Good Tradeskill for a Druid?

[Raevynwood]

I'm new to Everquest and I was wondering what would be a good tradeskill for a WoodElf Druid to take up? Originally I was interested in Baking or Tailoring. I found out that since I'm a Druid, it's probably not a good idea to create bad faction with the animals. Any suggestions? Thanks!

-Willow Raevynwood

[Nolrog]

You can kill most animals without faction hits. Just don't kill animals in SurefalL Glade, Jaggedpine Forrest (except for the griffons and anacondas, they're OK.) Also don't kill animals near druids at a druid ring.

You do a lot of tailoring using spider silks though. In fact, you could go from 0 to 250 on nothing but spider silks, though that wouldn't be the most expedient way to go.

[tatanka7th]

Basically, do whatever you enjoy. Smithing and tailoring are the hardest to max out, but have the greatest payoff if you want to make some plat from it. Baking and brewing are much easier to raise (and cheaper), and you can always use what you make. You may not make much off of them, but they are fun.

That leaves pottery, jewelcraft, and fletching. I wouldn't suggest any of these for a new WE druid (and your first char in EQ).

Of the two you mentioned, I'd mainly concentrate on baking, though there's nothing to prevent you from pursuing both. Though you can only raise one of them above 200 (for now

Tat

[Luvimt]

Since you are a druid and can therefore forage, I would suggest baking or brewing. There isn't great profit with either skill (tealosian teas and juice of quellious sell well as do hero sandwiches and tormentor stir-fry) but they are quick and easy to raise and will use up some of the supplies that most foragers have stacks and stacks of.
Tailoring is really difficult to raise (especially for certain races - took my half elf bard 6 3/4 yrs to get to 300) and involves lots of farming or spending lots of plat so I would only recommend that to the hardcore/sick.
Good luck with wahtever you choose.

[Raevynwood]

Thanks!

I want to thank all of you who replied so far! It has helped tremendously!

-Willow Raevynwood

[Quichon]

Since you are a druid and can therefore forage, I would suggest baking or brewing. There isn't great profit with either skill (tealosian teas and juice of quellious sell well as do hero sandwiches and tormentor stir-fry) but they are quick and easy to raise and will use up some of the supplies that most foragers have stacks and stacks of.
Tailoring is really difficult to raise (especially for certain races - took my half elf bard 6 3/4 yrs to get to 300) and involves lots of farming or spending lots of plat so I would only recommend that to the hardcore/sick.
Good luck with wahtever you choose.

I wholeheartedly agree with this! Brewing and Baking can be done extremely inexpensively if you have access to lots of foraged goodies.

Although druids don't use archery, Fletching can also go right up your alley since you can make cultural arrows up to 300 all vendor sold.

[Raevynwood]

Thanks Quichon!

Thanks Quichon for that input. Ideally, I would like to have decent skill in all the tradeskills available to me. With the responses I got here I think I will focus on Baking as my primary and do Brewing as a secondary.

[Liwsa]

I suggest you do tailoring. You can make items for you to wear. Once you get high enough you can make culturial armor for yourself and to make money off of.

[Elyssanda]

I suggest you do tailoring. You can make items for you to wear. Once you get high enough you can make culturial armor for yourself and to make money off of.

I'd have to totally disagree here. As a NEW to EQ player, run far far away from tailoring if you think you'd like to tradeskill. It's an insanely difficult one to do for a more experienced player unless one has endlessly deep pockets, or endless amounts of time to do nothing but get parts to use...

As a woodelf druid, baking, brewing, fletching are your 3 easiest because you can forage for the first two, and once you do them, then move on to fletching, not that you can use arrows, but you do at least have a cultural option so that you can max it out.

Also as a forager: if you can leave your game running while you are at work or asleep, you can bazaar sell some forages very well, depending on your server economy.

[Tiroon]

Thanks Quichon for that input. Ideally, I would like to have decent skill in all the tradeskills available to me. With the responses I got here I think I will focus on Baking as my primary and do Brewing as a secondary.

I think you have the right idea. It's just that the definition of "decent skill" will change over time.

Anyway you will notice that, unless you work on brewing only, the tradeskills are interdependant to some degree. Brewing is needed for dyes (tailoring) and tempers (smithing), even the best skill-up path in baking depends on the chef having some brewing skill.

Keep the tradeskill at a level that is not too big a pain to get and you'll be able to provide sub-combines to other players for a profit and you'll be able to make some very cool stuff for yourself too.

[Queletan]

As others have said, Brewing and Baking are the simplest of the tradeskills. Especially with the ability to forage. They won't make you huge ammounts of money, but you can sell picnics, constitutionals, or (as a forager) juice of quellios pretty regularly in the bazaar.

Of the remaining skills, Pottery is not so difficult to get into the low 200s, but lacks any real selling items, it is handy to have for a few other skills, but at the moment, not really that useful.

Fletching, for a tunare elf is not that difficult to level up (I'm not sure exactly what the financial obligation to it is, I just know it is a loooooooooot better than a dwarf's option . The bows Druzzil bows (the best that can be made) still sell regularly at least on my server, but they're down to a more reasonable price (still profitable, just not insanely so)

Jewelcraft is not that great of an option anymore, especially if you can't enchant your own metals.. The prestitigidase (sp) still sell allright on my server, but they're not really that stellar, and anything under that is weak at best.

Which brings us to the last two, Tailoring and Smithing.

If you're careful with your purchase prices on the items needed for Grandmaster gear, you can make a tidy profit on them... from what I have seen (On Dwarf and Gnome at GM and a Vah'Shir and Iksar at Master level) Masters armor is at best a mild money sink (I have ~100 master level gnome pieces on a mule waiting to be sold after I manage to move the ones on my trader). The problem with that is, you'd need to be at the Grandmaster level very soon. As a returning player that is probably pretty unlikely. If you can work them up cheaply, over time, I think they'd be a great possibility, but if it takes even 3 months, the market will probably be entirely too flooded.

That said, I'd work all of them up, have fun doing it.. see which skills might have a draw for you (for me it was smithing from day one, but hey.. I'm a dwarf soo... ). Just keep in mind, that unless you spend AAs on New Tanaan Mastery, only one skill can go over 200.. so make sure it is the one that you want to do.

GL with tradeskills, and welcome to our completely insane family

Q

[Liwsa]

If you are just looking to max a tradeskill JUST to have one maxed then yes baking or brewing is the win.

If you want a trade skill that you can work as you level to accompany your class then Tailoring is the one you should pick. If you were a plate/chain class then smithing not tailoring would be what you wanted but being a druid(leather wearing) tailoring is the way to go.

It all depends on your goals.

Do you want a tradeskill at 300 and don't really care what one it is, or do you want to work a tradeskill that will grow as you do.

[Devilcharm]

Basically, do whatever you enjoy. Smithing and tailoring are the hardest to max out, but have the greatest payoff if you want to make some plat from it.

I agree, do whatever you enjoy. I enjoy them all and all my toons have high tradeskills in one area or another (or all)
But by the time you get to 300 tailoring or smithing you would need to sell ~3M plat with of smithed (or tailored) just for time alone. Add prolly another 250k-3M for materials if you buy them.
Of all my toons, tailoring and smithing yeilded no profit yet. Nor do I expect any. By contrast, baking is without a doubt the easiest to max and most profitable. 0-300 in one day at an investment of 5k-9k worth of materials so I did not have to farm them (more profitable had I farmed them myself).

I sell my misty thicket picnics 3pp ea. One batch (filling up a trader to the rim, bank included) can yeild over 40k plat in one day. That assuming I dont sell picnics only, there is also the Gates of Discord faction food. Those sell for a very nice profit (both time and material) The subcombine foods to make bristlebanes party platter's sell for an exceptional profit, moreso considering how easy they are to make (trivial and ease of obtaining) Without a doubt, baking is the biggest plat maker and so far most profitable.

I only have one 300 brewer tho, one thing that has been getting my eye's attention is the juice of quellious. Most of it is foraged. I do not have a effective forager tho. But the stuff sells on Tunare for 140-200pp ea. Once my forager is able to effectively forage, expect to be seeing a lot of these for much cheaper then that. So I think brewing is another possibility for a money maker.

Overall tho, yeah. Do whatever tradeskill you prefer. The choice is yours and people buying tradeskill made items are always there. But do not be led into believing smithing and tailoring are the most profitable. The truth is they are the least profitable in both time/materials. No matter what, everone needs food/drink. No matter what, not everyone needs player made items. If they do need them, food/drink will be the most likely items to be bought.

[tatanka7th]

Another perspective on smithing....

I think it's not as hard as many make it out to be. I've taken my warrior from 0-245 in the last 2 weeks, and have spent a grand total of 40Kpp so far (and that's only cause I got impatient and paid 11Kpp last night for some components I could have easily foraged in 3-4 hours, and spent about 12K on velium for EVBs).

Granted, the toon is 66 and can farm stuff quickly, but still, if you do the standard banded -> emb needles -> fine plate -> EVBs -> shadowscream, You can get all the way to 267 for very cheap, and regardless of your race.

Tailoring is still the hardest to raise to high levels.

Oh, and another devil's advocate point... there's no need to get the skills to 300, necessarily. For example, the GM DoN armor/symbols can be attempted at the capped success rate with a skill of 275-ish, and an 8-12% trophy.

Tat

[Devilcharm]

While indeed true on your point on the shadowscream armor. Your looking at the raw plat cost of smithing. You say you spent 40k per, Your not taking into consideration time. Farming stuff for shadowscream armor takes forever, even at level 70. So no XP is to be made which is kinda a deturant to getting some higher end XP as not many people will know you cause of spending time in a lowbie zone. Also orbs take a ton of bank space. Taking the quickest route to 222 from velium after the other steps you said is indeed quick and cheap. From 222-268 making the shadowscream armor as you suggest will take over a month if not two getting to 268 on that route (cause you also need tons of swirling shadows). By no means am I trying to deter, but smithing is very very very expensive to say the least. Either through raw plat, time, or both. And lets say for one second he/she truely takes the time to get to high end smithing using your route to 268. From all the time spent... it is like I said, millions of plat worth of sales would be needed to make up for the time spent. If the stuff is bought, even more millions would need to be sold for plat invested, and time spent on those skill up's, and that is assuming he/she farmed the stuff to sell of any decent price. GM armors/aug's are now saturated on all servers, GM armor makes OoW smithed armors near worthless now. And the movement rate on GM armors (at least on tunare and povar) is next to nothing.
Again, this is not to deter from smithing, I enjoy it. But anyone who says it is inexpensive to get there needs to look at other things then raw cost of plat. Time makes it the most expensive tradeskill. Even making mistletoe cutting stickles takes forever, and the days of selling those for a profit are long gone, I have not seen one sell for more then 340 plat in over... I would guess 6 months. Regular price now is 200-250ea.

As for tailoring, your also forgetting, he is a wood elf druid. He has the easiest route to 300 tailoring. Shissar scales. It only took me two or three weeks to get my human to 300 tailoring. So at least for the poster, tailoring will not take forever.

Bottom line is, brewing/baking will bring you in plat on a constant and steady basis which can be used to fuel your other tradeskills, saving the most important factor making them expensive.