What Trade Has Toughest Skill-Ups?

[andyhre]

Smithing has gotten somewhat easier with the introduction of LDoN smithing and Enchanted Velium Bits, both of which delay shadow scream into the 222 range. These are pricey options, but if you can forage in LDoN or farm velium efficiently, I suspect they are preferred paths. I used this combination from 188 to 200.

With Tinkering, Footwarming boots are available, but wiser to use the not-too-hard-to-farm geerloks all the way to 236.

[Tejaye]

Tailoring

I heard that Ceremonial Solstice Robes were good form skill-ips and sales starting at 180. You may have failures then but you get skill-ups.
Is this a very expensive route to take you from 180 to 250?

[Galain]

The thing about solstice robes, is that you want to fail. Successes on robes is bad because then you have to make another chain. Therefore it becomes inefficient to do robes after 220 or so.

[Chenier]

From my experience, hardest to easiest:

tailoring (for obvious reasons)
pottery (i detested it more than smithing or tinkering)
smithing (deserves a bronze metal for the torture that fine steel bp's were to me....i swear i did hundreds and hundreds of combines and never got a skill up)
tinkering (because I hate PoI)

and the others are all easy...fletching is just cash, a lot of it, brewing has only gotten easier (I did most of high end brewing before casks were stackable, so stacking casks made it much easier and now the with new UI, it's a super breeze)

[mewkus]

Solstice Robes use to be more viable when there was a market for them. On my server at least, you're lucky to resell them for what it costs to make the chain. Typically people will skill up on robes until the sucess rate starts to make it cost prohibive (the expensive part of the combine is the chain which you get back if the combine fails, but you lose it when the combine is a sucess).

[Quesci]

You may want to read the tailoring boards for information on Solstice Robes, but here is my experience (all prices are from Quellious)

A run of 20 solstice robes requires
120 Spider Silk
120 Celest Essence
60 Imbued Emerald
60 Jars of Acid
20 Robe patterns
plus the chains. As a GM jeweler (but not an enchanter with mastery), I fail about 50% of my chains, for an average final cost of 520pp.

Depending on if you farm the silk, and if you have to pay to have the emeralds imbued, one attempt can cost anywhere from (60+520) to (220+520). Note that the chain is only consumed on a success, so the cost has to be separate like that.

So, basically failures cost 60-220pp each combine. Successes cost 580-740 per combine, but then you have a robe to sell. Robes sell for 300-400pp on Quellious. If you have to time to spend selling them, that will drop your cost per success down to 180-440pp. And naturally a success means that you have to make more chains.

At 244 tailoring, I succeed on far too many robes to make it fun. I have them coming out my ears, and hate selling them at such a huge loss. They aren't even worth turning in for tribute.

[Saleani]

There are 2 reasonable skill up paths for you for tailoring. Only your high elf has a cultural smithing, and since you are also an enchanter, you will be able to skip the step where you beg a level 49+ chanter to enchant your ore.

High Elf cultural tailoring

Wood Elf Cultural tailoring

On my server, doing the solstice robes is a huge money loser. The robes are selling in the bazaar for around 400pp. I have seen them for as low as 250pp at times. The chain runs around 300pp each to make. The tribute guy gives you around 30 tribute points for them.

If you choose to do the tailoring for your wood elf, trakanons teeth appears to have the best drop rate for high quality sabretooth pelts, and gives decent exp up to around level 60.

My recommendation is to look at your play style and levels. Look at where the foraged/dropped components come from. If your druid can gain experience in kunark, I would look for the wood elf cultural. If you don't mind mashing the forage key every time it pops up in the 2 faydarks, then getting the morning dew needed for every smithing combine for your high elf won't be a problem. The items for the dyes for your high elf tailoring are foraged in the faydarks and a couple kunark zones. Oak bark for your wood elf tailoring is foraged in kithicor and warsliks woods.

But in the end, it is your time and your effort. All we can do is make suggestions based on our experiences.

[TheGiantOne]

Tailoring! Tailoring! Tailoring!

Oh did I say Tailoring?

Hmm..I think Tailoring was the hardest even though it had more avenues to go up the ladder before flawless rockhopper hides or wyvern hides says it all. Try and buy one for less than 200pp now. They sell for 500pp on up per each hide.

Now to get the most plat back from your skillups go with Smithing. Total costs from 200 to 250 for 1432 mistletoe sickle cutters was 430k but by the time I hit 250 skill I broke even.

Now tailoring was a horror show compared to Smithing. You had to constantly switch back and forth between the items I have listed below:

Arctic Wyvern Hide - 100pp each
Cod Oil - 70pp each
Velium Studs - 90pp each
Misc Cost - 40pp
Total for Wyvern Arctic Armor - 300pp

Flawless Rockhopper Hide - 300pp
Acrylia Boning - 80pp
Paelea Bark Tanin - 10pp
Misc Cost - 40pp
Acrylia Reinforced Armor - 430pp

Gem-Studded Chain - 300pp (had a enchanter who was a friend do them for cost of materials (if ya buy them 800pp)
Sacred Tunare Silk x 3 - 150pp
Misc Cost (includes embroidery needle - 30pp
Ceremonial Solstice Robe - 480pp

Of course now the costs have more than doubled on hides and such.

You had to wait various supplies to come in so I finally said the heck with that and went with solstice robes to 234. Total costs I think for 200-250 was around 300k but I did quite a large business with the robes so got most of that back.

So to finalize between the tradeskills. The hardest one to do price wise was Smithing.
The Hardest one to do because it was just a pain in the neck was Tailoring and it took longer.

[OberonMiM]

Smithing is definately the worst. at 240 to 250 it had an average skillup of 30 combines per a skill. Tailoring at that level had a 10-15 combines per skill.

And personally tailoring combines with arctic wyvern and farming velium in cc are NOT that hard. If your buying them at outrageous prices your just wasting plat.

[splunge]

Im going to take a whild stab at this:

90-95% of those people in the 1750 club probably finished Tailoring last.

It involves the most ammount of farming/buying jacked-up price stuff in the bazaar.

Easiest:
Brewing. 1-248 in under 100p in about 3-4 hours.
Jewelcraft. 1-250 without moving an inch (cept to the bank to get more money) Its not hard, or really all that expensive just need a nice bankroll to start.

Medium:

Baking. Involves almost no drops and can be done pretty easily and cheaply.
Fletching. 1-202 is easy and cheap. 203-250 will either break your back or break your bank.

Hard:
Pottery: Lots of imbuing and doleing out cash for mana vials.
Smithing: Lots of farming or buying stuff in the bazaar. Very slow in the high end.

As far as 'skillups per combine' ratios, id say they are all the same. The only 'hard' parts are obtaining the plat or materials to do the combines.

[Kenamena]

whereas pottery simply cannot be grandmastered without the assistance of an enchanter/imbuer.

Not true, you can skill up on Star Ruby Encrusted Steins without any outside assistance. Spendy, but I did it from 230 up.

[Quesci]

Magic clay

[MartanioKotiz]

In my personal opinion I found tailoring to be the hardest. I would rather do all other tradeskills to 250 twice over then do one point in tailoring past 168 or so. But then again I thought smithing was fun after a certain point. Hehe