Hey all. I've played Skyrim for around eight hours or so now (low I know, I had a busy weekend) and I'm yet to find anything that lets me open locks magically. I usually roll with Alteration in Morrowind and Oblivion almost primarily for the Open spells, with usefulness in water-breathing/walking and feather. I generally find the Lockpicking mini-games tedious. My worst fear is that to unlock anything I will have to focus on the Lockpick skill. Checking UESP I think this may very well be the case. It's a shame because without an extra magic school my character seems really out of whack with what I'm used to (I've played most of my characters in both MW and OB). Can anyone confirm an Open spell that UESP missed?

To my knowledge there is no open spell like that. However, you don't need to focus on the lockpick skill anyway because with 10 lockpicks you can unlock any lock pretty easily in this mini-game.

I'll be diplomatic by saying that for some people, the lockpick is "a very difficult challenge" for them.

well master lockpicks are really difficult, and I usually go through about 50 lockpicks for just one master lock.

The Tower Stone, which can be found near(ish) Winterhold, gives you the power to open Expert and lower locks automatically. I haven't tried it yet to see if it has a daily cooldown or anything, and of course you loose the option of other stone powers, but at least it's there.

Quite surprised there's no Unlock spells in Alteration though...

Thanks for the replies. I guess I'll learn to live with it. So far there doesn't seem to be too much locked away for dungeon crawlers anyway. It looks like Bethesda has focused locks into Thief style play. I think 'll manage to get by without it, still, would've been nice to have. Just seems like a strange removal.

Tower stone. Automatically unlock expert or lower.

Someone will probably mod in a spell soon, but yeah, kind of surprised at the omission.

All fine and good for PC users. 360/PS3 gamers must rely on practice... and maybe the Tower Stone ability that is probably only useful once a day.

Quite frankly, you don't need the contents of any of the keyless locked chests (nor the contents behind the keyless locked doors) in the game.

I didn't pick up the ability, but it doesn't say once per day. They usually do.

Followers can open locks if it's in their skill range.

Honestly, the presence of an Open Lock spell would be rather unbalancing, like it was in Oblivion and Morrowind.

There is hardly any reason at all to take Lockpicking - which concerns itself solely with opening locks - when you could take Alteration and get a load of other benefits to go along with it. The only other solution I could see would be to fold Lockpicking back into a skill with broader aspects than just picking locks.

I do know that when I played Morrowind, I just used amulets to open locks and scrolls/spells, and in Oblivion you were usually fine using either scrolls or Alteration spells.