Lock Pick Thoughts

Alright I tried Hard Mode last night While I was Impressed with some of the changes I was Greatly dissapointed with the lock picks. And the loot inside.


The chance to retain a lockpick upon opening a chest is determined by the following formula: (Character level / 2) + (3 * Treasure Hunter ranks) + (2 * Lucky ranks) (%).

(Character level / 2)
Hard mode is only avalible to lvl 20 unless you beat the game in normal mode at less than lvl 20 while I do not believe this to be entirely impossible. By way of posting early and getting a run from ascalon city to droks then to Thunderhead Keep making it the 2nd mission you do then going to RoF and beating the game at less than lvl 20. So except for extream cases this is just silly and is in most cases simply 20/2 or 10

(3 * Treasure Hunter ranks)
Treasure hunter maxes out at 7 therefor if you have this maxed (6000k for keys alone btw) so at max lvl it becomes 3*7 or 21

(2 * Lucky ranks)
Lucky title maxes out at 5 according to wiki Based on games available during Canthan festivals it would take about 17 days to win 1.0 million tickets. Now 4 leaf clovers and the recent easter event made this a bit easier but Im still not convinced there has been enough oppurtunity to acheive a lvl 5 lucky title. But if you do happen to get it maxed out this becomes 2*5 or 10

so in total you have 10 +21+10 to acheive a grand total of 41% chance of keeping the lock pick. 6 mil on keys and I dont know how much on the lucky title but I know its alot. and you still loose your lock pick MORE THAN HALF THE TIME! This means that the best you can hope for is 2 hard mode chests with one pick. after that you are already out of the 1 in 2 chance you had.

The group I was in last night was a group of 4 we all opened 1 chest and 2 of us opened 2 for a total of 6 chests. as near as we could tell from our limited drops the chests were comparable to the 600g chests we find in Mirror of Lyss. Referring back to my comment about 2 being the best you can hope for IF you manage to get 2 uses out of it you just paied 1500g for 2 chests that appearently contain the same loot as 2 600g chests 2x600g =1200g so you just payed 300g more to get the same basic results.

Suggestions:
I think the formula needs work. I think if you dumped millions into your titles you should have more than 41% chance of keeping your pick

Make Lock Picks give you +1 to your lucky title each time you don't break it.

Improve the loot inside the hard mode chests so its worth the money.

Not sure why people are complaining so much about this... It is still 41% chance better than previous chests, you still get the keys the same way, they now drop from all monsters, and can be used in all areas! So you only get to keep it a set percentage of the time, don't expect Anet to give you a supreme master key that can open every chest all the time with no drawbacks. I do agree with the +1 to lucky title though, but all the rest seems perfect as it is.

there is a simalar system in place for salvaging and keeping the item it starts with a base of 50% and goes up depending on level of treasure and wisdom. it would seem to me that wisdom could come into play with lock picking as well so why not make it (char lvl /2)+(treasure*3)+(lucky*2)+(wisdom*3)
this would increase the total chance with everything maxed to 62% at least that is more than half

or do like they did with salvage and make it a base of 50% and go up from there. With salvage kits and maxed titles you can get to 92% chance of keeping the item

with the current formula for lock picks you can get to 41% with a base of 50 you could get to 91% wich would be comparable to the salvage kit formula.

This is a suggestion, so has been moved to Sardelac.

I thought the lock picks were going to be a bit better than what they are :/

Yea they need to change something. The stuff you get from the chest is not worth 1500g and the tiny chance you'll get to use the key again.

Adding points to the lucky title would be nice. Maybe if opening hard mode chests gave you double points to the chest title.

No thanks rather stick with normal keys, for the reason that if I want to open chests for that new shiny gothic dual axe i can buy a kurzick key for a LOT less instead of the tripled price. The only areas where lockpicks are good is in low lvl canthan and elonian areas. I take it someone thought about running locked chests in hard mode shing jea for that 15^50 non inscrip serpent axe

just my 2 cents

We are talking about hard mode not normal mode. Only lockpicks in hard mode.

For those of us who aren't into titles, I have a 13% chance for it to not break. Which basically, it will break everytime. I guess my point is, people who don't really have the time/money to get these titles shouldn't get screwed either. I think at least the price should come down, or the loot should equal out to the lockpick price..

Let's see... a lockpick is a key that opens all chests, normal chests included.

For normal chests, they have extra 30% when opening the chests you can open with keys...
So... for them it would be... 71%
Previous 1500 keys cost now 1250.
So... instead of paying 1250 for a key... you'll pay much less, since the lockpick would be used more than once... actually saving money. The average 'key' price would be 435 per chest.

And for 41% in locked chests... you'll get an average 885 price for keys that open chests with good rates.

Where is the problem? It's cheaper than before.

im liking the picks but was hoping there b less chance of destroying -_-