One day, I went to Mournhold to visit the local enchanter, and I bought about 50 grand soul gems (believe me it wasn't any loss of money, my guy has good mercantile and over 2000,000 big bucks - and note that the enchanter somehow has unlimited soulgems), and I summoned some golden saints and trapped them all in soulgems. I had about 34 golden saint soulgems, and was ready to make a whole "package" of constant effect armor and clothing (shirts to shoes, helms to boots). I had a 5 gold bounty for breaking into someone's house, and I happened to walk into a guard. I still had all the soulgems, and even though I had a 5 gold bounty, he charged me 30 gold, and not only that, he took all my soul gems! Even though I legally bought them and trapped souls in them, he TOOK ALL OF THEM! And when I try to get them out of the evidence chest, they get mad at me again.

The guard had just lost me well over a million dollars, and a beautiful set of 15-35 constant effect items that I was going to equip onto my guy. For absolutely no reason.

(Note that he is a level 40 breton, and those damn racist dark elves always seem to do nasty things to me, since of course they are nasty creatures.)

P.S. There needs to be serious guard improvements. Like guards attacking people who attack you, they don't steal stuff, they are at least 10% friendlier, and don't over/undercharge you or anything... just more like real guards, rather than stupid biased creatures that act like they're straight from hell.

Yeah that gets annoying but I do have a bit of advice for you.

Pay attention to if your crime has been reported when you do things like lock picking and so on. If it has, then drop all your stuff except your gold or anything that is useless to you. It sounds like they caught you before you could though, so just resist arrest, drop your stuff, and then run away to another guard or something that will ask what punishment you want instead of just attacking. Sure you will pay more, but it sounds like money is no problem for you.

This is probably one of the most annoying things in the game, especially if you have a lot of equipment that was stolen. The only thing you can really do is drop it on the ground and then go pay your fine. Or you can join the thieves guild...they will get rid of your bounty if you pay them (of course).

Just know that if you see a guard running around for no reason then he's after you to collect for your crimes.

Lastly, the easiest way to avoid this mess is just not get caught when you commit a crime (amulet of chameleon and sneak work wonders).

You should always save your game after you do something big, and soul trapping 30+ Golden Saints is big. That way you could have re-loaded the save game and just dropped your stuff before you ran into the big guy.

... or just don't do anything illegal.

Yes, I've done all what you guys have said, but what I'm asking is if Bethesda made it so that guards steal stuff that was LEGALLY bought in the first place?

I payed good money for those soul gems!

AFAIK they do not take items purchased legally. What may happen is that if you MIX stolen and legitimately purchased items they will treat them all as stolen.

Something to watch out for is that applies to attempts to sell to people you have stolen from. When I first played MW I would follow Habassi's advice for the first Thieve's Guild quest and steal a diamond from Nalcayra. However Nalcayra is the most useful person to sell unwanted gems to (convenient, with 3000 gold). If you stole her diamond - ANY diamond you try to sell her even if acquired legitimately will get you into trouble. Now I get my diamond elsewhere.

Well always save before doing something (use the quiksave) and if no one sees you doing a lockpick and you get no bounty. SAVE. But if you get a bounty becouse someone saw you just load.

Can't you get your stuff back if you go somewhere in the prison..........


The best advice i can give you on not getting your stuff taken is don't go to the guards..

although if they do

1. pay them
2. have a writ.........(you get them in the assasins guild)

My suggestion is to just go to the local evidence chest and taunt the guard till he attacks you. Then you get your stuff out without them getting pissy at you.

Befores speaking to guard- unload EVERYTHING. If you do that, they wont take anything from you!

being on a mod website, with a mod forum, is there a mod answer?

I know about the less annoying guards mod, but that doesn't fix what's going on.




... I know guards take stuff they assume is stolen... Once they stole the clothes right off me when I attacked fargoth (I had just gotten out of the Census office).

The removal of stolen items is hardcoded into the PayFine command. It would be possible, however, to bypass this by using the PayFineThief command instead...

*Marxist ßastard winks unconvincingly*

[FONT=Arial][SIZE=7][COLOR=blue]Now all you need to do to pay of a fine is to got the the thieves guild drop your gold and talk to the guy who gets rid of your bounty and he will do it for free and just use a levitate potion,scroll,spell, whatever to get to him. Did i mention he does it for FREE!!

hopefully in the next game bethesda will fix this. Of course, unless, it was on purpose.

*Marxist ßastard sighs unconvincingly*

Okay, I'll make a mod.

its only a good idea to drop everything and talk to the guard if you can afford it if not drop all ur stuff except money of course and get things to sell and sneak around town and sell things until u have enough money to pay the guard or thieves guild ive become good at this especially in balmora because you can pretty much get around the whole town on that wall then on roof tops this also goes for suran

If you are a Knight of the Imperial Protector, you can find the evidence chest(I dunno where the Mournhold one is, I would guess the Imperial Cult building) and LEGALLY lockpick them. One of the best reasons to join the legion.