The vanilla lock picking mini "game" is broken by design, not to mention pointlessly trivial once you get the hang of it. You might want to try a lock picking mod. There are several: Real Time Lockpicking Morrowind Lockpicking Zumbs Lockpicking Mod OBSE Any of those should effectively limit which locks you can open, depending on skill, and have various options to vary the difficulty. They also remove the broken vanilla idiocy and make lock picking real time (infinitely more immersive). The first one, by Migck, is the most recent, I haven't tried that yet. I've used Morrowind Lockpicking (slightly customized, since it has one or two small annoyances) for years. I've never used Zumbs.