Skyrim Designer Bruce Nesmith Says Bucket Stealth Was An Accident

Stealing from people – even something as silly as putting a bucket on their head first – is a huge part of what makes Skyrim, Skyrim. It’s right up there with the dragons and magic. The game just wouldn’t feel the same without those clueless townsfolk going about their day while you’re helping yourself to their stuff.

The development team was completely caught off guard when players discovered a way to become invisible using the game’s physics. They hadn’t even thought to test for this possibility, and the community cleverly found a loophole they hadn’t considered.

“It was a total accident,” designer Bruce Nesmith explained to FRVR. “We never intentionally tried to include a bucket-on-head feature during development—it just appeared after the game was released!”

The Bucket Trick Was Discovered Almost Immediately

I was determined to find out how this glitch started – I really didn’t want to lose all my items! While many players probably discovered it on their own, I found a video from November 12, 2011, just a day after the game launched. YouTuber TDKPyrostasis shared a video calling it “the bucket trick.”

Funnily enough, his first example was with a kettle, but that isn’t quite as catchy.

It’s amusing to see old forum posts where players begged Bethesda not to fix a minor glitch. Some wikis say the trick doesn’t work anymore and the item will fall off, but as our new picture shows, it still works perfectly after 13 years! It just requires a little effort to pull off.

Sadly, this clever trick doesn’t work in Starfield, and likely won’t in The Elder Scrolls 6. However, players will probably still find creative, unusual methods to steal everything they can. They’ve always been resourceful – remember how they used to push NPCs out of rooms in Oblivion?

2025-10-25 13:34

The Bucket Trick Was Discovered Almost Immediately

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