Treasure Map

A Treasure Map marks the buried location of a Treasure Chest, looted from monsters across the realm and decoded with Cartography before its grid can be deciphered. Maps come in five tiered classes — Stash, Supply, Cache, Hoard, and Trove — corresponding to the difficulty of the creatures that drop them and the Guardians that defend the chest. Each chest is also themed to one of five buried-adventurer professions — Artisan, Assassin, Mage, Ranger, or Warrior — which dictates its loot mix. Treasure hunting is the realm's most layered single-player activity: map drops, decoding, dig, guardian fight, trap removal, lockpick, and loot pull each lean on a separate skill.

The Five Map Levels

The post-Publish 105 (Spring 2019) treasure system collapsed the original seven levels into five. Old descriptive names ("Plainly Drawn", "Diabolically Drawn", etc.) were replaced with the named tier system that also describes the chest the map leads to. The full mapping:

Decoded maps describe themselves by their themed package — for example, "a tattered treasure map leading to a Mage's Hoard" — telling you both the difficulty and the buried profession before you ever dig.

Items needed to start treasure hunting:

• A Shovel or pickaxe (for digging)
• Lockpicks (or Magery for Stash/Supply/Cache)
• A Sextant (for fixing your position when reading the map)

Where Maps Drop

Treasure maps appear as loot on a wide selection of creatures at roughly 1% drop chance. The map level scales to the carrier's difficulty — Stash from Mongbats and Lizardmen, Trove from the Allosaurus, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Corgul the Soulbinder, Scalis the Enforcer, and the Great Ape. The full per-level carrier roster lives in the Authoritative Mechanics Reference below.

A few reliable starting points:

• The Guardian Room in Doom is an easy place to farm low-tier maps that always come out as Malas-facet maps.
• The "Witches Apprentice" quest rewards a random level 1–4 map. Run it in Felucca for a Felucca map, Trammel for a Trammel map.
• Maps drop as loot on the carrier, not in a guardian sub-chest, except for a handful of cases (for example, Hoard maps from most paragons appear inside the paragon's bonus chest rather than directly on the corpse, and Greater Mongbat / Dark Wisp / Lurg / Lord Oaks drop their maps in chests).
• Map facets are determined by where the carrier dies, with three exceptions — kills in Yomotsu Mines, Fan Dancer Dojo, and The Citadel produce Malas maps despite those dungeons sitting on Tokuno geography. Maps from monster sub-chests (Ilshenar paragons, Miasma) generate random facets instead.

Decoding the Map

To decode a map, double-click it. If your Cartography is sufficient, the map's tattered tag is replaced with blessed, and the dig location is marked — a single pin in the Classic Client, a red X in the Enhanced Client.

Cartography Skill

Cartography does three things:

1. Reads the map — minimum decode skill is set per tier (see the reference table).
2. Extends your dig radius — higher Cartography lets you dig further from the buried tile.
3. Sets chest quality at dig time — Rusty / Standard / Gold are rolled against your modified Cartography on the first successful dig (see Chest Qualities).

These thresholds use enhanced (modified) skill, not real — so Legendary Mapmaker's Glasses and other +Cartography items contribute. Cartography talismans, by contrast, only support map crafting and have no effect on dig radius or chest quality.

Davies' Locker and the 30-Day Reset

A read map's location is valid for 30 days. After that, the map reverts to tattered status and re-rolls a new buried location on the same facet the next time it's decoded. This is the standard remedy when a map's pin lands somewhere unreachable (under a player house, inside a permanently-blocked tile, etc.) — wait out the timer, re-decode.

The Davies' Locker (the Year 8 Veteran Reward) is the canonical treasure-hunter's accessory: it stores maps, supplies rough chest coordinates on decoded maps, and avoids the bag-clutter of carrying dozens at once.

Lockpicking and Magery

The chest's lock has its own skill check, separate from decoding.

• Lockpicking — high skill drastically reduces the number of attempts. A failed pick eventually succeeds, but spawns a Grubber that flees the corpse with one random item from the chest. Killing the Grubber drops your stolen item back. Grubbers can occasionally walk off with the gold bag or the gem bag entirely, so the loss is not always trivial.
• Magery — the Unlock spell can open Stash, Supply, and Cache chests if your Magery is high enough. Hoard and Trove ignore Magery completely. Magery can be supplied by +skill items rather than real skill, so a low-Magery character can still cast Unlock through a sufficiently-jeweled suit.

Specialty Keys

Two key items shortcut the lockpick step entirely:

• Skeleton Key — 1 stone, up to 100 charges, charges only consumed on success, insurable. A 100-stone stack of regular lockpicks can be replaced by one Skeleton Key. Each key is still worth 500 Clean Up Britannia points even with a single use remaining.
• Master Skeleton Key — unlocks any treasure chest on the first try, sidestepping the Grubber entirely. Insurable. Functions independent of Lockpicking skill, so a 0-Lockpicking character can still pop a Trove with one.

The character unlocking the chest does not have to be the digger, and does not even have to be in the digger's Party.

Remove Trap

Every treasure chest is trapped, and the trap must be cleared with Remove Trap before the chest can be opened. Pre-Publish 105 the trap was triggerable with telekinesis or absorbed by simply double-clicking — that workaround is gone. The character who dug up the chest must be the one to attempt Remove Trap; partymates cannot disarm for you.

There is no minimum skill to attempt Remove Trap — even 0 RT works on Trove — but the disarming mechanic differs sharply between <90 and 90–100 skill.

Below 90 Remove Trap

Using the skill starts a fixed timer. While that timer ticks, every 10 seconds an explosion detonates for damage, and at the first explosion (10 s) an Ancient Guardian spawns. Ancient Guardians are blue-hued, slightly tougher versions of the chest's normal Guardians; they drop no loot and must be killed before the disarm completes. The number of explosions and the eventual completion time are skill-gated:

A practical tactic at low Remove Trap: spawn a single Ancient Guardian on the first 10 s tick, hide or run out to the 16-tile leash range, then return to kill the AG before the final completion tick. Only one Ancient Guardian needs to be fought across the full disarm cycle if the chest is left to tick down naturally.

90–100 Remove Trap

The skill works like a Taming attempt: a single timer expires and either succeeds (chest disarmed) or fails with unavoidable damage and an Ancient Guardian spawn. Repeat until success.

The Safety Valve

At 90+ Remove Trap, every chest has a Safety Valve: a window of time after the chest is dug, before any RT attempt, during which no Ancient Guardians will spawn. If the initial guardian wave is dead and you wait the full Safety Valve before pressing RT, the disarm succeeds with no damage and no AG.

At Hoard and Trove the Safety Valve is long enough that experienced hunters work multiple chests in parallel — dig site A, run to site B, return when site A's valve has elapsed.

Distance Mechanics

Move more than 16 tiles from the chest at any point during the disarm cycle and the process halts (you can resume by re-attempting). This is exploitable — start the cycle, sprint to the 16-tile edge, hide and heal, then return for the final tick. The Enhanced Client's targeting distance readout shows you exactly when you're at the threshold. You can briefly exceed 16 tiles between explosion ticks; only your position when the timer fires matters.

High HP and 70 fire resist on the suit cover most disarm damage. Greater Strength Potions, Rose of Trinsic petals, Truly Rare Fish, and Firefish Pies all stack as situational survivability buffs.

Finding the Chest

Decoded maps show a single landmark grid; matching that grid against your Sextant coordinates and an in-world map gets you to the right neighbourhood:

• Enhanced Client — toggle Tilt Map on the overhead and visually compare against the treasure map graphic.
• Classic Client — carry a mapmaker's pen and blank scrolls, stand still, draw a local map, then use the plot course tool. Place a pin at each of the four corners; the lines cross at your position. Compare that intersection against the map's pin.

Digging Up the Chest

Dig with the context menu on the map (modern), or by double-clicking your shovel and targeting first the map then the ground (legacy). Do not move mid-dig — moving cancels the attempt. You may, however, cast spells.

• Failure — "You fail to find treasure." Step one tile and try again.
• Success — a 14-swing animation runs as the dirt patch widens, the chest appears, and the Guardian wave spawns at the moment the chest finishes rising.

The interval between swing 14 and Guardian spawn is the canonical window to cast Invisibility or Hide — staying alive for the first second of guardian engagement is far easier than tanking the opening alpha strike, especially at Hoard / Trove.

Luck

Luck is pulled from the digger at the moment the chest is created (the first successful dig swing). The same is true of Cartography — both lock in at first dig and don't retest if the chest is forced to re-spawn. Luck shifts the magic-equipment quality distribution upward by roughly one tier per 1,000 Luck. At 0 Luck the curve centres on Major Magic Item; at 4,000 Luck it centres on Major Artifact, with the distribution truncated before Legendary.

Chest Qualities

The dug chest comes in three visual tiers — Rusty, Standard (Metal), or Gold — determined by Cartography on first dig. Higher chest quality means more stackable loot and better-quality magic items. At 100 Cartography Stash and Supply almost always Gold; Hoard and Trove still occasionally Rusty even at 100 Cartography. Re-digging a chest with lower Cartography can downgrade quality but never improve it past the first dig's roll.

Chest Guardians

When the chest fully clears the ground, 4 to 8 Guardians spawn around it. Most are tagged with (Guardian) after their name and must be killed before the chest's lock can be picked. The remainder spawn as flavour — many are tameable (lions, tigers, panthers) and can simply be led off rather than killed.

Remove Trap can run while Guardians are still alive. Lockpicking cannot — clear the tagged Guardians first.

The full per-level, per-facet Guardian roster is in the Authoritative Mechanics Reference below.

Chest Skill Requirements

The combined decode + lockpick + Magery thresholds for each tier:

Lockpicking is capped at 100, and every 1.0 above the minimum increases pick chance by ~2% on a single attempt. Cartography decode minimums vary slightly (27.0–30.0 on Stash) and can be trained on NPCs and by repeated decode attempts on a Stash map. The "this map is too difficult to attempt to decode" message means it is not a level 1 map — you will not gain skill from retrying.

What's in the Chest

Loot is governed by four interacting axes: tier (Stash → Trove), profession (Artisan / Assassin / Mage / Ranger / Warrior), chest quality (Rusty / Standard / Gold), and facet (which determines themed equipment families). The general distribution:

By Facet

• Eodon — Dragon Turtle and Tiger armor sets, Eodon weapons, whips
• Felucca — original-era equipment; Power Scrolls drop here only
• Ilshenar — original-era equipment with dungeon-tier intensity properties
• Malas — bone armor, dragon armor; Necromancy reagents in Mage chests; Peerless ingredients in Artisan Supply
• Ter Mur — gargish equipment family; Mysticism reagents in Mage chests; Essences in Artisan Supply
• Tokuno — ninja and samurai armor; Tokuno-Empire weapons
• Trammel — original-era equipment

By Profession Package

• Artisan — axes, hammers, hats; resources, refinements, recipe scrolls
• Assassin — ring/chain armor, fast weapons, daggers (medium-heavy armor)
• Mage — leather armor, staves, wizard hats (light armor); reagents
• Ranger — studded armor, knives, bows (medium armor); boomerangs in Ter Mur
• Warrior — plate armor, maces, shields (heavy armor)

By Race-Specific Family

• Elf equipment — circlets, leaf armor, hide armor, woodland armor
• Gargoyle equipment — boomerangs (instead of bows for Rangers), leather armor, stone armor

Loot Tier Behaviour

• Magic equipment in Stash and Supply tops out at Major Magic Item — no artifacts.
• Magic equipment quality in Cache, Hoard, Trove is the same — only the quantity scales up with tier.
• Assassin Cache is the outlier: 24 magic items vs the 12 in every other Cache.
• Most legacy "treasure chest specials" — Skeleton Keys, Tasty Treats, Minor Artifacts — live in Supply chests.
• Reagents are Mage Stash; resources are Artisan Stash; refinements are Artisan Stash.
• Mysterious Fragments drop in all chest tiers since Publish 105.
• Legendary Mapmaker's Glasses are always exceptional and powderable / imbuable.
• A treasure map can drop inside a chest — when it does, it always replaces a scroll and is one tier higher than the source chest.
• Decorative coffin pieces are rumoured to spawn in Malas Mage Cache, Hoard, and Trove.
• Decorative and functional minor artifacts spawn inside a bright green backpack for visibility.

The full package-by-package loot composition table lives in the Authoritative Mechanics Reference.

Hunting Tips and Etiquette

• It is possible to dig, unlock, and disarm every chest tier with 0 skill in any of the four hunter skills — Cartography, Lockpicking, Magery, Remove Trap. The expected outcomes get progressively worse and slower, but nothing is hard-gated.
• Party size has a chance to add bonus magic equipment to the chest. All party members must be at the dig site when the chest is opened, not just on the party roster.
• Pull items one at a time when concerned — there is a per-pull random chance another Guardian will spawn. With a stacked chest it can compound.
• If an item refuses to come out of an open chest, step around the chest or have a partymate pull it. Anyone in the digger's Party can pull from an open chest.
• When the chest is empty, destroy it — strike it with an axe or use the context menu. This is etiquette: the chest's tile is no longer claimed by the spawn, so the next hunter whose map points to the same coordinates can dig immediately rather than waiting for the chest's natural decay.
• Don't leave Guardian monsters wandering. Other treasure hunters and nearby house-owners do not appreciate being ambushed.
• Dispel summoned creatures before leaving — frees control slots for the next dig.

Inaccessible Chest Locations

A decoded map's pin can land somewhere undiggable — under a player house, on a static blocked tile, inside an inaccessible dungeon corridor. Discard nothing. The decoded location resets after 30 days: the map flips back to tattered status, and the next decode rolls a fresh location on the same facet. Storing slow-rolling unreachable maps in a Davies' Locker is the standard workaround.

Notes and Patch History

• Publish 105 (Spring 2019) was the foundational rewrite: 7 levels collapsed to 5, profession packages added, chest quality (Rusty / Metal / Gold) introduced, telekinesis-trap-trigger removed (Remove Trap is now mandatory), Cartography took over the dig-radius role from Mining.
• Publish 97 (April 2017) — first treasure-system overhaul: Mining no longer needed, intermediate ruleset for cartography vs lockpick.
• Publish 67 (August 2010) randomised map locations. Pre-Pub-67 maps spawned only in Trammel and Felucca, which is why surviving pre-67 Ilshenar maps carry an Artifact Rarity 0 tag. Mining was the dig-radius skill before this rebuild.
• A 30-day decoded-map timer means even a 2014-vintage stack of unread maps you found in a chest can still be dug up today.
• There are 60 different kinds of Surge Shield, 18 different kinds of Mana Phasing Orb, and 2 different kinds of Runed Sash of Warding that can drop from chests.

Authoritative Mechanics Reference

The tables below transcribe Broadsword's official treasure system reference into one place — canonical decode/lockpick thresholds, full per-level monster carrier rosters, per-facet Guardian rosters, the per-package loot composition introduced in Publish 105, and Clean Up Britannia point values. Use this section as the authoritative lookup when planning a hunt or auditing chest content.

Decoding Skill (Canonical)

Lockpick & Magery (Canonical)

Map-Carrying Monsters by Level

Drop chance is approximately 1% on the listed creatures (some Eodon creatures may roll a different level depending on individual strength — they appear in both lists where applicable).

Level 1 — Stash: Agapite Elemental, Air Elemental, Bronze Elemental, Anchisaur, Archaeosaurus, Cave Troll (Shame), Copper Elemental, Dark Guardian, Desert Scorpion, Dull Copper Elemental, Earth Elemental, Enraged Earth Elemental, Enslaved Gargoyle, Enslaved Gray Goblin, Enslaved Green Goblin, Ettin, Evil Mage, Fire Gargoyle, Frost Troll, Gallusarus, Gargoyle, Gazer, Golden Elemental, Greater Earth Elemental, Eodon Britannian, Eodon Tribesperson (Warrior), Greater Mongbat (in chest), Lion, Lizardman, Molten Earth Elemental, Mud Elemental, Mummy, Myrmidex Drone, Myrmidex Warrior, Ogre, Ophidian Enforcer, Ophidian Warrior, Orc, Orcish Lord, Orcish Mage, Quartz Elemental, Sabre-toothed Tiger, Sea Serpent, Shadow Iron Elemental, Soulbound Apprentice Mage, Strange Gazer, Terathan Warrior, Triceratops, Troll, Valorite Elemental, Verite Elemental, Vicious Macaw, Wild Tiger.

Level 2 — Supply: Acid Elemental, Anlorlem, Arctic Ogre Lord, Battle Mage, Bound Soul, Cave Troll (Wrong), Clan Scratch Scrounger, Cold Drake, Corrupted Mage, Crystal Sea Serpent, Cyclopean Warrior, Dark Guardian, Deep Sea Serpent, Drake, Eodon Tribesperson (Shaman), Evil Mage Lord, Fairy Dragon, Fan Dancer, Fezzik the Ogre Cook, Fire Ant, Fire Elemental, Flame Elemental, Juka Mage, Kappa, Lesser Hiryu, Lich, Lizardman Defender, Lizardman Squatter, Meer Mage, Minotaur, Minotaur Captain, Minotaur Scout, Myrmidex Warrior, Najasaurus, Ogre Lord, Ophidian Apprentice Mage, Ophidian Avenger, Ophidian Justicar, Ophidian Knight-Errant, Ophidian Shaman, Ophidian Zealot, Pirate, Raptor, Ratman Mage, Reaper, Restless Soul, Revenant Lion, Saurosaurus, Sea Serpent, Slith, Snow Elemental, Soulbound Spell Slinger, Stone Elemental, Stone Gargoyle, Terathan Avenger, Trapdoor Spider, Triceratops, Troglodyte, Tsuki Wolf, Vile Drake (Belfry), Vile Mage, Volcano Elemental, Water Elemental, Wanderer of the Void, Wyvern, Yomotsu Warrior. Plus paragon chests of any creature in the Stash list.

Level 3 — Cache: Abscess, Ancient Lich, Ancient Wyrm, Archdemon, Balron, Betrayer, Blood Elemental, Crystal Hydra, Crystal Lattice Seeker, Cu Sidhe, Daemon, Dark Wisp (in chest), Devourer of Souls, Dimetrosaur, Diseased Blood Elemental, Djinn, Dragon, Dragon Turtle, Eodon Tribesperson (Shaman), Eodon Tribesperson (Chieftain/ess), Efreet, Elder Gazer, Eternal Gazer, Ethereal Warrior, Fire Daemon, Forgotten Servant, Frost Dragon, Greater Dragon, Greater Poison Elemental, Grim, Hiryu, Homunculus, Hydra, Ice Fiend, Infernus, Interred Grizzle, Kraken, Lava Elemental, Leviathan, Lich Lord, Lifestealer, Lord Oaks (in chest), Lurg (in chest), Master Theophilus, Meer Eternal, Meraktus the Tormented, Mephitis, Miasma, Minion of Scelestus, Minotaur General, Monstrous Interred Grizzle, Navrey Nighteyes, Neira the Necromancer, Night Terror, Oni, Ophidian Matriarch, Pestilent Bandage, Pit Fiend, Pixie (Renowned), Poison Elemental, Putrefier, Ravager, Rend, Reptalon, Rikktor, Rotting Corpse, Sand Vortex, Saurosaurus, Semidar, Serado the Awakened, Serpentine Dragon, Shadow Wyrm, Shimmering Effusion, Silvani, Skeletal Dragon, Skeletal Drake, Stygian Dragon, Succubus, Szavetra, Terathan Matriarch, Titan, The Piper, Tormented Minotaur, Travesty, Unfrozen Mummy, Wanderer of the Void, White Wyrm, Wight, Yamandon, Yomotsu Elder, Yomutsu Priest. Plus paragon chests of any Supply-list creature.

Level 4 — Hoard: Dimetrosaur, Paragon: Ancient Wyrm, Balron, Betrayer, Blood Elemental, Ethereal Warrior, Greater Dragon, Meer Eternal, Poison Elemental, Rotting Corpse, Skeletal Dragon, Succubus, Titan. Plus the chest-only set: Miasma, Pyre, Rend, Abscess, Putrefier, Master Theophilus, Stygian Dragon. (Map appears inside a sub-chest on the corpse, except for Dimetrosaur which drops it directly.)

Level 5 — Trove: Allosaurus, Corgul the Soulbinder, Scalis the Enforcer, The Great Ape, Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Chest Guardians by Level and Facet

The opening Guardian wave on a fresh dig spawns 4–8 creatures from these rosters. Names in (parentheses) are non-Guardian flavour spawn — tameable, non-blocking. The same lists apply to Ancient Guardian spawns during Remove Trap.

Level 1 — Stash

Level 2 — Supply

Level 3 — Cache

Level 4 — Hoard

Level 5 — Trove

Loot Composition by Profession Package

Every chest contains gold and gems in dedicated bags. Beyond that, the loot pool is gated by (profession × tier) with facet shaping the equipment family. The full matrix:

Notes on the Power Scroll axis:

• Skill rolled is governed by package — Blacksmithy from Artisan, Poisoning from Assassin, Magery from Mage, Archery from Ranger, Swordsmanship from Warrior (etc.; the package's themed skill family).
• Power Scroll value (+5/+10/+15/+20) scales with chest quality — Gold chests can roll up to +20.
• Felucca Artisan chests do not contain Power Scrolls — Artisan Power Scrolls are sourced elsewhere.
• Scrolls of Transcendence are worth more Cleanup Britannia points in Felucca than on safe facets.

Clean Up Britannia Point Values

Treasure maps — whether tattered (undecoded), blessed (decoded), or fully completed — can all be turned in at any Clean Up Britannia NPC for points:

A used Skeleton Key — even one with a single charge remaining — is worth 500 points. Don't leave completed maps on the ground after a hunt; turn them in. Completed maps can also be combined into a Tattered Wall Map decoration (see Cartography).

See Also

• Treasure Chest — the dug artifact and its mechanics
• Cartography — the parent skill
• Lockpicking — for opening the chest
• Remove Trap — for disarming the trap
• Davies' Locker — Year 8 Veteran Reward, the treasure-hunter's accessory
• Skeleton Key and Master Skeleton Key — lockpick shortcuts
• Treasure Map Spawn — alternate spawn lists
• Artifacts (Treasure Map) — the minor artifact roster
• Publish 105 — the foundational treasure-system rewrite
• Cleanup Britannia — turn-in point system