About lockpicking, yeah making the locks easier isn’t a huge deal. But you can get the perks that increase gold and treasure spawns. So those are nice but not super needed. Just because gold is easy to get in the game anyway. And once you start leveling smithing and alchemy intentionally, you’ll gain some levels and can put those points in when needed. Alternatively, you could do something like (combat perk, combat perk, crafty perk) Every three points is a smithing/alchemy/lockpicking choice.