UO Cartography Skill Guide

Cartography is the mapmaking skill, and it is the gateway trade for treasure hunting in Ultima Online. To draw a map you need a mapmaker's pen (bought from NPC mapmakers or crafted by a tinker) and a blank scroll in your backpack; double-clicking the pen opens the cartographer's crafting menu. The same skill also governs whether you can decode the treasure maps that drop from monsters and chests, so anyone chasing buried loot needs to invest in it before they can even read the higher-level maps.

Train by creating local and world maps, then transition to decoding treasure maps once skill is high enough. Scrolls of Alacrity and Bulk crafting help speed things up.

Cartography's value shows up in two places: the quality of maps you can craft, and the difficulty of treasure maps you can decipher.

• Talisman Bonus: A cartography talisman adds to your effective skill when making maps, which is why the original calculator asks for both your base skill and a talisman value.
• Treasure Hunting Access: Higher skill unlocks the ability to read progressively tougher treasure maps, gating you into the more rewarding dig sites.
• Support Skills: Cartography is typically paired with Lockpicking, Mining, and combat skills to form a complete treasure-hunter build.

When crafting, each map type has a minimum skill and a success chance that improves as your skill climbs above the requirement. The craftable map tiers are as follows:

Reading treasure maps is what most players actually care about. Each map is labeled with a descriptive phrase that tells you its level, and every level demands a minimum Cartography skill before it can be decoded: