WoW Lockpicking Leveling Guide 1-425 (2024)

Lockpicking is an exclusive skill of Rogues. Unfortunately many Rogues under utilize this skill and even more unfortunately many Rogues under utilize all of their skills and are simply button mashers giving Rogues a poor reputation. 🙁 If this sounds like you or if you want to be the BEST Rogue possible CHECK THIS GUIDE OUT and you’ll be pro in no time.

Cataclysm Update

Upon release of the Cataclysm expansion, lockpicking will become a permanent skill and will level up as you gain levels with your character. At level 85 you will automatically have a lockpicking skill of 425 and it won’t be necessary to level up lockpicking ever by traditional means of picking a lock on a chest or a door.

If you want to see how much fun leveling lockpicking was prior to Cataclysm continue reading this guide but once it’s released this guide is an ancient relic of things in the past like many other WoW Guides have become as Blizzard continuously tries to standardize everything of every class and make the game easier.

Old Guide Follows…

Lockpicking is a very beneficial ability to have. During your time in the game there are going to be locked chests in instances, locked boxes dropping off mobs, or locked doors that could provide you with access to uber loot to sell on the auction house.

What’s in this Lockpicking Leveling Guide:

• Horde Leveling 1-85
• Alliance Leveling 1-85
• Horde Leveling 85-170
• Alliance Leveling 85-170
• Both Leveling 150-400
• Doors
• Lockboxes
• External Resources

The Lockpicking Guide – Horde and Alliance

This leveling guide was last updated for patch 4.0.

To start out with leveling your lockpicking using this guide there is a slight difference in the beginning of lockpicking leveling for Horde and Alliance but eventually it will come on the same path for this guide, so until then I will start them out separately. Lockpicking can be a bit time consuming so if you find yourself low on gold from not farming be sure to check out this gold guide.

Horde Lockpicking Leveling 1-85

Once you get the quest for lockpicking there are chests inside of a ship near Ratchet. It’s the only ship in the water that’s not sunken so you can’t miss it. Inside the ship is what the quest refers to as a “place where they train their thieves” and that’s exactly where you want to head. You can pick the locks on those chests until about 100 lockpicking skill, but you may get bored of leveling after you hit 85.

Alliance Lockpicking Leveling 1-85

Alliance also get similiar quests for lockpicking as compared to the Horde. The thieves training area this time for the guide is by Atler Mill northeast of Lakeshire. You can stay at these chests until about 100 lockpicking skill but you can leave at 85 if you want and move onto the next parts of this guide. Keep a watch out for horde while you’re in Redridge, they seem to camp the area.

Horde Lockpicking Leveling 85-170

You will get a quest for your poisons, you may not know it as your poisons quest but the objective is to pick pocket a key, kill some things , kill a boss(elite), and open his chest. You will do this northwest of Sludge Fen. You get the quest at 20 but it is highly unlikely you will be able to complete this section of the guide until 24+, I’d wait until you were 26ish. The end guy is an elite who will beat you down every single time you try this quest, in order to keep picking the lock on his chest to skill up you will have to kill him every spawn. I’ve never been able to do this quest below level 24 with any of my rogues, so good luck to you! This chest can bring you up to 170 lockpicking if your patient, I usually leave in the 150’s though and go to the next area of the lockpicking leveling guide.

Alliance Lockpicking Leveling 85-170

The Alliance poison quest happens in a tower that is southeastern part of Westfall. The actual tower is located to the east of bridge that heads to darkshire. The quest is very similiar to the Horde, there is a chest in the top that you can pick to about 175 lockpicking, but you first have to find a way to incapacitate or kill the elite boss to make it worth while. I wouldn’t try it unless you’re 24 plus and that may be hard for anyone who isn’t geared up or twinked well.

Alliance and Horde Leveling Lockpicking 150-400

The rest of this leveling guide will be areas that both Horde and Alliance can do for lockpicking. There will be different options in this guide depending on what you like doing so please read the notes and pick out the lockpicking leveling route you think will work best for you.

If you find that you are having problems lockpicking or even playing the rogue in general it might help you to look at this rogue guide. It will have all of this information for leveling lockpicking and more inside of that huge guide.

Doors that can be Lockpicked

Here are all of the doors I know about in game that can be lockpicked.

All Lockboxes in Game

This is a list of all of the lockboxes in the game updated for Wrath of the Lich King and the minimum required skill leave to open each.

This is the end of the guide I hope it helped you, if you have any suggestions please leave a comment or email me. If you want more rogue tips and tricks take a look at this rogue guide.

External Resources

All Footlockers in Game
Junkboxes Sorted By Item Level
Lockboxes Sorted By Item Level

Thanks for following my lockpicking leveling guide. If you have any problems with this guide there, I highly recommend you check out the rogue specific guide that is offered by Killer Guides. It has leveling lock picking guide in it and a ton more.

If you see something wrong or have feedback for this guide send an email to: webmaster[at]almostgaming.com