Progressions and tradeskills

[solinear]

Does anyone know if the trivial levels for skills on the Progressions server (The Combine) is going to be adjusted to the appropriate (pre-expansion) levels for tradeskills? I'd hate to think that Banded, which used to take you to 168 (Cloaks) and was one of the highest end smithing items will now cap at around 115. I'm not sure what changes other tradeskills went through, but I'm sure they have all went through some level of 'adjustment' over time.

[Xenephex]

Does anyone know if the trivial levels for skills on the Progressions server (The Combine) is going to be adjusted to the appropriate (pre-expansion) levels for tradeskills? I'd hate to think that Banded, which used to take you to 168 (Cloaks) and was one of the highest end smithing items will now cap at around 115. I'm not sure what changes other tradeskills went through, but I'm sure they have all went through some level of 'adjustment' over time.

I can't speak authoritatively, but I am more than 90 percent sure that none of these trivials will be reverted. They are not changing basic systems, only tweaking some things on an individual basis. I believe the various trivials would fall into the category of basic systems.

In terms of other changes, there have been a lot, but the other major one was Fine Plate trivials, which got changed at the same time as banded, both of them at the time that Blue Diamond cultural was introduced. FP used to take you to 250 or close to it (don't remember precisely).

Besides the coding issues that would be involved with changing the trivials back, there are more fundamental problems as well, the biggest one being that everyone now knows what's coming in later expansions. There were really relatively few high level smiths on most servers at the time that BD cultural was announced, because old cultural was essentially the best thing you could make at that point, and while it was good, it wasn't great.

BD cultural changed all that. They actually gave us about a month of lead time on the change, before the trivials were reduced, but after the new armor recipes were revealed, and it was the closest thing I've ever seen to a feeding frenzy. Leather Pads went from 100 plat a stack to 500 a stack almost overnight with everyone and their brother trying to skill up before the trivials changed.

I always felt that the long-time dedicated smiths, who had already skilled up to 250 or close to it (as high as you could get then), got kind of ripped off by the early announcement. But the bottom line now is that you can't re-create the original server environment just by reverting trivials on smithing or anything else, because we have all had the opportunity to see into the future.

Unless, of course, they also want to make MQ blocks of ore non-stackable and have High Keep be the only place they are sold again.

[Gorse]

BD cultural changed all that. They actually gave us about a month of lead time on the change, before the trivials were reduced, but after the new armor recipes were revealed, and it was the closest thing I've ever seen to a feeding frenzy. Leather Pads went from 100 plat a stack to 500 a stack almost overnight with everyone and their brother trying to skill up before the trivials changed.

Not sure what server you are on, but Leather Padding has been selling for 20+ pp each on Tunare for 5+ years with little to no fluxtuation, however price gouging is common place on our server, if not even worse since the servers merged.


Gorse

[Qaladar Bragollach]

He's talking about what occurred right before the trivials on fine plate were nerfed (from 248ish to 188ush).

That was a LONG time ago.

[Xenephex]

Not sure what server you are on, but Leather Padding has been selling for 20+ pp each on Tunare for 5+ years with little to no fluxtuation, however price gouging is common place on our server, if not even worse since the servers merged.


Gorse

I think you may be mis-remembering. I started playing in 2000 on the Tunare server and made and sold something on the order of one thousand stacks of lps at 100 plat per stack. I was one of two major suppliers of paddings on the server at the time (the other one was Ginea, who may still be around) - we both sold at the same price.

I left Tunare for Ayo Ro and sold a lot more paddings there at the same price. I don't know what happened to the price of paddings on Tunare after I left, but I don't know any reason why they would have escalated suddenly.

I do not remember the precise date when the BD cultural changes were announced, but it is more recently than 5 years ago. Up until that point, 100 plat a stack was still the going price on Ayo. It then went up to 4 to 500 a stack and never came back down.

[Bobaten]

May and June of 2002 were the pair of tradeskill patches that brought out the Solstice Earring quest/cultural armor/smithing trivial adjustments. So, four years ago.

[Boleslav]

Funny how memory works sometimes. I did most of my fine plate smithing in 2001 and had a supplier on E'ci that I paid 60 - 75 pp per stack of paddings when he had them in stock.

I vendor-dived and farmed for the vast majority of my paddings though.

Boleslav Forgehammer

[Elfdruidess]

First week of May 2002 - introduction of Solstice recipes and BD cultural
First week of June 2002 - stats of Solstice earring improved to a point that everyone wants one

Then came:
1) nerfing of Fine Plate trivials
2) nerfing of original cultural trivials
I don't remember if both nerfs came in June 2002 though.

That huge leather padding rush occurred between May and June 2002 because (a) the Fine Plate nerf was announced and (b) people want to make the new BD cultural.

Also, it was the trivials of *original cultural* that were nerfed. Trivials of BD cultural remain the same to this day.

[Zacatac]

I doubt they would change anything. There is a pretty decent progression already in place now, and they wouldn't make an exception for 1 server. Info like that is probably global across all servers.

Misc. stuff : 0-90
Banded armor: 90-115
Ornate chain: 116-162
Fine Plate: 163-188
Old Cultural smithing (non-BD): 190-242

[Xenephex]

First week of May 2002 - introduction of Solstice recipes and BD cultural
First week of June 2002 - stats of Solstice earring improved to a point that everyone wants one

Then came:
1) nerfing of Fine Plate trivials
2) nerfing of original cultural trivials
I don't remember if both nerfs came in June 2002 though.

That huge leather padding rush occurred between May and June 2002 because (a) the Fine Plate nerf was announced and (b) people want to make the new BD cultural.

Also, it was the trivials of *original cultural* that were nerfed. Trivials of BD cultural remain the same to this day.

Very good. Would just mention that banded trivials were nerfed at the same time that Fine Plate trivials were.

[Elfdruidess]

I just went searching for the 2002 patch msgs. Sony's board only goes back to 2004 (or at least I haven't found anything from further back). But EQTraders News Archive miraculously dates back to exactly the Solstice / BD cultural patch of May 8, 2002.

Judging from the News writeups, it sounds like all the following changes made it to the patches of June 5 and 6, 2002:
1) Improved Solstice Earring stats
2) Nerfed Fine Plate and Banded trivials
3) Nerfed original cultural trivials
4) Introducing the ornate electrum/gold/platinum recipes

I remember the Solstice and BD side of those patches well, but not the trivial adjustment side of it. So perhaps someone else can confirm this.

EQTraders News from June 2002:
http://www.eqtraders.com/articles/ne...r=060000000000

[Xenephex]

I just went searching for the 2002 patch msgs. Sony's board only goes back to 2004 (or at least I haven't found anything from further back). But EQTraders News Archive miraculously dates back to exactly the Solstice / BD cultural patch of May 8, 2002.

Judging from the News writeups, it sounds like all the following changes made it to the patches of June 5 and 6, 2002:
1) Improved Solstice Earring stats
2) Nerfed Fine Plate and Banded trivials
3) Nerfed original cultural trivials
4) Introducing the ornate electrum/gold/platinum recipes

I remember the Solstice and BD side of those patches well, but not the trivial adjustment side of it. So perhaps someone else can confirm this.

EQTraders News from June 2002:
http://www.eqtraders.com/articles/ne...r=060000000000

I'm going from memory, but this is the way I recall it happening.

The new BD cultural recipes were introduced, AND it was announced (at either exactly the same time or almost the same time) that in the near future, trivials for banded and FP would be reduced. The time frame that I recall was about a month from the news of the new BD cultural to the time that the trivials would be nerfed.

What this boiled down to was essentially this: You are now going to be able to make some really good stuff with smithing and you have one month to skill up the (relatively) easy way. After that it's going to be a lot harder and more expensive.

The first thing that happened was that BD prices went through the roof. They had been up and down a couple of times in the past, but had settled back to more or less vendor fodder at that point. I will shamelessly admit that I made a killing by buying up every BD I could find in the first couple days after the changes were announced.

Then, people started figuring out the part about having one month to skill up and that's when padding prices started going up (I saw offers to buy as high as 1K a stack at one point). They hit about 500 plat and have more or less stayed there ever since, for reasons that continue to make no sense to me.

Things were frantic here on the boards (which were a different set of boards at that time). I notice that some of Niami's news items include her mentioning being 'fed up' with what was going on in some places on the message boards - I think because of the large volume of new users.

As to the timing of the pre-announcement, I still think it was a very odd thing to do, and I have always wondered how the devs felt about it in retrospect. If they had just announced the new armors and reduced the trivials all in one fell swoop, with no warning, it would have greatly rewarded all the old-time dedicated smiths. As it was, they rewarded all the people who already had enough plat to buy their way to 250 before the changes went in. I know there were a lot of people who got very rich in a short period of time after the BD culturals were introduced.

[Zacatac]

As to the timing of the pre-announcement, I still think it was a very odd thing to do, and I have always wondered how the devs felt about it in retrospect. If they had just announced the new armors and reduced the trivials all in one fell swoop, with no warning, it would have greatly rewarded all the old-time dedicated smiths. As it was, they rewarded all the people who already had enough plat to buy their way to 250 before the changes went in. I know there were a lot of people who got very rich in a short period of time after the BD culturals were introduced.

Well I consider myself to be "old-time" smith. And I was around 235 when they made the announcement, so quickly powered out those last points before the trivials got changed.

And you could not get to 250 on Fine Plate, it was 242 for the BP, same as the old world cultural BP now has.

Basically they scaled everything down a tier, and added new BD armor.

[Bobaten]

May 8 2002

Tradeskills:
Added over 1,000 new tradeskill recipes for all levels of skill, along with many recipe books. A few of the vendors of Norrath might be able to get you started on your way.
Added Mortar and Pestle to a Thurgadin merchant.
Rubbing Alcohol is now available from a vendor in Thurgadin

June 5 2002

Tradeskills:
Made some changes to the General Blacksmithing difficulties to make the progression in this trade skill more logical and to allow for more variety in that path.
Added more than 200 smithing recipes.
Enchanted Clay is now stackable.
Sheet of Fiery Metal, Essence of Fire, Imp Blood, and Fiery Temper are now stackable.
Enchanted HQ Ore can now be worked into rings, jointing, sheets, bricks, and blocks in a standard forge.

[Thalia]

Does anyone know what rules they finally decided to apply to this server? I could not find the information on my search of the EQ forums. Since tradeskilling is such a huge part of play and often interferes with raiding it would be helpful to know if you individually have to flag for all the expansions or if they open up when a single raid opens them. If it's individual then I believe it just to be a big waste of time since as a casual player I'll never have time to do both.