If the container (or door) requires its personal key - it cannot be
picked - "Strange that it does not work". It can probably be smashed by the
weapons, but this is another song. The pirate's cove west of Serpent's Hold
had a strange chest with no keys for it and not smashable. IIRC it was empty
(determined by the cheat mode or by U7Wizard).
If the container can be picked - then it also can be opened by a
Skeleton Key (find it). Skeleton Key means - no more need in lockpicks.
Picks are spendable and have a random chance of breaking, the Skeleton Key
is not.
Some technical info. Simple items in U7 are divided to classes:
1) HitPoints. Stupid item, without any interesting properties, but can be
smashed by weapons or explosion (it has its own "health" and you must
decrease it down to zero by smashing). Doors or glass covers seems to be
such.
It cannot be stacked in a heap like money or arrows, and also has no notion
of "property" on it.
2) ExtraStatus. Cannot be smashed by the weapons or explosion, cannot be
stacked, but has the notion of "property" and can be a weapon in hand. Most
weapons/armor is such. Food too. It also can hang on the wall like torch and
do not fall.
3) Heapable. Cannot be smashed, can be stacked in a heap, has NO notion of
property (but inherit the container's one and maybe even the
table's-under-them-one, so any money or mandrake roots lying around on the
floor are "yours to take"), cannot be hanging and falls. Money, reagents,
arrows.
4) Quality. Cannot be smashed, cannot be stacked in a heap, has NO notion of
property (but inheritance works), cannot be hanging and falls. It holds the
special number named "quality" inside it which is interpreted by the game
logic. Keys are such example - they are matches against the chest's Quality.
The Quality 254 on the chest (AFAIK) means - "pickable". Picks will say
"Strange it does not work" if applied to any other chest, otherwise a random
roll (but pick is gone anyway). Skeleton key also has a Quality of 254.
5) Map. I do not remember the special effects of these items, nor do I
remember the items belonging to this class.
Non-simple items are - containers, spellbooks, Virtue Stones, barges
(movable constructions which Avatar can steer - ships, Ice Raft etc), Eggs
(invisible objects which trigger script executions or monster creation, the
ONLY way of monster creation in the game) and the alive beings.
Containers combine the properties of HitPoints, Quality, and ExtraStatus
classes - they can be smashed, are compared to a key, and have the notion of
"property".
Also an interesting thing. The "disposable" items. Any item of any class has
the "disposable" flag. Disposable items are just disappear on region
outswap - i.e. when the Avatar goes too far from them (other items are saved
to U7IREGXXX files to be reloaded later). The dead bodies are usually such,
and not only. Looks like the weapons taken from the dead bodies are also
such, and so on.
This flag is manipulated by the engine and scripts in some very weird and
complex ways. For instance, once I filled a backpack full of minor weapons I
no more needed - like maces. I left this backpack somewhere and then went
all over the world. When I returned to the backpack - sorry, it was empty!
Backpack itself existed, but the items in it were gone!
I suspect that any items which were even once in Avatar's or companion's
posession are no more disposable forever, but I'm not sure of it. What is
surely disposable is dead bodies of non-NPC characters and that putting the
item to disposable or non-disposable container does not affect the
"disposability" of the item by itself - the container can be non-disposable
while the item continues to be disposable.
Also the script-generated items are interesting, for instance, I cannot
remember whether the food created by Create Food spell is disposable.
Max
>> Stay informed about: U7BG Unknown key 
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