking dumpster while the cops are looking for “some bald white dude who been acting funny”…

At least I manage to get some intel on her household’s routines, for when it’s their turn to be burglarized.

She’s even there at night… She must be smoking some serious chronic to be that paranoid, I tell ye. Still, that’s more intel for me while I learn by listening that it sounds as if the house I want to break into is empty at night – shame the mark have shuttered windows and an alarm system.

Plus their front door, the only way in at night, needs a key and can’t be picked. At least the back garden only needs a basic lockpick to get in.

This place is tough to perform initial and secondary recon. We’ll get onto the recon phases later – it helps to be ahead of the game for tougher jobs.

I’m starting to build up a picture of what’s happening throughout the day and night at both these places – casing the joints, you know… I’m starting to get a plan on how I’m going to do this job and come back later for any other loot I can’t carry, or return for what I can snatch while “waiting” .

Plus I’ll be half-prepped for next-door and that psycho-obsessive in the top windows (who also have shutters at night and alarmed windows – but that won’t be a problem by the time I get back).

I’ll wise you how I went about finding all that out when we get to casing (recon). There’s a few ways to learn these things – without wussing out and buying the smeggin’ tips that are so cheap it puts my recon hourly rate down to lower than a frigging cowboy cheeseburger grill flipper.

This bird’s definitely paranoid AF – either she’s got a house stashed full of Bud and Crank or the guy I’m trying to rob “sensitive documents” from sunbathes naked in his garden.

Basic Rules to Follow #2

See this screen here..?

Always, always look at it.

Don’t ever go straight to the pawn shop after nicking stuff. Chuck it all in your locker unless you are are sure you don’t need it for a request.

If you need a few bucks, go run through some houses you’ve already done over and sell the re-spawned loot again. You won’t get as much XP, but you’ll get the money to buy better gear.

Or a bed to sleep on, because that sofa probably stinks by now and it can’t be good for your back, sleeping on it and cramped in that tiny car – if you ever sleep at all…

(Regular loot will come back once a day. Idk where the people get the money – even in the unoccupied houses it will respawn. The exception being certain quest items).

You can always sell a printer or a small TV or a speaker, because there’s quite a few of them. But if you get a BlackBay job for items that you’ve pawned – you’re gonna have to go and get them again another time.

Or never if it’s a big, non respawnable and/or story quest item and you went and sold it – you’ve gone messed up, ain’t ya? (Why you don’t pawn stuff that seems to be super-high value).

This is why it’s worth always chucking everything in the locker at home first, and only pawning stuff when you need the money to buy stuff. Money’s no good unless it’s being put to use, right? May as well keep those hard drives, just in case a request comes up later for 3 hard drives and you’ve got 5 in your locker already.

Sometimes you’ll also find a list of items that are heavy and not worth much at the pawn shop.

This can be a handy shopping list for the first “inside” recon you perform, because most of that stuff is not worth stealing, unless it’s for XP, as there’s gonna probably be more high value, lighter items that I’d rather take, like phones, routers, headphones, hard drives, gaming gear and stuff.

Finding these items and only taking them also helps you build a mental inventory of the hi-value loot and where it is in the house, as it can form part of your secondary recon – to grab some low value, high weight items, so you can come back and take the good stuff later after you’ve completed all your recon and have your major heist planned out.

(It’s also less XP to lose in case you get surprised and caught or have to run or hide, but the cash makes up for it, so… fair trade, right..?)

This is also a screen you will want to visit every time you go home to drop off your loot, after checking BlackBay. It can reveal the locations of high value loot for your secondary recon inside the building, and earn you extra cash for doing some easy stuff like smashing a toilet or some dishes, chucking a brick through a window or other stuff for those times when you’ve had the cops called so many times that you may as well cause mayhem.

Don’t be a mug and break a TV when you could steal it – what a waste, you numpty.

Also – don’t be a div and go smashing the toilet in the middle of a perfectly decent heist and getting noticed. Also – carrying the kit to smash stuff is 1ld, and that 1ld could be the difference between stealing that quality loot or not – there are some instances that doesn’t matter, cos, well…

More on loot and tool selection in the secondary recon phase and example heists, I reckon.

Don’t forget your crowbar.

Basic Rules to Follow #3

Get yourself a nice, safe run to level up quicker than the story will let you.

I’m not gonna be pushed around by Vinnie – calling me whenever he wants and demanding that I do a bunch of stuff because some people did something for me.

I could be living in a tropical country with the amount of money I’ve gathered robbing these places, so I’m mostly ignoring him.

Now, by the time you get to the 2nd house stage of the tutorial story part, you ought to be level 2 or 3. Every time – run through that first house, grab the stuff, smash the toilet and the dishes (think there’s a Thug job for that) and – if you didn’t just sleep until the next day, but only a tiny bit, you’ll still have a full day to gain loot, grab a BlackBay job for the kitchen stuff you nicked, a painting and have probably stolen the same TV at least once or twice.

That’s the first and second house done, twice, plus the third, before Vinnie’s taught me about observation – by getting my cash route down, I’ve managed to level up to the point where I have lockpicking level 2 now.

Cos why not go a little ahead and explore..? I’d already bought a basic lockpick from levelling up doing the first few houses (selling the stuff on BlackBay, because I ain’t pawning stuff til I know it’s not requested), so I managed to get into that house after discovering (by going round the back and looking through the barred windows) that no-one was in at the time – worth the risk and it paid off.

By the time Vinnie’s teaching you to observe people – you ought to have robbed that TV at least twice.

There are a few places that I know have higher-value loot items that are real easy to get to, so I can just grab one thing, in total safety, from several places and fill up, while performing different stages of recon on the next target.

Anyhow – this means being past level 4 by the time you’re doing this:

Plus you’ve learned how to make some quick routes to get easy cash for stuff. Like crowbars if you lose them or lockpicks in case they break themselves – but I don’t ever break them, but I’ll tell you about that after a bit about levelling up.

Cos, well, see… If you’re gonna jump ahead of the game and the ignore story – it’s good to know how all your initial hard work is going to make your life super-easy later on.

By the time Vinnie’s gonna bark his next orders about some box, I’m gonna be level 6 and way ahead of the game within 30 minutes of playing it.

Notice where I park the car:

• If the cops are called, it’s not going to get towed.
• The door and trunk is left open.
• It’s right near an easy exit, but also positioned so I can get heavy items to it in broad daylight.
• If you sit in the car with the light on, to fill the box with some stuff, you’re visible and passers by will see you. This is another good reason to park it away from walkways. 

Ehy, sorry Vinnie… I was late… but I stole their TV three times and I’m level 5 now – am I learning to fast or was your mother a 3-toed sloth and your father a guineapig with a lisp and buck teeth, who never got a decent hand-job..? You’re lucky this phone only goes one way, Vinnie…

Let’s recap on the three basic rules, though, cos I know it’s a lot to take in and a TL;DR is preferable for people with short attention spans who are on the internet and finish the game in the time it’s taken me to write this guide.

TL;DR Basic Rules

Ok, so maybe you’ve had a run of S! and levelled up super fast, or maybe you’ve had a run of bad luck and been hiding in dumpsters or running from the cops.

We’ve all had days where we’ve not done so well – but hey, check it out…
If I drop my tools in a house and then pick them up again – I get 10XP for stealing them. Awesome.

If you end up having the police called several times and know you’re gonna get a lame rating – dump all the good gear you have and go grab the junk instead.

This means you’ll get the 10x XP for the crud loot, but the decent stuff – you want to get the S! bonus XP for that. Same kinda result as doing early recon, before you level up to get access to the decent kit that makes it a whole lot easier to complete jobs and story missions later on.

Dropping it before leaving the map will make it magically not be stolen and it will be back at the house as if you never took it, so you can get 10x XP on it again.

This also goes, for the time being, for the mailbox cameras, when you get to use them.
Sneaky XP glitches, huh?

Let’s recap the basic rules:

• Don’t ever buy tips, cos they’re too cheap and you will be a sucky thief for being lazy.
• Always check BlackBay and take all Thug jobs. Go home after every job and store all loot.
• Don’t pawn anything unless you have to, or know it’s not required for a Blackbay request.
• If you need cash, go steal some stuff you already stole from easy places.
• Doing this will get achievements for smashing windows, toilets, plates and sneaking.
• Don’t park your car where it’s gonna be towed, but try to be smart about it.
• I’m done with the winning cos I already won.
• Also, I’ve already won all the awards.
• Whoever can find the answer to the question, “How can I say this to my dog”, has already won.
• Rules are made to be broken. Sometimes. At least bent. Mostly.