Gathering a little stockpile of lockpicks is important in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, especially if you want to engage in some nefarious thievery and rob peasants and nobles for all they're worth. This is because the lockpicking minigame is extremely tough, especially if you don't have the adequate skills to reduce its difficulty.
Punching above your weight and trying to open harder chests will snap a lot of your lockpicks, and with Kingdom Come's less than generous save system, it's harder to roll things back—unless you want to drink a Saviour Schnapps before attempting to unlock every chest, that is.
Here I'll explain how to grab your first lockpick after the prologue section, plus a couple of easy ways to get lots more while travelling around. Remember, if you're intent on stealing it might be worth investing in some training, as this will make the minigame easy and result in fewer broken picks.
How to get lockpicks in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
Once you complete the prologue and find yourself freshly released from the stocks in the town of Troskowitz, you can get your first lockpick by talking to Bara the beggar—the nice young lady standing nearby beckoning to you.
Besides being a useful font of info, Bara will give you a lockpick if you convince her you need something to wear and say you're looking for armour, suggesting you break into the local guard quarters and look there. You can also pinch a lockpick from the Troskowitz trader if you look to the left of the counter, behind the shelves.
However, the best way to get lockpicks early on is by knocking down bird nests. While travelling around the map you'll encounter lots of nests, and if you press C to enter sneak mode, then G to throw a rock, you can knock them down and claim what's inside. It's a little tricky at first, but if you aim above them you should be successful. Also keep an eye on where they fall, because they have a tendency to bounce and become hard to find.
Bird nests contain either a lockpick, a sword pommel, or eggs. With so many nests around it's quite easy to farm up a lot. If you're progressing the main story to get invited to the wedding, I suggest following the Materia Prima quest that takes you to Lower Semine mill. Besides teaching you about thievery, there are four lockpicks in the barn next to the mill, plus an easy to crack chest next to them with seven more lockpicks inside—I'm also pretty sure these respawn after a while since they are part of the quest and Krezyl training you in thievery.
Besides all those, you can also buy lockpicks from fences—the places where you sell stolen goods. Try Fence Whitebeard at the far end of the nomad camp, just before where you go down the slope to Tomcat's arena.
