Ultima Online Cartography - decode levels, dig radius, and the chest quality nobody credits it for

Decoding: the five map levels

uo.com publishes the same table on both its Cartography page and its Treasure Maps page, which is the strongest form of confirmation uo.com offers.

Level	Name	Cartography required	Previous names
1	Stash	27.0	Plainly Drawn
2	Supply	70.0	Expertly Drawn
3	Cache	90.0	Adeptly Drawn, Cleverly Drawn
4	Hoard	100.0	Ingeniously Drawn
5	Trove	100.0	Diabolically Drawn

uo.com’s Treasure Maps page phrases level 1 as “27.0 (approximately 27–30)”. The old names are given because they were in use before the rename. Note the shape of the ladder: levels 4 and 5 both require 100.0, so grandmaster opens the top two tiers at once, and nothing between 90 and 100 unlocks anything.

How it works in practice (uo.com Treasure Maps):

• Double-click the map to attempt a decode. Failure gives only a message, and multiple attempts may be made — there is no cost to failing and no risk to the map.
• “An unread map has the description ‘tattered’, when read this label is lost and the map becomes blessed.”
• The decoded location stays valid for 30 days, after which the map reverts to tattered and resets with a new location. A hoarded stack of decoded maps expires.
• “You can also gain cartography skill by attempting to decode a level one map” — so the cheapest maps are a training method in themselves.

Dig radius - and the Mining correction

This is Cartography’s ongoing benefit after the map is read, and uo.com publishes it on both pages:

Cartography skill	Dig radius
0 – 50.9	1 tile — you must pick the exact spot
51 – 80.9	2 tiles
81 – 99.9	3 tiles
100	4 tiles

The difference between the ends of that table is the difference between an evening of digging and an evening of treasure hunting. At the bottom you are looking for one exact tile; at grandmaster you have a four-tile radius to land in.

The correction. uo.com states that the dig-radius bonus “was previously granted by mining skill”. Mining no longer sets dig radius. Cartography does. Bringing Mining for this is out of date.

uo.com notes these figures reference modified (enhanced) skill, and that cartography items provide bonuses — see the caps section below for what that does and does not mean.

Chest quality is set at dig time - and it gates Felucca Power Scrolls

This is the most under-appreciated published fact about the skill, so it gets its own section.

uo.com, verbatim: “Chest Quality is determined at dig time based on the digger’s modified cartography skill.” Three qualities exist — rusty, normal metal and gold. If a chest is redug, quality never improves, but it may worsen if the second digger’s Cartography is lower than the first’s.

And the payoff, from the same page’s loot rules: Felucca only, on all packages except Artisan, Cache, Hoard and Trove — “Powerscrolls up to +10 level based on chest quality.”

Put those two sentences together and Cartography stops being an access skill and becomes a loot quality skill. The chest was not fixed when the map was written or when it was decoded; it is decided at the moment of the dig, by whoever is holding the shovel. Which means:

• Sending the low-skill member of a party to do the digging costs the whole party loot.
• A redug chest can be permanently downgraded by a low-Cartography digger, and cannot be recovered by digging it again with a better one.
• The Felucca Power Scroll yield — the thing that raises other people’s skills to 120 — is downstream of a cartographer’s skill, not a miner’s.

[!] What uo.com does not publish is the actual thresholds: it names the three qualities and says modified Cartography decides, but gives no skill values for each quality band. Nor does it publish the Power Scroll drop table — “up to +10 level based on chest quality” comes with no per-quality probabilities and no statement of which skills’ scrolls can drop.

After the dig: Lockpicking, Magery and Remove Trap

Once the chest is out of the ground, Cartography’s job is done and two other skills take over. uo.com publishes minimums for one of them and explicitly none for the other.

Lockpicking opens it, and the requirement is hard:

Level	Minimum Lockpicking
1 — Stash	11.0
2 — Supply	76.0
3 — Cache	84.0
4 — Hoard	92.0
5 — Trove	100

uo.com puts its own warning in capitals: “DO NOT TRY TO OPEN A CHEST UNTIL YOU HAVE AT LEAST THE RECOMMENDED LOCKPICK SKILL.”

Magery can substitute via Magic Unlock, but only on the bottom three tiers:

Level	Magery needed
1	50
2	80
3	100
4	No effect
5	No effect

“Only levels 1–3 can be unlocked via magic” — so a mage can run the lower tiers alone, and the Hoard and Trove chests need a real Lockpicking character.

Remove Trap works the opposite way round. uo.com: “There is no minimum skill requirement for the different chest levels, the disarming process will begin when a player uses Remove Trap on the chest.” Skill sets the duration, not access. Two conditions apply, and they are what makes it dangerous:

• The player must stay within 16 tiles of the chest, or the process restarts from the beginning.
• “During the disarming process Ancient Chest Guardians, chosen from the monsters that can spawn during the initial dig, will spawn to defend the chest, accompanied by some fire damage.”

So Remove Trap is gated by time and survival rather than by a number — you are standing still, tethered to a 16-tile leash, while level-appropriate monsters arrive.

What is in the chest

uo.com publishes the loot rules by tier and by package:

• All levels: gold and gems in special bags, minor artifacts, randomly generated equipment, legacy and new decorative items.
• Stash and above: Scrolls of Transcendence, with skill and value based on the package and facet.
• Supply and above: Scrolls of Alacrity, skill based on package and facet.
• Up to Hoard: treasure maps one level higher — which is how a treasure hunter bootstraps from Stash maps to Trove maps without buying any.
• Cache and above: legacy and new decorative items.
• Artisan package: refinements at Stash, recipe scrolls at Supply and Cache, crafting materials at Stash and Supply.
• Mage Stash: reagents, in a special reagent bag, by facet.
• Felucca only, all packages except Artisan, Cache, Hoard and Trove: Power Scrolls up to +10 level based on chest quality.

Maps also carry Cleanup Britannia values, and tattered and completed maps are worth the same:

Map level	Points
1	50
2	100
3	250
4	500
5	750

Chest guardians

uo.com publishes a guardian table per level and per facet — Eodon, Felucca and Trammel, Ilshenar, Malas, Tokuno, Ter Mur. The range between its ends is the whole story of how much combat a treasure hunter needs behind them:

Where	What spawns
Level 1, Felucca / Trammel	Mongbats, Ratmen, Headless Ones, Skeletons, Zombies
Level 5, Felucca / Trammel	Ancient Wyrm, Balron, Blood Elemental, Poison Elemental, Titan, Greater Dragon
Level 5, Ter Mur	Lava Elemental, Greater Poison Elemental, Enraged Earth Elemental, Fire Daemon, Enraged Colossus

A Stash map is something a new character can do alone. A Trove map is a Balron and a Greater Dragon arriving while you are stood still disarming a trap. [!] uo.com publishes no recommended treasure-hunter template and no combat skill values, so none are suggested here.

The maps you can actually make

uo.com publishes the skill needed for each map type. The tools are mapmaker’s pens, bought or made with Tinkering, and blank maps or scrolls, bought from Mapmakers, Mages, Real Estate Brokers or Scribes, or made with Inscription.

Map type	Cartography required
Local Map	0
Star Chart	0.0
City Map	25.0
Sea Map	35.0
World Map	50.0
Tattered Wall Map	50.0
Eodonian Wall Map	65.0 (recipe required)
Decryption Cypher	95.0

Not settled. One further entry is unpublished — uo.com does not list it: Treasure Map compilation (stash/cache/hoard/trove) at 90.0 [!]. What it refers to, and whether it conflicts with uo.com’s Tattered Wall Map at 50.0, is not stated by uo.com. The uo.com table above is the documented one.

The three assembled items, with their published recipes:

• Tattered Wall Map (50.0) — 10 Stash maps, 5 Cache maps, 3 Hoard maps and 1 Trove map. A decoration that costs nineteen treasure maps.
• Eodonian Wall Map (65.0, recipe required) — 50 blank maps or scrolls, and 1 Unabridged Atlas of Eodon.
• Decryption Cypher (95.0) — 2 blank maps or scrolls and 20 dragon blood. “Used to decode special maps leading to dragon nests, each cypher can decode 10 maps.”

Where to buy pens and blank maps

uo.com publishes the vendor list with coordinates, which is unusual and worth reproducing:

Town	Vendor	Coordinates
Britain	The Oaken Oar	10°53'S 7°1'E
Buccaneer’s Den	Pirates Provisioner	55°11'S 99°50'E
Jhelom	Sailor’s Keeper	173°4'N 9°0'E
Moonglow	The Scholars Goods	49°13'N 142°2'W
Nujel’m	Seaborne Ships	36°2'N 167°16'E
Papua	Pier 39	14°24'S 9°29'W
Serpent’s Hold	Supplies	154°57'S 118°58'E
Skara Brae	Superior Ships	57°13'S 50°20'W
Trinsic	Britannia Provisions	103°16'S 37°20'E
Vesper	The Majestic Boat	70°24'N 117°33'E
Yew	Great Oak Vessels	51°30'N 49°0'W
Zento	Rokuon Cultural Center and Shops	32°0'N 45°33'W

In PvP

Cartography has no direct PvP mechanic — no damage, no defence, no ability. Saying that and stopping would miss the point, though, because it reaches PvP by two specific routes:

• It feeds the Power Scroll economy. Felucca chests drop “Powerscrolls up to +10 level based on chest quality”, and chest quality is set at dig time by the digger’s modified Cartography. Every 120 skill on a PvP template came from a scroll, and a share of those scrolls came out of the ground because somebody had trained this skill.
• Digging in Felucca is itself a PvP event. A treasure hunter is stationary, tethered to a 16-tile Remove Trap timer that restarts if they wander, and already fighting spawned guardians. That is the most target-shaped thing in the game, and it is where a raider looks.

Scrolls of Transcendence and Scrolls of Alacrity from chests accelerate PvP skill training directly, and the minor artifacts and randomly generated equipment feed PvP suits alongside crafted gear from Blacksmithy and Tailoring.

In PvM

Treasure hunting is a complete PvM content loop rather than a support skill: dig, fight tiered guardians, unlock, disarm while more guardians arrive, loot. Cartography drives three parts of it — access to each tier at 27.0, 70.0, 90.0 and 100.0; dig radius, four tiles at grandmaster against one below 51, which is most of the time a treasure hunter spends; and chest quality, set at the moment of the dig.

The loot is the reward: gold and gems, minor artifacts, random equipment, decorative items, recipe scrolls, refinements, crafting materials, reagents, maps one level higher up to Hoard, and Cleanup Britannia points at 50 / 100 / 250 / 500 / 750 by level. At 95.0 the Decryption Cypher opens dragon-nest maps, ten per cypher. Guardian difficulty scales by tier and facet, so the skill also sets how much combat the rest of the character needs.

Caps, stats and what items do

Cartography caps at 100. It is not on uo.com’s Scrolls of Power list, so it has no Power Scroll. There is no 105, no 110, no 120.

There is a real subtlety here, though, and it is worth stating precisely rather than loosely. uo.com’s dig-radius and chest-quality rules are both expressed in terms of modified (enhanced) skill, and uo.com notes that “cartography items provide bonuses”. So +Cartography jewellery genuinely counts for those two effects, and a character at 85 real skill wearing +15 is treated as 100 for the dig. But the skill-bonus rule cuts the other way at the top: item bonuses can only lift a skill past 100 if the character has also raised that skill’s cap with a Power Scroll [!] — and Cartography has no Power Scrolls, so there is no published route to modified Cartography above 100 either.

[!] uo.com does not publish how much +Cartography from items helps, nor whether modified skill above the 100 row would continue to improve dig radius or chest quality if it could be reached. Both are open.

Primary stat Int, secondary Dex. Counts against the 720 total skill cap. No mastery — Cartography is not on uo.com’s Skill Masteries page.

Skill	What changes
0	Local Map, Star Chart
25.0	City Map
27.0	Decode Stash (level 1) maps
35.0	Sea Map
50.0	World Map, Tattered Wall Map
51.0	Dig radius 1 → 2 tiles
65.0	Eodonian Wall Map (recipe required)
70.0	Decode Supply (level 2) maps
81.0	Dig radius 2 → 3 tiles
90.0	Decode Cache (level 3) maps
95.0	Decryption Cypher
100.0	Decode Hoard and Trove; dig radius 3 → 4 tiles; best chest quality

Training

uo.com publishes one method directly, on the Treasure Maps page: “You can also gain cartography skill by attempting to decode a level one map.” Since failures cost nothing and can be repeated freely, a stack of Stash maps is a training tool as well as content.

A banded path, unpublished by uo.com [!]:

Skill	Method
0 – ~30	Purchase from an NPC Mapmaker
30 – 50	Local Maps
50 – 65	City Maps
60 – 70	Sea Charts
70 – 99.5	World Maps
99.5 – 100	Level 3 and 4 Treasure Maps

[!] These bands overlap inconsistently — City Maps to 65, then Sea Charts from 60 — and are left as found rather than tidied up. uo.com publishes no banded training table of its own for Cartography.

Underneath it, the Guaranteed Gain System gives a mandatory 0.1 when nothing has been gained inside your bracket’s window — on a 700-point character, 22.6 hours at 90.0–94.9 and 27.0 hours at 95.0–99.9. A Scroll of Alacrity raises each check from 0.1 to 0.2–0.5 for 15 minutes, and treasure chests are themselves one of the places those scrolls come from.

What is not published

Recorded rather than guessed at:

• [!] The chest-quality skill thresholds. uo.com names rusty, normal metal and gold, and says modified Cartography sets it at dig time — and publishes no skill value for any of the three bands.
• [!] The Felucca Power Scroll drop table. “Up to +10 level based on chest quality”, with no per-quality odds and no list of which skills’ scrolls appear.
• [!] How much +Cartography from items helps, and whether modified skill above the 100 row would keep improving anything.
• [!] Any interaction with Detecting Hidden, Forensic Evaluation, Taste Identification or Item Identification. They often sit on “treasure hunter” templates, but uo.com publishes no Cartography interaction with any of them. Not asserted here.
• [!] Any Sextant interaction. uo.com does not mention one on the skill page.
• [!] Any recommended treasure-hunter template or combat skill values.
• [!] Any success-chance formula for decoding at a given skill, or any skill gain rate.
• [!] What the unpublished Treasure Map compilation entry at 90.0 [!] refers to, and whether it conflicts with uo.com’s Tattered Wall Map at 50.0.
• [!] Any link between Cartography and Fishing’s message-in-a-bottle and SOS content — uo.com’s Cartography page does not tie the two together, so this page does not either.

Where these come from

uo.com Cartography · uo.com Treasure Maps · uo.com Scrolls of Power · uo.com Skills, Stats & Attributes · uo.com Skill Masteries · uo.com Skill Gain Systems. Everything here is from uo.com or the game itself; anything uo.com does not publish is marked [!] as unpublished where it appears.