Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Lockpicking Issues and suggestions

I'm not referring to the bug which requires you to double-click while opening a lock. Nor am I referring to the treasure table issue which has Lockpicks almost never appear in random loot, although both of these should be fixed. (And Arhu and/or the Arrow Seller should sell Lockpicks.)

I'm referring to a balancing issue currently in the Beta.

Outside of Cyseal, there are essentially no locked chests or doors which haven't got a key for them somewhere. There's always a key around, which makes Lockpicking worthless.

Simply hiding the keys from the all-revealing gaze of the Alt button isn't good enough, the problem is that all chests are always open or have keys in the first place. Just hiding them will work for a playthrough or two until a walkthrough comes out or players find the hiding places themselves, and then lockpicking will become pretty much worthless again.

Suggestion: More chests should be locked, without existing keys.

If players want to get at the stuff inside and there's no key, they should pick the lock, or smash it open with a weapon or spell.

That brings me to another issue. Opening a chest with a lockpick consumes the lockpick. Smashing it open with a weapon damages the weapon. Opening it up with a spell costs nothing but time. As noted elsewhere, that's unbalanced.


Suggestion: Either A) Chests opened by lockpicking (and maybe key as well) should get an additional roll on the treasure table, probably using the lock difficulty as a modifier. Chests smashed open by magic and weapons remain the same.

Or B) Chests opened by smashing them have less items, items inside could start with lower durability, etc. Some kind of thing that makes brute-force opening less appealing.

The additional roll of items represents stuff that was not destroyed by opening the chest violently. Many games which let you use force to open locked chests have similar punishment mechanics to encourage lockpicking.

"Hold on, that's not fair, why should Lockpicking give more stuff? I want to play the character I want."

The reason why is because to lockpick, you need to spend Ability points into Lockpicking. Unlike weapons and magic, the Lockpicking ability has no other applications, it's exclusively for opening locks.

If a player is going to spend precious Ability points into Lockpicking, it has to be worthwhile for reasons other than cosmetic roleplaying.