Well... What can I say. In the old days, when I was a young barbarian barely in my 40'th season, I had to do these skills the long and hard way. Working my disarm trap required me to go to Soluseks Eye and klick like mad on the swingaxe in there to skill up. This still works and I think it still is the fastest way to get it up. Even when the axe is not moving because you disarmed it, you can still klick on it to increase your skill in Disarm Trap.
Rule of thumb about Disarm Trap; If you are in places like Temple of Ssra or LDoN missions where there are traps on floor, in rooms or door openings. Disarming it only once, will not be sufficient to let your group pass thru safely. As a general rule, if it is not a container (chest, barrel, box etc), the traps reset themselves and you will have to disarm again. Like Sense Traps, Disarm has a re-use on it so stay put and keep using disarm until everyone are safely past the trap. Don't forget you have to sense and disarm the trap again the same way on the return trip.
Sense Trap is slow to skill up... Much slower... There is no way that I know of to use your mouse and klick til your finger goes numb like with disarm and lockpicking. The only way to get this up that I know of is to use the Action Button after setting one of them to sense trap. Unfortunately, the Sens Trap has a re-use timer on it that can later on be decreased with AA ability, but any rogue with selfrespect wants these skills to be maxed out way before you can access AA abilities. The good thing about it is that you can use it any time and any place and even while fighting, wether there is a trap or not around to sense. Like forage for the classes that has it, just keep using it at all times and when you are sitting on your butt fishing or whatever, klick on this one also and will slowly get up there.
I got this skill maxed up fairly quickly by simply adding the /doability [whatever number your sense trap is] to my backstab hotkey.
Pick Locks... This one used to be a pain in the rear. I did this by sitting in Befallen and swinging that squeaky old door in this zone for 9 hours to gain maximum at it. Today, you have a much safer and incredibly fast way to fix your lockpicking. Here is how:
Enter Plane of Tranquility. In the very room where the book is to PoK, there is a desk with a book on it that sometimes animates as a spinning object. Get up on the desk, make yourself comfortable and klick crazy on that book with your lockpicks... Notice how rediculously fast your lockpicking goes up... I've seen people go from 0 to 200 in 30 mins using this book. I wish I had known about it 3 years ago when I was a young rogue myself dreaming of the bank vault in Freeport...
(as a side note, I did later pick the door to Freeport bankvault and all it has inside is a stupid guard, no gold, no coins *sigh*)
A small tip to all rogues: Always keep a spare set or two of lockpicks in your bank. I learned this the hard way when I was in Howling Stones and died on the wrong side of a locked door. My lockpicks were of course on my corpse and I couldn't get to it without first getting another set of lockpicks. :shock:
There will be some doors that the skilled rogue can pick without lockpicks (such as City of Mist lower door) if you have maxed out your Pick Locks. But most of the more interesting areas require you to have your lockpicks in cursor.
Im not sure if this will still work or not. I skilled up my disarm trap in Echo Caverns off the wormspores going toward FG. All they do is cast root on ya, stand there and do your magic.
