Bows or arrows for skill ups

[Spikehammer]

Do you get more skill ups per try doing bows rather than arrows or does EQ not care what you try.
I'm a bit of a miser when it comes to trade skilling prefering to farm my stuff myself spent a while in AC and Shadeweavers and farmed enough for a run of 134 condensed shadow arrows.
I got a skill up on last one to take me to 217, I know you can get bad runs with the rng but it was a bit dissapointing, mind you I did 200 goes on pottery and got no skill up so it's not as bad as that.
Do you think I should actually spend some cash on bows or just try arrows again and hope for the best. I am a shammy so had 280 dex.

[eniamn]

eveything i have heard to support bows sounds like it could just be rng. dont think there is a difference.

[Astroshak]

Either way, its a matter of getting the materials and plowing through the combines. Bows have the advantage of being easier to gather the materials for (because its all storebought); but the acrylia arrows have the advantage of being MUCH cheaper, if you're farming your stuff. Its a tradeoff, basically . . . time (spent farming) or plat.

[Taushar]

I have used about half and half using bows and arrows to get to GM and I have noticed that both give about the same skill ups from what I remember.

Taushar

[BartRN]

If it helps, I did bows yesterday from 210 to 250 in one sitting in about 3 hours. Took 100k, left with 15k. Sat in front to the vender in PoK and never moved till finished (cept for one time to catch a MGB C3, hehe). BOWS are the way to go IMO!!!!!

It is easier to farm PP than farm tradeskill items IMO

[Loathe_d_troll]

Just got done doing some cultural (wood elf) tries and such

Rough numbers came out to this 400 arrow tries on cultural arrows got me 2 improves (203 and 204) in two batches. total loss was around 8kish. Total time was around 13 hours with pre-combines.

The next day i decided to take a whack at bows

spent around 12k from 205 thu 215 time 2 hours

then pulled out 60k from my bank to pound it out hard 216-235 total loss on that jaunt was lil under 40k Total time took about 9 hours but was afk on and off ALOT if had been at cpu much woulda been half that

IMO the cost was better on bows. As was the time. at least compared to cultural combines. kinda costly cut oh well
puts me over 245 with geerlock so I'm happy hehe

[Laearya Lifeblood]

I went from 200 to 244 on bows, using tinkered cams, cost me about 25k total, when all was said and done

[Kelador Stormwolf]

As other people have said, bows require more outlay, but assuming you succeed on the combine you're not losing too much per attempt - at least until you get to shadewoods which can be a real plat sink. It kinda depends on whether losing a couple of hundred plat in a single combine makes you wince more than losing a couple of hundred plat over 100 combines...

If you want to make bows but you don't want to spend a lot of money you can do the Trueshot bow quest repeatedly (assuming you have the requisite faction in Kelethin and Kaladim (and the other places you need to acquire stuff on the quest). The Trueshot bow trivial is 235 - after that you're either going to have to make shadewood bows or switch to arrows. Cheapest way, but by far the most time consuming is to make acrylia arrows and farm the components yourself.

BTW I found that condensed flame drops in Scarlet Desert (from the Tro Jeg guys on and around the plateau) was a better return than the condensed shadow in Shadeweavers Thicket... SwT caves are fine as long as the 'right set' of aliens is up but one advantage of Scarlet Desert is there are Scarlet Rockhoppers running around that can drop flawless and superb hides - which you can sell for obscene amounts in the bazaar to desperate tailors, which you can in turn use to offset costs for acrylia if you get bored of farming the stuff.