I'm sure this is all old hat for everyone, but I'd like to review my roughly one-year experience with Phase and Lock Mastery. Spoiler: my experience isn't that good.

Playing a halfling sorcerer, I make tons of use of Lock Mastery from the other side, that is, asking people to do it for me so I can Phase all my garbage. And I don't get the skill for free, I've invested some fifty-odd demonology ranks towards it.

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I read initially that I wanted to keep a spare lock assembly around, so that when I wanted to add a new container to my Phase arsenal, I could keep using the same key, get that assembly duplicated, and added to said new container.

Practically speaking, this hasn't worked out so well for me. The first time I got work, I had two identical locks made, and one installed on my case. Naturally, that case is from before modern Phase, so the game design is it resists magic, and hence purposely doesn't work with Phase. (That was great news, I had it altered from a pouch to a case with a demonology design explicitly for Phasing because pouches cannot have locks added to them; should have checked its anti-magic properties first, duh!)

Then I got that lock duplicated twice and added to a purse (some junk, I mean very fashionable container, on pshops) and a satchel (found on a creature). By and by with all my components, scrolls and inability to carry almost anything (unencumbered), I eventually wanted another phasing item. (Please note, I do really like the results of this system, just not all the bloody hoops.) I found a nice leg-worn kit for sale, and asked for my lock assembly duplicated once more, and added to the kit.

I'm not sure exactly what happened, but either something was broken or a mistake was made. The result was that I had to throw out all my old keys, get two new keys made, get four more lock assemblies made, and each installed on the satchel, purse, and kit. I let the case be for the time being, since it was already a lot of work for someone, and the case can't be phased anyway.

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Now we've gotten the year covered, and it was today.

I wanted my locksmith toolkit to take a lock so I can phase my lockpicks in a sensible place (since Phasing only goes one deep), but it's scripted so it won't take a lock. Since I'd been asking around variously for a couple weeks (not too insistent, needing to usually wait around without some of my standard containers) and found someone willing to do work, I figured the case lock needed to be replaced to match my present set of keys. Anyway, Kaldonis is approaching level 80 now, and might want to hunt in OTF, so having a non-phasing locking container is smart.

Well, the locksmith forgot to duplicate my lock assembly as requested. So guess what's next? Making a new lock assembly, duplicating it five times, knocking out the locks on my satchel, kit, case, and purse, installing a lock on each, and making two new keys. Yeah, I'm definitely getting TWO spare lock assemblies made this time, because it's happened before. I did have some cool bone key blanks I saved from EG 2012, but now I'll be stuck doing stuff over the counter. I mean, was I expected to collect six bone key blanks at EG figuring I'd need all of them in little more than a year?

Also as a sorcerer, of course I know about the time consuming aspect of guild skills, so I like to tip well. I'm up to half a million paying for this service, and I'm back to square one! I'm back to square one again because this already happened and I wasn't even trying to add a lock to a new container in the final version, since the whole system is too picky about what can and can't have locks added. I feel so stupid about this, like it's my fault or something. I should have checked my pouch before I altered it into a would-be phasing case. I should have learned the first time it got screwed up that one backup assembly wasn't good enough. Live and learn, I suppose.

I guess you can know exactly how I'm going to conclude this post. Phasing is great. Lock Mastery seems pretty cool. But wow, this system is so full of "gotchas". So sure, at least this time we just say it's user error on behalf of who did the work for me not following my instructions (he's kindly offered to do all the above work for me). I guess it was user error the time before that. And the time before that, too. From my end, the system is just so horribly complicated. I mean, I guess the upshot of all this is I'm slowly getting Elanthia to understand how Lock Mastery works, despite being a sorcerer.

When I complained about the anti-magic aspect of old containers on the forums about a year ago, I was told that a merchant might come about to fix this. That's not materialized in the last year. Knocking out the lock assembly destroys the lock. Pouches can't lock but satchels are okay. Most any container that isn't a pile of junk is just not going to work. Pardon me for asking, but can we get a single bone tossed to us in this insane system?

In the end, I don't mind the fact that Phasing for weightlessness requires a lock. It doesn't make any sense from an in-game perspective, but it is was it is. Besides OTF and gremlins, it provides a relevance of adding locks with Lock Mastery, too, besides the cool factor. But is there some over-powered aspect of allowing lock assemblies to be duplicated easily? Is there a reason containers made before Phase were designed not to work with it? Could we perhaps expand the list of nouns that take locks? Or loosen the restrictions on what scripted items won't take locks, so I have any hope of ever use an auto-bundling herb kit, rather than giving it away in favor of a 200 silver creature-found satchel? I'm not even asking for all of these simultaneously, but you know, some modest improvement here would be nice.

I'm sorry I complain so much, but I avoided this system for all my years up to the end of 2012. And now when I work with it, it's mostly just a frustration and huge time killer. I cross my fingers and pray when I get lock mastery work done now, but Murphy's law hates me. Am I just horribly unlucky, or do other people find this system as restrictive and frustrating as I do?

~daid (player of Kaldonis)

[Cross-post with Lock Mastery...and accidentally posted in Necromancy yesterday owing to the hour of the day]

PS: Okay, the fact that I got skull rings working with Phase was kudos awesome; maybe I just need to start a skull ring collection and forget about Lock Mastery entirely. My discovery of one-deep only weightlessness was less exciting, though.

Can I ask what your key looks like?

I get that there's a problem with the script slot and locking. I'm just trying to tabulate the variously different limitations to indicate how some change(s) would be really welcome.

I'm using one container I found on a creature. The issue here is that creatures do not generally give enough of a variety of nouns for worn containers. Of course, this system gives me some goal for festival shopping (I missed some basket at the FWI food festival last summer).

I'd be really happy to see some tweaks in the hopper to get more lock master nouns spit out -- indeed the noun list wouldn't feel limiting if more of these nouns were easy to get ahold of. Honestly, I've never even seen some of these.

Here's the LM noun list: backpack, bankbook, basket, book, box, case, casket, chest, coffer, handbag, haversack, hip-basket, hip-satchel, kit, knapsack, manifest, pack, prayerbook, purse, register, reliquary, reticule, rucksack, satchel, songbook, sporran, strongbox, tome, toolkit, trunk, and tube.

If we can make silly nouns like "hip-basket" show up as often as "pouches", that'd be a serious improvement.

~daid (player of the temporally-challenged Harvest-Moon clan)

>a veniom-edged golvern key inset with a fiery viridian blazestar shaped as an open hand

Nice! I saw a golvern key blank being sold for awhile, but at my present state I can't justify spending money or alteration slots on keys, since they just don't last very long for me.

>you can also put a lock on a container with an accepted noun and then get it altered to something not on the list and it will have no trouble retaining the lock.

Ooh, I like this idea to be sure! I'd considered it before, but never actually tried it since I wasn't sure how it would go down. If it's really true, it would appear to cast doubt on the purpose of the mechanics. If a satchel altered into a pouch can be locked, why can't a pouch just be locked in the first place? And if a pouch can't be locked, then a locking satchel should not be altered into a pouch. No, I'm not trying to get more limitations added, so I'll hush about that now.

~daid (player of the temporally-challenged Harvest-Moon clan)