191, What next

[diverdwn030]

Hi all! I hit 191 the other night with patty melts! What should I make now to get to GM?

Thanks!

BlueEyes 41 Druid

179 FisherWoman
191 Baker
190 Brewer
131 Taylor
151 Fletcher
163 Potter

[Katalaeia]

You've got a few options available to you. Since you can forage, go to Shadowhaven and forage mushrooms for Ohabah Truffles, which trivial at 202. You could do cinnesticks too but Gfay has way more possible forages than SH does.

At 202 you have to make a choice. Some people are die-hard Halas Meat Pie fans (triv 226) and others are die-hard Misty Thicket Picnic fans (triv >250). I went with picnics, because getting ready to do 100 HMP combines about killed my wrist. MTP combines are faster because the subcombines make 10 items each in most cases, rather than 1 item each for some of the HMP subcombines.

I actually started picnics at 191 myself, but did my combines in SH, so I foraged as I went and did truffles too.

If you hunt in tier 3+ PoP at all, you can pick up supplies for >250 combines, like jord meat + vann toes + mephit meat (BoT), hero parts (HoH), and blood raven parts + bloody tormentor parts (Torment). This helps break up the monotony of picnics/pies a little.

[Phabos]

Looks like the restart of The Great Baking Debate (TM). At level 41 and as a druid, you have a few options.

(1) Pixie Powdered Cinnisticks and/or Truffles. Cinnisticks require foraging or buying the sticks and slaughtering thousands of pixies in L-Fay. These will get you to 202. Truffles are foraged mushrooms plus ingredients purchased from those cute little otters in CS, if you can get there, and again trivial at 202.

(2) JaggedPine meats/forages. These will take you all the way to 250. Griffon Meat, Anaconda Meat, and Plant Shoots are all ingredients in recipes that can take you as far as you want. The downside is that it takes A LOT of combines, and the drop/forage rate is somewhat slow.

(3) Halas 10lb Meat Pies. Trivial at 226, recipe a it too complicated to explain. Suffice to say there are a lot of subcombines, and you must farm/forage eggs (for dough) and farm mammoth and wolf meat. Each combine takes 1 dough, and each wolf/mammoth meat will net 10 combines.

(4) Misty Thicket Picnics. +250, with several subcombines. Requires Brownie parts (1 per 100 combines excluding failures, can get these at low levels in Steamfont), vegetables (1 per 10), fruit (1 per 72), and dough (1 per 100). In addition, there are ingedients only sold (to my knowledge) in RV and SH, so if you don't like (or aren't liked) in these zones, they become more difficult.

(5) Various PoP recipes with meat bought from vendors, PCs, or as gifts. Buying in large enough quantities from PC traders to GM is most likely prohibitively expensive, and vendor mining is hit or miss at best. Still, it is an option.


Those are the options (so far as I recall), now the recommendation. Anything is going to take a while. Make that a long while. Personally, even as a non-foraging class, I used Cinnisticks to hit 202, and then did a combination of HMPs, PoP Meats, and picnics.

Given the opportunity to do it again, (and provided I actually TOOK the opportuniy), I would do picnics as main main combine. After about 10 points on Pies, I gave up. They were costly, difficult, and the market crashed, leaving me with several hundred I couldn't sell. Prices, however, are subject to change, check your server. The main problem with Pies is the PITA factor, which they are, and then some.

JaggedPine is just too slow. The mobs are difficult to kill, the drop rate is not so good, and the forage rate isn't either, from what I understand. This may be a good suppliment (I did a few combines with vendored meat/shoots), but probably shouldn't be the main source of skillups.

PoP meats, again, are rare and expensive. If you can get them, use them, but don't expect large enough quantities to make them a viable option by themselves.

And last, the dreaded picnic. In my opinion, the best of the recipes. Inexpensive, mostly vendored, what's not can generally be cheaply bought in the Bazaar, and can be done in large amounts. Given a good system in SH, one can do 100 combines start to finish (buying ingredients to the final click), in under an hour (45 minutes was my average, maybe a bit more if I had to run to the Bazaar). It's +250 Trivial, meaning it can be done exclusively (as opposed to pies), generally sells well, and the success rate and yield are low enough so that you won't be swamped with finished products taking up valuable bank space. For fair disclosure, there are a LOT of subcombines involved. It also requires semi-decent smithing and tailoring skills (picnic baskets) as well as brewing (beer).


I hope this gives some indication of what is to come on your GM path. Good luck to you.

Now, who is going to be the first to disagree with me on picnics v. pies?


Phabos Aphsion
Drunken Paladin of Brell
Tarew Marr
GM Baker and Spoon Holder

[Balkin]

Not me!

Picnics PWN HMP's!!!

Having done both, I do hereby swear to never make another HMP ever again.

[Kahmon]

Before Either option was available I had a low level ranger running around Gfay killing the level 3ish brownines so I could reach 168ish while also foraging cinn stix & killing pixies. This gave me a large stash to work with from 191-202.

At 202 I chose MTPs to take me all the way to 250 because of 2 reasons:
1)all the subcombines have great yeilds so less prep time.
2)all the materials are easy to aquire. Aside from foraged goodies which can be bought in the bazaar for about 1pp each the only non vendor bought ingredient is brownie parts. Even these you won't need many of since each one is good for 100 MTP combines.

If you have about 100 skill each in Smithing, brewing and tailoring then this is certainly the best option. If you don't have the other skills then either recruit a friend to help or take a few hours to raise them. All 3 can be raised to the needed level easily enough.

[Toppo]

It is VERY easy to raise the skills. Brewing works up fast; you don't need to triv the beer because the yield is good enough that you can get all you need from a few successes. Smithing doesn't need to be all that high either for much the same reason.

I worked both skills up a little, and then did nothing but MTP preps til they became trivial

HMP's are kinda cool' but the amount of diddling around needed to get the goodies together will drive you crazy!

If you can get the ingredients (friend farms FG for AA or something) Lotus pies are good in this range too.

[karisun]

Once you can zone into Plane of Justice (lvl 46), forage Justice Fruit, Breadcrumbs, and Cockroaches.

Candied Cockroaches will take you to 202

Breadcrumbs and planar fishes will take you to 222.

Justice Fruit Pies will take you to 250.

You can forage in safety from the graveyard if you don't wish to hunt in the zone.

K

[Sadonumspa]

Plane of Justice Safety

I would recommend finding your way to the Trial area. This is the only True safe spot in PoJustice.

I was trained in the Graveyard ONCE by a *&^%$ trying to get someone to save him from his "pulls". Fortunately, I got off a gate before he got me killed. From that point on, I went to the trial area. It's not possible to be trained there as there are no agro mobs. Try there.

Sadonumspa Omnislayer
"There can be only One!"
65 High-Elf Paladin
"Havenlight-Guild of Xegony"

[Cigarskunk]

LOL - I love this debate, however, changes to allowing folks to do stack combines (either all at once or with 20 seperate clicks but stacks of items in the container) definately change the rules here. Assuming that you don't intend to wait for this change to go into effect, here's your options -

1) Wait till you hit 46 and do planer foraged combines - these are easy combines but you'll be foraging forever. Nice thing is that your occasional success will make you some nice plat, atleast for the justice fruit pies.

2) Truffles/cinni sticks - easy enough to do now, simply major PITAs in the area of farming and foraging.

3) HMPs - they're expensive, sell for dirt, take four times more subcombines then MTPs. require a ton of farming and are a pain in the butt to deal with in general, yet folks swear by them for some reason - I swear at them personally

4) MTPs - you'll need to work up your tailoring, brewing and smithing, but the smithing is easy while the tailoring and brewing can be skilled while you're making the MTPs themselves - all said, the easiest overall way to get from 191-250.

[astianax]

there's also planar fishing, that got left out. i know you currently can't manage these on your own, but they are a viable option once made available

46+ can fish in nightmare for crawdad (buttered crawdad triv 202 or 208). but it can be dangerous, as several things see invis and wander all over. i send my sk 'cause she can fd fish. also get nightmare cichlid for fisherman's companion quest

55+ can fish in valor/storms. valor tends to be safe if you avoid the ruins. also has crawdads and the other fish (valoran discus) for the fisherman's companion. storms is home to storm salmon, which can be used by itself or baked with bread crumbs foraged in justice

and, if you're one of the lucky individuals who has access to, and can fish safely in, plane of water, most of the fish here are used for baking as well

[Nairn Niteraven]

JP

(2) JaggedPine meats/forages. These will take you all the way to 250. Griffon Meat, Anaconda Meat, and Plant Shoots are all ingredients in recipes that can take you as far as you want. The downside is that it takes A LOT of combines, and the drop/forage rate is somewhat slow.

That's what I did all the way to 250, but I'm a Druid. Druids, Rangers and Beastlords own this zone; I'm not sure it's so hot for other classes because of the other critters that will probably aggro on you.

I *hate* MTP's and only do them on request; takes up way too much room and too many subcombines.

[Chenier]

Great discussion guys, thanks! I'm looking at working on my 200+ baking soon =)

[Tinile]

Originally posted by Chenier
Great discussion guys, thanks! I'm looking at working on my 200+ baking soon =)

I would have thought the cupcake would have done baking first

[Chenier]

Originally posted by Tinile
I would have thought the cupcake would have done baking first

Good point...no, I started tradeskilling because my boyfriend (who played at the time - heck, got me started playing) said ever so innocently one day "why don't you make us some handmade backpacks?"

It's all HIS fault.

[Tinile]

Originally posted by Chenier
It's all HIS fault.

My husband also got me sucked into the insanity of tradeskills.