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 (location) 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)
 * 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)

(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)