• Back by Popular Demand: The Treasure Hunter
May 7, 2001 & June 12, 2001Part 1 is a synopsis on the Treasure Hunter Templates. Part 2 is how to build your hunter. Part 3 is playing that Treasure Hunter.

Part 1: The Treasure Hunter Templates
In our skills section, we have a Fisherman/Treasure Hunter Template that is pretty tight. I say it's "tight" because it takes care of two character types. You have the Fisherman portion to take care of getting Nets, MiBs, and level 1-3 Maps. Then you have the Treasure Hunter Portion (Lockpicking and Cartography) to dig up those maps you find fishing or acquire as you hunt in game or buy them from other players.

Let's recap the original Fisherman/Treasure Hunter Template- 100 strength, 100 intelligence, 25 dexterity, GM cartography, GM fishing, GM evaluate intelligence, GM lockpicking, GM magery, GM meditation, and GM resist.

This particular Template uses Magery as it's weapons. It has the firepower to take care of Net and Map spawn. That's really all you need to fight and kill off spawn.
As you can see, everything there you need to acquire all the magic items you could get your hands on in game without having to worry about camping a spawn (fuck that).

It IS a good template. But some people don't like Fishing or already have a different character for Fishing.

My personal Treasure Hunter substitutes Wrestling for Fishing as I like hunting throughout the lands and sometimes, getting Trapped by "bad guys" in Felucca is a bad thing. And those bad guys can be Monsters not just Grief Players/PKs. Not too mention I already have a Fisherman/Archer. I like this Treasure Hunter a lot. The resist comes in handy on higher level treasure chests and in dangerous dungeon spots where the REALLY good chests are.

Even though I have two different characters for a Fisherman and a Treasure Hunter, it's really a waste of a character slot. I can afford to have different character types thanks to my having two accounts. Other people cannot and have to combine characters. And, there is no reason to have Wrestling on a Treasure Hunter if you are good at pre-casting the Invisible spell and using invisible items. Anyway, discussing how to manage 5 character slots is best left for a different time.

Another Treasure Hunter is the Treasure Hunter-Mage-Bard. He substitutes Wrestling and Resist for Music and Provoking. If all you want is a character to dig up chests, then this is the character to have. Yes, you need another creature to be effective in Provoking, but it's not hard luring a monster away and then making another spawn so they can be provoked onto each other. Not too mention, the magery is there to take care of a hurt or lone creature. The draw back is the lack of resist. And all high level chests spawn monsters that cast a lot of magery (Demons, Dread Spiders, Elder Gazors, Lich Lords, Poison and Blood Elementals, etc.). So, having an invisible item helps. But I am getting ahead of myself.

These are the different character types. In Part 2, I will recap the different Character Types and how to build each one.

What kind of Treasure Hunter will I be?. This [part] will give you an overview of the different templates available. I will also list the values you would be best to start with and what to do to train this character up.


Mage Treasure Hunter
Grandmaster in all: Wrestling, Meditation, Evaluate Intelligence, Magery, Magic Resist, Lockpicking, Cartography

I started with 50 Lockpicking/50 Cartography. These two are the hardest skills on this character to train up.

This template has the flexibility to take on any monster in the game, as well as do a bit of player versus player combat if he wants too. It also allows him to defend against a would be attacker and chest stealer in Felucca (wrestling helps against dexers). Only draw back is it will take you an hour (estimated) soloing a level 4 or 5 Treasure Chest.

Bard Treasure Hunter

GM Meditation, Evaluate Intelligence, Magery, Lockpicking, Cartography, Music, Provocation.

50 Cartography and 50 Provocation (if you can even choose it without Music; last I heard you could. If you can't choose Cartography).

The most POWERFUL Treasure Hunter in my humble opinion. You can do ANY level chest as well as hunt in all the dungeons. I think this character is the representation of the True Dungeon Crawler. He can open dungeons chests and take monster loot (my friend says he can get 50k an hour doing level 4 dungeon chests only). Provocation to keep multiple monsters busy. Magery skills to deal with lone monsters. The drawback is a single casting of explosion plus ebolt from, say, a Blood Elemental, could kill you.

Training

If taking the Bard Treasure Hunter Template on, Grandmaster your music using the Entice Method (to be put in the Music skill section soon; as of June, 2001, it's not a bannable bug). This should take you about a week of dedicated work. And you can work on it out of power hour above 95. It almost doesn't matter then.

You can gain Provoke on anything right now. So provoke, provoke, and provoke some more. At 75-80 the skills comes into it's own and you hardly fail. Although, being GM is important if not just because you have it GMed. You fail ALOT less at GM than at lower levels. Why not GM it?

NOTE: People say get Peacemaking instead of Evaluate Intelligence on the Bard. It's entirely up to you what you want to do. Bear in mind, Mindblast 'can' do damage to a monster and I believe damage from that spell is based on stats as on players. Personally, I would rather do damage with my spells. There might be times where you can't get another monster to spawn and have to deal with the Poison Elemental on your own.

Magery 4/5 For Magery, Evaluate Intelligence, and Meditation, I recommend the 8x8 method on a boat. It should take you roughly 2 weeks to Grandmaster those skills.

If using the Mage Treasure Hunter, go and Grandmaster Wrestling with a bone knight. Wear full plate if you can get it and be prepared to cast heal on yourself often. Potions help. If you are in Deceit at the Wall, you can gain without 'much' worry of taking damage or dieing.

If you don't have any friends to help train Magic Resist, you can train it on your own. You can get to 50 from 0 with Fire Fields. From there, you can let Gazors dump on you to 70. Above that then go find a "safe" spot and let Ophidians and Terathan Avengers dump on you. When you get above 91 Cartography, the magic casting monsters from the level 4 and 5 chests will give you plenty of opportunities to gain Magic Resist.

Once you Grandmaster your base Magery skills and have decent Magic resist, begin alternating days training Lockpicking and Cartography. Why? Two reason: 1) To avoid going insane. You will go batty training these two. Unless you get carpal tunnel first. I suggest using UOAssist and visiting the Attended Macroers Forum for tips on setting up macros. 2) When you get to the skill "wall", people say gain skill in something else to "break" the wall and "reset" your skill "counter". Alternating will ensure you are doing that often enough to keep you gaining at a steady pace.

Lockpicking

Buy up 20 GM Locked Picked ORANGE chests. Start training it. You should be at 70 after the first Power Hour. From there it gets harder.

Hit Covetous Gazor area behind the Harpies on level 1 and pick those chests after one rotation through your 20 GM Locked Picked Orange chests. Rotate between the 20 GM chests and the spawned chests. Whatever happens, try to continually pick your chests (think: UOASSIST). Gazors will be an annoyance, but a quick Ebolt or two will deal with them. If you can, get a friend that needs to work resist and let them keep the Gazors busy while you work your skill.

Never stop picking any chests. If you see a chest, run up and pick it. Doesn't matter where you are or what you are doing. Just PICK THEM!

If you can afford it (money and lockdowns), get 200 GM locked picked chests and lock them down in a house. Here is what Nissa said to do:
I setup 200 boxes in one of my houses. I have 2 secure chests with 10 bags in each chest. 5 bags across the top and 5 across the bottom.

Then I put 10 GM Tinkered red boxes in each bag. I put the keys to 20 boxes on one key ring. I used one bag from the top and one from the bottom and put the key ring directly between the two.

I now setup a bunch of UOA macros to lock and unlock the boxes in 2 bags. I have 10 macros setup. I run the macros one by one. As soon as I get a gain, I finish the bag, then move back to the first bag. Since lockpicking is target based, you have to keep trying new targets until you gain and the counter is reset. I did get to 95 this way. (And I am still at 95. blah!!) I find it ssssooooo boring. I hate it.

Yes, it's boring. Insanely boring. Hence my advice to rotate training Lockpicking and Cartography.

If you are lucky, you will have access to a Lockpicking House. The Treasure Hunters of Brittania have one set up on Great Lakes shard and maybe a house on other shards. You can ask them about it. They are nice enough to lend these houses out to their members and close associates.

From 95.?+ you need to be out there picking every chest you can.

Note: People have Grandmasterd Tinkering first before picking up Lockpicking. You should wind up with thousands of lickpicks from working Tinkering. Might as well put them to use right?

Cartography (See below for an extended Cartography Essay)

Now comes the hard part. In your non-training time, I hope you have been buying up 100s of blank maps along with the other supplies you need. You will need them. I highly suggest standing next to a trash bin in a town or your home while training this. OR, you could sell off "drawn" maps to a NPC (Moonglow and Trinsic has one in it's Provisioner Shops. Papua has one as well near the docks/smith shop). Please don't leave all your maps lieing around. It can cause lag if you have 1000 maps lieing around.

Since you should've started at 50, you should be able to Draw the hardest map you can draw, the World Map. Yes, I said it right, you can draw the hardest map at 50 skill. Sad, but true. Hopefully OSI will be improving this soon.

Any chance you can get to grab a map and decode it, DO IT. You can gain skill with decoding treasure maps. Some people feel they need to buy up every treasure map they get a hold of to train up their skill. The time wasted in trying to find these "bulk map sales" could go to training. But it's up to you.

[That Portion will be added at a later date.]

Cartography from the bowels of the Attended Macroers database:
Well, now that cartography became a little easier as of late, I have once again begun my task of becoming Grandmaster of Cartography, and thought some of you might benefit from me posting my strategy of gaining skill.

I'll try to keep this post fairly short. Then again, I tend to ramble, so maybe not. Oops, there I go rambling...better just shut up and get on to the details:

I work full. Get full and eat a cooked fish steak every 10 minutes to stay that way. It helps. I promise.

I don't move around while making maps, although I do move at least 8 tiles if I fail (either unsuccessful or destroy the map completely). I just make the maps right there in the shop. If you get in the habit of buying maps for your next power hour right after the one you are working in is up, or have another character buy your maps, you can maximize your map making time during your power hour since you don't need to waste time finding maps.

With the method I use described below, it takes me 20 minutes to make 100 maps, or 300 maps during a power hour.

I make only world maps, nothing else. Although they are more expensive, you can make world maps over the regular town maps that the NPCs sell. You cannot inscribe over town to town maps (Britain to Minoc, etc..). So if you are not concerned about the gold, just buy town maps during your blank map buying spree.


I don't bother trying to sell back the maps. The NPCs almost rarely buy them, and if they do, its only 5 or 10. Sell a few after your hour is up, since the NPCs turn them back into blank maps after they buy them, and you should be in 'map-buying mode' anyways, but don't waste the recall reagents recalling all over the place trying to find an NPC in a buying mood.

When buying maps, have a few empty pouches or packs to hold them. After you initiate the sale with the NPC, while your name is being typed out on the bottom of the trade window, pick up and hold the pack you want the maps to go into on your cursor. When the sale is complete, they will all go into there. A side benefit of this trick (and it works for the sale of everything from an NPC) is that the item limit is not checked. So as long as you are not overloaded (maps only weigh 1 stone each) you can carry more than the 125 item limit. Just dont remove anything immportant from your pack while you are over the limit, as you won't be able to put it back in.

I use UOAssist to help me make maps. Make a macro as such: Use Skill (Cartography, duh), Target Item Type (convert it to item type (map)), Menu Select (world map), pause 9000. Then, put all your maps on the ground, or in a secure (as long as they are out of your pack). Put one map in your main pack and start the macro. As soon as UOAssist makes the world map, take the just-drawn map out of your main pack and place it in a discard pile (another empty pack, or trash barrel, or the ground will do) so you know which maps you have drawn on and which ones are still blank. During the 9 second pause, you should more than be able to take the just-drawn map out of your pack into the discard area, and place a blank one into your pack. Just continually rotate the maps as UOAssist does the work until you run out of maps, or your power hour is up.

Like I said earlier, with UOAssist, you should be able to get about 300 maps drawn during your hour assuming you have all the maps bought before you start. Without UOAssist, you'll have to select the menu each time, as well as complete all the other menial tasks involved in Cartography, so you won't be able to fit in as many during your hour.

I am currently at 97.7 Cartography skill, and gain on average about .6 per power hour, or .1 per 50 maps. I'm sure I forgot something, but I hope I remembered enough to help a few of you out there. I would love to hear from anyone this article may have helped. Good luck fellow Cartographites!

By Uther Pendragon