Changes to the Top 10?

[Twistagain]

Sorry, but the UI is not to blame for the devaluation of skillup path items. They were devalued long before the UI came out. MTPs, for instance, were good money-makers when the earring quest first came out...which caused more people to look at MTPs as a source of income...which caused competition and drove the prices down. Add Aid Grimel into the mix once PoP came out, and Solstice Robes and the like are worth next-to-nothing.

MTPs still sell for 3-5p each fairly commonly (at least on Innoruuk.) For something that costs under 6g to make (plus the cost of 2 fruit per 100 combines), that's a pretty good margin. Granted, with such a small cost, you have to do major volume to make a lot of money...and there's a lot of competition...but the UI didn't cause either.

[Nolrog]

Here's Number 10, as it evolves. Please comment. At this point, I will not be making changes to any other item in the list. This is the most important one, and I think we should focus on it for now.

#10: Difficulty in skill up paths to 300

The tradeskill caps have been raised to 300 for all the tradeskills. However, the skill up paths are very difficult to non-existent for some of them. Now, from Maddoc's post on EQ Traders, it would seem that he has plans to address the skill up paths for all the trades:

MADDOC WROTE: Without going too deeply into specifics quite yet, what this means to you is a much more smooth skill-progression for all skills . . .

In some cases, this may mean that trivial of any given recipe will be increased or decreased, to help fill in the some areas of need. Overall, the changes will greatly benefit the tailors (and other tradeskillers, of course) in the form of a smoother progression across the board.

In general, I think everyone would agree that this is a good thing. However, there are some specific issues pertaining to the various trades that still should be mentioned. What better place to start than. . . .

10A) Tailoring. Well, tailoring is sure a sore spot in the TS community today. As Maddoc posted yesterday:

MADDOC WROTE: Now, as I'm sure you've noticed, some of these changes found their way live, somewhat unexpectedly, and I can understand the frustration at the changes, however...

Having mid-to-high level tailoring recipes to bridge the gap has long been desired by the community, even more so now with the change of the cap from 250 to 300. However, from Maddoc's post, it seems pretty clear (at least to me) that the trivial change to the Solstace Robes and the Velious tailoring should not have been pushed live until all the other changes that he has in mind (for tailoring) were pushed live as well. If, as Maddoc stated, the push was unintentional, then resetting the trival levels back to their original levels should be done, until all the other changes for tailoring are ready to be pushed live as well. Everything should go simulataneously, or nothing should go at all. This would also allow post 252 tailors to use up, in a lot of cases, the large quantities of components that they had saved up for a large tailoring run.

With regards to the velious tailoring, all the pieces currently trivial at 252. Having an arbitrary level of 252 doesn't make sense for all pieces, because the amount of velium needed is different for different pieces. Previous convention suggested that the more ore (velium in this case) needed, the higher the trivial level for the piece. Therefore, the recipes should either scale more logically based on this, or the velium requirement should be reduced to 1 for all of them. (Speaking of velium, what better way to reduce the mindless farming of velium for these recipes, than to implement the velium weapon to ore conversion, requested in number 1.)

Since the components for Solstice Robes and Velious leathers are, in fact, not common or cheap, the lowered trivials should accompanied by increased drop rates on the Velious leather components (and making the velium easier to gather, as number 1 requests ) and possibly the removal of the most expensive components for the Solstice Robes.

Since most people stock up on items for a long run of combines, having an unexpected change like this imposes a lot of anger and frustration on the community, especially coming, as it did, a couple weeks after the skill caps were raised. Tailors who were maxed out at 250 went back to farming ingredients to raise their skill to 300. Typically, people would farm one ingredient at a time. They'll spend days getting 100 Arctic Wyvern Hides, and then fishing for 100 Cobalt Cods, and then moving on to the velium. Many people were in the middle of gathering the ingredients, and now are left with a large stockpile of ingredients that are worthless to them. In addition, with the status of tailoring right now, there are no really viable skill up paths to 300.

10B) Research. The research cap is at 300 now, however, there are currently no recipes that trivial over 227. It would be great if the PoP spells would be researchable now. That would help alleviate two problems. 1) it would give researchers higher skill combines to work on, and 2) it would help bring down the price of 63/64/65 PoP spells, which are rediculously to insanely priced in the bazaar these days. Another suggestion is to allow you to research spells for any INT caster, perhaps everyone getting the same book to do the combines. In addition, adding in recipes to research spells for hybrid spells would seem to make sense as well. INT casters can currently research spells for priests, but not for hybrids.

In addition to not having the ability to skill up past 227, researchers do not have a tradeskill trophy. Since research is being treated as a regular tradeskill, it would only make sense that there was a trophy as well.

10C) Fletching. The skill up path for non-wood elf or non-Karana worshiping PCs is very difficult past 282. Fletching components in OoW and DoN do not drop frequently enough to make them a viable skill up path. Making PoP bows is also not a viable skill up path, because of the rarity/price of components.

10D) Alchemy. Many of the alchemy recipes above 250 require a foraged item, however, shaman don't seem to forage as well as some other classes. Could we get some higher skill recipes that do not use foraged items to use as a viable skill up path?

[Sharrien]

One thing I would see added to the top ten list is that whenever a change is planned in tradeskills for an upcoming patch, the devs should announce several days in advance in as much detail as feasible. At minimum they should warn us which tradeskill would be affected, better would be telling us which recipes are changing.

It takes a lot of time and plat to stockpile stuff to skill up, I would hate to see more people caught out like what happened this week to our tailors.

[Nolrog]

One thing I would see added to the top ten list is that whenever a change is planned in tradeskills for an upcoming patch, the devs should announce several days in advance in as much detail as feasible. At minimum they should warn us which tradeskill would be affected, better would be telling us which recipes are changing.

It takes a lot of time and plat to stockpile stuff to skill up, I would hate to see more people caught out like what happened this week to our tailors.

I changed the tailoring section of 10 above (last paragraph) to add some of these comments. Check it out and let me know what you think.

[Lanthorny]

10E) Tinkering (move the nitram anziok issue to this point) Many tinkering recipes (including skill up route recipes) require items only sold by this gnome who has been stuck in a hellish difficult place to get to (unless a rogue) for far too long. He has allegedly been being looked into ever since the top 10 list was first requested. But as yet despite promises of reviewing it it has not been changed in any way or any explanation for WHY he has not been changed despite lots of feedback to requests for more information on this since it was first requested.

[Nolrog]

10E) Tinkering (move the nitram anziok issue to this point) Many tinkering recipes (including skill up route recipes) require items only sold by this gnome who has been stuck in a hellish difficult place to get to (unless a rogue) for far too long. He has allegedly been being looked into ever since the top 10 list was first requested. But as yet despite promises of reviewing it it has not been changed in any way or any explanation for WHY he has not been changed despite lots of feedback to requests for more information on this since it was first requested.

What would you replace that issue with? 10 currently deals with the problems or lack of recipes, and not the fact that items are difficult to purchase. Besides, 10 is starting to get a little unwieldy already. I'm concerned with submitting an issue with so many subpoints (which is actually multiple issues rolled into one.)

[Sharrien]

I changed the tailoring section of 10 above (last paragraph) to add some of these comments. Check it out and let me know what you think.

I like what you said about tailoring, but my suggestion was asking for a few days' warning to changes in any tradeskill. I used the tailoring kick-in-the-teeth as an example of the Bad Things that happen when the community isn't warned. It would be nice if the tailoring trivials were reset long enough for people to work thru hard-won stocks but I am not holding my breath. What I really want to see is a warning so that people know if they need to skip a xp session and spend time plowing thru their stock of sickle, picnic or old-style cultural supplies.

(Hoping to get thru my old crap soon, but I have an awfully busy and non-EQ friendly weekend coming up).