The Difficulty Level of the Tyrian Cartographer Title

I want to hear from people who have achieved the Grandmaster Tyrian Cartographer title. How hard is it? Wiki says that it's relatively hard because you have to spend hours scraping the outside walls of the explorable areas. The thing is though, I'm progressing through Prophecies in order of the storyline (I do all missions and bonuses in order, and I explore all explorable areas, but I don't scrape) and I have more Cartographer percentage than Protector percentage. Does that mean that wiki is exaggerating about the difficulty of the Cartographer title? Or will the difficulty increase as I progress through the further into the story (as in you start getting less explorable map per mission done)? I am currently about to do the mission Sanctum Cay. Thanks in advance.

No, it fairly easy to get up to 70-80% discovered. It is the last 5% that is a real killer to find. You will not be able to just do the storyline and complete cartographer you need to go out and explore. That is what makes it so hard, it's such a large area and there are so many small nooks and crannies to find. So as you get further, it will hands down get harder.

Well, if I just do all the missions (with most of the areas unlocked) and explore all the explorable areas but without scraping everything, will I get Grandmaster? If not, how many percent will I have when I completely beat Prophecies?

There's a *lot* of scraping, and hidden places (dunes of despair + Frost gate necrotic traversal tricks spring to mind) needed for Tyrian Cart. From just exploring zones + doing bonus + missions you'd probably be around 90%. Maybe more, maybe less. It's hard to say.

it's the fact that the missions do not have explorable areas, so some missions will require you to keep an NPC alive while you scrape the edge of a map (if you don't know a glitch/trick to not have too.)

For instance. Dunes of Despair. If you don't use the Consume Corpse/Necrotic Reversal Vamp Weapon Rebirth trick, you must scrape the edges behind the doors while also keeping the Ghost alive on the center throne. Yes, it is easy in NM. Bring a bonder and bond the ghost while sitting your bonder at the very top of the steps and you can keep him alive. (Did it 3 times and he never died, but it's possible.) As well as that, you are on a timer to kill and scrape the edges of the map in that mission, and there is a part of it that extends a good distance off to the side.

Also, if you keep doing Thunderhead Keep and someone always talks to the king after defending, you may need to consider running around the outer edges of the map on the keep to get those, as well as there is an alternate path at the beginning of the mission which provides a good chunk of cart %.

The good thing about Tyria is that it's easy. Yes, it's huge, and you don't need to map all of it. I never mapped the whole of fire islands (almost none of peredition rock), and I missed a large chunk in the desert.

In Elona? Sure, it's smaller, but you've got to scrape every little single RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing piece, and then some to get max. Tyria is less of a headache, so on a scale of 1-10, I say about a 3.

Speaking as a Tyrian GM Cartographer I would say that it is not DIFFICULT to get the title but it is extremely TEDIOUS.

You cannot get the title without a lot of scraping, and checking the hidden areas. (see http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Gran...tography_guide) When I finished Prophecies I had about 85% complete. I found it very time consuming having to go back and scrape, but it paid off for getting that last 15%.

Also there is a program called TexMOD which is legal to use and is VERY helpful in seeing the areas you still have left to do. I could not have finished the title without TexMOD. ( see http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guide...-game_graphics ). In fact, I had given up on it until i discovered this very handy little program.

Anyways...hope this helps! Good luck!

Cheers

I agree, I got all 3 cart titles and I believe tyria took the longest, only because there are no explorable mission areas (better get used to h/h missions to try to scrape the edges for the title) and its HUGE compared to the other 2. Like the other poster said, it's not difficult, just tedious. Yes, it will require days or weeks of scraping. bring h/h and just scrape, let them kill the enemies while you walk. Keep your U map open and use the red dots to tell you where you scraped in case you die or something. Don't forget the stuff in the middle of maps that you might not have scraped next to (mountains in the shiverpeaks and uncrossable sand dunes in the desert come to mind)

well you are by ascolon i assume and thats easiest place to explore because there so many quest to hep you there but once you get with high lvl npc its harders and the more you find the harder itis to find new places so you speed hours try 2 find 1 or 2 small outposts

texmod

its not hard to get, its just the process of going through the motions...
just like every other pve title to get

Agree with above comments: Tyria isn't hard, it's just BIG and time consuming. In order of difficulty, easiest to hardest, I'd say:

1. Tyria
2. Cantha
3. Elona

Even if you missed Ascalon Arena? I missed it, does that mean that I will have to get nearly everything now? Or is there so much extra space that even though I missed a low level arena there will still be extra space left over after GMC?

Lets put it this way, without mapping the ascalon or shiverpeak arena, and using texmod on the rest of Tyria...

I had saved droks run for last and i didnt have to map the first half of the droks run that i didnt have to map it.

I'd agree with the comment about the GM Tyria title being tedious but I would not have said that the Nightfall version was more difficult to obtain. Admittedly it seems that you have to scrape a higher pecentage to attain GMC in Nightfall but it is a much smaller continent - you don't even have to do throught the vortex!

Without going out of my way to Cartograph Tyria I find characters usually have around 70% upon completion of the game - and I would agree with the last 5-10% being the hardest to find. Whilst I never used TexMod I found it simple enough to find an online GMC map and quickly swap between that and my own to see the differences... they really stand out. Check the wikis as they have various tips and pointers for places people usually miss, although if your scraping properly then you won't miss them anyway

In Tyria, Mission #1, "Northern Wall", you need to explore the area of the Charr encampment and south of the bridges on the way back. It's missing things like that that cause you to return and walk walls in older areas.

I have title without arenas. I used the TexMod program.

I think Wiki is saying, in this case, longer = harder. Not the case. You just have a lot of area to cover and sometimes it can get tricky doing that.

Side note: I don't know about every else who has posted here, but I did all three of my maps without the use of Textmod. Agreed. I didn't find it nearly as hard as the Cantha or Elona. It wasn't that hard, just extremely long.

speaking as a legendary cartographer, i would say tyria is not hard. it is somewhat long, but still a decent amount of time and pretty easy. do what i did, when i did cartog, i went from right to left on the world map. i did each individual zone and used this as my system for every cartog i ever did. it's very easy and very effective.


in my knowledge of difficulty, form hardest to easiest, i would say it would be:
elona -> cantha -> tyria


in my knowledge of time consumption, form hardest to easiest, i would say it would be:
tyria -> cantha -> elona

all in all... good luck with your title.

~LeNa~

I didn't get the ascalon arena.

Common misconception. Cartography isn't hard. It's long, and more than likely boring.

Use Texmod and some cartography files to make easy work of finding spots where you need to explore. I recommend doing the titles with along with Vanquisher if possible, and possibly leave any unexplored area in missions for later.

Thanks a lot everyone.