Talk:Grandmaster cartography guide

Archive

An image showing how much leeway is given in Tyria
This image gives an indication of how much leeway there is in Tyria. On the left, I had just gotten 100% (where my position is marked), then the right image shows how much more was left after 100%. I had not gone back to scrape the edges of Lornar's Pass nor gone back to scape all the outposts (as I had anticipated doing). GW-Susan 00:17, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I made your image smaller. Anyway, I got 100% just before doing the last mission (so I had more then you) and I saw a screenshot of someone having 100% in the middle of the second last mission... All depends on how much you scrape. &mdash; Poki#3 [[Image:Poki.jpg|19px|My Talk Page :o]], 07:27, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I wish there were someone to look at my map and tell me what I'm missing. I have scraped and scraped Tyria but cannot get past about 97%.  My character is from Cantha.  I've compared my map to 100% maps and, outside the low level arenas and an arena that no longer exists, it "seems" I have everything. :-( LetsReason (Bo M?nx character names) 04:01, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Install Cartography Made Easy. -- ◄mendel► 11:52, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Just finished this now. GMC@Tyria. I swear, i still had a whole section of The Falls left, the center portion of Tangle Root and the often missed parts in The Wilds mission. 0.8% atleast easily. Was kinda disappointed a bit i guess. After nitpicking Cantha and Elona, and doing the same here, i was really expecting to get to 99.8/99.9 max after i did all the 'preliminary' scraping. Ah well, got Legendary Cartographer.. so i'm happy. ^^ --86.106.16.9 03:48, October 5, 2009 (UTC)

Island of Shekah
While full exploration of the Nightfall starter area is impossible for foreign characters, my Ritualist appears to have uncovered part of the island. I suspect it is revealed by watching the intro cutscene ("Elona... Land of the Golden Sun..."). SarielV 09:51, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * What NPC has the cutscene again? --◄mendel► 10:27, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * You watch it the first time you come to Elona, or make an Elonian character. It's the one where your character points at a Skree Gryphon and Koss attacks it. You also unlock some of the tutorial map by going to the first mission outpost. &mdash; Poki#3 [[Image:Poki.jpg|19px|My Talk Page :o]], 12:37, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, I was hoping there's be a "replay this cinematic" type of NPC somewhere. So it's part of the travel quest then, and you'd do best not to skip it if you want to become a legendary cartographer. --◄mendel► 13:32, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I think you uncover the small part regardless... To lazy to do the quest on one of my unused characters and check. &mdash; Poki#3 [[Image:Poki.jpg|19px|My Talk Page :o]], 16:17, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, I get a nice little payback from the Elona Tourist Board for making you all sit through this little cutscene. In-game advertising ftw! --◄mendel► 01:09, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Do you have to watch the full video to get grandmaster cartographer or can you get away with skipping it? I did the first quest and everything btw just didn't get the area the video reveals.--Lryuzaki09 03:18, 22 March 2009 (UTC)lryuzaki09

Elona GMC: Can't Avoid Remains
My Rit has finally finished scraping the walls of Elona. Aside from the parts of Istan that foreigners cannot enter, the Arena, and the Remains challenge mission, I've got pretty much everything. I've compared against my two other GMCs and even used the Texmod mod to show which areas need cleared (and which I've found that the modder did not). I'm at 98.6% Even on my third Cartography run I was finding new slivers to clear, but I think that anything that might be left is negligible. There's not enough extra to allow a foreigner to skip Remains, and I suspect that Elona-born characters don't receive enough of an edge to cover the rest either SarielV 12:16, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Talk:Grandmaster_cartography_guide/Archive_1. &mdash; Poki#3 [[Image:Poki.jpg|19px|My Talk Page :o]], 14:53, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Tyria: The Wilds
The suggestion to have the final spider battle kill Evennia may no longer work, as the final spawn of spiders (incl. the Ranger boss) steadfastly center themselves below the overhanging ledge when aggroed on Evennia, firing harmlessly into the overhang. Evennia has no need to heal herself as none of the spider projectiles ever land on her. However, the first two spawns of spiders will appear on either side of Evennia and land successful attacks, poisoning her, but never enough to kill her, even with all the recommended spirits. When the final spawn arrives, it is centered in front of Evennia, - and the blocking overhang. Evennia never gets hit after the 2nd spawn since once the final spawn aggros on her, it refuses to move. I could not lure it, and it simply fires into the overhang rather than into Evennia. 10 September 2008 -- Rpger

I almost got it to work, but what had to happen first was that Evennia had to be lured from her original spawn spot which was well behind the overhanging ledge. After some effort, I got the Ranger boss to aggro on me. As I ran away up the tree root out of the spider pit, Evennia chased forward also as she was trying to hit the spider (now chasing me) with her default staff shots. Her forward movement put her at the tip of the overhang, allowing the spider to hit her when it reset its position to the center of the den again. However, in order to get the Ranger boss reaggroed on me, I had to attack and kill its surrounding companions. Therefore, although Evennia was now vulnerable, the Ranger boss's attack alone was no longer enough to kill her. 10 September 2008 -- Rpger

I eventually got it to work combining the technique above, of luring Evennia forward, plus adding myself next to Evennia just out of aggro of the spider with a vampiric weapon in hand to cause my own health degen. That way, Evennia had to not only heal herself, but me as well. The danger is that when laceration kicks in, the degen goes much faster, so a self-heal was necessary just in case Evennia ran out of juice when I needed it the most. That allowed the Ranger boss to focus fire on Evennia, while at the same time Evennia had to split her healing effort between me (heal other) and herself (heal area). 10 Sept 2008 -- Rpger
 * Would it be feasible to bring 2 players at least. draw one spawn of spiders away from the area with 1, and then have 1 MM making bone fiends with all the chosen corpses. and then losing the bond with either a death or Verata's Aura. The bone fiends (being level 18 and having up to 10 of them) should be able to kill Evennia even through her healing.
 * I haven't tested this at all, Just pondering, it seems much simpler/quicker than the spirit-ranger approach GW-Viruzzz 21:51, 17 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Might work, although the chance of the Bone Fiends annihlating the spiders is also high unless you pull them far far away. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 03:56, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
 * That's why you would need to pull a spider spawn away to make sure the minions aggro Evennia. GW-Viruzzz 06:00, 18 October 2008 (UTC)


 * You gotta aggro the spiders and then lure em correctly so almost all/all hit Evennia. Wand em or something, fire a bow for one damage, whatever yo usee fit. When they attack you, move around till the spiders can hit Evennia. Then kite like mad and they'll attack Evennia again, generally. Block stances also help. Then set up your spirits and wait for a while. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]]-- (s)talkpage  09:02, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

A Prescription for Conscription?
Dunno if you remember this quest guys, but you have to defend some crops in Arkjok Ward from bugs in Kourna. When the third or fourth wave approach, you can see them coming from beyond the portal, so I was wondering how much % of the map you could get by shadowstepping or transporting to their corpses beyond the portal (between Jahai Bluffs and Arkjok Ward), or if you could do it at all. Did someone ever tried? --Alf&#39;s Hitman 05:35, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I've never heard of anyone trying that, but it sounds like you could get through, and there'd be at least a speck or too, if not .1% in the gap there. Ezekiel  [Talk]  05:42, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
 * It is possible to transport to a dead foe behind a portal via necrotic traversal, I've done it in Black Curtain (and have the screenshot of the backside of the portal to prove it). Since that is near the upper edge of Arkjok, I expect the map edge to be very close, and that would limit how far you can explore. But it's certainly worth a try. I'd also be curious to find out if a shadowstep works as well, then there'd be no need to kill the enemy first. Population Control has a mob of foes running through a portal away from the player, but the potential for cartography is limited as there's no undiscovered space between those explorables, IIRC. --◄mendel► 06:01, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
 * It is possible. For one of the luxon territories, you can attack the shrine guards, have the merchant run into the city and either port to him or his corpse, and the area is yours to explore. King Neoterikos 06:05, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

"Magic Spots"
I specifically note in this section that there is evidence for some areas being affected by time-in-place. I inadvertently discovered one of these when in Cantha -- I was in the Kurzick staging area for the Jade Quarry, IIRC (might have been Aspenwood), using Carto Made Easy, had done what I thought were all the areas available in the staging area, and went off to read more about something on GWiki, leaving the character standing in a distant corner of the staging area. When I came back, several minutes later, I found I had a comparatively large black region added. I've since repeated this with another character, and seen some evidence of it in other cases, where I went to look up something while standing in a nook or cranny, and gotten another area -- often a black one on the CME maps. I'm not arguing it's actual time or whatever -- it may be some subtle random numbers the servers add up while standing in place which changes your nominal POV by one one-thousandth of a radian or something to match some ridiculously unlikely "view" which most people don't get unless they happen to get really, really lucky while turning. But it does happen, and I believe I can demonstrate a repeatable instance of it in Cantha. &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by OBloodyHell (talk &bull; contribs) 09:46, 15 January 2009 (UTC).
 * My theory has always been that since the client and the server are not fully synched (-> rubberbanding), and it is the server that uncovers the map, you may be standing in the nook on your PC and not in the nook on the server. Some skills trigger a resynch, as should the /stuck command, so if you can get your magic spot to trigger with that, it would prove it. (A map screenshot of the place would be handy?).
 * As for the 360, maybe the camera position gets considered as well, and that would mean that when you're looking inward, the camera moves a small distance further out - or, again, the extra time is what causes the effect. --◄mendel► 10:27, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, camera position is actually the thing that matters - that's why you get extra bits from watching cutscenes, even when your character isn't present (like the scenes in Varesh's warcamp). &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 14:33, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Percentage Contribution
I think it might be helpful to include a percentage contribution for each map, if such information is available. This could make it easier for people to get it right as they go through (assuming they're focused on the title, rather than the game) - it provides a progress benchmark. It would be something like
 * Old Ascalon: 2.3% (of Tyria)
 * Ascalon City: ...

If someone has data, I'd be happy to do the wikification. And/or if others think this is worthwhile, I can start a separate page with intro, table template, etc that folks could edit until it's substantially complete. --Tennessee Ernie Ford 05:14, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
 * There are some map pages with the cartography numbers listed, but I don't know how many or which. Great Northern Wall has a note about 0.4% extra past the charr for example. Ezekiel  [Talk]  05:17, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
 * So, you think that if I comb through the locations one-at-a-time (here at at the official site), I should be able to get a head start on data collection. Good place to start.
 * Meantime, does anyone remember seeing anything like this elsewhere?--Tennessee Ernie Ford 17:14, 5 February 2009 (UTC)


 * We mayn't copy information from the official Wiki over to ours. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]] -- (contribs) &emsp;(talk)  17:26, 5 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Except when the information is facts, because facts can't be copyrighted. Copying the description of an explorable area that someone wrote would be wrong, but copying, say, a list of the NPCs/monsters in the area is not.  This falls under the second case, as it is a fact that the area is some approximate percentage of the total continent.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 19:46, 5 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Typically, data is safe to copy/republish, while interpretation and presentation of the data is not. So, I agree with Vipermagi's statement as written, We mayn't copy information ... . However, I believe that we may copy the data. Fortunately, Mendel's remark suggests the point is moot - for which I thank Dwayna, since even compiling a list of explorable areas is a fair bit of work. --Tennessee Ernie Ford 03:36, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Lists of explorables are linked from the Location article. -- ◄mendel► 12:02, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

The percentages are hard to gather because there are rounding errors, you need to keep a very strict tally, there are usually border areas that could be uncovered by more than one region, and the statistics aren't really very useful, compared to "Cartography made Easy". -- ◄mendel► 00:43, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Cool - then it seems to me that this page should have a link to Cartography Made Easy. But where? Seems like a See Also section might be useful, as this article is rather dense. And/or perhaps under Maps, Comparing Maps, or even the opening paragraph. Thoughts? --Tennessee Ernie Ford 03:36, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Comparing maps sounds good, otherwise External Links is probably most appropriate. Ezekiel  [Talk]  03:43, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Who compares maps the old way nowadays? -- ◄mendel► 12:02, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, newbies like me, whose ignorance about power gaming is matched only by our enthusiasm for the game :-) --Tennessee Ernie Ford 17:17, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I've done Tyria enough that I can eyeball from memory where at least some spots are on other people's maps, so oldfashioned map comparing does sometimes help. Ezekiel  [Talk]  02:52, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Elona Tips
I was looking through the tips for Elona, and saw this entry:

"Wehhan Terraces Go into Bahdok Caverns and scrape the north wall near the entrance to the zone(once you load into the caverns head back in the direction of the entrance)."

I looked into it, and as I suspected, this area is underground, and as such does not count towards the title track. So either this has been badly written, or doesn't work. Mokushiroku no Yami 08:04, 23 February 2009 (UTC)


 * You haven't checked it while Cartography made Easy was loaded, though? -- ◄mendel► 13:36, 23 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Related point: Cartography made Easy shows that Moddok Crevice (outpost) is below ground even though it shows on the map. Its area can be mapped from the surrounding The Floodplain of Mahnkelon however.Thalestis 13:07, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Eredon Terrace
You do not need to be the opposing faction of the priest outside Eredon Terrace. You can agro the 1-2 groups of monsters outside Erredon they will kill the two Gaurds and Priest then if your lucky the Merchant will run through the portal. You can use skills like Return or Ebon Escape.

Monastery Overlook
I removed this part since it was really never true for Monastery Overlook: "...but may also be training areas for characters local to the continent (such as Monastery Overlook which is only explorable for non-Canthan characters during the Dragon Festival and special weekend events)." The Heart of Shadow skill could be used to explore that area at any time, though the May 14, 2009 update to Heart of Shadow and Viper's Defense has made crossing the portal between Shing Jea Monastery and Linnok Courtyard without triggering a rezone much easier. (I just verified this and added instructions in the appropriate location.) I suppose I could have edited the line to refer to Island of Shehkah instead, but since foreign characters can map a bit of it by watching a cutscene, I decided to just remove that part. Nwash 15:31, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Tyrian Grandmaster
Ok I just got the biggest shock of my life. I had been mapping missions as I went along through the Prophecies storyline, I get to 24/25 missions completed and I find I'm already 100%... ? I hadn't even touched Hell's Precipice, which in itself allows for a lot of cartography if you walk back from the cutscene. I know it's not unheard of to get over 100% in cartography but with one mission still to go quite frankly I was flabbergasted. Tyria being the bitchiest, most fussy and biggest area to map as well, I'm stoked that I got it already, but really quite stunned at the same time. --Valandil D 06:34, March 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, all of the maps have slightly over 100% because it would be nigh-impossible to get EVERY TINY LITTLE BIT. However, I think Tyria has the potential for even more if you explored the various arenas before they closed in favor of battle isles --Gimmethegepgun 06:42, March 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah I understand that you can't get every little bit of the map because there's some areas no matter how big that you just can't explore, thanks mostly to terrain. I've explored all arenas (Ascalon, Shiverpeak, etc) and had another cartography character to compare bits of map to.. just wondering though, would it be possible to get the title to read more than "100.0%"?  I have one mission left to go, I guess that'd be the easiest way to find out. --Valandil D 07:00, March 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * When I say "various arenas", I'm referring to the OLD arenas that used to be in Tyria, before they were moved to the rotation in the Battle Isles: Deldrimor Arena, Amnoon Arena, D'Alessio Arena, Fort Koga, and The Crag all used to be their own arenas on the Tyria map and could be explored --Gimmethegepgun 07:27, March 3, 2010 (UTC)


 * Even without those arenas, there's still something like 3% extra in Tyria (the other campaigns only have ~0.5%). I got 100% without mapping any of the arenas (beyond the outposts) or the southeast part of Dunes of Despair (mission).  Including the arenas it's probably more like 5% extra.
 * I recently checked out the Cartography Made Easy mod, and realized that I was still missing quite a few bits on every continent, but Tyria had at least 5 times as many as the other two, in addition to Dunes. I'd stopped mapping as soon as I got GMC, so all of those bits were extra, which is why I assume Tyria has 3% extra where the others have 0.5%. EotN has just over 1% extra, as indicated by being able to get 101 cartography points for Master of the North, after which I still had a few bits unmapped.
 * And yes, I did go back and map "EVERY TINY LITTLE BIT" because I'm an obsessive completionist like that. :P &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 15:41, March 3, 2010 (UTC)

Cleanup
I just did a major cleanup on this article. My original purpose was to replace the "Map comparison" technique with Cartography Made Easy, but then I saw how repulsively bloated the rest of the article was, so I decided to perform a bit of liposuction.

The biggest thing I did was to combine the Often missed and Specific tips sections and then drastically condense them. I simply threw out anything that was just "Don't forget..." or "Many players miss...", as CME makes it pretty darn easy to tell what you've missed. I also generalized the teleport technique into the General tips section so that the details didn't have to be repeated every single place it was used. I did the same with the shadow step technique, removing pretty much every mention of it and directing readers to the Portal jumping project if they wanted to bother with it, since there are really too many places it can be used to mention them all here.

The final article is less than half the size of the previous version, and it should be MUCH easier for people to find actual useful information on specific areas. &mdash;Dr Ishmael 00:21, March 4, 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't like where the TexMod stuff is, feels like it's being "shoved down my throat," especially with the embedded videos. I would prefer them being links instead, and the whole section moved down. Right now it says: the first thing to do for Cartography is to cheat! RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 00:37, March 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * Ishy : design :: oil : water. So the embedded videos are a bad idea, that's fine.  But what's wrong with CME?  All it does is modify the fog overlay texture to make the edges a lot more visible.  To me, that's not cheating - it doesn't do the actual cartography for you.  It's just a tool that takes the place of manual map comparison.  I see it on somewhat the same level as PvE skills, which, as we all know, are also considered to be cheats by some people.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 03:37, March 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * It is an external application which users have to download, it is not part of the GW client and not supported by ANet. Thus I don't feel it's right to make it a central part of the article. It's perfectly fine as a suggestion further down, but TexMod has all the potential to be "illegal," even though this particular incarnation of it is not. You have to tread lightly here, imo. Even though you provided links that should contain a safe download, it is a false sense of security, and there is no warning of any kind about using external applications. If someone sees this and decides "oh, this is safe, it's on the wiki!" they might apply the same to other "external aides" to GW, namely bots, without fully understanding the difference. It's like using pot and moving onto crack. All I'm saying is that it shouldn't be the central part of this article, which makes it look like: "this is how you should do cartography." RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 09:24, March 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * To me, cartographical aides are not cheats. It's still you and the game in sync, and nothing helping you in between except for maybe a bit of green fog.  TexMod doesn't do the mapping for you, it simply makes it easier to map. --Valandil D 10:47, March 4, 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree, this is not a cheat. But being as Texmod is identified by many antivirus programs as malware (though I agree it isn't), it is indeed highly questionable to me to make CME the primary focus of this guide.  The false positive does present a valid security issue since it is even easier to sneak a trojan horse into that because so many users are used to ignoring the detection/rescuing Texmod from quarantine.  It should not be so cavalierly recommended without explanations or notice of the risks involved in downloading software so prone to being falsely identified as malware.  Therefore, I find myself in partial agreement with RoseOfKali:  the article should not have been gutted to this level.  While I did not have the patience for it myself, the oft-missed spots absolutely should be documented.  If you wish, do so in a separate article and link, but the existence of Texmod and CME does not constitute adequate cause for the removal of that information, especially given Texmod's particular situation with security software.  Nwash  [[Image:User-Nwash-Eyes.png]] 12:32, March 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * Disregarding CME for the moment, I still stand by the removal of all that fluff. Even a standard map comparison would show you a huge gaping hole where, hmmm, gee, ya think ya might have missed something?  Most of them could be covered with a blanket statement of "EXPLORE THE WHOLE FRIGGIN' AREA, YA DOLT!"  Any serious cartographer is going to be scraping through every area anyway, in which case they will inevitably find these "often missed" areas on their own.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 15:47, March 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * Also, I question the removal of so much of the shadow step/portal jump material. I can understand to some degree removing the areas where it permits mob-free exploration, but only seven zones are currently identified as being completely explorable with this technique.  Two pairs of those are linked as the relevant shadow steps are from explorable to explorable, so that really amounts to only five cases to document here.  There are also only six currently discovered cases where portal jumping is the only way to explore certain areas of the map.  The only one you decided to leave documented specifically can be reached by an alternative method (though not easily available to most players).  Let's add also that you removed mention of the technique from Monastery Overlook, which is accessible to many characters for, what, four days of the year by normal methods?  So, really, we have a total of eight cases where portal jumping can be used to reach areas that are typically inaccessible to characters and six where it's the only way, most of these not even documented on my copy of CME.  IMO, you were way top cut happy on this article; while many of the changes are definitely an improvement, I cannot agree with your reasoning on this point.  There are too few places to list to require that people check the portal jumping table to find them.  Nwash  [[Image:User-Nwash-Eyes.png]] 12:32, March 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * Unlike CME, I do consider portal jumping to be something of a cheat. It is exploiting a loophole in the game whereby you can instantaneously move your character across an area boundary without triggering it.  The only reason Anet hasn't devoted resources to closing this exploit yet is because it doesn't affect the game economy in any way.
 * I retained the note for Eredon Terrace because that's pretty much the ONLY way most players will ever be able to map that area. Unless I've missed where the alliance advertised "1k for a 1-day membership to map our exclusive area!" or something.  Waiting a couple months for Shing Jea Boardwalk is MUCH more accessible than trying to join Eredon's alliance.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 15:47, March 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * And the other cases that are only mappable by portal jumping? I mean, the reasoning here seems so strange as to be beyond understanding... exploiting a flaw in the terrain clipping is not cheating, but crossing an area boundary without triggering it is?  I'm sure neither was intended by ArenaNet.  Then again, there are only two real benefits to this "cheat":  roughly 2.0% of cartography across all three continents, and the ability to explore a few areas without mobs.  So, we're going to get hung up on a "cheat" that enables the earning of four solely PvE titles slightly easier?  Is that terrain boundary flaw in Talus Chute a "cheat" then?  I notice you left that as well, though considering that it leads to an end of the world, one wouldn't reasonably think that was intended by the designers either.  Forgive me if I can't see your reasoning in this case to be even self-consistent.  I'm not trying to make a personal attack here, but this smells to me of some peculiar form of elitism, i.e. "I did it this way, so should everyone else."  I don't see what place such an attitude has in the pursuit of noncompetitive PvE titles.  Nwash  [[Image:User-Nwash-Eyes.png]] 16:25, March 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * Alright, in the interests of consistency, I removed the mention of this from Eredon Terrace.
 * I consider Talus Chute and other "terrain clipping" oddities to be bugs, but you're not really exploiting them. You are still in the area as it was designed, with all monster spawns as they should be.  There's no monsters there simply because the designers didn't place any monsters there.  Portal jumping allows you to access areas as they were not designed to be accessed, without the intended monster spawns.  That is why its an exploit.
 * All of that is beside the point anyway - I removed the notes because we already have a separate article for it. If that article is designed poorly, then someone needs to fix it, rather than using this article as a scapegoat for the other's deficiencies.
 * As for being elitist... I earned my Legendary Cartographer without ever touching CME.  If I were being elitist, why would I try to "shove it down your throats?"  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 17:22, March 4, 2010 (UTC)
 * Portal jumping project is a project page that was originally started in my userspace. I moved it to the GuildWiki namespace, but others thought it was appropriate for mainspace.  It should be noted that I bowed to consensus than truly agreeing; it is never intended as an general informative article, but as a repository for research data.  It's akin to a drop rate article.  Thus, it seems your argument is for the creation of another article, or perhaps modification of Area boundary.  This still seems illogical to me, as the specific portal jumps in question are directly relevant to cartography.  Personally, I think I'll wait for community consensus on this definition of "exploit," for the distinctions you have mentioned still seem completely inadequate.
 * I apologize for accusing you of elitism, as it didn't occur to me that you'd split hairs that finely. Still, I fail to see the value in doing so.  Nwash  [[Image:User-Nwash-Eyes.png]] 17:39, March 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * Seems like it's time for apologies all around. I had no clue that portal jumping was "your" project (as much as any research project around here belongs to a single user), or that it wasn't intended to appear in mainspace in its current form (which I've always thought was a bit incongruous anyway).  All of that happened while I was on wiki-break last year.  Without that knowledge, it felt like you were the one splitting hairs with me for no good reason.  Now, your Stout-Hearted (if misplaced, as I never intended to attack it) defense makes more sense.  When you forced me to defend my decision to remove those notes, the most effective defense I could think of was to call it a cheat (since that was already on my mind due to the discussion about CME), which in hindsight was pretty stupid.
 * You compared the project page to drop rate articles, and I would extend that comparison to include pages like Nick's history, all of which are currently subpages of a primary mainspace article. It seems the best solution is to convert your project to a subpage as well, probably of Area boundary.  Then I would have no problem with including the specific notes (and even the instructions) here while saying, "Ongoing research is being documented at Area boundary/Portal jumping project ."  As I've already tried to emphasize, it was the presence of what seemed to be a more suitable mainspace article that most strongly influenced my decision to remove that information.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 18:33, March 4, 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the portal jumping project is pretty much how I got my start here on GuildWiki, starting with when I got into Monastery Overlook via a portal jump before the Heart of Shadow and Viper's Defense updates that made it so much easier (and hence the Eureka! moment when I read those game update notes). But the relevant point is the misunderstanding over the page, and as I already indicated, I agree the page is not really in a good place given its content and purpose.  I have no objection at all to making it a subpage of Area boundary, but since there is a link on the main page, I'll let an admin move it.
 * And yes, that means we have no other place where those few particularly useful portal jumps are documented in an easily accessible fashion to users not conducting the research, which was the core reason for this disagreement. (Well, okay, clicking the sort button next to the Xplor column twice does work well, but as a couple of those jumps are really tricky to pull off, that isn't the best format to inform those just trying to get cartography points.)  Sadly, I was arguing blindly against a misunderstanding I didn't see, hence our creation of this epic WoT.  Nwash  [[Image:User-Nwash-Eyes.png]] 19:27, March 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * I really dunno what to do with the main page. Personally, I've always thought it was odd to link projects directly from there, but whatever.
 * Since you're much more familiar with the technique and its uses, I'll let you re-add the notes about it. &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 16:44, March 5, 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, the link works. It just points to a redirect, but as I noticed last night, it's been doing that for a while, actually.  (And due to a brain fart, I forgot I could update the relevant redirect, so I wasn't stuck with making a double redirect.)  Nwash  [[Image:User-Nwash-Eyes.png]] 17:00, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

(apply screwdriver to indents) The 'main focus' (the guide starts off with what cartography is, immediately followed by CME) of the article, imho, shouldn't be an external application. It applies of course, but at the moment it's, to use Rose's wording, shoved down ones throat. Not a cheat in my books, but still a third party program that is not supported by ANet. --- -- (contribs)  &emsp;(talk)  15:23, March 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * Alright, I fixed it. Honestly, I'd forgotten that we had that 3rd-party disclaimer template, otherwise I would've included it before.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 16:02, March 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you. :) I'm sorry this turned so "ugly." I just have strong feelings against TexMod, and don't feel like they're unfounded. I like the current version. RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 19:34, March 4, 2010 (UTC)

Elona portal jumping
As per the discussion above, I've readded the portal jumping tricks (along with one or two other handy tricks I remember) to the article. Unfortunately, I didn't discover the useful portal jumps in Elona and only personally verified one of them. The descriptions of the portal jumps for Elona could really use attention from someone who has performed them.

On a unrelated note, I remember somehow exploring the other portion of Unwaking Waters by killing some sort of charmable animal there and teleporting to its location (but I forget what kind of animal). Perhaps that should still be included to help avoid cartographers in the Unwaking Waters mission? Nwash  18:33, March 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * I cleaned up the notes a bit, mostly by adding a description of the technique to the General section, thereby allowing the Specific notes to be more concise. On the Elona notes, I understand most of them to be talking about the inaccessible corridors between areas.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 20:59, March 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * Right, that's an improvement over my tired writing. I asked for someone familiar with the Elona jumps to look at the descriptions because, with the exception of Marga Coast to Sunspear Sanctuary, those are not easy jumps.  (When I initially tested those portals, I ended up marking them as not jumpable.  Others found a way to do so, and I never got around to verifying them myself.)  The instructions in the Area boundary/Portal jumping project may be too vague to be helpful.  Nwash  [[Image:User-Nwash-Eyes.png]] 04:36, March 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * I think that after scraping the Unwaking explorable (which you have to do anyway), the only part left to explore of the mission half is the very start in the waiting area, before the gate opens, so I don't see a point in jumping anything, even if it was somehow possible. RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 02:29, March 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * So you do get complete exploration from exploring both? I thought I got some exploration of the southern area by teleporting to the charmable animal that I couldn't get otherwise, but I could be misremembering... my Canthan exploration was a while ago now.  <font color="#660099">Nwash  [[Image:User-Nwash-Eyes.png]] 04:36, March 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, don't remember doing that in Unwaking, and I have the 100% for Cantha.I might check later, I have some chars who've never entered the explorable there nor scraped the mission start. :P RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 08:05, March 6, 2010 (UTC)

M.O.X. Tutorial Discovery
I just did the M.O.X. tutorial which puts you in an alternate form of Boreal Station in Eye of the North. In this alternate version, there are two routes blocked by a line of golems. Both lines of golems can be bypassed by shadowstepping using Heart of Shadow and your hero M.O.X. One leads to Ice Cliff Chasms. If you attempt to explore that area, you find that it teleports you back to the tutorial just a short distance into the area. However, the other route takes you through the damaged portal that you use the very first time you enter Boreal Station from another expansion. This allows you access to a very small area in and behind the damaged portal. I'm not sure if this area can be accessed via the original quest where you first come through the portal before it is destroyed. I know that after the portal is destroyed that you can't go all the way up to the portal and you certainly can't go behind it. I could test this by repeating the quest, but I am too lazy at the moment. Also, I forgot to check the map before I shadowstepped, so I am not sure if I added to my map or not and I have only one character in a position to check it anytime soon and he already did it.75.120.88.27 18:33, April 19, 2010 (UTC)Hrogar

Mapping The Great Northern Wall
"After the cutscene where the Charr break through the blocked gate, you can access the area beyond it to the north. Beware that the timer will still be running, so using a skill or consumable to increase your movement speed may be necessary to map the whole area before time runs out. Otherwise, you'll have to run through the mission again."

Your advice above is, I believe, not the best possible in a couple of respects. First, if you wait to the end of the cinematic (i.e., rather than skipping it) then you will have wasted all of that time which could have been used in getting well ahead of the Charr before they break through the gate (remember that they are forced to act out the entire cinematic even if you skip watching it). Second, if you wait to the end of the cinematic before moving then you will have the Charr right behind you and the only possibility of getting back to explore the Northern region from where the Charr came from is to take a branching path to the left of the main path to the Wall and then double back after the Charr have passed. This again wastes a great deal of time.

The strategy that I would recommend is to skip the cinematic as soon as it starts and immediately that your character is free to move, run back to the Mission area where you fought the final group of Charr and wait on that hillock, out of sight and agro range of the Charr army as it bursts through the blocked gate and then follows its usual path over the bridge above you and then onto the path to the Wall. Immediately that it is safe to do so (i.e., the Charr have all left agro range), leave the hillock and run under the bridge and through the now unblocked gateway. Beware, however, that although the gate is unblocked and open, it is still guarded by a small group of Charr. Do your utmost to run past these as even if you beat them in a fight, you will have wasted a heap of time dong so. The reward for following this strategy is that you can gain enough time (you may also need to employ a running skill) to get to the opposite side of the area (where you may be disillusioned to discover that Guild Wars is not the alternative existence you thought it was but rather only a computer game - see: http://i51.tinypic.com/27ystgk.jpg).

P.S. I hope this strategy will work for everybody, but I must, finally, point out what happened to me in practice when I used it. The first time that I employed the "skip" strategy I did so to gain extra time to explore and map the south western part of the Mission area. I then found that I started from the very same place that I was before the cinematic was initially triggered. I expected the same when I next tried to use the strategy to get into the northern area beyond the blocked gate. This time, however, I found that either the game, or possibly a mod, had sussed what I intended to do (possibly because I was moving backwards into the cinematic triggering area in order that I didn't have to change direction after I "skipped") and decided to make it more difficult for me by positioning me at the start of the bridge and facing south towards the Wall, meaning that I had to run all the way back around the square and back under the bridge to the hillock before the Charr broke through the gate. To add to the merriment (for somebody) a single Charr appeared from nowhere and attacked the rear of my party as we ran for the hill. Thankfully, we were just able to dispose of him and get into the safe position before the Charr army burst through the gate. There were no more anomalous incidents, but I would be interested to hear of anyone else's experiences if they try this. This is the map of my progress before my time ran out (you can see the unnecessary and very inconvenient forced diversion to the start of the bridge from which I had to run back): http://i53.tinypic.com/fom2de.jpg. Note that I would have got further if I had not stopped to take screenshots of the "end of the world" when I first encountered it. Note also that I had already previously mapped the western side of the area using your method.

Hope all this verbosity helps somebody. :)

KA 217.135.131.213 11:51, November 22, 2010 (UTC)

Anvil Rock
In the article, it says: 'There is a small area that can be cleared if you take a right out of Ice Tooth Cave. It leads into the mountains.' This needs more detail, please;  right where? Just out of the portal it seems, yet that does nothing. GW-Susan 19:14, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I think we can remove it. I don't think there are any spots in Anvil Rock that require special consideration (beyond the standard Carto techniques). (I've checked this wiki and GWW to see if there are any related notes; I can't find any.) — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 22:02, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Exact area calculations
Last night, I finally reached a milestone in a little personal project I've been working on for a while: I have calculated exactly how much extra map there is in Tyria.

1.43%, or ~700,000 pixels.

I did this by taking my ritualist character to exactly 100.0% using Cartography Made Easy (took a few months because I was also playing Fable III and RB3, and my gaming time overall is greatly reduced from what it used to be). I then created a composite image of her U-map and used GIMP tools to calculate the area of the exposed 100% map and the total area of CME's "master" map (around 9.6 million pixels). There's a bit of an error margin, unfortunately, because I had to redraw CME's border in a solid color (it looks like a solid gray but it's not, and parts of the Shiverpeaks are too similar), but the perimeter/area ratio is small enough that my results should be fairly reliable.

Next, I will divide up the map to get estimates of the individual zones' contributions. In the past, people have done this by simply watching their title progress as they explore an area, but those numbers are necessarily estimated to the nearest 0.1%. I can calculate to at least 0.01% with pretty high confidence, and I plan on adding this info to the new location infobox.

I will eventually do the same for the other campaigns, of course. &mdash;Dr Ishmael 23:23, 2 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Wauw, go ish! We love you! *squeee fanboi!* --[[Image:El Nazgir sig.png|Talkpage]]<font color="Green">El_Nazgir 23:25, 2 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Awesome sauce! The contributes to... data will be great. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 01:58, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Method:
 * 1) Create composite images of both a 100% map and a fully-explored map.  Use the U-map with the CME mod loaded.  Since running TexMod prevents you from using the -bmp command-line switch, I used GIMP's "acquire screenshot of specific window" tool to avoid JPG compression artifacts.
 * 2) For both maps, delineate the external boundary (and boundaries of internal exclusions) with a solid-color line drawn over CME's pseudo-solid gray lines.  Fill the "explored" areas with a solid color and use the Histogram tool to get the pixel count of these areas.
 * 3) On the complete map, use a 1-pixel brush to draw boundaries between zones, then use the same technique to the get pixel counts of each zone.
 * 4) * This step introduces a number of approximations, the most obvious of which are the decision of where these boundaries actually lie and how to shape them. I followed the game's own model for the shape of lines, using only straight line segments and angles of 26.57, 45, and 63.43.  (These angles have tan(x) = (0.5, 1, 2) respectively, and I know they have other special properties that make them "useful" angles, but it's been way too long since I took trig to remember exactly what they are.)
 * 5) * In placing the boundaries, I attempted to keep them equidistant between the "walkable" areas in the neighboring zones, so that the inaccessible area would be divided equally. For outposts that are wholly surrounded by other zones, I drew a tight border around the outpost itself.  For outposts on the edges, I extended the outpost border to the external boundary when it made sense that there was significant area that could be uncovered from within the outpost.  If people think this is a bad approach and I should just draw a tight border around all outposts, or even that I should include outposts as part of the neighbor zones, I can fix that.
 * 6) * For cases where a mission outpost is re-purposed as part of a mission zone (TGNT, Nolani, Abaddon's Mouth, Hell's Precipice), I assigned the area to the outpost (otherwise they would have 0 area).
 * 7) Count the pixels in the boundary between every pair of zones and split the count between them.  (This is why many locations have a total of *.5 pixels.)
 * 8) Calculate the % of each area in relation to the 100% map.

So while I can't guarantee that these numbers are perfectly accurate, they are still a vast improvement on prior methods.

Hiding the tables to save your scrolling finger

Tyria
Largest area: Talus Chute, 2.005%

Smallest outpost: Elona Reach, 0.013%

Average size of explorable areas: 1.193%

Average size of outposts: 0.084%

Elona
Largest area: Turai's Procession, 3.482%

Smallest area: Consulate, 0.007%

Average size of explorable areas: 2.483%

Average size of outposts: 0.179%

I think I might do EotN to completely finish Tyria before moving on to Cantha. &mdash;Dr Ishmael 20:40, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Dude, you are f*ck*ng awesome. And nuts too, but a lot less then you're awsome. Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 20:46, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Exact area calculations (discussion)
Unless anyone objects, I think Ish's exact area calculations should go into their own article similar to how we handle portal jumping:
 * An umbrella article, perhaps Grandmaster cartography guide/Exact area calculations.
 * The umbrella article introduces the concept and describes the methodology (in notes at the bottom).
 * It also includes an overall table at the top, showing the total percentages available in each campaign.
 * The umbrella transcludes the tables for each campaign. This makes it easier for people to view and edit the individual tables. (Although, unlike portal jumping, most of the edits will probably be from Ish.)

I realize that we don't yet have data for the other continents (and might not see it soon). Nevertheless, I think it's worth preparing as if we will have all the details (eventually).

Separately, I want to reiterate my compliments to the chef: well done, Ish. This is excellent work, with illuminating and useful results. Thank you. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 20:57, 10 February 2011 (UTC)


 * If/When we finish implementing the semantic-aware infobox for all locations (and create a separate one for missions), and get these numbers included in them, we can use a semantic query to generate the campaign/continent tables. There won't be any need to edit them individually.
 * Q: How do we handle mission/explorable pairs? Do we list the % on both articles, or only on the explorable?  On the one hand, it would seem inconsistent for mission-only areas to have a % and shared-area mission articles not to have it; on the other, many missions in Factions/Nightfall don't allow access to the full area, in which case it wouldn't make sense to assign a % to those missions at all.  Maybe we list the same % for both with a notation on the mission about the restricted access?  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 20:58, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Maybe we list the same % for both with a notation on the mission about the restricted access? &lt;-- Personally, I think this is the best way to handle it. <font color="#660099">Nwash  [[Image:User-Nwash-Eyes.png|link=User talk:Nwash]] 13:18, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Hats off again
Gz again to Doc Ish, whose latest satellite-image analysis shows that Elonian GM Cartographers have less (fractional) wiggle room than those mapping Tyria. — Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 10:06, 23 February 2011 (UTC)


 * "less (fractional) wiggle room" and much less actual wiggle room - 1.5% of Tyria is 140k pixels, whereas 0.75% of Elona is only 44k pixels. Elona's total map size is approximately 1/3 that of Tyria.  I suspect Cantha will be even smaller, since it doesn't "fill" the world map quite as completely as Elona does.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 14:03, 23 February 2011 (UTC)