The short version:
Go to Feluca, get a packhorse and put 100-111 Dye tubs in its pack. Go to a place with a lot of NPCs, tell the horse to guard you. Practice stealing the Dye Tubs in a Circuit during power hour. You will get to all the way to GM this way.
The Long version:
Go to felucca, there are permanent Moongates from trammel to Felucca (see update highlights for a little more info on the Perma-Gate). It would probably be a good idea to get all of this set up on 1 day and try and catch the next Power hour as their is a considerable amount of Prep time.
You will need 100+ Dye tubs, (i used 111 just to be safe). It will take a while to buy that many, and it helps to have a place to store them. Most people can't fit 100 Items into their bank box, I know I sure couldn't. And no one could carry that many dye tubs at once since they weigh 10 stones each. A pack horse can carry them no Problem, but since it will take several Power hours to get to GM stealing, you wont be able to keep them in the horses pack (you can no longer stable an animal with items in its pack).
Be creative in how to store the Dye tubs so you can get them out and ready to go quickly for each power hour training session. I personally threw out as much junk in my bank box as I could, held as many on my person as I could, and bought a boat (for the hold) to stuff the rest.
Side note. A lot of people don't think animals will follow them on or off a boat. That is because it's a huge pain if the ground isn't perfectly level. You can do it at a dock, or at a few stretches of shore providing the shore is perfectly level as illustrated:
I would recommend putting about 20 or so dye tubs into a backpack, and storing them that way. On your next power hour, you wont have to deal with a million Dye tubs, just 6 packs.
You can choose if your going to stable the horse, or set it free and buy a new one for each stealing session. If you don't have a lot of gold sitting around stabling would be an attractive Idea. (I set them free and buy a new one each power hour but that is just to save time).
The reason your going to all this effort to keep 100 or more Dye tubs on hand, is because you can only steal 1 item so many times in a day, then you wont gain stealing from it anymore. I use 111 because I have had friends report that from 90 to 100 skill their gain Stops dead if they are using 75 or so tubs. 111 Is a Nice large number, and I have never had stealing gains go dead using that many Items.
Once you have your pack horse loaded up with Dye Tubs, go somewhere on the map that has a Lot of NPCs, I used the central Jhelom Tailor, but anywhere will do, the More NPCs the merrier and their are many places that are better than the tailor shop. The reason for all the NPCs is it makes it more difficult to steal when an NPC can see you, more NPCs make it ever harder. During power hour your gains will be incredible if you have a lot of NPCs around to watch, Much slower if you don't have any or only have 1 or 2.
Steal them in a set order to avoid getting too many attempts down on a certain item, and not using other items at all. I stack all the tubs in an organized fashion in packs, then Open the Horses pack then Open the packs in the horses pack and arrange them as illustrated below:
The packhorse method can be Used from 0 to 100 Skill, but since several things need to be done, It takes a fair amount of gold. and it has to be done in Felucca, new players to Ultima might consider using the Dock Method for their Initial stealing gains.
Raising stealing skill using the pack horse method is Extremely effective, its also hands down one of the Most Boring things you will ever do in your Life, you would be more excited picking fly poop out of pepper! So... :) If you have UO assist, its time to use it! Actually any macro program would work, but your putting your account in Jeopardy, a little Fly Poop is much more tolerable than having your account Banned.
Setting up Macros takes some time, and I'm not open to doing Tech support for Macro set up. You can however find most of the information you need for setting up UO assist Macros at www.tugsoft.com
When setting up a macro for this, make sure you leave a 10 Second pause in between attempts. That is 10000 milliseconds. (I use 11111 milliseconds because my connection isn't always the greatest. lol)
You have to wait 10 seconds in between stealing attempts. If you try to steal prematurely and your macro is recording, it will record that too, and it will throw your macro way off when you try and run it. I used the second hand on the computer clock and tried stealing every 15 seconds while recording the macro just to be certain I didn't have any errors (and I ended up having 2 errors when it was all said and done in spite of that DOH!). If you have a small amount of errors in the macro, you can delete the lines that are causing the problem. But if you have a Lot of errors you will want to start over again.
I recorded 60 stealing attempts on 60 Items in the first macro, and 51 attempts on the remaining 51 Items. The macros themselves run for about 10 minutes. I stay at the screen and read a bit, or surf the web with 1/2 the browser visible, DO NOT turn the macro on and the leave, you will get banned if you do that. Even if you just need to use the rest room, Turn the macro Off before you go or hold it! :)
Side issue about Un-attended macroing. The most smug macroers are always that way up until their first warning, then they go and macro in the woods thinking they wont get caught. The have a good chance of not getting caught, but many of them do end up getting nailed even when their in the Middle of timbuk2. It really pisses me off when I see on websites or other places people that have not yet been caught macroing advising newbies that its just fine and nothing is going to happen. Its not fine, something very well could happen. Its not really worth your account. *takes reciept for Thoth-Ammon's 2 gps' worth* I'm not passing judgment on anyone, but I think its important that every now and then people hear that, there would be a lot less people with Banned accounts if they did.