fletching questions

[Kylinee]

alright, I did my searching, but nothing came up when I entered the words "fletch, silver, and arrow" So I’m hoping I’m not duplicating someone else....

anyway, I’ve been surfing around all the boards including Aoenla Darkwood's site, Interealms Ranger Glade, EQ Striatics, and a few others. I have a few questions about fletching.

1) how do you get merchant faction up in Kelethin? I'm a half-elf ranger and I seem to be indiff to them all despite slaughtering crushbone time and again. What faction exactly are the WE merchants on?

2) ok, my CHA is 75, I have my 2 trusty opal steins for buying/selling bumping me to 125 CHA. now, assuming I am indiff or better, I should get the best price at just about any vendor assuming med-low traffic area correct? So my question is why can I get a better price off the fletchers on the west of PoK (indiff) than I can in my guild (surefall and not sure what level.. probably warmly at least)?

3) according to Aoenla's guide, the cost for making Type 11 Field point Wood shaft Ceramic Vane Large nock to get a fletcher to 202 is 2797cp for 5. or about 56pp for 100 (assuming all success on 1 stack). If instead, you use silver tip, wood shaft, round fletch, and large nock, you make 200 arrows (again assuming all success on 1 stack) for 80pp or 40pp for 100. that saves you about 14-16 plat a stack AND makes magic arrows. admittedly they are only 3dmg and 50range, but that's just fine with me in the 30s-40s. (this is using my cha of 125 it's about 79pp for the stack of tips + change for the 3 other stacks) So my question ends up being, why does no one advocate the silver tip method? Not only does it seem cheaper, but I swear, I’ve had TONS less failures.... I almost always make the full 200 and only fail at most 2 or 3 times. and my fletching is 180 or so and i do not get the message "this item will no longer increase your skill". this brings up my last question

4) is it not possible to skill up on silver tipped arrows? though I have been successfully making lots and lots of arrows, I don't seem to have many skill ups. is this the reason that the silver-tipped method is not recommended? or is this the result of the fletching nerf bat i heard about?

ok, that's everything I think. unfortunately I fried my computer and I’m waiting for parts so no EQ for me at the moment, so I can't go test everything. If someone has a parser (with REALLY good directions cause I’ve never used one before!) I don't mind testing the theories if they have not been tested yet. I don't have all THAT much plat to burn... but in the name of science I can give up a chunk of it....

Thanks for your help.

[Maarmote]

Aoenla guide suggests to use ceramic vane instead of silver points because it is much less expensive to skill up with. The average price on arrows shall not be taken into consideration if you only want to skill up and do not intend to use the arrows. Your reference should be the price per combine.

As for the skill ups, you should have some with silver heads as well as with ceramic, you just got a bit unlucky. Don't expect more than 1 point every 20 or 40 combine though. Sometimes 80 or 100 in bad series.

[Kylinee]

actually if you read my third question, the Ceramic vane is NOT cheaper. according to Aoenla it is 56 plat for 100 while using the silver tip is only 40 for 100. this is why i'm asking why it is not advocated.

[Taraddar]

You need to reread what Maarmote said. The issue isn't cost per arrow it's cost per combine. From what your've posted its 56pp for 20 combines of the ceramic or 80pp for 20 combines of the silver tiped. Sure the silver tiped make more arrows if you want to use them but the guide is for skilling up and probably with the assumption that you sell the arrows back to the vendor so 56pp for 20 combines is cheaper than 80pp for 20 combines even if you get twice as many arrows for the 80pp.

[Keqen]

If I understand correctly, silver tipped arrows yield 10 arrows per combine, as opposed to the normal 5/combine. So using silver tipped arrows are cheaper if you are fletching because you want ARROWS, while ceramic vane arrows are cheaper PER COMBINE, and thus the cheaper way to go if you are fletching to SKILL UP, as Maarmote brought out.

[Keqen]

Er, yeah, what Taraddar said. =)

Ya beat me to it!

[Kylinee]

ah

LOL. ah now i understand. I have pretty much always used my fletched arrows in combat. I mean i might as well use them to fight and it's good to have magic arrows that the all low except silver tipped provides.

well, that's the answer to 3. anyone know about the others?

[Taraddar]

1) no bloody clue, i'm a barb and don't fit in thier stupid doors and haven't been back to there in ages. I'd try some of the quests like the belts and such tho.

2) I'd probably check the faction on those vendors and check them right after a patch. Surefall is near a druid port so it may just be vendor greed where thier prices get worse after they've been sold lots of stuff.

4) if you aren't getting a trivial msg you should be able to get skill ups.

[Gargazon]

This kinda makes me wonder though. 80pp per combine, with few fails vs 56pp per combine. What is the sell back of the arrows to a vendor? Is there a net savings doing it this way? or is the overall cost going to be higher with silver tipped, and selling back to the vendor? For example, if it costs me 56pp to do the combines but I lose 10pp a run on the arrows, while with the same number of combines with silver tipped I lose less than that, it might be better to use silver tipped.

Maybe one of you math folks out there can figure out success rates at a given skill level and sell back, and figure out the net cost difference and when or if it would be economically more sensible to use silver.

[lonewylfe]

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=145

not too hard to do, got most of the stuff off the merchants when I did it for a while..never did get to max faction though.

[Osprey]

how do you get merchant faction up in Kelethin?

I think faction doesn't honestly affect prices unless you're quite disliked. Indifferent should be fine.

2) ok, my CHA is 75, I have my 2 trusty opal steins for buying/selling bumping me to 125 CHA. now, assuming I am indiff or better, I should get the best price at just about any vendor assuming med-low traffic area correct? So my question is why can I get a better price off the fletchers on the west of PoK (indiff) than I can in my guild (surefall and not sure what level.. probably warmly at least)?

No idea. My suggestion is just to shop at PoK and make life easy. Again, faction is not a big player. And some vendors are just designated mean or nice, and have higher or lower prices.

3) according to Aoenla's guide, the cost for making Type 11 Field point Wood shaft Ceramic Vane Large nock to get a fletcher to 202 is 2797cp for 5. or about 56pp for 100 (assuming all success on 1 stack). If instead, you use silver tip, wood shaft, round fletch, and large nock, you make 200 arrows (again assuming all success on 1 stack) for 80pp or 40pp for 100. that saves you about 14-16 plat a stack AND makes magic arrows. admittedly they are only 3dmg and 50range, but that's just fine with me in the 30s-40s. (this is using my cha of 125 it's about 79pp for the stack of tips + change for the 3 other stacks) So my question ends up being, why does no one advocate the silver tip method? Not only does it seem cheaper, but I swear, I’ve had TONS less failures.... I almost always make the full 200 and only fail at most 2 or 3 times. and my fletching is 180 or so and i do not get the message "this item will no longer increase your skill". this brings up my last question

Easy answer. I'd wager that when Aenola's was written, and specifically the part where the cost per try was worked out, you only got back 5 arrows per combine (back when it was barbed or hooked or something instead of silver). While it was updated, I bet the costs weren't.

4) is it not possible to skill up on silver tipped arrows?

Sure it's possible. It's a fletching combine like any other.

[Morani]

Regarding the Silver-tipped Arrows: Not too long ago, the buy back price from the vendors changed so I don't know what it is now. BUT, at the time you could make a SMALL amount of money while working on silver tipped arrows if you sold them back to the vendors. In my run of exclusively silver-tipped I made like 40p so it was worth it as I LOST nothing. Kylinee, I know you like to use the arrows for fighting but at that price, you might want to consider selling them back to the vendor and using cheaper arrows for fighting. You are likely to go though more than 550 combines before you reach triv if you are LUCKY. That comes out to 1,538,350 + in copper for the vanes. (over1.5k plat)

The Merchants:
I too think that once you reach indifferent it shouldn't matter but I'm not positive. There are four quests that you can do to raise you faction though: http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/qsearch.html?faction=70

Skill-ups:
The RNG is just plain CRUEL some times. Though, keep in mind that the silver tipped arrows make 10 per combine rather than the standard 5 so if you are looking at the number of arrows you have made rather than the number of combines; you'll actually have had HALF as many skill-up opportunities and it'd seem like it's gong a LOT slower.

[Lorthien]

Please correct me if I am wrong, but isn't everyone indifferent to the merchants on PoK?

[Maena Bowyer]

Ok...

Reason why ceramic arrows were better, (no idea if they still are) is because you could make a fairly nice profit making them. But then they reduced the sellback price ('bout a half year ago?), and you can't make a profit anymore. (and yeah, it was a profit even if you failed 2 out of 20, and you should be doing better than that on 'em at around 180 skill). Incidentally, I *believe* the silver tips triv under 190, but I was at 200 when they made the change to the tips, and so don't really know.

If memory serves, (unless they've fixed it) many of the generic "tradeskill" merchants in kelethin are on some faction that has nothing to do with kelethin. The two "fletching" merchants in this category are the bow parts merchant, and the arrow parts merchant that is "outside" (and has the fletching kit). Merchant Lanin, I believe. (many other tradeskill merchants in kelethin are on that same "unknown" faction). The fletching merchants inside buildings, however, are on the standard kelethin merchants faction. (not sure of exact name) you can increase faction with them through the newbie warrior quest.

Also, there is something known as "greedy merchant syndrome". There's an FAQ on this site somewhere about it, but basically merchants that are doing lots of business raise their prices. Merchants near newbie areas/guilds tend to do lots of business, which is why the ones in surefall charge more.