Skills/Lockpicking

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Lockpicking opens locked chests and boxes without the key, from a friend's practice box to buried treasure.

At a glance

Skill cap	100 (Grandmaster)
Tool	lockpicks (12 gold at provisioners, tinkers and thieves; made by tinkers)
Use	Double-click a lockpick, then target a locked container next to you
Starting gear	20 lockpicks
Stats it trains	Dexterity

How to pick a lock

1. Double-click a lockpick: What do you want to pick?
2. Target a locked container within 1 tile (or in your pack). If it isn't locked: This does not appear to be locked.
3. After 3 seconds the attempt is made. Stay next to it.

Result	What it means
The lock quickly yields to your skill.	Success: the lock is open.
You are unable to pick the lock.	Failure. There's a 1 in 4 chance your lockpick breaks: You broke the lockpick.
You don't see how that lock can be manipulated.	Your skill is below the lock's required skill. You can't try yet.
This lock cannot be picked by normal means...	The lock is magically sealed or can't be picked at all.

Every lock has a required skill and a difficulty range: your chance rises from 0% at the bottom of the range to 100% at the top. Whoever picks a lock is remembered, and Forensic Evaluation can find out who.

Locks you'll meet

Treasure map chests

Chests dug up with a treasure map are locked and trapped:

Chest	Required skill	Difficulty range	Chance at 100
Level 1	['36', '26–76', '100%']
Level 2	['76', '66–116', '68%']
Level 3	['84', '74–124', '52%']
Level 4	['92', '82–132', '36%']
Level 5	['100', '90–140', '20%']

Crafted chests and boxes

When a crafter who knows some Tinkering makes a chest or box, it may come out lockable, with a key inside. The better their Tinkering, the harder the lock:

Crafter's Tinkering	Required skill	Difficulty range
30	['20', '10–59']
50	['36', '26–75']
70	['52', '42–91']
90	['68', '58–95']
100	['76', '66–95']

These make perfect practice boxes: lock one with its key, pick it, lock it again.

Training Lockpicking

• Every attempt on a lock you're allowed to try is a chance to gain, from 0 to 100.
• Practice on crafted boxes from friends with rising Tinkering, then move on to treasure chests.
• Below 10.0 you gain on every attempt, sometimes several tenths at once. Above that, each attempt has a chance to gain 0.1.
• The harder the attempt is for your skill level, the better your chance to gain. Your chance also drops as you get closer to your Lockpicking cap and to your total skill cap of 700.
• If you've set Lockpicking to go down (the arrow in your skills list), gains elsewhere can lower it to make room under your total cap. Lock skills you want to keep.
• Reaching 100.0 adds Lockpicking to the Skills Mastered count on your achievements.
• Golem crafters, thief guildmasters, tinkers and tinker guildmasters will train you for gold: up to a third of their own skill, at most 42.0, for 1 gold per 0.1 points. Ask them (or use their context menu) to train the skill, then drop the gold on them.

Stats: each successful use has about a 6% chance to raise Dexterity by 1 point. Each stat can rise at most once every 10 minutes, and only if it's set to rise.

Suggested path

Lockpicking	How to train
0 to about 30	Buy it from a tinker or thief guildmaster.
30 to 70	Pick crafted boxes locked by a friend with 50 to 90 Tinkering.
70 to 100	Boxes from a Grandmaster tinker, then treasure map chests.

Tips

• Carry plenty of lockpicks. They break often at low skill.
• Treasure chests are trapped. Disarm them with Remove Trap before you open them.
• New characters who pick Lockpicking, Stealing or Snooping start with 20 lockpicks.

See also

• Remove Trap · Tinkering · Cartography · Stealing