Skinspikes VI to VII+ unintuitive.

[Amparo]

Forgive me if this is a dead horse.

Nobody will ever make or buy Distillate of Skinspikes VII to X for reasons that should be obvious to those responsible for programming tradeskills.

The 30 damage shield from VI is plenty for players from level 25 to 70. My customer base is a solid indication of this.

Version VI can be mass produced without taking a single step out of the Danos' house.

[Astroshak]

Thats funny ... there's a paladin in my guild who swears by the 55 DS from the Distillate of Skinspikes X potion; he uses them all the time while soloing.

Thats right, a soloing paladin. Farming up plat and also earning I don't know how many AA's, at least 400 by now.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

You can do some absolutely crazy powerleveling with a 55 point damage shield.

[Astroshak]

My guildie is level 70 and is closing in on max A's ... he started somwehere around 1000 AA's, doing this soloing, though not all of it was with the 55 DS potion, most of it is, since the soloing has been so profitable for him that he can afford to use the things.

[Angelsyn]

I swear by the 55pt DS also... I use it in soloing for my Paladin as well.

It's the difference between easily soloing 3 MoBs (with Steadfast Servant doing the healing) and soloing 1-2 MoBs taking half-again as much time.

It's the same reason I almost always use Mark of Retribution when using my Cleric... Every bit of DPS helps, and if you have high mitigation the DS does more (sometimes a lot more) damage to the MoB than the MoB does to your tank.

[Druegar]

I solo my paladin quite frequently and love Skinspikes X. With it I can get my total DS damage (from several sources) into the hundreds.

Granted, it's easier on the high-end, but soloing paladins are not as uncommon as you may think.

[Carmaris]

Yeah, I went through half a stack or so of Skinspike X just last night farming Shiknar Ichors. Can easily handle 2 shiknars, up to 4 if I feel like working, so the 55 DS vs 10 from my 10th ring really makes a difference.

Of course, now they're out of 'em in the bazaar /sigh.

[Gaell Stormracer]

Of course, now they're out of 'em in the bazaar /sigh.

And that's the clue that it is extremely likely that all those X's that were on sale before were actually "Kilva's Skin of Flame" potions that got auto-converted.

[Druegar]

And that's the clue that it is extremely likely that all those X's that were on sale before were actually "Kilva's Skin of Flame" potions that got auto-converted.

Before the Alchemy revamp, I had quite a few Kilva's potions. None of them got converted to Skinspikes. In fact, I still have some left. They are named and behave (including the very long casting time) just as they did before the revamp. Is there some quest or tribal dance I can perform to get them to turn into Skinspikes potions?

[Astroshak]

My guildie doesn't buy the skinspikes potions directly. Instead, he buys the cheaper dust of ro in the bazaar, and gets a shaman in the guild to make potions out of them.

[Carmaris]

Didn't start seeing Skinspike X potions in the bazaar until about 8 weeks after Ro went live, so don't think they were converted from the old.

They were/are pricy--180 to 200pp per--but they do come in handy. The Skinspike VI are nice, used them on my foraging mule when I was leveling him up and they made a huge difference.

[Posatrocible]

I wish I could sell skinspikes X at that price!!! 180 to 200 per. On my server at this very moment, the only powder of ro on sale is 3k lol. (Rediculous, but true... when some people notice they have the last tradeskills item on sale in the bazaar at any given time, they go kinda mental, don't they?). But recently, I haven't seen one for less than 400 plat. The other option is to get groups in Arc or Relic and hope the other group members won't object to shunting the powder my way.

I am curious what kinda prices people are paying for powder and what they are charging for X? The cheapest X on my server right now is 700pp.

[Queletan]

I /buyer most of my powders for 50pp.. I also pick up a fair number from vendors after a server reset. I haven't really tried to sell any; so far I've just gotten a stock of ~140 Skinspikes and ~80 Regeneration potions for my warrior (I love the extra dps over my coldain ring when I duo my warrior/cleric, and the regen helps loads when I'm using the tank to level up my enchanter..

If I sold them, I'd expect to get 100-125pp for them. I do think they're useful enough... Between that, my warrior's damage shield items, and my cleric's spells, I can get to (I *think*) ~145 (might be a little higher or lower). For a Cleric/Warrior duo, thats pretty huge; I have some pretty good DPS weapons (not stellar, but good for self geared) on my warrior, but enough of my damage does come from the mob (or sometimes mobs) hitting me, so I love it.

Pricewise, over a 35 ds, I don't know that enough people would be too excited about it, but I think enough people would be. There are some times when you can't turn down the opportunity for the extra something that helps a mob go down faster. I don't know that I would use them often in a group, unless maybe I had a beastlord for a slower, or no slower at all, because you really do need the mob to be hitting you frequently (just hopefully for not as much) for it to be any good, but there have still been times, especially on any "boss" mob my friends and I try to take on.

Q

[Dutchy]

Wish I could get those potions for below 200pp. Skinspikes X has been going for 1K+ on Drinal for a while, prizes are finally coming down a bit lately averaging 500-600pp a piece. Powders are running 300-400pp each in the bazaar and buyers are offering 100-200pp each.

Due to those high costs I've been using the VI and VII versions myself, together with the 21ds on my gear and the 45 reverse ds from my cleric it's working out well. If the X version became available for 250ppish I'd hurry over to the seller and buy his entire stock lol. Very worth it to me! Wish I could create them for that....

[Sollace]

on my gear and the 45 reverse ds from my cleric

The reverse damage shield for a 70 cleric is:

Mark of the Righteous = 35 damage
Mark of the Blameless = 45 damage

Both spells stack on each mob. If I'm using one ds, I use both.