Starting Off

Start your character off with:

• Strength: 45
• Intelligence: 10
• Dexterity: 10

Your dex and int will fly up when you work on Cartography, Detect Hidden, and Lockpicking, so don't worry about them.

Here's the skills you want to start off with:

• Cartography: 50
• Detect Hidden or Mining: 49
• Other: 1

NOTE: Detect Hidden is optional. It IS possible to open the chests with only Lockpicking. (Author's Note--I personally use Detect and Remove Traps, or would, if my Remove Traps was high enough, but Telekinesis works just as well...it's personal preference.)

Now you should decide what road you want to take with your treasure hunter. This will affect your choice of the 3rd skill. If you want Fishing, and get your own maps and SoS bottles (Ed. Note--big money here **grins**), choose 1 Fishing. You can choose 1 Lockpicking, and get some lockpicks, although these won't last you long. You can choose 1 Magery, although I'd recommend buying it, as those few reagents you start with won't help much. See the complementary skills for more on this.

(Author's Note--Detect Hidden starts you out with a newbie cape, and Fishing starts you out with a newbie hat...frankly, you should expect to die often, so if you like being in style even after that liche lord rips your still-beating heart out of your chest and takes a nice big bite, I'd find a way to get a hold of those...)

Raising Skills

Cartography

This has recently changed with the addition of UO:R. Cartography is now difficulty-based. In other words, you have to make harder maps to make your skill go up at higher levels. We are currently testing for the best breakdown of this. We believe it to be something like this:

• Detail maps to 65
• Regional maps to 72
• Sea charts to 85
• World maps to 98.5

However, no one knows for sure.

At 98.5, there is a wall in the skill. The only way to gain is to decode treasure maps.

Detect Hidden

This is a skill that is unnecessary to have to open any of the treasure chests. However, if you choose to take it, here's how you should work it up: find a tinker with a tinkering skill roughly within a 10-point range of your Detect skill. Have him or her trap you 20 or so boxes with darts, and put them all in a crate (don't trap this one). Put the crate on the floor of your house or boat and chop it up with an axe. This will result in all the trapped boxes in one square of floor. Use your Detect skill on the boxes. Each use will check your skill 20 (or more!) times, so it will go up fast.

Lockpicking

This has changed with the addition of UO:R as well. You need to practice on different chests to gain skill. One way to do this is to mark runes to each city, and run around unlocking every crate...then start that cycle all over again. An excellent place for chests is the Warrior's Guild in Britain. Go to the West Bank, then southwest and across the bridge. The Warrior's Guild is the large castle-type structure with the training dummies on top. Go inside, and turn west. To the east side of the staircase, in the south wall, there is a break in the wall which leads to a room full of chests.

If you just can't seem to gain anything, try wearing gloves. The higher the AR they provide, the harder it will be for you to lockpick something...so you'll gain better skill.

Mining

Right now, you're probably at 25 strength, 100 intelligence, and 100 dexterity. Now is where Mining comes in. While you're working on this, that should bring your strength up. You can mine anywhere you want, it's just personal preference. There are some areas you may want to stay away from, due to PK activity or overcrowding. Wherever you mine, I'd recommend getting 60-70 skill. If you use a map archive, then a high Mining skill shouldn't be necessary, unless you want another source of income by selling the ingots.

Remove Trap

This skill is optional for opening treasure chests too; Telekinesis works just as well. If you want it, however, you can buy this from a thieves' guildmaster once you have enough Lockpicking and Detect skills. You can work it up to 35ish by running around the inns and provisioners' shops in the towns and Detecting the traps on the boxes, and disarming them. From there, Level One chests will bring it up to about 45. After that, you will have to work with a tinker and disarm his traps. In general, you want to find a tinker whose Tinkering is within 10 points of your Remove Trap. Read Ferret's Pure Treasure Hunter Essay for excellent instructions on Remove Trap.

Complementary Skills

Magery

This skill is a MUST. If you follow my recommendations for starting your character, you should buy this skill later and train it up to where you can at least Recall consistently; I'd say around 50 or 60.

Fishing

There isn't much I can say about this one. Just go out and keep fishing. I'd recommend staying in near the coast once you hit 80 skill, so you don't accidentally pull in a sea serpent. See the fishing guide for more info on fishing.

Item Identification

Again, not much I can tell you. Just keep working on it, and it'll go up eventually. You really shouldn't need much of this.

Hiding

This helps out a lot. On Level Two maps and up, after you use the invisibility item trick, and your team lures the monsters away, you can take off the item and hide, so as not to waste charges. This is just an all-around good skill to have.

Macroing

Well...I can't OFFICIALLY recommend that you macro, but I do know that it's extremely helpful. So if you feel like taking the risks, that's your decision. I'm merely providing the information on HOW to do it...so if you get busted by OSI, don't complain to me.

Cartography

I'm not sure how to set up a macro for this skill, to tell the truth...

Detect Hidden

Set up the boxes as directed above. Set up a macro that uses the Detect Hidden skill and clicks on the stack of boxes.

Lockpicking

Set up a macro that double-clicks on your key, clicks on your lockbox, double-clicks on your lockpicks, and clicks on your lockbox again.

Item Identification

Equip a magic item. Set up a macro that uses the Item Identification skill and clicks on that item.

Hiding

This one's fairly simple...set up an in-game Hiding macro to any button and wedge that button down with something.

Playing Your Treasure Hunter

• Pick a city as your "haunt." Make sure everyone knows they can find you there. Soon, you'll get to know people and establish your reputation.
• YOUR REPUTATION IS IMPORTANT. I cannot stress that enough. You have to be known as a trustworthy, honest person. Otherwise, no one comes to you to do their maps. You can't cheat someone out of the items of the chest when you're doing a map for them.
• GET IRC AND LEARN TO USE IT. This will let you keep in touch with your employers without giving out your ICQ number, if you want to keep that secret. Check our links page for a link to IRC.