I'd almost given up on ObRem's painstaking lockpicking until recently.
I hate lockpicking in Oblivion Remastered. I hate the stupid little tumblers with their stupid speed variations and my stupid slow reaction times as I invariably miss the stupid sweet spot.
As someone who loves Skyrim’s lockpicking, I was about to completely write off any attempts at going around cracking every door and chest in Cyrodiil. Even with our ridiculously handy Oblivion lockpicking guide I was, to be frank, crap at it.
That was until last week, when one Reddit comment changed my Hero of Kvatch’s life. Now before you start—sure you can run and grab the skeleton key and auto everything, and sure you can just cast a bunch of spells to unlock things without ever even having to enter the lockpicking menu, but if you’re like me and still at least like to try and do things somewhat manually, this is the cheese strat for you.
Turns out that once you hit a tumbler upwards, you can continuously juggle it and it’ll stay the same speed until you let it fall down again. That means you can essentially keep hitting a tumbler until it reaches the slowest speed, and then comfortably juggle it until you know you’re safe to set it in place. Here’s an example of what I mean:
I’m shocked: it’s so genius that I assumed it was a widely circulated strategy, until I found myself sitting on the couch next to my partner—an absolute sicko with countless hours in the original game—who had never seen anyone tackle the lockpicking minigame the way I was doing it. I also continue to see people going through the same revelation as me on Reddit, so I thought it a worthy strategy to share with you all as well.
Since learning it, I’ve only broken three lockpicks while successfully breaking into what is easily over 100 different locks by now. It’s quickly become one of my favourite things to do (alongside the persuasion minigame, which I take a sort of sick pleasure in doing on every single NPC I encounter) and may even end up surpassing my love for Skyrim’s lockpicking by the time I’m finished with the Oblivion remaster.
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