Ethereal Curing Agent and similar broken combines

[Jidokwon]

Ethereal Curing Agent (Brewing, 212 trivial, Minimum Skill Required 220)
I'll be the first to admit I missed the "Minimum Skill Required" bit on this. Scrolling down and reading the posts, I wasn't the only one.

Poison has similiar recipes that have the Minimum Skill Required being well over the trivial.

I'm guessing the swatches I was hoping to make with the Ethereal Curing Agents is another recipe that will have this.

I'm just getting started, but I don't remember running into any Minimum Skill Required combines in the past. There may be a point to them that I missed, but having the required skill to combine being well over the trivial didn't make sense to me, thus calling them "broken."

I'm going to play around today with some different angled search filters going, but is there a way to tag recipes like this with a glaring warning on this site at least? (If I didn't miss it already)

[Zaltak]

You still can get skill on this and the temper if you use a geerlok iirc.
Also the clean the breastplate recipie has a min skill to attempt iirc.

[Jidokwon]

I was 217 brewing and couldn't do the 220 required combine for a 212 trivial. Geerlok or trophy would've boosted my skill enough for the combine. Did you mean that with using the Geerlok, I could get skillups properly from this as just about any other combine or just for the brief window it might open up a point or two?

[Shadrok]

The point ...

These Planes of Power recipes were restricted with a minimum skill level to make it necessary to find a friendly tradeskiller in order to get the tradeskilled Planar Armors.

Ethereal Curing Agent
Ethereal Silk Thread
Cured Ethereal Energy
Ethereal Temper
Ethereal Metal Rings
Ethereal Sheet of Metal

All require 220 skill for a 212 trivial as well as a Tanaan Container.

I did use the Swatches to get my first tailor from 212 to 220 and the Rings for blacksmithing, but there are much easier combines to skill up with now:

Indium armor templates
Pristine leather/silk armor templates
Minotaur Hero's Brew

[Ngreth Thergn]

not *broken* as the title says. Working as intended.

[mewkus]

The first couple days after PoP came out, these recipes were not restricted and those lucky enough to buy the components needed (before those vendors were GM killed) had a cheap and easy route to get their skill up to 212. Then they put in the 220 minimum skill requirement so that people couldn't use these recipes for skilling up. Back in those days tailoring over 158 and smithing over 185ish was really hard.

The 220 requirement is based on your adjusted (modified) skill level. If your raw skill is 210 and you equip your trophy (if at current level) or a geerlok, both giving you a 5% boost, your modified skill will be 220. Thus you are able to use these recipes to skill up from 210 to 212. If you are lucky enough to obtain something that gives >5% skill up bonus, then you can use these even earlier than 210. XtC drops a 15% smithing hammer, one of the Praesertums drop at 10% smithing girdle, and Shei Vinitras drops the 15% tailoring scissors. Those will let you do these recipes at 200 or 192.

The easy and cheapness of them also got those points to be called freebies. Nowadays, since they require PoP drops and not as many people are farming in PoP, those combines aren't quite as cheap and easy.