Lock

Locks are found throughout the wasteland on doors, safes and boxes. In Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, the player can use their Lockpick skill to pick a lock using bobby pins. Some can also be unlocked with keys.

Lockpicking in Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel
Picking locks in older Fallout games is simpler than in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas; instead of a mini-game, a lockpick skill roll will take place every time you use the skill on a door or a container. A successful roll will open the lock, a failure will not. A critical failure will break the lock, rendering it unavailable until the next day.

The lockpick skill can be used on unlocked doors and containers as well, and locking them will give the same amount of experience as unlocking a locked one (25 XP). Note that each door or container can only give experience once via lockpicking.

Lock difficulties
Locks come in 5 difficulties: very easy, easy, average, hard and very hard. Which locks you can pick depends on your Lockpick skill (see table to the right). Difficulty and your Lockpick skill also determine the probability of success for an attempt to force a lock open (see force lock below).

Experience points
Depending on its difficulty (harder locks reward more XP), successfully opening a lock grants an amount of XP. Without any XP reward-increasing perks, each level rewards the player with the XP shown in the table above.

Picking a lock
In order to pick a lock you must have a Lockpick skill high enough for the difficulty of the lock, and you must possess one or more bobby pins. Bobby pins are weightless items, often found in first aid kits and locked containers.

If the conditions are met, a mini game is activated. A bobby pin and screwdriver (a free, weightless item which does not appear in your inventory) are inserted into the keyhole of the lock. The player attempts to find the correct position for the pin, which is checked by turning the screwdriver as if it were a key. The further the screwdriver turns the lock, the closer the pin is to the correct position. Once the screwdriver is able to turn the lock a full 90 degrees, the lock opens.

The basic premise is complicated by several factors. If the player fails to determine the correct position of the lock too many times, the bobby pin will break, forcing the player to use another in order to continue the attempt. The number of times it takes for a pin to break varies, as placing too much force on the screwdriver will cause it to break faster than a light touch. The integrity of the pin can be roughly tracked by how violently it shakes on a failed attempt. When it is about to break, it will bounce out of the center position. The player can exit the mini game and restart it, which will prevent the pin from breaking, but this will also reset the correct position for the pin. Since there are dozens of bobby pins in the main game alone, it is often more practical to simply break one or two pins on a difficult lock. In addition, the difficulty level of the lock determines how accurately the bobby pin must be placed and how easy the pin is to break. A very easy lock needs little to no pin adjustment for a successful attempt, in turn making the likelihood of breaking a pin low. A very hard lock, conversely, requires extremely precise placement, and thus the repeated checks to find the correct position will wear out a pin quickly.

Controls for PC
The bobby pin is moved with the mouse, in a semi-circle around the top of the lock. The screwdriver is moved by tapping any movement key. In order to get the most out of a single pin, it is recommended to gently tap the screwdriver until it encounters resistance, then adjust the pin position and repeat until the lock is opened.

Controls for console versions
The bobby pin is moved with one analog stick, and the screwdriver with the other. The controller will vibrate with the wiggling of the bobby pin, and vibrate strongly as it starts to break. As with the PC, a light touch is recommended to keep the pin intact as long as possible.

Force lock
It is also possible to skip the mini game by attempting to force a lock open. The probability of success for this action depends on your Lockpick skill and the difficulty of the lock. This is far less reliable than the mini game, as the only combination which has a 100% success rate is a very easy lock with a Lockpick skill of 90-100; every other combination will have a smaller percentage.

If you fail at forcing the lock open it will break, and no other attempt at opening it can be made unless you have the Infiltrator perk (which grants a second attempt) or the appropriate key.

Behind the scenes

 * The way in which lock picking is portrayed in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas is almost completely inaccurate. A torque wrench (screwdriver) and a pick (bobby pin) are present, but the action of actually picking the lock is nothing like what a pin tumbler lock or most other locks with a cylindrical design would require to successfully manipulate the lock.

Bugs

 * Once your bobby pin breaks if you immediately press the "Force Lock" key the lock will be picked. The screwdriver continues moving without a pin hitting any tumblers.

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