Why wouldn't guards kill this thief?

I'm sitting at Brit West, thief comes up and steals my axe, I get a notification he stole from me and he turned grey. Guy is trying to gate out and I'm sitting a tile away from him yelling "guards" over and over.... nothing happened. Why did nothing happen?

Also if you are the one that stole my axe, I'll buy it back. Shoot me a PM.

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The guards were in on it.

I have never played a thief so my response is purely theoretical, but my understanding is that there are 3 types of results for every theft attempt.
a) failed to steal, thief remains blue, nothing happened.
b) theft goes unnoticed to everyone but the victim, thief remains blue except for the victim who sees him grey, and is now perma-grey and freely attackable by anyone.
c) thief is caught red-handed, turns grey to everyone and can be guard whacked ONLY during the first 30 seconds after the theft. He will be perma-grey to everyone even after turning blue, until his death.

Thieves have a chance to steal an item in town without going grey to anyone other than the person they stole from. If this is era-correct, this should make them "permagrey", allowing them to appear blue, but be attack-able without penalty, by anyone, including other blues (until they die).

Also, be sure you were spelling “guards” correctly. You have no idea how many time I have seen people running around calling “gards” or “gaurds”.

(successful steal + you noticed) - everyone noticed = your experience



The next bit ain't aimed at you... this is just for fun

Should you find yourself in this situation again, weigh your options many of which could include one or more of the following...

• laughing
• crying
• laugh-cry
• taking a picture for prosperity
• flip some chicken bones and divine the future
• attack the criminal and engage in deadly combat!
• challenging the criminal to a game of checkers
• ask the criminal to wait while you log on your main
• update your daily blog
• slam the caps lock key so hard you break your finger
• file a "Hurt Feels" report
• cry over Steel Magnolia's while you indulge in a bucket of Ben & Jerry's
• slap a llama
• laugh over Steel Magnolia's while you indulge in a bucket of Ben & Jerry's
• perch atop a building at dusk allowing your cape to blow in the wind as you brood... plotting your revenge
• become a detective

G'luck and have fun

Are you a thief yourself?

Did you use a speech macro for calling guards? If so, what did it look like?

Was he still on screen when you called guards?

Best method would be to check your hopefully logged logfile and see what happened.

I'm assuming the op here isn't an idiot and can spell guarfs correctly.

If you fail, you are going to turn criminal in town. Always.

UOR nerfed stealing so there is no "successfully take it and stay blue" condition.

There is a VERY VERY tiny chance when stealing an item as heavy as an axe that you will turn grey, AND guards cannot be called on you. <- this is what likely happened.

Or, the victim here was a thief that was perma, or otherwise a criminal/grey or in warring guilds etc.

The victim also may have had an active combat flag with the thief from a prior fight within 2 minutes since last aggressive flag, and so the thief and victim were both blue, and the stealing was legal as they were grey to eachother.

The victim may have attacked the thief 2 minutes prior and turned grey. Then attacked the thief who did not attack back sometime in those two minutes resetting the combat flag such that the thief was blue and the "victim" was blue, but the victim was grey to the thief, and is not allowed to attack the thief until a period of 2 minutes pass where they do not attack eachother.

Finally, maybe there was just no NPCs around where the crime took place so guards were not call automatically. And the victim didn't call guards before the thief manage to get far enough away or until after their "guards can be called" timer expired.

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I bet i know why.
were you pushing your bank macro?? and is it something like :

"vendor buy the bank some guards"

The way the code works is it will try to match the first understandable keyword, and then STOP processing.

in the above case, if you are standing near the bank, the game matched the keywords to "bank" already, so it stops processing and never executes the word "guards" since it found a match

in order to fix this, change the order of your macro to:

"guards bank vendor buy"

or the priority order in which you want them executed.

However most recommend you have the SINGLE WORD "Guards" on a macro on itself.

Also, it helps to !yell guards doesn't it? You reach more tiles that way or thats how it works as far as I know

.

Worst choose your own adventure designer evar.


Or best? (Continue on page 11.)

You could attack him if he was gray, but there is a possibility that immediately after the theft he used invisibility, and already after the guard it is useless to call, even if he is visible and gray! I call it a quick circle, but you can attach it

If you have lost something unnoticed or stolen with meat and pale yellow, you can always check Gwen, This dealer very often sells stolen goods and sometimes trades in banned goods! http://uorforum.com/threads/redemption-of-stolen-goods.25774/#post-249501

Good game for You!

Macro starts with "guards" so that's not it.

Thanks to everyone for the responses.

Oh my sweet summer child, you thought this thread was over? It's only just begun.