Easiest to Hardest ...

[Qaladar Bragollach]

Yeah I did too... that was then. Now you'd be hard pressed to sell all those spells at a rate that would still be profitable. I've already totally flooded the market on my server

[Wyvernwill]

While you can make some profit off of research while skilling up, the parchments have to be readily available. The biggest part of why I rate Research as hard as I do is the farming of parchments (I ignore the bazaar for all intents and purposes due to the simple fact that not all servers are equal there). When you compare farming Shissar Scales or Sunshard Pebbles/Ore for tailoring, Gorukar Mesa/Blightfire moors for treant branches, Sunshard Pebbles/Ore and Yttrium for Tinkering... the farming for research is by far the hardest.

One can turn a profit with Tinkering as well skilling up, but it will be slow as well. Case in point with research is that my trader still has a lot of spell that I can't get rid of for under 1k but I used that spell specifically to skill on.. still at a loss there lol.

In the end, there is the big four in Tailoring, Smithing, Tinkering and Research. Your milage will vary one person to the other, but I guess that's the beauty of randomness.

[Bobaten]

Except... if you don't care about the profit (or can't make a profit because the market is saturated)..you can use the same sunshard for research that you can for tailoring.
Though personally, I doubt anyone can actually saturate the research market. There are too many possible spells to make. Even when there were 2 crazy people trying to drive each other out of business on Prexus (offering any 2 69-70 spells for each runic or fine runic vellum), I still had to replenish my stock of 64-68 spells.

[Wyvernwill]

There's profit margins with every tradeskill. Tinkering, Research both have huge profit margins on a lot of various combines. Smithing/Tailoring, in the past, had huge profit margin items as well. With the new culturals, they will again have huge profit margins, research will remain the same and tinkering will have another driving boost on one of it's biggest items (AAAAs).

Profit Margins while skilling up, are irrelevant. I have made all my all my money back in the past skilling on MCS and pricing them at 400pp. People bought them and the minor over cost compensated for the failures. After that, Intricate/Elaborate and the Symbols became a good skill route and made considerable profit as well. The same could be said of tailoring.

When it comes down to the overall pain of gathering supplies + cost, research is still one of the most expensive routes in game post 243.

But, as I stated above, "hardest to easiest" is highly subjective to one's own experiences. Similar to those stating that Fletching (unless you are culturally gifted) is extremely hard. My personal experiences with it post TSS state clearly different. The beauty of opinions, eh?

[Catweazel]

There's profit margins with every tradeskill. Tinkering, Research both have huge profit margins on a lot of various combines. Smithing/Tailoring, in the past, had huge profit margin items as well. With the new culturals, they will again have huge profit margins, research will remain the same and tinkering will have another driving boost on one of it's biggest items (AAAAs).

Profit Margins while skilling up, are irrelevant. I have made all my all my money back in the past skilling on MCS and pricing them at 400pp. People bought them and the minor over cost compensated for the failures. After that, Intricate/Elaborate and the Symbols became a good skill route and made considerable profit as well. The same could be said of tailoring.

When it comes down to the overall pain of gathering supplies + cost, research is still one of the most expensive routes in game post 243.

But, as I stated above, "hardest to easiest" is highly subjective to one's own experiences. Similar to those stating that Fletching (unless you are culturally gifted) is extremely hard. My personal experiences with it post TSS state clearly different. The beauty of opinions, eh?

Although your opinion might well be the correct one, consider that stones for cultural armor will not likely drop until end zone SOF mobs are being killed and farmed. From SOE's perspective, this is likely to be mid way through the next expansion cycle or later (i.e. spring / summer 08). Cultural armor recipes will need to be learned including farming ingredients and completing the quests. Based on level 75 cultural, the likely drop rate and cost of these ingredients for "end game" crafted armor will not be cheap.

With no current AAAA market because of the duping and no sign that duped supplies are running out and future demand 6 to 9 months away combined with the expense of learning new recipes and their likely failure rates, "profit" is hardly a term this particular tinker is contemplating.

If you add to this the degrading effects of focii for casters (from level 70 to 80), even new cultural armor with old augs will not see any demand for many many months. Cultural armor without AAAA augs is frankly rather useless.

[Wyvernwill]

Cultural Armor (the level 70) has become useless due to level increases and new levels of group armor. For it's time, it was one of the most highly covetted sets of armor in game for a lot of classes, even without LB Augs. (I should know, I wore a full suit using don augs in the 12 slot.)

AAAA duping was a relatively small impact. There was absolutely no impact on my server, and quite a few others. I am still selling AAAAs consistently at 120k and I can barely keep up with the demand. That's a huge profit margin for me (and quite frankly, the profit margin is vastly better than Research).

The new cultural is going to be globally dropped, not like MDS and GDH where it was a required instance with a specific mob type only. While it will be most likely rare, if the suit follows suit, it will be a rather highly covetted set of gear again, and people will want it (especially those currently using LBs regardless of focus degradation). It's a free upgrade to raid gear in a lot of cases.

Learning the recipes/doing the quests, etc will take considerably less time than when the cultural originally came out. Simple reason why... once the items are identified, nothing much will end up changing. It will more than likely be the same amount of drops per slot (1 for bracer, 3 for legs), and will be similar across races. Once the first item is combined, there will be a flood of combines following suit. It's the way standardized tradeskills work, and cultural is a very standard system... look at Apprentice through Grandmasters, the combines were exactly the same except for the dropped component needed.

As for the delay in dropped components, on average it takes the high end groupers/raiders about 3 days to max level and start hunting end exp zones in an expansion... that's really not a long time when we're talking about a 12 month delay to the next expansion.

Ending point, while I sympathize with servers that were hit hard by a bug that was exploited... it has nothing to do with the fact that AAAAs are a very relevant profit margin for Tinkering.

[Zacatac]

For myself, the list goes -

1. Research
2. Tailoring
3. Smithing
4. Fletching
5. Pottery
6. Jewelcrafting
7. Brewing
8. Baking

[Bupper]

I maxed all 11 trophies last year, before sunshards. Here was the order for me.

1) Tailoring
2) Spell research
3) Tinkering
4) Fletching
5) Smithing
6) Pottery
7) Alchemy
8) Poison
9) Jewelcraft
10) Baking
11) Brewing

[Sukrasisx]

IMO (dont slap me) Sunshard Ore has made tradeskilling just way too easy. Of course, I speak as someone who maxed most tradeskills BEFORE its implementation.... so maybe I'm just jealous

Honestly with several thousand Sunshard Ore.... most trades are easy. (at least the ones with that as a regeant)

Maybe it's just me (and the fact that with all the time I spend on tradeskills I still haven't gotten any characters to level 70), but I just don't see "several thousand Sunshard Ore" as a viable skillup path. I don't see that many as drops, and at bazaar prices on my server that means you're suggesting several MILLION plat. Heck, if I had that kind of cash to throw around, yeah, most trades would be easy.

For me, easy means I can farm the components with a 69 monk or 58 druid and get enough for at least 10 combines per hour of farming, and the rest of the components cost maybe 200-300 per attempt. The Ore on my server goes for 1500 and up, and then there's another 450 for the vendored ingot to go with it. Yeah, I get two combines out of it (if the first one doesn't fail), but still, that's out of my price range.

Now, if there's a steady market for selling my successes, I can consider shoveling more front money at it and making it back. That's how I've scraped Research to 278 so far. So maybe I just need to check what the infusible gear is selling for and start feeding the market. But still, if my experience doing that in Research is any example, I wouldn't call that "easy". Easy means I can get enough materials to do a few hundred combines at a time and not worry about the cost.

[Roanne]

Well, youre not going to make your money back selling your crafts on the open market. Theres usually just too much competition from others making the same recipes on the same skillup pathway and the market is fairly narrow to start.

You can, however, usually make "most" of your money back just reselling to vendors. How much you lose depends on your success rate and you can pretty much consider any money you spent for components in the bazaar lost.

Regardless, sunshard components (sunshard ore specifically) made the endgame pathway in many tradeskills much easier (especially tailoring, tinkering, and research). Yes, its not what I would call "easy" relative to jewelcrafting, baking, or brewing, but its significantly easier than without those recipes.

[Rawckett]

For me, I think research is the worst. I'm 298 in tinkering, and found really no trouble there. I didn't mind spending the time farming, and with the Culteral Path it was fairly easy. I got to 290 before Sunshard, so that makes it even easier. But Research just is awful. I hate it. LOL.

Brewing is by far the easiest I think.

I think I have to revise just a bit, after rushing to get JC to 300 (at 280 ATM) before the revamp. Hehe.

Jewelcraft is BY FAR THE EASIEST. Brewing is next.

[Bupper]

AAAA duping was a relatively small impact. There was absolutely no impact on my server, and quite a few others.

On Quellious, a merchant who never sold AAAAs before the bug was discovered and never sells any other kind of tradeskilled items still has inventory remaining, priced consistently below anyone else.

[Bobaten]

The problem is, that while AAAA duping only hit 3-4 servers, it's not like people on those servers have a way around it.

[Wyvernwill]

But it doesn't make it a true statement that AAAA are not a cash cow because some servers got bent over by cheaters. There are ways around it, server transfers are available to go to a server than wasn't affected.

[Aldier]

Who would transfer servers to be able to get around AAAA duping? I am on my server because it is the server I started on. I am in a raiding guild. I have no intentions of picking up, leaving behind all my friends I have made over the years just because 1 item (yes 1) is no longer selling as well as it used to because someone duped.