I can't seem to figure out lockpicking in Wiz 6. My level 1 bard has a 7 in Skulduggery, which I thought would least be ok to open up the easiest locks on the first floor with a little patience. But the 2 tumblers flicker by at lightspeed and not only do I never see both of them green at the same time, but it's so fast that I dont know how I could ever time it with regularity... Is this supposed to be so fast? The only Wizardry Im very familiar with is Wizardry 5 where picking is based on stat rolls. This sort of crazy twitch game doesnt make much sense to me and I can't see any way to possibly open the door.

Also, according to the manual, if you fail the door can get jammed. Jammed doors supposedly cant be opened but every time i fail it says the door is jammed and lets me keep trying. Is the manual wrong?

What skulduggery level is necessary to actually have a chance of 2 green tumblers ever showing up? Is 7 enough to possibly open any doors?

I'm not sure, but I don't think the player can actually affect the outcome by hitting the key at the "right" time. AFAIK it's all based on your thief's skill.
If I'm wrong, you can try lowering the CPU cycles (CTRL-F11) down to about 100 and try. The reason they tumblers are so fast is because you're playing the game on a modern PC, when it was designed for a 286 or 386 CPU.

If the door is jammed, you are not supposed to be able to continue trying tying to picklock it. But the correct key will still work. Most generic locked doors can be unlocked with generic keys (carried by random monster like Rogues), so jamming them is not the end of the world. An unlock spell of the right magnitude will also work.

I think you need about 20 skullduggery to have a decent chance on the easiest locks. But trying and failing can increase the skill.

Thanks for the info...

The manual says that you need to press enter when all the tumblers are green. If it's all based on the thief's skill, why does the game wait for me to hit enter and flash red and green at me at a lightning pace and the tumblers stop where they were when i hit enter? Im more confused now than I was before...

The jammed thing also doesnt make sense. When I fail to pick a lock, the text ***JAMMED*** comes up but I can keep trying to pick it over and over again anyway.

The tumblers may just be there to make it more visual and give you a visual estimate of your chances. The mini-game in Wiz 7 is better, IMO.
When I played I reduced the CPU cycles as much as I could, but I still couldn't reliably open the door even though both tumblers were green when pressing the key.

The ***JAMMED*** message means the door is jammed, and lockpicking or brute forcing it won't help. You need a key or a spell.

Save before starting to lockpick each door. Do NOT save after any unusuccessful lockpick as you may have jammed a tumbler without realising.

Successful lockpick attempts can raise your character's Skullduggery skill. If there's no jammed tumblers on a door you can sometimes open it with a copper or iron key (which monsters in the castle sometimes drop). Once a door's jammed as far as I know there's no way to open it? (Let me know if there is!)

After trying a few doors with Skulduggery ~6 I said "screw this nonsense" and edited my save file to give my character a 20 in this skill. Now my chances are pretty reasonable on the early doors.

There's something to be said for playing a game as it's intended; but there's also something to be said for cutting a 100 hour game down to something more reasonable, especially when there's so many other great games with more reasonable difficulty and progression curves.

This does in fact work. It's how I've successfully opened locked doors (relatively) hassle-free for years. Anything below about 250 will let you unlock doors with reasonable accuracy. Simply wait until all the tumblers are green and hit ze button. There is. The correct key or a Knock-Knock spell will open it, or you can use brute force on it. Once it's jammed it can't be picked further, but all other door-opening methods still function normally.

So it IS based on twitch response hitting the enter button!

What program did you use to edit your save file?

I tried using BaneEdit to save a little time as you describe which was recommended in another thread here and now the game crashes between the initial logo screen and the main menu...

Answered in the thread about editors.

it's a bit late but after reacuaquating myself with 6 again, lock picking works like this: the higher your skill level the more green will pop up so if your skullduggery is at 15 you will see green appear more often then red also it seems to slow down either because green appears more often or the game just slows it down the higher the skill level. Not 100% sure which is the case but right now my thief has skulduggery of 22 and can easily open most 2 tumbler locks 8 out of 10 times without even looking at what the colour is when hitting enter.

I had to build my Bard's skullduggery up from 0. You can actually get a few points from failing as well. If I fail a door I just walk away and come back later. When I check the stats afterward it went up.

Also, as someone else mentioned, slowing your cpu cycles works. I set my cycledown= 120, cycleup=250 in the conf. If you get the cycles to around 11-20 you can hit Enter a couple times when both spinners turn green. Works every time for me. Probably is 'cheating', but I don't have to reload my save.

DCT is correct that more green numbers show up the higher your skullduggery is. I witnessed it from 0-16 skill level so far.

I'm having the same issues.....and would like to change my cycles....but I don't see any config file.....I usually know what I'm looking for, from editing them for other games, but see no such thing in my GoG Wiz 6 folder.....what is the exact name or location?

Edit: I Googled further and see something about CTRL and F11 and F12....is this how you are supposed to do it? Doesn't work for me, if so....seems to have slowed the game a little(doing it while in game).....but if I hit F11 a few times, the game basically freezes. Hit F12 once and it's back to not being able to unlock any doors.

I tried them all on lvl 1....no success. My Skullduggery did go up from 3 to 5, though. Maybe I should have put more points in that to start....guess I could go down to 2 and try some more and see if it goes higher.

Weeks go by and no answers at all?....sigh.....I've given up on this, for the time being, seeing I can't get any doors open.

File names:
..\Wizardry 6 and 7\Wizardry 6\dosboxWizardry6.conf
..\Wizardry 6 and 7\Wizardry 6\dosboxWizardry6_single.conf.

Wizardry 6 can be beaten in under 40 hours. On your first playthrough. Even without using the cluebook or drawing maps.