Unpickable chest?

[mikedarican]

In one of the dungeons within the mines, I fought 2 invokes and their undead buddies. After a very fun fight I got excited to see they were guarding 5 chests. Unfortunately the 1 chest that probably was the good one was unlockable. I have an assassin capped out at 85 lockpick skill. It states its beyond my skills. Umm that made this fight disappointing. The other boxes were basic and dropped terrible items. Is this a cruel intended chest?

[mikedarican]

Just beat another set got to the small treasure room 5 boxes. 4 basic and 1 large golden box... Large box states beyond my skills... Seems a bit unfair capped in lockpick. Takes me a good amount of time to beat these red robes. The outcome not worth it

[prometheusheir]

The UNLOCK spell boosts the lock picking abilities of your party (it works in combination, not in isolation, from lock picking skill). So if you have any spellcaster the spell will increase your chances. And, maybe just for the duration of the attempt, you can lower the difficulty setting in the options menu, which makes everything (including skill checks) easier.

[mikedarican]

Wow always thought unlock spell was a separate way to open locks. Never realized it stacked with lockpick skill! Thanks that worked

[mikedarican]

Ok just made a new party without a rogue. Have an Archer, 2 fighters, 2mages, and a cleric. Will I be able to open boxes in chapter 3? Specifically farming the random dungeons in the mines? I'm looking at their lockpick caps and they are very low. Both mage have unlock spell cap at 55... If I max out both unlock spells does that assist my parties lockpick skills at double 110 unlock spell boost? Or does unlock spell not stack? Since boxes is seemingly a major need to farm items in game i want to make sure i can still open them without having to make a rogue

[prometheusheir]

Originally posted by mikedarican:

Ok just made a new party without a rogue. Have an Archer, 2 fighters, 2mages, and a cleric. Will I be able to open boxes in chapter 3? Specifically farming the random dungeons in the mines? I'm looking at their lockpick caps and they are very low. Both mage have unlock spell cap at 55... If I max out both unlock spells does that assist my parties lockpick skills at double 110 unlock spell boost? Or does unlock spell not stack? Since boxes is seemingly a major need to farm items in game i want to make sure i can still open them without having to make a rogue

spell proficiency only matters for the person casting it, whereas lockpick knowledge is a group effort to some extent. Generally speaking, there are rewards for specialists throughout the game. Become a squishy priest? high heal powers! Be a squishy rogue? open all chests! So naturally, if you favour other specialisations over having a rogue, there will be high-end chests you won't open. But very very few of them if you do make an effort to max the spell and skill proficiency caps that a non-rogue party has. With a high spell level and a ~20 lockpick skill for one person, you can open almost all chests in chapter1+ch2.