What's the most effective way to steal inside one turn?

Question

The Steal command (and mug, also known as capture, and all other attempts to steal) has a success rate determined by the following formula. Note as Kaiser points out below, you can cut your enemy's level in half with the Discord Lore (unless they're immune to instant death, like bosses)

Success % = (Locke's Level + 50 - Target's level)/128

There's also lots of ways to steal more than one time per turn. You can have any two of the following relics:

• Brigand's Glove: turns Steal into Mug
• Genji Glove: allows two weapons, thus two attacks (affects Mug)
• Thief's Bracer: Doubles percentage chance of stealing
• Master's Scroll: 4 random attacks instead of 1, per weapon

There's also the Thief's Knife item which has a random chance of attempting to steal. Possible combos I'm considering are:

• Brigand + Genji: 2 Mug attempts per turn
• Brigand + Master: 4 Mug attempts per turn (but random targets)
• Master + Genji + Thief's Knife: 8 attacks per turn, possible chance of theft

So what's the most effective combo? Without (previously) knowing the % boost of the Thief's bracer or the % chance of the Thief's Knife, I've been going with Brigand's Glove and Master Scroll (Genji Glove before it) to maximize attempts per turn, but what's the most efficient way to do this?

Ideally I'd like the most chances to steal inside a single turn when using mug (or normal attack + Thief's knives, if necessary). Yes I know I can use Steal without an attack and be sure I won't kill things, I'd like to know the most effective way per turn to do this.

Answer 1

I have this all worked out except for the Thief Knife bits; I don't know how often they steal so I can't say how effective Genji Glove + Master Scroll + Thief Knife is (theoretically up to 8 attempts to steal, less in practice).

Given a base chance of 1% chance to steal (just to make the math easy, the real formula is above):

• Brigand + Genji = 1% x2
• Thief's Glove = 2%
• Brigand + Master Scroll = 1% x4 (random targets, plus a bug noted below)

So if your focus is just on getting the item, there's no difference between Brigand's Glove + Thief/Genji glove except that using the Genji glove will do more damage (which may be a good or a bad thing). Since the Thief's Glove is just as effective as 2 Mug attempts, if all you want is the item, you can just forgo using the Mug command since anything without the Master's Scroll will be just as effective (or less) than using just Steal + Thief's Glove.

Using the Master Scroll and the Brigand's glove is clearly the best option but it has a bug when attempting to steal multiple items: the Capture Glitch. From the Final Fantasy Wiki:

Additionally, there is a glitch involving Capture and the Relic Master's Scroll, or any attempt to steal multiple items within a single turn. After having Locke use Capture while equipped with the Master's Scroll (or any character using two Thief Knives), the first item stolen will always be stolen, but any items that would be stolen afterward will not be added to the player's inventory (unless the monster is alone). Any items stolen after the first item cannot be stolen again under any circumstances, meaning that some items, such as Ultima Weapon's Ribbon, are lost.

Note that "capture" used to be the name for the "mug" command in the original US release (the commands are Steal and Mug in the GBA translation) and I'm not sure if this affects stealing from monsters with a "common" steal and a "rare" steal. Either way it seems that the Master's Scroll is risky to use when stealing from multiple targets, but this generally only matters for bosses (which usually spawn solo) since they have the only stealable items which can be lost for good due to this glitch.

So, if you want to play it safe, just use the Thief glove and the normal steal command. Using Mug + Genji is more effective in normal combat (where killing things is okay). Master Scroll + Brigand gives you the theoretical best chance of stealing but only against a single target.