Guides> Exploration: in-depth

General
2024.05.07 6:28 PM
Chapter 1 - Introduction

Chapter 2 - Exploration spots

Chapter 2.1 - Nuia

Chapter 2.2 - Haranya

Chapter 2.3 - Auroria

Chapter 2.4 - The Oceans

Chapter 2.5 - Garden of the Gods

Chapter 2.6 - Custom Rewards

Chapter 2.7 - Removed zones

Chapter 2.8 - Future zones

Chapter 3 - Bonus info

Chapter 3.1 - Exploration Proficiency

Chapter 3.2 - Water mounts

Chapter 3.3 - Misc.info

Chapter 3.4 - Treasure Maps



For custom exploration spots, check out AR Exploration.


Introduction
This guide has an overview of all exploration achievements, so y’all do not have to search as much.
It can be used to:
  • check the exploration descriptions to gain hints;
  • find (shitty) screenshots from previous explorers;
  • read comments to sometimes easily find video (YT) tutorials or coordinates.
Disclaimer: this won’t make exploring 100% efficient. It is completely normal to spend a lot of time searching, or to spend time trying to land on the right spot to trigger the achievement.

Exploration tips
  • Screenshot the list of zone achievements to easily check off which you found.
  • Get a magithopter to reach annoying higher places or use the temporary crystal wings.
  • Get a striped yata mount to scale mountains easily.
  • Ocean exploration is the easiest with the help of a glider that has turbulence immunity.
  • Dragon Slayer’s Glider >> Red Dragon instance achievement
  • Feathered Dragon Glider>> upgraded Dragon Slayer’s / Kraken boss drop
  • Legendary Dragon Wings>> Black Dragon boss drop
  • Sky Emperor>> collection achievement magithopter
  • When exploring in a team, bring life lasso (Defense) to lasso each other to a tricky spot. 
  • Use the drop back skill from Shadowplay in case you accidentally fall from a high place.
  • Explore during events as enemy guards do not attack you due to zones being in peace.
Nuia
Note for Haranyan players: mind the guards in the Nuia Alliance Controlled Zones.
There are no exploration achievements in Miroir Tundra or Ahnimar.

Haranya
Note for Nuian players: mind the guards in the Haranya Alliance Controlled Zones.

These purple URLs have AR Wiki pages with proper screenshots, including full maps.

There are no exploration achievements in Rokhala.
Auroria

There are no exploration achievements in Reedwind, Whalesong Harbor, or Aegis Island.

The Oceans
These zones will be a lot easier with a turbulence immune glider like the Dragon’s Slayer Glider, the Feathered Dragon Glider, or the Sky Emperor magithopter.
Some spots will also require either a Dahuta’s Bubble, the Mermaid’s Breath, or an UBA.
For info on the UBAs check the Misc. info section.

There are no exploration achievements in: the Boiling Sea, Shattered Sea, Sea of Graves, Whaleswell Straits, or the Abyssal Channel.


Garden of the Gods
While the Garden is technically part of EHM, it has two separate exploration achievement sets.


Custom Rewards
Here’s an overview of the custom rewards acquired for finishing exploration achievements. For a spoiler regarding the Great Cartographer Notes check out the guide to annoying quests.
Great Cartographer effect

Removed zones
These spots are still attainable, however, they are no longer required for the custom exploration achievements mentioned previously.
Bonus info
Exploration Proficiency
While it is possible to use the hidden spots to raise the exploration proficiency, it’s not actually time efficient, same as raising sunken chests.
If you need something to help raise your proficiency fast, to e.g. be able to open shiny chests on sunken ships, consider the following:
  • Crafting recovery pouches
  • Crafting and upgrading keys
  • Saving up treasure maps and finding them in bulk.
Set this box in the folio to ‘exploration’ to see the short list of craftable items and their materials.
Pouches and keys can be found on the craft request board sometimes if you lack the mats but don’t mind burning the labor for someone else.
It’s also possible to make a second character, list your bulk crafts on the board, then relog to your exploration character to craft it in a jiffy.
Raising sunken ships also counts for a big chunk of labor use and therefore proficiency increase, provided you dig it up manually instead of using a submarine to blow away the sand.
Side note: there is only one proficiency title for exploration, attainable exclusively at max famed.
Water mounts
Submarines
At the moment there are six submarine mounts available:
The base swim speed of the subs is 5.5m/s, except for Onyx (6.0m/s) and Chrome (6.5m/s).

The Copper Steamfish Submarine cannot equip gear and therefore cannot be used for raising sunken ships: skills require the equipment to be usable at all, and the copper one has no skills.

The other submarines can have the following equipment:

The Reinforced Giant Tailfin has the following bonus effect:

The [Reinforced Tailfin Frame] is required for crafting the two tailfins, this item drops in the Sea of Drowned Love dungeon: it is one of the possible drops from opening the consumable crate.

Fish mounts
These are mounts whose main use is to move across water smoothly. They cannot equip gear and don’t have special skills like the submarines.
Fuchsiafin recipe

Other mounts
Unlike the previously mentioned water mounts, these three can be used on land.


A special note about the Mechanical Kraken, while you are mounted:
  • you cannot be targeted by enemies, however, AOE attacks can damage and kill your mount.
  • you can breathe underwater for 45 minutes, this buff is removed when you dismount.
The breathing perk is nice to have if you aim to raise a lot of sunken chests, and the mount is relatively cheap to get in the Manastorm shop.

With gear and gems on the legguards, the Mechanical Kraken and the Deathmaw will be faster than both the Aquestria and the Phoenix Phish.


Misc. info
Useful buffs
Use [Star Wings] to help with gliding around to find the exploration spots. This item grants a 30min buff that will:
  • Enhance your gliding by giving a speed boost on the burst skill;
  • Give a few seconds of reduced fall damage after closing your glider.
When participating in events, you might end up with some [Grape Soda], which is nice to move around that little bit faster. It also marginally affects your swim speed.

Diving gear
  • Swim Fins & Diving Helmets
  • [Leopard Purr Tattoo Bikini]-> a stat costume for underwater related content, found in the Marketplace.
  • Earrings-> For the accessories related to swimming, check out the accessories guide.
  • Lunafrosts
-> helmet frost: Flawless Waterdrop-> fin frost: Flawless Wave

To find these frosts, open the following:


UBA info
UBA is short for Underwater Breathing Apparatus, which is a pack you carry on your back that enables you to breathe underwater. There are a few ways to acquire and use one.
Note: You cannot use an UBA if you’re carrying another pack, say a Perdita Torso Statue or Delphinad Pottery that can be acquired from sunken chests.

Ship UBA
Most ships come with a variety of components when built, one of which is the basic UBA. When you spawn your boat, it will need some time to charge before it’s usable.

It is also possible to craft and upgrade this UBA type, to increase the base breathing time up to 35 minutes at Typhoon.


Emote UBA
This emote can be used at any time, lasts for 10 minutes, has a 20 minute cooldown before its usable gain, and it can be refreshed at the air cherries in Sea of Drowned Love.
This emote is acquired by completing 8 quests, and quest items to trigger these quests drop from elite mobs in the ocean. On the next page is a map with the names of the elite mobs and their respective coordinates.

To drop the UBAs, right click the back slot in the character info UI, or use the basic skill “Drop Trade Pack”, which can also be put on a skill bar.


UBA quest locations
Tips and info
  • The mobs are underwater, so make sure to bring a bubble to prevent drowning.
  • Do /target [mob name] when you’re close to the coordinates to find them easier:
>> e.g. /target Ghost Fyre
  • Make sure to loot the mob for the quest item.

Custom: treasure hunt event
Every Wednesday you can pick up 5 quests for the Treasure Hunter Day, from 3AM server time onwards. Below you can see the list of rewards for completing these.
You must hand them in before midnight as the NPC will despawn then. If not handed in, the quests will expire after their timers run out, even if they are completed.
The most straightforward way to complete the quests is to pick all five up at once, and then raise 16 sunken chests. Each chest will count for all quests at the same time, and 16 will be enough to complete the fifth quest. For every chest, you will need one [Recovery Pouch].
When using treasure maps for this event, the blue maps (rare) will not count, and there’s a cooldown between using the arcane/heroic maps, so it’s not efficient to use them for the event.
With the Sunken Ships method, 48 cargo packs are required to finish the 5th quest, which means you’d need to raise at least 3 ships. If you do not have the proficiency to unlock the shiny cargo, you will risk needing 4 ships instead. Overall, this is a very time consuming method, especially if you get robbed before you can deliver the packs.
For possible bonus rewards, check the next page.
Gold Pufferfish rewards

Custom: sunken chest rewards

An extra way to raise your exploration prof

Treasure Maps
Big belly fish are the best source for treasure maps, and famed fishing proficiency is required to acquire these fish. Reaching 230k fishing with buffs will not work.
This type of fishing can only be done in the Sunspeck Sea, the area around Freedich Island, and it has the same mechanics as bait worm fishing.
There’s a special chum needed to fish, crafted at Cooking Tools with shrimp and ground grain.
Each fish has a chance to drop a map of the three available grades: Rare, Arcane, Heroic.
An efficient method is to save up maps in bulk and run them all one zone at a time. This could be anywhere from 10-30 maps per zone. It’s nice to sort maps in a chest and divide them per area.
Below is an overview of a rough approximation of each zone’s coordinates.


How to find coordinates
Using the sextant emote is the default way to find coordinates in the game:
The sextant contraption can be crafted at a handicraft kiln with the following materials:
1x [Star Chart]5x [Starshard Ingot]2x [Iron Ingot]
The star cart can be bought at the general merchant on page 4.
Once you use the item, you can find the corresponding emote in the basic skill UI. Drag it to a skill bar for easy access, or type /sextant in the chat. This will show your current location only.

Custom: map coordinates
The AR devs have added coordinates to the in-game map to help out the playerbase, as the online ArcheAge maps went offline, which were used by many to plot coordinates in the past.
Marks on the map above:
  1. Mouse location coordinates
  2. Player location coordinates
  3. Marks to plot 4 map locations at a time
When zooming in you can plot your coordinates more accurately.
The mini map also shows your current location in the top right corner. If you’re close to a mark you plotted for a map location, you can look at the minimap coordinates to see how you have to adjust your location.