Talk:Locksmithing skill

I was wondering if it has been confirmed that reducing hinderance to 'none' and/or increasing perception ranks (via spell, etc) enhances success with opening boxes. I've always assumed so. -posted March 21/2018

Been thinking I wanted to undertake a somewhat large scale project on here. Thinking of an overhall of the Locksmithing/Lockpicking/Disarming pages. Any apprehension to me doing this? Thoughts would be to basically combine the info and tables from the disarm and lockpicking pages, onto locksmithing, as well as add information on the order of commands used to train it, and abilities used to enhance it. SEGGERING (talk) 15:21, 7 November 2014 (CST)

Knock yourself out. Always happy to have help. -CARAAMON (talk) 22:12, 7 November 2014 (CST)

I have combined the Boxes and Box Traps page into this one. If it is up to snuff, those other two could probably be deleted, or redirected here. I don't know how to redirect, and I don't know if I'm allowed to delete. SEGGERING (talk) 13:22, 5 February 2015 (CST)

Special Treasure Boxes?

How common is it to get a box that has extraordinary loot? I've now found 4 or 5 lout/goblin boxes that held anywhere between 1 and 5 platinum in them... way, way out of the norm... but... clearly, it happens. Should we note something about loot here at all? CARAAMON April 19, 2016

Faulty Analysis of the Box Difficulty Chart

This is the original player of Kaxis.

I was looking over the information on this page about the box ranking I did a number of years ago and found someone has made some serious errors. This discussion is lengthy since I need to fully explain all the issues and not just make changes without foundation.

The Methodology section is generally correct, but the Synopsis is not. The work I did had nothing to do with Locksmithing ranks, so it cannot be compared to any system designed to produce Locksmithing ranks as a result. My system's only purpose was to place the boxes in a particular order, from easiest to hardest. This was all clearly explained in my posts.

The final Note part is a big problem.

The comment about my system being up to 100 ranks off is wrong since my system never computed ranks in the first place. It mistakenly mentions my chart's "skill listings" when my chart doesn't list or deal with skills of any kind in any context. Someone didn't understand my unitless box scores and confused them with Locksmithing ranks.

The information about guild and stat breakdown is also inappropriate since a member of any guild with any stats could have duplicated my research and gotten the same box order. It's the chart below mine that suffers from guild and stat breakdown since time-sensitive variables are unaccounted for. As the tester or other diverse players with varying stats and skills and whatnot gain circles and input their numbers, this would become an issue.

That lower chart also fails to account for the wide range of box difficulty the boxes of the same creature have. Another tricky element is the degree of variance also changes for each creature, meaning some creature's boxes vary more than others. It's a pretty good moving target and makes an approach based on Locksmithing ranks fairly primitive. Such can only be considered a rough guide. This should become increasingly evident with increasingly stronger creatures depending upon where the levels are set.

When testing my boxes, I kept my stats and ranks stationary. All the boxes were tested with the same yardstick and put in an order of difficulty based on how easy or hard Kaxis found them. The only variable was the boxes themselves. Guild bonuses, perks, abilities, Thief tricks, stats, ranks, or whatever, were not involved. None of that applies.

As for the 3.1 comment, I don't remember any GM reworking boxes. Years ago, Kodius said he wanted to look at it, but as far as I know, boxes haven't been redone since Zeyurn was the Systems Lead, and even then I'm pretty sure he only adjusted treasure. I would expect that a box rewrite would also be part of a larger creature rewrite. However, if creatures and boxes have been rewritten unbeknownst to me, then that could change things.

Another problem is partially my fault. The final three creatures listed in this article: Gargantuan Bone Golems, Vaporous Blood Wraiths, and Orc Reivers, were never intended to be the final three on the main list. They were just three lower level creatures I happened to check. In my original post they were in a separate table; in this article they were mistakenly added to the main table. Also, 1st floor Orc Raiders seemed to have been oddly and erroneously dropped from the list.

The worst mistake in this article is that the box chart is actually in the wrong order compared to my original. It looks like someone tried averaging the high/low box scores and then re-ordering the creatures. They made quite a few math errors, but the idea is haywire anyway since it only uses the high/low boxes in each sample and ignores the other 8 boxes. This reduces my 10-box sample down to only 2. We need more data points, not fewer.

At the higher end of creatures, the ranges are wider, so this error isn't as detectable. At the mid-to-lower end it throws my precisely ordered chart into chaos. No wonder accuracy was lost, but it wasn’t the fault of my system. The high/low box scores are insufficient for a finished table, and I only posted them at the request of a player.

There are only two possible sources of error in my work. One was the 10-box sample; I wish it could have been larger, although 10 boxes still gave me 1000 data points per creature. The second was there seemed to be some disagreement afterward about which order of difficulty messages was the correct one. However, these effects are minor. Looking at the list, it pretty much follows the order one would expect. There could easily be a few creatures that are swapped with each other, like Stompers with Cinder Beasts, or Shalswars with Juggernauts, but any such swaps would be mainly between adjacent creatures with nearly identical scores and not wildly out of place as the final Note suggests.

The best approach is to just go up my chart creature-by-creature when considering boxes. This method is simple, and it works. There is often an overlap of creatures (the gap between Dragon Priest Assassins and Misenseor Resuscitants is the biggest exception to this), so there are creatures you can skip if that suits your combat needs better.

I'll correct this article when I can since the current wording can only discourage players from using my chart when in fact it's the best and most reliable piece of information available at the moment.

GREENBLACK (talk) 01:14, 5 May 2018 (CDT)

The box difficulty chart by Kaxis portion of this page has been rewritten and is now an accurate portrayal of the testing procedures.

GREENBLACK (talk) 18:24, 6 May 2018 (CDT)