One of my guildmates, Timberwolf, took it upon himself to build a lockpicker post publish 39. The results were quite suprising. You can now get to 95 lockpicking using less than 100 boxes and only a day (or 2 depending on how much time you have in game). Here is an excerpt from the original post :

After some digging, I've found that yes, the "Anti-Macro" code is gone for
all skills that were 8x8-able.

For you see, 8x8 basically was THE anti-macro code. With it now gone from
those skills it effected, the way those skills gain are now based on the RNG
(Random Number Generator).

Everytime you work a skill, the RNG tosses around random numbers until it
gives you a gain, randomly.

So what does this mean for Lockpicking Houses? Simply put, Lockpicking
houses are getting a hit.

You no longer need to have Hundreds of Boxes. At this time
You can now get away with have 20 Boxes of each Skill Type, as TimberWolf
points out in his Test in this thread. After you get to 95.0 In lockpicking,
you will need to go out and gain your skills the same way it has always been,
plus a new way with the new-found Satyr's.

Satyr's explained in these threads/posts:
http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/u...Number=6483817
http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/u...Number=6427037
http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/u...Number=6483830

Once you have reached 95.0 Lockpicking, you will no longer be able to gain
from the GM boxes. Some people believe that it does help to run through them
a few times, even though you will not raise from them. Whether you do this
onot is up to you. The only other way, besided Satyrs, to raise now is to hit
the dungeon chests and the harder statics in towns and dungeons.

If you have easy access to GM Locked Boxes, you can safely feel free to toss
them out and free up some space. However, in case this changes in the
future, you may want to hold onto your Boxes of lesser skill levels, and
those can be a pain to aquire. There has been no official statement stating
that some sort of reworking with Lockpicking will be done.

We can deffinately see that something needs to be done, as GMing it in about
16 hours total from 0 is just plain silly.

A Warning: toss out your hundreds of boxes at your own risk.
We know not what the future holds, we only know that hundreds of boxes
are not needed, at this time.

The entire post can be read here: http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/u...b=5&o=&fpart=1

I wonder what other skills have changed like that?

Jeez and to think it took me 7 months to GM on GL, then 3 on Catskills....

Yeah lockpicking was hell back in the day.
On another note I have been "trying" to get to 120 magery from 110. It is so slow I am thinking I am broken. Seriously.

Yea, it took me forever just to get to 95 lockpicking and I couldn't even begin to tell you how many tinkered boxes I used. I borrowed a collection of boxes from a guildmate and I would hit 2 different lockpick houses for gains. Because I heard how painful it was gonna be to GM, I just used my +5 AOS reward to GM. I guess it's good they finally made some skills easier to gain in, but they really went from one end of the spectrum to the other with lockpicking.

I used to ride around on my Beetle full of boxes and use a macro to pick/relock the boxes. That way you could macro your lockpicking while working melee or magery fighting critters. It was slow but wasn't as boring!

May ot need to do that anymore....or until another Pub changes it again.....

Went to 95.0 pretty quick, now running around picking EVERYTHING in sight, and it looks like GGS system for teh win.

Wow...

Took me forever to get mine set *sigh*

Can I ask... is it really worth the repeated deaths to get satyr discorded for gains?