The level requirement was removed a few years ago.
That was never the real problem however. If a level 10 can obtain a skeleton key on their own, then they should be able to open the chest. No one really sees an issue with that. What they see an issue with is the level 10 can get the skeleton key.
Mind you a new player who’s level 10 may not be able to do this (though I have seen exceptions to this). But its quite easy for an average player on a new character to be able to pull it off and for many its a quick way to a decent weapon to start out with. You even have our small speedrunning community getting a legendary weapon from such sources within 12-15 minutes of starting a new character… well… this was before the changes to health. It could probably be done quite a bit quicker now.
But the issue isn’t all that itself, its just a symptom of a greater issue of how easy these weapons are to obtain. If a player can obtain one within 10-30 minutes of making a character. How much easier is it for someone who’s level 60 and established?
We expect things to be easier when we’re established. We don’t expect them to be THAT easy. When you look at the time investment going into legandaries, what is the point of using Serpentman, Khari, Obsidian, or Starmetal weapons, which are all going to always be lesser than Legendary weapons?
And since we’re talking about the ease of use here. Add Hardened Steel, Ancient, Steel, and Iron to that list. Stone to Legendary or bust. Some people still use the crafted stuff for personal reasons. But the game definitely as it is right now encourages you to farm out a bunch of legendary weapons and just use them.
I would point out that there is two possible solutions to this and both are really not great. One is to increase the health and/or damage of world bosses. This only adds a few minutes to the time to obtain each legendary. The added damage then simply makes things more tedious, not harder. Of course that’s also a step backwards from Age of War as well. The other is to make these bosses spawn less frequently. And while this will make the weapons less common, especially on populated servers, it doesn’t address the ease of obtaining. These weapons should be moved to the dungeon bosses instead.
On the subject of dungeons, these could be made a little more complex as well. Or some of them could receive their dangers back (like Black Keep traps), or even become more dangerous (like the Dregs being moved to a level 60 dungeon, and giving the Remnant’s spit a higher velocity, requiring a dodge or block instead of moving to the side).
Its a bit of a stretch but I wouldn’t mind seeing some of the dungeon bosses have more complex attacks and mechanics. Right now we have Thag (in a nerfed state) with a simple telegraphed attack, and a simple add phase. And while some regard him as one of the tougher bosses in Conan Exiles. His attack patterns and mechanics are very similar to those used by bosses in tab target MMORPGs that are used in introductory low level dungeons.
The ease of bosses is mainly because they are tougher normal enemies with slightly different movesets. The movesets are chosen randomly and thus can’t be too crazy because they kind of come out at random and can’t be predicted very much. The movesets enemies have are determined by weapons’ (even animals have weapons) combos. They kind of cycle through different weapons and attack randomly, like the big boss croc has the lunge attack, the spin attack, and the quick bite attack. Its literally just picking a different weapon to use.
In reality it should be using these attacks based on conditions, not randomness. Lunging when you’re in front and a distance away, biting when you’re close, and spinning when you’ve been not in front of it (but close) for some time.
All this would help with this issue drastically. But more importantly it will help with the boring nature of these bosses as well.