Free WoW Guide: Rogues' Lockpicking Guide

This is a very important skill for rogues to learn and master. It is limited to your level *5, so you really can’t train to max once you get the skill, not that you could anyhow. Some important things to know about Lockpicking, mainly what you can pick and at what skill:

Creature levels to pickpocket junkboxs
Lvl 22-32 Battered Junkboxes
Lvl 32-42 Worn Junkboxes
Lvl 42-52 Sturdy Junkboxes
Lvl 52+ Heavy Junkboxes

Skills required to pick boxes
Battered Junkboxes(25-100)
Worn Junkboxes(100-175)
Sturdy Junkboxes(175-250)
Heavy Junkboxes(250-?)
Heavy Bronze Lockbox
Ornate Bronze Lockbox
Iron Lockbox (75-?)
Strong Iron Lockbox (125-?)
Steel Lockbox (175-?)
Reinforced Steel Lockbox (225-never)
Mithril Lockbox (225-never)
Thorium Lockbox (225-never)
Eternium Lockbox(225-never)

Skills for Doors
Gnomeregan (150-200)
Scarlet Monastery (175-250)
Searing Gorge Gate (225-never)
BRD Prison Cells (225-never)
BRD Shadowforge Gates (280-never)
Scholomance (280-never)
Stratholme (300)

Others
Engineered Practice Locks (1-75)

Location of Footlockers
Hillsbrad Foothills - Durnholde Keep
Redridge Mountains - Lake Everstill
Ashenvale Forest - Zoram Strand
Stonetalon Mountains - Windshear Crag and Associated Mines
Wetlands - Murloc Camps
Desolace - Sar'theris Strand
Badlands - Angor Fortress
Swamp of Sorrows - Pool of Tears
Searing Gorge - The Slag Pit
Tanaris Desert - Lost Rigger Cove
Azshara - Bay of Storms
Eastern Plaguelands - Tyr's Hand (elite)

You can see that there are milestones of a sort, 175, 225 and 250. To compare that to rogue levels, you’re looking at levels 35, 45 and 50. Now, there are many ways to increase your skill, with Pick Pocket being one of the better ones. Hence one of the reasons you are hunting Humanoids, to get Junkboxes. An important thing to know about Lockpicking is that skill-ups from locked doors are on timers. You can only gain a skill-up once then you need to wait 20 minutes to get the next one. There are ways to get around this though. One way is to successfully pick a junkbox/practice lock in between attempts. Another is to pickpocket a target, which has a 50% chance of resetting the timer. You can make an effort to collect junkboxes/practice locks and then head to a door and go nuts practicing though pickpocketing is the better solution.

Footlockers are static locked boxes you can find in the areas listed above. The area is comparative to the skill level you have. So if you have 80 lockpicking you’d want to head to Wetlands and if you were near 200 skill, then you’d go to Azshara.

The alternative is to simply stand in town and tell people you will pick their lockboxes for free. The lockbox can be in the do-not-trade window and you will still gain skill. Problem is, you need to be on at peak times and most servers are very laggy during these times, making it very frustrating.

The quickest way to increase your Lockpicking skill is as follows:

1–80: Lockpicking quest you get at level 16

81–175: Bottom floor of the pirate boat in Ratchet. Need to select the skill and click on the chest

176-225: Scarlet Monastery doors (Cathedral and Armory). Bring junkboxes/practice locks to reset timer OR pick the pockets of nearby enemies

225–280: Searing Gorge Gate. Bring junkboxes/practice locks to reset timer OR pick the pockets of nearby enemies, kill them and repeat.

280-300: There are 3 doors near the front (Shadowforge Gates) that you can pick, then reset the instance.