Oh dear. The lockpicking is so easy that you don't even need to put perks into it, and people still rage.

I had to install a mod to make lockpicking harder and the perks worth getting. Now I finally break more lockpicks than I find, and I've to carefully choose what lock to try picking and what to just leave be.

double that.


double that. on the 360, the least they could have done is have the auto-pick, if, they aren't going to advance the concept of lockpicking and take away the rpg/ character-based component.

did they really have no creative ideas in either the rpg/character or player-based skill aspects? and, they make increasing the base skill worthless? cmon gamesas.

That. The lack of innovation and creativity in those aspects of the game are the only notable thing about them. But the trees and the salmon are beautiful...

You should be able to fashion lockpicks out of embalming tools...I mean heck, they're EVERYWHERE right? So why not make them USEFUL???

I much rather have lock-picking strictly character based. No mini-game at all. At the very least, they should have made it the same as FO3. If you did not have the appropriate skill, you could not even attempt to pick the some locks.

I was really concerned when we first learned that the lockpicking mini-game would be based on the players skill as much as the PC's skill level. I had no problem with the similar game in FO3, but I was still concerned.

Well I shouldn't have been. The mini-game is way too easy. Out of eight retired characters only one that I can think of ever had to buy picks. There are just more than enough laying around to make up for the few you would break.

Note if anything, this is one of the few problems I have with the game. My pure Warrior opening Master locks like a born natural just doesn't make sense to me, but I'm not going to bother modding the game to make it harder since it really isn't that important anyway. I do miss the OPEN spell from prior games and Lock Bash from TES II.

I have Midas unlock spells

I'm definitely not a fan of Skyrim lockpicking, yes I've raged. On the plus side, buying lockpicks is nice and easy now so it balances out.

True, but with 100 lookpick the range for sucess is much larger. At 20 you have about 2 degrees of arc to open the lock.

What would be nice is if the lock picking tree had perks like the most of the rest of the skills. That is +20%, +40%, etc. rather than bonuses to one lock level at a time.

Still, I got so tired of my thief/assasin racing through levels as I broke picks that I added the mod to show you exactly where to set the pick. And even so my lockpick skill is in the low 40s by level 20.

They are useful - as embalming tools.

Skyrim's lockpicking mechanic actually seemed pretty easy and exploitable to me. For lockpicking, they probably should've done a random die roll on each attempt like Morrowind.

Thanks for the link to that mod! I am going to try it out. Like you, I can open any lock that I put my mind to, but sometimes it gets tiresome.

there is a perk in the lockpicking tree that makes it so you never break a lock pick again... just grab that if it frustrates you so bad to break picks.

But then you have to waste a large handful of perks in the lockpick tree, to get it. A lot of perks down the drain that could have been spent on something actually useful. If you want an unbreakable pick, just do the Dark Brotherhood thing. Or get the lock-cheat mod and just pop them quick and painlessly. Cuz once you have an unbreakable pick, the only difference between that and the cheat mod is a couple of seconds. On PC, of course. Hate having to remember that a big chunk of Skyrim players are stuck with stunted equipment.

lockpicks actually breaking isn't the problem.

having to pick the locks is.

I am very glad they did not carry over that particular mechanic, because it only really works if you know in advance at what level of skill a character will be attempting a given lock.

One of the more egregious cases of this in FO3 was an ammo can in a Raider base on the opposite bank of the Potomac; most characters reached this base at a low level, thus low skill, but it had a difficulty of Very Hard so required 100 skill just to attempt it. Naturally, there was never very much ammo in it, which begged the question of why it was a VH lock to begin with.

FO1 and 2, on the other hand, allowed you to try any lock at any skill, but the harder the lock the more likely you were to fail, and low skill increased the chance of that happening. Failing carried real risk with it too, since there was a chance that doing so would permanently jam the lock; this meant that you couldn't just spam-attempt a really hard lock at low skill and expect to crack it, unless you got insanely lucky while doing so.

Skyrim uses the first half of that equation but leaves off the second, which makes picking locks a total joke; failure effectively has no cost since picks are limitless and the lock can't jam, so you have nothing to lose by spamming the lock until it opens.

That's what I call hitting the nail on the head.

Lockpicking is easy for me.

Im sorry my comments were meant for the OP... seeing as how he was getting frustrated with the sound of a breakin pick... my bad.

IDC if I get a warning this time, did anyone else think of a preejaculation when they read the first 2 sentences...

to get to the point though, i thought oblivion was harder, you just need to be carefulw hen unlocking and join the thieves guild or dark brotherhood and buy all the lockpicks you canf rom their fences...

"...the inability to tell where your thing was when it broke..."

ermm.... no.

it takes 6 perk points to get to it.... out of 80 i believe? and if your gonna use the cheat mode why even bother playing the game...

Most players (myself included), never get anywhere near level 80. So yeah, 6 perks takes away from a lot of other significant ones you could have invested in. Not to mention, unless you really go out of your way to rush-level lockpicking (which isn't nearly as easy to rush as pickpocketing), you're not going to get that final unbreakable-pick perk until quite later in your character's career, since it is a 100th level perk. So, basically, if you are looking for any kind of relief from breaking lockpicks sooner rather than (much) later, you're going to be just about finished playing a char before you even get to that perk. Not much point in it.

As for why bother playing a game if I cheat on lockpicking? I didn't, for over 400 hours. I picked every last lock the hard way, thousands of them, with zero perks in locksmithing on all my chars. I never met one I couldn't open, and I quite used up all the thrill (pffft... lol... like, seriously...) of picking locks, in Skyrim. It's a boring, pointless mini-game that adds nothing whatsoever to the fun of the game, in my opinion. My chars are master lockpickers, and locksmithing technology in Skyrim's mideival era isn't exactly high-tech, ya know? They've learned the skill to the point that popping any lock in Tamriel is as much work as picking their nose. That's what I think of that. The rest of the gameplay? Some of it is still fun and entertaining, and that is what keeps me playing at this point. Lockpicking? Not so much.

Warriors should be able to bash chests, doors, and all. The damage requirement of the weapon should increase with the difficulty of the lock or the strength of the object you're bashing.

Mages or characters using magic should be able to unlock things with a spell. I don't know if this is currently possible because I don't really play as a magic character.