Skip to content

Lockpicking & Treasure

Tougher creatures drop treasure boxes — containers that are usually locked and sometimes trapped, holding loot scaled to the box's tier. Opening one safely is a three-skill procedure: disarm the trap, pick the lock, open the box.

Boxes

A box is a closed (and usually locked) container with tier-rolled contents. Its name follows a [condition] [material] [noun] grammar — e.g. "a scratched cedar chest", "an enruned mithril strongbox". Tier (1–10) drives material, contents, lock, and trap.

Material by tier

Tier Materials Container nouns
1 wooden box, coffer
2 balsa, poplar, cedar box, coffer
3 beech, pine box, coffer
4 elm, teak coffer, strongbox, chest
5 iron coffer, strongbox, chest
6 brass, steel coffer, strongbox, chest
7 silver chest, trunk, strongbox
8 gold chest, trunk, strongbox
9 mithril chest, trunk, strongbox
10 mithril/gold/mereglass, enruned chest, trunk, strongbox

Tier-10 boxes are always enruned — bound in shifting runes, the magical jackpot, and the only boxes that can carry a glyph trap.

Lock and trap by tier

Tier Lock difficulty Lock chance Trap difficulty Trap chance
1 10 46% 9 3%
2 20 52% 18 11%
3 30 58% 27 19%
4 40 64% 36 27%
5 50 70% 45 35%
6 60 76% 54 43%
7 70 82% 63 51%
8 80 88% 72 59%
9 90 94% 81 67%
10 100 95% 90 75%

Lock difficulty = tier × 10; trap difficulty = tier × 9. Lock chance = clamp(40 + tier × 6, 0, 95)%; trap chance = clamp(tier × 8 − 5, 0, 80)%.

Working a box — always in order

Disarm before you open

Opening, picking, or forcing a trapped, un-disarmed box springs the trap on you. Trap damage routes through the combat death system and can kill.

  1. DISARM <box> (UNTRAP) — defuse the trap.
  2. PICK <box> — pick the lock (needs a lockpick in hand), or UNLOCK <box> with the key.
  3. OPEN <box> — open it.
  4. GET <item> FROM <box> or LOOT <box> (EMPTY) — take the contents.

LOOK/EXAMINE on a box reports its lock state and warns if it may be trapped (the exact type stays hidden until you DISARM), so forcing one blind is a choice, not an ambush.

Step 1 — Disarming traps

disarm endroll = DisarmTraps bonus + DEX bonus + (INT bonus ÷ 2) − trap difficulty + d100

Success when endroll > 100.

On success the trap is neutralized; a scarab trap drops out as a lootable gemstone. A clean failure can be retried; a bad failure springs the trap.

Trap roster

Trap Effect on trigger
needle poison — a small hit plus a bleeding/poison wound
acid direct damage (acid spray)
sulphur direct damage (choking fumes)
blade direct damage (spring blade)
flame direct damage (gout of fire)
spark direct damage + stun (lightning arc)
blast direct damage + stun (concussion)
glyph direct damage + stun (rune backlash; tier-10 only)
cloud room-wide gas — hits everyone present
scarab direct damage; disarming drops a gemstone

Trap damage = max(2, trapDiff ÷ 2 + random(0, trapDiff ÷ 3)). Needle poison rate = clamp(trapDiff ÷ 15 + 1, 1, 8). Spark/blast/glyph stun = clamp(trapDiff ÷ 30 + 1, 1, 3) rounds. Trap damage is capped at roughly 70% of the victim's max HP, so a single trap will not one-shot a full-health looter — but can finish a wounded one.

Step 2 — Picking the lock

You need a lockpick in hand.

pick endroll = round( (PickingLocks bonus + DEX bonus + AGI bonus ÷ 2) × pickMod ) − max(0, lockDiff − sensed) − mismatchPenalty + d100

Success when endroll > 100.

Endroll band Result
> 100 Click! — the lock opens
81–100 near miss — you sense the lock (sensed rises, easing the next try)
≤ 80 failure — little learned
very low / fumble the pick may bend (condition −1) or break
  • sensed accumulates from near misses (and ANALYZE), lowering effective difficulty — capped at half the lock's difficulty, so a lock always needs a real roll.
  • Quality mismatch penalty: a pick finer than your skill fights your hand. A pick "expects" round((pickMod − 1.0) × 20) ranks; each rank short subtracts 1 from the endroll, capped at −40. Don't bring a starsteel pick to a 2-rank character.

Attempt roundtime

Endroll Roundtime
> 200 5 s
> 160 7 s
> 130 10 s
≤ 130 15 s

Lockpick materials

A pick's material sets its modifier (a multiplier on your skill + stats) and scrap value. Fresh picks have condition 12; each bend drops it by one, and a pick at 0 snaps.

Material Modifier Value (silver)
copper ×1.0 20
steel ×1.3 60
alum ×1.5 150
invar ×1.7 300
wolfram ×1.9 600
kingsteel ×2.1 1,200
deepsteel ×2.3 2,400
mithril ×2.4 4,000
starsteel ×2.5 8,000

ANALYZE — sensing a lock safely

ANALYZE <box>    (ASSESS)

A no-risk read that uses Perception (no pick, no wear). It feeds sensed like a near miss and hints at a trap:

analyze endroll = Perception bonus + (PickingLocks bonus ÷ 2) + INT bonus − max(0, lockDiff − sensed) + d100

Use it to soften a hard lock before committing your picks.

Keys, opening, and looting

If you hold the matching key, skip picking:

UNLOCK <box>             open with the key
OPEN <box>               open an unlocked box
GET <item> FROM <box>    take one item
LOOT <box>   (EMPTY)     dump everything onto the ground

A locked or closed box keeps its contents hidden. Keys follow their box — dropped with it, carried by a keyholder mob, or placed in a room.

Locksmith service

The Coldhollow locksmith offers paid help:

OPENBOX <box>    pay a fee to have the lock cracked (refuses trapped boxes)
REPAIR <pick>    restore a bent or worn lockpick

The OPENBOX fee scales with lock difficulty; the locksmith will not touch an armed trapped box, so DISARM first.

Selling contents

Take gems and jewelry to the gemcutter for a premium; coins pocket straight into your silver when you GET them (no selling needed); minor salvage sells for very little. See Vendors & Economy.

GM commands

/spawnbox [tier]         spawn a random box (tier 1–10, default 3)
/spawnpick [material]    spawn a lockpick (copper…starsteel, default steel)
/boxes                   audit every live box in the world
/debug <box>             dump a box's lock/trap/contents vars

See also