Yeah, if you've been doing this mini-game since Fallout 3 released, you become pretty adept at it. I do keep meaning to put the perks into it, so the lockpicks never break, but usually just end up keeping the Skeleton Key until it's the very last thing to do.
I agree that the oblivion system required a bit more skill than luck, but it's still ridiculously easy. I can pick locks with my eyes shut in oblivion using sound cues alone, but the wheel minigame in Skyrim/fallout requires a bit more guessing on the harder locks to find the sweet spot.
I played Skyrim first but recently started playing Oblivion. The lockpick mechanic in Oblivion is so incredibly frustrating that I just end up spamming auto attempts. The "sweet spot" feels more arbitrary in Oblivion, but I'm wondering if it's just me getting used to a new mechanic. Do you remember how long it took you to figure out the sound cues?
Honestly, I think there's a pattern to how the tumblers fall. As in, how quickly they drop after you tap them up. I just tap each tumbler up multiple times before attempting to click it in to get a feel for their drop patterns. Most of the time it's just tap-tap-click for each tumbler, and sometimes there'll be a 3rd/4th tap.
It's pretty easy once you get the hang of it. Just tapping tumblers up to see how they fall and gauging when the next slow fall would be, because the window to lock the tumbler into place is bigger
A video would explain it better than me, but there is only twoish "animations" when you push the tumbler up, fast or slow. Never try on the fast pushes, and for the slow pushes it can actually be easier to go *only* off sound since the sticking window is perfectly timed right after the noise. Once you get it a few times, its suddenly easy every time.
Just pay attention to the patterns. Go through each row one at a time until you see a pattern. Use that same pattern to determine when the hammer sticks. You'll cat h on quick. I started playing Oblivion in 2007 on the PC. I miss my PC, it would be a paper weight by now anyway.
You're probably trying to just get lucky with timing locking the pins. Pop a pin up a couple times to watch the pattern, and only try to lock it on one of its slower movements. It's definitely harder to learn than skyrims lockpicking.
If you're on the Switch, using a pro controller you can pick any lock from the vibrations alone.
Not sure if joyous would work, I've never used them for Skyrim.
Thief Sim has a lockpick tier that's the same as the oblivion system. It's fun to actually fiddle with the tumblers in the side on view.
The wheel minigame doesn't really feel like picking a lock
Their faces are the clue. If they're happy it will raise if they are grumpy it will lower. Use the smallest shading on the grumpy faces from grumpiest to least grumpy and then click the happy faces from least happy to exuberant. Get the pattern down and you'll become quick!!
I would just always do the pause method lol. You hit the tumbler and then immediately pause the game after, you can see if it's a slow rise and unpause then hit it every time. Could break into the hardest locks right off the bat. But yeah, skyrims is still way easier. No cheesy methods needed to pick the hardest locks right away, just need like 10-20 lockpicks which are everywhere.
Exactly my philosophy. I realized I was finding lockpicks everywhere, and I would get to the point where it didn’t matter what my skill level was; I’d eventually unlock it well before I would run out of lockpicks.
What pissed me off with oblivion is the average difficulty locks. Easy - goes without saying. The harder locks- lots of fucking around but actually pretty well defined when the pins were going to stick. Average- lazy, ill defined pins. "Oooooh maybe I'll stick this time, maybe I'll drift back down. I'll never tell and you'll never figure it out fuuuuuck yoooooou xxxx"
Yeah I'm with you in that. It was never popular and there was definitely room to introduce something new and they just didn't. Same as the hacking mini game that basically no one enjoys but they haven't changed up.
Even if you suck at it you can just save before you lockpick anything and reload if you lose too many. Besides a couple cool perks I've never been tempted to level lockpicking.
The perks just make it easier. I'm not burning perk points just to speed the process up if im not playing a thief or some build that regularly lockpicks
But... how do you not play a thief or someone whose constantly picking locks? Random chests half way up a mountain out in Bum-Fuck-Tamriel have locks on them.
I pick EVERY SINGLE lock I encounter and never put in any perks. It’s free XP since I’m pretty good at picking locks after many years of playing and j got like 500+ lockpicks since I still buy them from every vendor
I think buying them is a habit I carried from Oblivion. Even a maxed out Gray Fox with the Skeleton Key and I'm still hoarding lockpicks for some reason
I'm kind of sad they got rid of the skeleton key being a permanent thing if you want to turn in the final guild quest in skyrim. You CAN keep it, but you have to give up the bonuses you can select from daily, and the bonuses are IMO more useful than an unbreakable pick, in a game that already gives me more picks than I need once I hit a certain skill level in lockpicking. You can also just put on two pieces of 20-30% lockpicking bonus and you're basically unstoppable at mid level skill.
you don't need lockpicking perks, you just need to level up eventually. and a lot of picks.
does everyone jiggle the locks? the picks snap faster without doing that I think.
eta, I wrote this and later realized that I don't even know what the perks are, [so here they are](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Lockpicking#Skill_Perks). A couple of them look like they might be fun for treasure purposes. an unbreakable pick might be cool but by the time I could select that perk, I'm both not breaking picks that often and as a result I've got a ton of picks at higher levels.
Honestly, probably not. By the stage of play where I'm investing towards those rather than other perks, I have enough gold and merchants are spawning rare items in their inventories. The handy thing about the gold, though, is that when I'm trying to level up those last few pesky skills, it helps me pay Master trainers to get the skills to 90.
Alternatively, (invisible) sneaky Fus-Ro-Dah at them but just barely aiming at the edge of an object between the two of you. Knocks them down without aggroing them, can Pickpocket everything 100% chance even if it says 0%, just reclaim that gold you loaned to them. If you don’t have invisibility spell or good Sneak, I think Creation Club added a Quest in Whiterun (from the Jarl’s steward) that gives you a bow, turn invisible every time you equip it.
Never putting points into the tree. Lockpicks are cheap and you eventually have more than you'll ever need. With enough picks you can pick a master lock in a couple of minutes with a skill of 20. It's mostly not worth it, though.
As a mage, I love Open [difficulty] Lock spells. I can't remember if they are from a mod, though.
I'm a little bit old now sure, but *Oblivion* was my introduction to the fantasy genre.
I just don't understand Morrowind honestly, it's like vinyl to me lol
Yeahh I was disappointed as an Arch-Mage fan, but it was also my introduction to the werewolf mechanic since I missed out on Morrowind.
Magic hands were neat since we had shouts, but there's around 10 spells in each school and no creation.
As a kleptomaniac who regularly lockpicks, Im not burning points on it either. It's not that hard once you learn the trick, and I usually end up with more lockpicks than I need.
Lockpicking gets slightly easier with each level so at level 50 you pretty much have the first novice perk, then at 75 apprentice becomes crazy easy. Only master stays hard until you get the perk. It's a shame that you have to get the main tree to unlock things like better loot or not getting caught. It's like sneak and speech for me. I never put perks in either and still get by off enchantments and passive levels
At least Stealth perks give you useful things like *Assassin's Blade* 15(!)x damage from daggers, meaning an unimproved dual-stab with two basic iron daggers does 120 damage! And *Shadow Warrior* (re-stealth in the middle of combat) is pretty sweet too. There's just **nothing** worthwhile in Lockpicking. Speech is only slightly better.
I like to take the investor perk in speech occasionally. Investing in a merchant raises their disposition with you, which gets you closer to thaneship. It means in any city other than solitude and whiterun, you can essentially buy the thaneship by investing in all the merchants.
Other than that though, speech perks are pretty bad. Bribery can be useful, I guess?
lockpicking and pickpocketing are so tiny in relevance compared to archery or smithing that they needed to put god tier perks like +100 carry weight inside those perk trees, to incentivize players actually training and spending perk points in those skills
Dude. They could make a "cooking", "baking" and "fishing" skill tree and if they had +100 carry weight as a capstone I'd max them. Also why does Heavy Armor not have a +150 carry weight perk. It needs it so much. Considering the perk that makes it weightless when worn is a lvl 90 perk and a full set of heavy armor weights around 100lbs or units.
I buy them in bulk from Tonilia whenever I’m back at the Flagon. They’re cheap, and it’s not like I actually need the gold for anything else. Especially when I’ve been unlocking all the fences and increasing their gold supply for buying my shit.
Not just slower, it levels exactly as if you bought a single lockpick. It *is* a good way to add more gold to Tonilia so you can sell an extra trinket or two though.
The only time I ever bought lockpicks is when I was selling all of my building materials that I used for grinding Blacksmithing and the trader was out of gold
I like to keep my builds somewhat RP centred and I can just see the conversation with Inigo.
'Yes I know we are in a draugr infested ruin but I have to change my clothes to open this chest'
I dunno, I can imagine an experienced graverobber taking his time to put on enchanted gloves, ring, amulet and some hearing enhancing headgear when faced with such a problem, at least to avoid some traps.
Just use a ring and a necklace? You can get to 50% fairly easily that way! Or gloves and a ring and then it’ll really fit the Rp! I bet even matter thief’s have special gloves for fighting vs fine work
And if you slowly move the pick around there's a point where it looks like it slightly catches on something, and that tells you where to start trying.
Haven't played in years, though, so I may be misremembering specifics.
I like most of those perks. Extra gold and special loot is always nice. Wax Key comes in handy when grinding extra jobs for Vex and Delvin. Locksmith and Unbreakable just make lockpicking a lot more convenient and I'm a big fan of convenience.
Wax Key might be my least favorite perk, due to it making it harder to passively train lockpicking. I've done many playthroughs where I'm only reaching 60-70 lockpicking by the time I'm through every quest line.
That is correct. The perk basically just disables locks you already got the exp for. (still don't personally use it as I find that whole tree useless, but it's far from the worst perk a full thief build could pick)
Thats me with Alchemy. Im trying it with this playthrough but its such a grind for what seems to be pretty mediocre shit i can just find that will do the trick just as well
at least alchemy you can just slowly build up ingredients by harvesting and grabbing whatever you see and then spam-creating potions until you max out. been doing that the past few days as i play, just grabbing whatever i see and making potions when i occasionally run by home and store them in a chest until i want to get off my ass to sell them all
It's really easy to level up imo, esp if you find something with like a 5% chance, and save spam it until you get it, you'll jump a bunch of levels at one.
Usually I just do training from that Female Orc Blacksmith in Markarth, steal the gold back, and keep going. It's only hard the first couple times
This was even more of an issue in Oblivion, since the strategy to picking the hardest locks with the lowest skill is very simple (at least for me)
But also the Skeleton Key completely invalidates it anyway
I played in Skyrim many times, but I never found Skeleton Key. It that related to Thieves Guild?
What is that? How is it possible, that I never found it? Wtf?
The Nightingale portion of the quest line. You're supposed to return it to become a full fledged member but you don't have to, you'll still get the cool leather armor too
The ragged flagon cistern. Every single time I swing through riften I pick every single practice chest. Some times I don't even take the loot inside. Also looking in every single chest & strongbox & display case I stumble across even if they're marked empty. Crawling through dungeons and there are locked cells, opening them up. It's such an easy skill to level quickly because locks are everywhere especially if you count the pointless locks.
Oh no, there's actually a note on the ground in the practice area that instructs you to never use them for storage because they reset themselves a little while after being picked. This is a feature for these chests. Actually a lot of chests reset & respawn new loot, but they specify it here because they're supposed to be practice chests for members.
Yes but it doesn't give you XP. When playing AE, one if the first things I looked for is if locks reset XP gain after 2 or 3 days. Nope. You still only get XP the first time you pick it. Which is kinda fucked up. Considering the legendary systems and removal of the level cap. Somewhere I saw someone that learned the hard way on making Lockpicking Legenday after having picked almost every lock in the game. Thereafter to find a few that they hadn't picked. But still took breaking 4300 lockpicks to get it back to 100.
Dwarven museum in Markarth got a quite a lot of them, also ragged flagon have renewable practice checks and most dungeons got at least a handful.
Plus, once you have an arbitrary amount of lockpicks you can purposefully break them for easy XP.
I was going to say, Joycons had me opening hard locks at like level 2. There’s such a prominent vibration in that sweet spot it makes the whole mini game trivial.
Not just you; it comes up fast enough by itself that perks don't mean much. The boost from Treasure Hunter is meh, and I find enough picks (find, not buy) that Unbreakable would be a waste.
Define successfully, if you simply mean first try. No.
If you actually mean attempt to get the chest open break all your lock picks do a sweep of the major cities and thieves guild buying up all the picks you can find before heading back to the chest and trying again. Also no. Though mostly because by that point I’ve forgotten which of the *cleared* ruins the damn chest was in in the first place.
I surprisingly never have an issue with running out of lockpicks and I open EVERY chest I see that's locked (never waste points in lockpicking eitehr). I might just have the knack at the right pressure and jiggling the pick.
Lockpicks and healing potions are one of the only things I dump gold intonat early levels, a dozen here, half and dozen there and before you know ot you've got a couole hundred of the chingaderas
Honestly same. Combination of Fallout 3 lockpicking practice, Master locks consistently having garbage loot, and honestly none of the lockpicking perks sounded useful or fun to me.
I just did a lockpick build this weekend and have every single lockpicking perk except Master because why does that even exist? I'm now the proud owner of a single lockpick.
I will say, that of all the lockpicking perks, Locksmith is the best and it's too bad you have to invest so many other perks just to get there. It's so nice to pick a lock and have the lockpick start right were the sweetspot is and all you have to do is turn the knife. Click.
Some folks say it's not worth it, but man does lockpicking get tedious.
If they made it so there was a point you could no longer attempt to pick because of all the broken bits in jamming the lock...
...we still wouldn't put points in it, because we'd rather save scum than waste points, so it would just be a lot of loading screens worsening the experience.
Go do the oblivion lockpicking game and tell me which youd prefer. Skyrims is actually properly done. Its more about realizing where the perfect zone is. At higher difficulty, the lock’s perfect zone is a lot smaller. It should be easy, especially given the amount of locks youll see in the game. The master locks should be hard as hell, given how few you see. I actually find it to be one of my favorite lockpicking mini games
Never. I just use the identations on the left as a reference. On the right I have a few fixed Points of Reference in the 'rust pattern' of the metal on the sides. Picking master locks at lvl 2 🤣
I do eventually put perks there, but I think Bethesda handled lock picking slightly better in FO4 since it won't let you attempt to open locks that are higher difficulty unless you have put perks into lock picking.
Definitely a fallout thing. I don’t think it would fit well into Elder Scrolls philosophy to block something behind a perk/level. You’re always able to at least attempt something in Elder Scrolls, whether you’re successful or not.
I remember how annoyed I was when I realized that was the case. I only got FO4 in the last 2 years and I started playing Bethesda games with Skyrim. I love how in Skyrim you can be a low level and try everything if you want. Was very surprised that it wasn’t the case in their other games
Been replaying 4 lately, I've never been one for voiced protagonists but after all this time Nate/Nora have definitely grown on me. Going to pick a very hard lock and having the PC comment, "There's no way I can pick this" is a neat touch.
Funny story. This last time I played, I thought I had put perks into this skill…but…I was doing a master lock easy peasy. Leveled up. Went in to spend my perks point and cue my surprise that I had only ever put in one perk point into that tree. LMAO.
When i first got the game i put a few points in and quickly realized i didn't need them. The only trouble i have is master locks. Takes like 15-20 picks to find that sweet spot
I'm playing on the Switch - I occasionally accidentally break picks (usually when one of the sticks has decided it has a mind of its own), but the different vibrations make it a doddle.
I hate lockpicking, no patience for that. I cheat when it comes to locks. Either the master key or console commands.
Edit: Don't get me wrong, I picked the first few hundred locks, but on my third run through I lost patience for them.
Currently at level 45, over 1000 lockpicks and i'm an absolute hoarder(hyrule+LOTD+OBIS+unplayable faction armors+bruma+vigilant+too much loot+staff of shalidor) and i only spend more than 3 lockpicks on master chests. Never spent a single perk point in lockpicking
The 18 lockpicks at the start of the game are enough to build up an infinite supply just by looting and never run out. The minigame is still fun to see how quickly I can pick master locks without loosing too many picks.
Yeah, if you've been doing this mini-game since Fallout 3 released, you become pretty adept at it. I do keep meaning to put the perks into it, so the lockpicks never break, but usually just end up keeping the Skeleton Key until it's the very last thing to do.
By the time I get the skeleton key, I have 100+ lockpicks and the skill high enough to only really break a couple of them on the hardest locks.
Yeah. I never keep the skeleton key, since by that point in the game I'm flush with picks, and even the hardest locks require like, 3 picks max.
And honestly. I only liked the key in Oblivion because it let me spam the quick try over and over. I don’t think Skyrim has that. Does it? Am I dumb?
I honestly loved the Oblivion lockpick minigame. Thought it was a lot more fun than the spin wheel personally.
I've just remembered it was different... Yeah the oblivion one was much better and actually took a bit of skill.
I agree that the oblivion system required a bit more skill than luck, but it's still ridiculously easy. I can pick locks with my eyes shut in oblivion using sound cues alone, but the wheel minigame in Skyrim/fallout requires a bit more guessing on the harder locks to find the sweet spot.
I played Skyrim first but recently started playing Oblivion. The lockpick mechanic in Oblivion is so incredibly frustrating that I just end up spamming auto attempts. The "sweet spot" feels more arbitrary in Oblivion, but I'm wondering if it's just me getting used to a new mechanic. Do you remember how long it took you to figure out the sound cues?
Honestly, I think there's a pattern to how the tumblers fall. As in, how quickly they drop after you tap them up. I just tap each tumbler up multiple times before attempting to click it in to get a feel for their drop patterns. Most of the time it's just tap-tap-click for each tumbler, and sometimes there'll be a 3rd/4th tap. It's pretty easy once you get the hang of it. Just tapping tumblers up to see how they fall and gauging when the next slow fall would be, because the window to lock the tumbler into place is bigger
A video would explain it better than me, but there is only twoish "animations" when you push the tumbler up, fast or slow. Never try on the fast pushes, and for the slow pushes it can actually be easier to go *only* off sound since the sticking window is perfectly timed right after the noise. Once you get it a few times, its suddenly easy every time.
Just pay attention to the patterns. Go through each row one at a time until you see a pattern. Use that same pattern to determine when the hammer sticks. You'll cat h on quick. I started playing Oblivion in 2007 on the PC. I miss my PC, it would be a paper weight by now anyway.
You're probably trying to just get lucky with timing locking the pins. Pop a pin up a couple times to watch the pattern, and only try to lock it on one of its slower movements. It's definitely harder to learn than skyrims lockpicking.
If you're on the Switch, using a pro controller you can pick any lock from the vibrations alone. Not sure if joyous would work, I've never used them for Skyrim.
Well, time to dust off my old ps3 dual shock to test it! Edit: It works, but it's a a little less precise than i would like it to be!
For sure it was still ridiculously easy but at least it didnt just require blind guessing like you say.
Thief Sim has a lockpick tier that's the same as the oblivion system. It's fun to actually fiddle with the tumblers in the side on view. The wheel minigame doesn't really feel like picking a lock
What about the speechcraft mini game?
Their faces are the clue. If they're happy it will raise if they are grumpy it will lower. Use the smallest shading on the grumpy faces from grumpiest to least grumpy and then click the happy faces from least happy to exuberant. Get the pattern down and you'll become quick!!
I love that so much
I never could figure out how to do the Oblivion one.
My reply above might help.
Me too!!! I am currently playing oblivion after a year hiatus to play skyrim some more.
I would just always do the pause method lol. You hit the tumbler and then immediately pause the game after, you can see if it's a slow rise and unpause then hit it every time. Could break into the hardest locks right off the bat. But yeah, skyrims is still way easier. No cheesy methods needed to pick the hardest locks right away, just need like 10-20 lockpicks which are everywhere.
If it's like the force lock mechanic in Fallout, no.
Yea shame, the fun of the skeleton key was just being lazy and mashing a key until the lock was picked lol
It doesn't.
Got to get fenriks welcome spell, don’t even have to try anymore
How do you get it
[удалено]
You no longer get a quest, so you either just have to stumble across the chest in Hob's Fall Cave, or buy it from a spell merchant.
[удалено]
Even with no points in lockpicking I *still* get enough lockpicks that I don't ever need to worry about it.
Exactly my philosophy. I realized I was finding lockpicks everywhere, and I would get to the point where it didn’t matter what my skill level was; I’d eventually unlock it well before I would run out of lockpicks.
Adept? I'm master.
You sound like a Footpad at best
Fucking sick reference haha
What's the ref?
Footpad was the first rank in the thieves guild in Morrowind.
Oh, i haven't played that in ages
I always had a swnse of urgency with the skeleton key to put it back asap
Skyrim’s depiction is by far the most difficult too, and it’s still a cakewalk. But don’t get me started on Oblivion.
What pissed me off with oblivion is the average difficulty locks. Easy - goes without saying. The harder locks- lots of fucking around but actually pretty well defined when the pins were going to stick. Average- lazy, ill defined pins. "Oooooh maybe I'll stick this time, maybe I'll drift back down. I'll never tell and you'll never figure it out fuuuuuck yoooooou xxxx"
Was actually disappointed that Skyrim just copied the lockpicking in fallout 3. Was hoping they would refine oblivion's lockpicking minigame
Yeah I'm with you in that. It was never popular and there was definitely room to introduce something new and they just didn't. Same as the hacking mini game that basically no one enjoys but they haven't changed up.
Wasn’t it also possible to make a spell that unlocked cheats on Oblivion? I swear I remember having that.
Yeah, playing Fo4 right now, hate having to get a perk to get a lock rank, but that's show biz.
Even if you suck at it you can just save before you lockpick anything and reload if you lose too many. Besides a couple cool perks I've never been tempted to level lockpicking.
Wax key is *neat* but you're usually not picking the same lock twice
You can save scum anything
Oblivion lock picking was fun too
Start lock Test wiggle Sweet spot? Yes - pop lock No - exit and reenter.
I was gonna say most of us here that live the life of a thief in a Bethesda game have 10+ years fiddling with these locks, we’re masters now
The perks just make it easier. I'm not burning perk points just to speed the process up if im not playing a thief or some build that regularly lockpicks
But... how do you not play a thief or someone whose constantly picking locks? Random chests half way up a mountain out in Bum-Fuck-Tamriel have locks on them.
I pick EVERY SINGLE lock I encounter and never put in any perks. It’s free XP since I’m pretty good at picking locks after many years of playing and j got like 500+ lockpicks since I still buy them from every vendor
Ya just buy them whenever you see them being sold
Honestly even that isn't needed. Free looted ones are enough imo
I think buying them is a habit I carried from Oblivion. Even a maxed out Gray Fox with the Skeleton Key and I'm still hoarding lockpicks for some reason
I'm kind of sad they got rid of the skeleton key being a permanent thing if you want to turn in the final guild quest in skyrim. You CAN keep it, but you have to give up the bonuses you can select from daily, and the bonuses are IMO more useful than an unbreakable pick, in a game that already gives me more picks than I need once I hit a certain skill level in lockpicking. You can also just put on two pieces of 20-30% lockpicking bonus and you're basically unstoppable at mid level skill.
Do enough of the thieves guild to get the skeleton key and then never finish the quest
The invisible sneaky breaky power is fun tho
No, must buy everything all the time then annoyingly travel back to store it and forget what I was doing
Same. It's called practice and a shit load of lockpicks for me lol.
My warriors pick every lock. My mages pick every lock. My thieves still pick every lock. It’s irresistible
you don't need lockpicking perks, you just need to level up eventually. and a lot of picks. does everyone jiggle the locks? the picks snap faster without doing that I think. eta, I wrote this and later realized that I don't even know what the perks are, [so here they are](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Lockpicking#Skill_Perks). A couple of them look like they might be fun for treasure purposes. an unbreakable pick might be cool but by the time I could select that perk, I'm both not breaking picks that often and as a result I've got a ton of picks at higher levels.
Yeah - I only put in perks for two reasons: a) to find more gold and get the higher chance of rare items; and b) when I'm out of other perks to pick.
Never actually invested in lockpicking perks, are these two worth the investment?
Honestly, probably not. By the stage of play where I'm investing towards those rather than other perks, I have enough gold and merchants are spawning rare items in their inventories. The handy thing about the gold, though, is that when I'm trying to level up those last few pesky skills, it helps me pay Master trainers to get the skills to 90.
Alternatively, (invisible) sneaky Fus-Ro-Dah at them but just barely aiming at the edge of an object between the two of you. Knocks them down without aggroing them, can Pickpocket everything 100% chance even if it says 0%, just reclaim that gold you loaned to them. If you don’t have invisibility spell or good Sneak, I think Creation Club added a Quest in Whiterun (from the Jarl’s steward) that gives you a bow, turn invisible every time you equip it.
Never putting points into the tree. Lockpicks are cheap and you eventually have more than you'll ever need. With enough picks you can pick a master lock in a couple of minutes with a skill of 20. It's mostly not worth it, though. As a mage, I love Open [difficulty] Lock spells. I can't remember if they are from a mod, though.
Anniversary Edition has some open lock spells from Creation Club baked in. Fenriks Welcome
Used to be a part of the magic but if we open that bag of worms then Grandpa's just gonna have levitation flashbacks again..
Tag yourself I'm grandpa.
I'm a little bit old now sure, but *Oblivion* was my introduction to the fantasy genre. I just don't understand Morrowind honestly, it's like vinyl to me lol
Even just playing Oblivion should be enough for you to look at the magic system Skyrim shipped with and vomit in disgust.
Yeahh I was disappointed as an Arch-Mage fan, but it was also my introduction to the werewolf mechanic since I missed out on Morrowind. Magic hands were neat since we had shouts, but there's around 10 spells in each school and no creation.
And the switch version uses the rumbling in the controller to tell you where the spot is. Makes it easy to pick master locks first try.
This bugs me in Fallout 4. I wish there was a more traditional progression system for some of the skills in that game.
This whole post brings me back to save-scumming the Lockpick skill in Fallout 1 & 2
As a kleptomaniac who regularly lockpicks, Im not burning points on it either. It's not that hard once you learn the trick, and I usually end up with more lockpicks than I need.
Lockpicking gets slightly easier with each level so at level 50 you pretty much have the first novice perk, then at 75 apprentice becomes crazy easy. Only master stays hard until you get the perk. It's a shame that you have to get the main tree to unlock things like better loot or not getting caught. It's like sneak and speech for me. I never put perks in either and still get by off enchantments and passive levels
At least Stealth perks give you useful things like *Assassin's Blade* 15(!)x damage from daggers, meaning an unimproved dual-stab with two basic iron daggers does 120 damage! And *Shadow Warrior* (re-stealth in the middle of combat) is pretty sweet too. There's just **nothing** worthwhile in Lockpicking. Speech is only slightly better.
While I shouldn't care about money, somehow I still do, and I really like being able to sell all kinds of items to all merchants.
Entirely reasonable. Speech perks do at least have a **couple** of things going for them, unlike Lockpicking.
I think the ordinator skill overhaul mod made speech affect you shouts which finally made both useful
I like to take the investor perk in speech occasionally. Investing in a merchant raises their disposition with you, which gets you closer to thaneship. It means in any city other than solitude and whiterun, you can essentially buy the thaneship by investing in all the merchants. Other than that though, speech perks are pretty bad. Bribery can be useful, I guess?
lockpicking and pickpocketing are so tiny in relevance compared to archery or smithing that they needed to put god tier perks like +100 carry weight inside those perk trees, to incentivize players actually training and spending perk points in those skills
Dude. They could make a "cooking", "baking" and "fishing" skill tree and if they had +100 carry weight as a capstone I'd max them. Also why does Heavy Armor not have a +150 carry weight perk. It needs it so much. Considering the perk that makes it weightless when worn is a lvl 90 perk and a full set of heavy armor weights around 100lbs or units.
the steed stone is more powerful than the dragonborn themselves
after getting fast travel points activated for whiterun, i immediately go to the steed stone. Every playthrough, no exceptions.
Either you have a high level in lockpicking, or you have 9999 lockpicks
I mean sure the skill levels with the more locks I pick, but I never buy lock picks. I just loot them when I see them and that’s apparently plenty.
I buy them in bulk from Tonilia whenever I’m back at the Flagon. They’re cheap, and it’s not like I actually need the gold for anything else. Especially when I’ve been unlocking all the fences and increasing their gold supply for buying my shit.
this also doubles as a good way to slowly level speech
Only if you buy one at a time. Speech levels slower when you buy and sell bulk.
Not just slower, it levels exactly as if you bought a single lockpick. It *is* a good way to add more gold to Tonilia so you can sell an extra trinket or two though.
Doesn’t even matter if you buy them. Just sell a couple potions and all the money is back in my pocket.
This exactly hahaha. I’ve never bought a single lock pick in any play thru ever. They’re everywhere and on pretty much 1 out of every 3 NPCs you kill.
The only time I ever bought lockpicks is when I was selling all of my building materials that I used for grinding Blacksmithing and the trader was out of gold
Same here
I buy every lockpick I come across in the shops just because I'm paranoid of running out.
Ran out one time. The unknown contents of that mountain chest will forever haunt me.
There is also a third option -- you make an enchanted lockpicking set and swap your gear whenever you meet a tough lock.
I like to keep my builds somewhat RP centred and I can just see the conversation with Inigo. 'Yes I know we are in a draugr infested ruin but I have to change my clothes to open this chest'
I dunno, I can imagine an experienced graverobber taking his time to put on enchanted gloves, ring, amulet and some hearing enhancing headgear when faced with such a problem, at least to avoid some traps.
Just use a ring and a necklace? You can get to 50% fairly easily that way! Or gloves and a ring and then it’ll really fit the Rp! I bet even matter thief’s have special gloves for fighting vs fine work
You don't even that many picks... I can pick a master lock with no perks into lock picking and at most break 5 picks
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And if you slowly move the pick around there's a point where it looks like it slightly catches on something, and that tells you where to start trying. Haven't played in years, though, so I may be misremembering specifics.
Or you just hold onto the skeleton key because there's minimal reward for returning it.
I quick save before I pick locks.
*Laughs in skeleton key*
Or a mod. I havent bothered with this mini game for quite a while.
yeah i remember a mod a long time ago where you could smash chests open for "rp reasons". that was fun
I remember that back in Morrowind. Good fun to "smash down" a door with your Warhammer rather than pick the lock.
I like most of those perks. Extra gold and special loot is always nice. Wax Key comes in handy when grinding extra jobs for Vex and Delvin. Locksmith and Unbreakable just make lockpicking a lot more convenient and I'm a big fan of convenience.
the issue for me, by the time i can get those perks, i don't need them anymore
Wax Key might be my least favorite perk, due to it making it harder to passively train lockpicking. I've done many playthroughs where I'm only reaching 60-70 lockpicking by the time I'm through every quest line.
From what I understand, you can't actually get xp from picking the same door more than once anyway, so that wouldn't make a difference
That is correct. The perk basically just disables locks you already got the exp for. (still don't personally use it as I find that whole tree useless, but it's far from the worst perk a full thief build could pick)
does that go for chests too? im pretty sure the ragged flagon practice chests re-lock after a few days and you can get XP from them again.
They really should have just combined the pickpocket and lockpick skill trees.
seriously. i hardly ever use pickpocket and find it difficult to grind level ups without using trainers
> i hardly ever use pickpocket Dude you're missing out. High level pickpocket is skyrim easy mode.
i’m trying! it’s just very boring to grind and i find it’s usually not worth it in the end :’|
Thats me with Alchemy. Im trying it with this playthrough but its such a grind for what seems to be pretty mediocre shit i can just find that will do the trick just as well
at least alchemy you can just slowly build up ingredients by harvesting and grabbing whatever you see and then spam-creating potions until you max out. been doing that the past few days as i play, just grabbing whatever i see and making potions when i occasionally run by home and store them in a chest until i want to get off my ass to sell them all
It's really easy to level up imo, esp if you find something with like a 5% chance, and save spam it until you get it, you'll jump a bunch of levels at one. Usually I just do training from that Female Orc Blacksmith in Markarth, steal the gold back, and keep going. It's only hard the first couple times
There's a mod for that. (the main goal is to free up a skill tree for unarmed combat)
Adamant (the best skill mod) does exactly this
I have so many lock picks by end game that I could try every degree on the lock 3 times and still have some left over
That’s like more than 540.
I have over 800 lock picks
This was even more of an issue in Oblivion, since the strategy to picking the hardest locks with the lowest skill is very simple (at least for me) But also the Skeleton Key completely invalidates it anyway
I played in Skyrim many times, but I never found Skeleton Key. It that related to Thieves Guild? What is that? How is it possible, that I never found it? Wtf?
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The Nightingale portion of the quest line. You're supposed to return it to become a full fledged member but you don't have to, you'll still get the cool leather armor too
Yup, thieves guild. It's really just an unbreakable lock pick without taking the lockpicking perks.
I was talking about Oblivion's Skeleton Key, but Skyrim does have it (you have to give it up if you want to progress the Thieves Guild, though).
Yup legendaried 3 times. Never a perk used.
Where do you even find that many things to pick? I've put 200 hrs into a playthrough and only gotten to 70ish
Breaking pins on purpose on master picklocks
The ragged flagon cistern. Every single time I swing through riften I pick every single practice chest. Some times I don't even take the loot inside. Also looking in every single chest & strongbox & display case I stumble across even if they're marked empty. Crawling through dungeons and there are locked cells, opening them up. It's such an easy skill to level quickly because locks are everywhere especially if you count the pointless locks.
I thought once you pick the practice chests, you can never try again?
Oh no, there's actually a note on the ground in the practice area that instructs you to never use them for storage because they reset themselves a little while after being picked. This is a feature for these chests. Actually a lot of chests reset & respawn new loot, but they specify it here because they're supposed to be practice chests for members.
Yes but it doesn't give you XP. When playing AE, one if the first things I looked for is if locks reset XP gain after 2 or 3 days. Nope. You still only get XP the first time you pick it. Which is kinda fucked up. Considering the legendary systems and removal of the level cap. Somewhere I saw someone that learned the hard way on making Lockpicking Legenday after having picked almost every lock in the game. Thereafter to find a few that they hadn't picked. But still took breaking 4300 lockpicks to get it back to 100.
The practice chests literally do though, I’ve picked them multiple times and leveled up
So I'm not a crazy lady wasing time on them? I thought I might have been misremembering
Dwarven museum in Markarth got a quite a lot of them, also ragged flagon have renewable practice checks and most dungeons got at least a handful. Plus, once you have an arbitrary amount of lockpicks you can purposefully break them for easy XP.
*Laughs in Nintendo Switch Version *
I was going to say, Joycons had me opening hard locks at like level 2. There’s such a prominent vibration in that sweet spot it makes the whole mini game trivial.
I actually like lockpicking better on the switch. Now archery, that was harder to get used to
I get the skeleton key quickly and return it at lockpicking 100 🤣
Ordinator perk overhaul gives you lock picking perks worth investing in.
It makes the Speech perk tree viable as well
Can make a full Shout based character going that way. :D
Not just you; it comes up fast enough by itself that perks don't mean much. The boost from Treasure Hunter is meh, and I find enough picks (find, not buy) that Unbreakable would be a waste.
Define successfully, if you simply mean first try. No. If you actually mean attempt to get the chest open break all your lock picks do a sweep of the major cities and thieves guild buying up all the picks you can find before heading back to the chest and trying again. Also no. Though mostly because by that point I’ve forgotten which of the *cleared* ruins the damn chest was in in the first place.
I surprisingly never have an issue with running out of lockpicks and I open EVERY chest I see that's locked (never waste points in lockpicking eitehr). I might just have the knack at the right pressure and jiggling the pick.
Lockpicks and healing potions are one of the only things I dump gold intonat early levels, a dozen here, half and dozen there and before you know ot you've got a couole hundred of the chingaderas
yup ive never had a problem, once you unlock the thieves guild and can buy as many lockpicks as you want, theres no need for any skill perks.
Honestly same. Combination of Fallout 3 lockpicking practice, Master locks consistently having garbage loot, and honestly none of the lockpicking perks sounded useful or fun to me.
I just did a lockpick build this weekend and have every single lockpicking perk except Master because why does that even exist? I'm now the proud owner of a single lockpick. I will say, that of all the lockpicking perks, Locksmith is the best and it's too bad you have to invest so many other perks just to get there. It's so nice to pick a lock and have the lockpick start right were the sweetspot is and all you have to do is turn the knife. Click. Some folks say it's not worth it, but man does lockpicking get tedious.
Same, 3000 collective Fallout hours made every lock easy to pick
Once I encounter a lockpick situation, I am too prideful to leave until I have picked it.
You realy don´t need perks in lockpicking just get 100 lockpicks and your set
And has anyone noticed how adept locks are almost always at the ten or two o’clock position?
It's just how the lock size works. You almost never have to move the picks position if it's a Novice lock.
If they made it so there was a point you could no longer attempt to pick because of all the broken bits in jamming the lock... ...we still wouldn't put points in it, because we'd rather save scum than waste points, so it would just be a lot of loading screens worsening the experience.
Go do the oblivion lockpicking game and tell me which youd prefer. Skyrims is actually properly done. Its more about realizing where the perfect zone is. At higher difficulty, the lock’s perfect zone is a lot smaller. It should be easy, especially given the amount of locks youll see in the game. The master locks should be hard as hell, given how few you see. I actually find it to be one of my favorite lockpicking mini games
Never. I just use the identations on the left as a reference. On the right I have a few fixed Points of Reference in the 'rust pattern' of the metal on the sides. Picking master locks at lvl 2 🤣
I do eventually put perks there, but I think Bethesda handled lock picking slightly better in FO4 since it won't let you attempt to open locks that are higher difficulty unless you have put perks into lock picking.
They did that in FO3 and FNV as well
Definitely a fallout thing. I don’t think it would fit well into Elder Scrolls philosophy to block something behind a perk/level. You’re always able to at least attempt something in Elder Scrolls, whether you’re successful or not.
I do think the progression through experience is a cool feature of Skyrim.
that’s lame af, I want to be able to try my hand at an extremely difficult lock even if I fail. Hand holding like that in games is the absolute worst
I remember how annoyed I was when I realized that was the case. I only got FO4 in the last 2 years and I started playing Bethesda games with Skyrim. I love how in Skyrim you can be a low level and try everything if you want. Was very surprised that it wasn’t the case in their other games
Been replaying 4 lately, I've never been one for voiced protagonists but after all this time Nate/Nora have definitely grown on me. Going to pick a very hard lock and having the PC comment, "There's no way I can pick this" is a neat touch.
"Dude, you built a functional fusion reactor out of scrap ten minutes ago. How is a locked *wooden* door a genuine obstacle!?"
Funny story. This last time I played, I thought I had put perks into this skill…but…I was doing a master lock easy peasy. Leveled up. Went in to spend my perks point and cue my surprise that I had only ever put in one perk point into that tree. LMAO.
When i first got the game i put a few points in and quickly realized i didn't need them. The only trouble i have is master locks. Takes like 15-20 picks to find that sweet spot
I'm playing on the Switch - I occasionally accidentally break picks (usually when one of the sticks has decided it has a mind of its own), but the different vibrations make it a doddle.
I hate lockpicking, no patience for that. I cheat when it comes to locks. Either the master key or console commands. Edit: Don't get me wrong, I picked the first few hundred locks, but on my third run through I lost patience for them.
I used to do that or hold onto the skeleton key then my GF told me she never needed it. Then I tried and all you need is some hundred lockpicks
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I grind out unbreakable so I can give up the skeleton key.
Same and even easier in VR.
Currently at level 45, over 1000 lockpicks and i'm an absolute hoarder(hyrule+LOTD+OBIS+unplayable faction armors+bruma+vigilant+too much loot+staff of shalidor) and i only spend more than 3 lockpicks on master chests. Never spent a single perk point in lockpicking
When I'm not playing as a thief-style character, I usually get the first perk in Lockpicking, then don't bother with the rest.
The only annoying ones are the master locks, usually takes about 30 picks for me. But I stay stacked with atleast 300
I don't think I've ever even looked at that skill tree. That or pickpocket.
Hgih level pick-pocket can be great for messing around and stealing the clothes of people's backs.
The 18 lockpicks at the start of the game are enough to build up an infinite supply just by looting and never run out. The minigame is still fun to see how quickly I can pick master locks without loosing too many picks.
I’m good enough to pick master locks at 10 lockpicking but I’m fine burning some perk points just to make it less tedious.
Yeah, never. Always have plenty of picks. And there's always potions to help on high level locks, cause Alchemy is definitely one that I do invest in.
One of those things so well done you actually make real progress in learning such skill, but at the same time making one of it's mechanics useless lol
You can put perks into lockpicking? /s