What Trade Has Toughest Skill-Ups?

[Tejaye]

Not inlcuding Alchemy or Poison..........out of the rest of the Trade Skills, is Tinkering the hardest Trade to Skill-Up with? Are the ingredients for the items hard to find thus making Tinkering the slowest to gain skill in?
If not.....which Trade Skills seem to be the roughest to level up fast?
I am new to Trade Skills and I am interested the most in Tinkering, but I wish to work on all Trade Skills. I rather leave the toughest for last.
Any ideas on this?

[Quesci]

Most everyone will say that it is either Smithing or Tailoring. Which of those two is hardest will probably come down to your race/class and if you have access to other characters for things like foraging, enchants and imbues.

For me, tailoring is harder. As a high elf I have access to cultural smithing. I also won a +15% smithing hammer at about the right point in my career to allow me to skill up easily on ethereal bricks, and I was able to actually make money skilling up on sickles from a real skill of 212--so my situation may not match yours.

I did get some fairly easy skillups from LoY tailoring (which are also race restricted and difficult if you aren't an INT caster). Other than a few of those, tailoring is a pain to gather the ingredients for.

[Tejaye]

Cultural

I have 2 main characters, a wood elf druid and a High Elf Enchanter......................should I do Smithing with my High Elf due to the Cultural Armors? Or can Wood Elves do Cultural also?

[BuzWeaver]

It’s really up to you, in my opinion I would go with the High Elf for Smithing and the Wood Elf for Tailoring. Cultural tailoring with my Druid has gone pretty well, though excellent quality saber hides have a very low drop rate and prices in the bazaar may vary from 1pp to 300pp depending on the vendor.

At least with smithing you have the flexibility of buying most of the materials off a vendor. Tailoring has been quite a challenge this last year as I’m around 192.

[Furyrpied]

In regards to difficulty....

I would have to say tailoring just because of the PITA it can be to get the parts for a combine, Hoppers anyone? /sigh

I, as a halfling have the opportunity to do some cultural, but the drop rate of HQ Brute hides is just as bad as hoppers

/e thinks about maybe making baking his second GM skill as opposed to tailoring

[Mainiac]

First if you exclude Poison & Alchemy, you should also exclude tinkering, it's not open to everyone.

That not withstanding, Tailoring is by far the greatest PITA to GM, from my experiences. I have the other 6 at 250, Tailoring will be too someday.

[Nairn Niteraven]

I can't speak to Tinkering because I can't do it, but for the general skills available to anyone, Tailoring is the hands-down, all-time @#$%^. Smithing is a close second, but Tailoring is the worst for me.

[Tejaye]

Tailoring

At what skill Level does Tailoring become very hard to skill-up on?
And as for Smithing, at what skill level does it become very hard to skill-up on?

[Xira]

Tailoring: 158 (after wu's) or 187 (if u can do ribbons)
Smithing: after fine steel (~200)

higher if u have the ability to blow 100kpp's on bazaar goods

[Ursawraith]

Tailoring 187 (After platinum ribbons)
Smithing 222 (After Enchanted Velium Bits)

[Zeralenn]

In terms of what you have to try to acquire to get skillups, I would say tailoring is worst, followed by smithing.

In terms of combines per skillup, I would have to say pottery. When they slammed that with the nerf stick, they hit it really, reall hard.

...Zera

[Tejaye]

Pottery

How was Pottery nerfed? What did they change on it?

[Jasmyn Spirittapper]

A while back they changed how often you would skill up on it, I don't know if that had anything to do with people doing part of the (correct me if I am wrong) the fourth shawl quest, which with a skill of around 122 you can make a Thurgadin gate potion. Very handy when you consider it used to take you only an hour to raise skill that high in pottery, however, when I tried that with my rogue after they changed it, I was three hours into pottery and was only at 62,,,I gave up and just have my shaman make gate potions for him now.

As for hardest skill ups, my opinion (however much that is worth) is tailoring. The drop rate of many required components is difficult at best, where in smithing you have the EVB's which are not that hard to get materials for (wish I found that recipe before I was 219 in smithing). Anywho, that is my two cents.

Jasmyn Spirittapper
65 Barbarian Shaman
Order of the Black Rose
The Rathe

[ChaseFV]

Just wanted to throw my 2 cp on the pile and concur with the general finding that tailoring is far and away the most difficult skill to raise to the top.

Consider:
You have virtually zero storebought options for any phase of your skill raising.
Most of the options require either hours (or weeks, depending on your level relative to the level of the mobs needed) of farming, or scads of plat.
Even if you don't mind farming, you're generally going to have to be in your 40's or 50's to even start farming for most post-Wu's recipes.

I finally hit 1450 last week, and let me tell you, tailoring nearly broke me. I did it last, and I'm pretty glad I did. If any of the other skills were this difficult, I don't know that I would have persevered.

[Silverfish]

Grandmastery With Ease

This is my take on how easy the different skills are, in (my perceived) order of ease. Keep in mind that "easy" and "cheap" are not the same here, and in fact there are some very easy and much cheaper ways than I suggest for some of them. I just sought out the easiest route for them.

Fletching: If you had a pile of money to spend you could grandmaster this skill in front of one vendor. Even sane people can do it with two vendors, which are usually right next to each other.

Jewelcrafting: This skill can be grandmastered in front of two vendors as well, who are also very often together.

Brewing: The sane path to skillups requires several stops, but realistically, if you have the time you can grandmaster the skill off of vendor-bought components for not a lot of money.

Baking: This is the first skill you can't run to 250 solely on vendor-bought stuff, but the amount of farming needed is relatively low.

Tinkering: You can reach 235 with storebought stuff, assuming you can make your own small fine plate boots, which require farming for the padding. After that, it's much like smithing or pottery.

Smithing: Until you get to 158, you can buy all of the parts you need from vendors. After that, all you need to 188 is leather padding, which is expensive but plentiful enough. Then it's shadowscream to 250 which is a ludicrous amount of farming. The only reason I personally label smithing easier than pottery is that you can do smithing by yourself, no matter what class or race. It's often cheaper to find cultural combines to get there, but any class or race can GM smithing without involving another PC, whereas pottery simply cannot be grandmastered without the assistance of an enchanter/imbuer.

Pottery: Until 199, it's rather easy to do pottery. After that, you've got farming or hassling an enchanter/imbuer. If you truly wish to avoid others and you don't enchant on your own, you can get to 236 without outside assistance, but after that you must employ at least a level 8 enchanter and/or someone to imbue gems. Beyond this, it's easier and cheaper to grandmaster pottery than smithing, but again, easy to me includes not having to ask someone else for help. If making your own enchanter is not a big deal (and I suggest it), then move this above smithing.

Tailoring: This is the queen mother of difficulty in tradeskilling. Not a single combine from 77 to 250 can be done without something that's dropped. There are no vendor-bought combines anywhere in the skill path after picnic baskets, although you can often buy stuff that others have sold to vendors to move you along. Ugh. Double ugh. After 158, everything gets very expensive, and after 187, it gets appallingly so.

SIlverfish