Guide to keys and lockpicks

The number of keys you can open with a lockpick before it breaks is dependent on your lucky and treasure hunter titles. The base probability (P) for a lockpick surviving varies according to the function:

P = (level/2 + 3*treasure hunter + 2*lucky ranks)/100

At level 20 the following table shows the probablity of your lockpick surviving
The number of chests (C) that can be opened with each lockpick can therefore written as

C = sum(P^i)

This is a geometric series so as it approaches infinity, c can be generalised as

C = 1/(1-P)

and the net cost of a opening a chest (O) can be expressed as

O = 1500 (1-P)


So how can you use this information? Well with the addition of lockpicks, you can also use them on chests in normal mode. You receive a bonus(B) to P depending on the cost of the key (K), as shown below:

Taking all this into account, you can now make an educated decision as to whether you will use a lock pick or a key to open a normal mode chest. If follows then, that it would be cheaper to use a lockpick when
K > 1500(1-P-B)


I know you're all lazy so here's a handy table.
For example Someone with Level 2 Lucky and Level 3 treasure hunter has a P value of 0.22. Looking the lockpick costs in table 3, we can see that it would cost him 645g to use a 450g chest, 720g to use a 600g chest, 795g to use a 750g chest, but only 1020g to use a 1250g chest. This player should therefore only every use lockpick on chests in DoA, FoW, the Deep And Urgoz's Warrren (In fact you'll notice that its always better to use a lockpick than a 1250g key!)

But wait, there's more!

WIth the 26/04/2007 update a retaining a lockpick gives you 250 points to your unlucky title and breaking one gives you 25 points to your unlucky title.

Effect on the lucky title
Using the nine rings game as the base cost for title upgrades, each lucky point is worth 0.88g. We know from that each chest can be opened 1/(1-P-B), so if you include the increased lucky title as a cost offset, the new cost K' is

K' = Cost of opening - cost of rine rings per point* points per retain * retains per pick
K' = 1500(1-P-B) - 0.88 * 250 * (1/(1-P-B) -1)
K' = 1500(1-P-B) - 220.5(1/(1-P-B)-1)

Again, because you're lazy, the new cost has been included below.

You'll notice right away that some of these costs are very large negatives. WHat this means is, relative to nine rings, opening chests with lockpicks is a very gold efficient, but not necisarily time efficent way to achieve the lucky title once your P gets large.


A word to the wise
The cost offsets have been calculated for someone that is trying to achieve the lucky title and would have spent money on 9 rings to do it. The offset cost would be significantly smaller for someone who is getting the lucky title for the sole purpose of reducing the costs of using lockpicks. Calculating this would involve solving integrating a recursive function, and is well beyond the cobwebbed brain of an old fuddy duddy like me. If someone else wants to attempt to solve it, I can edit it into the first post (fully attributed of course!).

Lock picks VS Keys: Getting more for your gold

With the addition of Hard Mode a lot of people have been asking me “Which should I buy?” Are Lock picks worth spending all that platinum on? This guide hopefully answers all the questions asked by people who want Treasure Hunter/Wisdom Title and for those who use chests as there primary income source (and those who do both!)

I’m going to start by comparing obsidian keys with lock picks cost wise for reasons that will become clearer later on. Now Lock picks cost 1500g and there seems to be very few of them dropping so it looks like purchasing them from the merchant is going to be the only option for now. Obsidian Keys are very easily bought at 1100g off other players if you wait long enough in Temple of the Ancients so that’s going to be your best option. If you see any deal at less than 1100g best to buy as many as you can You’ll always want more keys eventually

Now to Illustrate the maths involved I’ll take 165k as the cash pool to spend on chest openers. That’ll either net you 150 Obsidian Keys or 110 Lock Picks. So for Lock Picks to be more cost effective than keys your going to be, on average, getting to open 151 chests or more with your pile of 110.

So what sort of salvage rate are we looking at then? As long as your lvl20 you’ll have a 20% base chance of not breaking your ‘pick on obsidians (10% base + 10% chest type modifier). However for it to be more profitable to use picks you’re going to need a keep rate of 37%. That’s 17% extra your going to have to get through titles to even start being worth your while going for picks.

That 17% is going to be costly – below I have a spreadsheet to show how costly each extra % is going to be. (* 600g is for people who want to fast run somewhere to max the title straight away, 500g refers to buying Phantom Keys at ToA off other players)

Treasure Hunter: Going accross column heading are - ,+%,Keys:1100,Keys:600,Keys:500,Cost per extra %:1100,Cost per extra %:600,Cost per extra %:500 (Damn you Autoformat )
3 110k 60k 50k 36k 20k 16.7k
6 275k 150k 125k 55k 30k 25k
9 605k 330k 275k 110k 60k 50k
12 1.32M 720k 600k 238.3k 130k 108.3k
15 2.75M 1.5M 1.25M 476.7k 260k 216.7k
18 5.5M 3M 2.5M 916.7k 500k 416.7k
21 11M 6M 5M 1.83M 1M 833.3k

Lucky
+% Cost Cost per extra %
2 44.1k 22.1k
4 88.2k 22.1k
6 220.6k 66.2k
8 441.2k 110.3k
10 882.4k 220.6k

The cost of lucky titles are based on the statistical averages of playing Nine Rings in the Shing Jea Board walk games that appear during a festival. (Best go on a corner :P)

So the cheapest method to get to a 17%+ bonus on Lock Picks is to get 4 Ranks of Lucky and 3 Ranks of Treasure Hunter. This will cost you …2.9Million – 5.9 Million Gold. Ouch.There is no reason then if normally you would not go after these titles to get them as you’re simply not going to see a profit on it.
It gets worse (or better depending on your view) – If players start selling obsidian keys at 1000g as the norm then there is no way that lock picks are ever going to be cheaper than obsidian keys.

So why Lock Picks then?

You’ll have probably noticed by now that I’ve concentrated a lot on obsidian keys. This is because on analysis these are the keys that pay for themselves the most through chest drops. On trials of running one hundred 600g keys (Port Sledge) I found one thing that another player would buy – for 5k. The rest of the rubbish just had to be merchanted at about 20-40% the cost of the key. Because players really only want to buy the most top quality items your going to have to rely on perfects and perfect mods to have any chance of gaining your money back. Obsidian Chests seem to drop Golds 80% of the time. High Req ones can be sold to identifiers for about 1.2 -1.5k – that’s bringing the “cash back” to 70% just there. Even if you do identify them the perfect mod chance is significantly higher here and some will go easily for 30k (+30hp). However if your lucky enough to get a req 9 item then it’s time to break open the identify kit. If your lucky enough to get something with a perfect inherent, maybe even a 15^50 then you’ve probably got 60k ish right there! That’s a fair few more keys :P (Happens to me guys) You’ll actually be making profits on the chests!

So what has this to do with choosing lock picks? From the analysis over the weekend HM chests are only dropping gold’s and tomes – from my little tests it would seem likely that your returns then would never drop below 100% if you used LPs on Hard Mode chests. So it is worth buying the picks then but only for them.

So Gold fans which to choose obsidian or LPs. It comes a bit of a toss up at this point – Obsidians you can get to faster (both runner and none runner alike) but your likely to be making less profit off each one. LPs on Hard Mode will take longer to get too (until at least someone finds a good place to run them * see Post Note) but your going to get more chance of getting a “big find” and making a of money. So in the end call it with your priorities – if you actually care about the Treasure Hunter/Wisdom Titles go for Obsidian, you won’t actually lose out on much and still likely to make a profit. If you care little of titles then take HM lock picks – you’ll make the biggest return on your initial outlay but your not going to be opening as many chests.

Hopefully this will at least clear the problems of my friends up and hopefully a few other guys and gals will have benefited.

BONUS EXTRA – A Hard Mode Chest Run

This is not by any means saying this is the best run – it probably isn’t by a long run (lol – pun :P) However it’s the only one I’ve been able to achieve on my own! XD Time to take a trip to Tyria Mission 1: The Great Northern Wall. Now I do this with a R/A Running build. The Skills I use are all the normal one Dodge etc + Anything that gives a speed boost/ block bonus is fine. On the Assassin side you want Shadows Refuge, Dash, Deaths Charge, Heart of Shadow and Shadows Refuge.

Start the mission, talk to the captain and get down to the gate. Wait 5 seconds for all the enemies to become engaged with guards before dashing past. The next part is a loooong run so try and wait till the last second before starting the dodge chain. You need to get to that lever fast – use alt to make sure your heading to the right point. You’ll probably have to activate Shadows Refuge before you get to it though – at 12 Shadow Arts that’ll give you about 14 seconds of invincibility. Once you’ve opened the door get through fast – SR will reduce your hp to a one shot kill level but thankfully the critters chasing you won’t precede much past the gate and you can have a well earned rest. Shadows Refuge will get your HP back up fast. The next bit of running is a little less hectic and you should get to a breathing point before the raging battle and the dual layered path. (that’s the bit where the burrowers spring up on the lower path) Use alt to try and see if there’s a chest here – there’s about a 25% chance from experience. If there is a chest use dodge skills to get close then activate SR – it’ll give you plenty of time use a Pick, grab your item then die :P. If no chests yet I wouldn’t advice running through the pitched battle. On the left hand side there’s an enemy on a ledge – use your Assassin Warp Skills to get up there and you should be able to survive him with Blockers and Shadow Refuge healing. Up here is usually another good place to find a chest. The rest of the mission from here is pretty simple – there are no significant mobs and any hidden creeps by the time they pop up you will be long gone. If you want now you can show the Charr some real running .

I can do this run in about 8 minutes. If you get a chest each time this could be a nice little money earner if anyone has the skills to do it . If anyone would like to PM me in game it’s “Tempus Reborn” PM especially me if you have any more profitable chest runs and I’ll add them to this. Anyway now I’ve got more testing to do and loot to grab so I’ll build you sayonara. Please tell me if you’ve found this guide helpful or you’d like to see any improvements.

Tempus Reborn

Treasure Hunter
Wisdom Seeker
Scavenger :P

Hi, First of all great guide!

I'm posting in the hopes you'll add to your guide any & all new information that results from the Update of Thursday 26 April, 2007.

<My particular interest lies in Finding out the possible benefits of using Lockpicks to open the lowest end chests (Runs,locations, ETC. would also benefit the Community) with the intent of gaining points towards our "Lucky" title>

With the incentive of +250 points towards "Lucky" Title (Which has also been raised...Now ='s 2,500,000 to Max) for Retaining our Lockpicks after use You can easily understand my new-found interest in "Lower-end" Chests!

Thanks for your consideration in advance, please feel free to contact me in game! IGN: Critical Cal

I'd be happy to provide you with or assist in the gathering of: Any Information which will benefit the Community in the long term!

Mathematical people are scary, but i'm sure glad we have them! Thanks for the guide! =)

Table of lockpick usage (Hardmode only, no titles to begin with)

Damn you anet! its diferential equation to get numbers right!

what results are is that you need to lockpick ~ 27 000 chests to reach current known max lucky title tier.

Goos news is that you need to buy only 17000 lockpicks (its just 20 milllion), 10000 will be reused.

maxing Chestrunner title will cost you 7000 lockpicks (8 million gold) (3000 lockpicks reused)




This is same table, but when using lockpicks on 600g chests in normal mode

Max lucky is worth 7,9 million gold, 15000 chests opened, 5000 lockpicks bought
Max chestrunner worth 5,6 million gold, 10000 chests, 3700 lockpicks bought.

---

This means that Chestrunner title is actually cheaper when done exclusivelly with lockpicks even if you have no bonus titles when you start.

Why are you genius' over-looking the potential to increase your " LUCKY " Title by opening lower -end chests? This is something that Can not & Should not be ignored!

And By Increasing your " LUCKY " Title, Giving us better odds of retaining our Lockpicks on higher-end chests?

Maybe because the lucky title change postdates the guide .

... but ask and you shalll recieve. The OP has been edited in to include cost adjustments for lucky points.

A bit of a digression I know but since you asked: For the Lucky Title now you've got two options

LockPicks - This is the looooong method but seeing as you probably want lucky for the chests anyway it's not really costing you extra money going after chests

Nine Rings - This is quick allowing you to get both lucky and unlucky titles maxed in about 200 hours and you can leave your computer AFK while you do other things, walk the dog, paint the garage etc so it dosnt require any time per se...
But with this method you will have to fork out an extra 900k for the privelage of speedy gain...

your usage of port sledge (witman's folly) chests doesn't work all that well since witman's folly has bad drops from chests. if you do chest runs in places like ice floe, you can get mursaut bows and hammers which people are willing to pay more.

Actually, the lucky titles add 2% chance each level, and the Treasure Hunter add 3%.

Seing as Treasure hunter goes up to tier 7, and lucky to 5 (maybe 6), I imagine you just have the axis backwards.

The correct table would be:
Rest looks good though. Will have to read a bit more thoroughly before I can comment further. GJ man.

Edit:
Tempus Reborn, it's Shadow Form not Shadow Refuge that grants the "invincibility" (bar targetless enchant removal or walking into aoe/hostile wards) you're talking about.

Additionally, I think you make lockpicks sound less useful than they really are:

If you buy lockpicks for 1.3k from a factions outpost holder, then you only need 24% bonus from your titles (see table above) for it to be worthwhile using lockpicks instead of keys on all 600g chests, before you even look at percieved value from lucky title bonuses
That's lucky (3) and chest (2) / lucky (2) chest (3) (almost).

I would imagine many people had those sort of titles before lockpicks came out.

My userpage on wiki has various charts I am also playing with

~
Blue, using lockpicks for all his keys =)

Gotta love statistics classes in college huh?

Actually you guys put a lot of thought into this. great stuff... TY.

im luck 1, TH5 and i have 27% chance ... uve got it down as 21 o.0

TH should be account based anyway.

But, in my experience, most HM locked are dropping purple crap, so they are not rewarding at all.

IF WE CAN RECEIVE +250 POINTS TO WARDS "LUCKY" FOR RETAINING OUR LOCKPICKS?.....WHAT, WHERE, HOW IS THE BEST MANNER WITH-IN WHICH TO BENEFIT FROM THIS INFORMATION?.......

Please excuse the initial use of all caps! I feel quite frustrated that this simple manner of Increasing Our Odds is being Completely ignored?.....

<....While trying to explore the possibilities of using Low-end Chests (With Primary intent of Increasing points for "Lucky" Title yesterday prior to work? It seemed to me as if All of? or the vast Majority of Low-end Chests were missing from all Starter/Noobish Areas!...>

Trying to AFK for The Title is Extremely Time-consuming as well as potentially very costly. I personally see an exceptional positive benefit in: Finding the best / easiest / fastest routes in Low-Lower End Chest areas for the express purpose of cheaply increasing both My "Lucky' Title & My Future Odds when opening chests that cost 600 + gold for keys (for the "Treasure Hunter" Title track)

I wrote a lockpick calculator to determine the odds of keeping your lockpick, including normal mode odds.

Yes sorry only just become aware (and used) a discount merchant - 1200g lockpicks spin this right around... 1000g obsidian keys to 1200g lockpicks just require a retention of 20% ...exactly what you start off with! So now its Lock Picks Lockpick Lockpick all the way i feel (accept if your going after 600g chests when its still requires a few extra titles)

Enough with the Arithmetic!!!! (Math was hands down my Worst Subject)

I'd like to thank you all who were able to compile this awesome amount of data in such short order!

Now I'd like to present you with a new Task: Please list where the best low end chestruns are / perhaps a map with a route displayed? Chests which can be reached very quickly & repeatedly (Hopefully)! and are under the 300 gp cost per key.

If We're able to find a couple of really Quick/Efficient Runs/Routes, Then? We'll be able to take advantage of the above-posted information increasing out "lucky" titles! (Remember not Everyone in the Community has all 3 Chapters...Some are unable to capitalize on the "Board-
Walk")

P.S. (Remember Math is my weakest Subject....) If the Guild-wiki Lucky-Title track post is correct in stating that:

3,454 points per hour (from Nine rings ticket wins) is the average won?

And If by opening only the lower end chests ='s above 75% Retain Rate?

Then Only 14 < with retention of lock-pick > of these LOW_END Chests need to be opened per hour in order to show a better Rate of "Lucky" points Added to Title!.....(14x250pts ='s 3,500)......

And I'm sure finding only 14 low-end chests per hour??? < Equals..?? Almost? But not quite, as Lazy as Cal's Ex-Wife!)

Show Me The Hustle Fellas!......Let's find a Run/Route that delivers 20 low-end chests an hour ....Which would completely Blow The Board-Walk out of the water as a Worthwhile method of gaining "LUCKY" Points!!!

[Talking about capitalising on the boardwalk Im semi-afk and for 15g Im making 11 Victory Tokens every 4 mins - just thought Id share Hello Drunkard Title ]

Low Level Chest Runs - Well first of all your going to want to be the speediest you can be, you won't need to worry about keeping alive as nothing could really kill you at low levels - My previous build of R/A is pretty good but consider changing out a skill like Shadow Form for another like Escape

For maxing lucky your going to need to be going for Ascalon and considering the rarity of chests outside the missions here I'd recommend just doing either mission 1 or mission 4 (1 can be done in about 5 mins , 4 in about 12 mins) You'll net 2-3 chests on mission 1 , probably about 4 on mission 4 so call it about 3 mins per chest.

So 2.5 million lucky points would take 10000 chest * modifier ( with no titles thats 65% retention rate) which is on average 15400 chests used. (This is a slight overestimate as you'll actually gain bonus retention as you go after the maxed title - the amount needed to be opened is more like 14000.)

Oof good luck with that - even with 3 mins a chest thats 700 hours of work. And your not going to be making money from this either

20 chests an hour is the Magic Minimum!: < Retaining your Lock-pick 20x per hour ='s 5,000 lucky points an hour!>

And yes? May not be Making much money doing this? However?...You won't be LOSING an Average of 3,000 gp per hour At Nine-Rings either!

SO in Mathematical Conclusion? : 500 hours running low-end chests is equal to? 224 hours faster than Nine-Rings And whole lot cheaper FTW!....

Now back to the Routes....Come on guys 20 chests an hour is what we Need!

Unfortunately chests can't be run while you're AFK

If you're really determined to do it, obviously Old ascalon and the 2 newbie islands are the way to go.

Your LockPicks will break about a third of a time for these 20 chests - So thats about 7. If youve bought them at 1200g thats still 8400g deficit. To counter this the "junk" you'll egt in low level chest will sell for about 125g on average. So you'll make 1625g. But then your still spending 6775g an hour on these 20 chests and you don't even get the benefit of being AFK or getting Treasure Hunter Titles

So the lucky mod on lockpicks is really just a nice bonus if your going high level chest running but not actually a suitable means of maxing lucky out...

Sorry

This all sounds nice and all, but I have tried the lockpicks and have so far found them to break too much and give purples. For 1500G a pop, I don't want to be getting purples for the majority of the time.

I just expect more from my money. Lucky title...they made a useless title useful for one thing. The grind. An expensive grind, but a grind none the less. If I wasn't treasure hunting and wisdom seeking, this would be less interesting, but getting purps with my titles seems a waste of 1500G.

You start with a 10% chance.
600g chests become viable when you have a 30% retention rate.
(Presuming you're paying 1500g for a lockpick, which you really shouldn't be; with 1300g buying from outpost holders you only need a 24% retention rate)
--
He's talking about ascalon chests. You have a 95%+ retention rate with those.
--


It doesn't matter what drops you get. Lockpicks still work out better than keys for 600g chests when you have a decent treasure/lucky title combination.

Even if you fall below the retention rate required for a statistical return, lockpicks still have an extra ~300g value due to the lucky title increased, making it still worthwhile to use them inplace of keys (generally).

Ty to the OP for making that correction to your table.

How do you buy lockpicks for 1200gp? Where do you buy lockpicks for 1200gp?

Can someone explain?

Thanks for the charts, i'll check them so now and then when i want to chestrun with lockpicks, for my taste GW will have the weirdest chance ever, i always end up with streaks of rares/purples keys breaking or not breaking ah well might just me my misinterpretation ;D

The discount merchants in factions for the kurzick and luxon town sell the lockpicks for 1200 gold each to alliance members of the controlling alliance.
Some are selling large amounts for 1300g each most often 75 a set so that players who can't access those merchants still can buy them cheaper

Im afraid BlueNovember you seem to be in error - for obsidian chests your intial lockpick retention IS 20%

Secondly your right Ascalon chests do have a 95%ish chance of the lockpick being retained -IF you have maxed titles. Cal dosn't. So I am indeed right to quote the Ascalon retention rate at about 2/3. (Why would he want to this if he had opened 10,000 chest already )

So Cal and anyone else still can't get a quick fix on the lucky title by using this method - It takes longer, more effort and is even more expensive.

Again gotta say - Lucky bonus on chests is a little extra happiness factor but for actually getting titles with it... no chance

...but you start with a 10% native bonus, which was my point.

Yes you are correct here. 95% is the retention rate you require for ascalon chests to become viable. The correct value for the context I was using is 55%. I was reading from the wrong column in my own table. Ty for the correction.
--

Red-Tide, WTS lockpicks 1.3k ea =)

Phew - Had a quick frantic check of my maths - Its a shame though that the Lucky Points on chests arn't gonna help people max their title. Its really just there I suppose so chest hunters can work towards two bonuses on their lockpicking at the same time. BTW does anyone feel that in Hard Mode Ascalon more purples drop from chests than those in Hard Mode Fissure of Woe?

My whole point for all of this? was I don't know any where to run Chests as No one has really made any effort to answer What I needed answered! And? My retention rate for ascalon chests is 79% (I feel good enough about it to take the risk!).....I really appreciate the effort you guys have made, however?....IF YOU HAVE THE INFO i WANT?.....Give it to me instead of trying to prevent me from making mistakes! You haven't gone & researched My Idea....You looked at numbers? & Decided that my IDEA was flawed....

& if you can't remember what I Wanted?....scroll up....!

IF It turns out that I'm wasting to much money? You can best be sure I'll be back & posting that My idea isn't working the way it seems that it should...What's the next step?....I need more ideas....


For those of you that have been (or Will be?) Helpful Thank you Very much!!!

u kno that if u unlock hard mode chests regardless of getting a grape or not u still get a point for the treasure hunting title.

SWEET MERCIFUL CRAP! Be cool, man. They didn't go out and answer all of your questions for you TO YOUR LIKING! Someone did, however, mention the places where you will find the most chests in such a low level area. How did you put it? ....scroll up....! That right? Yeah, it is.

I don't mean to be so rude, but damn, man. Don't be so demanding of people who are really just being INCREDIBLY helpful to the gaming community by taking the time to figure this stuff out for us other lazy folks. If you want a chest-running guide for low level areas, SEARCH for that. In all likelihood, though, it doesn't exist, so go out and blaze some trails to make one.

Thank you very much Mr. Voice of reason!

In 3 separate threads now? I have been unable to find exactly the info I've been looking for! OR ? Even find someone to contact me in game! So don't jump in my direction, OK?

All these "Help-Ful" People? and the vast majority of what gets posted is trying to tear someone or their ideas down!

This is the last post I'll make probably make the effort for....I'm already sick of the "Help" that gets offered out!

CAL!

Thank you for dispelling my delusions of luckiness by running around shing jea with a lockpick. I despise AFK titles but I'll be darned if I'll pay more money while *working* to get it!

Cal - try decaf.

Gosh - I didnt think I was going to get abuse for working this stuff out

Hope you didn't take my post as abuse! It's great stuff. I was just chuckling because that was the first scheme that came to my mind when I read about the luck addition.

Cheers.

No I just thought Cal was a bit indignant - Like this is a thread about comparing lockpicks and keys not post your chest runs..Anyway as long as some people found it useful Im happy

didnt kno luck added chance lol