251-300

[Curras]

I have a couple alts that I created for the specific purpose of trade skills. A HE enchanter (lvl 38) and a VAH shaman (lvl 47). I probably will never level these characters anywhere near lvl 75 or even lvl 60. I worked on trade skills when the cap was still 250.

How hard will it be to take these characters to skill 300 with a wis/int cap of 255? Would it actually be easier to lvl them 65 to take advantage of increasing their stat caps? Should I just grind it out with their current stat cap of 255?

[Gaell Stormracer]

You can check this with the Advanced Calculator on the main site, but the difference isn't huge - high stats just reduce the skill-up "penalty" on failed combines, so if you stick to combines with a trivial that's close to your skill, the differerence won't matter much.

[Tiroon]

For one tradeskill (Research) the difference is zero. If you have a chanter for that purpose don't bother.

For alchemy the difference is huge. If you leveled and then got the PoP stat AA's to get to 305 WIS, the skill up rate would increases by more than 20% at a skill of around 250 (and more than 23% at 299 skill).

So it depends just how easily you can level your shaman. Another consideration would be that Salvage is level restricted. The third rank is level 70 required.

[Bobaten]

Jewelcraft has the same skill up difficulty as alchemy. So if your enchanter is a jeweler leveling would be worth it.
The complete list:
Difficulty 1 (115 stat for max chance on success, 215 for max chance on failure)
Spell Research

Difficulty 2 with alt stat (200 for max chance on success, 400 for max on failure)
Blacksmithing
Make Poison

Difficulty 2 with no alt stat (215 for success, 415 for failure)
Tailoring
Tinkering

Difficulty 3 (315 for success, 615 for failure)
Baking
Brewing

Difficulty 4 with alt stat (400 for success, 800 for failure)
Fletching

Difficulty 4 with no alt stat (415 for success, 815 for failure)
Alchemy
Pottery
Jewelcraft

Difficulty 8 (815 for success, 1615 for failure)
Fishing (I don't recommend skilling this up through combines)

So for about half of the tradeskills, stats over 255 can help quite a bit.

[Gaell Stormracer]

Nice summary, Bobaten. My view is still that for difficulty 1, 2, and even 3 skills, it's "close enough" to be able to get to 255, because you can usually find combines that are cheap and plentiful enough at various trivial levels to keep skill-ups efficient. For the difficulty 4 combines, especially fletching for the less privileged race/class combos, the raised stat caps may be a better option.

[Curras]

Thx

Thx everyone.

My HIE enchanter has a jewelry skill of 282. It was easy making it this far since you can just buy everything from a single merchant. Not to mention an awesome skill up path to keep failures to a minimum. Just at the point where I need dropped gems to make it the final way.

My VAH shaman has an alchemy skill of 232. Of course that puts me in the "forage the crap out of NBL's" category. I may play the shaman some but not sure if I'll ever break lvl 60 to take advantage of wisdom cap increases.

[Unapuma]

You can eventually reach 300 in alchemy without reaching 60 or other advantages of being high level. My shammy is only 26 and max wis of 255 yet after some 3,000 assorted distillates X I dinged 300 in alchemy. I tried Deepwater as it's easier and have slightly lower trival but I got less skillup for some reason.

[Abazagaroth]

Jewelcraft has the same skill up difficulty as alchemy. So if your enchanter is a jeweler leveling would be worth it.
The complete list:
Difficulty 1 (115 stat for max chance on success, 215 for max chance on failure)
Spell Research

Difficulty 2 with alt stat (200 for max chance on success, 400 for max on failure)
Blacksmithing
Make Poison

Difficulty 2 with no alt stat (215 for success, 415 for failure)
Tailoring
Tinkering

Difficulty 3 (315 for success, 615 for failure)
Baking
Brewing

Difficulty 4 with alt stat (400 for success, 800 for failure)
Fletching

Difficulty 4 with no alt stat (415 for success, 815 for failure)
Alchemy
Pottery
Jewelcraft

Difficulty 8 (815 for success, 1615 for failure)
Fishing (I don't recommend skilling this up through combines)

So for about half of the tradeskills, stats over 255 can help quite a bit.

Fishing was amazingly easy to skillup through combines. I seriously doubt that the numbers you quote for fishing is correct, as a couple hundred fish took me from 0 to like 170 or something in a matter of one hour.

[Gorse]

Fishing was amazingly easy to skillup through combines. I seriously doubt that the numbers you quote for fishing is correct, as a couple hundred fish took me from 0 to like 170 or something in a matter of one hour.

Also this is a discussion about 251 to 300 and fishing is capped at 200. That said, I agree, fishing is an easy and kind of fun (at least the first couple times) trade skill to master.



Gorse

[rolfus]

Real life information

Ok, my main is a 58 shaman. I maxed my TST a few levels ago with a 255 Wis. As such, I can tell you it does suck a bit to max the skill, but not as bad as the TST itself was (I think it took 800 combines to get the trophy to max).

You also should look at the cost of skills-ups vs the cost of leveling. Is it work the time to level up to the higher stat caps if the combines are costing about less than 30P each? (Nodding blue lillies can be foraged quite easy and will take you to 300 without any issues).

For the enchanter and jewel craft, that might be a very different story!

Either way, tradeskills are very fun, so good luck maxing them!

[Gaell Stormracer]

Fishing was amazingly easy to skillup through combines. I seriously doubt that the numbers you quote for fishing is correct, as a couple hundred fish took me from 0 to like 170 or something in a matter of one hour.

The Advanced Calculator doesn't seem to be able to cope with difficulty 8 skills... -100% chance to skill up per combine

[Ozadar]

I just went from 158 to 215 on geerloks working on Tinkering. Needless to say, my gnome was sitting right at 255. To equip his geerlok for the 5% bonus, I had to remove my primary and dropped below the 255 int level. Through trial and error and messing with the calculator on this site, I found that sacrificing a few points of int (even up to 10 points) was better than giving up the 5% geerlok bonus. Thus, I went geerlok all way. Had quite a few failures until I hit around 190 skill, but skill-ups were fairly linear with very few surprises.

Thus, sage words above, on using small trivial gaps (which I didn't and paid with many failures). Between that, 255 int, and geerlok . . . I think you should be pretty good for most of the tradeskills, for a while. Besides, most of the tradeskills you benefit around 380 int, the supplies are fairly plentiful if not cheap to get to 289 and beyond. Exceptions: Jewelry, alchemy and fletching can be rough because of the foraging . . . pottery because of cost, thus higher levels (and higher int cap) in these would be of great benefit.

Ozadar of the 71st Corpse
Erudite Tradeskiller of Zek
Member of 1450 Club

Baking - 286
Brewing - 292
Fletching - 268
Jewelry - 287
Pottery - 261
Smithing - 248
Tailoring - 270
Research - 202
Fishing - 200

(+5-8% to all skills) + Salvage 3