Research - Best Tradeskill Ever

[illana]

Oops, I have 4 stacks left, not 5. So 80 runics left. Doh.

[Bobaten]

Don't confine yourself to level 65 spells when you can still skill up on 63 and 64 spells. My top selling spell last month was Girdle of Magi'kot (64), and 2 of the 5 spells tied for second place were also 64, 2 were 63, while only 1 was 65. I sold 101 spells last month.. 36 65's for 218k profit, 23 64's for 134k profit, and 42 63's for 126k profit. I sold a few 62's but I didn't tabulate those since I am not replacing those since they don't give me skill ups anymore. My revenues are still the same as last month, averaging 25k a day, and over half of that is profit.
I'm not on any kind of race for 300 (got all of 2 skill ups replacing the 101 spells), but slow, steady, and profitable is good enough for me.

[illana]

Admittedly, I have been avoiding combining my last stacks of runics in lieu of doing 63/4 spells to get skillups so my success rate is a little higher. I have been thinking it over a little, and I will continue the slow steady approach. I will admit that I was a little jealous of all the people that made such huge profits. I saw more than a little green. (pun intended) At this point, if I break even, I wil be OK with that. Gonna keep plucking away at the 63/4 spells, then when I get around 280 skill I'll do the 65s. I gotta say, Research has still been my favorite tradeskill of all time--DoDH and older.

[Elfdruidess]

I did not start skilling up (from 208 skill) until mid-December. That's 3 months after the expansion came out. And I was 300 skill already by late March, just one month later than the first 300 skiller serverwide.

That's because I totally ignored lvl 65 spells until I was around 285 skill. I did not even stock up on runic parchments. I did a lot of lvl 62 spells pre-262 skill. Then it was lvl 63-64. By spending my capital on buying grubbys, shabbys and grimys instead of runics, I bought alot more skillup attempts. Also, the profit from lvl 63 spells was even better than if I don't fail on lvl 65 spells.

Concentrating on lvl 65 spells was for those who started in Sept. Concentrating on lvl 63 spells was for those who started in Dec-Jan. Although I must admit, for those who started in Mar, I am not quite sure if even lvl 63 spells can reap a profit anymore. At least not on my server, where you can find 30 copies of some popular lvl 63 spells on sale in bazaar.

[Zacatac]

I am not quite sure if even lvl 63 spells can reap a profit anymore. At least not on my server, where you can find 30 copies of some popular lvl 63 spells on sale in bazaar.

I actually make a better profit (per unit) on 63/64's, but they don't sell as fast as 65's.

I can buy 63/64 parchements for under 2k all day, and sell them for 5-7k.

The 65s have a lot more competition, so runic parchments sell for 6-8k, and finished spells selling for 10k. Not a big margin there.

[Tokkyl]

I'm not a researcher but have to agree this appears well thought out on progression and flexibility as earlier skillups are used in later recipes. Parts are vendor bought and farmable or can buy from bazaar, and some drops were modified per requests from the community and became readily available. I know other trades have items, but I'm not trying to compare to stockpiling metal bits, etc here as that's comparing apples to oranges.

First, congrats to everybody whose already maxed or continue to work on research as I'm tradeskill addicted myself. Especially to those such as Ysall who mentioned that being first is where the plat is which is the same in any economy, although unfortunately I've never been in this category myself (still working on it HEHE). He spent the plat early and earned the rewards after taking a risk on the market. Fortunately research wasn't like PoR bows which were the cabbage patch dolls of EQ - huge demand and profit and then a market that quickly fell off the face of the earth due to saturation.

Second, I admit to being jealous of the profits I've seen researchers make as I've spent or farmed more than I care to tally trying to get my tailoring to 300and earn Master Artisan. But I've also got to say everybody whose complaining about NOT making a huge profit on this should just take a look at other tradeskill historically and be happy there will ALWAYS be a market for spells and it won't get out-dated by new expansions. Remember when acrylia came out and you could make a profit and skillup at the same time, well it's outdated except as a skillup route as better armor and weapons are now available at a cheaper cost than making the product. The components to make the item if bought are 20-50x more expensive than the final product's resale value, with many going to tribute or vendors. The real pain is when you farm for hours or spends loads of plat when you can't stand to kill any more greenies for hours to end up just hitting the delete button because you can't sell, tribute or even GIVE AWAY the item.

All trades eventually get saturated with more people who are on the slower leveling curve, but there will always be a new main, hyrda or a twink being leveled who need these spells REGARDLESS of future expansions or level caps. I would personally be ecstatic with breaking even let alone making pp on some trades, or the fact that you can make ANY spell and not restricted by race or class.

So enjoy research and be happy you have a such a viable and diverse tradeskill. I hope future changes to other tradeskills (can't wait for tailoring) are similar in structure and creativity.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

I'd just like to make 2 comments.

1). Yes its true that the way to make big money is to be in a market early before it saturates. There is only one way to do this... have the skill when the new recipes hit. However, even those of us who hit it big on research this time around were at some point in the past on the outside looking in with some other tradeskill. Nobody starts out with high skill. So, your turn too will come grasshopper. The first step is to get the skill... sure it might be hard and it might seem worthless at the time, but some day in the future you will be in the right place at the right time to pounce on a new market and rake in the big dough.

2) Research is not the only tradeskill with a stable long term market. Baking and brewing will also always bring in steady profits.

[Newcromancer]

"Nobody starts out with high skill."

In a way yes and in a way no. One of the travesties of the implementation of research as a tradeskill was the grandfathering in of those who simply trained up to max (at the time) at the trainer.

[Ysall]

In fairness, being able to train research up with your guild master only got you to 200. You would still have needed to get up to around 230 yourself to start making decent plat on it from the new recipies.

The people who made the most plat were the ones who got up to the recipie max available before the new recipies came out i.e. 227.

As it happens, I did research the hard way up to 187, never even realising you could train research up to 200. I didn't discover that till I paid my Guild Master to max a language from 99 to 100, and accidently hit Research instead. So I did get a free ride from 187-200. But 200-227 was all my own hard work.

And it wasn't as if we didnt get enough warning that new recipies were coming. Rumours started going around several months before they finally arrived, so if you were truly determined to get head start on the market, you could do so. It cost me about 60kp to get from 200-227, just pharming the bazaar once a week, and I sold a good few of my skill-up spells whilst doing so.

[Newcromancer]

Why is everyone on these boards so defensive and touchy? I never said you got a free ride. Nor would I say it even if you purchased all your points from a trainer. Clicking a button is not "hard work", tedious yes, hard no. There is nothing wrong with having purchased your points. What was wrong is that they didn't allow everyone to do so. That was my point.

[Maevenniia]

Purchased skill points: You could do it before, you can't anymore, end of story.

It's not a "travesty".

At first, Spell Research was not considered a "real" tradeskill, but because casters needed to research some of their spells, and skilling up was not always easy, we were allowed to purchase skill points.

Then, LoY came along and Spell Research got a nice upgrade. For a very little while, you could still purchase skill points (this was an oversight, I believe...mistakes happen.) The skill cap got raised to 300, and the purchasing of skill points was discontinued. This was in anticipation of even more upgrades to the skill, namely a trophy and researching higher level spells...

Of course, it took until DoDh research was implemented for us to be able to skill up past 227, and research those higher (61-65) spells, and until PoR to get our trophy, but SOE does tend to move slowly on stuff sometimes.

[Zacatac]

By the time they changed the system, there was also new recipes being put in that made it much easier to level up doing combines (LoY research, and now DoD).

That right now is the big issue going on with the new Combine server, the arguement that research is going to be incredibly difficult because it is using the new system (can't by skill at GM), and will only have the orginal 1-50 range spell recipes.

http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/...essage.id=6017

[Carlo the Curious]

Clicking a button is not "hard work", tedious yes, hard no.

That would be all of EQ then?

[Newcromancer]

"That would be all of EQ then?"

No. Sitting in one spot monotonously clicking a single button is tedious. Kiting, healing, dpsing etc is not tedious as you are moving around and different things happen on different mobs/pulls. If you find sitting in one spot clicking the same button mindlessly for hours not tedious I would think you would have fun playing the game of "mow your lawn by plucking one blade of grass at a time". No, nothing in EQ is "difficult". My 4 year old plays better than most and he can't read.