Thieving is one of the faster skills to train in Minescape, and also has the benefit of being a fairly decent moneymaker. There are plenty of options for training the skill, and this guide will show you some of the best places to level Thieving from the lowest levels to the highest.
As of a recent update, you are no longer forced into combat when you fail to pickpocket an entity, so training combat alongside Thieving is no longer necessary. However, some mobs still require combat for sake of Thieving efficiency. The combat method of training Thieving will be explained a little more later on.
If you're looking for less intensive training methods, you can instead thieve from stalls when you hit the required levels for them, but they are significantly slower XP than pick pocketing and will not be discussed in depth in this guide.
Levels 1 - 5[]
At level 1 Thieving, your only option is to steal from Man and Woman mobs, which can be found pretty much everywhere. From the perspective of a brand new player, the best place to start pick pocketing them would be in Lumbridge. The main pathway through the town has dozens of them and you can easily run from one to the next and not worry about their high alert cooldowns.
If you choose to utilize combat to kill a mob, the goal is to kill them as quickly as possible, so having decent combat stats and gear appropriate to the combat level of the mob is ideal. Killing a mob and forcing it to respawn removes the high alert cooldown, allowing you to pickpocket the mob more often. If you can't 1 or 2 shot a mob, doing the kill method is not recommended.
A good location for the kill method is in Edgeville, where you can find several mobs that respawn in the exact same location.
At level 2, you unlock Goblins, which can be found around an abandoned building by the Lumbridge river, across the bridge closest to the castle. Pickpocket these until you hit level 5.
Levels 5 - 12[]
At level 5 you unlock Farmers. Finding a good spot for these is tricky, but you can find 4 or 5 of them near Lumbridge, along the road north of where the Goblins were. There are 2 fairly close together near the cow and chicken farms that you can bounce between doing the combat method if you want, otherwise you can just run up and down the road and steal from all of them.
At level 7 you unlock Highwaymen, however these do not appear in groups and aren't really worth trying to steal from. However, there is a spot South of Falador at the crossroads by the chicken farm where you can find a Farmer and Highwayman that spawn fairly close together, and if you want you can run between these two and steal from/kill them. Otherwise, you'll want to stick to the Farmers around Lumbridge until level 12.
The Vegetable stall is unlocked at level 5 which is located in Draynor Village.
Levels 12 - 30[]
At level 12 you unlock Monks, which can be found at the Monastery just west of Edgeville. Monks are interesting because you can sometimes steal prayer potions from them which you can either sell or you can save them to use for combat training. If you want to earn a good stack of pots, then you can stay here until as high as level 30 if you wanted.
At level 15 you can thieve from Wizards which can be found at the Wizards' Tower south of Draynor. Inside the tower there are a lot of wizards, so you can run around in a circular direction and hit them all up as you go along. These are a fairly decent source of runes early on. You'll want to stick to these until level 30, unless you want to try to earn some gold through Guards.
Guards are unlocked at level 19, however they are only found in small groups. The only way to steal from these efficiently is with the combat method which requires decent combat stats. Thieving Guards can be a really good source of money early on, so if you can kill them it's not a bad idea to do so. If you struggle to kill them then I'd recommend sticking to Wizards until level 30 Thieving.
Level 20 unlocks the fruit stall which can also be found in Draynor.
Level 25 unlocks Al-Kharid Warriors, but we won't be starting until level 30, which will be explained in the next section.
Levels 30 - 45[]
So here is where we start over-leveling for Thieving targets. Because fail rates are obviously higher at the minimum required level, from now on we're going to be training up a few levels past the required level of a mob before we start thieving them, otherwise your XP rates will be lower than at the previous mob.
Al-Kharid Warriors shouldn't be started until you hit 30 Thieving. They can be found all around Al-Kharid but the best place to steal from them is at the palace. Up the big set of stairs there are 3 located in the open courtyard and 4 inside the first big room inside the palace. These mobs are a bit spread out, so if you have access to speed potions (of any tier) this is the first mob where they become really useful. You will be Thieving from these all the way to level 45 because none of the mobs you unlock until that point are worth doing, except Barbarians which we will wait until level 45 to steal from.
If moneymaking is your primary goal, Guards are still a viable alternative training method during these levels and beyond. You can earn quite a lot of gold from them if you can 1 shot them, but the XP rates can't compete with other mobs at these levels or above.
The fish stall is unlocked at level 35 and can be found in Port Sarim.
Levels 45 - 70[]
Barbarians are unlocked at level 40, but once again we are waiting until level 45 to begin. They are located at the Barbarian Village south of Edgeville. We will be sticking here until at least level 70.
There are a total of 10 Barbarians located in the village, (there used to be 13 but 3 were removed permanently in a recent update). Before you begin Thieving them, I'd suggest you take a little bit of time to walk around and find them all and start planning your route around the village to be able to steal from them all.
Speed potions are strongly recommended here because the Barbarians are very spread apart and with speed potions you can hit up all 10 of them by the time their cooldowns finish resetting to get the max XP/hr. If you don't have access to speed pots or choose not to use them, you can choose to skip the 3 Barbarians located in the big Feast Hall at the north of the village during your route.
Silver stalls are unlocked at level 50 and can be found in Port Sarim.
Rune stalls are unlocked at level 65 and can be found in Varrock Square.
Levels 70 - 90[]
The next location we're going to is the Beekeepers, which can be found at the bee farm south of Camelot castle and west of Catherby.
Beekeepers are unlocked at level 58, but they seem to have a very high failure rate early on so we don't want to start here until at least level 70.
Beekeepers are notable because they give significantly more gold than the previous mobs, so you will make a significant chunk of money while training here.
One of the downsides to training on Beekeepers is the fact that there are only 6 of them. This means that by the time you finish thieving all of them you have to wait 20-30 seconds for their high alert cooldowns to reset. The combat method is not recommended here because Beekeepers do quite a lot of damage and even with high level combat and gear, it would be far more trouble than its worth. Despite this, their XP rates are still better than Barbarians, but if waiting around for that long between cycles becomes an issue for you, Barbarians are still a decent, if less profitable alternative.
At level 80 you unlock the Scimitar stall which can be found in Varrock Square. From this point on, stalls are a viable alternative to train up to level 99. The rune and scimitar stalls are very close together in Varrock square and if you run between the two you can get some seriously good XP rates. The rune stall has a 15 second cooldown and the Scimitar stall has a 20 second cooldown.
A good cycle between the stalls would be to start from the Rune stall and go back and forth between them. After the first steal of each you will have to wait just a few seconds for each of them to respawn. When you get back to steal from the rune stall for the third time, it should have already respawned by the time you get there, and you will want to steal from it and then wait until it respawns again because it will be ready to steal from again slightly before the scimitar stall. Then you simply repeat the cycle.
As of an update that heavily nerfed alch prices especially for mithril items, mithril scimitars are no longer valuable enough to be worth alching for money. As a result, if you're looking to make money through Thieving you will want to try different methods than stalls, but if you're looking for just the best XP for now, stalls are the way to go.
From level 80 on, where you want to train is a matter of preference. Beekeepers make more money than stalls even if you have the magic level for high alchemy, but stalls have slightly higher XP rates. Without high alchemy, stalls are only worth it if you don't care about making money.
Level 90-99+[]
Once you hit level 90, the final good pick pocketing mob starts becoming a viable option. Smugglers, which have a required level of 80 but once again because of fail rates, shouldn't be started until at least level 90. However, through some testing there are a few caveats about Smugglers that need to be mentioned.
First, is I mentioned that the suggested level is at least level 90. Fail rates are inconsistent due to the nature of RNG, and while Smugglers definitely start to become one of the best training methods at around level 90, you may still struggle to get higher XP rates than other training methods because of the inconsistency of how RNG works. I suggest testing them out for yourself to get a feel for them, and if you feel like it still isn't good enough there's no shame in waiting a few more levels before coming back.
Secondly, there are supposed to be up to 8 Smuggler mobs at the tents, however a few of them have a random tendency to go completely missing and there is usually as few as 4 or 5 of them. They don't wander off, they just disappear. If there are fewer than 5 Smugglers located in the camp, even with a 0% failure rate their XP rates won't be better than training at the Varrock stalls.
Lastly, Smugglers aren't necessarily the most profitable. They're outshone by Beekeepers and the Guards from earlier levels, but in terms of training at the highest levels their massive XP potential more than makes up for their GP rates, which are still pretty good compared to most other Thieving mobs.
Smugglers unfortunately have a few big asterisks associated with training on them, and while they undoubtedly have the highest XP potential of any other Thieving training method in the game, if these issues become too big of a hindrance then the two Varrock stalls remain the best alternative training method.
Beyond level 99, with the Thieving cape increasing success rates by 10%, Smugglers have a 0% fail rate from normal pick pocketing. It is still possible to fail them when on high alert. Because of this, any training beyond 99 you definitely want to stick to Smugglers, however, only if there are 5 or more spawns of them. With just 5 spawns, you can get up to 20% higher XP/min on average than what you can get at stalls, and with 6 spawns it can be up to 40% more, depending on how efficient you are at timing their cooldowns. If there are fewer than 5 spawns, the XP rates will be slightly lower than the Varrock stalls, and your best option would be to try hopping to another server to see if there are more Smuggler spawns, otherwise you might be better off coming back to the skill at a later time to see if the spawns are fixed.
Happy Thieving.