Ogre Smithing

[LaniyaFyrewraith]

After 3 years in EQ, I am finally taking the plunge into tradeskills. For the challange and the seeming rarity, I am planning to go the Ogre Smithing route. I am going to use an Ogre Shaman alt and can only assume that this will be a long and painful (expensive :roll: ) road. If there are any other Ogre Smiths out there that wouldnt mind giving me pointers and some idea of how painful the process is, I'd surely appreciate it

Laniya

[ArrakeenNaedShoj]

I am not an ogre, but after spending a lot of time here and listening to the praises and complaints of just about everyone I can try and give you an Idea.

It will be hard. Unless you are in a VERY strong guild or play a heck of a lot, it will be one of the most challenging things you can do. Getting to 188 or so will not be too bad, but once you cross that threashold you will be looking at a lot of time, and possibly a lot of plat down the drain(and a lot of time to farm the plat). You have one of the "easier" old style culturals, but that will by no means make your job a cake-walk, and the only other options you have are the same as everyone else(the same ones that everyone else has a hard time with).

And when you finally do make it to 250, there isn't much in-game reward(other than a good feeling and a congratz from everyone here ). Yes, you will be able to make some pretty good armor for you and your friends, but much of your target customers, will have opted for Human Cultural instead, since it's slightly better for the same price, and easier to get since there are probably more human smiths on your server. You will still be able to make and sell the non-cultural high skill stuff, but you are then competing against your entire server, which can be profitable, or an excercise in futility, depending.

In short, If you are choosing to do this, because you think it will be fun to do(or you have done it before and found it fun), then by all means go ahead. It is fun, and will give you something challenging and fun to do, when you aren't doing other things. If you are trying to make gobs of money you are in the wrong business. Like real life you should have gotten in months ago to make the "real" money.

I apologize if this discourages you. That isn't what I am trying to do. Smithing, even though I have only managed to make it into the 190's has been a very rewarding experience in gameplay for me. It has given me something to enjoy in a game when there is little else I find enjoyable anymore. And it has kept me playing for the last 3 years or so.

The only pointers I can give you are..

Make freinds with a 49+ enchanter, someone who is willing to enchant bricks for you during downtime will help immensly.

Learn how to do shadowscream. It appears to be one of the easier(and definately the cheapest) methods of skillup, and can be done solo once you learn all the tricks.

If you can get it, get the Creator's Hammer from Sssra. The 15% smithing bonus will make your job a lot easier(and give you a nice easy way to get 20 or so skillups that would be much harder otherwise). Or since you are a large race, the Girdle of the Forge from Sanctus Seru, has a 10% bonus that is good. If not that, buy a geerlock, it won't help as much, bt it WILL help.

[solinear]

Expensive? No.

Time consuming? Yes.

Get your Wis up. Find someone else to buy stuff for you.

Here's how I've done it so far:

1-20 = Metal bits, very inexpensive.

21-68 = Lanterns (yeah, didn't feel like finding scaler molds in Oggok). Still haven't spend more than 100pp total so far...

68-90 = Banded Gorgets. Still not spending much money. After sellback, maybe I'm up to having spent 200pp

90-106 = Banded Coifs. Maybe I've spent 300pp by that time.

106-128 = Electrum Ornate Bracers. Farming FS weapons and HQ ore is the way to go here, Sol A is your new home... empty out your bags of everything other than food and water and COMPLETELY fill up on FS weapons and HQ ore... the Unrefined will just waste your time and the Fiery isn't worth the time, JUST HQ ore and FS weapons.

128-145 = Varying on Gold Ornate stuff, never go over the coif though, not worth your time or money. By this time I'm down to having spent about 200pp on smithing, since the only things that I'm buying are the patterns and precious metal and selling for 20pp each item, effectively making money, if you don't count the time spent farming the ore/FS weapons.

145-168 = Fine Steel Plate Bracers. Sounds expensive, but with a Geerlock, high Str (or Wis for Shm), you can go up very quickly. You can't really farm the MQ ore anywhere, so just go to the Karanas or Stonebrunt and farm quality (low, medium, high) quality pelts and silk thread to make leather padding. Do NOT buy padding, it's stupid expensive and you will save a LOT of money just farming them yourself. Because of stupidity (buying padding), I'm now up to having spent about 1200 on smithing.

168-188 = Go farm more pelts and silk for padding, you'll need more here. Go all the way up as high as you can with the Fine Steel Plate, even doing the BP. It's about break even here if you farm your own padding. Considering failures, you'll lose maybe another 200pp on smithing at this point. The key here is to have someone with a high Charisma buy the ore and sell the armor for you. My success rate (with gearlock) was very high right through this entire phase of Blacksmithing.

This is where I'm at now. I'm getting ready to start on Enchanted/Imbued Ogre War Plate. That will take me all the way over 230, well into the range of making the high end Darksplint/Darkscale stuff. If you just look at AC, this stuff is better than Thurgadin Quest armors and nearly equal to Skyshrine quest armors. You can outfit a MT with this stuff, so long as he don't mind putting on some resist gear in his fingers, ears, range and maybe neck slots.

A couple of things to note:

BUY A GEARLOCK. This has really been the key to my not spending WAY too much money on smithing, because my success rates are so high, I'm not losing much per combine.

Go make a DE Enchanter to buy and sell for you. This will save you so much money it's not even funny. Instead of leaking money left and right, you'll be just about breaking even. I started out buying the ore with my Ogre (until you start doing the Ornate, it won't really matter anyway), but when I hit the Ornate chain, I was leaking money out every orifice. As soon as I started using the DE to buy/sell for me, I was breaking even or even making money. It's kinda hard to tell when you spend 2 hours in Sol A farming ore and coming out with 250 plat more than you walked in with anyway, between all the plat, gold and silver you got while looking for weapons and ore.

Farm your own stuff. If you don't, you'll end up paying 20pp+ for the large bricks of HQ ore and 20pp per leather padding. You have no choice on the MQ ore, but the HQ ore and leather padding you can do yourself. Save the money and do so. Trust me on this.

I'm not really sure what my skillup/success ratio will be now that I'm moving onto the Enchanted/Imbued Ogre War Plate, but I'm guessing that it can't be that much different than what is was up until now, with 225+ STR and a geerlock, I'm getting a skillup about every 4-5 combines and succeeding about 4 out of 5 (or more), even when I'm outclassed on an item by 20 points. I might have a little trouble breaking in with the visors initially, but it's 25pp per Adamantium and the only thing I've got to do now is get a Shaman to imbue Jade for me and an Enchanter to enchant the ore for me. That shouldn't be too hard for me to get, since I know a 62 Shaman and about 3 49+ Enchanters. I'm just going to run to Neriak, load up the little DE with Adamantite, jump back to PoK and get all the stuff enchanted/imbued.

This might be where I'll start leaking money like a storm cloud does water, because I need 4 enchanted large bricks of Adamantite for every visor (3 to make the block for the folded sheet, another for the ring), but I'm not going to bet on it. Of course, what I've got to go do now is farm Elf, Dwarf and Human Blood... yuck. Fortunately I only need 1 per final combine, since Ogre swill is used for the folded sheets and blocks.

BTW, I haven't even bothered to sell anything to players yet. I've sold everything to vendors to save time and I honestly don't think I'm losing out on the money end of things yet either, players won't pay as much for the stuff you're making up until this point. I'll tell you what I can sell the Enchanted/Imbued War Plate visors for after I've got some tempers.

Oh yeah, I'm not going to do any Acrylia. Why? Tempers. I can get Elf Blood on Sisters Island in OOT (or anywhere else with Elves), Dwarf Blood off the Dwarf bandits in BB (I'm warmly to the guards in Kaladim, don't want to ruin that) and Human blood off any number of the idiot bandits in the Karanas. With the exception of Sister Island, I don't care about any of the factions involved (bandits... who cares about them anyway?). Where do you get Akheva Blood? 4-Arms... yeah, they're a lot easier than bandits... :roll: Hmm... <20th bandits or >40th Akhevans that cast and kick anyone's butt for looking at them wrong... I think I'll do the wussy bandits that I can mass slaughter.

I think Ogres actually have it easiest, as far as smithing. Our Strength is through the roof (for battle types) and our stuff is all easy to get. Humans? Bleh. Not enough Str, I think I start 30 points higher than Human Warriors do and I'm a BST. So we need someone to buy stuff for us and enchant the stuff... so does just about everyone else if they want good prices and aren't an Enchanter.

[Herculez]

Easy?

First off, ogre smithing is very difficult to do, i know. Im at 192 Ogre smith on Karana server. First thing i would suggest is dont make an Ogre Shamen, make a warrior. In smithing your skill up rate is based on Wis, Int OR Str, which ever is the highest. Base ogre str can be as high as 150, and 255 achieved with just a couple kpp since str is one of the cheapest stats to raise both with equipment and buffs. Secondly, cultural armors are not a real option, though it would be the cheapest method if you can do it. The elven blood needed to make the tempers drops off only wood elf npcs ( Guess sony doesnt think HE's and DE's have blood ), and are quite rare. It is terribly expensive to advance after 188, and i have personally spent in 20-30kpp range to go from 188 to 192. I dont think it is going to be a very easy path to take, and to date there is only one ogre on the entire karana server over 200 skill, and he is only a 210. Ogre smithing is possibly the hardest to do, simply because we cant be the classes that can easly solo farm ingredients. The best advice i can give you is just be patient and hope for the best.

Herculez SkullCracker
197+5% geerlok Smith
Karana Server

[LaniyaFyrewraith]

Thanks, and another Question =)

Wow, thanks for the great input guys. I was planning the Ogre Shaman because an ingame smithing friend of mine is totally convinced that skill ups come from whichever is greater between INT and WIS. However, after looking at the FAQ and reading your posts, it seems that it will also key off of STR.

That is convenient as I already have a 54 Ogre Warrior that maxes STR out with a shammy buff. Please clarify that STR can be used as a primary skill-up stat as that would really help my cause.

I really appreciate all the good Info shared in the above posts and appreciate the honesty about difficulty. Any further input concerning the saleability of Ogre Cultural would also be appreciated.


Happy Smithing to you all and may the RNG gods favor you =)

Laniya

[ArrakeenNaedShoj]

To confirm, yes it's the highest of STR INT or WIS that determines your skillup chances. This has been confirmed by VI/Sony and has been supported by the data posted by actual smiths. In the beginning of the game it was just WIS/INT and it has changed a few times, but as of the last 4 or 5 fanfaires it has been this way.

[noggs]

hiya, 230 ogre smithy here. just to tell ya, post 188, it WILL break you unless you REALLY want it. just stick to your guns and you'll get there. depending on your server, different routes might be a bit more viable:

Acrylia: if you're 50+, farming Essence of Wind's should be easy in Twilight Sea. or they might go cheap in your Bazaar. they've kinda gone nuts on my server. Windstones can be gotten from UP or TM. technically they're an uncommon drop of the Luclin gem table, so any zone that can drop "uncommon gems" can potentially drop a windstone. this route is somewhat expensive, but the armor is pretty dang good. depending on how saturated your Acrylia Plate market is, this might be able to be a moneymaker. BP's & Legs intiallly sold for around 3k on my server. They're down to around 1k now. Strangely enough, despite the 240ish triv rate of the legs & BP, i was able to make them with a decent amount of success @ 188+ geerlok. not great, but good enough to keep me from making the other "not so good" pieces.

Shadowscream: never did this myself, but rumor is it's the "poor man's route who has a lot of time". you need to do a quest or two in Shar Vahl to get it kickstarted then it's a LOT of farming to make armor that is completely worthless. like i said, i never went this route.

Ogre Cultural (Old): I tried this route for a little bit, but not having a 49+ chanter friend made life VERY hard. first of all, you need to cart LOTS of Large Bricks of Adamantite (non-stackable), have them all enchanted by a 49+ chanter (325 mana per cast). a word of advice, if you're looking for a chanter to do this for you, be prepared to: Give them a copy of the spell (sold in 3rd Gate, in neriak Library), and be prepared to donate. To date, out of 6 chanters i've employed, i have yet to find one that had this spell. it's around 60pp. Some have been nice enough to do a batch for me just in exchange for the spell. others i've had to dig deep into my pockets & give them shineys. and others have been very helpful guildmates donating their time. anyhow, if i remember correctly, the only thing that's depressing about this is you need to use Enchanted BLOCKS of adamantite. meaning, since Enchant Adamantite ONLY works on Large Bricks, you need to lug 3 Large Bricks, get them enchanted individually, then smith them into 1 Enchanted BLOCK. ie: trivial failures REALLY hurt here. anyhow, I tried this route & quickly gave up after making a few pieces for myself. If you have a great 49+ chanter friend or your pockets are deep, this should be ok. I managed to sell 2-3 pieces to finance my smithing.

Mistletoe Cutting Sickles: this route is for the smithy who has LOTS of money and a decent amount of time. All you technically need is: someone to Imbue Emeralds (ask one of the 1000's of local droods), someone to brew...forget the trivial (i'm 151+ geerlok & doing fine), and someone to do some pottery (i'm 124+ geerlok & doing fine). everything is store bought except for the Imbuing part. however, like i said, this is very expensive and it trivs at OVER 250. so if you have money, you can powersmith yourself all the way to 250. I started this at around 212 & leveled myself up to 227 with it so far. @ 212, i'd make around 3-4 sickles a stack of attempts (runs you around 5-6k). each sickle on my server can sell in the bazaar from 1900pp to 2400pp. so you can easily finance yourself if your economy is good. btw, this is for the POTC quest, just in case you didn't know. nice thing about it is it's "consumed", so people can't use them & pass them down. they're burned up, so people will always need more. however, these are VERY time consuming to make. if you're looking for "least number of COMBINE" clicks, this is not the route for you. being an ogre, this is where i get the stuff:

Mortar & Pestle, Celestial Solvent, Scent of Marr, Mistletoe, Sapphires, Rubys, Emeralds, all 3 Molds, Jar of Acid, Sheet of Metal: sold in PoK. Please note you don't have to make your own Sheets. I did, but found out there's a dorf that sells them. this will save you TONS of time. Elven Wine: Fungus Grove. be prepared to make TONS of Celestial Essence (Celestial Sovlent + Scent of Marr, no fail combine in a Mortar & Pestle).

Ogre Cultural (new): don't try it. lol. i tried @ 213. went 0/18 on bracers. tried again @ 225 with VERY good success rates. take a lesson from Noggs, don't waste your BD's.

GM Smithy Hammer: not for a skill up route, but costs around 5-6k per attempt. 213: failed. 216: failed. 216: failed. 222: success.

special note: Skilling up from 210 to 212. If you know a GM brewer, have them brew some Ethereal Temper (forgot recipie, but easy to buy in PoK, i think), triv = 220 or 212. Merchant mine or go to the bazaar for Bricks of Etheral Energy. You can ONLY skillup on this from 210 to 212 IF you have a Geerlok. this is not meant as a skillup route and you must have a modified 220 to even ATTEMPT this. it won't let you otherwise. and it TRIVIALS at 220. meaning, you can only skill up @ 210-212 + geerlok. make Ethereal Rings. 1 Temper + 1 Brick + file. very easy 2 free points.

oh...and if you do go the cultural route & you need blood tempers:

Elf Blood: OOT - Sister Island. LOTS of elves, 3 dorfs, 1 human.
Dorf Blood: Butcherblock has 2 Bandit camps
Human Blood: South Karana, if you're @ Spires facing the bridge, follow the ocean to your left. there's a bandit camp of around 4-8 bandits. uber-green. respawn rate of about 4 mins.

ok...that's my good deed for today. please let me know if ya have any other questions.

noggs
proud smithy of the <black claws> MT
230+ GM Hammer &amp; counting...

[Herculez]

Gm Hammer

Ive always kinda wondered what the real purpose of the GM hammer is. Ive heard that its 5% bonus will stack with other mods, but as far as i know sony hasnt came out to state that it does. Other than that it just looks good and has a summon bag effect. Is there any other real reason to attempt this thing???

[Kozak]

Ogre Cultural (new): don't try it. lol. i tried @ 213. went 0/18 on bracers. tried again @ 225 with VERY good success rates. take a lesson from Noggs, don't waste your BD's.

GM Smithy Hammer: not for a skill up route, but costs around 5-6k per attempt. 213: failed. 216: failed. 216: failed. 222: success.

special note: Skilling up from 210 to 212. If you know a GM brewer, have them brew some Ethereal Temper (forgot recipie, but easy to buy in PoK, i think), triv = 220 or 212. Merchant mine or go to the bazaar for Bricks of Etheral Energy. You can ONLY skillup on this from 210 to 212 IF you have a Geerlok. this is not meant as a skillup route and you must have a modified 220 to even ATTEMPT this. it won't let you otherwise. and it TRIVIALS at 220. meaning, you can only skill up @ 210-212 + geerlok. make Ethereal Rings. 1 Temper + 1 Brick + file. very easy 2 free points.

oh...and if you do go the cultural route &amp; you need blood tempers:

Elf Blood: OOT - Sister Island. LOTS of elves, 3 dorfs, 1 human.
Dorf Blood: Butcherblock has 2 Bandit camps
Human Blood: South Karana, if you're @ Spires facing the bridge, follow the ocean to your left. there's a bandit camp of around 4-8 bandits. uber-green. respawn rate of about 4 mins.

ok...that's my good deed for today. please let me know if ya have any other questions.

noggs
proud smithy of the <black claws> MT
230+ GM Hammer &amp; counting...

Smart ogre side note if u have/can aquire 15% smithing mod The Ethreal rings are easy 19 Points of skill. ( can start at 193-212 )

Go STR all the way 305 str MAKES a Huge Difference for me.

The part about ogre Cultural Made me cry Noggs I was hopeing for 2 bracers at 215 skill ( even camped the blood temper and got everything imbued ready to go) guess ill knock out 300 more combines of sickles first.

[Derok]

Re: Easy?

First thing i would suggest is dont make an Ogre Shamen, make a warrior.

I have an ogre shadowknight, and have had to make an ogre shammy as well for the sole purpose of imbuing jade. It's near impossible to find someone to do it for you (well, at least on my server) and with the rate being something like 2k/imbued stack, it's also cheaper. If you've already got an ogre warrior, groovy. Just get an ogre shammy of your own (Rallos Zek of course) and get him up to 29. After that, you're good to go.

[Zopharr]

Go make a DE Enchanter to buy and sell for you. This will save you so much money it's not even funny. Instead of leaking money left and right, you'll be just about breaking even.

Another option iis to buy some steins and maybe some cat's eye bracelets - that will give you +64 cha. (Toss in a necklace or some star ruby rings if that doesn't get you to 103 or better.) A DE chanter works great if you two-bow or have a *very* patient friend. If that doesn't work, cha gear isn't all that expensive - if you have the money to do fine plate, you can get the cha gear. The money I spent on charisma rings and bracelets for Zopharr when he was smithing (well before opal steins) was the best smithing investment I ever made - saved me probably 4-5k. Worked well with Garshok too.

As many here, I'd advise the strength smithing route rather than the wisdom route. So go with a melee if you are making an ogre from scratch. Buy some crustacean armor in the Bazaar, a few other cheap strength items, you should be able to get well over 220 strength pretty easily and pretty cheap.

For more strength, look into a Woven Frost Giant Beard - five charges of up to 35 strength. It may seem that buying a "smithing suit" is a hassle - but believe me, the increased rate of skill-ups at 255 (or greater) strength will save you a few thousand plat in the fine plate stage, not to mention having to collect less padding.

Same principle goes for wisdom if you are dedicated to go the shammy route. Max out wisdom gear. Once you are done with banded, get stuff ready for a *long* smithing session, then donate for C3 for the wisdom buff. *Well* worth it when you are done with banded.

I'd advise the shadowscream route over acrylia plate or the ogre war plate - unless you get exp from the mobs you'd need to farm for acrylia plate, in which case I'd suggest doing an acrylia session for every 3-4 shadowscream sessions for variety/bring in some plat. The ogre war plate method means you will have to become *very* friendly with some chanters and - well, it can be hard enough to get chanters to enchant metals for the blue diamond armor, much less the quantities for skilling up.

Assuming that you aren't skilling up on ogre war plate (which I don't recommend), I wouldn't be concerned about finding ogre shaman. When you start getting to the 220s, just start carrying a stack or two of jade, then do an occasional /who all ogre shaman 29 65. A shaman in his 30s will usually be quite happy to imbue a stack or two of jade for 10pp each.

Just be intelligent about who you ask - lower levels will appreciate the plat more, but if someone is in KC or Plane of Valor - well, they probably won't be available for imbuing just then. Be polite and respect that you are asking for a chunk of their time. Worst case, ask some of the human smiths who imbues their jade - you won't really be competing with them. (I think I've sold RZ-imbued stuff to maybe three ogre warriors in 6 months - they generally prefer the human Fierce Heraldic.)

Hope that helps.

[Herculez]

Str?

Exactly how do you get your str up to 305 in the first place?? 255 is the natural max, and as far as ive been able to see there are only 5 ranks of the planar aa that raises max stat potential by 5 each. So all i can see is 255+25=280 str max. Is there some other AA i just havent seen yet or did you just make a typo?

Herculez SkullCracker
53 Ogre Warrior

[Arghargh]

5 points / level after 60 for free. Yes, there is an PoP AA to give you another possible 5 points/leve.

I got to 188 before the big change in trivials, so I have no advise there. Post 188, I did almost exclusively shadowscream, then mistletoe cutting sickles. Shadowscream was a massive time sink, but effectively free. Although acrylia is profitable, it was too slow for me. I was more interested in getting to >220 so I could make sickles. I didn't bother with ogre cultural because I could farm a set of shadowscream componants much faster than blood temper componants.

If you want the largest market for blue diamond armor, go with a human smith.

Arghargh Grumble, Darkblood
57 Ogre Shaman of Rallos Zek
Alchemy – 165
Baking – 200
Brewing - 200
Fishing - 200
Fletching – 200
Jewelcraft –200
Potting - 200
Grandmaster Smith - 250
Tailoring – 159

[Herculez]

305 str

Thank you, that explained how someone would be able to get to 305 str. Being only lvl 53 i was unaware of the 5/lvl increase, though i did know about the AA. And as for human smithing being the most popular, perhaps, but that depends on server. As is on the Karana server, me (197) and another ogre smith (210) are the only ogres with a real shot at making Darkscale anytime soon. There are multiple ads in the karana forum so i am hoping that i can make quite a nice profit if all this shadowscream farming pays out. FYI, new ogre cultural armor has a slight AC bonus over over any other new cultural and that always makes it desirable.

Herculez SkullCracker

[ArrakeenNaedShoj]

Ive always kinda wondered what the real purpose of the GM hammer is. Ive heard that its 5% bonus will stack with other mods, but as far as i know sony hasnt came out to state that it does. Other than that it just looks good and has a summon bag effect. Is there any other real reason to attempt this thing???

The 5% doesn't stack with other mods, so that portion of it is basically making it a geerlock with stat mods. However I can think of PLENTY of reasons to make the thing.

1. It has 50 CHA, which means that any non-ugly race will need ONLY it in order to get their CHA in the 110 range for best prices. And even those with the worst CHA(40 I think) would only need one Opal stein on top of it to make it. No more carrying 20 peices(I have a troll baker that does) of CHA gear in the bank and on combine day.

2. It doesn't just summon bags. It summons bags with 100% weight reduction. Which for anyone who has had to carry 400 lbs of ore with a 90 STR and no SoW realize is VERY Valuable in deed.

3. It increases ALL of your smithing stats INT/WIS/STR by 10. Which outside of uber gear(meaning gear requiring a big raid or a hefty drop in your bank account) is a pretty large amount.

4. You can wear it in your ranged slot. Which for some of us, makes it the best over-all peice of range gear we will likely ever see. Meaning we will be using it ALL the time, not just during smithing.

5. Going along with number 4, WE CAN MAKE IT OURSELVES. Meaning I don't need an 8 hour raid. Or a month of "questing" hoping for some Rare 24 hour spawn that drops a part only 1 in 10 times(meaning the 1 time out of 10 that I am not on). The peices are all readily attainable, if a bit expensive, placing them in the reachable limits of just about anyone that can actually raise their skill to the 230+ range.

6. It's a major accomplishment in this game. It says that you followed through with a very difficult quest(or got very lucky). It says that you didn't give up when things got hard, or you had to do 300 combines to see a skill point. It says you really are a "Grandmaster Smith" and not just some guy selling cultural armor. In other words, it's an ego boost.