Elder Scrolls V Skyrim: Master Lockpicking Guide

This is my lockpicking guide for Skyrim. You can either read the description below or watch the video I have recorded. The video is a little dry, but contains all the reliant information. I will add however that if you are in a town and you want to break into a house without being seen; you should crouch and wait for the eye in the middle of the screen to close (indicating that you are hidden) before starting you lockpicking attempt. This will ensure that your lockpicking attempt is conducted in secrecy.

In Oblivion you could lockpick by the sound of the tumblers rising, but this isn't possible in Skyrim. You need to keep looking at the tip of the pick (see screenshot).



If you are on an area of resistance the end of the pick will judder. You need to probe around the lock until you find an area of smooth motion with the pick. Once you have found it, don't rotate the lock all at once. Rotate it gradually, always looking at the end of the pick. If you find an area of resistance, release, move the pick slightly and start turning again. Apply this technique and you will be able to break even master level locks with a low level character.

Eve Online Video Tutorials

Eve Online is both a very good and very difficult to get into MMO. But there is a very large helpful player base, including some people who have made videos on some aspects of the eve universe.

paradigmblue
Fleet Ops 102
Fleet Ops 101
Goonfleet 0.0 Mining 101
Goonfleet Safespotting 101
Goonfleet Tackling 101

1stStepsAcademy
Tread Alliance Test Video
Jet Can Mining Test
Turrets Tutorial
Map Tutorial
Low sec mining

Eve Online Tutorials Search Index

Interactive Fallout 3 Map

Fallout 3's main quest might be a little short, but there is a lot to see in the wasteland. Planet Fallout has put together an Interactive Fallout 3 Map With Google Maps, making it easy to navigate and find something of interest. And when you find something you can always look it up on the Fallout 3 Wiki, that has guides and descriptions to most things in the game.

[The escapist]

Prince Of Persia Classic Combat Guide

So I downloaded Prince Of Persia Classic from XBox Live Arcade and happy bought it as I never liked POP, but POPC has fixed the stuff that used to frustrate me like how the price seems to slide everywhere, progress saving and switch markings, but for some reason I had a problem with the combat. I tried reading a few forums to see what advice people had and as it turns out I wasn't alone in my inability to win at combat and if you look at the forums you will see two clear classes of people, the first are like me, people who are having issue with even the simplest of sword fights and others not understanding what the problem is as they are doing fine.

In brief the combat works like this, you reach a screen or ledge with some guard on and the prince pulls out his sword (the prince is now in combat mode). Pressing the A button blocks attacks and the X button performs an attack. This might sound simple, but the timing of the guard's attacks always seemed to defeat me, over and over I died trying to work out what I was doing wrong, but I get it now.

Combat is kind of turn based, so let me walk you through a senario:

1. Facing eachother the guard lundges at the prince.



2. The prince blocks the guards lundge, knocking him off balance. Seeing the guard off balance the prince tries to strike the guard with his sword. Somhow the guard manages to parry the princes's strike and makes yet another lundge for the prince.



3. The prince again blocks the guard's attack, knocking the guard's sword to the side. The prince tries yet another counter attack, stabing the guard through the chest.

When you press A or X in POPC the command issued isn't imediatly carried out in the game by the prince. So imagine that when you give the prince a command to either block or attack is added to a buffer or list whitch the prince will perform at the next avalible oppertunity. This list will hold a maximum of (I believe) two items. So pressing X and then X rapidly will exsecute two attacks by the prince. So now imagine in the senario above that I have pressed A and then X quickley between sections 1 and 2. So as soon as I seen the guard start to attack I tell the prince to block and then strike. The prince will then block the oncomming attack and then counter attack. And again in the senario above I have pressed X then A in the space between sections 2 and 3 and the prince acts acordingly again.

Now as a side note on the 360 controller the Left Triger and Left Bumper will also block. As well as the Right Triger and Right Bumper will also attack. I suggest using the Bumpers as this will allow quicker exsecution of commands.

And just because I like to embed video in posts:

Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion: Master Lockpicking Guide

I have been playing around with Oblivion's lockpicking and discovered a few things that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere. So I present this mini-guide that will help you defeat all locks in the game, overcome the need to carry hundreds of lockpicks and shy away from difficult locks.

The tutorial for lockpicking in Oblivion only tells you to toss the rails up into the upper part of the lock. The FAQs so far on the web talk about timing, but I have found a slightly better way of describing how successful lockpicking works.

A higher security level will make lock picking easier. Lockpicking works by tossing a rail up into the upper half of the lock and pressing the 'A' button on the 360 pad (or by left clicking with the mouse on the PC version). Once all rails are locked in the upper half of the lock, the lock becomes unlocked. If you don't press the 'A' button at the right time the rail will come crashing down, break your lockpick and you will have to start again with a new lockpick.



What nobody will tell you however is that there are different speeds to the rails. If you push a rail upwards the game will take your security skill, lockpick skill and luck to calculate a rail speed. If you are better than the lock, the rail will rise slowly and then fall slowly making it easier to pick. If however the lock is better than you, then you are going to have to keep tossing the pick up until the rail rises at the lower speed. The trick is to listen to the rails noise because the lower speed makes a slightly different noise to the faster tosses. I have managed to pick locks on noise alone. Simply toss each rail a few times until you are confident you can lock it, once it raises at the slower speed, lock it, don't bother with the faster tosses. With this technique I have managed to pick Hard locks without loosing a single pick and I am only level four and I am not even playing a thief character either (in fact I haven't yet managed to successfully pick pocket someone yet). And the auto-lockpick breaks all my picks too, so taking your time really does payoff.

One last thing, if you want to break into a house without being seen or chased by guards, go into sneak mode next to the door you want to open, wait until the eye in the centre of the screen goes dark and then activate the lockpicking mode. Time is stopped at this point so you can take as much time as you like. Once the lock is open you will be inside, but because you where in sneakmode when you picked the lock and nobody was watching, no guards will be looking for you. The only thing you have to be concerned about is the homeowner.