about to start my first tradeskill

[Raolin]

Greetings everyone,
I've decided I want to start tradeskills, and have a few questions. First, what is the best tradeskill for plat invested/pat returned. Secondly, which tradeskill would be considered to make money in the beginning that could fuel the other tradeskills. Third, is there a certain skill that goes well with a certain quest, like earring of solstice, that you lvl up then make the components for and sell with good success to fund the other tradeskills? Basically my problem is, like most of us, I' broke Broke means I'm somewhere over 300pp but under 1K on any given night. My personal information is, 52 Dark Elf Magician, Agnostic, Max Ally faction with merchants in Neriak. If you have any questions for me to better answer my questions feel free to ask. Thanks in advance.

[EnfinitiStarr8]

Please do a search and you'll find the best tradeskill you want is ANYONE YOU ENJOY! But if you are talking about easy, low cost, not bad return for a first trade skill. Get brewing to 250 and make Demi-Sec for the earring. That does mean you have to spend AAs if you want a SECOND tradeskill over 200, but that's all I'll say.

[Calabar]

For the most part, you’re not going to make money from trade skills until you get your skill over 200. There are exceptions, of course, but personal experience is that trade skills are money sinks. There are some items that you can make that will make you some money at lower skill levels, but you certainly aren’t going to get rich. If that’s your only goal your likely to get frustrated and give up long before you can get to the level to make money. If you don’t enjoy doing trade skills for the joy of doing trade skills, my advice is not to bother. The only exception to this that I can think of is if you have a huge bank account and can throw large sums of money at a skill. In that case you could buy everything you need from players and muscle your way through a trade skill. But I’m talking LARGE sums of money when it comes to buying supplies in the bazaar.

If you really do want to try your hand at trade skills, I’d suggest looking at the different items you can make with different skills and decide what you would like to do most. Tailoring and Smithing tend to make the most sellable items, but they are also the hardest and most expensive skills to raise. Brewing is the easiest and fastest trade skill, but there aren’t a lot of useful items to make with it. Baking is a lot of fun, at least for me. There are a lot of useful items, that is items that will keep you fed and even add stats, but the market is flooded with most of the stat items so they tend so sell rather cheaply. So you don’t get a lot of profit for the amount of work you usually have to do. Jewelcraft is not a bad trade skill, but it’s a skill best suited for enchanters who can enchant there own metal. But if you have a friend who can do that for you there is profit to be made in the bazaar from magic jewelry. Pottery is another skill that anyone can do. It was recently made harder to skill up in, ridiculously so in my opinion, but its still reasonably cheap up to about 200 skill or so. And if you take it to 250 there are some nice pottery items to be made.

Trade skills can be fun, but they can also be expensive. They can be financially rewarding if you manage to hit 250, but if you don’t find them rewarding in and of themselves you might do better investing your money elsewhere. All that having been said, pick a skill and give it a shot. Trade skills may open up a whole new world for you in EQ. If you do find yourself bitten by the trade skill bug, be sure to come back here and do some reading. There’s a wealth of information to be found in these pages.

Best of luck and above all have fun.

[kiztent]

Simply put, if you could make money easily on a tradeskill, so could anyone else. If everyone else starts selling "it" (this mythic profit item), the price will come down until you make so little money that people drop out because it's not worth their time to make "it".

You are much better off planting your behind in front of Gornit for a month if you want to make money.

[Moonlilly]

You are much better off planting your behind in front of Gornit for a month if you want to make money.

Nah he's better off farming the tradeskill supplies and selling it to the morons like us.

[kiztent]

You are much better off planting your behind in front of Gornit for a month if you want to make money.

Nah he's better off farming the tradeskill supplies and selling it to the morons like us.

That's what I've said the last 30 times this had been asked this month. Variety is the spice of life.

[Zyrtryx Conjureblade]

If you're looking to make money quick, go to North Ro or OOT and do some Fishing.

[Obina]

So the consensus is Brewing, but baking is not far behind.

Here is a thought for all: Doesn't it depend on how many "active" tradeskiller of each type there are on his server. Like how many routinely sell stuff most nights and in the Bazaar (and the status of price fixing). Did the last two Tailors just retire?

Here is a way we could track this. Like the Dow Jones we could have a Server wide Inxex of Trade skill using Earing of the Solstice stuff. The Cabbage average. We note the lowest price of each of the 9 gifts and then index them versus a norm. If Star Ruby Steins are normally at 400pp on a particular server, but the overall norm is 300, then perhaps that server needs potters.

A lot of work to track for little benefit perhaps, but I could say the same about skilling up to 250 with 100 Wisdom to see what happens!

Obina

[Raolin]

ok, instead of being a good tradeskiller, perhaps i would make a good tradeskill supplier. My mage can take almost anything even or below for his lvl by chaining pets, so what items are A) easy to get but always seem to be in short supply and B) harder to get, but sell for good plat because, again, always in short supply. I don't have much money, but maybe i can work out a barter system with some of the tradeskill people on my server like,"You make me this part for Earring of Solstice...i'll get this many xxx for you." How does this sound as an idea?

[Zyrtryx Conjureblade]

Not sure that would work or not.

But if you want to supply stuff for tradeskills, try farming spiderling silks or training up Brewing enough so you make Heady Kiolas.

Also, if Ping Fuzzlecutter, the Gnome vendor in the West Freeport yard, will sell to you, buy a few stacks of Fuzzlecutter from him and resell them in the Bazaar. I've done that with my Druid alt a few times. They usually sell pretty fast.

[sir0die]

if you are broke, don't look towards tradeskills to make you money. Like all life investments, you need money to make money.

if you are broke, go farm plat off HGs in rathe mountains.


Tradeskills, overall, loose money, you invest alot of plat to get your skills up, then get little return on mid-high end items. Yeah, you'll hear glory stories from a few on how they make 300k on some stuff, but they have already spent a fortune on their skills and have a long established niche of the market. They have either the resources to farm highend mobs, alot of oplat to buy it, or a good guild to help supply them the rare items needed for the highend combines.

some of you are like children, wave a shield in front of your faces and tell you i made it myself and it sells for 50kplat, your eyes light up like a kid who was just offered a WHOLE box of candy, instead of just one piece.

Just a warning, smithing and tailoring are some of the costlier and difficult skills to GM (not to mention you need to develope the other skills if you wish to be independant). I'd recommend brewing or baking if you are interested in a constant stream of plat (provided you keep a mule in the bazaar when you are not actively playing). After all, everything you'll be selling is either eaten or drank. The'll need more when they are hungry again.

[Zyrtryx Conjureblade]

Yeah, tradeskills really are not a good idea if you're doing them purely to make money. Go farm HGs, like sir0die suggested. (I'm going to try that when I get a few more lvls. Would be suicide at lvl 37)

After I already started on Baking, I saw a post on the old EQTraders board (the EzBoard one) where someone mentioned they made enough money by making and selling Misty Thicket Picnics to buy a horse.

Probably not possible to do that anymore. MTP prices have gone down a bit since then, and I can't even sell Halas 10lb Meat Pies for a good price. I usually end up going to PoK and auctioning them off for 2pp each, because there are usually at least 8 or 9 other people selling them in the Bazaar and they all have a lot more HMPs than I do. (I can't afford to churn out several hundred HMPs at once - don't have the Mammoth Meat OR the plat for it)

[kiztent]

I personally avoid Rathe mountains like the plague. Cash camps are determined by cash/kill and kill rate. If the zone is packed because everyone knows it's the "best" cash, kill rate is low and net cash rate is low.

Best is to find a place with few farmers and not quite as good cash, making up for the lower cash per kill with a higher kill rate.

As a mage, I'd recommend any place where you can mow through greens that drop fine steel weapons. Summon a few bags. It's well worth it.

[Galathnor]

I would say go to EK and farm the spiders there. On Povar server the spider silks are selling for 7 to 10 plat each and the carrion spiders and the crag spiders both can drop lots of silks. Another thing you can do is Make Celestial Essences, take one Scent of Marr, and one celestial solvent and combine in a mortar and pestle = 1 C.E. sells on povar for about 5 plat each at a cost of just over a plat and a half to make.

Galathner