I think lockpicking is still going to be required it just isn’t on the TC right now so people can see the loot and use remove trap easier. Just what I heard.
Right now on TC the chests are not locked at all, so all you do is dig it up, kill the mobs, and loot the chest. Sometimes you don't even have to kill all of the guardian mobs in order to loot the chest. My guess is that you will eventually need cartography, lock picking, and remove trap in order to locate, dig up, and successfully open chests after the publish hits. That's just a guess, though. Nothing definite's been said yet about no longer being able to use telekinesis spell, nor if we will also need detect hidden skill in order to be able to use remove trap to disarm chests. Kyronix did say today that cartography's not going to go over 100, but there will some new items added, like mining gloves?, and I believe that the intention is to have the highest cartography you can and use those items in order to dig up a gold chest every time, rather than a rusty or metal one.
If you feel like testing stuff on TC, there is a place on every facet where you can click on a post to generate a map of whatever you want that will be located in that facet. You can get to each facet's map-spawning location via gates at the commons area in Britain (Trammel).
You sometimes have to wait a minute or two before you can decode the maps from the clickies, but Kyronix says the wait is purely a function of the system trying to keep up with generating the locations if you're pulling lots of maps at once. If you put a map in one of the Davie's lockers, the theme that it shows in the locker is not necessarily what the theme will be when you pull it out of the locker. Just keep putting it back in the locker and pulling it out again until you get the theme you want. (You won't be able to change the theme this way once the publish hits. Kyronix has said that only the map location of an uncompleted map will change after 30 days. Facet, level, and theme will stay the same.) If you transfer a locker over to TC, expect that it might show errors for a day or two when you look at the listing. The maps will still work, though.
If you want to place a house on TC right now, the only thing you can place is a keep-sized plot because of the housing contest. Kyronix said today the shard isn't going to be wiped when we get to testing the MIB changes.