money wise

[Kaidian Blade]

Total cost is directly related to how much you farm/forage for yourself. I too consider Fishing a tradeskill of sorts, but like the previous post mentioned - it's not a true tradeskill and caps at 200. And the only problem I see with taking all skills to 200 and stopping is this:

One day, you're going to be making something in one of those skills that trivials over 200 and when you least expect it - DING! You get that skillup to 201 in a skill you may or may not have wanted to GM in first, but now you're stuck with it. My suggestion, pick the skill you really, truly want to GM in first and get it to 201. Then take the other skills to whatever stopping point you want (100, 150, 175, 200).

[Zacatac]

Not sure if you realized it, but AA points are the only way to have multiple 250 skills. You will need 18 AA's done to open up all 7 trades to 250.

I've been doing this for 3.5 years and I still have a ways to go to hit 1450 club, let alone 1750. I still need to 60 more skill-ups to max out brewing, pottery and tailoring to 200.

I'd start by choosing which one you want to go over 250 first, and concentrate on that one for awhile. Make sure you get it over 201 and not accidently take another skill over 200. Do the other ones as needed. Some things you must have several skills in order to proceed. Like making leather padding (tailoring) for smithing, or making heady kiolas (brewing) for tailoring, etc.

You can easily take Jewelcraft and Fletching to 200 (you have the cash) in a few days. Baking, Pottery and Brewing would be the next easiest to 200. Smithing and tailoring takes time and money and just no way around it.

You'll notice I said 200's, not 250's. To get beyond 200 in each will take a huge amount of time/money/dedication.

[xaanru]

*raises an eyebrow* Mayhap I was lucky, but it only took me a little over 5k to make 190 smithing. I'm currently working on shadowscream armor and don't expect it to be too much more. Perhaps less than 2k (beings the only thing I have to buy are water flasks and banded molds)? Am I naive for thinking such?

No, its just that, skilling to shadowscream is a horrible timesink, and most peopleon't put in the ungodly amount of time to do it.

I gave up on shadowscream as a viable alternative, while I was still reading the description on how to get the hammer.

I can't imagine trying to farm enough of that stuff to do the 2000 or so combines it has taken me to get from 191 to 229.

[Morani]

Kaidian and Zacatac do bring up a good point about the 201 thing. I disagree that the best solution is to figure out first what one you want to GM but, if you DO know, the easiest way to keep from making that mistake iIS to hit 201 in that tradeskill before you get too close with another. Either way, it’s something to pay attention to so you don’t make a grievous error that you’ll regret latter. I would suggest that you just pay attention to what you are trying to do with tradeskills (since the only thing that you’ll get a skill up from is things that are not yet trivial to you and maybe stop at 190 rather than 200.

My ORIGINAL thought was to stop at what ever trivial is the end of a particular recipe near to 200 (I.E. Patty Melts @ 191 with baking, Fedwer Stingers @ 182 or Vah Shir Essences @ 188 for brewing, Silver Tipped Arrows @ 182 for fletching, etc.) but I'd dropped that in favor of simplifying.

[Gargazon]

Not having actually hit 250 yet in anything my word may not count for much, BUT..baking or brewing would be easy to do to 250 for someone who can forage, and more importantly won't cost you anything but time really. (I'm 224 in baking, and have already netted almost 3k off halas meat pies in the last 3 weeks, just trying to unload them in the bazaar for 2.5pp each...although, for the effort involved it's defiantly NOT worth it, it hasn't "cost" me anything but time)

as far as skill up routes I think most people generally would go the following in your situation

Baking

0-135 fish rolls
136-143 bear/lion fillets (save fillets)
144-191 patty melts
191 -202 oobah truffles OR just skip to
203 (191) 226 halas meat pies
227-250 Misty Thicket Picnics.

Brewing is also easy and cheap to do, at least to 148

0-122 fetid essence (buy your fishing grubs though, takes too long to forage them)
123-151 Skull ale (track and kill undead cyclops in SK, save the skull)
152-188 Faydwer Shakers
189-248 mino hero's brew

You can of course do a lot of other stuff keeping close to trivials, etc, but with 65k a few extra plat shouldn't be a real issue for you. You will make money either way once you can make picnics with baking, and GLM and QAT with brewing.

I have also read that to GM JC takes approximately 15k and 5 hours if you do it right. That gets a little more complicated in the skill-up path though. I wrote it down somewhere but I can't find it atm.

The two I would definitely NOT suggest you try to gm on 65k would be Smithing, and definitely NOT tailoring. I've been helping a friend farm stuff for tailoring for a little while, it sucks, and we haven't even gotten him to the expensive stuff yet, and he and I both have chanter alts that can make the mana for Wu's...but that only gets you to 158. It's a serious PITA.

Another thing to consider is that often the sub combines sell for more than the finished product. You can probably make more money never GMing a skill at all, just working them all to around 200 and selling sub-combines. That is if you even care about the money. If it's a money thing (which it doesn't sound like it since you have 65k) you can run around EK all day tracking and foraging. The things to collect are HQ, MQ lion skins (haven't seen LQ drop there), spider silk, and keep hitting that forage button for tea leaves (I'd save plains pebbles, fruit, roots as well, but that's just me). The spider silks alone sell for 4-5pp EACH on Fennin Ro, the skins for more, and the tea leaves for as much as 35pp each IF you can find them. In addition, if you plan on GMing Brewing (for profit) kill any and all griffon type mobs you see, and save all griffon feathers, it's used in brewing QAT as well.

If only I had known =(

Keep in mind that the above skills all also have items made from other skills in many of the combines, so I would recommend taking all of the skills to 100+, some I would raise higher. An example would be baking. If you plan on being a GM baker, I would also take brewing to 188 or so, this will allow you to brew the jumjum spiced beer for the MTPs yourself. Also the picnic baskets trivial around 88 (tailoring) I believe, making your own will save you money, and it also requires smithing, but you would need well under 100 to easily make boning so no biggie there.

One other thing I have noticed from a bakers standpoint. Make large batches. It's just more time efficient to do a lot of subcombines and then the combines, rather than running back and forth to make a few attempts at a time.

Anyhow, that's my 2cp worth. (I hope it's worth at least that much lol)