Fallout 4 Lockpicking Guide

Fallout 4 is a great game, even if fans of the series think that it doesn’t measure up to its predecessor. Nevertheless, Bethesda delivers new and well-known features. Especially opening locked boxes, chests, cabinets, and more might be a challenge for some.

This is why we provide you with our Fallout 4 Lockpicking Guide. You’ll learn everything you need to know to master this task.

1) Fallout 4 Lockpicking Guide: Pick locks with hairpins

An essential part of Fallout 3 was to try to open locked containers with shaky fingers and a hairpin. In Fallout 4, you can once again use the little wire things to grab one or two pieces of well-protected loot.

Locked items in Fallout 4

In the open game world, you’ll find yourself in front of a lock now and then. You can try picking locks with hairpins in Fallout 4. There is no fixed pattern as to which locks are blocked and which are not. If you don’t manage to open the chest, the cupboard, etc., you simply won’t get the contents.

Money and valuable items under lock and key

In these containers, you’ll always find a few things. It can be just money or ammunition, but also more valuable items. So it’s well worth investing some time to open the locks.

Hairpin + Skill

Picking Fallout 4 locks is not rocket science. You just need a hairpin and some skill and practice. You can also improve your skills over time. By doing that, more locks will be available to you.

2) How to pick locks with a hairpin in Fallout 4

Lock picking explained briefly

To pick a lock, you need a hairpin. In contrast to Fallout 3, where these were rather scarce in the wasteland, in Fallout 4 you can find one on almost every corner. To pick the lock of a chest or a crate, you insert the hairpin into the cylinder and turn the lock.

A vibration will signal that you are wrong. If you stay in this position and try to turn the cylinder again, sooner or later your tool will break. So you have to change the position of the clamp. The goal is to find the place where you can turn the cylinder without problems. How big the margin is at the corresponding position depends on the difficulty of the lock.

So what sounds quite simple in principle can cost a lot of time and nerves. The expert and master levels in particular require special sensitivity. In addition, you should always have a few hairpins in stock. After all, there’s hardly anything worse in the wasteland than having to leave loot behind because a lock just won’t open.

Hint: On higher class locks, the lock will reset if the hairpin breaks. This makes the challenge even more difficult.

Beware of being too careless with hairpins

The challenge is to pick the lock before you run out of bobby pins. It is very possible that you will lose your patience due to locked boxes, chests and the like. With the right locations, you can quickly replenish your supplies. But also a Fallout 4 lock picking cheat can help; especially for the better locks.

Which lock classes are available in Fallout 4?

If you want to enjoy Fallout 4 lock picking at all, you need Perception 4 with your character. This is one of the seven primary abilities in the S.P.E.C.I.A.L system that the game series is based on. This will allow you to open locked items that belong to the “Easy” or “Advanced” category. However, there must always be at least one hairpin in the inventory as well. Furthermore, there are “Expert” and “Master”.

3) Where to find hair pins in Fallout 4?

As already mentioned, you can find hairpins at various locations. While in Fallout 3 tips and tricks were still in demand or crown corks, you find hairpins more often in Fallout 4.

Sometimes you find them far too quickly. After all, the appeal of leaving a chest, crate, or closet behind to return with hairpins much later is missing.

If you keep your eyes open a bit in the wasteland, you can find them almost anywhere. They thus drop along with the regular looting.

This means that the bonus of the highest rank of the “lockpicker” skill – that your hairpins won’t break anymore – isn’t very useful. After all, you usually already have more than 100 hairpins in your possession at this point.

4) Perception

Lockpicking in Fallout 4

The skill you need to pick locks in Fallout 4 is Perception. Like any other S.P.E.C.I.A.L skill, it can be increased to level 10. However, you need to get Perception to level 4 first to unlock locks. Since at level 1, it allows you to pick pockets with the skill “Longfinger.”

At level 2, “Rifleman” is added. This allows you to inflict more damage with non-automatic rifles. And level 3, “Attention”, lets you see the damage resistance of your opponents.

Perception level 4

Only at this level do you have the intuition in combination with attentiveness to be able to pick simple Fallout 4 locks as a “lockpicker”. At rank 1 of this skill, you also get the ability to open “advanced” locks. All locks also become easier to pick.

At rank 2 (level 7), your skill is already so good that you can unlock “expert” locks. Again, opening all other locks becomes easier. From rank 3 (level 18) onwards, the “master” locks are added, whereby all locked objects can be unlocked more easily.

When you reach rank 4 (level 41), the hair clips no longer break off. However, there is an advantage at this level:

While you usually have a lot of hairpins by this point, if one breaks off while you’re trying to pick a lock, the lock resets. Once you reach rank 4, this no longer happens.

Lockpicking in Fallout 4 made easy with PLITCH!

As pointed out, picking locked items is no magic trick. You won’t lack hair pins either. However, the whole thing can get quite annoying over time and especially with the “expert” as well as “master” locks.

If you don’t have much time to game anyway, or if you actually had a completely different plan, PLITCH is the way to go.

We not only provide you with our Fallout 4 Lockpicking Guide but also 24 Fallout 4 cheats with which you can customize the game. Among them, you’ll also find a code that lets you add 100 hairpins to your inventory. With these, you can perfectly test your lockpicking skills. So, use PLITCH and experience Fallout 4 just the way you like it.

Happy Gaming!