I often get what I presume to be the worst messaging from my water lore benefits to Piercing Gaze:

>You detect that you have a very poor chance of magically unlocking it.

This is extremely accurate sometimes, but dismal other times. I understand statistics, but even before finally making this post, I opened one such box on the first try. It's sufficient to remark some boxes are much harder than others (like ones that I corrode all the way down and still can't get until I use enhancives).

The issue, as I see it, is that the messaging doesn't seem to be accounting for use of Lockpicking Lore (403). Obviously, use of this spell will depend on the character and origin of the boxes. However, everyone who knows Unlock knows that spell, which is important to consider for this benefit.

Of course, this is a relatively new release with Piercing Gaze, so I can't say for sure how it is treating the problem, or any of my suggestions below are in fact already implemented.

There are a couple ways about this as I can see, if there's an interest to improve the lore benefit. Considering many of the boxes I pop are challenging, to make the lore benefit actually meaningful for me much of the time, some modification would be nice.

One option I imagine is to give two different messages, one calculated with normal Popping and one calculated with lore.

Another way is to base the messaging on active lore. This could either be 404, 403, or either one. The idea is that if 403, for instance, was active, the calculated difficulty accounts for this. It could already be that this is the case, and I've started some minor testing along this line to try to see if there's a difference.

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>Daid: Pretty sure you have a whole big bucket as your penny jar. You never have only two cents. :p

I had considered this when I first wrote my post (funny how that happens), and did a little testing but was still getting the "very poor chance" every time. But I have another locker or two of boxes, and I'll try to test this more consistently to see what happens.

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Check out who's dying any time! https://twitter.com/GSIVDeathLog

>Daid: Pretty sure you have a whole big bucket as your penny jar. You never have only two cents. :p

Piercing Gaze's (416) lore benefit already accounts for Lock Pick Enhancement (403) and Disarm Enhancement (404) if they're active. You may not be able to tell the difference in your chance to unlock/disarm the box when the latter spells are active because the bonuses may not be enough to push you over the threshold to the next messaging category. Here's the breakdown:

terrible	0-9%
very poor	10-24%
poor	25-39%
decent	40-59%
good	60-74%
great	75-89%
excellent	90-99%
perfect	100%

GameMaster Estild