Crafting
Cartography
A treasure map is useless until it is decoded, and Cartography is the only thing that decodes it. Higher-level maps need real skill before they will give up their site at all, and the chests at the end of them are among the better rewards in the game for the effort involved.
Map levels
A map below its minimum skill cannot be read at all. Above the "reliable" column it decodes every time.
| Level | Min skill | Reliable at | Guardians | Lockpicking to open |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0.0 | 30.0 | 3 | 0.0 |
| 2 | 10.0 | 40.0 | 4 | 10.0 |
| 3 | 20.0 | 50.0 | 5 | 20.0 |
| 4 | 40.0 | 80.0 | 6 | 40.0 |
| 5 | 50.0 | 95.0 | 7 | 50.0 |
| 6 | 80.0 | 100.0 | 8 | 80.0 |
Maps come from Fishing and Tracking. Decoding one only reveals the site — getting the chest open is Lockpicking's problem.
How it climbs
- What trains it
- Every attempt on a map you can read, decoded or not
- Up to 50
- Quick: about half an hour of attempts
- From 50 to 100
- A long climb that slows all the way up. About 35 hours of attempts in all
- With no map you can read
- A Practice Map (Inscription, 250 attempts each) is studied instead
Rares
Five yard pieces found only by working this skill. Every map you decode can turn one up. Each stands in your yard or your house, carries its own story on its tooltip, and trades like any other item.
| Piece | Its story |
|---|---|
 Globe of Britannia | A painted globe of the known world on a brass meridian, turning sweetly on its pins. Britain sits in the middle, which no other town accepts. On the far side one small patch has been left blank and labelled, in a careful hand, 'somebody really should go and look'. |
 The Signpost of Everywhere | A post with an arm for every town in Britannia, each one painted with a name and a distance. Every distance on it is wrong. The cartographer who carved it walked every road to measure them, and maintains that the roads have moved since, and that this is not his fault. |
 Surveyor's Theodolite | A brass sighting scope on a wooden tripod, graduated in degrees too fine to read without squinting. It charted every coastline from Occlo to Serpent's Hold, and its lens still carries the thumbprint from the one afternoon the surveyor let his nephew have a go. |
 Cartographer's Table | A trestle table under a half-drawn chart of the coast, its corners held down with a compass, an inkpot, a whetstone and a boot. The chart shows a sea route to Buccaneer's Den that no captain has ever managed to sail. The map is not wrong, its maker insists; the sea simply has not been told. |
 The Spot Marked X | A stake, a scrap of red cloth and a spade: the very spot on the very first treasure map ever decoded. Eleven hunters in eleven years have dug it out and found nothing. The scholars agree it is the most successful treasure in history — every one of them went home and bought another map. |