Announcement

**Kinsen** · 03-20-2008, 10:43 PM

If I recall correctly I made "Oil of Vitrol" to get to 102

Recipe: Crystallized Sulfur, Gnomish Heat Source, Saltpeter, Vial of Pure Water

You have to buy or farm the Saltpeter and Crystallized Sulfur, Gnomish Heat Source is vender bought, and the Vial of Pure water if makeable with vendor components and trivials at 54.

I would make Vials of Pure Water till 54 then switch to Oil of Vitrol. Save all of these that you make as you can use them in other skillup options after that.

K.

**Neebat** · 03-21-2008, 12:08 PM

Idiot's Guide to 102 Skill in Spell Research

This is a 12-step program for casters who are INTELLIGENCE-based in theory only.

Step 1: Get the Drops Get a lot of saltpeter and crystallized sulfur. These are used in the cheapest route to 102 skill, so you will need a lot. A stack (100) of each would be a good solid start.

Sulfur drops from many, many places and can often be found on NPC vendors because people sold it to them. Saltpeter drops from Plane of Innovation, Clockworks in Coranthus, and probably some Secrets of Faydwer zones. You can find it on vendors sometimes. And a buyer in bazaar can get a lot fairly quickly.

Route for the Lazy Rich - There's an alternative to crystallized sulfur and saltpeter, but it costs a lot more. I'll cover it below.

Step 2: Find the Vendor Go to PoK and find the small bank. On the platform with the small bank, go to the east end, past one building and around the far side of the next. There will be two spell research vendors standing under an awning. You need the one on the left (south). His name is Eric Rasumus and he's going to sell everything you need with very few exceptions. He is a researcher's best friend.

(This isn't entirely true. If you get good at research, you'll discover you have many best friends who want spells from you. People you don't even remember meeting.)

Step 3: Buy Starting Supplies Buy a Spell Research Kit. 5 stacks (100) Empty Vials, 4 stacks (80) Water Flasks, 1 stack (25) Gnomish Heat Sources.

Time Saving Tip ** Hold down SHIFT when you press the Buy button to buy the whole stack. You want to make sure you know how many you're buying first. The powdered parts for research all stack to 100, while vials and flasks stack to 20. Heat Sources invented by Gnomes are weird.

Step 4: Do your First combine Fill your research kit, with 4 Flasks, 5 vials, 1 heat source. These should be UNSTACKED, so they fill all 10 slots in the Kit.

Time Saving Tip ** Hold down CTRL when you click on a stack to pull one item out. Now would be a good time to practice that.

Press the combine button and you will probably see a message that you failed. The recipe has a difficulty of 54, so with 0 skill, your chances of making it are very low, but chances are good you will get a skillup. Keep going until you get a Vial of Purified Water.

Step 5: Switch interfaces It's faster to do combines with the spell research kit in the tradeskill interface. You do this by closing it and reopening it. The tradeskill interface is the one with an Auto-Inventory button which does not show you what is in the kit. You may need to hold down CTRL when you Right-Click to open it.

Step 6: Start You Favorites List Type in Purified Water in the search box and press Search. You should see the recipe listed. Click on it and it will show the ingredients you used. Click the Add button to add it to favorites. You will be using that recipe MANY, MANY times as a researcher.

Step 7: Combine from the Tradeskill UI While you have the Water recipe selected, click Combine. If you succeed, you will have vials on your cursor, so click Auto-Inventory until you cursor is clear. Repeat step 7 until your skill is 54. If the icon for one of the parts turns red, you've run out. You need to buy more.

Time Saving Tip ** Keep the vials of water you have made, even if you have to put them in the bank. You will need them later.

Step 8: Start Your Trophy (Optional) Go to the Freeport stone in PoK, which is East of the small bank, through a wall and southeast around some buildings. In West Freeport, do not enter the city gate. Go northwest and look for some tents north of you. Tell the Halfling there that you are a researcher, and she will give you a task. You will probably need more skill to finish it, so go back to PoK. The trophy gives you a bonus to your skill so long as you equip it, and gets better every time you succeed on a non-trivial combine.

Time Saving Tip ** If you wait, you'll be better at research and she'll give you a harder task. That's why I recommend you grab it now, at 54 skill.

Step 9: Your Second Recipe

Route for the Lazy Rich - You'll have a problem here because you can't make Oil of Vitriol without Sulfur and Saltpeter. You should still find some if you can, just to learn the recipe. Buy some oil of vitriol and skip to step 11.

Open the Spell Research Kit as a container. (The way you did to fill it with vials and flasks the first time.) You will need to do this every time you start to learn a new recipe. Put in 1 Gnomish Heat Source, 1 Vial of Pure Water (from the ones you made), 1 Crystallized Sulfur, 1 Saltpeter.

Press Combine and you may fail. This is the recipe for Oil of Vitriol and it has a difficulty of 102. This recipe will ALWAYS have a chance to fail, no matter how good you get, but you won't be able to learn more from it once you get to 102.

Keep going until you get one oil of vitriol.

Step 10: Another Favorite Close the Spell Research Kit and open it to use the tradeskill interface. Type in Oil and hit Search. You should see the Oil you just made. Add it to your favorites and make some. Make 10 for right now, just to get on to the next step.

Step 11: Salt Buy 10 Rock Salt from the Spell Research Vendor. Open your research kit as a container and spread the 10 out so they fill the entire kit, then press Combine. This recipe is extremely trivial and you will succeed.

Time Saving Tip ** You can also combine the salt 1 at a time or 5 at a time, depending on how much you need. You might want to put all 3 versions on your favorites list.

Step 12: Muriatic Acid Place 1 of the Fine Salt you just made into the container and add 1 Oil of Vitriol and 1 Gnomish Heat Source. Press Combine and you may still fail. This is the recipe for Muriatic Acid, and it has the same difficulty as Oil of Vitriol, so you can switch back and forth as you skill up.

As soon as you make a Vial of Muriatic Acid, you can switch to the tradeskill interface and add it to your favorites. At this point, you have an idea of the basic mechanisms of research, and three of the basic components. Keep making Oil of Vitriol and Muriatic Acid until your skill is 102.

For the Lazy Rich, you can buy Aqua Fortis and alternate making Muriatic Acid and Aqua Regia.

MORE Time Saving Tips **

For spells 50 and over you will need 1 muriatic acid (made into Aqua Regia). For spells 64 and over, you will need another muriatic acid. So save it!
Here are two more recipes you should add to your favorites:
Combine Oil of Vitriol with Saltpeter to make Aqua Fortis.
Combine Aqua Fortis with Muriatic Acid to make Aqua Regia.

Both of those have the same 102 difficulty as Muriatic Acid. Later, as you are making spells, you may need to work quickly when you don't have Saltpeter and Sulfur on hand. You may buy Muriatic Acid, Oil of Vitriol, Aqua Regia, or Aqua Fortis from the spell research vendor, but he will charge you a LOT more money. It is much cheaper to make it yourself.
Type /hotbutton AutoInv /autoinventory That will make a hotbutton which does the same thing as the auto-inventory button in the tradeskill window. You can put it into your hotbutton bar and assign a keyboard button to it. With that button, you never have to take your mouse off combine. Making Aqua Regia always produces at least 2 results. You can make one button drop them both to inventory. Right-click the Auto Inventory button you made and type /autoinventory into all the blank lines.
About those Dirty Empty Vials. It costs more to clean them than it does to buy new ones. Sell them back to Eric, because he LOVES doing your dirty dishes. (This doesn't apply to the lazy rich, because they were probably just dropping them on the ground.)

Actually Making Spells

The components you've been making are the basics, they aren't used directly in making spells.

A large part of the FUN in using this system is figuring out the recipes on your own. There's a basic template that works for 99% of spells, and once you know it, you can take the description of a spell and go straight to the recipe. The template consists of 5 parts:

Quill. You will make a quill based on who will use the spell. For most spells, this quill will be specific to one class. (But not all spells are owned by one class.) The quill is prepared with "A Quill" and 2 treatments. A quill and the treatments are sold by Eric, your friend, the spell research vendor. For example, Quill of the Forest Stalker is used to make the very best spells (the ones used by rangers.) Make it by applying Knight Treatment and Elemental Treatment to A Quill.
Ink Additive. There is a different ink additive for each way a spell can be resisted, and 1 for spells which cannot be resisted. Eric sells them. The most common additive is Ink Additive of the Nameless, which is used in almost all buffs and non-resistable spells.
Ink. There is a type of ink for each type of spell effect you can imagine. For instance, Ink of Pain is used in every spell that does damage. (You'll need lots of that.) Each ink is made by mixing 1-3 pigments or powders into a vial of pure water. MANY spells have more than one effect, so you will use more than 1 ink. For instance, most cleric buffs raise the target's Current HP, AC and Max HP. That's two Ink of Tunare for the two life effects and one Ink of Tribunal for AC.
Thickener. Each type of spell has a different thickener. For instance, Invigorating Thickener is used for all single-target buffs. Group buffs use a different thickener. Nukes, DoTs, debuffs, etc all have distinct thickeners, and each thickener is made in lots of 30 or 40 with one combine, using 1 alchemy herb which you can buy in PoK and 2 gemstones.
Time Saving Tip ** Clear a bag in your bank for thickeners and save them.
Something to Write On You need some kind of paper, papyrus, vellum, parchment or even a special hide. They all drop from caster mobs at about the level of the spell. There is a different drop for each level of spell from 50 on up, and they're all "Dirty" when you find them. For recipes under 50, you use various types of "raw" hides.

You need a solution for cleaning each writing surface. Eric will sell you the cleaning solutions for raw hides. Each type of raw hide covers a range of five levels, with a different preparation method for each level. You should find someone with some smithing skill to make you a Skinning Knife, because it's used in 2 of the 5 preparation methods.

Aqua Regia is used in the solution for every spell from 50 on up. Most of your Muriatic Acid and all of your Aqua Fortis will go into Aqua Regia. That means, if you make it from scratch, every spell is going to use at least 3 Saltpeter and 2 Sulfur. If you want to speed up the process without spending a lot of money, you may sometimes want to buy Aqua Fortis to save on dropped components while making Muriatic Acid. That way you only need 1 saltpeter and 1 sulfur per Aqua Regia.

There is a lot more to say about Papers and how to prepare them, and you need to get a full list of all the inks, quills and thickeners. All of that information is available in books sold by your friend Eric. If you prefer, send an in-game mail to Saryrn.Zipper and I'll send you a couple of quick-reference documents I've prepared.

Skilling Up, Beyond 102

Many folks make parchment solutions using Aqua Regia and gemstones. The highest of these trivials at about 250, so it's certainly a workable route. But it's EXPENSIVE if you aren't making and selling spells.

For the rest of us, patience pays off. I recommend putting up a buyer for Parchments. You can get most of them for 100-200pp once people know there's a buyer. And the cleaning step has the same trivial as the solution, giving you two chances to skill up, before you even start making spells. And making spells IS the fun part. If all you ever make are solutions, you're missing most of the excitement.

**Flaight** · 03-22-2008, 07:59 AM

Good lord, that was thorough. Thanks so much! That cleared up a lot of issues yesterday. I have to say, information out there on the internet is so fragmented and actually I found a lot of info inaccurate. I kept reading that Spell Research Kit is only for 60+, so I didn't even buy it till I saw your post. Also, most discussions are mostly regarding high end products and very little info on newbie end. Info is around, just hard to land on them in a timely fashion and even worse to tidy it all up in my stupid head. So I very much appreciate your contribution here. Perhaps this should be a sticky, or compiled into a guide.

Anyway, so here I am after much reading and struggling. I must admit, the path I took was slightly different in the end because I just couldn't get myself to collect components.

I used to play EQ long ago like a madman till I quit, only to come back again in recent months and been playing a necro from scratch. My memory of tradeskills are vague, but painful. I wasn't going to get into tradeskills at all this time as I don't have a lot of good memories of it.

Being a necro though I hit a brick wall with some spells, 1 notable one was Lich at lvl 48. It's a key spell and I needed it, but only higher spells are being traded in bazaar. Research became unavoidable. I had a lot of money on my old main so my goal was to attain skill level of around 150-200 as quickly as possible by throwing money at the problem. Lich trivials at around 130 ish.

That's the background to all this. Before I read that post I actually went to South Ro and did the quest to get the box for making practice runes. How stupid. Then I took a break and started combing through the internet again, and your post as well and realized I may be in for a big farming session for all this trouble.

Further searches eventually landed me in big new recipe list. Just so many recipes... So I combed through to see the easiest (sadly also likely the most expensive) way up. And I came to realize that variety of Solution series may be what I was after.

I still don't know if that was the quickest way up, but earlier I attained skill lvl 174 in the space of about 2 hours, likely MUCH less as I was having a ciggy breaks here and there. I must say your explanation of the way new kit works was wonderful... It's so much easier now. The whole thing was done in Crescent Reach where I'm amiable and it so transpired that everything I needed was there.

The down side is, it cost me 55k or thereabouts, just over. I didn't do a proper book keeping so I don't know exactly how much, but jogging my memory back on how much I grabbed, 55k is my best guesstimate. I stopped at 174 where Fine Parchment Solution trivials because I suspect the next step would become exponentially more expensive and time consuming and I can't sustain this, I need to keep cash flow for items as well. Maybe I'll continue on it little by little, as I'm beginning to enjoy it. But for now, Lich is done and all is well...! I'm leeching myself once again for infinite supply of mana. I'm happy.. for now. A little scared of future expenses however.

In case anybody else who wouldn't mind doing this are wondering, here's the run down of what I did. I would emphasize that I have NO IDEA how good this method is, whether it's the cheapest quickest way, or even just quickest. But it is in my view very quick and can be done by just running between 2 vendors (gem vendor and research vendor). So I'm just leaving this here as a record, so any poor sod like me MIGHT use it in the future as a reference for his/her own research.

Feel free to comment on it or contribute to this madness. And even make it into sticky so practical approach can be absorbed in 1 place. Together with Neebat's detailed post on kit usage etc, I think this thread can be very helpful for some people.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
New Spell Research Powerleveling suggestion:

[] Fine Salt (to Skill 15)
1xRock salt

[] Vial of Pure Water (to Skill 54)
5x Empty Vial
1x Gnomish Heat Source
4x Water Flask

[] Papyrus Solution (to Skill 81)
1x Aqua Regia
1x Gold Bar
2x Peridot
1x Star Rose Quartz
1x Vial of Pure Water

[] Runic Papyrus Solution (to Skill 100)
1 x Aqua Regia
1 x Gold Bar
1 x Jade
2 x Opal
1 x Topaz
1 x Vial of Pure Water

[] Parchment Solution (to Skill 144)
1 x Aqua Regia
1 x Fire Emerald
1 x Gnomish Heat Source
1 x Vial of Pure Water

[] Fine Parchment Solution (to Skill 174)
1 x Aqua Regia
1 x Fire Emerald
4 x Gnomish Heat Source
2 x Gold Bar
2 x Vial of Pure Water

---------------------------------------

The 1st step, Fine Salt, is probably not necessary. As Neebat remarked, Vial of Pure Water is needed in a large bulk later so you might just as well start with that.

So why does that path cost so much. It's mostly because of Fire Emerald and Aqua Regia. They take up the bulk of the funding you throw at it. Also once I started on Fire Parchment Solution I noticed the skillups slowed down considerably. It was pretty smooth till skill 144 ish though.

Nevertheless, it only requires a jeweler vendor and research vendor, so you could just go to the city where you have highest faction.

**Kinil** · 03-24-2008, 07:41 AM

1 to 54 do the freebie quest in Crescent Reach.

After that I worked Powders, altho it is very level dependant because of the spell to summon one of the compents for the combine.

Crude Binding Powder 58
Crude Enchanted Spell Parchment 75-80

Makeshift Binding Powder 83
Makeshift Enchanted Spell Parchment 99-106

Elementary Binding Powder 118
Elementary Enchanted Spell Parchment 132-140

Modest Binding Powder 152
Modest Enchanted Spell Parchment 167-175

Simple Binding Powder 192
Simple Enchanted Spell Parchment 201-215

Binding Powder 232
Enchanted Spell Parchment 247-255

Just an alternate route if it's available to you.

**Gorse** · 03-24-2008, 09:26 AM

I would say Binding Powders would be a great route, if you have access to the large quantities. I had skilled up old spell research to 205 or so, then did solutions once they were added, but before the lower parts were added to the vendors. It was a good route, pretty cheap since I farmed all my saltpeter and crystallized sulfer, but it was major time consuming. I would still go the solution route, as binding powder is no where near common enough.

Gorse

**Neebat** · 03-24-2008, 12:05 PM

I base the information above on the things I cover when I'm coaching new researchers. It is EXTREMELY thorough when written out like that, but interactively, I can generally skip parts by leading people to the vendor, asking questions about how they use the UI, etc.

I like to start people right off on the vials of water because you need an enormous number of vials later, and they capture the feel of the research system. I thought about putting Salt earlier in the process, but it's only 20 combines and it's over, and it's such a simple combine; people need to get used to mixing things together. CR is an option, but I wouldn't want anyone to get the idea that CR is the right place to do research. It's SOOO laggy for many people, to the point of unplayable, and that's the last thing you want for tradeskilling. I haven't done the CR research freebie, but I have to assume it looks like the Abysmal freebies: A lot of recipes you'll never see again, repeated over and over more times than necessary. I don't think that's a good deal.

When someone I'm coaching gets to 54, I usually hand them a stack of sulfur and a stack of saltpeter. That gives them 150 or so combines making muriatic acid for very little expense. (And it's only about 800pp for me on buyer.) That SHOULD get them to 102 with a lot of muriatic acid on hand.

You hit on something very reasonable with the Solutions as a skillup route. It's pure vendor, with no farming, no drops at all, and it can take you all the way to 250 or so. I've known a lot of people who did it. They started out way in the hole by buying all that Aqua Regia. My wife takes that approach to all tradeskills: Spend as much as it takes to get to 300, then be proud you've got the title. Personally, I make GOOD money at research, and that's why I recommend it. I want more competition in the bazaar trying to out sell me, not one more person with a research title and a hole in their wallet. I prefer people start on tradeskills thinking of them as a way to make money, not a money pit. It takes patience, a little farming, watching for drops or smart shopping.

Even if you have no benefactor and no inclination to farm, you're still taking a pretty brutal approach by starting solutions at 54. Buy Oil of Vitriol and Salt from the vendor, and you can still make Muriatic Acid for skill ups. Then buy Aqua Fortis to convert them to Aqua Regia for more skillups. It's a lot cheaper than destroying Aqua Regias, and twice the skillups.

If I get a student who wants to throw money at the problem, I toss them a couple stacks of Paper, the 71+ kind. You're still dumping (a lot of) money into solutions, but you get twice as many combines from the same aqua regia.

I think I'll go ahead and edit the guide above to include a route for those who don't want to hunt for Sulfur and Saltpeter.

**Bobaten** · 03-25-2008, 07:05 AM

Unlike the Abysmal Sea quests, you can move to the next combine as soon as your current combine trivials for the Crescent Reach tasks. Personally CR is my favorite tradeskill zone by far, and it's also not laggy for me anymore (it certainly was at TSS launch however).

Announcement

Help: Low end Spell Research

Help: Low end Spell Research

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment