smithing SUXXS..{insult removed}?

[acor]

Raised my ogre, point by point to 250 GM smither.

Then, realize that humans can do armors for ogres, and, for my surprise, every single piece of armor has 20hps more than the BEST cultural armor i can do (as ogre) for ogres!! Thats around 250hps more between the 2 sets.

Reward of 2 months non stop farming and skilling smithing: NADA. Noone will buy Crimson Darkscale Armor (ogres to ogres-trolls rallok zek) having the {pottymouth word removed by Mum} human armor made, which has more hps than the ones i do. Sold few pieces of Tae (market that is going down everyday and which any smither can do).

Wuts more, humans can do agnostic versions of his armors for nearly every race (small-big-medium), but, as ogre, i cant even do an agnostic version of mines for those ogres/trolls that didnt choose a deity at creation.

Well, with so much patches that Sony/Verant had do in past (and will do in future) ... noone realized this is {Dev Insult removed}of a RPG development and need URGENT to be modify??

Would have been better to restrict smithy advance to humans for the beginning, so no make ppl waste his time raising a skill that would never gain profit at all from it.

nope, wont do GM smithy path again for a human to equip my ogres/ gain some profit. :?

/shivering about EQ2 new tradeskill classes. :evil:

[Arbelac]

Humans CANNOT do armor for "nearly everyone"....All the high end stuff is restricted to HUM/HEF/FRG, with the exception of Rallos Zek imbue.

As for not being able to create agnostic ogre armor..../bonk dead_horse

[Mahlig]

I understand your frustration, and this is not the first time someone has complained about it. However, I would suggest that all "this skill is broken because I can't do <fill in blank...in your case, make money>" be limited to the rants section. Also, the armor has been that way for a while now. I am not sure how long you have been a 250 smith, but if you got to 250 smithing AFTER this change was put into effect, then the blame for what "suxx" does not lie on smithing nor on Sony, but on the person who did the smithing.

Also, if you are smithing to "make money", you are in the wrong business. Make sickles if you want to make money. As far as I have seen, they still sell well.

[sumamael]

/kicks the topic to the Primal Scream Room, buh bye!

[Axterix EnObelix]

I've got a troll warrior that follows Inny. A few of my friends play Inny following SKs. But there's never any Inny worshipping ogre armor out there. I'd like a set. The stuff has good hp and the best AC of the smithed sets. You might want to leave a set of Inny armor on your mule. It may be a small niche market, but if it's all yours, it makes you money.

Now about the stats. I agree humans shouldn't be making the Rallos stuff. Rallos and ogres go hand in hand. Humans, barbs, and their lot? Well, the Avatar of War shows what uses Rallos and his followers have for them. I also believe they need to add an agnostic set. That right there would open up a bit of a market.

That said, the ogre armor is some fine stuff. It's got the highest AC total of any cultural. The CT version has the highest hp total of any armor besides the Tribunal stuff, assuming a high enough player wearing it. And any version of it has about 50% more HP than what a lot of people get access to...warriors that don't follow Rallos or the Tribunal, paladins, and SKs who aren't troll or ogre. And be glad you aren't an Iksar SK or warrior. Another gap that seriously needs to be filled...heavy chain please!

A bit of advertising wouldn't hurt though. Gotta make people aware of it. Gotta take advantage of the Inny troll market...its' small, but it is there. Seek out the CT following TSKs...a way for them to further increase their hp lead over the pansy inkies.

And, of course, round up a bunch of ogrum smiths and agnostic trolls and ogrums and start a feedback campaign. Get them to add some agnostic armor!

[Reflan]

I agree completely.

Because I'm an ogre? Maybe partly. I'm only human...er, ogre...after all.

But also because it seems like it would be a much better idea if every race could craft the very best armor for their own race. That would really give you something to look forward to, and a clear and unassailable reward both for being your race AND for taking up smithing. Contrarily, knowing that no matter how hard you work at smithing and no matter how thrilled you are at your racial/religion selection, you can NEVER make the best tradeskill-made items for your character is a let down.

Heck, humans and ogres are even KOS to each other too, sometimes. Of ALL races to make your toon's best gear, why make it a KOS race?

It would be absolutely great to be wandering around wearing the very best tradeskill-made armor your race could get that you had made YOURSELF. A natural gameplay possibility, you would think.

And conversely, if you couldn't make the very best thing possible for other races, that would be fair too. Every race has it's own advantages and disadvantages, lore and tone. If my ogre can never make a bow with all the great characteristics a wood elf ranger can, so what? Or even if he could make it, would it be a terrible thing if he couldn't sell it to anyone outside his own race? You can't have everything. Similarly, if he can never make LOY robes...okay. I guess I wouldn't expect him to. Ogres in pajamas is a trifle absurd, after all. So it's all good. Why sweat it when other people get the slice of the pie you would really expect them to anyway?

But it seems just all wrong when I have to go to puny humans to get the best armor for my fat, sweaty, blood-caked self. I'd rather eat them while they're still screaming.

[Silverfish]

Been There

> Contrarily, knowing that no matter how hard you work at smithing and no matter how thrilled you are at your racial/religion selection, you can NEVER make the best tradeskill-made items for your character is a let down.

I know the feeling, being a Halfling cleric. I have to find a Dwarf to make Mischievous Plate armor. The best armor I can build is awesome, but it's for Halfling druids, rangers or paladins, and I can't wear it. Boo.

[Darknyss]

And be glad you aren't an Iksar SK or warrior. Another gap that seriously needs to be filled...heavy chain please!

I can agree with that... the only other problem I see is if they actually took the time to re-work the race/class combos so that the right people could make the right stuff for EVERYBODY... somebody who could previously make something wouldn't be able to make it anymore... and you have that whole issue...

"You can't please ALL of the people ALL of the time..."

May 5th will forever go down as a day when all tradeskillers dreams (AND nightmares) came true... and I don't think there's a dev team around that is willing to fix that mess...

[TheGiantOne]

May 5th will forever go down as a day when all tradeskillers dreams (AND nightmares) came true... and I don't think there's a dev team around that is willing to fix that mess...

[/quote]

I agree wholeheartedly. Take smithing as an example. They give you only 2 ways to raise your skills as a barbarian smither. The cultural way past 188 don't do squat as you can't even attempt any of that armor til you are close to 240.

Okay so lets take a look at the other 3 routes.

Acrylia Chain and Acrylia Plate both need 2 rare as heck ingredients which are essence of wind and windstones. Don't make me laugh.

The third route was supposed to be decent making shadowscream armor however they managed to mess that up now also. They doubled the drop of the shrieking substances (no drop) but they made swirling shadows tradable but THEY NERFED THE MOBS BADLY THAT WERE DROPPING THEM.

So what has smithing become since after May 5th of this year? A big fat joke as also the RNG if you are lucky and don't lose your mind doing any of the above routes on armor making you might get 1 skillup out of every 13 combines on a good day for skillups but in their ultimate wisdom they hit themselves over the head again by letting you be successful 10 out of those 13 combines so you could sell them ROFLMAO.

NO ONE WANTS THAT CRAPPY SHADOWSCREAM ARMOR.

So whoever did this at Verant drink about 20 cups of coffee, be more wide awake and open up at least the drops (make them all NOT NO DROP) and increase the drops of materials if you still want to play the stupid game regarding your RNG for successful skillups or for heavens sake at least open up more routes for people to attempt smithing.

If you don't increase the number of drops for materials you will drive this skill and the armors you want made price wise out of the reach of most people NEVERMIND THE PRICE OF THE MATERIALS FOR THOSE ARMORS. So in the end you will have achieved nothing.

Spoken from true experiences making a whole 3 points in smithing in last 1 1/2 weeks working on it 5 hours a day. Also now have 400 shrieking substances sitting in bank and 23 swirling shadows. BTW..swirling shadows are no longer 50pp in bazaar. Try 200pp per each one.

We won't even get into Tailoring which is in just about as bad shape as Smithing.

[Grimina]

Just a couple of points that might make smithing not seem so bad to you (thegiantone)

Windstones are NOT that rare anymore. Go to the tunnels to AC in grimling forest. They aren't as common as the runes..but they are a LOT more common there than anywhere else. I can get a lot in a short amount of time. A stack in an hour or two (sometimes more, sometimes less). Plus lots of acrylia, AND plenty of cash from the other drops. Essence of wind is common as can be in twilight sea (twice as much more than the windstones you can farm in GF)

From my experience there has been no "nerfing" of the drops of swirling shadows. I took my level 11 ranger to shadeweavers to farm these and got a little under a stack in 30 minutes. And that ranger can't kill the things anywhere near as fast as my main can. And in twilight sea the drops are still the same. About a stack or so an hour. Perhaps you have just had bad luck, might be worth heading back to try again =)

Also, though you'd still need quite a few more points before you start...you do not "need" to be 240 to work on your cultural armor. Granted the cultural isn't the best path for skillups due to the cost...but you could feasibly start at around 225+ with your geerlok equipped.

And at 220+ (in my experiences) you could also start mistletoe sickles. A lot more work, slightly cheaper than BD cultural, but around that point is when I started...and was actually able to make a profit from my successes (sickles ~1250p or less)

So yes it is difficult for races without the old cultural as a "bridge" but it's most definitely not impossible. I had old cultural as an option (dorf)...but I didn't spend that much time working on it, because the other options for me were better.

Anyway I hope that gives you a little hope, and a little help

[Reflan]

I had such insanely horrible luck on shadowscream that I did mostly sickles from 209 onward. I spent some money, but toward the end I made a fair number of sickles and made a lot of money back, too. All in all, if you have the initial start-up capital and sickle prices are above 1k on your server, it's not really a bad way to go. Some servers still have people selling sickles for 1500 and up -- in that case, making sickles to skill up could actually be very profitable.

P.S. -- I didn't do any cultural till I was effective 250 skill. Then I started in on ogre cultural. The first two combines I tried were crimson darkscale breastplate and greaves, and both were successes! I was very happy, and that was the start of some sweet rewards for all the true grief and horror that comprises the mastery of smithing. However, I have failed many, many pieces since then. The failure rate is over 50% on the BD armor. Quite a few times I have failed four and five in a row. The cost in BD's on that really mounts up VERY very quickly. For some reason, bracers seem almost impossible for me to make. I've tried dozens and only made I think five(shiver).

Anyway, it's great when you succeed on BD armor, but you can expect a huge number of quite expensive failures. I would strongly advise people not to try skilling up on the BD armor; it's not worth the cost and grief. Save it as your reward for a job well done when you get effective 250 skill.

This stuff takes quite a while to get together the subcomponents for the combines, too. Lots and lots of steps -- kiln, brew barrel, forge, forge again.... It's not something to monkey around with, I think.

[Slippyblade]

You got a stack of Shadows in half an hour with an 11 ranger??? I go there all the time with my 55 rogue. I can single shot every mob in the zone. And often have to sit and wait for Shade spawns. If I get a stack an hour, I am doing VERY WELL.

[Grimina]

Little less than a stack like 15-16 of em. I believe there's a certain time when they just don't drop or drop really rarely. Because sometimes an hour will go by and nothing, then the next 15 minutes I'll get 10 of em. And once when I was killing with someone else there they said "Welp no more shadows for awhile" and sat down. Then a little while later stood up and started killing again. And darned if the whole time they were sitting not one shadow dropped. I have no definitive proof of course, and when I go I just keep killing even if nothing is dropping...but that could explain why some people have terrific drop rates, and some people have horrible. Could just depend on what time (game) that they are hunting. *shrug*

Oh and never sit and wait for shades to spawn. That stuff spawns so fast you should never have a moment to "wait" My monk can one-hit-wonder everything there and I still don't have any rest. Kill EVERYTHING, skeletal hunters, the bugs, the rockhoppers, the loda kai...

[Slippyblade]

I refuse to mass kill that end of the zone cause there are usually still lowbies xping in this zone on my server. Granted, they are probably twink alts, but they are still killing for xp here, so out of decency, I need to limit my killing to the skells. But I to have noticed a deffinate Drop/No Drop pattern to the shadows. Wish I could figure it out though.