Newbie questions!

[Eilderts]

Alright, I'm a lvl 35 Ikky Shm on Morell-Thule, worshipping my lord Cazic-Thule, and was slightly shocked when a 49 shm mentioned he made 8-10k to buy his horse from fletching. I can farm about 100-150pp per hour usually, so thought I might give trade skills a try to suppliment that. Is fletching worth doing? I understand that Nightmarewood Compounds sell for lots of money.

Also, I have a newb Halfling Ranger that I want to eventually twink. I figure if I get a decent skill on my shm I can equip him with better arrows and a better bow (or at least the same for cheaper).

So what is the quickest/cheapest path to take? Remember that I will probably be doing this either in Cabilis or Plane of Knowledge.

Also I have all expansions except LoY if you advice me farming stuff.

And when can I start making money and off of what item?

[KyrosKrane]

With most tradeskills (including fletching), you can't make money consistently until your skills are over 200, and probably closer to 250. (The exception is baking, where fish rolls (trivial 135) and patty melts (trivial 193) sell quite well.)

The quickest way to skill up on fletching is to find a fletching vendor who sells arrow components (the one in PoK will do quite nicely), and park yourself there with a bucketload of cash.

Then look at this page:

http://www.eqtraders.com/secrets/recipes_fletching.htm

All arrows require four bits: the arrowhead, the shaft, the nock, and the fletch. Find the one component that has the lowest trivial, but is still over your current fletching skill. Buy some of that, and buy the cheapest components for the other three arrow bits. Toss one of each bit in a fletching kit and combine; repeat until you reach the trivial for this set of four components. Then find the component with the next highest trivial, and repeat.

A more detailed skillup guide can be found here:

http://www.eqtraders.com/learn/learn_fletching.htm

[Calabar]

One of the problems with trying to train fletching up quickly, via throwing money at it, is that the cost becomes significantly higher after hitting a skill of 202. I’ve read posts from people who have chosen to skill up on vendor bought materials alone have spent hundreds of thousands of plats to do so. So unless you have an endless supply of cash, after 202 skill you’ll have to start farming for materials.

There used to be a vendor rout you could take with bows to gain significant skill. The vendor would buy a certain bow back for a greater amount of money then it cost to make it. This money would offset the cost of your failures. Unfortunately, Sony took the giant nerf bat and whacked the vendors upside the head and told them to cut that out. So now they just shrug their shoulders and offer you a token amount for the bow. Which leaves us little choice but to farm materials for higher skill combines.

My ranger has 202 fletching and my shaman has 200. Not having an endless supply of cash, or the desire to farm for fletching components at this point in time, I don’t have any personal experience at leveling beyond this. But there are lots of threads you this board that can help you once you reach that point should you choose to do so.

Best of luck.

[Taushar]

It is very expensive to GM in fletching with vendor bought items. How much exactly depends on your Wis/Int and RNG. When I GM'ed in fletching from 200 to 250, my Wisdom was 305. I did it half store bought bows and half acrylia arrows. I bought some acrylia and farmed most. It still took me about 45kpp to get from 200 to 250. It just gives you some idea. You can do either cheaply using farmed items or outrageously expensive using the bows combine. There is seldom in between.

Just as a side note, it's interesting that SOE put a tradeskills that is most useful by a certain class, i.e. Ranger, and made it difficult for them to skill up. I mean how many Rangers do you know have over 300 Wisdom? I just feel for my Ranger friends who are trying to GM in fletching. It's taking them so long to do it.


Taushar

[lonewylfe]

Just a side note, dex can also be the major stat for fletching. That's why I do all mine with 255 dex.