Is there light at the end of the tailoring tunnel?

[Mahlig]

No. That is just a train being driven by the RNG.

This latest streak I have been on has really, well, put an itch in my craw. I'd like to think I am helpful. I would like to think that I can be nice (I said "can be"). I would like to think I am genuine. So why, oh why, does the RNG have it out for my sanity (assuming there is any)? Kiztent (many of you know him) had stumbled across a cache of Othmir Hides. As I am a tailor (and he knows it), he gave em to me for a song (actually, LESS than that) because he wants to see me get to my goal. I had recently attained skill 201 and was pushing eagerly to get to 215-220 to do some cultural combines.

Well, Kiz gave me close to 80 Otter hides (I had some already and I had a friend farming them for me) so I had a good start on moving on up. Well, I got nada except a crap load of othmir caps. So, I figured I would farm some silks for robes. I had 1 more gem studded chain, so why not pop out 20 attempts? Well, after a success on the 3rd attempt, I was fresh out of chains. So I consul a good friend enchanter who is a 250 JCer (though not JCM). He agrees to make the chains for free! So I pop over and give him 5 attempts. Success on the first one! I am stoked. Well, after 4 more failures, I give him another set and he succeeds...yes, 2 of 6. Well, RNG gives me a kick in the groin, but I stagger away to make some Robes. Nada. So, I gather up 20 more attempts. 1 Robe made, nada for skillup.

As luck would have it, a guildie friend enchanter that makes chains for her husband happens along. Sweet. She agrees to make me some chains (also for free, so how can this be bad kharma???), so I give her 5 attempts. Is the RNG spiteful or what? Another 1 for 5. That was enough to make baby Jesus cry. But I persevere. I pop out another 20 robes...1 success...0 skill up. So, I give her 4 more chain attempts, 3 success. Apparently, baby Jesus intervened on the RNGs toying with me.

So now, I drop those 3 made robes on my druid (2) and paladin (1) and make them the earrings. I take my druid to Erud's Crossing and get some seahorse roe. I figured I would work on cultural robes. That netted me about 10 attempts and I was successful on 8 robes, 0 skillups. A bit put off, I head over to Stonebrunt to blow stuff up. I start getting bamboo shoots (2 on my first 2 kills). Sweet sassy molassy. Well, after 3 hours and 3 more shoots, I decide on 5 more attempts. /sigh 3 robes, 0 skill. So, I go to EK and kill every spider that has ever existed. 20 more robe attempts, 2 robes, 0 skill.

Ok, so now we are over 100 attempts and still no skillup. Didn't they make it *easier* to skill up in tailoring??? Well, as luck would have it, an angel in the form of a druid appears before me. "Silly one. Do not work on Robes as their trivial is higher and thus you will get less skillups (in theory). Work on velious tailoring (wyverns) and acrylia." So, I thanked Nimphe for her sage advice and popped out to DSP. Caves were taken, so I head to ML. Got a handful of flawless pelts. Too slow for someone as impatient as I, so I head to CS. I had a bag full of pelts, so I went fishing. Hours of fishing later, I have some 60 cod. So, off to CC and orc massacre ensues. I make up a ton of studs (oh, the humanity of 26pp per temper). As I had some acrylia already, I pop up to PoK and drop those mask attempts. 19 masks made, 0 skill up.

Realizing that I do not have my Coldain Kit on me, I head back to Thurg to dust off these 60 wyvern hides and clear myself from Tailoring 201. Well, 180+ (total) attempts later and 20k pp lighter, I am still at skill 201. Imagine my chagrin when I see people go from 200 to 250 for 30k!!!

So, my tailoring has been shelved for the moment. I am gathering up supplies for a big blowout run. I have over 100 wyvern hides, 80 raptor hides, 20 cobalt drake hides, 66 othmir hides, 140 spider silks, 96 Terrorantula swatches, 20 powdered blue diamonds. I see my remaining 12kpp being spent on Tempers and HQ Ore. My goal? Skill 202. If anything, this experience has taught me to set my goals MUCH lower. This has not been humbling. It has been humiliating. Maybe this is payback for making the 6th shawl at 128 skill. When is enough enough?

A tired and depressed (ex?) tailor.

[Aavar]

/COMFORT

Yes there is.

[kiztent]

I have a dozen terrorantula swatches, less than a stack each of othmir, wyvern and drake hides, and piles of velium.

I'm finishing class title off tonight, but look me up - shouldn't take long.

[Sylphan]

I was in a similar situation the last few weeks. I've been stuck at 209 for awhile, eager to get 210 and do some ethereal swatches. I've had the silk and curing agents taking up a backpack for a month now. Three stacks of sorcery robes so far, zero fails, zero skillups. I decided to do some solstice robes even though they're expensive, since I had one chain left. Of course I succeeded on the first try and had no more chains.

But then there was yesterday. I had enough silk for six solstice combines so bought the components for two chains, and succeeded on the last try. Did all six robe combines and skilled up on the last try. I had 48 ethereal curing agents saved in the bank, but saw four more at a good price in the bazaar so went ahead and bought them. I hit 212 on the 52nd and last try. Then went on to skill up again on a stack of skewn robes (since sorcery robes are now trivial).

So I've forgiven tailoring, for now. But I was sweating it out right to the last combine at each step.

[byelka]

The RNG can be bad somedays =(

Lucky for me I have yet to go 100+ for a skill up but I have gone 80

and as for skill ups versus what you are attempting I have seen no difference between one item and the next.

Tailoring 207 currently just doing solstice robes

[Morani]

Mahlig, It sounds like Karma is saying you need to lean something from this. Judging by what's happened, I'd say it's either patience or how to add "color" to your vocabulary. Either way, /comfort.

[Serenya]

I sympathize, I sometimes wonder why I continue with some of my skills, and I neither tailor nor smith.

My ranger sat at 239 fletching for 6 months. Every time I got together a bunch of acrylia I would make a few stacks of attempts, to no avail. I decided to try mithril. Several hundred arrows later, I was still at 239 (ad I've sold exactly one arrow, I'm going to start using the things. I already use the acrylia ones). After pouting for a week I bought all the acrylia in the bazaar (what's a few thousand plat more for a skill that is only a money sinkhole anyway, right?). After going through about 10 stacks of arrow combines she is, at last, at 242. I'm going to try the bloody trophy, because it's got to be cheaper then getting one more skillup. /sigh

The sad part is, she got to 188 fletching when the cap was 200. I've probably spent 15k over the years raising her skill to 242 and I did the bow route to 235 before the nerf -- she'll never make that back, arrows barely sell anymore, the nightmare bow is hard to move for more then 4k (I sometimes can sell it for 6) and I'll probably never see the components for the better bows. /wonders again why she thought all Rangers should of course max fletching in addition to archery. Oh, well, at least archery is maxed.

[Reflan]

When you said it took you 30k to go nowhere and some people max their skill for 30k, that rang a bell for me.

I've felt the same way about smithing, where most people seem to say they get a skill-up every 20 combines on average at higher levels or even a better ratio, whereas it took me over 40 combines each skill up from 188 to 250. Ouch! That's no small difference. It was fantastically difficult for me compared to most.

It can feel like it's grinding it in still further when people get the %mod items, like the akheva shears or the 10% smithing belt or 15% smithing hammer, and then not only max their effective skill out far, far earlier and cheaper, but do it incredibly easily for the points they actually have to sit through by doing enthereal bricks(in smithing) from what is it, 192 to 212 or 213, which is a huge swath of VERY easy combines. People actually do that part of the skill in a single day -- it took me too many dozens of hours to even want to think about. (shiver)

The skill mods can make a skill comparatively trivial to master, and that trivializes the efforts of those who had to eke out their skill gains the hard way and long way.

More power to them, I guess -- but it can strike a rough note sometimes when you consider how wildy different people's experiences are to master the very same thing. Doing a hard skill like smithing or tailoring with a good or reasonable amount of luck with the range, and maybe even with a skill %mod item, is an experience that has almost nothing whatsoever to do with the experience of tradeskills many people have. It's not even like you're playing the same game made by the same company. It can be a sweet deal when you're on the right side of luck, but the divergence between what that's like and what things are like for the skiller with average or rotten luck is astronomically wide.

It's unfortunate, and I'd even say it doesn't strike me as very good game design at all. Oh well, just the kind of thing you have to put up with if for some perverse reason you've decided tradeskills are actually worth doing.