Oblivion talk:The Unfortunate Shopkeeper

There is another way to complete the quest. A cheaty one though. Take Ghost Ship of Anvil immediately after you got this one. Get inside the ship, hit the ghost (it will have no effect until you have silver or enchanted weapon) and get out immediately. The ghost will follow you outside and hit Varulae unconcious. Meanwhile all the gang you're expected to get at night in the store are here in docks and they will begin fight with the ghost. They have no chance of course. Just hide somewhere and wait until all are dead. Ghost gets back to the ship (not sure actually, did not see it). Now go to the Norbert Lelles. P.S. Valurae will be ok next day or so.

Intentional MisspellingEdit

This is the third time somebody has corrected the spelling of "Quality Burlaries" to "Quality Burglaries". I know the misspelling was done intentionally as a joke in reference to the "Quality Mercandise" sign out front, but is this joke worth the effort of repeatedly un-correcting it every time somebody sees the "error"? Or is there a better way to make it clear that the mistake is intentional? Just didn't want to go back and forth on this one forever. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 15:05, 7 March 2007 (EST)

I agree, it's not worth constantly changing this header if most people don't realize it's intentionally misspelled. I'd opt to just have it correctly spelled, unless someone can come up with something better. --Nephele 15:32, 7 March 2007 (EST)

You could always try the denotation (sic). Then maybe people will leave it alone. --Vilhazarog 15:40, 7 March 2007 (EST)

TimingEdit

At dusk the group of three intruders will gather outside the shop. At precisely 10pm they will start sneaking (albeit rather blatantly) into the shop. So you can complete the quest a little before midnight. --Timski 13:58, 10 May 2007 (EDT)

Killing the Thieves OutsideEdit

For some reason, as soon as I got the quest and talked to the Norbert, the thieves were outside as soon as i stepped out, approximately 11 AM. I decided to try killing them right there to see if it would count as a murder and it didn't and the quest was still completed. --Piercethetruth 00:50, 1 December 2007 (EST)

Verified on the 360 version - I went outside the shop after talking to Norbert Lelles and attacked the thieves. The townsfolk and a guard joined in on the attack against the thieves. I looked at my stats, no bounty. I talked to the guard & did not go to jail. Also, I tried persuasion on the thieves before attacking them, the disposition was zero and would not change. - RoadDog772

Thinking about it, this is probably because the three thieves belong solely to an evil faction. Given these two independent confirmations, I will remove the 'verification needed' tag. If somebody has evidence to the contrary (has got a bounty for attacking them outside), the note should be deleted completely. --Gaebrial 02:52, 30 January 2008 (EST)

I too can confirm this for the Xbox 360. I walked outside immediately after talking to the shopkeeper and attacked the thieves. All the guards and townsfolk helped me and I received no bounty or infamy.Obliviongamer 01:04, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Getting rid of the bodiesEdit

I ran outside, fought them, then threw the bodies over the railing into the ocean. End of mess. Zack-10 Mar 2008

This was weird: I waited around inside Lelles's shop until @11:00. Sure enough, the thieves came in, but didn't see me yet because I was in sneak mode. So, I leave sneak mode and stand up straight in front of the first thief with my sword drawn, and . . . NOTHING! He ignores me! I try talking to him and he says something to the effect of "Now's not the time to talk"! I tried the same thing with the other two thieves and got the same response! Finally, I decided to just take a hack at one of them, and that got them to attack me. My personality score isn't that high, and I can't think of any reason why my disposition would be high with any of the thieves, so, like I said, weird!204.108.237.194 09:07, 20 May 2009 (EDT)Marcus

Glitch?Edit

I was playing on the 360 version, and i had waited in the shop until around 12. I eventually got bored and went outside and saw the thieves, but Storn the Burly was laying on the ground, dead. The thieves had full health, as well as everyone around them, and there were no indications of a recent fight (The mythic dawn sailor didn't have her summoned armor on), yet the thieves had not stopped on their way to the shop and storn was dead right behind them. Anyone know how this could have happened? — Unsigned comment by 76.21.230.121 (talk) at 01:20 on 2 August 2010

Hard to say. One possible explanation could be that you were on the dockside at 4am when the thieves leave the shop. They will then be attacked by all the pirates and maybe you didn't notice and left the area before all three was killed - and before Isolde got involved. Other than that, it sounds a bit like a one-off. --Krusty 15:19, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Notes CleanupEdit

I've removed these strategies from the notes section. They were bloating the article and are general strategies that work everywhere. Thoughts?

• Talk to each thief and get their disposition up to 100. Equip a frenzy spell and then cast it on one of the thieves. The other two thieves will attack the frenzied person. If the frenzy wears off then they will continue fighting. This method reduces the last standing person to a low health and makes him easy to pick off.
• Some people may find, however, that when attempting the above "Frenzy" technique, that the frenzied enemy may start attacking citizens instead of his other two companions. This need not be a bad thing though, as the enemy is still busy trying to defeat the citizen. This gives you opportune time to pick him and / or his two companions off.
• Command Humanoid works well here, as it levels the playing field.
• Stay in sneak mode and don't attack them; wait until one notices you and attacks. Sometimes you can fight one-on-one while the others continue looking at the shop's goods!
• If you want to, you can use the time alone in the shop to steal some of the valuables from the shop.
• Solve two quests in one go. Visit the shop in the morning, get the quest and leave. The three thieves will be standing outside waiting. Now go and do The Ghost Ship of Anvil quest, and get the Spectral Sailors to follow you out onto the dock. They will attack the three thieves and other NPC's. You mop up and claim the glory.

RaidensTechSupp 02:05, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Moved bugEdit

"Avoid entering Flowing Bowl Inn while being chased by the thieves as Lelles might leave and never be seen again."

Seems like an one time bug to me. Feedback would be helpful. --Rigas Papadopoulos • Talk • Deeds • 13:06, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I do not understand what that means. Clarification?Obliviongamer 01:03, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Peaceful burglars.Edit

They "sneak" in at ~10pm, collect some invisible stuff from floor then they will wait till 11pm to attack you.

~~Roman 10.10.2015

Pacifist methodEdit

I'm attempting a pacifist run through Oblivion, and was able to successfully complete this quest without killing anything.

Pretty easy to do this one as a pacifist--either wait for them to enter the shop, then lead them outside, or use a Frenzy spell when they're hanging out on the dock and let the guards/townsfolk take care of them. Be sure to start The Ghost Ship of Anvil before you do this to ensure Varulae doesn't get killed--she's so close to the fight, she seems to always get dragged into it. (Heinrich also seems to die a lot, but he doesn't play a role in any quests so that's OK.) Alynnidalar (talk) 19:15, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Odd Bug: Shop LockedEdit

Had an odd bug with this quest; got it from Azzan in the normal fashion, but when I went to talk to Lelles, his shop was locked (Normal daytime hours), so I couldn't complete the quest. Waiting did no good. Just out of curiosity, to see if he was maybe dead (there was a dead city guard outside), I used the player.moveto command just to find out where he was. It transported me inside the shop, where Lelles acted like nothing was out of the ordinary, left for the Flowing Bowl as usual (door was unlocked; I checked), and the quest proceeded normally from there.