Where to buy Lockpicks in Oblivion Remastered

The Lockpicks in Oblivion Remastered are a critical resource for opening locked chests and sneaking into rooms to steal items while uncovering secrets. 

The locks that you open in Oblivion Remastered range from easy to difficult, increasing the number of tumblers that you need to set. If you don’t turn the tumbler right, the Lockpick breaks, and you have to use another one to pick the lock. To make matters worse, higher difficulty locks require you to set five tumblers in succession. But if you get one wrong, it resets your progress entirely. It burns through your Lockpicks stock very quickly, so you’ll always need to stock up by looting random drops and also purchasing them using gold.

Buying Lockpicks in Oblivion Remastered, explained

To buy Lockpicks in Oblivion Remastered in the early game, you can meet with Shady Sam NPC, who stands outside the Imperial City walls every day. To find him, you can teleport to Chestnut Handy Stables on the map and then follow the walls outside the city near the Elven Gardens District icon in the Imperial City to find him. Don’t teleport inside the city as it doesn’t allow you to leave it directly without using the main gate, so start from the stables and hug the wall to find Sam. He wears a black robe, and you can interact with him to open his shop and purchase his illicit goods.

He sells 30 Lockpicks a day, and you can reset the day by sleeping on a bed or following the time on your map to return to him and purchase more. Apart from that, he also sells a myriad of potions, which are very useful to increase your health, attack, and many other attributes in the game. While he has a fixed price for these Lockpicks, you can press R to haggle and adjust the values of purchasing or selling items to him. If your prices are right, he’ll allow you to sell or purchase his item at a low price, but if you try to sell him your goods for an exorbitant price, he’ll refuse to buy them. You can increase your Mercantile skill to get better prices.  

Other than Shady Sam, you can purchase Pockpicks from the Fences in the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood merchants, who you can unlock by joining the Brotherhood after killing an innocent person and sleeping. However, these people usually unlock later in the game, and Shady Sam is your best bet in the early game to get a bunch of Lockpicks and have the best shot at unlocking chests and doors. 

Next up, you can read our guides to learn about fixing items and the Best Birthsign in Oblivion Remastered.

Check out All console commands in Oblivion Remastered on Destructoid.