Start digging up treasure chests then swapping skills using soul stones

After I find and start digging up a treasure chest while I have GM cartography and mining can I recall home before the chest is fully unearthed and swap out my cartography and mining with more combat and magic skills, recall back to the chest, and continue digging it up?  Or do I need to keep the cartography skill at GM so the t-map will continue to work?

Admittedly it has been a while but if I remember correctly once the map s decoded you no longer need cartography.

I know you dont need cart once you decode the map, not sure about mining even after the dig has started. Test it and let us know, I'm sure if it's possible the Devs will fix it in the next patch anyway.

Seem like doing it the hard way.
I just run when chest fully up, hide to brake contact then draw them off one by one.
I just have 110 archery with 90 tactics for fighting skills but still only need help with level 7s.
The spawn can be nasty all at once but one at a time is doable.

As for your method I'd have to try to be sure, but once you know exactly were the chest is you don't need mining to dig it up so it should work. (check out "Jacob's Pickaxe" +10 to mining and digging t-chest don't count as uses)

You do have an hour after digging it up to kill the spawn and loot the chest so time is not really an issue.

See you out there treasure hunting 

Miles Revelstoke 
Pacific

I do know that you can't move while the chest is being dug up or else it will despawn and you'll have to start digging again. 

Jacob's pickaxe has limited use for treasure hunters. You need 51 mining skill to increase the treasure chest digging radius from 1 tile to 2 tiles.  So unless you have 41 mining already, there's not much use for it.

I run 0 mining and finding the chests isn't difficult with practice.  I usually find it in 2-3 digs and very often on the first dig.

Dizzy said:

I run 0 mining and finding the chests isn't difficult with practice.  I usually find it in 2-3 digs and very often on the first dig.

What? How? I have 100 mining, use UOAM for assistance, and still usually have to try 30+ times to find a chest. Is there an EC feature that magically highlights chest spots for you or something?

Obuw said:

Dizzy said:

I run 0 mining and finding the chests isn't difficult with practice.  I usually find it in 2-3 digs and very often on the first dig.

What? How? I have 100 mining, use UOAM for assistance, and still usually have to try 30+ times to find a chest. Is there an EC feature that magically highlights chest spots for you or something?

Using Davies' Locker, you can limit it to a 1x1 degree area to search. 

That amounts to about a 10-15 x 10-15 step area to search, depending on your mining skill. Mark the 4 corners (use a mapping program, a sextant, the displayed location feature in EC, or the -where command of UOA to find coordinates) with bandages, etc. Then start searching the box like you were mowing a lawn ordoing a sonar search for the Titanic, starting on the corner the chest appears closest to. And, some people claim they can even match up maps with the EC map to be able to find the spot first dig with 0 mining every time - I don't believe them.
With 100 mining, you should only have to dig 3-4 times each pass, and make 1-4 passes (shifting 3-4 steps up/down each pass). For 0-50 mining, you probably will have to make 6-8 digs per pass, and shift only one square up/down. It typically takes me about 1 to 10 digs to find a map with 60+ mining and holding a jacob's pickaxe.

In the past when I tried decoding the t-map then swapping cart out I was no longer able to read the t-map when I was in my house but I can now.  They might have fixed something in pub 100.

The good news is my scenario works:

I was able to

1. Decode the t-map at my house
2. Swap out GM cartography for GM Inscription
3. Go to where the treasure should be
4. Start digging around with GM mining until I found the spot
5. Stop digging before the chest appeared
6. Recall back to my house
7. Swap mining out for focus
8. Recall back to the chest area
9. Dig from 4 tiles away (which eventually reduced down to 1 tile)
10. Fully dig up the chest
11. Begin blasting away at the guardians with chain lightning as a fully powered up mage.

<quote>And, some people claim they can even match up maps with the EC map to be able to find the spot first dig with 0 mining every time - I don't believe them.</quote>

Eh?  That's what I do.  I have the size of the maps set to very large in EC, and eyeball it against the radar map, lining up trees and rocks until they match (little yellow dots on the maps, outcroppings of rocks, etc).  

L6 and L7's were harder for me at first, the maps were so small and scaling didn't work.  But eventually I added these two lines into the UIVariables section of my character profile:  (they're essentially the same commend, but the latter seems to stop working and the first one I added only last week to fix it).  So yes, I often hit the dig on the first try in the EC.  

Of course, I've probably done tens of thousands of maps over the years, it's my favorite activity.  I have two treasure hunters, one used to have provo but changed over to Mysticism and Spellweaving, the other is a tamer.  Both solo L7's regularly.

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I have 90 mining but I don't use the co-ords for t-maps, I never use a Davies Locker either, I only store my SOS's in there. I match up the map with my EC map and then go dig it up. Sometimes I hit it first try and sometimes it takes a few tries. Of course there are always spots that take 10 minutes and seem to not be where you thought! My t-hunter has Magery and Mysticism, so I use an RC for the spawn or rather a few RC's! 

I'm too afraid of accidentally losing a skill to juggle soulstones, so I use a template that doesn't need me to.  I started with a mystic, using RC's but later added spellweaving with a vol 3 mastery, finding that a summoned reaper is better for distracting the initial spawn while I 'retire to a safe location' 😂 then clean up with RCs 
Full template is: GM cart,lockpick, magery,mining. 115 spellweave, 120 myst, 85 focus. There's a video on my youtube channel if anyone wants to see how the template works, google: May Kinoles making holes version 2 - map is a level 6 in Malas.

I usually mark out 10 runes for maps with the exact locations first so I can use a luck statue and do them all before it runs out.  You then can swap out cart and mining before you start going through your runes.  Taming with a mystic pet is the best rounded Ive found for tmaps, mass sleeps the spawn with no issuses.  Only frost dragons need seperating due to low cold resists on pet.

I dont have a davies locker but marking everything with 100 mining on the ec client is really fast.

I typically run a mapper with GM cart, lockpicking, mining, hiding, magery, and meditation. But I also multi client. I have him do his sweep, which is relatively short with 100 mining. As soon as I’ve found the exact location, i run my tamer over. 
I’ll dig up the chest, and use the split second delay to trigger hiding with my tamer off screen. Run up and drag off and take down the guardians. Then I bring a character with Packies through a gate and just shovel everything in and sort later. What I don’t keep gets unraveled or tossed for cleanup points. 
Has made me quite a pretty penny thus far, and I can solo even level 7s, though they can be a little annoying.