Lockpicking

On the wiki page http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Treasure_Hunter it says Lockpicks have a standard 40% retention rate on 600g chests. My question is; does the chest count as a 600g chest only in normal mode, or does changing it to a 'locked chest' in hard mode mean the same thing?

For clarity; say I open a Forbidden Chest in Raisu palace using a lockpick in normal mode, it retains at 40%. Now I open the same chest in hard mode (now labelled locked chest) will the lockpick remain unbroken at 40% a rate?

Also, one other thing, which zones are best to use lockpicks in for maximum return, thus mitigating some of the cost?

Thank you

no, all locked Chests are the same and it depends on the key price.
if the key has a 600gold Value its chest is a 600g chest...
if that makes sense

I use lockpicks lower end areas when farming feathers or WiK even, although no chest points... You get dam good lucky points

No, the retention rate of Lockpicks used on locked chests is much lower than NM chests. This link gives the stats: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Lockpick

No. The rates are different in NM and HM.

The 40% retention rate you are getting n NM includes a bonus based on the cost of the keys. For a 600g chest, the NM bonus is 30%, so your NM retention on Forbidden Chests is currently:

10% base + 30% NM bonus = 40% NM retention

As you increase your Lucky and Treasure Hunter ranks, the 10% base rate will increase, but the bonuses will not.

However, you do not get the retention bonus in HM, so your retention rate on locked chests in HM will only be your current base rate -- 10% at this point. This rate will apply to ALL locked chests in HM, regardless of the cost of the keys in NM. So the same HM rate will apply to chests on Shing Jea Island, Raisu Palace, or anywhere else in GW.

the only other thing is locked chests in EoTN count as 600g chests even thou they can only be opened with lockpicks (always a loop hole )

Thanks for the replies. So for the most profit available with maximum retention rate, it is best to open Eotn chest in NM? Or are the drops from those not that great, despite being labelled as 'locked chest'?

Chest running in its self is a gold drainer.


I can only think of ONE area in all of GW where I actually made profit (and a rather large profit, actually) from my lockpicks via chest running, and that place isn't exactly very well known (as a matter of fact there's only 1 person there right now at this moment and s/he seems to be AFK).

I'm mainly looking to mitigate as much of the cost as possible.
Btw, which zone are you referring to?

You can't expect profit. The best you can expect is to cut your losses by maybe 30%. There are a couple of ways to do this, if you have plenty of storage.

1. If you don't have plans to work on the Wisdom title, sell the gold items that drop without identifying them. Gold unid sell for around 700g each, or 7 for 4.5-5k. In NM you can expect about 30% of the drops to be goldies on average over the long term, based on my experience running chests out of Boreal.

2. Do all your chest running in NF or EotN areas (where the weapons are inscribable), salvage any useful perfect mods, and sell them. Most of these are going to go for around 1k, though there are a few that will go slightly higher. Only a perfect Forget Me Not inscription is worth any serious amount, though, and you'd be lucky to come up with a handful of those in 10,000 chests. (I got three of them by the time I finished TH.)

Personally, I just bit the bullet and merched everything except mods I salvaged for my characters and heroes. That generated around 5k out of every 25 chests, which didn't come close to covering the cost of broken picks until I was nearly done. I alternated chest runs with regular farming to get cash to buy more picks. I bought 80 picks per week (100k) and ran 25 chests per day until I was done, which took around six months. Net cost was probably around three million gold.

Just as a side note - if you actually read the text that pops up when you click on a chest (where you then click on "Use Key" or "Use Lockpick") it will tell you the exact retention percentage for opening that chest.

Why do you mention the place but don't tell where it is?

Some people are into games of "ha, ha, I know something you don't know but I'm not telling because too many people will spoil it." It builds their self-esteem to drop such hints and get people begging for information. Better to just ignore such posts and let them fall flat trying to feed their egos.