order

[kiatek]

Just a curiosity question.

I have been working on mastering multiple tradeskills with the elusive 1750 in mind eventually, just as others are . I have baking at 250, tailoring 225, and others 180ish-190ish. Tailoring is such a time sink, that in order to have my mind continue functioning, I work on other tradeskills for a break.

I was just wondering what order those with more than two over 200 chose and why. I started with tailoring and picked up baking as a skill that would be mind relieving. Now, I will probably be chosing between fletching and pottery next (at least you CAN buy components for those as opposed to tailoring) to do in "relaxing" periods of mind numbing tailoring. I am actually "saving" brewing and jc for my smithing later on since by then i will need easier sessions

So what order did you pick and why?

[kiztent]

Pottery is the devil.

It is the only tradeskill that past a certain point you CANNOT skill up without an enchanter. Skill ups were lowered to compensate for it being 'too easy' and hell levels start at 160 and keep going.

If you don't mind paying ~18pp for a combine you can buy up tainted planar essences, but pottery is an evil backbreaking skill to raise.

I'd put it with smithing and tailoring as the 'hard' tradeskills.

[Lorthien]

As my main tradeskiller is a wood elf I sunk most of his beginning capital into Fletching and got it to 185, where it resides still. I then went into the 'easy' skill: Brewing, Baking, Jewelcraft and Pottery. In between I got tailoring and smithing up but as you said HUGE time sinks, especially for those of us are lower levels. I do have one advantage with my wood elf. I have been spending down time in the Faydarks and foraging Morning Dew. I have now made many, MANY a High Elf smith happy, and have a whole new set of Koada'Dal armor for my 51 Pally. As soon as my friend gets her smithing higher Im gonna turn that into Full Blessed Mithril.

[Cendorly]

I was already 250 pottery before the nerf, and before PoP came out. Smithing was 190 (got there before the fine plate nerf) and my other tradeskills were about the level needed for the prayer shawl. When PoP came out, I made the decision to get all my tradeskills to 250 and focus hard on tradeskills. Mostly due to the fact I was pretty burned out on raiding and the whole high end game, and didn't have much interest in PoP as far as raiding/exploring/etc went.

So...the order I did tradeskills is: Baking, Smithing, Brewing, Tailoring, and probably JC/Fletching together...I don't have the aa points yet to do the last two tradeskills.

Grinding for me has become rather boring, unless I'm soloing or duoing with friend(s), so, doing the tradeskills was dictated by how fast I got aa points. I remember using points and getting Baking to 201 right away to lock that in as my first tradeskill over 200. Meanwhile, I was working on getting more aa points, and getting the rest of my tradeskills up to 200. When I got a few more points, I put it into Smithing to start working on that, knowing it was going to take me a LONG time. Farming shadowscream became something I did to take time off from the mindless combines of MTP's, and Baking was something I did for fun and to see progress and feel like I was getting somewhere.

When I GM'd baking, I was still working on smithing, but started alternating aa points for my next tradeskill - Brewing. I didn't do brewing in 1-2 nights, like most people. Brewing for me, was again, that escape skill that I did when I had a few horus, and wanted a "good" run of combines and skillups and needed a break from Smithing. At the same time, I started getting more aa's to start working on Tailoring. I guess you can say I had smithing and tailoring going on simultaneously, with Brewing thrown in, but I wasn't focused hard on Tailoring until Smithing was done.

After I GM'd Brewing, I said that's it, I've got to finish Smithing, and pushed hard and fast to GM Smithing. I did that after farming too many hours for Shadowscream, only taking breaks to work on tailoring (I know, I'm nuts for working on TWO of the hardest tradeskills back to back and simultaneously). I GM'd smithing and had no more aa points banked. Tailoring was over 200 by that time, and became the "only" skill I was working on. When I wasn't working on tailoring, I would grind for aa's for Pet Hold (a pet caster class aa that I desperately wanted and needed). It was torture, grinding for NON-tradeskill aa's but I knew the value in the class aa and wanted it badly.

So...I did manage to get the six aa's needed for Pet Hold, and just a few days ago, I completed tailoring at 250 WOOT! LOL. Now I have a whopping one aa point banked, and only 2 tradeskills at 200 - JC and Fletching. I'll probably work on them together, since I plan on going the farming route for Fletching for a bit, until I get burned out, then I"ll just do some vendor combines. As for why I left JC and Fletching to last...I have a chanter bot with 250 JC and my husband is a 230ish fletcher, so there wasn't an immediate need to get those two skills up.

Sorry for the long rambling post...hope this gives some insight into my crazy thought of picking tradeskills to GM.

Cend

[Suva]

I had pottery close to 250, but baking hit 250 first. Pottery followed soon after. I forget if I did jewelry or brewing next, but i think it was brewing. Fletching is now sitting at 244. I just recently got tailoring to 218 and smithing is last stuck at 194.


--Suva

[ChaseFV]

Well, not yet, but my intended thought process...

I realize you asked for the opinions of those currently with two skills or more over 200, but I intend to get there someday, and have more-or-less worked out a plan.

It all started with the advent of Wood Elven cultural fletching...until that appeared, I intended to be a GM fletcher, and was well on my way. That disheartened me so much that I stopped fletching, and began searching for a tradeskill that gave no cultural advantages, and for which it would be helpful to be a forager. I decided on brewing, as there were already two advertised GM bakers on FV at the time, but only a few brewers 200+, and none yet to 250.

Sticking with that theme, it will be my intent to do Baking next. After that, I'm torn between the plat sink that is JC or the timesink that is Pottery. I'd like to do pottery, as there are only 2 or 3 advertised GM potters on FV, just don't know if I have the patience/plat for it.

Anyhoosy, I need to join the 1450 club before I can dream about the 1750 club...

[kiatek]

re

thanks for the responses! its always pleasant to see others reasoning behind what they are doing.

Cendorly, I am right there beside you. I don't enjoy raiding to be honest. I was in a raiding guild two years ago and needed a break from the game after 4 months of nonstop raiding. Decided that I wanted to have fun, and raiding wasn't accomplishing that.

hmmm so fletching before pottery perhaps....

[kiatek]

re

thanks for the responses! its always pleasant to see others reasoning behind what they are doing.

Cendorly, I am right there beside you. I don't enjoy raiding to be honest. I was in a raiding guild two years ago and needed a break from the game after 4 months of nonstop raiding. Decided that I wanted to have fun, and raiding wasn't accomplishing that.

hmmm so fletching before pottery perhaps....

[Moraganth]

I went tailoring first, simply for the challenge.. and the desier to make meself an ice silk robe (finally did it, now that i won't use it.. /sigh). Next was Jewelry; our only guild jeweler is an alt in the low 50's, so the probability of her getting the jewelry mastery points is minimal.. and out guild needed someone to make pop jewelry.

Next will be pottery.. we already have a 240+ DE smith, a 250 baker, a 240 fletcher, and a 250 brewer.. pottery is just missign a 240+... unless our druid gets there before me..

It's all about needs.. and how many aa points i can farm while doing everythig else..

[Pootle]

I had all mine around the 180-190 mark, but tailoring was the one i wanted up first. Always has been.

Anyway i burnt myself out getting tailoring to 204... and needed a change, had to restore my faith in tradeskills so i sunk 3aa into Tannin Mastery and spent a short time working my jewlcraft.

I have a pet chanter so i would spend some time enchanting the plat bars, then have Pootle skill up on them. Not bad really, i went from 191 to 250 and made 3 artisan seals (success on 2nd, 3rd is banked for tailoring needle *grin*). And i worked out that i am down about 9 or 10k.

Anyway the plan for the future is Tailoring, tailoring and more tailoring. I will be working on the other skills, probably another easy one after tailoring. But as fot AAs, i am gonna alternate between Tannin Mastery and a 'useful' skill. Next planned one is Innate Cammo.

[Reflan]

I had pottery at 148 and baking around 135 when I decided to take tradeskills seriously. I knew I would one day, so luckily I had some stuff that I had been saving for years -- like backpacks full of pelts and silks for tailoring and smithing, and foraged fruits and vegetables for baking, and iron oxides I gathered here and there for pottery.

I had always wanted to do pottery, but people kept discouraging me from it -- probably because they were making so much money at it. I wanted to start at either that or baking, since I at least had some points in both, so I chose baking. I also figured baking could fund my other skills a little. I'm not a champion money maker, and figured I would need all the help I could get if I wanted to take up smithing and tailoring later.

But first, I used a bunch of my hides and silks to get tailoring to 131, and bought a few more here and there. That mule was getting too crowded anyway -- I have a mule for each tradeskill.

So then I did baking and found that though it cost me 5k or something, it started funding me nicely -- a few K a week or more. But making that money took LONG sessions -- MTP are only 7pp usually on my server. I took baking to 250.

Then I got a tanaan AA and did pottery until I couldn't borrow my friend's chanter to enchant clay anymore, somewhere after 200. So I leveled my own chanter first to 12, the later to 29, and in between that I got brewing to 200 just to have something to do and perhaps something more to sell. I heard people multiquested avalanche ale, but never followed up how, and wasn't at 250 anyway. I was too worried about other things to find out more. I did make lots of grobbs liquidized meat drinks, though, and made money off that very easily, if not always quickly. The combines aren't as bad as misty thicket picnics, which sell easier but take much longer to make in quantity.

So with my handy 29 chanter, I enchanted about four bags of clay and many, many mana vials. I did some planar steins, and some ceramic bands, and when I was going to move on to the encrusted stein stage, I knew I would have to lacquer gems and that can get expensive with failures. Hearing that you can get JC to 250 for 8k or less, I figured I might as well push it to 200. Getting to 190 took me almost no money at all, but 190 to 200 cost me a thousand or two. Took a couple of evenings.

Then I was ready to do pottery steins, and did a ton of opal steins, then ruby steins. When I realized I could have my shaman imbue jade for old world idols and could afford to throw them away, I did a good sized run of them, too. I filled all the mules on both my accounts with steins, and multiple mules on a friend's account with them too. Thank goodness -- steins are expensive, especially ruby steins. I've sold every one I've ever made, most of them for 250pp. I did sell some at cost when some goofball price warred them down to 100pp, which is basically cost or less even at 250 skill. I'm at 246 now. I probably spent about 40k getting there, minimum, but I've made back the cost. Steins helped a little, and so did golden idols of tunare, which I only dared make when I hit 246 and got tired of skilling up in pottery. The mana vials are expensive and failures hurt. Permafrost is very hard to find these days, so it's put a small crimp in money making in pottery.

Now I'm doing smithing, and am at 195. Making shadowscream. Shadowscream is essentially free, but the enormous amount of time I spend doing it could also be spent hunting loot or making sellables with my baking, brewing, or pottery skills. So I save money, but I lose money too. Shadowscream isn't as cheap as it seems!

But I think a path like mine is a pretty good one, although pottery isn't that great a skill, really. But what I mean is that I started cheap and with skills that would let me sell products readily and steadily -- consumables, via baking and brewing. That's what funded pottery for me in large part. With a couple of the cheaper easier skills, you can have a slow but reliable cash income to fund the tougher skills, which are probably the ones most of us have a keen eye on doing sooner or later -- smithing and tailoring, or maybe tinkering for gnomes. It's not that easy to go into the expensive skills right away with nothing to bring in money in the meantime. Making sickles, velium leathers and cultural armor and weapons, tae ew armor and weapons -- that can get very costly very quickly.

So for some people, getting one skill can be a wise thing to do to help another, either by making you able to make sellable products to finance your other tradeskills or by making another skill easier or cheaper indirectly -- like my getting JC up higher made me able to have fewer failures making lacquered gems than I would have if I had only a low skill. Or how my baking over 200 made the grobb's liquidized meats less subject to failure on the most expensive combines in the drink, the meat/mandrake roots. Sometimes skills weave in and out of each other like that. If my chanter were higher, she could enchant adamantine for me for cultural smithing too.

These things all sort of play off each other; that's why it's hard and maybe even sometimes unwise to just stick to one skill.