Despite the game being released almost 10 years ago now with its anniversary being this November, Bethesda's Skyrim is very much alive and kicking to this day. Among the things that aided Skyrim the most to stay relevant throughout this decade are its dedicated modding community, which has created a lot of content and graphic upgrades for the game, and also the fact that it was ported to every console with new releases and editions. Contributing to the game's incredible success is the fact that most of the time players can do whatever they want once in the lands of Skyrim, be it following main or side quests to see them through or even just wandering around to admire the scenery.
As per tradition, Skyrim also features its own Thieves Guild, which can be found in The Ratway beneath the city of Riften, where the guild has established itself as an economic and political power over time. As a member of the Thieves Guild, the Dragonborn will eventually have to pick some locks both to progress in the game and to retrieve potent artifacts or valuable treasures to make a fortune. As such, the Lockpicking skill is one of the players' best friends here, but coincidentally it is also one of the most difficult skills to level up consistently or even rapidly.
How to Improve the Lockpicking Skill in Skyrim
One of the best ways to get an edge over other characters with Lockpicking is to start the game as an Argonian, The Elder Scrolls' reptilian people, who are a long way from home in the lands of Skyrim. Argonians are an amphibious race, which means they have a very useful perk called Waterbreathing, but most notably this is the only race in Skyrim to start the game with +10 to their Lockpicking skill, effectively making Argonian characters closer to the skill level cap by quite a lot. While not a trick on its own to level up Lockpicking, choosing to make an Argonian Dragonborn helps those players who want more of a sneaky playstyle akin to that of thieves or assassins.
One of the most renowned and effective ways to level up Lockpicking is by finding difficult chests or other locked things, such as doors or displays for valuable items, and just break lockpick after lockpick. As a matter of fact, breaking lockpicks is a great way to level up Lockpicking, but the task can be extremely boring and exhausting in the long run. That's why a Skyrim player found an ingenious way to do so by not having to manually break each and every lockpick, and all this method requires is a robust elasticated cord and a controller.
The cord is then tied to the controller in a way that allows it to constantly move lockpicks and break them, which works best with Master locks, such as the one that belongs to a chest found within the Thieves Guild hideout. This, of course, poses the debate as to why someone would do this rather than just using Skyrim's console commands to give themselves maximum level Lockpicking, but this only works for PC copies of Skyrim.
Another tip is to align the Dragonborn to the Thief constellation using the Thief Stone, which is found at the very beginning of the game after the whole tutorial area; this provides players with a 20% boost to all skills associated with stealth, including Lockpicking. This method makes the leveling process less tedious because it's way faster, and aligning the character to a specific constellation is not an irreversible choice.
The second method would be to progress through the Thieves Guild storyline up until the end of the Blindsighted quest when players obtain an unbreakable lockpick, the Skeleton Key. But beware: completing the questline after Blindsighted will also mean losing access to this item. Luckily, there's no pressure to do so, and players can tackle content at their own pace. Ultimately, though, the best way to level up skills in Skyrim is likely just playing the game because that's what grants players the best experience overall.
Skyrim is available on PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.
