New to TS

[Zacory]

Hi everyone! I've been bitten by the TS bug since completing the Frostfell baking quest all on my own. Now I have big plans to attempt everything I can as a 70+ Wood Elf Druid. That artisian charm looks too good to pass up.

I do have a few skills up over 100 already. I have heard that it's important to get the Beginner's trophy as soon as you can. Also, I understand the Salvage and Mastery AA's will be a tremendous help.

So, my question is... in this day and age (Welcome to 2007!), what helpful advice can anyone provide to someone new to Tradeskills?

I do plan on reading old posts but the list in this forum alone is over 100 pages!

[Elyssanda]

Best place for you to start?
http://mboards.eqtraders.com/eq/showthread.php?t=25961

[Bara]

Edited

So, my question is... in this day and age (Welcome to 2007!), what helpful advice can anyone provide to someone new to Tradeskills?

I do plan on reading old posts but the list in this forum alone is over 100 pages!

Valium, lots and lots for when the RNG *Random Number Generator* is being cruel to you.

and Happy '07 to you too!

[Blayze Meduenin]

welcome to the madhouse =p

The tradeskill guide is an excellent starting point.

two other pointers id give are

1) Get you wis as high as possible when doing combines

2) Look at multi stage and multi skill recipes where you can do some combines now and some later for skillups (if you have room to store them!)
Toward this end you can also fill up on parts youll use later then die to store them till you need them.
For instance mistletoe cutting sickles for smithing you can skill up making parts and storing them on bodies then skill up on combining the parts
Or ceremonial solstice robe can give you high end jewelcraft (300) tailoring (252) and lower level tailoring (combining spider silks to swatches and then the blessed swatches)
There are many others but those are examples from the top of my head

[Zaltak]

Get one skill maxxed before moveing to the next.Start with either bakeing or brewing since these are the easyist to max.Do all the freebie quests on the ship in Abysmal sea.Get all the beginner TS trophie tasks since they are unlimited on time.
GL and welcome to the insanity:-)

[Maevenniia]

There are also "freebie" quests in Crescent Reach

[andyhre]

Find a way to earn lots of platinum. Even though some tradeskills can have pockets of lucrativeness, for many the skilling up is a large plat drain.

I earned 400,000 plat on leather padding as a young'un which fueled a lot of my later tradeskilling. I also got lucky in that I was the first wood elf on my server to make master's cultural, and stuff that now sells for 200pp per item was going for 10K+. Selling a few sets of armor seriously refilled my coffers for the run to 2,100.

There are those who do it slowly and steadily and less expensively. But, if you plan to do a lot of skilling, I recommend building a small fortune first, as it will make the process smoother.

[Strokker]

Find a way to earn lots of platinum. Even though some tradeskills can have pockets of lucrativeness, for many the skilling up is a large plat drain.

I earned 400,000 plat on leather padding as a young'un which fueled a lot of my later tradeskilling. I also got lucky in that I was the first wood elf on my server to make master's cultural, and stuff that now sells for 200pp per item was going for 10K+. Selling a few sets of armor seriously refilled my coffers for the run to 2,100.

There are those who do it slowly and steadily and less expensively. But, if you plan to do a lot of skilling, I recommend building a small fortune first, as it will make the process smoother.

It's well and good to say find a way to earn lots of plat, but it is not that easy especially when your are chomping at the bit to get rolling. TSS zones have some nice plat mining options some nice stackable items that sell good to vendors, of sourse there is always GEms and such. Things like Padding and Cultural just dont sell as well as they used to, and just about anything you can make if you are not high enough to farm for yourself will not net you the return you need. I just dont have too much in advice to help out here, maybe some others do, like some items to sell on a bazaar mule to players/tradeskillers or as i used to do when I was skilling up offer to hunt things for tradeskillers in low zones for a fee so they can take time to farm harder stuff or to level up or what have you. Heck I still do this. Creativity is the key, I just lack some.

[Itek]

I think andy was fairly clear but he seems to be being misinterpreted. Allow me to state it more plainly.

In order to make a small fortune in tradeskills ...

start with a large fortune.

If you manage to get ahead of the curve you can make a killing. Check your 2100 club by server. Notice there IS ONE on your server. Go to the bazaar and find if someone has a trader with a complete set of your race's GM armors. Discover that YOU will probably NOT be the first on your server to make nifty augmentations.

Tradeskills are great. Fun and a good way to do something besides find the biggest baddest monster and stick the +5 sword of doom into it.

But if you are doing it for "I'm so cool" points or "I'm gonna jack the price up thru the roof and be rolling in plat" ... you're just gonna be mistaken.

[Blayze Meduenin]

Ironically if you want to make some plat to fund tradeskills one of the best sources is farming and selling tradeskill ingredients.

Not sure what its like on your server but things like velious furs, treant branches and blue diamonds go for 300-500 per, the cobalt cod and velium to go with eyvern hides sell as well but for less (maybe 10-40pp for lesser ingredients that are more available)
Celestial essence while not the market it once was when everything at the forfront used it can still make a small consistant income if you price it right.
Spider and spiderling silks are used in several higher recipes as well.

So a good albeit slower and a little tiresome route could be farm ingredients and sell half to fund the other things you need for your skilling while amassing ingredients for the higher end when you get there.

[Itek]

Ironically if you want to make some plat to fund tradeskills one of the best sources is farming and selling tradeskill ingredients.

I posted this over three years ago.

My opinions have changed little on the subject of earning plat by getting it from fellow tradeskillers.

Very little.

[Blayze Meduenin]

Times change a lot though, ive been hunting wyverns lately for hides, and they are so grey to me a clear the zone in 2 pulls. If someone, anyone hunted them and sold hides id much rather buy them than spend hours farming them.

[Itek]

No they do not change. YOU change. The game evolves, but -they- do not CHANGE.

Case in point:

I'm farming my own wasp spider silk. As a 72 level cleric I can pull one, or even two, mobs in the area and survive the pull. The drop rate is crappy but hey, it's light-blue mob every 6 minutes exp and I can do it myself.

I'm there over an hour, and finally have to take a moment and OOC regen. I'm a good way from the enterance of the spider cave I've been pulling, but the mobs are decently broken up.

In the 4 minutes or less I was away from keyboard (gotta take bio breaks, even when soloing) a group of 4 arrives and begins setting up IN my camp.

I'm 30 feet away, the mobs are clearly broken up. There's a CORPSE ffs.

Itek: "Howdy, so you are fighting the spiders now? You looking for the wasp silk? It's pretty rare, I've only gotten 2 pieces myself in the last hour or so here."

(Yeah, I thought THAT was fairly clear, yet polite.)

Pharmer: Yeah, we have the camp now.

O Rly ??

*Itek makes notes of names and guild names*

Itek: "Cool, I'll just go try for lepoard intestines. BTW I can't find the silk in the bazaar so I'd probably be willing to buy them."

Pharmer: "Sorry, we need them ourselves."

Itek: "No sweat, i was just gonna offer 3k each for 2 pieces."

Pharmer: "How soon can you be here with the plat, we have a couple spare now."

Actual conversation.

I don't mind paying if I have plat and don't want the tedium of farming. I am opposed to saying "the best way to make plat is to farm stuff for tradeskillers."

See I don't make 6kpp an hour farming plat. And I probably would have gotten my 2 wasp silks in another hour of farming the spiders. I just didn't want to have to wait while a Pharmer had stolen my camp until they got tired of it.

Wander over to the shaman / shadowknight / necro forums and see what they have to say about people farming spawns for plat. I know at least 3 shaman who did 1.5 pre-quest instead of the 1.0 quest, because they can't get the child's tear.

I can't fight the system. Doesn't make the system ethical.

[Blayze Meduenin]

umm thats 2 different points, theres a big difference to complaining about people farming tradeskill stuff to sell and someone camp stealing.

[Zacory]

Thanks all for the advice and input! That Trade skill guide is real nice.

I've been trying to build plat in the bazaar but still only making few hundred here, few thousand there. Seems farming trade skill components is still the way to go. Although it appears people still need to stay ahead of the trend. I've been trying to sell leather padding, but would imagine most smithers are well beyond making Fine Plate. The hot item now seems to be vergalid clay.

Itek - I read your old post and can feel your pain. Looking at your adventures for crystalline silk was in 2003 and now wasp spider silk in 2007, the same camp struggles are apparent.

Blayze - I have a question about something you mentioned:

...
Toward this end you can also fill up on parts youll use later then die to store them till you need them.

If I was to store trade skill goods on a corpse, wouldn't that corpse just be summoned during my corpse retrieval times after raid wipes? I wouldn't want to waist 290 plat summoning corpses that aren't going to be viable for rezes anyway.