Some of these steps below I didn't follow directly, but not because I don't believe this is the best method. I evolved as a treasure hunter after a playing for a while. I started out to be a fisherman until I pulled up that first Level 1 treasure map. Although fishing is profitable, it's a lonely profession. Nobody wants to sit on a boat with while you fish for a serpent. Sometimes I fall asleep while fishing, too. That never happens when I treasure hunt. 8) So I raised my magery skills by casting from my boat at water elementals and sea serpents until I was GM Fisherman. I was doing L2 Treasure hunts by this time, and getting ready to do my first L3 when I discovered how useful provocation was. When attacked by 2 liches, a dread spider, and an ogre lord all at once, provocation is much more useful than fishing. I also raised music while fishing - I had time to play my harp 3 times between each cast while slow trolling, getting my music up into the 80's in just a few days.

An extra advantage can be yours as a beginning mage / bard / treasure hunter with advance planning. Choose one of your initial skills to be music related, and you will start off with a newbiefied random musical instrument. This instrument will stay with you even if you are killed by monsters as long as you keep it in your main bag. After dying (and even the most skilled treasure hunters trip over a bush and succumb to an ogre lord thrashing), you may gain new life from a wandering healer. After your resurrection, you are defenseless - no armor, no weapon, no reagents, and no health so even the lowly mongbat will dispatch you quickly. But - you *do* have a tambourine. Imagine coming back to life next to a gargoyle - and instead of attacking you, you provoke it into attacking a mountain goat. Ah, you have some time on your side - hurry, go loot your stuff and get your reagent bag.

OK, newbiefied instrument in your backpack, it's time to build your warrior skills. Although raising your barding skills will be free (except for the time involved), and cartography is a minor expense, raising lockpicking and magery will siphon gold from your bank. In addition, these all of these skills will raise your intellect and dexterity at the expense of strength, leaving you at a disadvantage when it's time to carry the treasure loot.

I started off with mace skill to kill my first mongbats, but the combat skill can be anything you like. I chose macing simply because I found an accurate mace of ruin on the ground, a wonderful weapon for my new player. You're eventually going to drop this skill when you run out of skill points. Wrestling is also good, as it may help your mage cast spells uninterrupted. As you wander outside of Britain and into the woods to provoke your first mongbats, they are often unamused and will turn on you. Whack them with your mace, building strength as you go. Very impressive, mighty mongbat hunter.

As you wander in the woods, pick up those spare reagents you see lying around. You will need them when it's time to start building magery skills. Early spells to cast (and setup as UO macros because you'll use them) are your heal and cure spells. Once you gain proficiency, drop the heal spell and use greater heal. A good rule of thumb is to attempt to cast spells from spellbook circles 5 points above your magery level. In other words, if your magery is in the upper 20's, casting Bless (a circle 3 spell) will give good magery gains. In the upper 30's, cast Greater Heal, a circle 4 spell. As a young mage, I would stumble across other warriors' battles in the woods east of Britain, and gain skill by casting bless and heal on them. Sometimes they were grateful and gave me a little tip of gold. Later, I could cast poison and fire field and could dispatch large number of creatures at once while working on my running skills. My first major victory was in the swamps near Trinsic, casting my first poison field. Using only poison field and fire fields, I knocked off 15 lizard men at once while they chased me around in circles.

Magery requires you to move about. You cannot stand in one spot, casting Greater Heal, and gain more than a couple tenths of a point. Keep moving. Your technique now should be 1) Provoke an animal, but since you often fail it turns on you, 2) cast a spell or two (poison or heal), 3) club that critter with your mace. Now go find some new critters. Moonglow is a good place to practice these skills. Plenty of animals to provoke, and plenty of reagents lying on the ground. A technique that allows you to practice provoking is to float a boat just offshore, and provoke the animals. If you fail at the provoke, the animals can't attack you, and you can keep trying until you provoke them. Use an explosion or energy bolt to finish them off. This boat-fighting technique also will come in handy when you first start your Level 3 treasure hunting, covered in more detail under my "How to Conduct a Treasure Hunt (Mage/Bard Treasure Hunter)" Essay, here.

Keep practicing your provoke and magery until you can starting killing critters with more gold on them. Provoke orcs or lizardmen and collect their gold, and use the gold to buy lockpicks. Pick as many chests as you can find, but only attempt each chest 3 or 4 times. You won't gain any skill after that, and you'll just be wasting picks. Buying a set of lockable boxes (at least 50 of them) is a good idea so you can cycle through multiple chests. Once you get above 70 lockpicking skill, you'll need to upgrade to GM lockable chests to get your skill to the low 90's. After that, only high level dungeon chests will improve your skill. Pick your 50 lockable chests and relock them. Do it again. And again. And again. Then take a break and pick town chests. My favorite place to practice is at the Warrior's Guild of Britain - there is a stack of locked crates under the stairs on the west side.

Hopefully by now you are getting proficient enough at provoking and magery to afford to buy maps. Lots and lots and lots of maps. Blank maps are cheapest, but sometimes the shops run out of maps. You can also buy the town maps and draw over them. You can keep your costs down by reselling the completed maps back to the shopkeeper. The shopkeeper will take your maps and turn them into the cheaper blank maps. For instance, I might find the cheapest maps on a vendor are Occlo maps for 8 gold. I buy all 10, draw my world maps, and check the vendor again. Now his cheapest maps are Magincia maps for 12 gold. I offer to sell my maps to the vendor, but he says he cannot afford them. So I donate gold to him, dropping 300 gold on his head (supposedly you gain karma from this but I've never seen it). Now he'll buy my 10 world maps at 15 gold each. And now he has 10 blanks for sale for 5 gold each. Using this technique, I can draw 200 maps in an hour, and not cost more than 200 gold total (I start with 1000 gold and end with 800). Sometimes I even make a small profit. Some pitfalls with this is 1) if the vendor suddenly respawns, he forgets you just donated money to him. Your donated gold is gone, and he still can't afford maps. 2) Occasionally the vendor won't buy your maps anyway. I donated 2000 gold once and the vendor still didn't want to buy my maps. Now I donate in smaller amounts. 3) Another cartographer is making maps and dropping them on the floor. He doesn't know why the vendor has the cheaper blank maps only when you talk to him, but while your donating gold and selling maps, he's buying the blanks.

Cartography, Lockpicking, Magery, Provocation. Those are the basic skills. My current skills looks like this:

• 95 Magery
• 90 Eval Int
• 98 Meditation
• 60 Resist
• 93 Cartography
• 95 Lockpicking
• 85 Music
• 84 Provoke

Huh. No GM in there. "The Famed Sphyr, Master Stoic." My INT is 100, STR is 75, DEX is 50, but I would prefer to sacrifice a little Dexterity for more Strength. I'm still working on Cartography and Lockpicking to GM levels someday so I can do L5 treasure hunts. In the process, I'll be dropping meditation and perhaps resist down just a little. I also plan to keep improving provoking at the expense of music, perhaps 100 Provoke / 75 Music. If you succeed at music but fail at provoke, you incite the monsters into attacking you. If you succeed at provoke but fail at music, you have no effect on the monsters.

You will end up spending a significant time alone in training, picking lock after lock, creating map after map. Two of the most dull skills to train, but if you can keep at it, the treasure hunts are exciting and profitable. Your dexterity will go up significantly during your training. Make sure you stop once in a while to train something with strength involved. I used Arms Lore - I would raise my Arms Lore skill from 0 to 10 on my dagger, then set the Arms Lore arrow down and go back to my lockpicking. When Arms Lore reached 0, I would train it back up to 10 again, and once again turn the arrow down. You will need strength to carry your reagents to the hunt and to carry the loot back.

So far, you've been alone a lot, practicing skills separately. You go to the woods to ebolt a troll, you float your boat next to Minoc to practice your provoking on that incredible spawn on the peninsula. You run around from town to town picking chests. You stop at one town and draw a couple of hundred maps. When does it all come together? At your first treasure hunt!

How will you know you're ready?

For your first Level 1 treasure hunts, you should be able to buy sufficient skill. I believe 30 cartography and 30 lockpicking will let you handle it. Can you kill 4 mongbats at once? Then you're ready for the chest itself. Keep in mind that although the chest spawn may be easy, the location of the chest may be in a difficult location that may offer additional challenges. Four mongbats is much easier than 4 mongbats and a silver serpent. If the chest is in a low-spawn area, you should be able to handle this treasure hunt solo.

Level 2 chests are harder. Cartography must be at least 71 (if I recall correctly) to decode the maps, and I needed a lockpicking skill of 76 to open my first L2 chest. It is particularly frustrating to locate your first L2 chest, dig it up, fight off the gargoyles and orc mages, and then find you are unable to open the chest. Around this point, you should find you no longer have room in your skill set for that mace, so it's time to drop it. Hopefully you're skilled enough at magery to dispatch those mongbats with energy bolts. Are you ready for an L2 chest? Wander in the woods, come across an orc camp. If you can pick the chest and defend yourself from the orcs, you should be ready. Even so, having some help with you for your first L2 chests is a good idea.

L3's and up are significantly more difficult and rewarding, but L2 chests will let you learn the technique, skills, and strategy that you can apply to higher level chests. Don't forget to check out my "How to Conduct a Treasure Hunt (Mage/Bard Treasure Hunter)" too, for tips you can use during your treasure hunts. Good luck!

Sphyr, Treasure Hunter of Lake Superior