On a Whim

[Mistofelees]

Well, no not really a whim, but not with much concern I did some blacksmithing for the first time last night on My Enchanter. Lvl 62 with 270 Int.
The reason I did the smithing, well there are 2. I need fine steel armor to make my clockwork Gear, and I needed a Clockwork Needle to make the Gnome robes. Why not just go buy them? Umm....because this way is more fun.
So anyway, I did 100 combines creating Embrodiery Needles
Succeeded 45 Times.
Combines 45 Clockwork Needles
Succeeded 45 times
Begining Skill. 40
Ending Skill 128

Yes, I know the low level combines are fast and easy, but still it was gratifying to have that much success. Now to figure out where to go from there without going crazy..............

Mistofelees MagikCat
62 Enchanter Cazic-Thule
Legion of Nox
250 Jewelcraft
220 Tinker
200 Fletcher
160 Tailor
and now, 128 Blacksmith

[Heap]

Start making the fine steel you need for the clockwork armor. It will take you to 188.

[Silound]

Negative to Fine Steel. I have discovered (with some work on sveral of my characters) that in the long run you pay more to skill to 188 on Fine Plate than if you do the Karana arrowheads that also trivial at 188. Reason? Arrowheads are a flat 6-8pp per combine, fail or success. Fine Plate can be as low as 5-12, but that doesnt take into account failures in the folded sheets (21pp per folded sheet, and even at 250, my friend still fails 1/10 on average) or in the final combine. Nor does it take into account the cost of molds. So in a cash sense, it's much more economical to make the arrowheads to 188.

Silound

[Enchanter]

Gnomes can worship Karana in order to get the mark for arrowheads?

[Astroshak]

From a plat standpoint, the BEST thing you can do to get smithing up a bit more (155 at least) would be to hunt in Rathe Mountains, the Hill Giants. Save all the FS weapons, convert them to HQ ore and then to rings. Save the plat for buying the silver, electrum, etc. bars you'll need, and make Ornate chainmail.

Time consuming, but this is the one thing you can do that will be very easy on the pocketbook at this time. Its up to you if you want to go and do plat OC, or stop with trivialing gold OC, before moving to FS.

Of course, if you've got the plat to burn, simply buy the HQ ore, and the unrefined ore to restock the HQ vendors . . .

[Agouth]

Wipe out Sol A is the cheapest way to get through Fine Steel levels. YOu get unrefined ore, you get HQ ore and you make more cash per hour and get more FS per hour than HG's ever give you. Especially since they added flame agates as relatively common drops in zone.