Lockpicking

[o_O]

Omg Lockpicking in Oblivion is so damn hard, had 40 Lockpicks and they are all gone so fast, any way to go around opening chests, or are they even worth to be picked open?

[Johnny Casey]

Originally posted by 󰀉tempeh󰀉:

Nobody mentioned fortify luck in all this time? Torch to slow the tumblers, fortify luck to increase your effective skill level without an experience penalty. I had to resort to this because I had security as a minor skill and I needed to un-equip the skeleton key to raise security above 60.

Lots of people don't realize that your character's Security skill actually influences the difficulty of the lockpicking(with 50 Security skill, Easy lock becomes just as easy as Very Easy lock, etc.), since most people don't even attempt to fiddle with the lockpicking, which in my opinion, one of the best features in the entire videogame history.

[Shedding my mortal skin]

Originally posted by Johnny Casey:

Originally posted by 󰀉tempeh󰀉:

Nobody mentioned fortify luck in all this time? Torch to slow the tumblers, fortify luck to increase your effective skill level without an experience penalty. I had to resort to this because I had security as a minor skill and I needed to un-equip the skeleton key to raise security above 60.

Lots of people don't realize that your character's Security skill actually influences the difficulty of the lockpicking(with 50 Security skill, Easy lock becomes just as easy as Very Easy lock, etc.), since most people don't even attempt to fiddle with the lockpicking, which in my opinion, one of the best features in the entire videogame history.

Had to look this up to see if it was true. UESP says "As your Security skill increases, tumblers move less rapidly, giving you more time to fix the tumbler in place."
That's great to know.

[DoomslayerXL]

I just save scum and auto-attempt at this point. Trying to catch the tumbler moving slowly is so painful when the point at which it starts to sound different from a normal tumbler is exactly when the fast ones drop, making the experience feel totally random.

[Wai]

Originally posted by o_O:

The thing in Oblivion is that i havent found a single chest that i could say "yep it was worth it". Always filled with a couple of potions or under 20 gold coins. Only have 40 plus hours of gameplay dunno if it gets better but from what i could understand the best gear/weapons are obtained from quests and not from chests.

There are some very good items found, randomly, in chests. But, it is true, a lot of chests, particularly early in the game are "ho hum" that hardly covered the cost of my broken picks.

I find you lose less picks, early on, if you default to automatic, but, with practice you can correctly guess when the slow speed tumbler will occur. You can push the pick up as many times as you like before picking. Watch the fall each time you push. Eventually you will know when the fall will be slow. Pick on slow, never on fast. Once you have the knack you will rarely break a pick. Until you have the knack you will need to carry a large supply of picks. Luckily they are zero weight.

[arottweiler]

There's a noticeable sound when the tumbler is going to fall slowly so wearing headphones helps and makes you look like a professional safecracker. I like the lockpicking mechanism but it's not worth playing the mini-game when the loot is going to be 9 gold or a fur helmet. Even a chest with a very hard lock might only contain a gold ring or few health potions. It's easier and quicker to just carry loads of lockpicks or the Skeleton Key and spam the auto-attempt which still increases security skill.

I use the mod Portable Enchanting And Spellmaking Scroll which overwrites the contents of a lot of locked chests with just 5 x quill, 5 x inkwell and 5 x parchment which are required to create a scroll. I think there's quite a few mods that can cause a lot of vanilla chests to contain next to nothing.

[IvySlug]

man, this post has been necrod twice over 6 years. that's kinda funny

[arottweiler]

Originally posted by Saint_Iny:

man, this post has been necrod twice over 6 years. that's kinda funny

But most people don't look at the year of the post and are only scanning the thread to answer a question they have. Especially here where there's no details except thread title and last post date. When it's not a simple Q&A thread that's been resolved within a few posts it doesn't matter if a few years go by before it gets posted in again. It's an on-going discussion with subjective views. Recent posts can also help find the thread in search engines and as it grows it could end up containing a lot of useful information for someone searching for Oblivion lockpicking in ten years.