Rolling Horde

Leveling Lockpicking, 175 - 250

• Posted by Walkere on July 7th, 2008 filed in Grinding, Rogue

One of the less enjoyable parts of leveling a Rogue is leveling your lockpicking skill.

There’s something very broken about this. The junkboxes that you collect off mobs have skill levels that are far too wide, so you’ll find yourself needing to grind your lockpicking skill at one point or another. You can either pick a lot of pockets, or find a spot with outdoor chests or doors that you can pick.

From 175 - 250, there is just such a perfect spot - Scarlet Monastery.

Picking the Doors

The wowwiki article on lockpicking suggests that you show up to Scarlet Monastery around level 205. The door actually turns Orange at 175, so I’d suggest going at 175. No sense grinding lockpicking somewhere else, when this is much easier.

Here’s the basic procedure. Scarlet Monastery has two locked doors - Cathedral and Armory. When you walk into the area, you can pick both locks.

Once you pick the locks, there’s some kind of hidden cooldown preventing you from getting a skill-up for another 5 to 10 minutes. There are, however, ways to reset this cooldown.

Method one: Enter part of the Scarlet Monastery instance. Pick three pockets. Leave. This will always reset the timer, such that you can once again pick the two doors and potentially get two more skill ups.

Method two: Unlock a junkbox. According to wowwiki, this has a 50/50 chance to reset the timer - I observed it to be somewhat higher.

With that in mind, here’s what you should do until you hit lockpicking 250.

Pick the doors. Enter the instance, pick three pockets, and leave. Re-pick the doors. If you have any junkboxes on you, open them one at a time and re-pick the doors after each opening.

It helps to use the instance portals in some kind of order. For example, enter Cathedral three times, them Armory three times, then Library. At that point, the Cathedral mobs should have re-set so that you can pick their pockets again.

If you out-level Scarlet Monastery (I went at level 58, but I’d recommend being 40 or so), you won’t have any problems with mobs resisting your pick-pockets. It’ll be easy for you to quickly move in and out, and continue to open the doors.

I was able to grind from 205 to 230 in about a half an hour. It’s a decent time sink, but what are ya gonna do? Need to open locks somehow.