What's up with the Pick Lock skill?

I put 3 points in lock picks and have auto-skelly key (but without expert status), but never managed to pick a single lock. I was mainly trying it out at the various doors at Ashbury Haunted Castle. Are they meant to be hard?

Which areas would be pickable for 3 points, with or without expert status?

 

I find lockpicking skill quite useless, unles playing pure thief. Axes(if Tech) or unlocking cantrip (if Mage) work better and don't waste your character points.
Sir N.

 

Save your game, then have a poke around in Shrouded Hills.

If that doesn't work, you've got one screwed up game!

 

Yes, the doors in Ashbury Castle are hard. 4 points & expert training gets through most city shopkeepers' chests. 3 points & apprentice should get through most of the locks in smaller towns.

 

Also, be careful about equipping the heavier gauntlets, as they detract from lockpick and pickpocket skill, sue to loss of finger dexterity.

If you want to pick a lock, get some of those 'light-fingered gauntlets' and switch between them and your normal ones when picking locks.

 

Guantlets of Dexterity work better than LFG even for pickpocketing. Unless your DX is already maxed, say with Agility of Fire.

 

I find picklocks one of the best skills in the game (read my other topic)

I have 4 points, expert, and I can pick all merchant locks, even when I only had 3 points apprentice...

And you don't damage weapons or makes loud noises either...

 

Or you could just use a TIME BOMB and blow open the doors/chests with no risk at all. Of course, then you need explosives skill, dynamite, etc...

-Poiuyt Man

 

Or you could just RAZE all of Arcanum, then no-one would mind if you picked the lock.

Yes I know, but you started it.

 

If you break the chests, you can't go back & do it again tomorow. Sheep should be shorn, not butchered.

 

Ha, indeed. I've slaughtered everybody with the Bangellian Scourge before... Arcanum gets kinda lonely after that...

No wonder I never succeeded in the wool business!! :roll:

-Poiuyt Man

 

Maybe its just me but if I try to pick a merchant lock... THE CONTAINER IS JAMMED!!!! Any help?

 

If your lockpicking skill is too low, and/or the lock is too complex, you'll critically fail and jam the lock. Merchants often have hard-to-pick chests. Advance time one day to unjam the lock and try again.

-Poiuyt Man

 

that's why you have to get like 3-4 lockpicks and aprrentice or expert skill to even try...

Also, save before lockpicking...

 

T'is one of the older universal traditions to RPGs...

 

How it works.

Each lock has a dificulty rating. Unlocking Cantrip works on a simple equation, MA/lock dificulty. If the result is > 1 you are in. <1 you are not.

Lockpick has a better chance the better it gets & the more DX you have. It can always miss. Even at 4 points & expert, you have a chance to not open a Shrouded Hills lock, but I don't think you can jam it.

Get & use Agility of Fire to boost your DX. Locks that jam at DX 12 & 3 points expert lockpick will open at DX 20 & the same. That takes only 2 AoF spells. They are stackable.

AoF = DX + 4, Charged Rings = DX + 2 each. Trapmakers spectacals = DX + 2 & PE + 2.

 

Lockpick mastery makes it almost impossible to fail on most locks aswell as giving you a chance to pick "unpickable" locks such as the chest in the animal museum.

 

Well, I can't wait until I get Master Lockpicker

 

I was dying of curiosity when I first came across that chest in the game, so I used a fate point to pick it. :lol:

-Poiuyt Man