Skyrim Thief Skills - How To Max Sneak, Speech, Pickpocket And ...

The fastest way to max level Lockpicking and Pickpocketing

How to reach level 100 Lockpicking

Lockpicking and Pickpocket are two skills which often go hand-in-hand - probably because, to gain access to locked doors, there's normally a choice available to the player: lockpick the lock, or pickpocket the key.

• Lockpicking experience is granted for two things: succesfully opening locks, whereby experience is levelled according to the difficulty of the lock, or by breaking lockpicks, which gives a smaller, flat amount of experience regardless of the lock difficulty.
• To level Lockpicking then, you can either head to a location which has a large number of difficult locks to open, such as the Dwemer Museum in Markarth, or you can simply find a lock where the starting position won't open it, buy a huge amount of lockpicks, and get breaking.
• Breaking huge numbers of lockpicks is, we believe, the slightly faster option overall. You can buy lickpicks from Thieves Guild members and fences, or alternatively you can in fact use the Skeleton Key, awarded from a latter quest in the Thieves Guild storyline - which we explain how to start in our Faction quests guide - which is unbreakable, but still awards experience for 'failed' attempts to pick a lock.

How to reach level 100 Pickpocket

Pickpocket is one of the harder skills to power-level, but it's also one of the fastest to level up in terms of the experience you gain from each attempt... if you get it right.

• The amount of experience gained from pickpocketing and item is based on that item's value, rather than anything like weight or percentage chance of success.
• Bearing that in mind, the most efficient items to steal are gems and jewelry, as they're high in value but low in weight - which means a higher chance to steal, as weight determines difficulty.
• One mini-exploit for levelling Pickpocket is to repeatedly steal the Strange Amulet from Calixto Corrium, during the quest Blood on the Ice, as you can immediaely re-sell the amulet to Calixto for 500 gold - which is also one of several great ways to earn gold in Skyrim.
• Another slightly cheesy way to level Pickpocket is to use the age-old exploit of purchasing Pickpocket training from a trainer, and then stealing your money back. This levels the skill in two ways at once, but will slow down significantly at higher levels.