Problems Skilling Up

[Tillinghast]

Okay, I was trying a non-tradeskill on a lower level alt last night. Bind Wounds went from 55 to 74 very easily, however, trying brewing took me 15 stacks of fishing grubs and water to get to 100.

Tillinghast
Empirically Imperial Mule

[Verdandi]

...however, trying brewing took me 15 stacks of fishing grubs and water to get to 100

That's 1 skillup in every 3 attempts. That sounds quite reasonable. Actually, it sounds a lot better than I remember. But that makes sense as part of the rationale for making 250+ harder is that getting to 250 (or maybe 200, I don't remember) is now easier.

Folks, please remember that we've been told that it's been checked since the last changes and found to be working just fine. I suggest that those who are really concerned hang tight until the Fan Faire in June and see what Tanker has to say then. If you feel very strongly that SOE ought to give us more feedback before then, you need to tell them so via the means of communication that they provide, not on these boards.

[KB1]

I lied, 752 combines now.

Raising brewing too 100 on fetid essence with 15 stacks sounds very reasonable to me. Considering you are going tofail most of those combines.

[max76487]

I did 14 smithing combines night before last, went from 188 to 191. Did 22 tailoring combines last night, went from 186 to 189. I have done, to date, 560-read FIVE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-KC combines for brewing in the last week, with a modified 274 skill(GM corker), and have yet to have 1(ONE) skill-up. Over the last 3 weeks or so, I have done 7 runs of MTPs, at 200 combines per run, with a modified 278 skill-1--read ONE--skill-up. Aaaccckkk!!!!! I haven't even tried to touch JC or Pottery-throwing pp down a dark hole is not my idea of a fun game.

[mithridate]

Somewhere on these boards I read the theory that people who are angered by their lack of skill ups are more likely to post than people who have had a good run. I saw the logic and agreed at the time. However, after reading recent posts I have to disagree. Many people are posting on how well they are doing skilling up pre-250ish, while post-260ish the majority seems to be having horrible "luck." Consistently horrible "luck" translates to a possible problem that perhaps shouldn't be merely written off as "unlucky with the RNG."

My two coppers.

[Oona Wynterbreeze]

Somewhere on these boards I read the theory that people who are angered by their lack of skill ups are more likely to post than people who have had a good run. I saw the logic and agreed at the time. However, after reading recent posts I have to disagree. Many people are posting on how well they are doing skilling up pre-250ish, while post-260ish the majority seems to be having horrible "luck." Consistently horrible "luck" translates to a possible problem that perhaps shouldn't be merely written off as "unlucky with the RNG."

I have to agree there. I so far have had no complaints with the skill-ups pre-250, but I have officially stopped doing jewelcraft combines until SOE says something to us regarding our suspicions, whether that something be good or bad right now I could care less. I'm just so incensed that this many people can think something is wrong and yet they still remain completely and utterly silent. With 291 taking 187 combines, 292 taking 117 combines and sitting at 185 combines and counting trying to get 294, I don't have the cash to continue to be "possibly" throwing my money down the drain with no reasonable hopes of skill-ups.

P.S Post-280 is where it got ugly with me and that ugliess pretty much tripled at 290.

[Oona Wynterbreeze]

Folks, please remember that we've been told that it's been checked since the last changes and found to be working just fine.

I missed this. Where did they say everything was fine? And was this before or after dozens and dozens of people have said that post-280ish it's taking 150, 250, 500 or even 700+ (my condolensces KB1) combines for one skill-up. Don't get me wrong, this may read like I'm venting on you. NOT my intention at all, just commenting that with alll the posts I've read I don't remember one SOE person going, "Yes 250+ combines a skill-up may be ugly, but that's about the average you should expect now." At this point that's all I want, just them acknowledging our concerns and stating yes, that's correct. (Don't really want to hear yes , but I'll accept it and go back to my combines that I've put on hold.)

[tindiyen]

I just finished both pottery and brewing , I had done Fletching, baking, and jewelcraft pre patch. THere is not a 20% difference its MUCH MUCH larger easily twice the old number of combines. I was planning for 100 combines per skill up in the 290+ range and barely making it .

Tind

[KB1]

Pre 250, and even a small ways after that isn't an issue. It is the plus 280, and wow, the plus 290 that is the issue.

[Oona Wynterbreeze]

Pre 250, and even a small ways after that isn't an issue. It is the plus 280, and wow, the plus 290 that is the issue.

Right on the money... I had three ugly runs in the 280's and I'm currently only three points into the 290's at 293 and I've already had a 187 combine run, a 117 combine run and am at 191 combines and counting trying to get 294. The thought of taking 2000+ combines for my last seven points is something that makes me shudder to say the least.

[emandes]

urgs - that's the same with brewing for me.
I used to collect components for 60 or 80 combines in a row. Mostly 60 combines which resulted in 5 skillups in average which is imho ok.
When reached 290 the first 80 combine run gave no skillup the second one made me 291 the third was again no skillup.
Aprox. 2000 combines for the remaining 9 skillups result in 20 h dump kaladim camping for foraging the two components + 4500 precombines

I think some guys in SOE are only playing EQ instead of making good concepts and implementing good code/functions and they don't have a real life besides eq.

If you apply this on smithing - bahhhhhh - that'll be 2000 sickles for the last 9 skillups with 700.000 pp you need for it. Poor drood enchanting 2000 emeralds. Poor smith doing 36.000 precombines including the fails its 38.000 thats at least 21 h dump clicking - based on 30 combines per minute an no time for inventory management. My experience with sickles is - for 20 combines its at least 1 hour including all precombines, i.e. 100 h of dump clicking, NPC-shopping, inventory hopping etc. 25 consecutive days of eq playing (4 h evening shifts) - for 9 skillups.

@SOE-devs - either change skillup rate or change GUI - allow precombines to be done in stacks (like casters can imbue 1 or 5 at a time) AND make intermediate parts as blessed sickle blade stackable so one can manage more than 20 "end" combines in a row.

[Verdandi]

I missed this. Where did they say everything was fine?

Well, I misspoke somewhat, although the general intent was still accurate. Take Tanker's post in the "How much did 250-300 get worse?" thread. From the frequency of replies in that and a few other threads, he's obviously reading everything everyone is saying in them. He's frequently posted when he suspects a bug and is looking into it, but has not done so now. The post that I thought I remembered saying everything is fine was actually referring to the very trivial chance of failure, which isn't relevant. But the fact remains that Tanker and the gang have been very, very communicative and helpful. I am inclined to trust that he'd be on this if he smelled a problem. Alternatively, something has come up that's keeping him from our boards or from working on this. Hollering here will therefore be utterly useless. Sending examples of troublesome runs to SOE along with your polite expressions of frustration are much more likely to help free us some help in those cases.

The fact also remains that as people have pointed out numerous times, threads like this do not remotely resemble representative samples of people's experiences. That's why we usually quash them after any ordinary patch, because they're just breeding grounds for unfounded rumors. As the patch that spawned this batch of threads actually did affect skillup rates though, it was worth exploring. But just because 5 people post very bad experiences every day doesn't mean things are out of whack. We don't know how many people are having very good experiences every day, or how many are having exactly what one would expect. We all know the RNG does very freaky things.

And lest anyone think I'm being insensitive, let me say that every day I stare longingly at the bags of alchemy components sitting in my bank. I've gotten frustrated with the slowed rate of skillups myself, and have stopped skilling up until the minimum chance is put in, in the hopes that it'll include some of those ingredients. I don't know when that's coming, but I also eagerly await it.

But the discussions like this thread have become less and less productive. If people want to continue sharing experiences and trying to puzzle out what's happened, that's fine. If people want to complain and wail and gnash their teeth, then we're going to start moving things to PSR.

Please, send your requests to SOE to them through their own means of communication. The devs have chosen to become members of this community but are no more obligated to say anything here than anyone else. Complaints, rants, and general venting need to go in PSR. Please stick to questions or sharing of information amongst ourselves in the rest of the forums.

[Phantron]

If the chance to skill up is 1 in 24 after 250 (20 X 120%) then you need 24 X 50 = 1200 combines. There's a 19% chance you'll have a string of at least 200 consecutive fails while making 1200 combines (it is equivalent to the chance of not failing 200 times in a row occurring 1000 times (1200-200) in a row). And 24/skillup is certainly the lowest estimate I've seen. If you assume you skillup once in 30 combines, then to get 50 points (1500 combines) there's a 78% chance you will fail at least 200 times in a row in some point.

Abnormal bad or good luck is actually quite normal when you do a lot of combines. For example, how likely is it to skillup back to back? It may seem pretty rare (1/24^2 = 0.17%) but over 1200 combines, the chance of that happening is 1-[(1-(1/24)^2)^(1200-1)] = 88%.

[Ngreth Thergn]

And somewhere (and no I am not going to look it up_ Tanker pointed out specifically...

it is the AVERAGE of combines over 250 that went up 20%.

sicne it is an average... it could be a scale.

where ate 250 it is still the normal 5% max chance of a skillup, but it scales all the way to 299 where you only have a max 1% chance of skillup. And teh AVERAGE of a chance of skillup from 250 to 299 is 4%

Note, this is just how I interpret what was said, not any direct statement.

but this does acount for how horribly difficult getting from 299 to 300 seems to be.

[Phantron]

Well using average = 24 combines (20% more) should yield the best case against a long string of failures since that's the smoothest skillup progression possible. Certainly if the success rates are not uniform then the chance of getting a bad string would be even higher, but then the chance of getting a good string of skillups on the early parts would be higher too.