Gothic 1 Remake: How Lockpicking Works (And Where to Get Picks)
Opening locked chests in the Colony feels exactly like being handed a rusty piece of metal and being told to crack a bank vault.
The Old Camp is packed with valuable loot. As you wander through the various Digger huts, you'll notice plenty of locked chests just sitting there begging to be opened. Before you start planning a massive crime spree, I highly recommend securing a safe place to pass the time. If you need a hideout, check out my guide on where to find a free bed early so you can sleep off any botched robbery attempts. Once your logistics are sorted, you can finally tackle the locks.
The lockpicking minigame is completely brutal if you go in blind. A complex chest can easily take ten minutes of trial and error to crack. I've spent enough time breaking picks in the dark to help you understand exactly how this frustrating system works.
The Brutal Reality of Sliders
When you interact with a locked chest, you get a close look at the internal mechanism. Depending on the difficulty, you'll see five or six different sliders. Every single slider has seven holes. Your goal is to move every slider until a copper colored pin pops out of the middle hole. Getting the pin perfectly centered on every slider unlocks the chest.
The Linked Mechanism Trap
If each slider moved on its own, this puzzle would be a breeze. The catch is that moving one slider usually forces other sliders to move at the very same time. Sometimes they move in the exact same direction, and sometimes they slide the opposite way entirely.
Your first priority should always be mapping out the connections. Move a slider slightly and watch exactly which other pieces react. You want to slowly work each pin toward the middle, switching to a different slider the second your current pin hits the outer edge.
Durability and the Art of Save Scumming
Before you attempt to open anything, do yourself a massive favor and save your game.
At the start of your journey, your lockpick only has two points of durability. If a slider hits the edge of the lock, it makes a rattling noise and burns one point of durability. If you make a second mistake, the pick snaps and the entire lock resets. You can press the R key at any time to manually reset the puzzle, but if you back out of the minigame while your pick has any strain on it, the pick will immediately break in your hands. Save scumming is the only reliable way to keep your inventory intact during the early hours.
Upgrading Your Lockpicking Skill
You don't have to suffer with basic lockpicking forever. Once you trigger the Casting Shadows quest for Diego, you can ask him about teachers in the camp. He points you toward Fingers.
To find Fingers, head left from the castle entrance, walk past Snaf and his cooking cauldron, and head up the slope to your right. If you hand him 100 ore nuggets and 10 of your hard earned skill points, he'll train you.
Where to Buy More Lockpicks
No matter how careful you are, you'll eventually run out of supplies. You can find scattered picks hidden inside abandoned huts or tucked away in prisoner camps around the world. If you end up snapping all your picks and need to track down a merchant in town, you'll want to know exactly where you're going. Grab a cheap Colony map to save yourself some aimless wandering.
You have three different merchants to choose from in the cloth covered market area in the south section of the Old Camp. Fisk sits outside his house and sells up to a dozen picks for 15 ore nuggets each. Dexter, the guy who hands out The Cult's Recipe quest, also sells them.
Your best option is Mordrag. He's a representative for the New Camp who sits on a bench outside a shack on the east side of the market. He undercuts the local merchants and sells lockpicks for just 13 ore nuggets each. Buy your supplies from him, save your game, and start cracking those chests.
