I found it rather confusing in the beginning to pick locks because I had no idea what to do. Had to look it up but all I found was video tutorials which I don't really like. Now that I know how to do it I found it rather fun so I give you a text/image guide.

Lockpicking in elex works by figuring out groups of pegs and activating those pegs in the right order, changing directions at the end of each group.

First off, start by just going to the right


Make a mental note of which pegs fall right after and which pegs stay.

A peg that falls right away could be a group of its own, or it could be part of a group going in the other direction


Multiple pegs that stay (until they don't) means you can be sure it's a group in the direction you're going
Keep in mind that no group that isn't at either end can be the last group

Having reached the end, go the other way and do the same.


Now that you know all the groups, in this case a single-peg one, then a 2-peg one right-to-left, then a 2 peg one left-to-right then another single peg one, you can begin solving it.
You need to change directions at the end of every group and the next group is the one directly adjacent to the pegs that are already up.

Here, we have only two possible solutions, as we just have 4 groups and either group 1 or group 4 have to be the last one. So we either start at peg 3 and go to the left, or we start at peg 4 and go to the right

In the example chest I've used for this short guide, it was the first of the two solutions


Often there are way more than just 2 solutions, particularly on the harder chests, just try your luck, if you know where the groups are and keep in mind to change directions after each group, you'll get them open in no time.
And some times (often with easier chests) you get lucky and just have two groups and "solve it" by just going to the far right and back to the far left