Question about chests, keys, and lockpicks

I've been playing for a long time, but have generally ignored the chest/key dynamic entirely. It seemed that whenever I bothered to buy a key, I invariably got an item of less value than the key I used to acquire it. I'm curious, though, now that I have access to hardmode and such, whether there are good places and times to acquire and use keys or lockpicks from a profitability standpoint. I'm not talking about titles, here. Are there places where it makes sense to buy keys or lockpicks in the interests of making a profit?

Once you max Wisdom and Lucky, you will actually earn money by opening chests, since you will likely never lose lockpicks.

You can see the articles about the lucky title in the wikies.

Opening chests is a gold sink, nothing more. Yes, some people do get lucky, however most the time the item that drops is shit.

So it's like real life gambling, basically? That is, occasional short term net gains but inevitable long term net losses?

Has anyone ever done an analysis of where the best investment/output ratios are in the game? I have always relied on the geekiness of strangers.

Precisely. Except that if you actually luck out and get an item worth 100k, you can recoup your losses and then some... assuming you don't immediately spend the cash on more lockpicks, of course

I'm sure some people have done some sort of mathematical analysis, at least with regard to the efficiency of lockpicking chests and farming, based on average returns, but I haven't gone looking for the information. Perhaps a search here or on GuildWiki might net you what you're looking for.

Yes, I opened around 3k chests on my warrior, made a massive loss. For every 50 or so chests I got one item that was worth selling, and generally that item was ~10k.

This was a while ago now though, before HM etc that char has long been deleted.

OK, I think I have a clear picture. Lockpick chests can be made profitable, but only after maxing titles that require a massive loss to get there. Everything else is a net loss, though it IS of course possible to win the lottery.

Thanks everyone!

Lockpicks can be bought from other players cheaper than the merchants. you need to find someone in Factions whose guild owns a city and they will usually sell picks for 1250g each.

For me it was the opposite, I opened 5k~ chests before HM for an overall net profit.