The focus of this guide is the fastest
way to raise the Cartography skill. Most likely, if you follow the methods
in this guide, you will not gain any money and may in fact lose money while
you are raising Cartography. However you have all those treasures out there
to find, so who needs money while raising the skill?
Starting Out
To begin I suggest you have about 500-1000 gold to spare on you. More than
likely will get the money back, but you need to have some funds on you.
Then you need to find yourself a mapmaker. These generally can be found
in provisioner's shops, by docks in some cities, and also in Shipwright
shops. Once you have found one, buy all the maps he has. Even the ones
that are already drawn on. You see, for every map that you sell him, he
will spawn a blank map, that you can draw on, in his inventory. You can
actually draw over the city maps that he sells. If the mapmaker that you
found has no maps for sale, then just keep looking.
Here is a list of all the shops which have mapmakers in them.
| Britain |
The Oaken Oar |
10'53oS
7'1oE" |
| Buccaneer's Den |
Pirates Provisioner |
55'11oS
99'50oE |
| Jhelom |
Sailor's Keeper |
173'4oN
9'0'E |
| Magincia |
The Furled Sail |
55'53'S
164'48oE |
| Moonglow |
The Scholars Goods |
49'13oN
142'2oW |
| Nujel'm |
Seaborne Ships |
36'2oN
167'16oE |
| Papua |
Pier 39 |
14'24oS
9'29'W |
| Serpent's Hold |
Supplies |
154'57oS
118'58oE |
| Skara Brae |
Superior Ships |
57'13oS
50'20oW |
| Trinsic |
Britannia Provisions |
103'16S
37'20oE |
| Vesper |
The Majestic Boat |
70'24oN
117'33oE |
| Yew |
Great Oak Vessels |
51'30oN
49'0oW |
Since the anti-macro code came in, Cartography has been a difficulty
based skill for purposes of gaining. This means that each of the 4 types
of map you can make by using the skill on a shop-bought map needs a different
level of skill to be successful. The two map types that are important
are the local maps and the world maps. Local maps are useful because you
can gain from then to around 60ish, and they can be sold back to the shopkeeper
regularly. World maps are useful because they are what you need to draw
to get up as high as you can by drawing maps.
After you have drawn on all of your blank maps, you have to sell them
back to the mapmaker so he can recycle then into new ones. I would sell
no more than 20 maps before buying them back. Or else you run the risk
of 1) someone else buying them, 2) the mapmaker resetting and you losing
your maps either way. The normal price to buy a blank map is 6 gold, and
the average price for a local map is 7 gold. Remember you are not in this
for profit (if so then disregard much of this guide). If the mapmaker
has no maps in his inventory currently he doubles the price he is willing
to pay for maps. If this happens, I suggest just selling 1 map the first
time, then selling him 5 maps at a time.
So now you have sold your first batch of 20 maps, and bought them back,
but now when you go to sell the other maps that you have made, they are
at the bottom of the inventory list. This is why I told you to put the
completed maps into a separate bag. After you buy blank maps, pick up
the bag that you placed the completed maps in and then put it back down.
This causes the items in the bag to become the newest in you pack and
therefore at the top of the for sale list.
Gaining Cartography skill.
I'm going to assume you have no skill at all currently, but you want to
get to Grandmaster skill to do level 5 treasure maps. Firstly, you'll need
some money. 5,000 gold in the bank will be more than enough to start with,
and will last you quite a while. Now go to either a harbour shop or a provisioners.
If the town you are using doesn't have a ship-shop, the mapmakers will be
in the provisioners. I find the best towns to use are Skara Brae, Jhelom
and Britain. This is because all these shop have 2 mapmakers, which means
more maps that are available. Find a mapmaker, and say '"name" teach cartography'
to him. He will respond with an amount of gold - this is the amount of gold
to give to him to be taught all he knows. If you are starting from 0 skill,
you will need to buy some in order to gain. You cannot currently train the
skill from 0 manually. Now, on to the skill itself. Mapmakers sell maps.
They sell a lot of maps, ranging from blank maps, to town maps, to routes
between towns, to maps of the whole world. The prices they charge increase
as you go along that list. Any map you buy from a mapmaker can be used for
cartography. You can over-write a mapmaker's map, but you can't over-write
a player made map or a treasure map. When you are just starting out, you'll
want to buy blank maps, as these are the cheapest. Buy as many as the mapmaker
has. Click on your cartography skill, and target one of the maps. Select
'Local map' from the menu. You'll either succeed, fail, or fail completely.
A success is shown by the text 'With great care, thou dost make a chart
of the geography'. A fail is shown by the text 'Thy trembling hands result
in an unusable map'. This map can be used again, just target it again with
the cartography skill. A complete failure is indicated by the map disappearing;
you destroyed the blank while trying to draw the map on it.
Now that you've used up all your maps and have created local maps from
them, sell all the local maps back to the mapmaker. For every map you
sell back to him, a blank map will appear in his shop inventory. Buy all
his blank maps again, and don't forget to check any other mapmakers in
the shop for blank maps either. Local maps usually sell for 1-2 gold more
than you paid for blank maps. This extra bit of cash should cover you
for what you loose when you destroy a map, and you might even make a profit.
Keep making local maps until around 60-65 skill. Now you have a choice.
If you want to try to keep making money, just switch to using the next
highest map type to make, the 'city map' choice on the menu. Due to the
fact that the maps are less common (in the map makers eyes), it's harder
to sell the maps back. The same goes for 'sea charts' and 'world maps'.
Due to this, I would suggest simply accepting that you will make a loss,
and start making world maps. At 60ish, you will fail quite a bit, so it's
only really worthwhile using cartography during power hours. It also saves
a lot of frustration, boredom and cash to limit yourself to this hour.
By the time you get to the low 90s in skill, you will be rarely failing,
and at this point you can use the skill outside power hour too.
Note: Currently no one is able to gain skill past 99.5 by making maps
like this. From this point on, you must decode treasure maps to gain.
It is wise to start collecting as many level 2 to 4 tattered treasure
maps as you can one you reach about 85. Save them for when you hit 99.5
It seems best to stop decoding
once you gain 0.1, saving the rest of your tattered maps for another session.
They are very expensive to buy, and unless you have a lot of friends saving
them for you, it will cost a lot of money to fund the last leg of cartography
training. Expect to need upwards of 500 treasure maps to GM the skill
from 99.5. Do not bother trying to raise by using level 5 maps, they are
too hard to even attempt, and you will not gain by using them.
What Happens When The Mapmaker Has Run Out of Money
The first thing to check is to see if he has any maps for sale. If so buy
them. Unless you are close to your carrying capacity, or really just don't
want anymore maps (I personally use more than 50 at a time).
If the mapmaker is out of money and has no maps for sale, then you can
just donate money to him. This will add the money to his inventory so
he can buy more maps, and you get the money back right away by selling
the maps. As a bonus, you may even get some karma =).
Shop Etiquette
There are many people that recall around, draining the mapmakers of their
money or buying all the maps that all the mapmakers have. I have found that
it is much better to just find on shop that you like and hang out there
making maps. With you giving the mapmaker money when he runs out, there
is only one reason for you to really ever go to another shop, if you ruin
all the maps that you had and your mapmaker has none for sale.
Another bit of advice is to take turns buying and selling to the mapmaker.
I have had pretty good luck with this. No one has tried to "steal" my
maps so far. And one mapmaker is more than enough for 3 or more people
to buy /sell to, if everyone takes turns.
On the same note, if you see a newbie come into the shop, who has no
maps and you know the mapmaker is out of maps give the newbie a few of
yours. 5 maps shouldn't too much for you, but might help him start on
his way.
I hope you all have fun on your treasure hunts.
- Milamber of the Clan Bladerunner
- Khal'abbil of Europa
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Stratics Central
