JC cost now!!!

[Cartright]

This is probably redundant, I GM JC last may, and it cost me about 4-5k until i read the thread on enchanting the metal first. You pretty much break even and dont lose any money after 200+. You just need a large pool of money to buy the gems and metal in bulk, but you make the money back when you sell to vendor.

Will test this out tonight to confirm this again.

Pottery was expensive for me to GM, costed me about 30k, and that including farming some stuff.

Smithing is extremely cheap if you farm all your stuff.

Fletching is expensive post 200

Tinkering is expensive --pre 200

baking is cheap, brewing is cheap

And tailoring is hard lol.


Cart

[Xorithra L`Amante]

Did they change the trivials on JC? It's been years since I GM'd it and I remember not even needing to go past gold...

[Astroshak]

Gold can only get you, as I recall, to around the 200 mark. Maybe a little higher, maybe a little lower, I forget exactly (and not ognna go check). Plat and Velium trivs were very close, if not the same, for a given gem, so there was never any need to go to velium for skilling, only plat.

[Aalar]

JC is only expensive when you fail a combine. Which if you are staying within your 95% percent success range should be only....5% of the time.

Yes - brewing is the cheapest/easiest.

Any tradeskill where one can sit by a vendor and buy>>combine>>sell>>repeat is easy in my book.

Aalar

[Sluggo]

JC was by far the easiest to get to 250. Sit between two vendors and never have to move away till your done.

Tailoring and Smithing??? Painful, horridly expensive and extreemely time consuming.

Brewing, very cheap.

Pottery and Fletching? Fun, about the right difficulty in my opinion.

Sluggo

[Nolrog]

The sell back prices for enchanted jewelry was indeed changed a while back to make it the same as the unenchanted versions.

Just recently, I found out that that this was not the case. I had been making platinum + low end gemstone that sold back for ~95PP. Just for fun one time, I enchanted the platinum, and it sold back for ~100PP. That takes the lost from about 10pp per success to about 5pp per success.

[Jarroll]

My spreadsheet with all my cost and data on skilling up from 200-250:

http://www.xegonybard.com/downloads/...luptracker.xls

Jarroll

[Deedolith]

And the debate come back again.

In theory:
- JC is the most expansive trade skill, but on the other hand, you can find everything you need on vendors.
- Other tradeskills (not inculding race / class specific ones) are very cheap, but you need to farm for endless time to get your supply.

In practice:
- JC is cheap, as it cost ~30K to go from 0 to 250
- Other are expansive as people tend to farm in the bazaar to save time.

[Trellium]

I recently got my enchanter's JC up to 250. I did so without getting any of the AA's (bah, what's money to a gnome?). Then I failed twice for the trophy and and now doing some of the JC AA's and salvage.

My server is Test. I currently get different sellback prices for enchanted vs. unenchanted jewelry, as described above, so I enchanted the plat bars. VoQ, 9s (or Oak when available), and sitting on my pig made it easy to generate mana for enchanting while I did the tradeskilling itself.

I had gotten an enchanter to 230ish in jewelcrafting back in the Velious days. In that period I spent about 30,000pp to get the skill that high. My more recent experience was much different. The total cost from 0-200 was about 2,000pp, and then I took a break. This last weekend I did 200-250, total cost was about 13,000pp for that using enchanted platinum bars to make the jewelry.

This is entirely subjective of course, but it felt like I was getting increases in skill much more often (it was a massive grind back in the earlier days, much worse than today). The new UI probably helped a lot in reducing the grind factor, my gear is better than I had in Velious era, and plat is easier to earn. heh, the only thing that didn't change were the recipe's used in JC from 1 to 250.

It cost more money than Brewing and Baking did to get to 250, but the total time expenditure was probably not too different, and fewer merchants were needed, and the recipe's themselves were all fairly simple (even compared to Brewing).

I was really avoiding Jewelcrafting, largely because of the time and expense, but it wasn't anywhere near as bad as my first JC character.

[Ozmandias]

It defininately did change at one point. When it was I forget, but there was about a week when vendor buy backs became equal (lucky me it was for the last 20 points too). I had a chanter bot doing the plat bars and I went from making a few plat on a successful enchanted combine to losing. At that point I just camped the chanter bot and powered through it. Not sure where the 30K figure is coming from. It would have cost me 10K at most (30k output perhaps? you sell your successes...) had I not had bags of gems and done the first 120 or so free. 0-200 cost me roughly 2K, and 201-250 cost me no more than 5K, almost positive it was 3K. No logs from this as this was a good two years ago and I'd quit the game and erased EQ from the hard drive for 8 months or so. It was pretty close to PoP release though, as I recall that being my first Taanan skilled ability and second 250.

[Mikiky]

I am currently at skill 194 and it has cost me a total of over 40k to get here so far, i have to say that I am feeling a bit "ripped off" by the system atm... older posts brag of "grand master on 50pp". Unfortunately, those of us who come into the game a bit later are required to pay extensively for the foilable of those select few that undoubtedly used macros to generate the millions of excess plat that flooded the servers not so long ago and we are all still recovering from it.
I hope that the powers that be will finally equalize the situation where I can at least break even on my sales to vendors, or even a slight profit to make up for those large amounts of "you lack the skill...blah, blah" /rant off
I must say it is rather fun tradeskilling at JC... the appreciation of low lvl's when you give them a couple of Golden wedding rings has returned a number of times when the have come back to me and given me all their gems (many of them blue diamonds) from their adventures.
Good luck to all who pursue the trail of the crafter.

[Trellium]

I am currently at skill 194 and it has cost me a total of over 40k to get here so far, i have to say that I am feeling a bit "ripped off" by the system atm... older posts brag of "grand master on 50pp". Unfortunately, those of us who come into the game a bit later are required to pay extensively for the foilable of those select few that undoubtedly used macros to generate the millions of excess plat that flooded the servers not so long ago and we are all still recovering from it.
I hope that the powers that be will finally equalize the situation where I can at least break even on my sales to vendors, or even a slight profit to make up for those large amounts of "you lack the skill...blah, blah" /rant off
I must say it is rather fun tradeskilling at JC... the appreciation of low lvl's when you give them a couple of Golden wedding rings has returned a number of times when the have come back to me and given me all their gems (many of them blue diamonds) from their adventures.
Good luck to all who pursue the trail of the crafter.

Wow, that makes no sense to me at all. There is no way I spent more than 2,000p getting to 200 skill, and that was fairly recent too. Something else was wrong to have you spend that much plat to get to 194.

I got in the habit of having the merchant window open while I trade skilled, and sold each jewelcrafted item as I made it. The plat bars and the jems all stack, but the end result doesn't. If you don't watch it, eventually inventory is full and items drop to the ground and that could be horrendously expensive if you don't pick them up fairly soon. Its also a pain in the caboose.

Enchanting the bars helps a lot with cost - but not anywhere close to making it 20 times more expensive.

And, it wasn't at all my finding that it is harder today than long ago - its much, much easier today to do jewelcrafting.

[Ozmandias]

Gotta agree with Trell here, I can't imagine spending 40K on JC pre-200 unless you're simply taking a 250+ combine and chain combining it?

Even if you did the unwise aspect of using rubies and sapphires on the lower metals, you you'd still only use them a few points, and get a decent buy back. I wasn't an EQtraders user back when I was working up JC to 200, but I could see the math of electrum +low gem was cheaper than silver +high gem...

The things I could do with 40K...like finish tailoring for example. Heck, last 50 points of fletching were only 30K (go go tons of banked sedge and self-made cams).

[Traflr]

Well I have to concur with the fellow who said he didnt go past gold. When I GM'd back in Kunark days I did not go past gold bars. It cost me total under 5k enchanting all metals and sellbacks. When I did shawl quests on my druid and Cleric, which was PoP era, I gm'd under 2k. I have never used plat or Velium bars in any char to GM JC. Granted, I did use many of my own collected gems, but 30K to GM JC...WOW!
I am a gnome Chanter and am also GM tinker. That was costly yes, but at 250, Vanish devices have more than paid me back 10 fold on anything I spent getting there.

[Ravenswood]

40k to 194..... *shudder*

I'm just a (relatively) dumb Ranger, with a WIS of 192 with KEI and tradeskill gear on, and I spent about 4-5k over the last month to get to 184. I spent less than half the 40k to get to 250 Fletching...

This has to be a case of the poster not knowing that using recipes close to your trivial is key to getting faster skillups.