Treasure hunting

[Bethany_lg]

I've been reading these boards forever, and many times i have thought about adding my 2 cents, but I finally got frustrated enough. For many this may seem to be a minor thing, but I recently decided to make a treasure hunter. I'm doing level 2 maps and my character is fine with them. She can kill the badies that spawn, and all is good. Except that every level map apparently can spawn in the same areas.
To get to the point, and this isn't the first time it has happened, I recall onto an island to dig up my chest. Bam, whoever was there before me left behind an ancient worm, a titan, a collector of souls, and a lord of the abyss. My baby treasure hunter is dead before I know what hits me, and I'm stuck on an island with no healer.
There may be no easy solution to this. If certain level maps had designated spots, so that level one and two maps couldn't be at the same spot as level 5 and 6 maps, that would help. Or if the spawn could go away after the previous hunter left the area. Just takes the fun out of the hunt when the beginning chests end up with spawns like that.

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

The easy solution is to NOT allow a chest to be opened or have anything removed while guardians tied to the chest are existant and alive. Secondly, apply the "snapback" code used on mobs in the invasion systems so that if they are led too far from the chest, they snap back to the chest.

In other words, force the treasure hunter to clean up their mess before they get the reward.

 

[MoneyMaker]

As far as the snap back thing, most monsters do wander back to the chest area. (seen this time and time again.)
I have to lead off the spawn one by one to take care of them. If I fail (and wind up monster kibbles) the monster envitably works it's way back to the chest. (making it difficult to lead off again)

What you are seeing is people who are marty nabbing. They dig up the level 6 chests (for those not in the know, they have a guaranteed marty in them) stay in stealth to unlock them, then appear just long enough to set the trap off.
They stealth back in and nab the marty, if it is one they want. (you can check out the contents of the chest and the marty pack without being revealed).
When they have the marty, they simply hide again before the mosters aggro on them, smash the chest and leave the monsters in place.

This is not the spirit of the game or the prfession which it represents.
It is marty farming, pure and simple.
It ruins other's game play and is (I imagine) time consuming for the GMs, who recieve the pages reguarding the monsters. (thank god they incorporated the stuck feature in the help menu, without the need for a GM to come get you outa there anymore).

As this has been an issue since the level 6s came out (and got worse with miasma chests), I doubt that it will be resolved anytime soon.
The only suggestion I can give for the situation is to add hiding to your template, and maybe stealth. (I know, I know, no room in your temp for that or not something that will balance with your temp)

Hope they resolve this issue someday, til then I wish you safe t-hunting.

 

[MalagAste]

I agree that the items in the chest should NOT be able to be removed unless you have killed all the monsters spawned.... That would solve the issue... And maybe when the chest "Despawns" from no one looting it then the monsters should too. I don't know.

 

[Zodia]

I think its time to change the chest locations. Treasure Hunting isn't Treasure Hunting.
Its just "Recall to the spot where we know this chest will spawn at".
Preferably add some sort of randomness to it --- and some new items in the chests as a reward for the increased difficulty.

 

[Warrior of Time]

I fail to see the value of making the chests random in a problem like this.

The truth of the matter is that the things in the chests are of little or no value except the gold and the artifact. Having luck don't help a lot. If there was something in there worth fighting over that would change things a lot. Who wants to fight for a few regs, scrolls, and gems. The rest is easier gotten by buying them.

Lady M or a dungeon pays better. Most T Hunters don't have the fighting skills to handle the spawn. Even the artifact is next to useless since they can be had for less than the insurance they pay getting killed only 1 time.

Most times they hunt the chests alone these days. If more than one goes what is in there to divide. Mostly because others get more gold doing other things. What there is in it you can get more gold killing dragons than any T hunter just grabbing an artifact and moving on. The fact of the matter is why do a chest at all if they get more gold and items doing anything else. It was not always that way.

Cutting down on the number of level 6 chests is not the solution either.

Some of the people I know run 2 computers to do one. One to dig the chests. The second to kill the spawn. If they are both in the same party then the warrior can then loot the chests. If you can kill the first 4 then a warrior can easily handle the others that come one at a time.

Lets face it. The chests have stood still as the rest of the game has moved on. The monsters that guard the chests don't have any better loot than the ones in the dungeon. Where is the incentive to kill them off at all.

I personally think the chests and the guardians need to be upgraded. Using 200 points to dig one don't help you kill anything at all. Those that have the full 700 to 720 skill points have a hard time. Try it with only 500 to 520.

May I suggest that a person needs to be a T Hunter before they complain about them. It may give them a different point of view.

 

[Uriah Heep]

Please don't put the bounce back "feature" on tchest mobs. Often that is the only way to kill them, lure them off one by one and take them on singly.
To be honest, I don't see why anyone would leave the mobs...the loot on them is far better than that in the chest. The chest is just the icing on the cake
Don't know the solution to this, unless it is to have the mobs poof say, 2 hrs after they spawn...

 

[MoneyMaker]

Lets face it. The chests have stood still as the rest of the game has moved on..\

Ageed, and signed.

May I suggest that a person needs to be a T Hunter before they complain about them. It may give them a different point of view.

I can not speak for the others posting here, but I can speak for myself.
I do have a T-hunter, and have used all 720 to make his template.
I do not have the luxury of having 2 comps to do one chest. I have to log out of my t-hunter acct., log into my tamer (another acct., standing near to the area of the chest), lead off and kill the monsters one by one, so yes I know the pain of being a T-hunter, but that still does not excuse the fact that other T-hunters are leaving the monsters behind (unkilled) and smashing the chest.
If they wanna get the marty and dash, well they should go back with another char, that can handle the monsters, and kill them. plain and simple.
As far as the loot in chests, well we all know that T-hunting has seen no attention for years, and might not see some til after SA, if then.

 

[Tom_Builder]

I've been reading these boards forever, and many times i have thought about adding my 2 cents, but I finally got frustrated enough. For many this may seem to be a minor thing, but I recently decided to make a treasure hunter. I'm doing level 2 maps and my character is fine with them. She can kill the badies that spawn, and all is good. Except that every level map apparently can spawn in the same areas.
To get to the point, and this isn't the first time it has happened, I recall onto an island to dig up my chest. Bam, whoever was there before me left behind an ancient worm, a titan, a collector of souls, and a lord of the abyss. My baby treasure hunter is dead before I know what hits me, and I'm stuck on an island with no healer.
There may be no easy solution to this. If certain level maps had designated spots, so that level one and two maps couldn't be at the same spot as level 5 and 6 maps, that would help. Or if the spawn could go away after the previous hunter left the area. Just takes the fun out of the hunt when the beginning chests end up with spawns like that.

I agree that recalling in to left over spawn sucks. One simple fix might be to have the spawn leave when the chest decays. But I dont want to see the way tmaps spawn changed. I think if the loot was updated people would hang out long enough to empty the entire chest instead of just grabbing the artie and recalling. I always kill off the spawn, it has 95% or more of the value.

 

[Maplestone]

I do all the maps I find and its a bit annoying to drop in on someone's left-over ancient wyrms (I do take it upon myself to clean them up, although sometimes I give up if I can't get the magical combination of successful attacks to finish it off a wyrm before it regenerates ... or I go pull up my tamer).

For high level spawn, I would use the green thorn / solen fifth-nest system: have a T-hunter dig a temporary hole that leads to a seperate cave (or cave system so there's some room to maneuver and hide) with the chest and spawn so that you haven't just left traps for poor low-level T-hunters.

I also agree that the initial four guardians should have to be killed off to open the chest (the L0 maps in ye olde Haven had that).

I'm not a fan of random spawns - I spent a lot of time assembling my (almost complete) T-map rune library and I hated hunting around for the right tile to dig on ... it was exciting once or twice, but very quickly became annoying.

 

[Harlequin]

I have to agree with most of the posters here regarding designated areas, it only helps part of the T-Hunting community.

A better solution is what a few other have already suggested - T-Hunters have to kill off any guardian spawn before being able to loot anything. Plus the chest can only be opened after the initial guardians have been killed.

These ideas should hopefully curb instances where people just grab marties and run. I don't mind killing left over spawn with my T-hunter, but think it's professional courtesy to deal with your own spawn and remove the chest when you are done.

Speaking about that, we also need a way to encourage T-Hunters to remove the chest - Maybe limit it so that players can only have 1 chest dug up at anytime. If they don't remove the previous chest or wait long enough fo rit to decay, they can't dig up a new one.

Regarding skills and monster difficulty, I think it's fine as it is - My T-hunter is also my fisherman, and I do not stone carto. Meaning I am down 300 points - lockpicking/carto/fishing. My other 4 skills are taming/lore/vet/magery.

Advantages:

1) No issues with being unable to provoke the last spawn
2) Able to solo lvl 6 chests
3) Nice to have a cu sidhe guarding/healing me when fishing. He's melee so no worries about having ranged attacks kill sea serpents 5 tiles away. Because then I would have to move my boat, I'm lazy.
4) Gives me an extra tamer to store pets
5) Also makes a good pack hunter
6) No need to do the de-code and stone carto thingie
7) Fishing gives maps too, so adding it to a T-Hunter makes sense if you when to cramp as much as possible into your character slots.

 

[Maplestone]

you can still dig up a chest if one is already there - use <CTRL><SHIFT> to distinguish them. (I have my runes marked just off the chest spot because I try to salvage everything and it often takes more than one trip to empty out a L5+ chest, I've only hit a couple of spawns in progress this way)

 

[Harlequin]

you can still dig up a chest if one is already there - use <CTRL><SHIFT> to distinguish them. (I have my runes marked just off the chest spot because I try to salvage everything and it often takes more than one trip to empty out a L5+ chest, I've only hit a couple of spawns in progress this way)

I mark my runes 1 tile away too, so that I don't get blocked by my own chests when recalling. However, I always get a message that says something is in the way if there's a unremoved chest already there.

I noticed that sometimes there's a second chest underground when I use ctrl shift, but I can't get to it. Are you saying I can just pick/kenesis and loot it normally using object handles? I have never thought of trying that! Great tip, thanks!

 

[Maplestone]

The underground chest seems to be an artifact of a normal chest and is inaccessible, but I have dug up chests on top of chests and been able to loot them by going through the object handle.

 

[Harlequin]

Photographer by any chance? I've only heard my photography-crazed friends use the word "artifact" to describe residual effects.

 

[Shelleybean]

Sometimes spawn is not left behind intentionally. This seems to be more problematic since ancient wyrms were buffed. I'm guessing that t-hunters are unable to kill them so they leave them behind. I used to be able to solo level 6 chests prior to the ancient wyrm buff. It's been a lot more difficult since then and sometimes I am unlucky and die. Of course there's not a healer nearby so it can take some time before I can get back to finishing off the spawn. I really don't see an easy solution to this.

 

[RichDC]

I havent got a t-hunter, unfortunalty much as i would like one...whats the point?

However, what about this for a crazy idea, Make the loot level of the chest multiply by the amount of spawn you kill??

So, if you do a level 6 and you kill 0monsters its a level 1 loot chest.
If you kill 1 monster its still a level 6
2 level 12
3 level 18
4 level 24

Mite actually make it worth doing, i mean that would mean 24k gold right? and i would assume an almost arty quality kind of loot.

 

[Warrior of Time]

Ageed, and signed.



I do not have the luxury of having 2 comps to do one chest. I have to log out of my t-hunter acct., log into my tamer (another acct., standing near to the area of the chest), lead off and kill the monsters one by one, so yes I know the pain of being a T-hunter, but that still does not excuse the fact that other T-hunters are leaving the monsters behind (unkilled) and smashing the chest.
If they wanna get the marty and dash, well they should go back with another char, that can handle the monsters, and kill them. plain and simple.
As far as the loot in chests, well we all know that T-hunting has seen no attention for years, and might not see some til after SA, if then.

If your running KR you don't need 2 computers, just 2 accounts. One to do the chest the second that can kill the spawn. You can party the two or rez from one account to another. Just remember you can only work one at a time since you only have 1 keyboard.

I kill the spawn since I have a tamer t hunter. In KR I put the way points for all the locations of the chests. That way if I am off by a location I just walk to the next one marked. The system is great since all you need is right on your maps. Mouse over a dot on any map it tells what the rune I should use. The system uses a alphanumeric system.

I still think they need making the entire chest and guardians worth killing. If they want what it has bad enough they will work to get it. They may even be able to aford paying others to help. They will then clean up their own mess. That or others will be eager to do it. Better yet make the chests hold things that can only gotten in one. (Useful things) There is enough junk in the game as it is. Add the right kind of stuff to them to have a mini champ worth doing.

UO/SA has a chance to add things to the maps that can only be found in a chest or SOS.

 

[MoneyMaker]

Thanks, warrior.
looks like I am gonna have to finally break down and download the KR client.
Heard too many useful things about it, not to have it.

 

[guum]

Treasure hunting & fishing used to be my two favorite UO activities...but, as someone said above, they haven't kept up with the rest of the game. I don't know if the devs are planning to do anything with these two activities, to make them more lucrative and interesting again (not just tacking on another marty or two to the loot table, please), but it'd sure be swell.