A small(?) baking rant.

[Calabar]

I believe I understand where you’re coming from, and to a degree you have a point. There are certainly more baking recipes for foraging classes then there are for non-foraging classes. But I’ve never seen this as a problem, but more just a fact of EQ life. I hope that didn’t come off as flippant as I’m afraid it did. *grins*

If you ignore brewing, every trade skill has some kind of hurdle characters have to jump in order to pursue that skill. Some skills have higher hurdles than others and multiple hurdles are not uncommon. It’s frustrating for those of us who would like to accomplish something alone instead of in a group. But that's just the way it is. My tailoring is stuck at 131 at the moment because I don’t have the money I need to buy stack after stack of viscous manna for Wu’s armor. My smithing is stuck at 188 because I have yet to find a way to farm more than 10 swirling shadows in two hours time, assuming the mobs aren’t camped in the first place. And 5 combines for two hours work is just too frustrating to deal with at the moment. I’ve yet to start jewelcraft because of the cost for a non enchanter.

I realize these are not all the same issues, but the point is we all have hurdles we have to overcome if we wish to pursue our oh so addictive trade skills. Though not nearly as easy as brewing, baking is not terribly hard for any class to pursue, assuming the player can stand to do sub combine after sub combine after sub combine… Baking to 191 is extremely simple and fairly cheap even for low-level characters. After 191, for non-foraging characters, Halas Pies are a feasible way to go. They require no foraged items whatsoever. Eggs can be hunted from snakes in newbie zones or Basilisks in Lavastorm Mountains. Wolf meat drop from gorge hounds in East Karana that I think are green to a level 20 character. Mammoth meat drops from mammoths in Everfrost, around level 20 mobs I believe, or more frequently from the higher-level mammoths in Eastern Wastes. The rest is store bought and the pies will take you to 226 skill. Then you can make Misty Picnics all the way to 250. For 100 picnic combines you’ll need one brownie meat, which you can farm in front of the Minotaur caves in Steamfont Mountains. Just start killing mobs and the brownies will spawn. And they are only around 12th level. You’ll need 10 vegetables for 100 combines, but you should be able to find that many in the bazaar with little trouble. And you’ll need 2 fruit. Again, you should be able to buy these in the bazaar for very little cost.

Halas Pies and Misty Picnics are not exactly cheap to make, thanks to the required herbs, but both recipes make very useful foods that you can use, give to friends or sell for a small profit. Though my first two characters could forage, my current main cannot. So I understand, at least a little, the frustrations of baking with a non-foraging character. Even if there is a way to reach 250 skill without the need to forage, there are still a lot of fun foods out there that require foraged items. I try to think of it in terms of the real world. If I want to bake a cake I’m going to go buy my supplies at the store instead of raising chickens or planting wheat. Granted, it’s not the greatest analogy, but it keeps me from becoming too frustrated when I want to make fruit pies or some other forage related foods for guild get-togethers.

[Cigarskunk]

OK, it does suck that there are so many recipes which require a forager, but all said, baking is still doable - got a 53 troll SK to 250 doing pretty much nothing but MTPs from 191 to 250.

[Morani]

I was being sarcastic. That's why I started the next paragraph with "seriously"; to show that I wasn't being serious in what I said. I listed every tradeskill because I listed them all; that's the true motivation behind including class specific (as to not having heard a good reason, I agree but that really doesn't enter into it since "I can not" is usually the basis for any statement of something being "unfair"; that's pretty much universal in America). My point was simply that someone can make a logical and valid argument that every single tradeskill favors some class or group of classes more than others.

To specifically address the Smithing one (since someone else did), it's a LOT easier and less expensive for a warrior to find ways to boost his/her STR than it is for others to boost their INT/WIS. When I'm working any other tradeskill, I have a nearly complete set of gear that I change into for my Ranger. When I'm doing Smithing, I have a druid Strength buff me because I end up with 3 points more in STR than I would WIS. The buff is a LOT easier and cheaper for me. It would not be difficult for me to take that farther and state that melee classes have it easier than casters for smithing. As I said, the only point was that it CAN be done for all of them. Well, that and WAY too many people make the issue into a bigger problem than it is or should be in my opinion.

Farm plat? How does a solo warrior do that, pray tell?

I will fully admit that I do not have experience with a warrior higher then 20th level but I think I can make some safe assumptions. If I'm wrong, feel free to point it out (worst that'll happen is I'll learn something). I would think that your level 50+ warrior would be able to keep up with a level 38 Ranger. I know us Rangers are tri UBBER <rolls eyes at own scarcasm and winks> but with the ~15 level difference and better gear than I could hope for right now… (my gear isn't all that with a mix of Ry'gorr, Ivy Etched, Sebilite, and my prized piece; a Tolon's Helm but I also have a Bloodstained Mantle and Dwarven Workboots.) I can make 200-300 plat in an hour solo. Yes, I DO have a heal spell I can use but I have over 1100 hit points under my own buffs and my BEST healing spell does 33 points… It's like trying to drink a gallon of water with a thimble. I can bind wounds for more than my spell. (Yes, I'm a LITTLE bit bitter about this but I'll live. ) So, if you're only getting 200-300 plat in an hour you'll still end up 1.5k richer buying the foraged items.

There are other alternatives too. Us foragers can do certain things if we have saved the stuff we've gathered for a while but it still took a lot of time to gather what we needed. MANY times, I find foraged goods sold at the merchants in the towns that Rangers/Druids can start in or where races start with Forage ability. By looking at the merchants you can gather a collection of items for MUCH less than they sell at the Bazaar but it'll take a lot of time to get a collection. I DO understand your frustration, I just don't see how we have a unfair advantage when we spend a LOT of time rather than money.

Another alternative, grab a couple of Rangers/Druids/Iksar/Wood Elves and head some place to hunt where the items you want can be foraged and ask them if you can have what ever they collect or offer to buy it from them when you get out there.

BTW, what server are you on Rutha? I'm on Druzzil Ro and, at current, I have over 15 stacks of Veggies and just recently found 4 stacks of basilisk eggs on a merchant. If you are on Druzzil, you are welcome to as many stacks of veggies as you want and I'll sell you two stacks of eggs at cost.

[Axterix EnObelix]

>>I can solo the brownie guards and bind my wounds back to 60%. My first AA point was put into "First Aid" precisely for that reason. They are dark blue to me. I can solo one if I have at least 80% health (just to be on the safe side). The drop rate and ease of "harvest" is such that this is actually worthwhile -- as long as nobody else is camping the brownies, either for XP or for their own brownie parts.

There are also low level brownies in Steamfont. Easy to slaughter. From the zone to LFay, follow the wall left (wall on your left in other words) until you come to a kobold camp. Slaughter all the roaming mobs around that camp. Nice low level brownies there. Save any cash that drops and do the occassional shout saying you're looking to buy veggies. Usually a druid or ranger or two xp'ing in Steamfont.

As to veggies, ask friends and guildies who forage to save them for you. Most people don't bake. Plenty you can get there.

But remember this most of all: Anything that is easy has no value. Look at JC, except for combines that take JCM to do reliably, there's not much value to it.

[Ruatha]

I will fully admit that I do not have experience with a warrior higher then 20th level but I think I can make some safe assumptions. If I'm wrong, feel free to point it out (worst that'll happen is I'll learn something).

Well, I'd point out where you were wrong, except that you didn't tell me what it is you do to farm 200-300pp per hour. So I dunno if I could or not!

So approach it from a different angle: Look at whatever it is you're doing to get that money, and ask yourself "Could I do this if I didn't use spells AT ALL?" No snare. No invis. No SoW. No harmony. No wolfform. No nothing. Just your gear, a backpack full of bandages, a high pain threshhold, and a low instinct for self-preservation. If you can say "Yes" to this question, then it's probably something I could do too. On the other hand, if you can't say "Yes, I could do all of these things without spells," then no, I prolly CAN'T do it.

The only thing I can think of that I could do as a solo warrior that could possibly net me 200-300pp per hour is soloing hill giants. The problems there are:

1) I can only handle one at a time. If I aggro two or more, I hafta zone.
2) I cannot immediately rush off and grab another one as soon as the first one is killed. I have to bind wounds, and once I've reached the bind wound limit, I have to sit on my but for a while. Even at 56th level, a green hill giant can take off three bubbles of my health, and more than that if the random number generator is feeling particularly froggy.
3) I cannot compete efficiently for kills in a highly competitive environment. If I go to the Hill Giant area in the Rathe Mountains and there's nobody there, I'm golden. If the area is being camped by a party or by a quad-kiting druid, I might as well go somewhere else. Because I will spend at least as much time running around looking for a Hill Giant as I will killing them. And Brell help me if a caster decides to KS me, because there's jack I can do about it. And yes, I have been KS'd by casters half my level while soloing a giant.

BTW, what server are you on Rutha?

Brell Serilis. But thanks for the offer anyways.

[Axterix EnObelix]

Pretty sure you could make that much cash an hour in Sol B, killing kobolds. Just make sure you cut down the damage you take...slow and hard hitting is better than fast. Make ripostes work for you, not against you. You've got cash loot, poison comps, research comps, bronze, and fine steel. Just sell 'em to the druid vendors.

I was able to kill there at 35, pre-RoK, solo, using an Exe Axe, fbss, and crafted, although I'd have to zone about half the time. Not exactly good xp, but a way to kill time while waiting for groups. By the SoV days, it wasn't uncommon to see level 40ish warriors solo'ing at the entrance using a Wurmslayer + another slow hard hitting weapon, basically solo xp'ing. Also saw the same set up solo'ing Drolvargs in FV, although there was less cash in that.

A warrior of your level with today's armor and weapons should have no problem there.

[Reflan]

Everything on the mountain where the hill giants gather in Lake Rathe is a placeholder. The reason hill giants seem sometimes to be slow spawns is that virtually nobody puts in any consistent effort at killing placeholders. Most put in no effort, period. You can easily have multiple groups there getting plenty of hill giants if you kill placeholders.

Remember how much money you can make vendor-mining, too. A little running goes a long way. Every once in a while you might even run into something like a blue diamond for 262pp(vendor price) that you can turn around and sell for a 100pp profit or better. Once I found a boar horn on a vendor for 9 copper. Last night I just sold one for 10k. But things like zombie skins are more reliable. I always sell out of them almost instantly. Vendor price 1 gold if I remember; I sell for 1pp and make a quick 200pp fairly frequently. Some people sell out at 5pp.

Go make celestial essence and make 3.5 per vial. No fail combine. Make hundreds of them in an hour and bank thousands of plat a night.

It's not that hard anymore, no matter what class you play.

[Ruatha]

Everything on the mountain where the hill giants gather in Lake Rathe is a placeholder. The reason hill giants seem sometimes to be slow spawns is that virtually nobody puts in any consistent effort at killing placeholders. Most put in no effort, period. You can easily have multiple groups there getting plenty of hill giants if you kill placeholders.

Oy.

Back In The Day(tm) when hunting hill giants was something we could do for both XP grinding AND cash, me and a couple guildies would hunt hill giants in the Rathe Mountains. And NOBODY BUT US would clear the placeholders. Every time we went hunting, the hill giant supply would slowly run dry...right up until I went on a "trash run," rounded up all the lizardmen and basilisks, and trained 'em to my group where they'd get AoE'd and beaten to death. And then suddenly **poof** giants for everybody!

Remember how much money you can make vendor-mining, too. A little running goes a long way. Every once in a while you might even run into something like a blue diamond for 262pp(vendor price) that you can turn around and sell for a 100pp profit or better. Once I found a boar horn on a vendor for 9 copper. Last night I just sold one for 10k. But things like zombie skins are more reliable. I always sell out of them almost instantly. Vendor price 1 gold if I remember; I sell for 1pp and make a quick 200pp fairly frequently. Some people sell out at 5pp.

Now, let's chat a bit about this. Because I'm just anal retentive enough to enjoy running from vendor to vendor, looking through all their wares, trying to find goodies for sale.

My problem is that I have no clue what's valuable and what isn't. You mention zombie skins. I see those for sale all the time on vendors, and had NO idea they were worth anything other than low-level vendorbait. What makes Zombie Skins so valuable? And, in general, what's a good rule of thumb for what I should be looking for on vendors that's worth reselling?

Go make celestial essence and make 3.5 per vial. No fail combine. Make hundreds of them in an hour and bank thousands of plat a night.

Can't speak for your server, but there's usually a couple thousand of these for sale on Brell at any given time in the Bazaar. And I don't see the supply dwindling.

On the other hand, I'm now wondering what kinda market there would be for Bayle's Delights...

[Suva]

There are not always celestial essences for sale on brell...

I'm also on Brell and often times run to bazaar to pick up a few stacks and have seen it sold out multiple times. Though I also refuse to pay for than 5pp for the stuff and will make it myself rather than buy it if people have it for the higher price. Have seen it as high as 50pp per celestial essence before. Of ocurse, you'd also need the time to keep a char there.

[Morani]

If you can say "Yes" to this question, then it's probably something I could do too. On the other hand, if you can't say "Yes, I could do all of these things without spells," then no, I prolly CAN'T do it.

That's a pretty good way to look at it but I still think the 18 levels difference between us has to mean SOMEHTING. To answer your question, most of the things I fight to get money, I can do without any kind of spell as most of them are WAY green to me. Some of them I'll use spells on for speed or convenience and I've always got SOW up because I feel like I'm moving too slow without it now.

Even then, there are some things that make a difference between us. If I take on a Hill Giant, I can NOT go toe to toe with or I WILL die. I have to back off and do some root-n-shoot with a DoT and some Nukes to drop it. Even then, it takes 4 or more bubs of health and my entire manna bar to do it (I've died 4 out of 6 attempts to solo one this level). Keep in mind though that a level 38 Ranger has access to about level 20 Druid spells. When I'm done, I can bandage myself to 50%, sit and wait for my manna to regen, chain cast my wimpy heal 16 times, sit and wait for my manna to regen, Rebuff myself because nearly everything has dropped, sit and wait for my manna to regen AGAIN, THEN go out and fight. I think the only real difference between our down times it that I actually have something to DO during it.

Here is how I make money (other than vendor mining as it's already been mentioned):

Everfrost: Hunt cats, bears, spiders and mammoths. Pelts can be sold from 1- 20 plat each as is depending on quality and sever (throw out ruined) or turn them into leather padding and make 250-350 plat a stack. Make spider silks into swatches and sell them for 8-12 plat each. Keep the Mammoth meat for Halas Pies or sell the meat a 10 plat or more each (might be off on this price since I've never SOLD the meat I've gotten.) Sell the tusks for ~ 9 plat each to the merchants (keep a sewing kit or toolbox on you to hold the giant sized tusks). I have NEVER failed to sell out if leather padding or silk swatches within 1 day of putting them up in the Bazaar.

East Karana: Find a mountain and kill EVERYTHING (snakes, wolves, lions, spiders, griffons, griffawns, the occasional hill giant, etc) I have seen Giants stay up for over an hour there walking, solo, between the entrance to Highhold and the Gorge. See above for pelts and silks, snake eggs sell for 1pp each all the time (though I sell them for less personally), griffon feathers are used in Fleeting quivers and Qeynos Afternoon Tea, Griffenne Blood is used to make Royal Tempers for Qeynos Cultural, Griffon eyes are no-drop but can be turned in to sellable "crafted vambraces", Griffons also drop gems. (It's possible for me to gather over 2K plat worth of materials here in a 4-5 hour block and nearly that in Everfrost.)

Crystal Caverns: Gems, crystalline silks, gems, Ry'gorr items, and I haven't said it enough; gems … Most mobs are under 35 so they should almost all be green to you.

East and West Commonlands: Pumas, Plains Cats, Black Bears, Young kodiak, kodiaks, Asps, Rattlesnakes, Skeletons, Zombies, Giant Spiders, Will O' Wisps, Werewolves, Hill Giants, Griffins, Shadowed Men. Bone chips sell VERY well a 1pp each, someone else mentioned zombie skins already, Shadowed Men drop various stuff that sells well, Werewolf claws can be turned in for the Lupine claw gauntlets (which sell pretty well).

Hollowshade Moor has MANY drops that are worth selling from all "factions" plus various tradeskill items.

Permafrost is suppose to be good to but I've never been there, Lower Guk has a LOT of items you can farm and can many times find a group to join for loot splitting.

Fish Rolls are another tradeskill moneymaker at 1pp each. With ~ 8 gold a stack spent on making them, that's 19 plat profit on every stack.

As for merchant mining, I've made over 30k plat off of that and I do NOT have PoP so I miss out on most of that stuff AND it takes me 2-3 time longer to hit the merchants in numerous cities. Granted I've been mining them for a year now, but I only play (actively; not counting the mule selling) MAYBE 2 nights a week for up to 6 hours a night. At a rough guess, that’s 390 hours I've been on and about 1/3 of that was mining so: 130 hours = 30k plat = 230 plat an hour. If I didn't start smithing and tailoring 4 months ago, I'd probably be more like 40k in sales (since I used items I would have sold) and that's almost 310 plat an hour.


Without having access to foraging OR a way to make some decent cash, I can really understand why you where so frustrated. I had assumed that you had your own ways to get money and where familiar with a number of different ways to do so. Lack of EITHER truly makes things tough. I hope we've been able to help you alleviate one of those problems.

My problem is that I have no clue what's valuable and what isn't. You mention zombie skins. I see those for sale all the time on vendors, and had NO idea they were worth anything other than low-level vendorbait. What makes Zombie Skins so valuable? And, in general, what's a good rule of thumb for what I should be looking for on vendors that's worth reselling?

I was all set to post this long enough message and saw this… There are two answers I can give you here:

One of them is to look at This Thread from a while back. Some of the stuff is probably out dated but most of it's still good. Towards the end, I compiled most of what was posted by others into a single list. The thing I planned to do then (and STILL haven't) is to put together a list of spells that are sought after and thus highly sellable (mostly level 50+ spells that are only Mob drops) Maybe I'll get to it soon (not today), if I do; I'll share. Give me your E-mail and I'll send you a more useful version o fhte list from the thread that I have on Excel. Also, look at This Page. It's from the main site here listing PoP drop items that are used for tradeskilling, and someone here started a thread on "what to save if you are going to the Plane of ____". I've not looked at the thread because I don't have PoP nor am I level 46+ and thus CAN'T go to the Plane of _____.

As for the zombie skins, they are the only non merchant bought item to make poison, lined poison, and sealed poison vials in pottery. You can go up to 188 on those. There are substitutes for the zombe skins (like black wolf skins) but a LARGE percent of customers don't know this so they sit there while the zombie skins MOVE! I'm currently doing pottery to 188 on vials and to get from 155-175 it's taken me nearly 50 stacks of them to do it with my worst run being 2 skill-ups in 10 stacks. That means a LOT of skins are needed.

[Gargazon]

What to farm for cash.

Easy stuff would be EK, cats/wolves/spiders

as a 56 warrior you could farm HGs in RM pretty easily, you could duo then no problems at all.

zombie skins

Stoneburnt kill cats for pelts.

Not sure about your server, but on fennin leather padding is 25-30p each, that's 500-600pp a stack.

You can possibly farm brownies.

Wolf meat and mammoth meat sell very well at prices you might be supprised at. 20p each for wolf meat in the bazaar at times, mammoth meat is 20-30, as high as 50 sometimes.

and make MTPs. Veggies and fruit = cheap. Brownies in steamfont are easy, or you can possibly farm the ones in LFay. they trivial above 250, and sell well.

From a soloing standpoint. Do yourself a HUGE favor and get a truncheon of doom. 50% slow on a mob at level 60. like 46% at level 56. You can solo most spiders in velks if you can't find a group. Nothing you can do will let you solo in PoP though. I would however, recommend trying to get groups in PoN. Starghilaug (sp?) parts are used in 250+ baking, blood raven parts are 250+ baking, hobgoblin meat is 250+ baking.

Other than that just accept the fact that as a warrior you are pretty much screwed. SoE has constantly erroded our power by handing it out to others, adding 100+ all/all items to close the hp gap, leaving taunt flat out broken, etc, etc. Same with tradeskills. We have nothing that we do better than anyone else, except take hits. In exp groups though, SKs and pallies take them well enough that you are usually not prefered, this leaves you with soloing to get high enough to tank in raids for your 3 minutes of glory. Or begging friends to group you when they don't want to because unless you have an eb weapon you can't hold aggro...because taunt is broken. So definatly get that ToD. If nothing else, you can solo in velks. slowly. Oh so slowly.

[Reflan]

Okay here's a link I like for PoP drops that I first got here. http://www.salo.bz/ragbert/popdrops.html

Look for this stuff. Impossible to remember it all, and some is worth little, but some is worth a LOT. Some is used to make items worth 20k and 30k. By the way, drop the bucks on PoP if you don't have it. It's where the game is going and for most people it's where the game already is and will be for a long time. Cough up the dough. A lot of the best vendor mining is in odd spots in PoP.

Okay zombie skins...sell like lightning, and you can also use puma skins, thick grizzly skins, and black wolf skins for pottery 148-188(vials). When you need them, you need literally bagfulls of them. And...they're actually an incredibly fast way to level up pottery; leveling pottery on vials was some of the fastest skilling I've ever done in any skill, easily. It's true that many people don't know anything about the vials besides the zombie skins, but then again, most people vendor dive only for zombie skins too. That means tons of the other skins are usually available. I saved up two and a half bagfuls of zombie skin substitutes I wanted to use to get a twink through pottery, then figured I needed the money more than the skins, and sold out the two and a half bags while I was AFK from my computer. When people buy things like that for tradeskill components, they buy a LOT. All it takes is one dedicated guy to make hoarding those things profitable. And these days everyone is tradeskilling it seems.

Apply that to celestial essences too. It doesn't matter if there are a thousand in the bazaar. For instance, I'm working on smithing. I have a lot of mistletoe sickles to skill up on. Each complete combine on them requires five CE's. I've been working on the sickles since 209, and I would like to hit 250 one day. That's 41 levels in smithing. I average 43 combines per skill up(don't ask), times 5 that's over 200 CE per point. 200 times 41 points is EIGHT THOUSAND plus CE's I will need. I'm just one guy. There are plenty of other tradeskill uses for CE besides mistletoe sickles, and other trades that use CE. You SURE there's no market for CE's? I've bought out every single CE in the bazaar a few times. I go through multiple bagfuls a day.

Finally, silks and "quality" paddings of all sorts sell well on their own and for much more money turned into leather padding. Get a skinning knife and turn medium quality pelts into low quality ones for padding. Most people won't bother. That's why most people sell medium quality padding for less than low quality. Scoop it up, spend an extra second and save a few plat per stack, and turn your vendor mining and bazaar mining into hundreds or thousands of plat a day by making padding.

Buy ping fuzzlecutter drink if you're hanging around Freeport. Sell them for a plat each and make 15pp profit per stack; sell them for 2pp each and make 35pp per stack. They sell quickly.

I find south ro, north ro, oasis, commons, freeport, gukta, neriak, shadowhaven, felwithe, butcherblok, and PoT and PoK to all be great places where a few hours can make you anywhere from a few hundred to thousands of plat. Or you can get a major score like that boar horn I found, or the essences of sunlight I've found before, etc.

[Ruatha]

Wow, everybody! Thanks for the info about the drops! I'll start doing a little vendor-diving tonight!

And, for the record, I will also start doing MTPs tonight. I knew when I posted this rant that the "real" answer was (and is) "suck it up and cope." Which is what I plan on doing. But I needed to vent anyways.

Buy ping fuzzlecutter drink if you're hanging around Freeport. Sell them for a plat each and make 15pp profit per stack; sell them for 2pp each and make 35pp per stack. They sell quickly.

See, I saw this in the Bazaar the other night. And asked my guild "Why would anybody buy Fuzzlecutter Formula 5000 for 1pp per bottle from a bazaar vendor when they could just go to Ping Fuzzlecutter himself and get it at cost." Are there that many folks KOS to him?

[Ruatha]

Give me your E-mail and I'll send you a more useful version of the list from the thread that I have on Excel.

Okie dokie. You can email me at ruatha@global-tetrahedron.com if ya wanna. And thanks!

[Reflan]

Well, people buy Ping's because they want to have drink that lasts longer so they don't use as much bag space or carry as much weight -- longer-lasting drink is handy.

And some people are KOS, but more just don't want to make a run to Freeport or just don't have the time. It does take a while, after all. And a large number of people don't even know who Ping is. Finally, there are plenty of people who don't even bother looting stuff worth 20pp a pop because they don't need money enough to care, so paying 20pp a stack for drink doesn't phase them. Lots of people in this by now fairly old game are sitting on 10 or 20,000 plat, or even 100k or 500k. It doesn't bother them to buy Ping's, or, say, buy misty thicket picnics when they could just as well make their own.

You're selling to them their own saved time. They're happy to buy it back on the cheap.