what started it?

[kaleep]

what started your desire to do tradeskills? i'm curious when people started getting into them.

mine was as a level 9 warrior talking to a guy selling banded armor, i knew i could make lots of pp selling it in Gfaydark, if only i had 100pp to get started, after selling lots of cb belts, i went to this site to find out how to do it, and found that wise classes had it easiers than stupid warriors... so long warrior, hello cleric(now level 65, and always been main since he could make a banded gorget, which was on day one of his exiswtence.)

so, what got YOU into tradeskills?

[Prizzle]

A guy was selling +2 wis rings when I was playing a ranger. Asked him where he got them he said he had made them.

Asking around how one could make such things I found out only enchanters could make stat jewelry and were making a fortune out of so called silver and platinum ruby veils (yes this was a loooooooooong time ago). Made a little gnomish chanter alt who eventually became my main. Never did sell many veils though hehe

[Enchanter]

It was the dawn of Norrath. As a struggling enchanter hunting Deathfist orcs for fun and profit in East Commonlands, I got to see part of it's transformation into "Bazaar v1.0". I collected every bone chip, every ruined pelt, and every rusty broadsword trying to save money for spells and gear, when some passing caster of incredible power (he had a last name!) showed off his 10 slot backpack.

I was gone.

Must... hunt... bears...

Raw silk to fill in my empty gear slots later was just a fabulous perk.

[Suva]

I had a friend give me 100pp one night and teach me how to brew and bake to get my skill to around 100. I was hooked on tradeskills after that.

[Tinile]

I remember hearing about this thing called Jewel Craft that would make me fabuously wealthy. Since I was still trying to find a char I could play of my own, testing some combos out, I decided to make an enchanter, since it was *the* class for JC. I remember diligently sitting in felwithe, running between two zones to buy supplies, clicking away. I enchanted the silver and electrum bars and sold my jewelry in gfay using /auc. Then I heard of other trade skills, and I remember thinking that one day I would master them all (max was 200 back then, although there weren't recipes to get you to 200!). I remember getting Namarie to 114 JC and being so frustrated, as that was when I was to switch to gold bars with the lowest gem. 10 plat for gold bars was huge!

Things happened and I ended up playing my druid, which was originally created on the 2nd account to be a port bot for the enchanter. I ended up starting to tailor on the druid somehow. Was lucky I had the enchanter for mana vials for Wu's and started Nam's pottery to make my own vials for enchanting. I remember selling the uber Wu's gaunts (when they were the only Wu's piece in game) for uber 80pp in EC bazaar. I was so thrilled by that uber amount of money!

Ended up shelving the enchanter at 30 for a couple years. Eventually PLed her to 52 so she could do all the 49 enchants. Trailed along in tradeskills on the druid for the shawls. Could never figure out which skill to GM in, so I never did any GMs. Then they came out with the AA and 1750 and my drive to master all trade skills came about again and I am certainly on my way to 1750 on the druid. I plan to get the enchanter her shawls, will probably have her just be 200 at all skills, except the JC which she is already 250 in.

That's my long and boring story!

[Verdandi]

I was bored with exping and curious about these abilities that I saw in my skills list. I had a friend who was into smithing (and had taken me on some wild adventures trying to get from Halas to Highpass, which was the closest source of ore at the time) so I knew that was more trouble than I wanted at that tender level of 12ish. The next most logical skill for a barbarian was brewing...and so it began.

After I got the hang of brewing and was well underway there, I realized that all those meats and parts I was looting could make some fun foods as an alternative to boring rations. (This was well before different durations on foods.) So I took up baking. At one time, shortly before dragon steaks were introduced, I had made one of everything possible.

Once brewing and baking had gotten to the point where I needed lots of time to gather materials or to trek to distant cities for supplies, I realized pottery could be done very close to home. The various sizes of clay and need for firing sheets confused the heck out of me, so I stopped and started a few times before I got the hang of it. I still hadn't discovered EQ Traders and was working entirely off the books in game. Take a look at those pottery books sometime, yikes! But eventually I figured it out.

Around this time I started an enchanter for a little variety and decided to undertake jewelcraft with her. But as she worked her way through silver, I discovered what abysmal soloers low level enchanters make, and what an abysmal enchanter I make. She made some modest profits selling silver jewelry, but is still level 11 to this day.

Back on Verdandi, I dove next into tailoring. Now this was fun, junk pelts and patterns that cost a couple silver, turned into useful armor that sells for gold! I got stuck after tattered, until raw silk and eventually cured silk were introduced, and managed to make a bit out of those.

Around this time I turned 25 and tried alchemy. After burning my entire savings of 500pp for a whopping skill of 8, that went onto the back burner for a while.

By now I was high enough and worldly enough to have ventured as far as Freeport, and realized it was the perfect place for smithing. Brewing, baking, and pottery were pretty much maxed (as high as was available at the time) and figured it was high time I started smithing. But smithing was much more expensive, so I did batches here and there as my cash supply allowed.

The coldain shawl quest provided the incentive to finally make the plunge into fletching and jewelcraft with Verdandi. I still wasn't sure what to GM until the solstice earring quest and barbarian cultural made up my mind on smithing.

I had been working on alchemy as funds allowed, but the proceeds from smithing allowed me to finally max it on up. Yay!

So now with 250 smithing and 200 everything else (well, 195 alchemy till I ding again), the need for exp for AAs is the only thing holding me back from GMing more. One of these days.....

[Grimina]

My husband made me do it!! He started EQ before I did and found out (on everlore hehe) that he could tailor his own armor (monk) so he diligently worked on that until he got to a skill of about 50 and finally made his own set of cured silk armor and was SO proud (this was before Wu's).

Then I started playing and he had me working on tailoring to make my armor. Unfortunately...paladins (my first toon) can't WEAR raw/cured silk. So I was buying ringmail from vendors...slowly...until we saw some guy auctioning banded armor. I scrimped and saved until I could buy a whole set. Then realized...I could have MADE that. Spent some time searching the web to find out how to raise smithing. And got quite irritated that all the sites only listed the trivials...and not the skill level when I ought to START making the armor (boy was I a n00b LMAO).

Then I saw someone auctioning silver ruby veils. Man those looked neat! So I did my research, and started on JC. And spent every dime we made switching back and forth between JC and smithing (we were perpetually broke after that LOL). Until I finally gave up and asked a friend to make the veil for me. He was in Rathe Mountains at the time so I loaded up and started the harrowing journey (I think I was level 20 at the time hehe) on the way I discovered that my skill was only 1 lower than triv. So I took a chance and clicked combine. I failed LMAO. So I went back to get more materials and didn't feel like running back to rathe...so I clicked combine again and succeeded. Happiest moment in EQ til then! I was forever hooked from that point!

[Nimphe Wildwood]

I started out in Brewing. Back in 2000, lower lvl people were lvling like crazy from a quest called Tumpy Tonics. Literally a dozen or so people would wait around for a dwarf named Groflah. People were paying 100pp for a stack of these now infamous drinks.

Back then at lvl 20, 100pp was a lot! I made a lil bit of pocket change but that didn't last long, VI found out about this so-called new method of exping and put a stop to it. That was also my first experienced Nerf.

From Brewing I went to Tailoring. From those two started my down-ward spiral to TSI or TradeSkill Insanity!

[Chenier]

Boyfriend says "why don't you make us some backpacks?"

It's all *his* fault. /nod

[cattywumpus]

I started playing a little after Luclin came out. My first true toon was a Vah Shir Shaman so I had to learn brewing for my class quests. Brewing is still my first love (I'm a grand master Drunkard too).

I kind of enjoyed making useful things so early in my carrer. By the time I was level 10 I was making Heady Kiolas for sale so I could finance my addiction. I started fishing around this time too.

Next on the list was Smithing. I needed armor and banded just looked so wonderful to me at the time that I had to learn how to make it. Selling Shadeling Silks and Heady Kiolas to anyone I could find helped me to make an entire suit of Banded Armor by the time I was 10 and I was making it for friends as well.

By the time I was 15 I had linked up with a Vah Shir Beastlord and he needed a lot of help with Tailoring for his class quests so we started tearing up Shadeweaver's Thicket for pelts and silks. I smithed his studs and bonings for him whenever we could come up with enough cash. I caught the bug by helping him.

I made the mistake of deleting that character and quiting the game for a while. Then I got bored and did it all over again.

It's been all downhill from there. I think I've spent more time tradeskilling than anything else except possibly vendor mining for stuff to put together.

[Aloca]

With my first character being a druid, I had all these wonderful forages that were filling up space, and someone mentioned brewing and baking. Then I found out I needed all that equipment for baking ... so pottery was learned in a short time. Now I'm just hooked and want to be able to make everything I can get my mitts on!

[Calabar]

I first discovered trade skills while playing UO. Trade skills are, or at least were, a bit different than in EQ. You didn’t have to have max skill to make useful items, though it did help. And it didn’t take a lot of time to reach GM level in a skill, at least not like it does in EQ. I loved making my own spell books and rune books filled with runes I made myself to locations all over the world. I got to make clothing, armor and weapons and place my name on them along with my GM mark. I absolutely fell in love with the ability to make things that other people enjoyed. I made a bit of money that way but more often than not I gave my items away. But my favorite character was a baker but unfortunately there was absolutely no use for food in the game other than role-playing.

Then I came to EverQuest and the trade skill system simply blew me away. UO trade skills were very limited. You could, for example, make only one kind of bow and one kind of arrow. I couldn’t believe the HUGE variety of items players could make in Norrath. A friend talked me into playing EQ and his sister made one of his characters a full set of banded armor. After I managed to stop drooling I started looking into smithing. My young druid, much like myself, was a packrat. He’d spent a lot of time hunting in East Commons and had his bank box stuffed with pelts and other odds and ends. Then one day one of the hundreds of tells scrolling past my screen caught my eye. Someone was buying medium quality cat pelts. And he was offering 5pp each. As I had about 15pp to my name this was huge. I told him I had some in the bank and ran to Freeport as quickly as I could. I had just over five stacks of pelts and he bought them all. I used that money to raise my smithing to 101.

Then I heard about hand made backpack so I started working on tailoring. But that proved to be much harder than smithing. Then someone introduced me to stat food. One look at dragon steaks, the top of the line food, and I stopped hunting spiderlings and started baking. I made edible goo, rat, bear and wolf sandwiches and of course batwing crunchies. I made fruit pies and eventually fish fillets and fish rolls. It’s a same I didn’t know I could buy fish and bat wings from a vendor. But I did manage to raise my fishing skill well over a hundred at the same time.

I had so much fun meeting people by handing out snack packs of batwing crunchies and milk that I had to find out what else I could make. That’s when I found EQ Traders and I had to try every trade skill my wood elf druid was allowed to practice. Needless to say I was always broke, but I was having a great time. When my guild broke and I lost my closest friends I just couldn’t bring myself to play my level 51 druid any more. So I started playing my shaman and I started all my trade skills all over again. After the trophies came out I decided that it was taking way too long to GM baking so I took the short rout and took brewing to 250 and made my trophy. I’m now earning AA points and plan to eventually take at least baking and smithing to 250 as well. It there weren’t trade skills in EQ I’m not sure I’d still be playing this game.

[Xenephex]

I actually got into it for the money. My first week playing, a kindly high level gave me a small sewing kit, said something about leather paddings and pointed me at this web site.

So I read up a bunch. At that time there were no message boards here but there was a listing of tradeskillers by server, so I found a couple names of people who were making fine plate, made a stack of leather paddings and sold it for 100 plat!

I got someone to make me a skinning knife but soon lost it in a bad combine and decided to skill up smithing to make my own.

Then I saw that banded armor was a hot item (really), so I skilled up some more and sold a bunch of that.

In the meantime I'd found out about backpacks so I skilled up my tailoring some more and made and sold those - also made and sold raw silk and cured silk along the way, and of course had to skill up in brewing.

I think my proudest moment was when I hit 115 in tailoring, which was as high as you could realistically go in those days.

Still was selling lots of leather padding, but finally decided to use my own and skilled up to the mid 190's in smithing (with a wis of 125 - I didn't know much about stats back then) and made and sold a fair amount of Fine Plate, which was near uber at that time.

Merchant mining was heavenly back then. There was only one other player doing it on my server to the best of my knowledge (/wave Ginea) for a long time.

I've only GM'ed one skill (brewing) and taken one other (baking) above 200, but I've never lost money on any skill except perhaps for pottery (and not much there), and made money on most of them.

I guess I'm not a true hard-core tradeskiller in terms of doing it just to do it, but I've always enjoyed it and enjoyed the community here on EQTraders.

[eniamn]

I blame tradeskills on gallon. D&D. love wizards and have extra skill points normally. they go in blacksmithing/armorsmithing in that order. just loved the role play of my iddy bitty wizard smithing better than the fighters cause crafts use your int bonus.
Gallon was a wizard with a massive int bonus. powergame but fun. anyway you get skill points based on int and wizard use int to determine the strength of their spells so i had all these extra" skill points. crafts have to be trained to use so i was putting 1 point in every craft skill and getting a skill of 13. that is actually pretty good in D&D and for one point very fun. the game died but i remember wanting to get one point in everything.
played eq and it was the same thing. erudite wizard got to skewers (member those days ug) and then quit eq and deleted him. started back so i made eniamn again on a server with my friend. started blacksmith again. then i found this sight. /thanks the Denmom heartily. i saw about the shawl quuests and thought that would be awesome. i had seen the tradeskills and wanted to do them all anyway so this gave me an actual reason to work for it. then i saw how easy it was to do baking to 135 and brewing to 122 and said why not so i had a little money one day and blew it all. then saw pottery was easy but i am not a pothead so i only got it to 122 recently. found out baking and brewing weren't that hard to get higher so skull ale, some fay shakers, and patty melts later i am at 192 baking and 165 brewing. haven't had a chance to do groundspawn for brewing shar vhal esscense but otherwise. then i went **** i hate spiders. killed them in droves. learned about the leather padding for smithing i would need so i started tailor. got to 104 yesterday and man is it slow. even farming the hq ore and fs weapons is quicker. tried jc but without enchanted bars it just didn't seem that worth it so only 34 on it now.

[Zacatac]

As a mage, it seemed the best idea was to learn tailoring. I started around level 12, killing spiders in Everfrost. And I soon had a full suit of raw silk armor. I also sold quite a bit of it to the other casters around the Qeynos area.

Later I took up brewing to make heady kiolas. Did a lot of spider hunting in EK while brewing in Highpass. Then I'd go hit WC and hunt for greater light stones and HQ bearskins.

By the time I was mid-20's level, I was near 90 tailoring and selling Wu's Gauntlets to all the monks and 10-slot backpacks as often as I could find HQ bearskins.

I eventually moved on to smithing, more brewing, and pottery. I'd also spend time fishing while waiting for boats, traveling on boats, or other "downtimes" near water.

And the the shawl quest came along, so I learned Baking, JC and fletching because of it.