Cartography Skill

"To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs."

If you want to be a treasure hunter, there's is no way around this one. Cartography serves two purposes: drawing maps to indicate the path you wish the tillerman of your boat to follow (function that people seem to rarely use) and more commonly, to decode treasure maps. This skill is long and boring to raise, but in the end, it is well worth. To do so, you will have to draw an endless number of maps. Gains will be fairly quick and steady at the early stages, but like in most other skills, it will slow down almost to a halt as it gets higher.

There are two ways to do it: you can either buy blank maps to draw on or use blank scrolls to make your maps. You can get the blank maps at the shipwright where mapmaker NPCs generally hang out, and scrolls at any mage shop (note that some mapmakers also sell blank scrolls). There are also mapmakers in Trinsic's provisioner shop.

Do not throw out your maps. You want to sell them back to the NPC who will recycle them into blank maps for you to buy back. Note that you can use any of the maps the NPC sells to draw upon (even cities maps and world maps). They are just more expensive than blank maps, so choose carefully.

I personally suggest using the blank scrolls as they are easily available in large quantity at the mage shops and are stackable while blank. Whereas blank maps do not stack and therefore limit the number you can buy at one time.

There are four types of map you can draw: Local Map, City Map, Sea Chart and World Maps.

You cannot GM Cartography solely by drawing maps. Beyond 99.5, you will need to decode treasure maps. Every time you successfully decode a map of level 2 to 4, you stand a chance of gaining.

The following table indicates the minimum skill required to decode treasure maps and unlock the chest:

When you feel ready to go out and dig out your first chest, make sure you are well equiped for the advendure. You will need to decode your treasure map and find its coordinates, a shovel or pickaxe to dig up the chest, lockpicks and the sufficient lockpicking skill to unlock the chest, otherwise you will dig it up and the treasure will be lost to you unless you can find a lockpicker to open it for you before it decays. Always have more than 1 lockpick on you as you will often break them.

When attempting to dig up your chest, mining skills will significantly increase the area you will dig in, hence your chances of finding the chest. It is not a compulsory skill. It just makes your life easier.

Be forewarned though that as the level of the map increases so does the difficulty of the spawn that guards the chest. As soon as you dig up the chest, 4 guardian creatures will spawn and attack the closest thing they can target. That means you. A considerable amount of lag occurs as soon as you finish digging the chest so by the time you can react, you're already dead. In order to prevent that, you should either use an invisibility item, have someone invis you, or if you have 80+ magery, precast invisibility as soon as you start digging. I say 80+ because you don't want to fizzle, especially if you're soloing your maps. The table below indicates the type of creature you can expect to spawn from the chest. The only time where there will be no initial spawn is with level 1 chests.

As you loot the chest, you will get, from time to time, more creatures that will spawn. These one however, will spawn one at the time. Certain items will trigger the spawn as soon as they're taken out. So don't rush into looting unless you want the multiple spawn to occur.

If you're digging a high level map in a residential area, take the time to warn the neighbors if you see them hanging out nearby. They will be more enclined to help you if things turn bad.

Once you've taken care of the initial spawn, do not rush off to open the chest. They are all trapped. Level 1 chest will not kill you, just hurt you a little. But level 2 and higher will definitely kill you. You can either use the remove trap skill, which I consider a waste of skill as the telekinesis spell will work just as well. Move a few tiles away from the chest (at least 4-5 tiles) then cast the spell on the chest. You will generally need to use circle of transparency as most of the level 1-3 chests are burried under trees. You will have to move around to find the right angle but there always is one. Sometimes, you can just see a bit of the chest through the leaves, that's all you need to set off the trap. An easier way though is to make yourself a "last target" macro so you don't have to deal with hidden chest issues.

If you were hired to dig the chest for someone else, leave the trap on until all the initial spawn has been killed and that everyone is back at the chest (especially the owner of the map). Remove the trap in his presence. It helps with trust. Let him loot his own chest. That way, there are no questions as to what was or wasn't in it. The only people that will have access to the chest are those in the same party as the treasure hunter who dug up the chest. Make sure you establish what your payment will be before you unlock the chest.

When you're done with your chest, destroy it so it doesn't keep another hunter from digging his own map at that same location. To do that, you need to empty the chest completely. If you don't want some of the stuff in the chest, just drop it on the ground, some passerby will more than likely want it. If it's utter crap, just drop the junk loot on the corpse of one of the guardian monsters so they can decay quickly. Once your chest is empty, click on the chest and a menu will appear. Select destroy chest, et voilà!

You could dig your map even though a chest as been left there, but if there was anything left in that chest, once you've unlocked yours, you may get a message telling you that you didn't dig that chest, hence cannot loot it. If this happens to you, your loot isn't lost. You will have to come back in a little while, after the previous chest has decayed so you can access the content of your own. However, if every treasure hunter takes the time to destroy their chest once completed, it will solve that problem for everybody. It's just a question of courtesy.

There is a variety of monsters throughout the land that carry treasure maps. Do not hesitate to advertise that you are buying maps as many warriors who do not have a treasure hunter will get maps while hunting and will be more than happy to unload them on you.

Level	Monsters on Which They Spawn
1	Ore Elementals, Earth Elementals, Ettins, Fire Gargoyles, Gargoyles, Gazers, Ophidian Enforcers, Ophidian Warriors, Orcs, Orcish Lords, Orc Mages, Sea Serpents, Terathan Warriors, Trolls, Mummies, Liches*
2	Air Elementals, Drakes, Fire Elementals, Frost Trolls, Ophidian Apprentice Mages, Ophidian Shaman, Reapers, Sea Serpents, Snow Elementals, Stone Gargoyles, Water Elementals, Wyverns.
3	Arctic Ogre Lords, Cyclopean Warriors, Cyclops, Dread Spiders, Efreets, Liches*, Ogre Lords, Ophidian Avengers, Krakens, Ophidian Knight-Errants, Snow Elementals, Terathan Avengers.
4	Daemons, Dragons, Ice Fiends, Krakens, Lich Lords, Ophidian Matriarchs, Terathan Matriarchs, White Wyrms
5	Ancient Liches, Ancient Wyrms, Balrons, Blood Elementals, Poison Elementals, Shadow Wyrms, Titans
6	Paragon Ancient Wyrms, Paragon Balrons, Paragon Titan, Paragon Blood Elementals, Paragon Poison Elementals Chests looted off any of the aforementioned Paragons

* Liches normally have level 3 maps. But from time to time, they will spawn a level 1 map.

When doing a treasure map, there always is a chance that the guardian monsters carry another treasure map. I love digging up a level 5 and get a poison elemental that carries another one. Quite a few treasure hunters just lure away the spawn and go back to their chest without killing them. It's not a good idea. Not only is it unpleasant for the neighbors, you also risk losing some quite valuable loot