/con a recipe

[Iumarex]

I was doing some pottery skillups last night (162-190). I was making casserole dishes the whole time. For the first few combines the recipe was yellow and most of the time it was blue.
I was getting frequent skillups, several were back to back and I was averaging one every 5-10 combines, with several back to back. At 189 I noticed that my skillup rate had dropped, I looked at the recipe and it was light blue.

Could just be the RNG, could be a Hell Level. Sure felt like XP with light blues.

Anyway I'll post more info as I get it. Not sure if I'll ever have the drive to create some identical chars to skillup enough to really test this.

[MissV]

Even before the new UI I had noticed that my best skillup rate was from making recipes 10-20 points above my skill. Then with the new UI and the colors, I could narrow this down to dark blue. Yes the color is directly related to success rate. That's easy to see. I also strongly believe it is related to skillup rate. From my experience, it is crystal clear.

There are rumors. Rumors that you get a better skillup chance on success than failure. This would indicate that light blue recipes would yield the best skillup rate which I have found to be false by far. To me it makes sense that a slightly higher chance of failure would be rewarded with a better skillup rate. The combinations would go to high success/low skillup to high failure/high skillup. I wouldn't dare do reds or yellows for skillups unless the recipe was dirt cheap (hero's brew!) but I think somewhere in the middle, like dark blue, is the key to success. Depending on your skillup rate it might turn out to be even less expensive than always doing light blues. I also believe that each recipe has a difficulty modifier that influences skillup rate (but not success!). This is of course pure speculation on my part but I noticed that when I did easy recipes (like the hero brew where you can buy all the ingredients in the same zone) I had a bad skillup rate while when I did the tedious recipes (lots of sub combines or ingredients that are rare drops) I got a much better rate.

People will keep believing what they will though. I merely share my own observations. Personally I try to pick the highest trivial in the dark blue range. When it turns light blue, I stop and pick a new recipe at the highest of dark blue. It has been working great. I still have my sanity and it's not outrageously expensive either if you spend time researching which recipe you should work on next.

While not necessarily experimenting with strict guidelines, I suggest you try various strategies. If you do a few stacks of combines you should get a feel for what you like best.

Good luck!