Smithing Chisel and Acrylia

[Aenara]

Last year I gave up on trade skills. Tailoring finally got me. 150 skill and I could do no more. I left my Deluxe Sewing Kit in the bank with a smattering of Wu's components and was done. Walked away. But I remember reading a few months back when they changed things (nerf'd Smithing hardcore -- thank Tunare I got 175 on banded mail!!) and supposedly tailoring skill increases were more reasonable.

So I the masochist in me reared its ugly head and I've resolved to get the **** shawls done. I luckily managed to tailor my 7th with 159 skill (+Geerlok, of course!). But I spent an entire day solo'n in the Western Wastes to get 5 velium hound furs. (/bow Verant, thank you for Dire Charm and Brontotheriums!!) After a week on and off, I now have the 8 I need. I really don't want to lose them (and I have a hard time paying 700pp per fur in the bazaar) so I want to score at least another fifteen points in Tailoring. By the over-abundance of cheap Studded Acrylia Masks and a 200pp price tag on Superb Rockhopper hides, I'm guessing there's some acrylia in my future.

I had a few large bricks of acrylia to chisel at. Happily cruised around PoK and set about reducing them to rubble for fusing into studs. Well, my first large brick became small easily enough. But I failed making the small brick into two small pieces of acrylia -- which seemed odd. With a 175 Smithing skill and a 31 trivial, I cursed and shrugged. With apprehension, I tried reducing another large brick. Again, I get the happy small brick. But the happy small brick happily failed to become pieces. That's just silly.

I submitted a /bug, but I have little faith it will be looked at. Has anyone else noticed this or a similar bug? Or is there a Pristine Smithing Chisel I should invest in? I suppose I could be I extremely lucky at tough combines like the 7th shawl but unable to chisel bricks of acrylia. If that's true, I need to walk away from trade skills for another year.

[Cigarskunk]

Hopefully you're just having a bad run - with a 186 smithing skill, I still have a 10-15% failure rate on converting velium into the stackable stuff - maybe those combines have a higher failure rate programmed into them?

[Dunthor Warsmith]

Ah yes, taking a 7.0wt brick of ore and chiselling it down into two 0.5wt pieces of ore which a goblin has enough skill to fashion - the ultimate test of one's smithing prowess.

I've always had a pretty good rate breaking down blocks/lrgBricks/smlBricks, but it seems like most people do have an abnormally high failure rate Seems silly, assuming its not just a lot RNG fickleness.

(and shouldn't it go no-fail at 227 anyhow? I remember hearing the theory that the less-than-5%-failure-rate started decreasing at triv+100, going down to 0% at triv+200. That could be wrong, but it seemed reasonable from what I've heard)

[Calabar]

I was just messing around, waiting for the gremling runner this weekend and managed to loot some acrylia bricks. I decided to turn them into pieces to save room in my bank. I chiseled enough bricks to end up with a stack of 20 pieces and didn’t fail once with 189 smithing skill and a geerlok. Maybe I was luckier than I thought.

And I know for a fact that there IS a chance to fail at combines that are 200 or more trivial. With 250 brewing and a geerlok I failed one combine on a run of Heady Kiola (trivial 46). It was my only failure and I was making several stacks for Wu’s armor, so the chance is small but its there.

[Malodium]

Hm I didnt know there was even a chance at failure doing that, thats stupid.

Ive never failed at chisling anything down so assumed you couldnt fail at it.

[GraemeFaelban]

You definitely can fail, at 186 smithing, I fail around 5% of the time.

[Thicket Tundrabog]

I have done many thousands (perhaps ten thousand) of brick/block breakdowns. Most have been velium, but many have been acrylia. Historically, I would average a 5% failure rate. Since the 'trivial' patch many months ago, I very occasionaly fail, but much less than 5%. My smithing is at 212 without geerlok.

Thicket

[Malodium]

Hmm, that may be why I have never seen a failure.
I got to 188 on fine steel, which doesnt require anything like that, and I did shadowscream all the way to 250 after that.

I have been doing lots of brick breaking since while working on tailoring, but since im at 250 smithing I suppose it would be incredibly rare to get a failure.