Lockpicking is a skill that allows you to access most locked rooms and containers, or to disarm certain traps, without their corresponding keys. The Lockpicking skill tree has a total of 11 perks, requiring a total of 11 perk points to fill. The art of lockpicking is used to open locked doors and containers faster and with fewer broken lockpicks.
Lockpicking in Skyrim
Skyrim Lockpicking Guide
How to pick a lock in Skyrim
Players can approach locked doors, gates chests or traps and when in range will receive a tooltip to unlock the lock as well as the difficulty of the lock. Lock difficulties start at Novice and go up to Master.
Lockpicking is in 2 parts, picking the locking mechanism on top and the dagger below to rotate the lock and open it.
The objective is to place the pick in the right location then rotate the lock and open it, failing to pick the locking mechanism will cause damage to the pick possibly destroying it. Higher difficulty locks having a smaller and more difficult to find correct lockpick position.
Skyrim Leveling Lockpicking Skill
Lockpicking skill is increased when successfully picking a lock and also when breaking a lockpick. Lockpick levels can also be increased through Trainers and through finding and using skill books.
The amount of skill gained from succeeding is based on the difficulty of the lock, with higher difficulty locks giving more. Breaking a lockpick will give a small amount of skill gain per lockpick broken unrelated to the difficulty of the lock. The lockpicking skill can be rapidly leveled up by gathering a large amount of lockpicks and then finding a difficult lock to repeatedly break picks on for experience. many general merchants sell some number of lockpicks for players to gather.
By becoming a member of the Thieves guild players can gain access to the Thieves guild training room in Riften. The training room features 5 chests with each difficulty of lock for players to practice on, from Novice all the way to Master. The locks will automatically re-lock after a few days in game giving players time to gather more lock picks to level up with.
If not looking to level up lockpicking all at once, players can take their time and pick locks they see as they go about their adventure and gather ample experience this way. Taking the Quick Hands perk will allow players to pick almost any lock in front of people without alerting guards giving access to many more locks to pick.
Skyrim Lockpicking Tips
While mostly a trial and error effort to find the correct position for the lockpick, there are some tips that can help with successfully picking a lock.
- Slowly move the lockpick from one end of the arc to the other end and look for visual and audio queues on where the correct position is, multiple tries may be required
- The closer to the correct position the more the lock will be allowed to turn
- Holding to turn the lock when in the wrong position does more damage to the lockpick, tap lightly to reduce the amount of damage to lockpicks
Skyrim Lockpicking Skill Perks
Perk Points in Skyrim
Players gain 1 perk point every time they level up their character. A player will need 251 perk points to get every perk to the maximum level which is achieved at level 252.
Before spending perk points to get the bonuses from the perk, the player must first unlock the perk. Perks can be unlocked on their respective skill trees by having enough levels in the skill as well as the prerequisite perks leading to the perk. All skills have their base perks unlocked with perks further into the tree being unlocked as points are invested and levels gained.
Perks can have multiple levels to them giving increasing bonuses with more perk points invested in them. Different skill trees will need different number of perk points to fully unlock all the perks in each tree. Players may want to check and consider the number of perk points they need for their builds and at what level they will need to be to unlock everything they want to have.
Reclaiming Perk Points in Skyrim
There are 2 ways that players can reclaim the spent perk points in Skyrim that are quite difficult to get to so players do still want to be careful with their perk points. At level 100 players can set the skill to be Legendary. This will refund all perks invested into that tree as well as set the skill back to level 15. This will also allows players to increase the skill experience once again and gain new levels and more perk points.
Alternatively players who have completed the Dragonborn main questline will be able to reclaim points repeatedly by using the Black Book: Waking Dreams. This will require them to have a dragon's soul from hunting a dragon.
Click the header to sort the table.
| Perk | Rank | Skill LVL. | Perk Requirement | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Novice Locks | - | - | - | Novice locks are much easier to pick. |
| Apprentice Locks | - | 25 | Novice Locks | Apprentice locks are much easier to pick. |
| Quick Hands | - | 40 | Apprentice Locks | Able to pick locks without being noticed. |
| Wax Key | - | 50 | Quick Hands | Automatically gives you a copy of a picked lock's key if it has one. |
| Adept Locks | - | 50 | Apprentice Locks | Adept locks are much easier to pick. |
| Expert Locks | - | 75 | Adept Locks | Expert locks are much easier to pick. |
| Golden Touch | - | 60 | Adept Locks | Find more gold in chests. |
| Treasure Hunter | - | 70 | Golden Touch | 50% greater chance of finding special treasure. |
| Locksmith | - | 80 | Expert Locks | Pick starts close to the lock opening position. |
| Unbreakable | - | 100 | Locksmith | Lockpicks never break. |
| Master Locks | - | 100 | Expert Locks | Master locks are much easier to pick. |
