The 249 Potter's decision

[andyhre]

My pottery is 245, and I have lots of imbued gems stashed away, awaiting a chance to skill past 250 (which would also get me to the 1750 club even though I'm closing in on 2000 as well, 1750 has to include at least 250 in each to count)

So, looking at the Journeyman Pottery Quest and the Expert Pottery Quest, it seems like the rational thing to do is to get the quest at 249 rather than 250. I suspect I'd get the trophy pre-evolved at something like 95%+, so the number of combines needed to evolve it to expert-level would be small. But ignoring the recipes common to both quests, it appears I have a choice between:

Journeyman
Create 2 Dye Vial using tradeskills
Create 3 Unfired Poison Vial using tradeskills
Create 12 Heavy Pie Crocks using tradeskills
Create 2 Unfired Sealed Poison Vial using tradeskills
Create 2 Unfired Advanced Poison Vial using tradeskills

vs.

Expert
Create 1 Grandmaster Potter's Sculpter using tradeskills
Create 1 Unfired Crucible of Escape using tradeskills
Create 2 Unfired Red Ceramic Band using tradeskills
Create 1 Unfired Idol (for Rallos Zek) using tradeskills
Create 1 Unfired Idol (for Tribunal) using tradeskills


The only really time-consuming item on the journeyman seems to be getting 12 or so Heavy Bricks, but I cannot imagine the cost of just buying my way through that can compare to the cost of the old-style GM pottery trophy.


Can anyone make a case for why waiting to 250 makes sense vs. getting the quest at 249?

[Lucian Celeste]

As for Heavy Clay it dropped fairly regularly for me. I was in the gorge of king Xorbb for roughly 30 minutes and had more then I needed. That being said I don't see a reason to wait until 250.

[andyhre]

As an update, this weekend I went ahead and got the 200-level quest, and then went ahead and digned 250, then actually did the quest. I farmed 13 heavy clay (b/c the quest says to make 12 unfired when it's actually 2) in about an hour (and killed the Fabled Evil Eye three times in the process). When i made the trophy it was at 99% and single Unfired Idol (tunare) evolved it to the next level. I also digned 251 on that combine, which was nice.

So, clearly this was the way to go -- the 250+ quest is much more expensive. I am glad I went this way.

Having said that -- I personally think the current system is backwards in that it rewards lower-level skillers and punishes high level ones. I should not have been rewarded by an eaiser path than someone who got the quest at 250 rather than 249. One suggestion I would offer is to have the trophy evolve BUT have it be at the old % when it evolves, and require another quest to awaken the new stats.

In a parallel experiment, I made the JC trophy at 250 (not 249) and then used it for my skill ups. I am at 293 and the trophy is at 92% or so, so I am certain it will turn to a master's trophy before I ding 300. In both cases, what this shows is getting the trophy as early as possible is smarter than mastering the craft further and then getting a more advanced trophy.

If an additional step were added so that the 300 Skiller simply has to do the quest to get a 12% trophy, but the 299 skiller has to do an additional quest to evolve his trophy to a 12% one, the balance between advancement and difficulty would be better served.

I was not above using a system that I disagree with to my advantage, but I think the current system is too skewed in favor of the lower-skilled skiller, which is backwards.

[Silverfish]

One Advantage

There's one advantage to doing the expert quest over the journeyman quest, involving building the grandmaster trophy. Sure, it's not much, but if you get the gems yourself, don't pay for the Artisan's Seal and succeed on the first try, you can get a Grandmaster's Carry-All for around 3000 plat. Not a bad price for the bag.

Silverfish

[andyhre]

There's one advantage to doing the expert quest over the journeyman quest, involving building the grandmaster trophy. Sure, it's not much, but if you get the gems yourself, don't pay for the Artisan's Seal and succeed on the first try, you can get a Grandmaster's Carry-All for around 3000 plat. Not a bad price for the bag.

Silverfish

True enough. Pottery is one of my last skills I've worked on, so I long ago got the Old-Trophy bag (from fletching) and unlike the new trophies, the old ones did not create a distinct perma-bag for each skill. So you are right if someone ONLY wants to go pottery, making the old-style pottery trophy has a benefit. If you are doing another skill, though, then this becomes moot.

Andy

[Shadowpyre]

If I had it to do again, I'd wait and do the quests at the higher level for my 3 skills that are not 300. I dinged from 292 to 300 Pottery and my trophy was at 4 or 5%. The extra 90-95 combines of 300+ skill to get your trophy "caught up" are a real pain (1% per attempt). For many tradeskills (ex. Smithing and Tailoring), it's going to be alot of extra pp's

*edit* I did all my trophies pre-patch, so they all started with 0%

[andyhre]

If I had it to do again, I'd wait and do the quests at the higher level for my 3 skills that are not 300. I dinged from 292 to 300 Pottery and my trophy was at 4 or 5%. The extra 90-95 combines of 300+ skill to get your trophy "caught up" are a real pain (1% per attempt). For many tradeskills (ex. Smithing and Tailoring), it's going to be alot of extra pp's

*edit* I did all my trophies pre-patch, so they all started with 0%

Understood -- the old logic pre-patch was different than now. Now, you should amost never wait to do a trophy, unless the trophy you want to do has some hard-to-get item at the lower level.

To continue my pottery story, I am now at 294 pottery and the trophy, which was Level 4 with 99% when I made it at 250 (and then evolved to level 5 on the first real combine I used it for, which also got me point 251) is now 96% of the way to 300, and will almost surely ding before I reach 300, unless my skill up rate on those last six points is crazy lucky.

So I could have waited until i ding 300 and then make a master's trophy, but instead I got an 8% trophy at 251, and I'll have a 12% trophy before I hit 300, and I saved a lot of plat.

Similarly, my JC trophy that I made at 250 (I did the level 5 quest, not the level 4 on that one) hit level 6 (12%) when I was at 295. The last 5-10 points of the skill up process are so steep that you will surely catch up under the current system. If I were stuck with an old unevolved pre-patch trophy, I'd be inclined to redo the quest, unless it were prohibitively expensive.