One Hour One Life Forums

-- The short part: --

Hello! I am the first Cartographer, the one who created the first shack and the Content Town stone. I'm an experienced player known under a different handle. I'm posting this under an alias to stay as anonymous as I can.

I am taking my leave from the game, soon. I have had a lot of fun playing OHOL with all of you, but I am getting tired of the game.

I've decided to publish a guide to cartography so that others can enjoy the craft. I hope that cartography continues because it seems to have had such a strong and positive effect on the community as a whole. There is still toxicity, obviously, but even the most devious trolls seem to enjoy the shacks and atlases. Cartography unites us through shared experience, so I truly hope that others will carry the torch after I'm gone.

Cartography, and the atlas stones, have grown so large that I can't do it by myself and I haven't been doing it by myself for quite a while now. I know a few of the other cartographers, but many are mysterious to me.

Sorry, I don't intend to reveal my Phex/Discord name or who I am, ever, I will remain anonymous though many of you know me. This project was never about me and I don't want it to be. It's about all of you.

Cartography started organically, as a way to help new players learn to travel. "The Cartographer's Shack, a Place of Rest" was just that, a place for me to work on making maps where I wouldn't be bothered. But now, the shacks are important rest stops for people making long journeys, and a place to commemorate our shared efforts.

It's turned into so much more than I ever expected. Cartography has become a way to build the lore and history of the places we built together. Cartography is a humbling endeavor, but endlessly fulfilling.

I may have started this, but it's the community that brought us this far. I don't know who most of the other cartographers are, but I'd like to take a moment to thank them. Without the help of the rest of the community, especially the mysterious cartographers, this would not have been possible. I wrote less than half of the maps in the stone atlas in the image below. Thank you all so much for working on this with me!

The latest atlas has over 120 stones spanning from recent towns and monuments all the way back to Content Town. Not every town and landmark is there. And, a few way stones from older atlases may be lost now. There are simply too many places in the game and I'm very sorry if your favorite town or monument isn't in the atlas. But, hey, what's life without a little road trip every once in a while?

The other cartographers and I have left some unique way stones regarding cartography, never copied, dotted around the map in various well-traveled locations. The only way to read them is to travel east. They can be found outside of the small cartography workshops found in towns.

The atlas at Pickle Town was made by the entire town working together. All I did was collect the old maps by copying way stones and start engraving. When people saw what I was doing, almost everyone pitched in to help. Thank you to everyone who helped save the ancient maps that life. It was amazing, and the other cartographers and I were very grateful for your support.

Challenge for travelers: try to ring all of The Cartographer's bells. Another challenge is hidden later in this post.

Atlas at "The Cartographer's Base, a Place of Exploration":

It's easy to do basic cartography if you can live to sixty, but very advanced cartography requires knowledge of every skill in the game. So, this is a great skill for people of all skill levels above basic farming/cooking/etc.

-- How to be a Cartographer (The Journey): --

(The easier and more critical skills are first, more difficult tasks later in the guide)

To make blank maps:
- Get a round stone, sharp stone, two flat stones, a bucket of water, a bowl, a knife, an indigo, some shafts, and some hot coals
- Shave the shafts with a sharp down to short shafts
- Start a (small) fire in the middle of your work area
- Place the flat stones in separate tiles near the fire
- Spread out the short shafts around your work area, leaving two spaces open
- Use a knife on the short shafts to make wood shavings
- Use the bowl on the bucket to get water, then put wood shavings in it
- When the fire turns to coals, put the soaking shavings on it
- When the shavings are cooked, remove them and place them on an empty tile
- Hit the shavings with the round stone
- Use the bowl of wood pulp on a flat stone
- Use the round stone again on the flat stone with pulp
- Place the other flat stone on top
- Remove the flat stone, and the paper, and repeat until you've used up all of the shafts
- Fill the bowl with water and place the stacks of paper around the coals.
- Boil the water on the coals and add indigo
- Quickly dip each piece of paper in the indigo dye to make a blank map

The coals will not go out as long as you keep using them within sixty seconds. After that, they turn to ash. The boiling dye lasts about two minutes. Starting from scratch and using HETUW, you can make at least thirty maps by age thirty as long as you have enough shafts. This includes time as a toddler gathering materials and yum chaining.

To make pencils:
- Fill a kiln with kindling and light it
- Add adobe
- When it goes out, remove the adobe and use a basket on the kiln to get a small charcoal pile
- Take individual pieces of charcoal with your hands and lay them on the ground
- Cut the charcoal with a flint or knife
+ Extra credit if you put the pencil in a basket with a couple of blank maps in it for the next traveler

To write a map:
- Place a blank map on the ground
- Use a pencil on it
- Stand on the spot where you want the map to point to
- Say something that you wish to be written on the map

When you hold a map, it creates an arrow at the bottom of your screen that points to the map location

To make way stones:
- Get a cart (at least)
- Bring at least one map with writing on it
- Put a shovel and a basket containing a chisel and at least one mallet in it
- Dig up a big rock (the kind you make sharp stones with)
- Add the chisel to the dug rock, then hit it with the mallet
- Remove the chisel
- Separate the halves of the stone with your hands
- Chisel the halves individually
- Put the chisel and mallet back in the basket, and all items including blocks back in the cart
- Place the block where you want the way stone
- Add a chisel to a block where you want the way stone
- Combine a written map with a mallet and hit the chisel/block combo
- Remove the chisel so the stone will settle

To copy a way stone:
- Use a blank map and pencil on the way stone you want to copy, bring the map with you to your destination
- Place a block and add a chisel where you want the copy
- Use a mallet on the map, then on the chisel/block combo
- Remove the chisel so that the stone will settle

To create a town directory:
- Yum up as much as possible before age fourteen, and carry a filling pie in your backpack
- Get a horse cart, shovel, and basket with chisel and two mallets
- Get either a pencil and four blank maps, or four already written maps
- Engrave a way stone to your home town in your home town near the nursery
- Travel out of town until you see a biome-specific way stone (these are small, in a restricted biome area, and have a hole in the middle)
- Click the biome way stone to get the location of that expert village well
- Travel to the expert village
- Write a map for that village and engrave it's stone, as well as the stone for your own village
- Repeat for the other two family towns.

To Create a Cartographer's Shack:
- Grab a rope or bow, wear pants with a sharp stone in your pocket, and put three different pies in your bag
- Grab a horse cart (it doesn't need to have tires but they help)
- Yum up and hit the highway heading west. It's built by players one tile south of where the snow biome ends.
- Head west until you're about two kilometers west of the westernmost town.
- Make stakes from a shaft
- Select a tile for the fireplace. This should be at least six tiles south of the road.
- Place the stakes there, hit with a round stone, and add a flat stone
- Gather shafts with your horse cart.
- Make a perimeter with the shafts where you want the walls to be. The shack should be at least five tiles by five tiles wide inside (six by six if you include the wall tiles) with the fireplace in the middle.
- Make one short shaft for the door handle
- Gather pine needles with your horse cart. You will need one bunch of pine needles per shaft, plus one bunch of needles for each floor tile. Don't bother with baskets, it's faster to just use the cart itself.
- Add pine needles to the shafts that you set out to mark where the walls will be
- If you have a bow instead of a rope, use flint on it to get the rope
- Use the rope on the shafts with pine to make walls. This does not use up the rope.
- Add the short shaft to the wall that you want to be your door
- Swap each wall with the stakes, and hit the stakes twice with a round stone before adding the wall. The wall will line up correctly by itself.
- Put the stakes on the floor of the shack and hit them once with a round stone before adding pine needles
- Continue adding floor to the shack until you're in your fifties.
- Try to return home with your horse, or if you're too old, at least leave it in the shack with the door closed. You'll need to come back later to finish in another life.
- Return to the shack you made with a bucket of water, a bowl, quicklime, and two stone blocks. Optionally bring boards.
- Get a bowl of water and add the quicklime to make plaster. Pile round stones in the corner until you can't add any more
- Add the plaster to the stones to make a cistern. You can fill it with local water, or carry some there later.
- If you have boards, place a stack of two long shafts (shaved with sharp stone) and then place the boards on top to make a table in another corner, away from the cistern.
- Outside of the shack, place stakes where you want the bell tower, and hit them twice with a round stone
- Add both stone blocks
- Use flint on a branch to make property fence, and surround the bell tower base with it
- When the fence is ready (it takes a minute or so), finish setting it up by hitting it with a round stone
- Copy way stones from the towns onto maps and bring them to the shack
- Engrave the maps into stone like you would with a town directory.

- Each time you visit the shack, add two more blocks to the tower base if it's settled.
- When you can't add any more blocks to the tower, use an adz on a stack of long shafts to make a fence post and add it to the tower
- Combine two gold ingots (recipes available on onetech.info) into a stack and hit them with a hammer to make a bell
- Combine two ropes to make a lasso and add it to the bell
- Add the bell to the tower and ring it.

To Create an Atlas:
- Fill a horse cart or truck with blank maps, bring food, and a pencil
- Travel east to the previous cartographer's shack or atlas, and copy the atlas there onto new blank maps, or use existing maps.
- Try to make an extra copy of each of the maps to the Cartographer's shacks and to Content Town
- Bring the copied maps west and stash them somewhere you can get to them next life.
- Park the truck in the town's fence if you used one, you only need a horse cart after this point at most.
- Engrave the maps into stones near the shack, or in an atlas in between shacks if towns are dying off quickly.
- Once the stones are engraved, it's safe to leave the maps but it's better to ink them if you can.

Notes:
- Trust is earned, not given. This works both ways.
- Cartography is the art and science of knowing where to go.
- Teach new players who can already cook, farm, and make tools how to make maps.
- HETUW mod makes your life as a Cartographer quite a bit easier.
- Maps are ephemeral, they can be erased or stolen. Way stones are permanent, so always engrave your maps.
- It's okay to leave maps out once they are engraved, and you should, so that people can use them. It's easy to make new copies from way stones.
- Almost no setback is irreversible. The most that trolls can do to the shacks/atlases is to annoy you. So, don't blow your lid or give attention to trolls. Patience and persistence always win, and the mechanics of cartography are in favor of The Cartographers, not the trolls.
- Cartography is an idea. "The Cartographer" is only an idea. These things cannot be killed or destroyed as long as one person remembers them, no matter what happens in the game.
- Each Cartographer's shack needs a name. We use the format "The Cartographer's ____, a place of _____". Engrave it on a way stone directly outside of the door to the shack. This makes it recognizable and easy to find in larger directories or atlases.
- Try to leave a little bit of food in the shack every time you visit. This helps keep people alive when they are on the road.
- If you close the door and light a fire in the fireplace, the entire shack will be at or near ideal temperature.
- The bell tower is difficult to build, but you can make the bell itself in just one lifetime by being born in the desert family. Collect two electrum, two sulfur, four niter, two paper, four water bowls, one empty bowl, two alum, and two copper foil. You can hide the materials in the wilderness or just make the bell when the tower is ready.
- Search onetech.info for "Gold in Silver Nitrate Solution"
- The bell tower helps the towns trade with each other, and since it's within a few meters of the shack, you will know if someone rings it as long as you have a way stone to the shack in your town (you need HETUW to check coordinates, press G to see the list).
- Copy the way stone to the new shack as soon as the atlas is settled into ancient way stones, and bring it to at least two towns that are currently thriving.
- Try to keep the chain going. It's been unbroken since Content town as of the time of this writing, but don't get overly obsessed with it. It's okay if the atlas has to start over, and many of the old locations are impossible to visit now anyways, but the atlas serves as our lore and history in-game so it's worth preserving if you can.
- Try to copy the stones "Content Town, the Sprawling Metropolis", "The Cartographer's Shack, a Place of Rest", "We are stronger together than those who wish to destroy us", and "Memorial to the Mysterious Cartographers" if the chain is still going, as a high priority. This is The Way.
- If the chain is broken, don't have a nuclear meltdown. Ask for help from an experienced leader or the community at large.
- If, for what ever reason, it's impossible to reach a previous atlas even by car to get the old stones, engrave a new stone marking the beginning of a new epoch.
- There are more secrets in the East than there are in the West.

Cartography is a humble profession. Embrace humility, and it all becomes so much easier.

May your journey be long, for long journeys may be arduous, but they are the most rewarding.