How lockpicking works in Starfield
Open doors and loot people!
If you want to break into restricted areas or open safes in Starfield, you'll need to get your hands on some digipicks. Digipicks are Starfield's answers to bobby pins and lockpicks, and you'll need to find a bunch of them and complete a minigame of sorts if you want to open doors.
Digipicks can be found as floor loot, on NPCs—both dead or alive—and in supply chests. If you've got cash to burn, you can also purchase them in some stores. Before unlocking anything, I recommend doing a quick save as you can easily waste digipicks. With that warning out of the way, here's how to use them.
How to use digipicks
Even if you haven't picked any security-based skills or traits, you'll be able to unlock safes and doors at novice levels with digipicks.
To unlock something, you need to solve a series of simple—but poorly explained—puzzles. The digipicks have various pins that you need to slot into gaps in the lock. Each lock has multiple circular layers, and you'll need to fill each of a layer's gaps before you can move onto the next layer. You can spin the digipick around to fit through the slots, and can choose between different pin configurations depending on how many digipicks you have. This is where things get a tiny bit tricky because it's possible to select the wrong pin configuration, even when it fills some gaps in the lock. You might not realise this until you're down to your last option. You can undo a move, but this will cost you another digipick.
It's also worth noting that exiting a lockpicking attempt will cost you yet another digipick, which is why I suggested you save beforehand. You can upgrade the security skill which will improve your lockpicking abilities, which you in turn improve by picking more locks. A higher security skill also gives you more auto-attempts, letting you skip these sometimes frustrating puzzles. You'll need to put a point into stealth if you want to be able to sneak effectively and lockpick without getting caught.
Unlike other Bethesda RPGs, where one lockpick can be potentially used multiple times, each lock in Starfield will force you to use up at least one digipick, no matter what you do. So you'll definitely want a few of them in your inventory before you head off on your next space adventure.