How to lockpick in Oblivion Remastered and where to buy them

Unless, of course, you find the Skeleton Key, an unbreakable lockpick that essentially breaks lockpicking.

No matter your chosen method of picking locks, it’s an extremely useful skill to have as there are plenty of goodies locked up just waiting to be pinched, especially if you join the Thieves Guild.

But, as always, you can resort to cheats and console commands or Oblivion mods as well, but below, we have all the lore-friendly methods!

How to lockpick in Oblivion Remastered

To lockpick in Oblivion Remastered, you need to lift all the pin tumblers at the top position and lock them in place, which is done by pushing them repeatedly until the pins are falling down at a slow speed and then locking them in place at their highest position. Once the final tumbler is in place, the lock will open.

If you try to lock the tumbler when it’s not at its highest point, you will break your lockpick and tumblers locked in place will fall down, though this can be mitigated by a higher lockpicking level.

How to get better at lockpicking in Oblivion Remastered

If you want to improve your lockpicking ability quickly, go to the last tumbler and press A, X or the spacebar repeatedly.

Whilst a bit cheesy, this will allow you to tackle higher-rated locks sooner and also give you perks such as not all tumblers falling down if you fail.

You can also choose 'The Tower' Birthsign when creating a character, which lets you open an average-level lock once per day.

Alternatively, you can do away with all of this and find the Skeleton Key, an unbreakable lockpick which also increases your lockpicking skill by 40.

While you can use this to try and pick the lock conventionally, you can also just hit Auto Attempt until you pick the lock automatically.

Where to find lockpicks in Oblivion Remastered

With ample opportunity to break your picks, you will want a steady supply of them to keep yourself topped up.

As such, there are a number of ways to go about getting them, which are as follows:

Looting lockpicks from corpses and containers

Typically, bandits, marauders and goblins will have a lockpick on them, so anytime you kill one, be sure to search them.

It’s also worth checking every chest, barrel, sack and so on you come across, as you can often find a lockpick in them

Buying lockpicks from Shady Sam

Shady Sam is a vendor of nefarious things, including lockpicks, and he can be found outside the north-eastern walls of the Imperial City.

Joining the Thieves Guild

When you first sign up for the Thieves Guild, you can buy lockpicks from Armand Christophe for five gold apiece during the May the Best Thief Win quest.

After this, you will be able to trade with fences and other Doyens, who will have lockpicks aplenty in stock.

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