What lockpicking level do I need, and can I get past a lock without it?

Steps

1. Read the number on the lock before doing anything else. Every recording cited here gets a specific figure, not a pass or fail.
2. If your skill is below it, do not look for a workaround on the lock itself. One player reads 90 and says outright that he cannot even attempt it.
3. Raise the skill by using it. Lockpicking is one of the use-levelled skills, and one player is recorded levelling it during a session by opening the locks he could already open.
4. If the number is far out of reach, look for a way around the lock rather than through it. Recorded examples: climbing onto a roof and dropping down a chimney, jumping over the obstacle the lock was guarding, and talking to an NPC through a window instead of unlocking his door.
5. Expect a minigame when the attempt is allowed. Three channels record one; one of them reads its instructions aloud as selecting a pin, pushing with a key, and turning the lock.

The numbers people have actually read off locks

This site does not have a table of lock requirements from the developers, and it does not invent one. What follows is every lockpicking figure that a player has read off the screen in a recording cited here, with how many unrelated channels have it. It is a sample, not a schedule.

Nine distinct numbers appear: 5, 6, 15, 20, 35, 40, 60, 80 and 90. Four of them are on more than one channel. 20 is the most-recorded — four sightings across three channels, including a room a player cannot enter and a locked house whose owner has to be spoken to through the window instead. 35 appears on three channels, once on a granary. 60 appears on three channels, two of which are demonstrably the same door. 90 appears on four channels and is the highest anyone reports being refused by.

The single-channel figures are 5 and 6 on small containers, 15 on something a player gives up on immediately, 40 on a small chest, and 80 on an obstacle a player decides to jump over instead. They are recorded here because the spread is the point: a reader who has heard “lockpicking 60” and assumes that is the bar will be wrong in both directions.

Nobody in the source pool has recorded a lock above 90, and nobody has recorded successfully opening one of the high-numbered locks. Every high figure cited here ends with the player walking away.

Below the number, the game does not let you try

This is the most useful single fact on the page and it comes from one recording stated plainly. Looking at a 90 lock, the player says he cannot even attempt that one. Nothing in any other recording contradicts it, and the behaviour of every other player who reads a number and immediately walks away is consistent with it — though walking away is also what you would do if the attempt were merely hopeless rather than blocked.

So the page states it as one player's explicit description plus a pattern that fits, not as a mechanic read off the game. If you have a save near a lock above your skill, the thing that would settle this is whether the prompt is greyed out or simply fails.

One player is recorded going the other way: he reads a requirement of 6 against a skill he has just raised and says he can pick it now. That is the same rule seen from the passing side, and it is what makes raising the skill by one point worth doing when a specific lock is one point away.

What raises it, and what lowers it

Lockpicking levels through use like the game's other skills. One player announces mid-session that his lockpicking has levelled up, immediately after a run of chests, and later reports the specific level his character has reached. Nothing here suggests points can be spent on it directly.

Update 7 increased pickpocket and lockpicking XP gain. That does not change any number on any lock, but it dates every opinion about how long a number takes to reach: all the recordings cited here were made on builds where the skill climbed more slowly than it does now.

One character background is recorded as trading health for it. Four channels read out a merchant-city origin that gives better prices and better lockpicking at the cost of 20 per cent health. And one player, on a different channel, watches a lockpicking penalty appear and works out that the item he had picked up was cursed — one recording, and the only evidence here that the skill can be reduced by anything.

Getting past a lock without the skill

Three routes are on camera, all of them specific rather than general. On one locked house, two unrelated players read 60 off the door and both get in from the roof by dropping down the chimney; that quest has its own page. On a different obstacle a player reads 80 and says he will just jump over instead. And a locked door with a requirement of 20 has an NPC standing behind it who has to be talked to through the window — the player who describes this calls it weird, which suggests it is a workaround rather than the intended path.

The general lesson the page draws is narrow: when a lock is out of reach, the recordings show players solving the problem around the lock rather than at it. What the page does not claim is that every lock has a way around it. Several of the recordings here end with the player simply not getting in.

The minigame

Three channels confirm a lockpicking minigame exists. One reads its instructions while learning them, describing selecting a pin, pushing, and turning the lock when the pin is right. One says he loves it and that it is stupid. The third encounters it in co-op.

One thing about it should be flagged rather than buried: a player in a co-op session says twice that the minigame took him to the void. That is one recording of one incident and no second source has anything like it, so it is printed as a single report of a bug rather than as a known behaviour.

One player complains repeatedly across his session that he cannot see anything while picking. That is a visibility complaint from a single channel and may be his display, his settings, or the game.

Requirements / limits

• None of these figures comes from NerveLabs. They are numbers players read aloud off locks in recordings made between 17 and 23 August 2026, and machine captions can mishear a number.
• The list is a sample of the locks these particular players happened to walk up to. Absence from the list means nobody recorded it, not that it does not exist.
• Every recording predates or coincides with Update 7, which changed lockpicking XP gain. Numbers on locks are unaffected as far as anything here shows; opinions about how hard they are to reach are not.
• Nobody cited here has opened a lock above 6 on camera and shown what is inside. The high figures are all refusals.
• Whether lockpicking as a skill carries a passive stat bonus is not established. One player asks the question aloud while reading his skill panel and answers himself, but the following sentence reads a tooltip that may belong to a different skill, so nothing is printed either way.
• Whether the game has a lockpick item is genuinely unclear. One player states flatly that there are none, and separately that being able to lockpick does not make lockpicking easier. Another player's own inventory prompt appears to mention lock picks and he cannot find them. Both readings are recorded and neither is published as fact.

Common mistakes

• Treating one number you have heard as the requirement. Nine different figures have been recorded and four of them appear on more than one channel.
• Grinding the skill toward a specific door before checking whether the door can be bypassed. The best-documented high lock in the game is opened by climbing onto a roof.
• Assuming a locked door means the content behind it is gated. In at least one case the NPC behind the door can simply be spoken to through a window.
• Reading pre-Update-7 estimates of how long the skill takes to climb as though they still apply.
• Buying a merchant-city background for the lockpicking bonus without noticing it costs 20 per cent of your health.

Sources checked

Eleven player recordings and the Update 7 changelog. Every figure on this page was located by searching the transcripts for the word rather than by watching for locks, which is the only way to be reasonably sure the list is not just the locks that happened to be memorable.

The evidence card lists each number against the timestamps that carry it, and records what was considered and rejected — including the passive-bonus question and the lockpick-item contradiction.

Related

Locked Out covers the one door where the bypass is fully documented. The skills page covers how use-levelled skills work in general, and the races page covers the background that trades health for this skill.

Still unverified

• Is the attempt blocked below the requirement, or merely certain to fail?Single unconfirmed reportOne player says he cannot even attempt a 90 lock. Everyone else simply walks away, which is consistent with either.
• What is the highest lock in the game?Not verified90 is the highest anyone has been refused by in the recordings cited here. That is a ceiling on the sample, not on the game.
• Does the game have a lockpick item?Not verifiedOne player says there are none and that the ability alone does not help. Another player's prompt seems to mention them and he cannot locate them. Unresolved.
• Does lockpicking grant a passive stat bonus like other skills?Not verifiedOne recording asks the question aloud and the answer is ambiguous in the captions, because the tooltip read immediately afterwards may belong to acrobatics.
• What actually reduces the skill?Single unconfirmed reportOne player observes a lockpicking penalty and concludes an item he picked up was cursed. No second recording shows a penalty of any kind.