Question on all trade skills

[Benadan of Drinal]

I'm going to get all skills up to a skill of roughly 195 or so, GMing just 1 trade skill, what should it be? i'm lookin to get Use out of it as well as profit, i'm a warrior, but smithing isn't the one i want to GM

[BuilderOfCastles]

DO WHAT YOU LIKE!!

that states it all.

Not enough deterant? :-P
Let me illustrate making money through trade skills.
After a day of battling various creatures...
. Marriel: Give me your hide a_wyvern.
. a_wyvern: But I am still using it.
. Marriel: I am working on tailoring, I must have it.
. a_wyvern: I am sure we can be reasonable about this?
. Marriel: Reasoning is over, I AM a tailor!

Well after this, then you get back to Shadow Haven and clear out half of your bags. (because you need that much space to make combines) And then head over to the potion merchants and make SOW potions. Cost 5pp each and usually 11 combines to make a 10 doser. So it costs you 96 clicks and 55pp to make one sellable item. (Repeat add-nauseum) Then you get to the bazaar and do a search on potions. hmmm, everyone is selling SOW potions for 95pp except:
- 10 dose blood of the wolf(80) . 65pp . PotionMerchant
So tonight, if you want to sell any, you will have to sell them at 65pp. Is 10pp worth the effort of 96 clicks?

This is how it is with all of the expendables trade skills
- Alchemy (you can ignore, just for completeness ^_^)
- Baking
- Brewing

The other skills have a very small market and an ever increasing supply
You will get a few sales, but mostly to friends and guild members.
- Fletching
- Jewelcraft
- Pottery
- Smithing
- Tailoring


So it all comes down to WHAT YOU LIKE!
Baking - have a bag always full of yummy looking food.
Brewing - So many varieties of alchohal
Fletching - Want to really agro that mob with high damage arrows?
Jewelcraft - All those gems are pretty ^_^
Pottery - Idols, pots, pans... all just a whell away
Smithing - Make your own armor. sweet!
Tailoring - Now you know what to do with all of those hides.

[Brodybeard]

Re: Question on all trade skills

I'm going to get all skills up to a skill of roughly 195 or so, GMing just 1 trade skill, what should it be? i'm lookin to get Use out of it as well as profit, i'm a warrior, but smithing isn't the one i want to GM

By the time you get all skills up to 195, you should have a good idea about which one you'll want to grandmaster.

Of course, I'm a great one for this advice... I really enjoy brewing and baking. But what cultural tradeskill did SOE give to halflings? TAILORING! I even enjoy smithing more than tailoring!

No, tailoring is fun, too. It's just annoying that a halfling cleric of Bristlebane can't wear any of the nice new halfling cultural armor.

Of course, it's going to be a long time before my cleric gets close to 200 in tailoring, so I have plenty of time to change my mind. :roll:

[Zopharr]

Re: Question on all trade skills

I'm going to get all skills up to a skill of roughly 195 or so, GMing just 1 trade skill, what should it be? i'm lookin to get Use out of it as well as profit, i'm a warrior, but smithing isn't the one i want to GM

My advice:

If you want to tradeskill to make a profit--you want phat lewtz, big profits--fuhgetaboutit.

If Drinal is like most other servers, there are numerous GM tradskillers in each field. With the exception of smithing (due to race/culture limitations) and JC (chanter JC mastery), one 250 tradeskiller is like any other. As a latecomer, you will be competing against numerous others who have already established names, reputations, supply networks. Making hundreds of thousands of easy plat isn't going to happen. If you want to tradeskill *just* to make cash, farm HGs, it's far less frustrating.

If, on the other hand, you want to tradeskill because you like making stuff, because you think it's neat - well, go for it and enjoy! Pretty much any skill will make you enough plat to buy dots for your cleric and an occasional new toy (and you may luck out and win the lotto when a new expansion creates a market for a new item). Baking, brewing and fletching deal with consumables, so you can make money there - not great, but some. If you farm geonids in WL, you can make engraved royal velium armor with JC and smithing both under 200. A niche BP/legs market that can help fund other stuff. As for pottery, I'm not too familiar with what the market is - my impression now is that the best market (at least on my server) is in the new PoP items, which will require you to buy components and compete with potters who have already established supply networks. Tailoring is hard to raise--second only to smithing--and profitable only at the very high end. Tailoring is the ultimate labor of love, IMO.

Bottom line: tradeskill because you want to tradeskill, not JUST because you want to make a lot of plat. My two cp.

[Raiyaeq]

It's hard to carry through all the clicking if you only want to do tradeskill for pp. Making thousands of celestial essence, tunare dust, silk swatches to raise skills so maybe one day you can make good pp from it, doesn't really worth anything.

I do tradeskills cuz I like it and the extra pp making ability doesn't hurt either. I love it when I make neat things for friends, alts, guildmates.

Baking/brewing - easy to train with limited pp but profit making is minimal, you can make good pp in long run, but you won't see thousands of pp in a short time unless there's another quest like potc when it first came out.

Tailoring - high end stuff makes great pp also doing combine for ppl, but high end stuff is also hard to come by especially elemental pieces. It'll be very hard to get the stuff. A lot of farming here for silk, pelts, acrylia, velium pieces, fishing needed also.

Smithing - depends on race, sometimes cultural makes great pp also PoP items have a good profit range also. A lot of farming here for pelts, acrylia, etc.

Pottery - golden idol, steins sell for reasonable profit range, but the market has slow down. PoP items makes good profit, but parts are hard to come by also. Pottery skill gaining has been changed so it's harder to raise skill with pottery now. Expect to get somewhere close to 36 combines per skill gain in mid 200s.

JC - great profit from PoP items, same as all other PoP tradeskills, parts aren't so easy to get sometimes. If you aren't a chanter with JC aa, it's really not worth of making any of those since you'll have somewhere close to 33% fail rate.

These are my experience in the tradeskills that I do, overall, I have to say, Smithing, pottery, tailoring are really nice on money making, and baking, brewing get me lots of friends since with me, they'll never go hungry and thirsty again. Good luck on your tradeskills, it's fun overall.

[DeegerStormcrow]

It's possible to make money on any of the tradeskills but you have to have good market timing. For example, as a GM fletcher I don't normally make a lot of money but at the very beginning of PoP I was ahead of the curve on Nightmarewood bows (thanks to everybody at EQTraders ) and made significant money on them for about 2 weeks--around 60-70kpp. Now, with so many fletchers, the price of the bows has dropped significantly.

Most (if not all) of the other tradeskills are the same. When the Earring of Solstice first came out I would guess that GM bakers, brewers, and potters made a good amount of cash. Now it's just about impossible to make money on Solstice goodies because so many traders are dumping them on the market.

So, unless you get lucky you will almost certainly spend more money getting to GM status than you will by selling stuff. So, as the original reply said, do what is fun.

For me I would say baking is the most fun. I find it gratifying to pass out justice fruit pies and such to my friends.

[Mridule]

my two cp...

As far as the stories you heard about people raking in hundreds of thousands of pp doing tradeskills it does happen on a rare occasion but its really a matter of being in the right place and the right time. By right place I mean having the high skill , having the right supplies or supply chain, having enough upfront money, and having enough play time available. Basically first you need to put in tons of time to get your skill up then if your lucky you may make your money back plus a bunch more.

The tailors made tons on the velious reciepes when they first came out.

The smiths who got there skill up before the trivial changes made tons on the BD armor.

Everybody (except fletchers ) made tons on the PoTC items when that quest was first introduced.

GM Fletcher made some cash after the BFT was introduced. (Thankfully I was one of them).

GM Fletchers made some more cash right after PoP was released.(Once again I was one of them).

GM Tinkers made some decent money right after PoP was released also (Once again I was one of them).

But, eventually the market dries up for items and the cost of the components is greater than the final product. I was one of the first people selling Nightmare bows on my server and I had a hard time keeping the first 30 or so I sold in stock with a price of 20k-25k. Eventaully other people got into the market and old buyers started reselling as they got better drop bows in the higher planes. Over the last week I have had a Nightmare bow on my trader for 4.5k and it has not sold. The same thing happend with all the new Tinkered items and the PoTC items. Solstice robes went from selling withing a few mintues at 9k to selling one robe a week at 1.5k.

In summary get into tradeskills only if you think they are fun because making money on them depends largely on factors out of your control. You need to be extremely lucky.