Successes, failures and stuns
A failed pickpocket stuns you for 9 ticks (5.4 seconds), deals damage that depends on the target, and stops you pickpocketing again for a little longer. At 70% success, almost a third of your attempts produce nothing but a stun, which is why two players with the same level can see very different xp per hour. The fix is to stack every success boost you can get.
| Boost | Effect | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Gloves of silence | +5% success chance | Need 54 Hunter, wear out after failures |
| Thieving or max cape | +10% success chance | From 99 Thieving |
| Medium Ardougne Diary | +10% success in Ardougne | Hard diary extends it everywhere |
| Dodgy necklace | 25% chance to dodge a stun | 10 charges |
| Shadow Veil | 15% chance to dodge a stun | Needs A Kingdom Divided, stacks with the necklace |
Together the necklace and the veil avoid 36.25% of stuns. Eat straight after a successful pickpocket rather than while stunned, because eating during a stun adds the food delay on top.
Pickpocket targets and xp
| Target | Level | XP each | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Man or woman | 1 | 8 | Quests are faster from here |
| Master Farmer | 38 | 43 | Seeds rather than coins |
| Fremennik citizen | 45 | 65 | Coin pouches every time |
| Wealthy citizen | 50 | 96 | Varlamore, after Children of the Sun |
| Knight of Ardougne | 55 | 84.3 | Bank close by, diary helps a lot |
| Menaphite thug | 65 | 137.5 | Best with blackjacking |
| Vyre | 82 | 306.9 | Needs Sins of the Father |
| Elf | 85 | 353.3 | Prifddinas, after Song of the Elves |
Counts for common stretches: 38 to 55 on Master Farmers is 3,169 successful pickpockets, 55 to 99 on knights is 152,643, and 85 to 99 on elves is 27,671. The xp gap explains why elves and vyres are so popular late on: each elf is worth over four knights.
Coin pouches and the rogue outfit
Most pickpocket targets give coin pouches instead of coins. They stack to 28, and once you hit the limit the target refuses you until you open them. The Ardougne Diary raises the cap: 56 at medium, 84 at hard and 140 at elite, which means fewer interruptions on long sessions at knights or elves.
Rogue equipment from the Rogues' Den wall safe gives a chance of double loot per piece, and the full set doubles it every time. It adds nothing to xp, so it changes the gp column of the calculator, not the count. On elves and vyres, where the loot tables carry real value, it is worth the effort.
Other ways to train
- Stalls. The East Ardougne bakery stall from 5 and the Hosidius fruit stalls from 25 (up to about 42,750 xp an hour) are the classic low-level route, with no stuns to worry about.
- Blackjacking in Pollnivneach from 45, after part of The Feud. Knock out bandits, then Menaphite thugs from 65, for 230,000 to 265,000 xp an hour at its best, at the cost of a lot of clicking.
- Pyramid Plunder in Sophanem, with xp climbing in bands: about 125,000 an hour from 71, 190,000 from 81 and 270,000 from 91. Its rare pharaoh's sceptre drop is a teleport back to the pyramid.
- Chests. Dorgesh-Kaan rich chests from 78 and Rogues' Castle chests in the Wilderness from 84 (about 260,000 to 300,000 xp an hour, with PvP risk).
Seeds from Master Farmers feed straight into a farming calc plan, and the OSRS thieving training guide covers the full 1-99 order with the quests that skip the slow early levels. For a wider view of gp per hour from Thieving and other skills, see money making methods.