Cartography/Lockpicking...HOW???

[Edie Brickell]

Just had a few questions for the veteran treasure hunters on the shard. I've managed to macro up lockpicking to 94.8 without problems and have begun exploring the dungeons quite regularly looking for more gains. My question is how on earth did you guys GM lockpicking or even budge it past 95?? I've literally picked hundreds of chests without any gain. I'm making money, but not sure how to keep things moving in the right direction.

My other question was about cartography. How in the heck did you guys macro this up??? Seems hard with the item count resstrictions? Makes me wodner how anyone GMed this, especially with the 95 skill gain stopage without treasure maps. Can anyone REALLY have enough treasure maps to go from 95 toGM? That, I would think, would literally take thousands of maps.

Any help is appreicated. I'm no stranger to treasure hunting, just a bit overwhelmed with the difficulty Second Age represents. On Metro I knew where all the big treasure spawns were but 2nd Age is hard because chests dont spawn where they should (it seems) and you get like 5 empty spawns for every one that counts. I've found TWO chest spawns that gave me trouble, and one I couldn't pick at all. I'm guessing these are the ticket to gains, but I need a lot more than two consistant spawns if I'm going to make any headway.

[johttenn]

Lockpicking is slow to gain past 95...also make sure you concentrate on lvl 3 and 4 dungeon chests, you won't get any gains on lvl1 and 2s.

[Edie Brickell]

Lockpicking is slow to gain past 95...also make sure you concentrate on lvl 3 and 4 dungeon chests, you won't get any gains on lvl1 and 2s.

I guess I know about the chests, jsut having a hard time figuring out where the 3 and 4s are or how to tell when I've found one...

[platy]

the best way to find the hard chests is to just go to the hardest monster in each dungeon.. the chests around them should be higher levels.. i.e. the ancient wyrm, lichlords, etc.

[Rahvin080]

As for cartography, I'm macroing it now. You basically have to do a semi-attended macro. If you have a weekend day where you don't have much going on, get to the map guy in britain, buy around 115 maps(that's what I get anyway) and start up a macro. It takes about 30-45 minutes for one "batch", so you basically have to sell all your maps that you've created and buy another 115, lather rinse repeat. It kinda sucks compared to other macros, but meh. You might be able to buy groups of the maps, use an organize macro to put them in a bag and drop that bag in your bank, and then use a restock agent to do the entire thing from the bank, but then you won't be able to sell them back if you macro unattended. It makes a huge difference in money if you are able to sell the maps, instead of the 5g lost per map, you only lose 2 or 3. My batches of 115 maps give me approx 1.5% skill, meaning from 50 cart you'll spend about 28.5k to 95 skill, assuming constant gains. Hope that helps


*Edit* Ugh, I just started with sea charts and world maps, and the vendors won't buy them back. This blows :/

[Edie Brickell]

How do you knwo a chest is a level 3 or 4? Is it the item count or the gold amount? Thus far I haven't picked a single chest that has had over 300 gold and I've been in some prety dangerous and remote part of dungeons. I'm no stranger to lockpicking mind you, just having a real hard time getting a handle on the situation in 2nd Age. Any of you GM pickers wanna share a spot or two with me??

[johttenn]

There's a table on the old stratics page in web archive that details...amount of gold, gems, scrolls, regs, and magic items are all influenced by the level of the chest. You won't find much over 300 gp in coin.

I know where quite a few lvl 4s are, but they are too profitable and slow-spawning to share...

[TwoTon]

There's a table on the old stratics page in web archive that details...amount of gold, gems, scrolls, regs, and magic items are all influenced by the level of the chest. You won't find much over 300 gp in coin.

I know where quite a few lvl 4s are, but they are too profitable and slow-spawning to share...

Level 4 dungeon chests do not have arrows in it thats how you can tell.

[Edie Brickell]

THanks, I've found a few chests that are hard for me to pick, I just wasn't sure if they were 3 or 4. No arrows is a good guide. Used to be you could tell by the container type. I have 94.8 picking and actually found a chest that said I didn't know how to manipulate the lock....still scratchign my head about that.

[Coffee]

Any chest that you fail on, is a chest that you can gain on. Generally, the higher level chests yield 300+ gold.

You're probably talking about the chest at the Yew Crypts. That one requires GM lockpick.

Cartography is a definite pain, but lockpick is probably the most annoying skill post-95. However, you will go through TONS of maps before becoming GM. I think I went through like 150 maps or so before getting a single gain

[Mr.T]

cartography would be easy post 99.5 if you had 2mil to burn on t maps:P