Kingdom Come: Deliverance lockpicking guide

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is an ambitious game built around being as realistic as possible. This leads to a lot of unexpected (and unexpectedly complex) mechanics like lockpicking.

You’ll bump into this notably difficult minigame relatively early. As with many things, you’ll get a tutorial wall-of-text the first time you try it, but you won’t have much time to practice. Later, you’ll be able to interact with millers — who, apparently, are tapped into medieval Bohemia’s seedy underbelly — and they can teach you more and help you practice. (You’ll also be able to learn pickpocketing from them.)

Even with practice, though, using a lockpick is more often frustrating than it is successful. Below, we’ll show you how to lockpick. Nothing beats practice, but our advice should get you rotating in the right direction.

Lockpicking basics

Warhorse Studios via Polygon

The central conceit of lockpicking is simple enough:

• You move the cursor around until you find the right place (the sweet spot) for the lockpick.
• When the cursor turns gold.
• You have to rotate the entire lock mechanism counterclockwise while keeping the cursor in the same relative position.

That means coordinating both thumbsticks at the same time. It’s … not easy.

How to pick a lock in Kingdom Come: Deliverance

If you try to be precious or exact during the process, it’s going to take forever. The cursor is going to jitter all over the place, and you’re going to break every lockpick you own. (And the sound of breaking lockpicks alerts everyone nearby that you’re up to no good.)

Instead, we’ve found that a close enough approach works well:

1. Find the sweet spot with the right thumbstick and make sure you notice and understand where it is in relation to the rest of the lock. In the video above, it’s close to the center, right in the corner of the lock’s mechanism.
2. Now, just lean into it. Don’t overthink it. Don’t even think about it. Just start turning the lock with the left thumbstick (or the PC equivalent) and use the right thumbstick (or the PC equivalent) to chase the sweet spot. Don’t go too fast or slow. Just move smoothly and steadily.
3. It’s going to be imprecise (and a little daunting), but just go for it. You can correct the position of the pick as you turn the lock, but as long as you keep everything moving, you’ll have a lot more luck.