You will need a several lock picks, just about all Blacksmith/Provisioners/Tinker/Carpenter/Bakery shops will have locked crates and strong boxes, most of these can be opened in a few tries with about 30 lock picking and all the time with 50 Lock picking. (Other chests in town, like in Guard stations often require much more lock picking skill).

Pick all the locks at a single location before you start opening them.

After the lock is picked just open the Chest. Now some of these will be trapped, there are 3 types of traps

1-Dart.

Just an Annoyance, it will do a small amount of damage.

2 Explosion.

Another annoyance, unless you fall below 30 Hit points, then it is possible to kill you. (This is only for the in town shops I have listed above, Guard post containers, and other containers have the capacity to Kill a very strong character in a single shot).

3 Poison cloud. These you will have to worry about.

The poison cloud traps in the shops will have weaker poison than other places, but even so it can kill you in a minute or less if you don't "CURE" it. the most cost effective way I have found is to carry 3 garlic and 3 ginseng on me, you have to wait a moment after you are poisoned to cast it, otherwise "your concentration will be disturbed" and it will fizzle, but after a few times you will get the hang of it.

If you are Poisoned and out of Cures, make the most of the few moments you have left by opening any other containers you haven't looked in yet (That's why you pick all the locks when you first get there). If their are no more containers to open you can run to low traffic area to die if your carrying anything important. Or you can try stealing some really high risk items (Heavy things, or anything if their are people or NPCs close by).

A good warrior or Mage can be in a lot of dangerous situations and manage to go for weeks or longer without Dyeing. An active thief however is going to Die Several times in a busy day at GM level, Newbie thieves can easily spend 30 minutes of every hour as a ghost waiting on the 2 minute criminal flag to wear off so they can resurrect. Your going to die a lot, make the most of it.

For all in town rares, there is a Key that not all rares hunters seem to understand, that is you need to STEAL EVERYTHING out of the chests/barrels/crates Etc so when they spawn again in 10-40 minutes (Usually about 15 minutes, but it can take 40 minutes before for the next spawn) you will have a Much better chance of getting the item(s) you want. Rares spawn right along side the normal items, if you only steal the rares you see when you show up, you are not going to have a good chance of getting anything good for round 2.

As we mentioned in Stealing 101, unless you are a master thief your Best defense is to wait until the NPCs wander off screen then steal everything you can as fast as you can.

After a few stealing sessions you will start to learn what certain items weight. Since your stealing will be at least 50 you should not have much trouble taking 1 stone items even with NPCs present. Start taking those out of the containers as soon as you get all the containers open. Wait until the NPCs move away and then start stealing the heavier Items.