Canthan GMC

Is clearing The Jade Quarry absolutely needed to get Grand Master Cartagropher in Cantha? Please only respond if you know for a FACT, in other words if you have GMC and have not cleared the Quarry.

No it's not needed, but you'll have to map everything else really well.

Oofus,
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...032479&page=13 , post #257

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...&postcount=249

states clearly it was done without quarry

I was sure it was needed, but if it isnt.....hooray! I'd grab some guildies and explore at least some of it anyway, just so it's easier

so u dont rly need to do evrything? i mean there is more then 100%?

Yep, there's more than 100% (strangely). On Tyria, there is around 103-104% of the map that you can explore, to accommodate for bits that are REALLY hard to see, or if you didn't get the Arena zones explored when you could.

There is more than 100% on every map.

I think Tyria (without the old and current arenas) is around 102%.
Since I'm the active 'map comparer' in the Tyrian exploration thread atm, I think I have some knowledge on that one
102% is a lot on the Tyrian map, you are talking about getting GMC when you have a lot of Hell's unexplored (I've seen a screenshot) or a lot of Lornar's Pass, probably all (I have a screenshot at 100% with a huge part of Lornar's still covered in snow).

I'm not sure on the % on Cantha and Elona, but you can leave some bits unexplored and have GMC. I know that because I've seen the 100% Elona map of someone in my guild and compared that to my 100% one.
And I know which parts of Cantha I missed and still have 100% (the boardwalk area, for example).

You may also use this glitch to get around 0.5%. Ideal when you cannot get into the quarry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8XdLqZekv4

You must have more luxon faction than kurzick for it to work, is my experience.

I got 100% for Cantha without actually entering the Jade Quarry mission. I did scrape the town area though.

Tyria is much more forgiving. I got 100% in there with about half of the Arid Sea still uncovered, and w/o having completely scraped all of the desert missions. And this was with a Factions character.

I found Elona to be the least forgiving. While I didn't have to scrap the walls, I did have to uncover most of the Wurm mission in Salahja. That was a pain to figure out.

If you're in a decent sized guild/alliance, it may be possible to get together a mapping party for Jade Quarry. You need 8 people on each side to enter and they need to stick around to do it two times so you can scrape the base defense on both the Luxon and Kurzick side of the map. There's a finding a group forum on guru somewhere where you can probably set something like this up yourself.

Good luck, and keep scraping!

Its indeed possible without it... but life is so much easier with it. I spent a month finding my last 1% WITH the jade quarry. Though i got it eventually

not really. I and my guild are Kurzick and it's actually fairly easy. Just go assassin and add Death's Charge (or any Shadow Step actually) to your skill bar, Shadow Form also helps. Just go outside, talk to the Luxon Priest, and fight him. The Luxon Merchant will run around a fair amount, but after a few tries he'll actually run into the open gate. When he does this, just Shadow step to him. You'll be inside the gate with out actually going into the town. The gates to the restricted area will look closed, but you can walk through them, then just proceed as normal. I picked up 0.5% there, although I've heard others only get 0.4%. I'm currently sitting at 98.4%

Thanks for all the advice. Hyper.nl and ShadowbaneX(didn't have any Luxun faction), a special tanks to you two, that was more then enough to get the last 0.3% I needed. Much appreciated.