Lockpicking Trainers & Skill Levels

Finding Fingers: lockpicking training in the Old Camp

Fingers teaches lockpicking in the Old Camp, in the hut right next to Scatty's. Walk in, talk to him, and he offers to train you in exchange for ore and learning points (LP). Lockpicking can be attempted from the very start of the game: no quest, perk, or story progress is required to try any chest you come across. You start at Untrained, and that level can already open everything in principle — the puzzle is the same for every player, only your mistake budget grows with training.

The first upgrade, Trained, costs 10 LP and 100 ore. Early on, 100 ore is real money — it buys a solid weapon upgrade or a few healing potions — so do not hand it over the moment you meet him. My rule of thumb: finish your first mine run or two, and only pay for Trained once you have actually opened two or three chests and enjoyed it. If you only loot chests that sit directly on your quest path, staying Untrained until mid-game costs you nothing — the level raises your mistake budget and nothing else, so you are never locked out of a lock for being Untrained.

Before you spend anything, try a few chests at Untrained and watch what actually kills you: it is almost always the wall at -3 or +3, never the puzzle itself. If two mistakes feel unbearable, Trained earns its 100 ore back on the first long chest. If you rarely touch the walls, keep the ore — a careful player can stay Untrained for the entire game and miss nothing.

Untrained, Trained, Master: what each level actually gives you

There are exactly three lockpicking levels, and the difference between them is one number: the mistake budget. Untrained allows 2 mistakes, Trained 4, Master 6. A mistake happens when a turn would push a pin past the wall at -3 or +3 — the plate cannot move, the pick takes damage, and the counter goes up by one. Hit the budget and the pick breaks: the lock resets to its starting positions and the attempt starts over. That is the complete rule set, and the table below shows all three levels side by side.

Fingers sells the upgrades at fixed prices: Trained for 10 LP and 100 ore, Master for 20 LP and 200 ore — 30 LP and 300 ore if you buy both. What does each level feel like in practice? At 2 mistakes, a single careless turn ends the attempt, and one misread coupling usually means starting over. At 4, you can afford a moderate risk now and then, and the occasional misclick no longer costs the whole lock. At 6, you can experiment: test a coupling you are unsure about, recover from a wrong turn, and still finish the chest. Every fresh attempt starts with a full budget, so a broken pick only costs you the time you already invested.

Spending order matters. Trained is the sweet spot for most playthroughs: 100 ore stops hurting once the colony's mines start paying, and four mistakes cover honest errors without trivializing locks. Master is a luxury purchase — wait until 200 ore and 20 LP do not hurt, because its real value only shows after broken picks (more on that in the next section). A common trap is buying Master right before a hard chest and expecting easier plates: the plates are unchanged, only your survival margin grows and, after breaks, the lock itself shrinks. If you never break picks, Master is 200 ore for nothing.

What training changes — and what it never changes

The fact most players get wrong: training never changes how plates move. Couplings stay With, Against, or None, every turn still moves a plate exactly one step, and the walls stay at -3 and +3. A sequence that solves a lock at Untrained solves the exact same lock at Master, provided no coupling has been removed. That is why the gothic remake lockpicking solver on this site does not need your level: the optimal move order is identical for Untrained and Trained, and for Master it only changes after a break removes a link.

Master adds exactly one permanent effect. Every time your pick breaks at Master, one random coupling is removed from the lock, and the lock resets as usual. One break, one link gone. This is a genuine difficulty decrease — the puzzle is literally smaller — and it is why experienced players deliberately break picks on stubborn chests. Carry a few spare picks, break once or twice, and a tangled six-plate lock often shrinks into a few independent plates you can solve by eye.

In the solver, this matters exactly once per break: after the pick breaks, check which coupling disappeared (the game shows it briefly), mark it as Gone in the matrix step, and solve again. Do not skip this — planning around a ghost coupling yields a wrong sequence, and following a wrong sequence costs you another pick. Removed couplings stay gone, so a chest keeps its reduced state until it is finally opened.

The bottom line: spend on training for forgiveness, not for access. Your level decides how many mistakes you survive and — at Master — how quickly locks simplify, never which locks you can open. If you play with the solver, Untrained is a perfectly viable permanent state. If you play by hand, Trained is the best value in the game, and Master is worth it only once 200 ore is pocket change.