KyrosKrane's Skillup Blog

[KyrosKrane]

Welp, I decided to go for broke. =) After today's raids were done, I went on a hunting expedition and gathered up all my remaining pottery supplies, and started in seriously. 162 combines later, I was at 297 -- soooo close! I was out of lacquered star rubies, so I raided my bank for some cash and bought three stacks of rubies, lacquered them up, and combined them. Two combines short of the full three stacks, I dinged 300 pottery! =)

All that's left for me now is fletching. I have my buyer looking for the bits to make arrows and bows that trivial over 300, but the supplies are understandably rare. I'm still going to work on fletching, of course, but I suspect I'm as close to 2100 as I'm going to get in the near future -- at least until the patch with the changes to skillup strategies.

Meanwhile, I think I'm gonna take a break from the tradeskill grind and focus more on the tradeskill quests. I still need to finish my grandmaster quest, and I've promised myself several pieces of armor that would be upgrades to me. We'll see how that goes.

Status update:
Pottery: DING! 300!

[KyrosKrane]

Wow, it's been a VERY long time since I put an update in here.

I finished my GM armor quests a long time ago and made myself almost a full set of GM armors with accompanying augs, and rounded out most slots with Omens type 12 augs too. Recently, I started swapping out the Omens augs for the DoN type 9/12 augs that you could buy with crystals.

Over the last few months, I've done maybe 50-100 assorted arrow and bow combines, and that took me up to 284 fletching. Yesterday, I decided to try the trophy route and did 41 trophy combines. (I'd planned on 40, but I salvaged enough for a free attempt. ) That netted me another two skillups to 286. An additional dozen or so assorted bow and arrow combines didn't get me much, though, other than some stuff to sell.

I've decided I like the trophy route purely for the quantity of combines I can assemble, though obviously it's horridly expensive. I've set up my buyer to purchase loads of gems for trophies, and I estimate that each attempt is costing me on the order of 4500pp in pure loss.

One side effect of this choice is that I may be able to narrow down the trivial of the trophies. By assuming that my success rate is representative of the actual success rate of my skill level (always a dangerous assumption with small sample sizes), I can use the success rate forumla and figure backwards to estimate a trivial. My sample size is still way too small to make a reliable guess, but the data suggests that the trivial for a trophy is somewhere around 350 or so. I'll refine that guess a bit more as I produce more trophies.

Status update:
Fletching: 286

[KyrosKrane]

Two weeks. Two weeks of collecting jacinths, black sapphies, and two types of diamonds. Two weeks of trips to Thurgadin for velium bars and trips to the guild hall to pester guildies for mana vials. Two weeks of boring subcombines.

In the last two weeks, I did 191 trophy combines, including maybe 10 with salvaged components. It's pure murder. The final components (artisan's seals and fishbone dart tools) both don't stack. I had to make a new alt just to hold the subcombines. I'm seriously thinking of buying Omens for my mule account just so I can work in the guild hall -- but they don't sell scaler molds there for the dart tools, much less velium bars for the gems. This is actually more irritating than making mistletoe cutting sickles, which really says something.

At any rate, I did some checking and it turns out that I don't get any benefit from wisdom over 425, which I can reach with Wunshi's. At least our guild shamans will be relieved that I won't be chasing them around asking for Ancestral Aid all the time.

The good news is that I've gotten five skillups, putting me at 291 fletching. I'm largely out of subcombines for trophies, which means buying more gems. (Thankfully, I still have enough velium for another run of 100 trophies.)

I'm close enough to finish line to taste victory. Now I just have to go for it. Nine more skillups and I'll be done with fletching. Just nine. That's all I ask for.

Status update:
Fletching: 291

[Ysall]

I feel your pain. Having gone down the trophy route myself (as did Gigantous) I know how hard it is. Like you, I had to use a second account just to hold all the non-stackable stuff, and the simple mechanics of swapping stuff around is a real pain.

One thing I'd warn you to be careful of, and thats skewing the rare gem market. As you will realise, skilling up by the trophy route requires truly industrial scales of gems. I made the mistake of buying them direct, rather than using /buyer. The consequence was I singlehandedly hiked prices up massively, and then fell victim to a gouger who realised someone was in the market for huge quntities, who then proceeded to buy every gem that came on the market.

In the end I had to pay 600pp for my blue diamonds, and 550pp each for diamonds, jacinths, and black saphires. I had tried to outlast the gouger, but when I realised Gigantous was getting close to 2100 too, I had to give in.

[KyrosKrane]

Actually, I've found a few vendors in out-of-the-way places that are usually loaded with the gems. The hard part is getting enough cash to the vendor to buy him out.

I also use buyer mode and offer a 25-50pp premium per gem. I was getting all I needed and then some with that method.

[crystilla]

Kyros,

May be a while, but in case you ever do hit 300 in fletching and have extra supplies, I'd be willing to buy them from you. (Hit the peverbial 282 wall and have the money but not farming time to go further right now; well for the next few months.)

[KyrosKrane]

Crystilla, I'd love to be able to help you, but I'm on Luclin (Veeshan). My deity is Erollisi Marr, not my server. =)

As to the skillups themselves, I've been able to get a few more skillups, almost exclusively from trophies. I've gotten maybe fifteen other combines, like planar bows and Omens arrows/bows, but none have got me a skillup. Still, for sheer number of combines, nothing can match trophies -- which is freaking sad.

I'm still buying gems, and if all goes well, I should be finishing up fletching in a couple of weeks.

Status update:
Fletching: 294

[crystilla]

Bah, I *could* have seen that for myself had I actually looked. Us dwarves tend to jump for the greedy thing, so when I saw EMarr, my mind closed off to anything else

Cheering for you to get there; 300 fletching is so sweet a number to many's ears.

[KyrosKrane]

After a disturbing, disturbing number of trophy combines, I've clawed and scratched my way to 297. I got two skillups within five or six combines of each other, but since then, I've had something like 80 combines without a skillup. I've not been able to get a single skillup from anything other than trophies in the longest time.

I've run out of supplies again, and I'm back to the bazaar to buy supplies. I estimate by now that I've sunk over one million pp into these last 15 skillups. My spreadsheet warns me to expect another 300-500K for my remaining skillups. I pray that I don't run into anything resembling a financial crisis until I can rebuild my nest egg.

It's agonizing, painful, and depressing. And by Erollisi, I will beat fletching.

Status update:
Fletching: 297

[KyrosKrane]

I hate dry runs, I really do. Since hitting 297, I've done over 130 trophy combines and about 30 other combines, all without a skillup. I know it's just the RNG, but on average, I should be at 300 by now. It's disappointing to say the least. I'm out of supplies again, and I'm desperately trying to buy more. I think I'm making Luclin's chanters very happy with all the mana vials I'm buying, but frankly ... this sucks.

Three points. Three points to go. Keep your eye on the prize, Kyros. It's just three points.

[KyrosKrane]

Ugh. I'm now up to 172 trophy combines, and about 200 total combines, and still at 297. Can you tell I'm slightly irritated at the RNG?

[Ysall]

I feel your pain Took me over 200 GM trophy combines to get from 299-->300.

[KyrosKrane]

What a long, hard road it's been.

On Friday, November 25, 2005, at 23:41:19, I finally ding'ed 300 fletching and 2100 in all seven tradeskills.

When the dust settled, it took me a whopping 281 trophy combines to get out of the hellhole that was 297, plus a whole bunch of non-trophy combines. Even then, I skilled up to 298 on a PoP bow, not a trophy. 299 came very quickly after it; it took maybe a dozen combines, including four trophy attempts. 300 was also not too bad, it took me a mere 32 trophy attempts (and no others) to ding 300. Ironically, I skilled up on a fail, so I had to do one extra combine just to get my trophy back!

All told, it took me 722 trophy combines, plus another few hundred other combines, to get from 284 to 300. The trophy combines alone cost me about 2.8 million pp. Out of my trophy attempts, I managed to salvage 43 Artisan Seals and 46 Fishbone Dart Tools. On average, it took me about 42 trophy combines per skillup, plus goodness knows how many non-trophy combines.

At any rate, I'm certainly glad to be done. Now ... all I have to do is make a rogue, an INT caster, a gnome, and a shaman, so I can skill them up in all the remaining tradeskills!

Status update:
Fletching: DING! 300!

[Luvimt]

Many grats Kyros, what determination
I made a shammy in my tailoring break and quite enjoyed skilling up - be prepared for some serious kedge/seb farming. Spell research is a bit more of a PITA and is hard to farm for unless you go the runic parchment solution route from scratch (I went the oldschool spell way till 227). Unfortunately I dont have space for another alt so no poison making for me.
Good luck with your new tradeskill challenges - hope the skill-ups come quicker than your fletching skill-ups.

[Tuppet]

grats!!

it's pretty scary though that your average combines is close to the new formula's prediction:

(trivial - average combines per skillup)

299 - 38.76
300 - 40


scary because of the sheer amount of combines necessary!! =(