Anyone know how the fuck to unlock something that has more than 1 pin? I just can't seem to get to the second pin to push it up before the first one has dropped and to say the controls are shoddy would be an understatement. I feel like I'm trying to take the top off a boiled egg with a JCB. ATM all I'm doing is spamming auto attempt which seems to eat through my lock picks and I'll never be a millionaire if I keep doing that.

Drives ya mad don't it man!! You do get used to it though.

There is a pattern I think. Only a few types, i.e. really fast, really slow or medium, which can all be identified by listening to the sound they make before you go for it.

I think there is a skeleton key as well, which makes picking locks irrelevant

I quicksave and then auto try, if I break too many then I reload, I'm not patient enough to do it properly.

Close your eyes and keep clicking a pin. You will hear a double-clink/tink now and again. That's when you need to click the button. I'm not taking the piss.... honest. If you listen carefully enough there's a double tink and if you click fast enough, you can do hard locks at minimal skill.

Fuck that, just get the skeleton key.

Before I get that (I think it's level 7 or 13 or something req. to get the quest) I usually just buy 100 lockpicks at a time and use auto until it opens. CBA to sit there listening to clicks.

I'm not even a thief yet I joined and then went on to the arena, even though I had some book I'd murdered and entire cave of cultists for. I'd just finished a couple of fights then all of a sudden 2 of the feckers spawn and start murderising me when I was wearing my arena armour and was using some staff that shocks people (just used it to see what it did), they killed my ass and none of the other fighters even looked like they were going to help me. So I loaded up my last save and went straight to the temple to hand that fecking thing in. Gonna have to rejoin as I have a load of loot I need to offload.

Got to admit I cheated by cloning my lockpicks.
Cloning items is not difficult, and only requires a stack of arrows (along with your lockpicks). Equip the arrows and begin blocking (what you block with does not matter). While blocking, open up the inventory, attempt to unequip the arrows (you will receive a message stating that you cannot), then drop your lockpick by using shift & left mouse button. Upon exiting the inventory, you'll drop the item in an amount equivalent to the number of arrows in the stack.
I also did this with my iron arrows to get my marksman skill up (shoot your horse till its almost dead and then 'wait' or heal it and start again. Your poor horse just stands there taking arrow after arrow in the arse. Be careful near drops though as arrow impacts will push the horse a little (sometimes right over cliffs- d'oh )
If you want to duplicate arrows, you will need to have two separate sets (one equipped, one to be cloned).

You can clone other items as well but be careful. I tried cloning a Greater healing potion and forgot I had a stack of 350 arrows. Ten minutes of lag later I had a lovely fan of 350 potions spreading around my feet.

Skeleton Key aquired, goodbye lockpicks \o/