Old Erudite Cultural (Complaint V2)

[Itzena]

The major problem with old (non-BD) erudite cultural (and its potential use as a skillup path) is the mana vial requirements. Each combine needs a vial of purified mana - i.e. 4 rubies (so 525 plat on gems alone) per combine. This is a Bad Thing.

The fix should be fairly easy to do - change the mana vial needed to a different one. Personally, I'd think that the clear mana vial would be reaonable (needs one emerald/vial). The distilled mana vial (between clear and purified) still needs two sapphires/combine, so that would hardly be worth the change, IMO.

The 'rare' (i.e. farmed/expensive) component for this cultural should be, after all, the terrorantula silk.

Anybody see any blinding mistakes in my theory? I'll post a version of this to EQLive, after I've seen any reasonable counterarguements.

Why version two of this complaint? The first one would have gotten locked and/or deleted (and probably myself banned as well). So I toned it down to the bare essentials of the arguement.

Why here and not the Tailoring forum? Well, it's going to end up a rant, anyway, so I'm just saving time and Mods' energy.

[Cigarskunk]

That is a pretty unreasonable expense - but then again, I'm sure that they are worried about erudites becoming the new tailoring bots due to having relatively easy and risk free road of skilling up tailoring via thier cultural now that the silk is a bit more feasable to get.

[Eumerin]

A bit easier to get meaning that there are now 2 rare spawn points on the spawn cycle that drop the silk instead of one?

*snicker*

Have you looked at the triv level on the stuff? Steelsilk (the stuff requiring the rubies) trivs out at less than 120 (the exact point isn't known). Crystalline silk will get you further than that, the mobs that drop crystalline silk are much more common, and the only expense in crystalline silk is the silver thread you need for each combine.

Adjusting the price to create of the old erudite cultural most certainly will not cause a flood of tailor-bots.

[Itzena]

I knew I forgot another point w.r.t. old erudite cultural: It also needs a platinum thread (Eumarin's mention of silver thread for crys silk jogged my memory).

So that's, what, 750-odd plat/combine...before taking into account getting hold of some terrorantula silk.

Change it to clarified mana vial and gold thread, and the cost/combine drops for 20(ish) plat, plus whatever you can buy terrorantula silk for (vendor sells at ~50plat, if you happen to find any on the SRo inkies carrying any...lowest I've seen silk in bazaar is 60. And that's per silk, not per swatch).

[Jannelle Silverthorne]

Eumerin,
You are conveniently forgetting that the trivial level you are refering to is for the Imbued version of Steelsilk, which is lower than the Un-imbued version for some unknown reason.

The Un-imbued version is trivial someplace over 170. Lowering the cost to make it would provide a reasonable path to skill on similar to the path for Wood Elves and Halflings. With the current requirement for the mana vial and plat thread it's not a reasonable skill path.

*edit*
As for getting ahold of Terrorantula silk, that's a trivial issue for anyone who can kill Terrorantula as the cycle to spawn the terrorantulings and Terrorantula has been documented on these boards before. In case it's been lost in the board conversion I'll post it here again.


Terrorantula Spawn Cycle - South Ro

a puma
a sand mummy
a dune tarantula
a desert tarantula
a terrorantuling
Terrorantula

The above mobs will spawn in a wave and wander until dead. Roughly 45 seconds after the last of a wave is dead, a new wave will spawn from the above list. Waves can be 3-6 mobs on average and spawn primarily along the east and west walls, roaming toward the center.
Note: Having a tracker makes this much easier as default tracksort is by spawn time. I.E. all new mobs will be at the top of the list once you get the cycle started.

[Itzena]

Yes, and all you have to do for acrylia tailoring is kill rockhoppers and farm some acrylia.

Both Terrorantula and terrorantulings are rare spawns in that cycle (assuming that the cycle is correct...if I had one plat for every '100% correct South Ro spawn cycle' I could buy my way to 1750 in the Bazaar).

[Jannelle Silverthorne]

Feel free to either A. Not trust me, or B. haul your butt to Karana and send me a tell and I'll show you the spawn cycle. I play most evenings but may be raiding. If you don't see me on, check for any Ashborne member and ask them if I'm around.

The spawn cycle in South Ro that most people are interested in is the one for the Ancient Cyclops and that one does have scores of conflicting cycles that people have reported as 100% guaranteed.

I'm a wood elf, I could care less about making old style erudite cultural easier than Acrylia. The only reason I spent the time to figure out what the Terrorantula spawn cycle was is because my partner is an erudite cleric who tailors. She's past the point of needing/wanting to make steelsilk for skillups or use .

That said, it would be nice to have them change the steelsilk so it's not so far out of line with the other first generation cultural armors. Changing the required mana vial and thread would be a good start and would allow it to be an alternate skill up path if someone chose to, similar to imbued reinforced halfling/wood elf armor.

In my experience, Terrorantula silk is less rare than HQ Brute hides or Excellent Sabertooth Tiger hides. It's a fairly safe bet that I can pull a couple stacks of the silk out of South Ro in an evening while hunting brutes or tigers in Kunark may not even net me a stack of the correct hides.
Why do I say that?
1. The terrorantulings and Terrorantula are not that rare.
2. They drop mulitple silks quite often.
3. It's a small zone, you very seldom have to leave the desert area.
4. I have tracking to pinpoint the mobs on the cycle I listed so I can turn the cycle over every couple minutes.
5. There is nothing in the zone that's even remotely dangerous to a L50+ toon, let alone a 65 toon.