New to EQ and new to tradeskills. Which should I try?

[coriello]

Some background info first:

I used to play Asheron's call a lot (3 years) and have kinda wanted to play eq but never got the initiative. I mentioned to one of my good friends that I planned to start playing and he hooked me up with a neat account of a lvl 65 rogue and 35 shammy. I have been playing for about a week. I have made a lvl 14 necro atm and also have another friend from AC playing. I dual box the shaman and necro for buffs and heals every now and then.


The Question:

Basically I really want to try jewel crafting, baking, and brewing. I have 20-30k PP I can spend on crafting at the moment. My question is this....

Which trade skill would be more profitable earlier on in the crafting stages? I hear that jewel crafting takes a bit of time and money to skill up compared to baking/brewing. I want to make some items to sell on the bazaar to help fund my chars and crafting needs for jewel making. I am definately going to do at least those 3 trade skills (baking probably on another char).

I am going to make an enchanter on my second account to level with my friend and I, he can toss us clarity and our pets buffs and mess and what not, and he would be awesome at jewel craft. So should I take jewel craft first to make profits or go with baking or brewing?

Any help on this would be awesome, and please post reason for going one way or another as I would like to evaluate as to why you think that way. It would help me decide much easier. Thank you, and hi (this is my first post here)

[merkell]

Do a search and you will find many threads related to this topic.
there will be lots of good info for you.
I hope this helps you.

[Phabos]

Since you don't yet have a higher level enchanter, which you will need to make profitable jewelry, since, obviously, the more expensive metals (and those which take higher level spells to enchant) have better stats and can actually sell, you probably don't want to start JC yet. Lower level jewelry is a plat a dozen and may not even make your costs back (including failures).

If you want to make a reasonable profit, I would reccomend Baking or Brewing. Granted, smiths and tailors make more per sale, but skilling those up take large amounts of time and farming. Baking and Brewing are relatively cheap and are high volume sellers, which adds to a nice profit margin.

I prefer Baking myself, but that is a personal opinion. Brewing is enjoyable, makes decent stat drinks, and the results will sell as well as baked goods.

Phabos Aphsion
Drunken Paladin of Brell
Tarew Marr
WTS Picnics and Tea

[coriello]

Thanks a ton, that is exactly what type of info I was looking for

I suppose what I could do, is work baking up on an alt char like I was planning, and then work on jewel craft as I go along so it won't seem so tedious hehe. Thanks again for your replies, I did search through the forums, but I did not see any of them that asked about the profits though.

[Silound]

The good thing is baking and brewing can be done in 3-5 recipies total.

Baking--Fillet of Bear to 143, Patty Melts till 191 Misty Picnics/MP to over 200.

Brewing--Fetid Essence to 122, Jumjum Spiced Beer to 168, MHB (if you like pain) to 248.

JC is best left to enchanters, because without JCM AA (is it still broken?) You stand a lesser chance of success on those high end items with a greater than 250 trivial.

Smithing is a great skill, but you ever heard the saying "spend a large fortune to make a small one"? Smithing will over time probably even out and turn decent profit margin, but your highest chance of profit will be new recipies coming out with a new expansion. Same deal goes for tailoring. Both are expensive or mind numbingly time consuming to GM, and profit is slow to turn overall. That's not saying it's not profitable, but it takes time and dedication.

Personally I have one of each of those skills, and I deeply regret taking on smithign and tailorign at once Headaches galore

Sil

[Furyrpied]

Aye... good thing you didn't mention tailoring... *shudder*

Baking is great fun, and can be profitable in the long run with Misty Picknic Baskets or Holy Cakes, but to make your baking life easier you need a forrager, Iksars can 'forage' but are maxed out at a skill of 50, so maybe a ranger or druid is in order... Trust me.. my wife decided to GM baking and is always harrassing me to go hunt in places that will get her items from my forraging...

I'm not sure about selling back some low level baked items though.. Used to be able to sell stacks of Fish Rolls (135 trivial) for about 10pp a stack in the Lake of Ill Omen because it was a long run for people to go for food.. but with all the expansions, dunno how populated the zone is anymore

Brewing is also great fun and can be profitable with Queynos Afternoon Tea or Grob's Liquizised Meat (spelling is wrong I know.. but it's after 1am ZzZzZ... Huh? what? oh right...) as they are stat giving drinks. You can (almost) GM without any forrages (all vendor purchasable items) and is realativly cheap to do so, the last two points are the expensive ones that you will need someone to do some jewlcrafing, or forrage for you (Demi-Sec Champain or Queynos Afternoon Tea)

Selling Heady Kiolas (46 trivial), Prismatic Dye (54 trivial) Jumjum Spiced Beer ( 162 trivial) in the bazaar can be profitable as many other trade skillers will need these for sub-combines for tailoring or Misty Picknic Baskets. I know of a lot of higher end people who would be willing to pay up to 20pp a stack at least to save them the time of having to make these trivial items. Stick them on a trader mule in the bazaar at night or for a while in the afternoon and see how fast they can sell.

For selling in the bazaar I always zone in and find a spot to sit, then /bazaar all my items I wish to sell and price accordingly before I put trader mode on. If you don't see an item you wish to sell (say dyes) do a /ooc need a price check for (link item) and see what comes up..

All and all, I say go for Brewing, especially if you enjoy roleplaying a drunk.. Can be fun at times, and to be able to show off to newbies that you are drinking Skull Ale as opposed to Gnesh is always fun!

Good luck to you and your future in trades!

Edited for stuupid typos.. I should be sleeping...

[Nolrog]

Try tailoring. It's a lot of fun, and pretty easy to raise

[Zeralenn]

Tailoring is the absolute worst tradeskill to raise to usable levels.

Smithing is the second worst.

...Zera

[Sanna]

For people who are completely new to the idea of tradeskilling...

I would recommend brewing, or possibly baking.

If you can get a brewing or baking skill to 190s and you're not totally sick of sitting in front of the barrel, click-click-clicking, then yeah, you're cut out to be a TSer.

If you get to 60 and start screaming, maybe TSes are not for you. ^_^


Brewing and Baking are good 'water testers'. JC is not 'hard' per se, as long as you watch what you are doing (stay close to trivial to minimize failures and maximize returns). But yes, absence of a chanter for the metals is a hamper there.


Glad to see a new and interested person. ^_^!

-- Sanna
Do not start with Tailoring. Do not start with Smithing. Anyone telling you these is attempting to play a cruel joke on you.

[Maevenniia]

Originally posted by Nolrog
Try tailoring. It's a lot of fun, and pretty easy to raise

You are an evil, evil person

[Nolrog]

Thank you. I try my best.

By the way Zeralenn, I was being sarcastic. See the little wink at the end of my post?

[Calabar]

If you want a trade skill that is fast to grand master so that you can make the higher end items then I must also vote for brewing. I just hit 250 brewing on a second character so its not hard to do. Its all vendor bought, and fairly cheaply so, all the way to 248. Though you don’t need those last two points if you have a brewing geerlok, if you want them anyway as I always do you can make Kaladim Constitutionals. They are a pain to make because of the subcombines, which are not cheap, but you don’t have to forage or buy anything from someone with jewlcraft. All you have to do is pick up some ground spawn in Kaladim to add to your subcombines. Then you can make some of the stat drinks to help finance your other trade skill interests.

Baking, at least for me, is a lot more fun than brewing. But it seems to take me a long time to gain skill in it. I will one day be a 250 baker, but it’s been much slower for me than brewing.

[Nolrog]

Brewing was really easy to raise to 122 with Fetid Essence. It cost me probably around 7PP to get that far. I then made Ol' Tujim's Fierce Brew (barley, hops, yeast, malt, cask) to 135. After that, I was kind of stuck. I was making Hero's Brew for a bit after that, but stopped after a bit because it takes a lot of ingredients (malt x 3, yeast, water flask x 2, short beer x 2, cask, and I had to make the short beer since I couldn't find any.)

[Leafshadoe]

I chose fletching for one character (a woodelf warrior) 'cause it seemed to fit, and the arrows I could make starting out were better than the arrows I could buy. Also, have made a beginner bow that seems to work really well. Made a few to sell as well. My newest character (I am just trying out some diff. classes ) is a baker. She makes the tastey 'Batwing Crunchies' really cheaply- mainly by hunting her batwings. Jamie Oliver eat your heart out!

[GraemeFaelban]

The best advice to someone who is new to tradeskilling, is run now, run fast, don't look back. Tradeskills are the devil.

Others have given good advice if you choose to ignore the above.