TradeskillsFollow

I've been getting interested in raising some tradeskills on some of my toons. I'd like to solicit experience of other players in the best combines to do generally to raise skill levels. What I mean is I've been playing around with trying combines MUCH higher than my existing skill level, while using Draught of the Craftsman, which for two hours guards against loss of components when failing. My experience is somewhat contradictory:

I went from 160 to about 250 in both brewing and baking, working on a recipe with a trivial of over 425. That's two hours together for both. Plenty of skill-ups, sometimes several in a row, and regardless if I failed or not.

But in an hour working on a jewelry combine with a triv of 410 I got literally just ONE skill-up from 253 to 254. Bad news!

Maybe JC levels much slower than brewing or baking?

I think I'm going to use velium bars and rubies next time I burn a Draught, since the Velium Ruby Veil trivial is 282, much closer to my skill level. Hoping that leads to more skillups in the same time span.

I guess the question boils down to this: do other tradeskillers notice you're liable to get more skillups if you work on a combine with a triv only slightly higher than your current skill level? Or does that make no difference except in terms of how often you FAIL?

All store bought recipes, have a lower skill up rate. Most tradeskills seem to give the best skill up rate when yellow in the recipe window. But for JC, I've always went with stuff close to trivial to avoid as many failures as possible, since it's generally expensive. I've never tried really high trivials above my skill in JC to see how it would work out, but even moderately higher, 30-50 above skill, seemed to lower skill up rate at first until skill is closer to the trivial, and of course more failures.

Skill up rates slow down alot post 250 skill also.

Yther Ore.

For JC, gem cuts are the way to go. I just got my JC to 300 last week, and used gem cuts to get from the low 200s to 300. Was nice and easy, and not at all expensive. But not store bought. All those raw/uncut gems I'd been squirreling away for years finally paid off :)

Also, don't use Draught of the Craftsman for low skill ups (<240 or so). For almost all tradeskills, there are reasonable recipes to be found to get you to that level. Save the DotC for the end run, to get to 300.

I have been planning to get a DotC myself. Have tailoring and smithing left, both in the 260 range. All the rest I've done the old-fashioned way. Though, admittedly, I had an advantage in fletching, being a Wood Elf.

Tat

Just to put the DotC in perspective, using the skill up calculator on EQTraders, to get from ~260 to 300 with high stats (high stats increase speed of skillups), it takes ~800 combines to get there (on average, the RNG has the final say :). So, 800 combines in 2 hours is one combine every 9 seconds! And that's just for one tradeskill, just from 260-300. So you don't want to be wasting a DotC on lower skillups that could be done the regular way.

PPS - On the skillups... per data collected over the years by LOTS of tradeskillers, and collected at EQT (and also in agreement with what I've seen), the skillups definitely slow down as you approach 300. That last point to get 300 will take and average of 40 tries to get. For the JC that I mentioned above, I had 120+ combines at 299, to finally get 300. It's not unusual at all.

Edited, Jan 11th 2013 3:41pm by tatankaseventh

Skilling up in JC isn't bad now with the new world-wide drops of uncut gems (alexandrites, combine stars, amethysts, etc...). Just cut them. I think all it requires is a jeweler's glass and a gem-cutting tool in a jewel kit. Players often have stacks of them in the baz for 2-4p each, making the base material pretty easy to come by. Used to be jewelcraft was painfully expensive, but now it's one of the cheapest. When I made my current main, leveling up, I just kept every gem drop I got and threw it on a mule. By the time I was ready for jewelcraft, it didn't cost me a dime, and I actually made over 100k selling the results to in-game vendors (taffeites, prestidigitase, harmonagates, and staurolites sell for good money to vendors once they've been cut.)

True, true. But that's the nature of tradeskilling, from my experience. You (A) think ahead and bank all those ts supplies you find as you level up, (B) Do a LOT of farming, but mostly for the last 50 points or so, because there's always some recipe that will get you to around 250 that can be mostly, if not all vendor bought, or has the dropped component that is easily available (C) Spend a lot of money in the baz buying those dropped components. Because some of us will always want to do tradeskills, there will always be a market for the tradeskill items in the baz. And yeah, a lot of those components will always be overpriced. I make a habit of slapping vendors in the bazaar for gouging prices. /nod

Still, that hasn't kept me from dropping 100k on pelts and ore because I just needed enough for 20 skill-ups. /sigh.