Chest & Lock Guide

What This Guide Covers

This page documents the six preset lock configurations built into the solver on the homepage. Each preset corresponds to a chest or door that players have reported in Gothic 1 Remake - from Dexter's chest in the Old Camp to the Old Mine chest in the Colony - together with its plate count, starting holes, and the couplings between plates.

The table below lists each lock by name and location. The Plates column shows how many dials the lock has (the solver accepts 4-7), the Start holes column shows which holes the pins sit in when you first open the lock, and the Couplings column summarizes how many directional links exist between plates. Pins are numbered as holes 1-7, which map directly to positions -3 to +3 on the solver's rail, with hole 4 at the center notch.

Two caveats before you rely on anything here. First, this is a community-collected reference, not an official database: starting positions and couplings come from player reports and playthroughs, so they can vary between runs or change with game updates. Second, these six locks are the presets we ship, not a complete catalogue of every lock in the game. Always compare the table against the lock actually in front of you - a sequence is only as good as the state it was computed from.

The six presets span every lock size the game uses. One lock — Dexter's chest — has four plates, the smallest size in the game. Two more use five plates (the Smithy chest and Lares' hut), two use six (Scatty's hut and the Colony water tower), and one uses seven (the Old Mine chest, the largest the solver accepts). Larger locks are not automatically harder — difficulty comes from how many couplings exist and how tangled they are — but they take longer to enter by hand, which is exactly where a preset saves you time.

The locations cover all three camps. Dexter's chest and the Smithy chest sit in the Old Camp; Lares keeps to the New Camp; Scatty's hut is again in the Old Camp, right next to the lockpicking trainer Fingers; and the Colony contributes the water tower and Old Mine chests. If you follow the main story, you will run into most of them before the end of the first chapter.

How to Use a Preset with the Solver

Step 1 - check the plate count. Look at the lock in the game and count its plates. The table tells you what to expect; if your lock shows a different number, skip the presets and enter the lock manually - the solver accepts 4 to 7 plates.

Step 2 - load the preset. On the homepage, open the preset picker above the lock editor and choose the entry that matches your lock, for example "Old Camp - Dexter's Chest". Loading it fills in the plate count, the starting positions, and the full coupling matrix automatically.

Step 3 - solve. Click "Solve Lock", pick a mode, and read the sequence. Each step tells you which plate to turn, in which direction, and how many times. The solver only returns edge-safe moves: every turn is checked against the -3 to +3 bounds, so no pin is ever pushed into the wall and the pick cannot break while you follow along.

Step 4 - verify before you start. Compare the first state the solver displays with the lock on your screen. If a pin sits in a different hole, adjust that plate with the arrow buttons; if two plates move together in the game but not in the solver, change that pair's coupling. Even a single mismatch can invalidate the whole sequence, so this check is worth doing.

If the lock differs from the preset - a pin in a different hole, a missing or extra coupling - fix the entry and hit Solve again. The preset is a starting point; the solver always works from what you actually entered.

Two things about the direction labels. On the homepage, every step names a plate and a direction (left or right). Left always means moving toward the higher holes, right toward the lower ones — matching the rail. If a step says "turn plate 2 left" and your pin moves toward the lower holes instead, a coupling is marked backwards: fix the matrix and re-solve rather than improvising the rest of the sequence.

What if the pick breaks mid-sequence? In the game, a break resets the lock to its starting positions — same couplings, same layout — so you can simply replay the same sequence once your pick is restored. At Master level, however, a break removes one coupling: mark it as Gone in the solver's matrix and solve again, because the old sequence no longer matches the simplified lock.

Where the Data Comes From

The preset data was collected from community sources - player reports and published walkthrough data such as Game8's lock tables - and cross-checked against our own in-game observation before a preset was added. It is not official data: the configurations do not come from the developers' files, and this site is not affiliated with Alkimia Interactive or THQ Nordic. It is simply an independent tool for gothic remake lockpicking.

Couplings are recorded as With (same direction) and Against (opposite direction). Where the community disagreed about a coupling, we kept the variant reported most often - every preset is a best-effort model of the lock, not a guarantee.

We ship these six presets because they are the locks players ask about most often, not because the list is complete. Other chests and doors exist; anything not listed here can still be solved with the manual editor.

Found a mistake - a wrong starting hole, a missing coupling, or a chest that deserves a preset? Write to [email protected] with a screenshot or a short description of the lock. Corrections confirmed by other players go into the next update.

Every preset carries a verification state. Verified means independent sources agree on the configuration; conflict means published sources disagree and we show the differing variants; pending means no reliable source has been found yet and the data is carried over from the original preset set. Of the six presets, Dexter's chest and Scatty's hut are currently marked conflict, and the other four are pending — treat all of them as community-reported starting points, not official values.

That is why each chest page lists its sources. Where a fact comes from a published walkthrough (Game8, community guides) or a fan-tool database, the link is included so you can judge the provenance yourself. What we never do is claim a configuration is official: this site is an independent fan tool, and the configurations reflect community reports, not developer files.