Top 10 Update Next Friday

[Nolrog]

Hi everyone. Time to update the top 10 list. Well, actually the top 8 list, but that means we have spots for 2 more items.

The current top 10 list is here (be sure to scroll down to the last two posts in that thread.)

Here are the items on the list.
Tradeskill Top 10 Issues
1) Rotating stock on vendors
2) Nitram Anizok's plight
3) New Bag Designs NEW item added with the 2/4/05 update
4) Mass Combines With One Click - NEW item added with the 6/3/05 update
5) Tradeskill components are unreasonably rare - Item modifed with the 6/3/05 update
6) Balancing the Grand Robe / Grand Tunic / Phylactery quest for melees
7) Reduce the amount of storage necessary - Partially Implemented with the 6/29/05 Patch - New Information with 7/3/05
8) Difficulty in skill up paths to 300 NEW item added with the 3/4/05 update

Last time, the patch came out a couple days before the list was do, so I did not have time to update it.

OK, so, what do we want to add to the list? If we have a consensus on an item, I will add it. Please be as descrpitive as possible, so I can shamelessly steal your text and use it in the list.

[KyrosKrane]

/cough Tradeskill super-trophy /cough

Text should still be in the older copies of the Top 10, or I can write something fresh if it's gone.

[Xulan]

Agree on super trophey/10% trophies.

Would also love a confirmation on if 300+ modified GM tradeskilling has the proper success/failure rate for DoN armors with Mastery 3 (and without, but the concern seems to be with Mastery 3 as well). Decent thread in the smithing forum, but I'm not sure if it deserves a spot on the top 10 (certainly deserves confirmation though =)

[Ysall]

Agree super-trophy.

Can we split out fletching from the general part about difficulty of getting to 300. With improved chance of skill up being implemented for smithing, and tailoring, this one has been partly, if not largely, fixed for those tradeskills.

[ruodrra]

Add Research to top ten list

Research needs to be addressed as a top ten issue for eq tradeskillers. Most important, drops of components need to be increased significantly and from more mobs in more zones. This increased supply will help to alleviate the inflated bazaar prices for components or the need to vendor mine extensively/exclusevily. The issue of SOE providing more skill up paths beyond 227 now that the skill can go to 300 but can no longer be trained beyond 21 is moot until they put into the game more readily available research components necessary to have a reasonable opportunity to skill up to just 227.

Just to use an analogy, I am a gm baker (thanks probably exclusively to the information i got from eqtraders). When the only real viable path to 250 was misty thicket picnic baskets, SOE added the hynid tuna recipies. And when a bottleneck occured with vegetables, SOE made it so you could 'make' vegetables.

This same level of attention needs to be given to research.

PS -- chuckling at number 4 on the posted top ten list "Mass Combines With One Click" -- I don't think I've ever had a stack of research components to make one run of 20 combines, let alone the opportunity to do 'mass combines'.

[Taadieri]

I agree with Kyroskane and Ruodrra.

There has been lots of discussion of the possible forms a master artisan's trophy could take and it is still a priority for many tradeskillers even if there is not a consensus.

In the case of research, the components for the rarer and more powerful spells should remain rare. However, there needs to be a reasonable path to skill up through either bought or more common dropped components.

[KB1]

Spell research trivials, or the abscence of a trivial above 227 to be more to the point. Mass combines on trivial items like say soda water and CEs, super trophy, and the lack of halfling parts to roast and sell to the masses.

[Angelsyn]

Research recipies... Specifically for Hybrid Spells from RoK, SoV & SoL.

Research recipies... Specifically for some PoP spells for [i[all[/i] classes. Possibly using a modified/turned-in Parchment drop? Turn in Parchment to get a "Lesser/Greater Research Tablet of {class}", which could then be combined with other item(s) to produce a spell for that class?

Simply raising the skill-bonus on Trophies to 8%?

Increase availabilty (via more locations) for Master-level DoN armour drops.

Increased stack-ability for more items... Leather Padding, for example.

Institute stack-ability for Enchanted ores. Mithril Bricks stack, why don't Enchanted Mithril Bricks stack?

[Nolrog]

Spell research trivials, or the abscence of a trivial above 227 to be more to the point.

Research recipies... Specifically for Hybrid Spells from RoK, SoV & SoL.

Research recipies... Specifically for some PoP spells for all classes. Possibly using a modified/turned-in Parchment drop? Turn in Parchment to get a "Lesser/Greater Research Tablet of {class}", which could then be combined with other item(s) to produce a spell for that class?

Research is already there in 8b. Please head over and read it (there's a link to the list on the first thread here.)

Increased stack-ability for more items... Leather Padding, for example.

Institute stack-ability for Enchanted ores. Mithril Bricks stack, why don't Enchanted Mithril Bricks stack?

This is covered in number 7 (4th part), not specifically these items, but the concept of increasing the stack size of selective items. I will add in these to the list.

Mass combines on trivial items like say soda water and CEs

Mass combines are there in number 4.

[Nolrog]

/cough Tradeskill super-trophy /cough

Text should still be in the older copies of the Top 10, or I can write something fresh if it's gone.

I'm pretty sure I can dig it up. Here is what we had before. You can edit it if you like, to make it more relevant, improve the argument or whatever.

7) Tradeskill Super-trophies
Add some kind of super trophy for multi-tradeskill GM's? Here are some ideas on what could be done in this vein.

A tradeskill super-trophy is defined as a trophy you can only obtain once you have all seven tradekill trophies (excluding alchemy, poison making, tinkering, and research), or one that requires 250 in all seven general tradeskills, or both.

One possibility is a combine that requires all seven trophys plus some other item, yielding back six normal trophys and one super trophy with increased stats or abilities.

Another option is for a no-fail combine of all seven trophies in a quest container to yield the super-trophy. The super-trophy could be combined by itself in a forge to yield a no-drop, no-rent, lore item with a bonus to smithing; it could be combined in a tailoring kit or loom to yield a tailoring-boosting item, and so on.

Perhaps this super trophy could allow the wielder to exceed the 252 cap on tradeskills -- if it were a 10% mod for a 250 tradeskiller, the wielder's effective skill would be 275 rather than 252.

Another popular option is to have the super-trophy reduce fail rates, much like the enchanter Jewelcrafting Mastery AA. This reduces enchanters' lock on one tradeskill while still giving them an advantage -- the super-trophy requires being a GM in all seven tradeskills, whereas enchanters can get the same benefit purely with AA's.

Alternately, a single super-trophy with multiple tradeskill mods on it would also be nice.

Could the existing tradeskill trophys be adjusted so that each yields a unique 100% WR bag? Thus, a person with three trophys could get three different 100% WR bags that don't poof on logging. This was mentioned as being possible in the past.

[ruodrra]

Nolrag wrote:

Research is already there in 8b. Please head over and read it (there's a link to the list on the first thread here.)

Yes I saw that, under the heading 'Difficulty in skill up paths to 300'. I am suggesting that it be elevated to its own place on the top ten because the issue is skilling up period, not just to 300.

As I said, the issues already listed in 8b (no skill up path to 300 beyond 227, no gm trophy, etc) are all excellent but moot unless there is a corresponding fix to increasinging the availability/reducing the high bazaar costs of research components.

At the very least, if research ends up remaining as a sub-category of a top-ten ilist, significantly expanding component drops from more mobs in more zones and from mobs across a wider level range that the current policy (components drop from a mob the same level or 4-5 levels higher than the spell level the component makes) should be added to it.

[Nolrog]

Nolrag wrote:

Yes I saw that, under the heading 'Difficulty in skill up paths to 300'. I am suggesting that it be elevated to its own place on the top ten because the issue is skilling up period, not just to 300.

As I said, the issues already listed in 8b (no skill up path to 300 beyond 227, no gm trophy, etc) are all excellent but moot unless there is a corresponding fix to increasinging the availability/reducing the high bazaar costs of research components.

At the very least, if research ends up remaining as a sub-category of a top-ten ilist, significantly expanding component drops from more mobs in more zones and from mobs across a wider level range that the current policy (components drop from a mob the same level or 4-5 levels higher than the spell level the component makes) should be added to it.

Many of the entries in number 8 deal with no skill up path though. For research, it's none at all (tailoring pretty much as well) and for others is for certain races/dieties (fletching non-wood elf or non karana worshipers.) I'd prefer to leave it as is right now, and add something different instead. I don't think that by giving research it's own number, it will have any more impact than it does now.

[ruodrra]

Just so long as being a 'sub-category' doesnt imply less of a problem or priority than some of the other 'numbered' items, I will go along with that.

Perhaps research can also be mentioned in '5) Tradeskill components are unreasonably rare' as a further compromise.

[Nolrog]

Just so long as being a 'sub-category' doesnt imply less of a problem or priority than some of the other 'numbered' items, I will go along with that.

Perhaps research can also be mentioned in '5) Tradeskill components are unreasonably rare' as a further compromise.

That's not a bad idea. Do you have a list of exactly what is too rare (besides the fabled Yaeth's pg 73 right of course.)

[greebmushroome]

under item 7), can we add the non-stackability of enchanted mithril bricks/blocks/etc. the un-enchanted mithril ores stacks. surely the act of enchanting doesn't increase the item size!

(also, as a formatting note, you might want to make the sub-points of 7 all use the same outline numbering system... it currently has, 1, II, C and 4).


under 5), can we list more explicitly the tradeskill components we think should drop more often? there are a few listed. for the DoN drops, yttrium could use maybe a 20-50% boost in drop rate. shissar scales may be common enough. storm volaas hair is ridiculous; the mobs that drop it are unreasonably difficult compared to the mobs that drop other master's-level components (the metric for which should probably be shissar scales and shissars). nightmare arachnid silks are close to this difficulty, i believe. i am led to understand that great repile hides/teeth are also unusably rare. maybe "review and revise DoN recipes" should be it's own item.