Lockpicking success

[Mikel123]

http://www.uopowergamers.com/a-may00.shtml

I played UO last year for about 6 months, one of my characters is a "pure" dungeon rogue - he does not fight. He is near GM in hiding, stealth, lockpicking, detect hidden, etc. He has 96.9 lockpicking currently, and there is no chest he cannot open on the first try. because he never breaks a lockpick, he uses a set of "newbie" lockpicks that rez with him.

This was from a May, 2000 archive so "last year" is 1999, and 6 months of it would have to encompass some, if not all, of our date range.

I assume he is speaking of level 4 chests and below, since he's talking about dunegons and not t-maps.

I don't know what to make of this quote. On the one hand, if he has 96.9 lockpicking and has 100% chance of success in opening chests, he shouldn't gain skill anymore from those chests. So he's either not trying level 4 chests, or he is trying level 4 chests and is simply not going to gain any skill unless he does level 5 chests.

In any case, the "not breaking lockpicks" thing seems like a reliable bit of info. I think newbies get 5, and on UOSA you'd go through them pretty quickly even at 100.0 lockpicking.

As for the success rate, that's a whole other issue. It is quite possible that you could not fail to open, nor could you gain skill on, level 4 chests at 96.9 skill. My guess is that you'd then need to raise Detect Hidden to some amount so you could attempt level 5 t-map chests and have some chance of success (and thus some chance to gain), and then once you got to GM lockpicking, you could drop Detect back down if you want.

[nightshark]

I found a few '99 posts claiming you can GM LPing from player made boxes...

Even a newbie tinker made chest will take you to 100 lockpicking. Dull as
hell unless you aren't adverse to macroing.

A guy in this thread also claims that he can pick all dungeon chests 100% with 96 LPing.

The best way to do this is to find a tinker that can make a lockable box for
you Make sure they tinker only has about 50 to 60 skill. Then keep locking
and unlocking that same box. Once you stop gaining skill from that I would
guess around 70 or so move to a GM tinkered box. This will take you to GM
although it will take a long time.

As far as lockpicking skill goes, if you just start a character with 50%
skill and practice on a lockable crate made by a low level tinker you can
get all the way to GM.

Just been checking it out the last few days, even level 1 Covetous has
crates with page 8 scrolls like resurection and summon elementals. I haven't
made it to the Covet Treasure Room yet, but then I haven't tried that hard
yet.(TC)

Never see 8th level scrolls in dungeon chests O.o

[Mikel123]

Ahhh cool on the level 8 scrolls!

You know, I remember a thread from way back, before I even started here, that I stumbled upon, saying that you only go up to 95.0 on lockpicking here in order to "save the economy". Which is the only instance I've ever seen of this shard purposefully abandoning it's mission in favor of customization. Seems like it really should be changed (especially since t-maps are macroable to 100.0, and you can open even level 5 chests at 95 lockpick + detect hidden).

[nightshark]

Ahhh cool on the level 8 scrolls!

You know, I remember a thread from way back, before I even started here, that I stumbled upon, saying that you only go up to 95.0 on lockpicking here in order to "save the economy". Which is the only instance I've ever seen of this shard purposefully abandoning it's mission in favor of customization. Seems like it really should be changed (especially since t-maps are macroable to 100.0, and you can open even level 5 chests at 95 lockpick + detect hidden).

Player 1 (95 LP/GM detect - NO other skills, he just LPs lv5's for my cart. will delete him when I gm LPing)
Player 2 (Only LPing)
So it really makes no difference to the economy, given you can easily make a character capable of opening lv5s.

More proof you could gain past 95 LPing with GM made boxes:


http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 605b2ca762

My fisher/treasure dude now has the title of master rogue, being at 97.8
base lockpicking skill (.1 above fishing dangit). What I did was get a
BUNCH of lockpicks (like 500 or so) and sat down in front of a gm tinker
chest until I could pick it. That got me to 80 in just one day.

From 80 on, I took a locked box made by my 89 tinker and locked/picked
it over and over while doing other stuff (namely fishing), and am now at
97.8, haven't broken a single pick, although it's taken me a week.


What this says is that there are two ways to go about it. The fast path
is to find a gm-made box and pick it, then move to one of the town
chests that are in the 90s (there is almost always one in brit guard
tower next to the west bank). You'll break hundreds of expensive picks
but skill gain will be pretty fast. You can gm lockpicking inside of a
week this way.


The slow/cheap path is to use any old box and just keep locking and
picking it. Since the skill isn't difficulty-based, you keep gaining
from success, although it's a lot slower than the gain-from-failure
route. It's a lot cheaper but will take a month to gm.

If you read later threads that this same person posted, he did indeed GM LPing, though he doesn't state the method he finally GMed it.

BTW, wtf at this...
"From 80 on, I took a locked box made by my 89 tinker and locked/picked
it over and over while doing other stuff (namely fishing), and am now at
97.8, haven't broken a single pick, although it's taken me a week. "

[BlackFoot]

i can agree with the first guys story a little bit
i have 96ish lp and detect hidden and i dont fail dungeon chests or lose a lockpick in months, i gain randomly
i dont pick alot of chests though
pick lvl 5s pretty fast