different kinds of 250 trivials

[Eggborn]

I am a punk 195 smith working slowly to raise my skill.

I like to put my skill to use when I can help people with combines, but I noticed that some items that are trivail 250 I always suceed on, and others I always fail on.

For example- I twinked my cleric on Acrylia before ldon came out. Even in the 180's I could make acrylia breastplates without a problem and still never fail.

I wanted to get my druid and myself an earring of the solstice. I have not yet suceeded at a mistletoe cutting sickle! I hate to spend the money on it more, so I tend to do the subcombines now and hire a 250 smith. This got me two sickles so far, I need one more, but heck even the 250's I hired failed on two combines.

I hate to go and hire people to do combines for me for Tae Ew, sickles etc, but the ingrediants are hard to come and expensive. I'm sure my guildee's and friends would also like to know when they have materials and need something made.

What have others noticed that are super hard to suceed at , and what is super easy when you are pre-200 or pre-250?

[eniamn]

cutting sickles, pop anything not just smithing, and tae ew are 50% sucess or less at 250 from what i have seen posted.

i think the acrylia stuff is triv in the 240's with breastplate being high 40s low 50s. could be wrong.

i was making way too many halas meat pies for 30 points below triv so i think the fail rate drops a lot once you get higher. some of the pop foods i do pretty well on too. the weaker ones that prolly should be triv closer to 250 like jord meat pie. no hero parts to test yet.

[Zacatac]

I think the Tae Ew stuff is a bit easier than other >250 combines from personal experience. I'm way over 50% on those, more like 80% success.

Other things like cutting sickles, cultural armor and probably PoP armor are in the 50% or less category. 9 for 20 is a typical day on stuff like that.

[Eggborn]

I have no problems making my cultural, but maybe cause it's iksar lol

[Armaged]

Originally posted by eniamn
cutting sickles, pop anything not just smithing, and tae ew are 50% sucess or less at 250 from what i have seen posted.

i think the acrylia stuff is triv in the 240's with breastplate being high 40s low 50s. could be wrong.

i was making way too many halas meat pies for 30 points below triv so i think the fail rate drops a lot once you get higher. some of the pop foods i do pretty well on too. the weaker ones that prolly should be triv closer to 250 like jord meat pie. no hero parts to test yet.

I'm 9 for 11 on POP bows at 250 fletching with Trophy.

[eniamn]

was a post in fletching or scream of 0 in 7 attempts at 250 with trophy. rng over short samples. do 100 of them and then check.

(not a slam or even that i expect you to find the stuff for 100 pop bow combines just rng screwyness.)

i could have been off about tae ew though. it doesn't get made and posted about enough for me to see it much. no first hand on it yet.

[Dunthor Warsmith]

From the impression I've gotten, the >250 difficulty scale goes something like (cultural being dwarf)

ench/imbued old cultural plate < shadowscream < tae ew < BD cultural plate < mistletoe cutting sickles

I've never done any acrylia plate, so no idea on that.

[Talanshar]

Thoughts

Even though Acrylia has relative high trivials, I didn't seem to fail on those combines very much. I know I smithed a few Acrylia BPs for twinks when I was in the 190's, but I didn't really hit Acrylia hard until the low 200's. I rarely failed on Acrylia. As for sickles, I made my first attempt around 212 and succeeded on a couple. But then failed miserably on future attempts. "Old" human cultural BPs (242 trivial, iirc) I'd usually hit about 70 percent of the time in the 220's and 230's. At 248, I tried to make a BD cultural helm and failed ten times in a row, but on the same run smithed a BP, greaves, boots, gauntlets, bracers, and vambraces.

Also, I noticed in my skilling that once I hit a certain level for non-250 trivial items, the failure rate decreased markedly. There used to be a rough formula floating around this board that attempted to quantify expected success/failure rates based on comments from SOE folks, but I haven't dug around for it lately.

But yes, I noticed that Acrylia and old cultural were relatively "easy" armors.

[EchtelionFV]

Tae ew is way easier to combine, I have had a 50% rate on about 20 combines between 204 and 224 skill. Now try that with sickles or BD cultural...

[Bennan]

Acrylia...

I have done about 130 - 150 Acrylia combines starting at 188 up to 242 at various stages.

I always found it had a high success rate, I would fail maybe 1 in 8 b.ps/legs if that...

[Cavel]

The current Theory is that all items have a set trivial level, no one has been able to give the exact levels because they are over 250. BUT if SOE followed the same logic in the 250+ trivial items that they did for all the others you will get something like this:
Tae Ew Chain is lower than Tae Ew Plate
POP Chain is also lower than PoP Plate

The weapons and quest items are also going to be higher than most Chain items.

The best thing anyone looking at making these Items could do is skill up to 250 or close to it, get the highest Skill mod item they can and attempt the combines praying that the RNG is kind.

[Rorgg]

The best thing anyone looking at making these Items could do is skill up to 250 or close to it, get the highest Skill mod item they can

While you're certainly welcome to do that, it's a bit of a waste. We know that 252 is the higest modified skill. That means:

220+15%
230+10%
240+5%

are all the same as 250+15%. While I laud all the folks who go to 250 for their dedication ... I think it's loopy. =)

[Cavel]

I am sorry I must have missed the post from the devs stating that 252 was the highest modified skill that you could get... How long ago was this put out?

[eniamn]

nothing official but ppl have noticed it doesn't really help. i hear 252 alot but some still say 255 ocasionally. 255 is a classic cap in eq (i mean look at all you stats). /shrug i personally dont think 255 will help you much over 252 anyway and dont care. planning on all to 250 with geerlock from the get go so doesn't bother me.

[xaanru]

Trivials/difficulty

Well, first, to address the acrylia plate: The BP trivials at 242, so no wonder you fail less, its a sub-250 trivial item.

Other items with trivials OVER 250 (they aren't trivial at 250) seem to vary, the assumption is that their actual trivials may be as high as 300+ in some cases.

My experiences:

Tae ew chain - Barely over 250, I succeed on at least 80% of it, and I have made hundreds of pieces.

Tae ew PLATE - lower trivial than the chain, note that these items ARE ALL TRIVIAL at 250, where the chain is not. T think they were throwing a bone to make up for the scales being rarer than a lot of epic drops.

Sickles - 40-50% success rate at 250 (high trivial)

Blue diamond cultural (heraldic) - 40-50% success at 250.

PoP armors -seem to vary by zone. I know a smith who has decent (50%) success on night terror at just over 200 skill. Has more trouble on hurricane.

My personal experience is that I am 4/4 on night terror, 12/12 on hurricane, and 2/2 on livestone. I've never failed a piece of PoP armor (knock on wood). I have however failed on subcombines, including a temper for livestone that cost 12k for ingredients.

Old human cultural - Freeport stuff - easier than acrylia plate, Qeynos stuff, harder than acrylia plate.