Which gives faster skillups....

[Finneus]

If you just want to skillup as fast as possible, it seems like recipes that are harder (yellow/red vs blue) get you there faster. Am I correct in that? If thats the case, are you better off removing your trophy when the recipe color changes from yellow to blue to get in another 10 points of "yellow", or does it not matter? Or for that matter, does it pay to remove it and lose the item xp to evolve it?

[theRiov]

Your skillups are twice as likely on a success compared to a failure. Its better (and cheaper) to do combines that you're going to succeed at and thus closer to your trivial level. The trophy evolution is a seperate skillup rate and is unaffected by if you skilled up or not.

There are a LIMITED (cultural mainly) number of recipies that have built in higher skillup rates. (GM Cultural BP's have a 10% chance per combine for example) This is more significant as you get to the upper end of the tradeskills as some your skillup chance is 1-2% per combine. 10% is much much faster.

[melkorr]

I'm fairly sure that your INT/WIS/alternate stat increases skillup chance on failure. So higher stat does help the chance of skillups on high trivial fails. However, the point where your stats are high enough to make fails and successes even is up there a few hundred above current caps. Another thing to consider is that trophies and other stat mod items extent the range of items which you meet the max success rate for. So if theres a much cheaper/easier to farm/simpler combine that's up there in that almost there range, a trophy can often make it green to you. I did most of Jewelcrafting on green combines, because with the combines stairstepping up 3 or 4 points at a time, my trophy always kept me ahead of the next one's trivial.

[Aldier]

The required stat to achieve equal success rate on success vs failure depends on the difficulty of the tradeskill. Some are obtainable, some are not. Check around and there should be some threads that discuss and list the numbers.

[Roanne]

My general rules of skillups:

1. Make stuff as close to your current raw skill as possible.

2. Make stuff you can get the things to make.

Generally speaking you will skillup more often on successes than failures so the more often you succeed (e.g. closer the difficulty of the combine is to your current skill) the better.

Skip general rule #1 if you can get better quantities of supplies to make something more difficult because the more often you click the combine button, the more often you will skillup no matter what the chances are.

There are lots of tangent issues that change the answer but they involve specific circumstances. Easy skills coupled with high prime stats, innate minimum skillup or failure chances, complexity of subcombines, etc.

[mewkus]

The best thing to do is play around with the calculator on the main site. You can plug in different skill levels, trivials, stat levels and see which will give you the highest chance of getting a skill up.

As already mentioned, there are some recipes that have an inherent bonus to skill up chance. The bonuses are kind of there due to the less abundant supplies for attempting those combines. So, unless you have lots of plat or friends helping you farm stuff, you can't really plan on doing massive amounts of those kinds of combines. But if you have the parts for them, certainly plan on using them (closer to 300 is more advantageous than at lower skills though).

Your effective skill (raw skill plus trophy/geerlok/whatever) only plays a role in determining your success or fail chances. It has no effect on your chances of getting a skill up (other than the secondary effect based on succses/failure). If your base skill is 200 and you have a 5% mod for an effective 210 skill, you can sill get skill ups from doing combines that trivial at 202. Even though that recipe will show up as green on your user interface.

The one exception to wanting to succeed whenever possible is when/if you're making Ceremonial Solstice Robes. For these, you want to fail as much as possible so you'll really want as high an int/wis as you can get. [failures return the expensive component allowing more attempts]

[Zopharr]

Generally agree with what's been said above. Stay closer to your level, but the best recipe is the one it's easiest to get materials for

Pay attention to alternate stats, though. Depending on your level/stat caps, if you are max strength (or dex, for fletching and poisonmaking) Wunshi or Dire Focusing can boost your stats over the cap to the level where your chance to skill up is the same regardless of whether you suceed or fail. This will make a noticable difference over the long haul.

Garshok

[Nolrog]

Your skillups are twice as likely on a success compared to a failure. Its better (and cheaper) to do combines that you're going to succeed at and thus closer to your trivial level.

Cheaper for several reasons. Ingredients are cheaper at the lower levels (lower level skill ups are cheaper than, say making MCS from 54 to 250), and not only that, but the more you succeed to make stuff, the more stuff you have to sell back and recoup some of your cost.

[Bobaten]

To give an example of when it is benificial to not equip your trophy:
My smithing trophy evoloved to level 6 when I was at 295 skill. I had 415 to all stats. Since for smithing, you only need a stat of 400 to make skill ups on failures match skill ups on successes, I had no skill up bonus for succeeding. I was using cobalt ore to skill up, and already had couple stacks of wrist and glove templates saved on a mule. I had salvage 3.
With that set up, I chose to do glove template combines, and not use my trophy. I had a slightly higher chance of failing a combine, which would let salvage kick in and give me a chance of recovering the cobalt ore, giving me another combine to get a skill up. But even with that set up, I only actually got two extra combines from salvaged ore going from 295 to 300 (and no skill up on those 2 combines).

[Kross]

it may be just blind luck...but after this new patch i seem to get more skill ups on dark blue trivials with the templates. before the patch i'd always go after yellows then reds then darkblues for skilling up if possible. of course supplies have the biggest control in that decision.

anyone else notice this trend? i have salvage 3 on 2 characters, leveling up tailoring at the same time. i'm just comparing the raw number of combines for each and number of skill ups.

on a side note, i've heard alot of people talk about doing their trophy quest way before 300 skill. i've been asking around to see what it evolves by the time you hit 300. i personally have waited to do the quest until 300 skill because i like more freedom on what i can do for skill ups without having to use a modifier. doing the quest at 300 skill gets you a level 6 trophy with no percent evolved. if anyone remembers where their trophy was when they hit 300 let me know

[Aldier]

There are lots of stories about where the trophies are when people finally reach 300. The benefit to making the trophy earlier is a) you do not have to make the old style GM trophy for that skill and b) you have easier combines to attempt in order to create the trophy. Smithing and tailoring especially, people who do a lot of the Intricate, Sacred, Elaborate, and Eminent combines are more likely to reach 300 before the trophy evolves because of the bonus chance to skill up on those combines. There are reports of the trophy out pacing the person and reaching level 6 before they reach 300 as well. It is really just dependent on the RNG. If the RNG is nice to you, your trophy will be under-evolved and you can do combines at the accelerated rate to catch it back up. If the RNG is fickle and you take more time skilling up, your trophy could be right on time with you or even ahead. The difference is the RNG gives skill ups while the trophy is a fixed amount of experience you gain based on successes.

I have wondered if the yellow or red combines would give a better chance to gain a skill up than the dark blue or the light blue, and I believe that the skill up rate is not dependent on the "color" but simply on your success rate.

Mastery aa and a trophy make it so I rarely fail any of the combines I attempt whether they be light blue or red to me. I think my last batch of templates I made 63 combines of Fine, Excellent, and Superb silk and animal pelts. (Fine are green/light blue, Excellent are dark blue, Superb are red). I only failed 2 Superb templates, and salvage recovered the vendor parts.

[Chatoyan]

The RNG is a thing to be alternately blessed and cursed, as all tradeskillers find out at some point. In the past week, I did well over 200 combines on armor templates using excellent pelts and got 2 skillups (took me to 261). Then I got 5 skillups on 13 combines of Eminent augs.

Extreme runs of luck - good and bad - will happen. That's why I lean towards the "whatever is available" school of thought when deciding what to work with.