Make it so cartographers can bury treasure chests

This would require:
GM locking picking
GM cartography
GM tinkering

A player could bury a treasure chest, and create a map in order to find its location.

Limit it to 1 buried treasure chest per account.

A player with these 3 skills could roam around the world looking for other people's hidden wealth.

If drug dealers can do it, why can't we?

Am drunk disregard if this is stupid

That.....would actually be pretty neat and have some RP use as well.

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That is a really great idea.

If we also get the ability to create maps, we could get player created treasure hunts, just without the ease of using a
rune library. Could be great events.

I would so love to have a few cryptic hints and a map handed to me, and then I would have to figure out where that treasure is buried.

Would make for a crazy hunt. I don't see it being possible tho, but who knows. I'm just a telemarketer.

- GM Tinker&Carto&Lockpicker(&Detect&RemoveTraps?) can create 'a water-tight chest' and 'a hand-drawn map'.

- Double-click a shovel, target water-tight chest, target hand-drawn map: "Are you sure you want to bury the chest here?"

- Click Yes and the chest disappears and a GUMP opens with a blank textbox for you to enter your cryptic hints or whatever.

- Cartography or Inscription can duplicate the hand-drawn map and you can distribute as you see fit.

- GM Cartographer can double-click shovel, double-click your map to try digging up the chest. (Obviously Mining helps a ton here to expand range of digging).

- Hand-drawn maps and chests disappear after set time period (30 days?) to ensure not clogging up the world item count.

Anyways that's how I'd envision it. Would be an amazing way to distribute stuff for events, leaving the server giveaways, etc.

Yes this is great!

Oooooo I lile this !

Very much so YES!!

Alcohol helps the thinking process.

I guess I'll be the mean guy.

While this is a really cool idea from an RP perspective, there's not quite enough here to make a fully fleshed out system.

Consider:

Why bury treasure when you can store it in a house, and not be vulnerable to players digging it up?
Why invest skills in an alternate means of storage which is more difficult to recover?

The system has no benefits over traditional storage, in addition to no encouraging of player interaction to any real degree.


Now then, I don't want to completely crush the idea, so let me propose an alternative system expanding upon the original idea:

Players with [skills undecided] can choose to bury a treasure chest at some point in the world. A new item would be introduced. We'll call it "Ancient Platinum". When platinum is buried, after 3 months REAL LIFE time, any platinum in he chest is converted to "Ancient Platinum", which can be redeemed at 2-5x the normal value. There would be an upper limit, of course. We could say like 50 platinum. If these numbers seem arbitrary, they are. They're not set in stone, and my knowledge of the in game economy is not sufficient to assign appropriate values. I will say, however, that platinum and its associated goods are the best thing to tie this to, since it's based off the IRL passage of time, and adds a further incentive to members to be on regularly.

Now, where things get interesting. We would have different tiers of Platinum. "Ancient Platinum" would be at double value. "Very Ancient Platinum" would be at triple value. And "Extremely Ancient Platinum" would be at 5 times value. Except instead of switching after 3 months, you'd have up to 20 platinum upgrade to the next highest tier every month.

Example:
Month 0: 50 plat
Month 1: 30 plat, 20 Ancient Plat
Month 2: 10 plat, 20 Ancient Plat, 20 Very Ancient Plat
Month 3: 10 Ancient Plat, 20 Very Ancient Plat, 20 Extremely Ancient Plat


As you can see, this strongly incentivizes throwing a bunch of platinum into a chest and leaving it to sit for a long period of time. So how do we make it really interesting? When someone makes a map with cartography, and would receive a treasure map, there is an *extremely* small chance of instead getting a map to a PLAYER's treasure chest. But the chest is not completely random. Chests with only regular platinum cannot be drawn, and the percentage of a chest being drawn as the target is weighted based on the number of Ancient Platinum in the chest(higher tiers weight further).

Lastly, even with all these things, a player's chest cannot be immediately dug up. The cartographer can take the map to the chest, and start digging, but once the chest is reached, magical wards must be given time to diminish. ...which is a BS excuse to say after digging for a bit, you must wait 12 hours to come back and dig it up the rest of the way. A player who buried a chest can walk over that area and investigate to make sure the dirt is not disturbed(only the owner can see if its disturbed). So a diligent player can prevent someone else from acquiring it, but checking their patch of dirt like clockwork twice a day for 3 months leaves room for error.

It doesn't have to be platinum, by the way. It could be any resource of thing of value, really. But it would need to be something which could be aged in such a way that it gains a value multiplier.

Because you WANT it to be found, and because it's fun to work for things (or you have the skills already).

Your idea is cool, though it's gambling at best and a runaway platinum fountain at worst (when people figure out how to abuse it).

Yeah that's true. It would need to be coupled with a platinum sink of some sort I think.

Because from a player perspective, they're gambling on losing it all. But from a total market perspective, no platinum is being destroyed, only rearranged and created. It could be used as a secondary currency which CAN'T be converted back to regular platinum, but which could be used to purchase more cool cosmetics that normal plat can't buy. In that case, it actually does function as a platinum sink, albeit by converting it into a secondary resource. But since it is a one way conversion, it would still be a plat sink.

When I first got into UO I dreamed of being a treasure hunter and burying my ttreasure, until I found out it didn't work like that

If we can take a hundred or so tiles for a house then I can't see why you couldn't bury treasure, would be good for RP and player quests and the like.

For me it was not about storage, it was about creating adventure for others, and doing it without needing to bother staff
with it (I would prefer Chris to focus on more important things).

I would even like several levels of chests, so that you can make a chest that requires no skill to dig up and open.

It could be so much fun making "newbie" chests with the gear many are spoon-feeding them with atm.
Let them explore Ocllo and find the chest, dig it up and enjoy their loot. Much better than just getting handed a bag
with lots of gear, and in some cases more money than what is good for them.

Even I like your platinum idea, I am afraid it would be abused, those things always are.

Well, in my opinion i don't think it is going to be common for players to bury valuable items for other players.

I would think anyone burying treasure would be doing it for their own benefit, and of course, would be risking someone else finding it.

So, what if gems could be buried, similar to how a pirate would bury treasures. Over time, the gems could turn to platinum. maybe the combination of tracking and detect hidden would be able to discover hidden treasure (with a really small radius). maybe 1 screen or so. if you discover hidden treasure you can dig it up and receive either platinum, or gems that have not turned to platinum yet.

This way... if players are interested in burying treasure for others, they can. And, players will be able to steal each others treasures!

This could encourage people to make pure treasure hunters!

cartography
lockpicking
detect hidden
tracking
mining?
hiding
magery? fishing?

I don't know how new you are to UOR, but your forum account is new, so I will guess you are new in general (sorry if I am wrong).

Here on UOR people do a lot of stuff for other players, without thinking of any kind of benefit.

There are freesist parties, yes you could say that those holding a freesist party just needed to get resist themselves, but that do not explain
why they last for days, with great cost to those holding it (you can GM resist in a day max 2). What about casters and ressers?

There are hardmode hunts, there are fishing tournaments , there are fight nights and many other events, have a look yourself
http://uorforum.com/forums/player-run-events.8.

I am still to read/hear about an player run even that requires a fee, most are taking donations, but that is not a requirement.

So as you can see, its not about scoring a big profit, its all about the community, and we have one of the best there is here.

As for the platinum idea. nah somehow it will be abused, besides it was never about burying chests for profit.

As for the risk of other finding it, they would very very slim, since you would need the map, or be very lucky. Running around random areas,
digging random spots will keep you occupied for many years. You would get more profit by picking Cove cotton field once a day.

I cannot say what others have in mind for this idea, but for me it was for helping newbies without just handing them a bag of goodies.

The Player Run Events forum is full of, um, player run events, where prizes are almost always given away. People definitely enjoy giving stuff out as part of events.

I guess the treasure chest method could get boring after a few, but I think people could use it creatively. For example, the map clues could be somewhat vague or involve a multi-step process... or you could let yourself die with the map in your pack and let a looting monster (Balron maybe?) loot the map from you so the person that kills the Balron finds it.

I used to do something like that on a character I used to have called Dungeon Fairy. I would suicide myself on various mobs known to auto loot. Then later someone would find an oddly colored bag with various goodies and a book with a message wishing them a good day.

The Dungeon Fairy "retired" so, the position is open.

I think @Jupiter did the same thing too! I found a bag and a note of good wishes from... *sniffles*... from PAWS and it really ... *cries* made my day.

Other players hold spur of the moment events hiding things and giving tips as to their location in IRC.

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