Retire adventuring?

[Lazgar]

Hi,
I’ve become somewhat tired of raiding and XP grinding lately but trade skills and the bazaar still keep me interested in the game. I have thought of just selling off my non-essential equipment and working only on trade skills, making a profit off selling my wares in the bazaar. My question is has anyone done this and are you still able to make profits and continue working on skills?

[Kingbobb]

Depends on what you mean by profit. It takes thousands and thousands of pp to GM most tradeskills. I can only speak to tailoring and smithing, but I think the others are comparable. It also takes a huge time investment, which if you're thinking of changing your goals when you play, won't be an issue.

However, it may take a while before you begin to see a return on your investment, in terms of platinum.

I can give you a specific example in smithing, my GM skill (236). I've been playing for over 2 years, and working on smithing that whole time. it's possible (and probably not too hard) to catch me in a few weeks time if dedicated olay, if you have the funds. I only started being able to make items that would sell in the bazaar around skill 190, and have just now reached the skill where I can attempt the really good selling items, and expect enough success to make a return on my cost of goods investment. But until I sell a few BD breastplates, I won't have considered smithing to have been a profitable venture.

I'd advise you to take a look at the GM tradeskill options open to you. Really look at the high end items each trade can make, and pay special attention to the racial/cultural paths that exist. Then check out the bazaar to se what's available for sale, and at what prices. But remember that todays good market is tomorrows flooded market, so don't always expect to be making the same profit margins on items over time. The good thing is, that once you Gm a skill, any new recipes are that much easier for you to do, and newer markets become accesible, rather than acting as the enticement to get into the market.

Overall, don't really expect to make huge sums of PP doing tradeskills. I think you're better off viewing it as a deeper, meaningful alternative to the constant grind of exping, or raiding, or camping (although you'll still have chances to do all those chasing down rare tradeskill needed items). The pp is really just a bonus, and sometimes a very good one.

[Bennan]

Heya, I have completly given away active XP'ing and/or Raiding, so that I can just do Tradeskills. I am still powerleveling some alts, thats the only xp I do. I just need certain characters at certain levels.

For me, its been a great change. And yes I do make a profit, in fact I have more money in the bank than ever before (only 14k, but I have spent about 20k over the last 2 months and I started with 1k).

I still have a long long way to go, before I find myself in the position that everything is GM'ed but for now it is profitable and enjoyable.

Note: Best thing to do, is start checking your Bazaar for goods and the prices, skills like Brewing and Baking are good Tradeskills to start with, and can make you money. Money you can use to help finance and further your other Tradeskills.

Extra Note: I would be careful when selling the non essential gear, in quite a few cases you may need to farm some high level mobs, and being in the best gear possible is of great benefit.

[Threlcour]

Re: Retire adventuring?

My question is has anyone done this and are you still able to make profits and continue working on skills?

This is currently my everquest existance and has been since I decided to stop raiding and hunting in early October. I am now basically a full time tradeskiller.

My recommendations for this path, is to take it slow and work on many things at one time. Powerskilling is as pressured filled as levelling, so if you don't want to level, don't force yourself to powerskill. The early bird may get the first worm, but the patient bird gets a bunch of worms.

I will define my projects and activities, that I move between:
1. I have a 250 brewer, who serves as my bazaar mule. In order to keep Albhert in stock, I have a character farm for constitutionals or have my baker make liquidized meat or have Threlcour wander to EK to look for tea leaves. But if I don't feel like restocking, I do not.

2. I have an approximately 215 baker, when Albhert's stock of pies gets low, Bakir will make some more pies, hopefully getting a skill up. Albhert has also bought about 100 picnic baskets and jumjums when found on a merchant and I have 3 stacks of brownie meat for when I am ready to do picnics. When I am low on eggs, Threlcour goes to LS and hunts basilisks. When I am low on mammoth meat, Threlcour goes to EW and hunts mammoths.

3. I am working on smithing for my ogre, again Threlcour is the supplier. While going through the ornate chain part of life, I hunted Nurga for FS weapons, to turn into HQ ore. I made money during this phase and I can now walk around in Chardok. I hunted to make my own padding during the fine plat phase of life. Now I am doing Shadowscream, using Threlcour to make the orbs and get the shadows, and having Biph gain skills.

4. I also have a twink shaman I skill everyonce in awhile. I would like to get him to 29, so he can imbue jade. He will also start working on pottery at that point.

I never do to much of one thing for to long. I farm my own components which makes life quite inexpensive, it also lets me find the 50-300pp items to spice up the stock. I regularly wander around merchant mining. I just do whatever perks my interest when I am on the game. Its also very easy to have multiple days in a row where I just don't sign on.

Heck, I have spent most of the last 2 hours in game working on the themesong and dance routine for Biph my Ogre Smiph.

Its a fairly carefree existance for Threlcour and Company.

And even though I have likely spent 50+ kpp in merchant stock and twink (wis/str/int) gear, I still have about 120kpp on the merchant mule.

[Reflan]

Don't sell off anything you need for actually playing your character, as you will need to farm things occasionally. You can buy many things you need for tradeskills off vendors, but sometimes (often) you will run out of supplies and have to restock, and the vendors will come up bare. Maybe someone will have cleaned them out before you -- sometimes I'm racing around to farm vendors at the same time a couple of others are farming the very same vendors! So...keep the tools you need to do the job and do it well and quickly, and some will be tools you use to experience.

Also remember that you can only pass 200 in ONE single tradeskill without earning the New Tanaan Mastery AA skills. Each time you earn 3 of those points, you can only master one single more tradeskill. Personally, I've gotten one level of tanaan mastery so I could bring pottery and baking up, and would eventually like to master JC, smithing, tailoring, and brewing too. MAYBE fletching, but only for bragging rights or for the Aid Gimel quest. That's LOTS of experiencing I will have to do. Further, planar power will let me raise my stats so I can do much better with tradeskills(higher wisdom/int, higher strength), and I can also spend more points on innate enlightenment to raise my wisdom directly, again a big help. So you see, there are easily 20 points of AA you can spend on tradeskill stuff alone if you're only 61 like me, and not much less if you're lower level. If I progress over 61, I could spend even more AA to help tradeskill through additional levels of planar power and innate enlightenment.

So tradeskilling does NOT mean you never should worry about experiencing again. Actually, the more experience you can spend on AA, the easier and faster(and more profitable, because of reduced skill-up time) your tradeskills will be. Keep your experiencing tools sharp!

To another part of your question, can you make money just tradeskilling? Yes, but it depends; kind of a complicated situation.

First off, some servers are flooded with tradeskillers. Mine is. There are many, many people selling acrylia leathers, misty thicket picnics and halas pies, grobbs liquidized meat drinks, star ruby and opal encrusted steins, and even fierce heraldic armor, for instance.

That means two things to you -- one, you will not find money flooding in once you master the skills that many people have already mastered, because you have competition. Two, your skilling up on the way to mastery will be much more expensive, since some people make and sell items at cost or even below to skill up. If you want to skill up AND not go broke -- not a consideration at all for rich folk -- you will have a much harder time in a flooded market. What kind of server do you have? That could help you pick your tradeskill.

I had a terrible time in baking with 260 wisdom(with and without a geerlok -- I'm level-locked at 260 because I'm level 61, unless I get a bunch of AA to raise it). At one point I didn't get a single skill up in literally a bit over six hours, at skill level 201. So, I wound up making far more than 2000 halas meat pies before finally skilling up out of them -- and I only began after patty melts trivialed, so I didn't start on them early. Now, a couple of months later, I am finally down to my last 300. Prices meanwhile have dropped from about 6 or 7 plat and sometimes more per pie to 3pp and sometimes less, as undercutters sell at 2.5pp to try to do whatever it is such folk try to do. Almost the entirety of my pies I have sold at 3pp.

So did I make money? Yes, but as noted, it took MONTHS to make my money back. You have to have a long time horizon in tradeskilling sometimes -- very long indeed.

To use tradeskill income as a means of funding other tradeskills, and so build up a sort of momentum in your income through mastering one tradeskill after another like a snowball rolling down a hill, is very much iffy and a gamble. I wouldn't count on it to pay off anytime soon, and would start with some active capital unless you want things to be incredibly, painfully slow. If I had relied on my halas meat pies to fund the other tradeskills I had been working on or even just baking itself, I would have had a long wait and my skills wouldn't have advanced nearly as much.

It's even worse if you start off in expensive tradeskills, like smithing, tailoring, and even pottery at the higher levels(cheap to 199). Try funding yourself with baking, then brewing. They're cheap and the pay-off will be slow and steady. You could go broke very fast in competitive markets on the expensive skills.

Finally, keep in mind that wis/int are big friends of the tradeskill folk. Your skill rate will increase much faster with high wis/int. Seriously, I wouldn't even try tradeskills until I had acquired a good suit of tradeskill armor and items. Plenty of people do it the painful way, and you might want to also, but I guarantee you will spend much more time and money trying to skill up with low wisdom or low INT. That cuts into the return on investment in terms of money very seriously, but perhaps even more importantly, in terms of your time. It will get on your last nerve to skill up slowly!

Friend of mine with 325 wisdom got all skills up to do the 8th shawl in two days. He said skill-ups were coming like crazy, just flooding in. He's done tradeskills on other characters, so he knows the difference. They don't flood in at 260 wisdom, which is what I have, except at low levels. Nor at 230, which my druid has, and wow was it bad when the druid has like 175 wisdom.

Do yourself a favor and don't tradeskill until you have a good tradeskill suit and a nice chunk of change in the bank. You don't have to do it that way, but you will pay a notable price in terms of time and money if you don't.

Good luck! May it all eventually pay off for you.

[Piikaa]

Here is another option for you, you can work on making the sub-combines for other tradeskillers if all you are interested in doing is the tradeskills. I've often had luck working with GM smiths by making the sub-combine parts to the very high-trivial items they are working on. Also, you can make a stead income by farming & selling silk & pelts to tailors. Otherwise, just enjoy yourself and do the combines that you want to do and sell them as you can.

Don't let the pixles get you down!

[Obina]

Supplying other trade skillers is a great way to make profit. I buy things now that I thought others were crazy to buy. Heavy Clay, Permafrost crystals, Sarcofocus Fungus, Kunzar Koi, - I even buy pre made celestial essence and pre-enchanted clay.

Personnaly I suggest focus on one skill as high as you can first. A 230 potter makes money. A 180 in pottery and brewing and baking doesn't. Smith and Tailor might pay out a bit earlier - depends on prices on yr server. But focus.

Another trade skill to work on is trading itself. I noticed someone bought 10 star ruby steins off me for 300 ea. Hmm earings for all the new frogs in the guild perhaps. I was sold out and logged for the night. The next day I noticed her in bazaar. She had only 3 left and they were on sale for 400 ea. I talked to her - she does stuff like this all the time. (Her stock of stuff was amazing too).If you have a bit of start up money, there is money to be made be really watching prices and sale trends. It is risky - never know when some new idiot will flood the market and prices will drop - but if you are patient and track data, there is money to be made.