The DoN Cultural lottery

[Xenephex]

This is not a rant, more just an observation - but as usual I can't think of an appropriate forum to post it in other than this one.

I'm sure I'm not alone in what I'm going to describe and I wonder how others of you might think about it, and/or whether you 'won' or 'lost' in this particular gamble.

Here's my situation: I skilled up on smithing with the goal, ultimately, of fitting out my own warrior in Don GM Stormguard armor. I figured I could make some, sell some, etc. etc. until I finally had enough to be able to make my own set and, hopefully, have a continuing source of income after that.

Now, I know it would have been wise to have like a million plat or so before I ever started, but I was nowhere close to that, and it seemed like, overall, I couldn't lose in the long run - if worse came to worse, I could at least make my own armor cheaper than I could buy it. But I really didn't anticipate worse coming to worse.

When I started skilling up, I had about 200K in the bank. I spent about 70K or so skilling up (using Mistletoe Cutting Sickles after 222) and eventually got to 254 with all my smithing mastery aa's and my salvage aa's. A good enough skill, according to others calculations, that I would have the maximum chance of success on any of the cultural pieces.

I had made back some of the plat in the course of doing this, so, at the time I finished, I had about 80K in the bank plus 3 metallic drake scales that I had accumulated (and could have sold for 34K each or so). So I made 3 attempts at single sheet items and succeeded on two. I put those two up for sale in the bazaar at lower prices then anyone else was selling for. They've been sitting there for over two weeks and haven't sold. Not only haven't they sold, I haven't even had a nibble - i.e. someone asking me if I can make another piece or anything like that.

I know enough about the EQ economy to know that sooner or later I will sell some pieces, but it is also clear to me that I am not going to be selling a ton of the stuff, and I'm not going to be selling steadily. There are two other dwarven GM smiths on my server who are selling the stuff, and I'm guessing the market has been fairly saturated.

So, at the moment I have those two pieces for sale, plus a couple of master level pieces I made, and then about 150K in the bank. I could wait until I have a big reserve of plat to do anything else, but that really seems kind of pointless to me. So, one of these days, I'm going to stick 3 sheets in the forge with a bp mold and click combine. And at that point, it is going to be a huge roll of the dice, and what happens after that will very much be different depending on whether a bp comes out or not. I will either have a 200K item to sell, or I will be down to 60K or so in the bank and looking at 3 weeks or so of building my funds back up again.

I'm not going to come here and rant if I fail - I know how this works, but I realize that the fact that 'it will even out in the long run' is not going to matter a lot to me in terms of doing DoN cultural. The amount of plat involved is just much too large compared to what I am starting with. I can make up the 3 weeks, but then what if I fail again? And again after that? On the other hand, what if I succeed the first time? And the second time? I will, most likely, change my EQ fortunes considerably, one way or the other, pretty much depending on a couple of combines early on.

Since I feel certain that not all of the smiths on this board went into this with large amounts of plat already banked, I know that some of you must have been through some version of the 'lottery combine.' What was your experience - both in the short term and the long run?

{Moving to General (from PSR): this applies to more than one skill and is a question (with comment) but not a rant, so General is the perfect spot. I'm hoping to help you get some solid information rather than just rants. -Verdandi}

[Qaladar Bragollach]

Not to be a pessimist... but if you are having trouble selling 1 sheet items over the course of weeks, how long do you think it would take to sell a BP even if you do succeed?

My experience on this is that for plate/chain/leather nobody is buying. Everyone is getting their own scales/hides and hitting up their guild's smith to do free combines. While you say there are 2 other dwarves making the stuff on your server you don't actually know that. You only know that there are 2 others making it to sell in the bazaar. There could be dozens of them doing free combines for their guildmates.

I made nearly a full set of GM Moonglade in the course of skilling up smithing from 290 to 300. That was about 3 months ago. I've still got 2 pieces of it that haven't sold yet and I won't be making anymore... the profit margin on the stuff isn't that high anyway.

Of course if you make silk then its a seller's market... people will beat down your door to give you huge stacks of platinum.

If I were you, I'd slowly save up and make myself a full set, pat myself on the back, and call it a year. Anything else you make profit on is icing on the cake but don't go into it expecting to make a mint.

[Sharrien]

GM armor is a low volume business. Customers are those who either don't have Time+ raid gear and have gobs of cash or those who raid high enough that they can get at least bazu stones and have even more cash to burn so they can also afford amalgamators.

If your products are unique in the market, maybe even the first time available on your server for your race, you need to get the word out that a new GM smith is in town. I had a full set of kitty chain and plate on the market for a couple weeks before I heard anything, then I sold all the plate and nearly all the chain within a week. Leather moves slowly as well, but with all us kitty beastlords out there, it's steady .

And yes, I've also done a buttload of armor and aug combines for guildies free of charge.

[Dranul]

Iksar cultural is where it's at...do you know how many of us have picked up a need and thread? Sooo very few.

Something I've learned from just tradeskilling in general, you better expect to lose money. Even with spell research, I've lost considerably more than I've made, though that's more than likely because Saryrn has a few other researchers on it.

[Flatley]

Making money on tradeskilling has always been tough. I agree Iksars are problably the best race for doing Cultural Armours for profit. Halflings get to sell Haversacks for profit (yaah!).

I have found that doing sub-combines for tradeskillers really doesn't sell well. Lacquered gems, HQ Rings, Acrylia Boning, Pale Nihilite long hilt kits and fillets all have sat on my vendor waiting for a tradeskiller to pick them up. None of it sells, Better to do the complete combine or sell the raw materials.

[Bonkr]

What's interesting about DoN cultural armor is the impact of the player made augs. Without those powerful slot 12 augs, the armor ends up being no better than mediocre. Put a symbol in it and a 50 hp aug, for example, and you have 200 hp legs. Well, you can get those or better from doing DoDH missions for much less effort.

If we want to see a market for these, then the Bazu and Discordant stones need to drop more often and off non-raid mobs. As it stands, the only people I know wearing cultural or buying it are putting Last Blood augs on them.

[Wyvernwill]

Up until my guild caught up raid wise to where I am gear wise, GM armor was a huge boost to my stats. That being the case, I had the best one groupable gear possible for a paladin Pre Time when DoN came out. The GM armor made a huge impact in the one stat that I was weak in, being AC.

At my peak, I wore six pieces, and now I am down to five and anticipating another raid drop soon that will drop me to four. Discordant/Bazu stones make GM armor considerably better than Elemental/Time gear, and puts it at a bit stonger than Qvic Muramite armor, plus you choose your most needed effects vs being stuck.

At this point, yes, the GM markets for the most part will be fairly well covered. There will continue to be demand, small demand or large will vary by race and availability, but the demand will not completely fade away. Metallic Drake Scales and Glossy Drake Hides are very easy to farm if you devote some time to it, or have access to multiple accounts to get missions for yourself. Myself and one friend usually split MDS and GDH we farm together every night for whatever purposes we want them for. We usually end up seeing 2-6 within a two hour farming of a Creator mission zone in.

GM armor was poor when it came out (until the revamp) became amazing, and when the next expansion came out, it wasn't as good. This has happened with all armors tradeskilled. Expecting one set of items to stay the pinacle of the game for more than one expansion is not very reasonable when you look at how with almost every expansion one groupable loot has been ballooning to catch up to the disparity in raid gear, which is a massive player-base concern.

The question is... what would you rather have? Raid guilds growing far more powerful every expansion, leaving that gap continue to expand, disallowing even the best geared non raiders from doing high end exp content cause it was geared for those raiders, or would you rather have a fighting chance?

I personally believe that, though the success cap stinks and has cost me a lot of scales, the GM armor was very well done and executed and has served a good purpose to the game. They just made the creator mission far too easy and it lead to a very easy way to farm scales (unlike Death Comes Swiftly, which should be seeing some solid farming too due to Coarse Spider Silks). That's just my opinion on the matter... everyone else's milage with GM armor may vary.

[Xenephex]

I appreciate all the replies; I'm sure I didn't make myself entirely clear.

I think the stuff will sell, but it will sell slowly and infrequently. I have had a number of conversations with one of my competitors in the Stormguard market and that is what he reports. He says he sold 600K worth of pieces over about a one week period a month of so ago, but has sold only a couple of pieces since then. He says its always like that.

I am pretty patient about stuff like this. My point was that with the limited size of the market that I am probably never going to make enough attempts to see the RNG 'even out'. I doubt if I will make more than 5 attempts each at the 3 sheet items in the next several months.

With the high price of the components (even if you farm them, you are still sacrificing what you could sell them for), this essentially becomes a moderately high stakes roll of the dice on a few risky combines. Some weill get very lucky, some will fall somewhere in the middle - some will get very unlucky. It's just a slightly different situation than a lot of tradeskills because of the above factors.

And... I rolled the dice tonight on a GM Stormguard BP combine.

And won.

[Winenose]

Grats on the win

On the topic of GM armor / symbols market. It's a long-term investment. If you have the armor up for sale, actively advertise, etc.. then when more guilds do DoD progression and start clearing Demi-plane of Blood more, they will want GM armor and augs to put the Last Blood augments in to.

Believe me, if you keep at it and tell everyone you're the smith to turn to, it will get better the more time passes. How many guilds in your server are in Demi-Plane?

[Boleslav]

Higher end tradeskills have been that way for a long time.

I remember being level 16 in 2000 with a smithing skill of 175. I put about 90pp in materials in the forge, hoping for a Fine Steel Breastplate. It seemed like a ton of money, and would have taken me a long time to recover if it had failed.

Then it was old school Dwarven Plate. Lava Rocks were hard to find. The Twilight Sea elementals weren't in game yet, so you would get a few lava rocks from Fire Giants (if folks were raiding), may a couple from a high end necro soloing in Skyfire, or could get one every couple hours if you scoured Najena from top to bottom. I still now Najena well enough to clear it in my sleep from farming Lava Rocks there 5 years ago. On top of that, you had to invest in enchanted Brellium, and an imbued ruby. By the time I pulled the trigger on a combine I was a nervous wreck. It took months of farming smithing and selling before I could afford a set for myself.

Black Acrylia Weapons came out. Gathering Akheva Blood and Black Acrylia was a daunting task, and I paid a fair amount of money for my first supplies. A success could net a Black Acrylia Halberd, which I could sell for 15k. A failure meant going back to the drawing board.

Then Blue Diamond cultural was released. The price on blue diamonds skyrocketed, and the pressure on places to farm velium was pretty intense. At the start, a successful combine could yield an item that sold for 20-30k.

All that said, I find myself in much the same boat you are in. Although I am gathering goodies to make a set for my use, as opposed to for sale. Two weeks ago, I rolled the dice to make a set of GM legs, and lost. Last night I bought my third drake scale and will attempt the combine again.

DoN Cultural is very good tradeskilled armor. Just like when other powerful tradeskilled items are introduced, the item is valuable and the components to make the item become valuable as well. The only way to avoid the DoN GM Cultural Lottery is to not have any tradeskilled items that are worth anything. If that were the case, the game would be much less fun for me. How about you?

However, as a 250-ish smith, there are lots of smaller markets you can get into to help raise the plat to keep yourself in a slow stream of supplies. If you enjoy tradeskills, you will find a way to make a modest in-game income from them. If you skilled up to make yourself a suit of armor, then you will get out of tradeskills what you put into them.

Good luck to you, and congrats on you shiny new BP!

Boleslav Forgehammer
Paladin of Brell in his 70th Campaign
Tunare (E'ci) – Sacred Destiny

[Bobaten]

Yes, that sounded exactly like my wife's complaints 4 years ago when she was trying to make studded acrylia cloaks (OMG +10 wisdom!). She spent all of her money on pelts, then fizzled 2 out of 4. Leaving her with one to wear, and one to sell (for less than the price of 4 combines). Meanwhile I was making a nice profits selling Handmade backpacks, and she lamented why had she bothered skilling up.

[Rhumba]

Something I've learned from just tradeskilling in general, you better expect to lose money.

There should be a disclaimer on every EQ Traders page. It should be simmilar to this. There are times you can make pp from tradeskills, but most of the time you can't. There are so many tradeskillers now that it's just not likely that you will ever make PP on it.

I've lost so much PP on GM Ogre cultural it's crazy. Granted most of it has to do with my <20 percent success rate on the BP's. Best to just get it out of your head that you can make money doing this.

[Xenephex]

Higher end tradeskills have been that way for a long time.

I remember being level 16 in 2000 with a smithing skill of 175. I put about 90pp in materials in the forge, hoping for a Fine Steel Breastplate. It seemed like a ton of money, and would have taken me a long time to recover if it had failed.

Then it was old school Dwarven Plate. Lava Rocks were hard to find. The Twilight Sea elementals weren't in game yet, so you would get a few lava rocks from Fire Giants (if folks were raiding), may a couple from a high end necro soloing in Skyfire, or could get one every couple hours if you scoured Najena from top to bottom. I still now Najena well enough to clear it in my sleep from farming Lava Rocks there 5 years ago. On top of that, you had to invest in enchanted Brellium, and an imbued ruby. By the time I pulled the trigger on a combine I was a nervous wreck. It took months of farming smithing and selling before I could afford a set for myself.

Black Acrylia Weapons came out. Gathering Akheva Blood and Black Acrylia was a daunting task, and I paid a fair amount of money for my first supplies. A success could net a Black Acrylia Halberd, which I could sell for 15k. A failure meant going back to the drawing board.

Then Blue Diamond cultural was released. The price on blue diamonds skyrocketed, and the pressure on places to farm velium was pretty intense. At the start, a successful combine could yield an item that sold for 20-30k.

All that said, I find myself in much the same boat you are in. Although I am gathering goodies to make a set for my use, as opposed to for sale. Two weeks ago, I rolled the dice to make a set of GM legs, and lost. Last night I bought my third drake scale and will attempt the combine again.

DoN Cultural is very good tradeskilled armor. Just like when other powerful tradeskilled items are introduced, the item is valuable and the components to make the item become valuable as well. The only way to avoid the DoN GM Cultural Lottery is to not have any tradeskilled items that are worth anything. If that were the case, the game would be much less fun for me. How about you?

However, as a 250-ish smith, there are lots of smaller markets you can get into to help raise the plat to keep yourself in a slow stream of supplies. If you enjoy tradeskills, you will find a way to make a modest in-game income from them. If you skilled up to make yourself a suit of armor, then you will get out of tradeskills what you put into them.

Good luck to you, and congrats on you shiny new BP!

Boleslav Forgehammer
Paladin of Brell in his 70th Campaign
Tunare (E'ci) – Sacred Destiny

Well, I've been doing tradeskills for a long time, but this is my first real venture into high-end smithing (or high priced tradeskills of any kind). I have been close to doing it before. I too had some thought of skilling up in the early days of fine plate, and made it all the way to 196 (was on a different server at that time - Tunare). But I was level 24 at the time and though I don't remember how high my prime stat was then, I can guarantee that it was probably pretty bad. I finally gave up and went back to leather paddings and backpacks as a somewhat slower but much steadier source of income.

I was tempted again when the BD cultural changes were announced, with the impending change in FP trivials. Again, I decided to cash in on the 500 percent increase in leather padding prices instead. THAT was probably one of the worst decisions I ever made, as I believe most of my LP customers from that period of time have long since retired to villas on the French Riviera.

For me, tradeskills have always ultimately been about equipping my warrior, so yes, what I want out of this, ultimately, is a nice new set of armor. The Stormguard is a significant upgrade for me in every slot - enough that I had planned to save up and buy it, until I finally figured out that it was cheaper to skill up and make it myself.

I am aware that there is much better armor dropping in various places, and were I anything other than a tank, that is certainly the way I would go. But, as always, I face the catch-22 that in order to get in a group as a tank in those zones where I can get better equipment, I first need to get better equipment. Thus, DoN cultural.

I know it is not as popular as it once was, but I also know enough to know that there are many others in my situation, and so there is still some market for it. So while I don't think I will roll up millions of plat doing this, I do think that I will make (or at least save) money by taking this path. I wouldn't have done it if I was not reasonably sure of that.

So this was not meant to be a rant about making money in tradeskills, or a complaint about the vagaries of chance and the RNG. It was just an wide-eyed recognition of the sheer amount of risk involved in some of these early combines, and an expression of both trepidation and exhileration at the audacity of sticking more than half my net worth in a forge and hoping for the best.

90 plat on a fine plate combine was indeed a lot back in those days, but it was still less than the price of a stack of padding, and that was a couple hours work at best. Even BD cultural, though I never attempted any, would never have come anywhere close to half my plat in one combine.

So, much bigger risks and correspondingly bigger potential rewards than I, at least, have ever experienced before. I have to tell you that last night was heart-stopping (and fun).

[Veril]

Stick with it. Tradeskills are the biggest money maker in the game. Make what the market wants and you will be rolling in it in the end.

I've made many many millions from smithing as a barbarian. Tae Ew was good to me, and then it was blue diamond cultural, then elemental and now it is Grand Master stuff. It sells. sporadic, but it's a good money maker.

Don't restrict your skills to just GM stuff, there is demand for the lesser stuff as well.

Symbols - check the bazaar for people who want to buy symbols in buyer mode, I've sold a few at sensible prices (60-70K) to those people.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

The trick with tradeskills is having the skill and capital at the right time.

Sure you can make money off GM armor now. But you won't make nearly as much money as the people who were making it when DoN went live.

Gain the skill, plug away at it, then wait for new recipes to get added then pounce. That's how you make a pile of money. It might take months/years though.