skill up

[Kumulas]

I'm a Wizard and was setting at 188 smithing and wanted a cheap way to skill up so went with shadowscream smithing. My Int was at 320 and maxed without buffs. I had farmed enough shadow/shrieking/wailing to do 400 combines. I have been told and read that the only thing that will effect skill ups in my Int since it is my hightest stat, so I got no buffs before starting the combines for the shadowscream steel collors that triv at 228. 400 combines later and I had only gotten 6 points of skill up. I was a little disappointed in that. Now my questions are 1) should I have gotten buffed, 2) should I have chosen a lower triv item to make. In my tradeskilling experience it seems that the closer you are to a triv the more successful you are but that the skill ups do not come any faster then if the triv is above your skill a ways. Any info would be most gratefully recieved.

Kumulas
65 Wizard

[syndellbristle]

Welcome to the hells of smithing... 190-220 will be your worst nightmare, and no you didnt need buffs.

[Aleksandros]

Smithing hell levels

Dead on, you're right at the beginning of the ugliness. Took about 300 combines for me to go from 190 to 191, then smooth sailing to 242 (in the old days, when Fine Plate took you that high). Of course, the last 2 points from 240 to 242 took another 400 combines

Patience, and a ton of farming will get you there.

[Kaysha Soulsinger]

You should have taken a lower trivial item. During the latest fan faire, the skillup formula was revealed (see the General Forum for several topics on that one). It has been stated explicitely that successes give twice as much chance on a skillup than a failure for one of the two tests you need to pass, before the game grants you a skillup.

[Kumulas]

Thanks for information and the somewhat words of encouragement. And thanks Kaysha for pointing out the post in the general area about the new information given out in the vegas FF. I had not seen that post. I will now try to do combines closer to my skill level. Although as a Erudite I don't have any cultural combines to help and looking at the recipes I'm stuck with LDoN smithing or acrylia smithing. Now for the two of them I would do acrylia except for the fact that I can't see how anyone can gather enough windstones in the numbers that would be required to make that a reasonable option. On my server the bazaar prices are just in line with my bank account. If anyone has another suggestion to acrylia I would be most grateful

Kumulas
65 Wizard

[Qaladar Bragollach]

Thanks for information and the somewhat words of encouragement. And thanks Kaysha for pointing out the post in the general area about the new information given out in the vegas FF. I had not seen that post. I will now try to do combines closer to my skill level. Although as a Erudite I don't have any cultural combines to help and looking at the recipes I'm stuck with LDoN smithing or acrylia smithing. Now for the two of them I would do acrylia except for the fact that I can't see how anyone can gather enough windstones in the numbers that would be required to make that a reasonable option. On my server the bazaar prices are just in line with my bank account. If anyone has another suggestion to acrylia I would be most grateful

Kumulas
65 Wizard

LDoN recipes to 212, then Enchanted Velium Bits to 222. I'm sorry you wasted a lot of time doing shadowscream at that level.

[Syanya]

Skillups

Myself, been skilling up using LDoN armors, but only using tempers I gather components for to keep costs down. I have noticed (although it may just by the rng playing tricks on me) that with the same buffs (Kei and Fo7) I skillup more then 3 times as fast in neriak then in PoK. I do not know if it is because of the 255str/230int combo making the RNG hate me, or what is going on.. but in 430 combines in PoK I got 2 skillups making LDoN plate pieces, but in neriak.. same gear, same stats, same materials.. another 400 combines yeilded me 9 skillups.

Only 212 at the moment in smithing and wishing it wasn't so hard to farm materials for skillups.

Good luck to all of you,
Syanya

[Brickhaus]

I just finished my run from 200 to 222 so here are some comments that you might find useful...

1) Your ceiling Int max is 355...if you can only get to 320, then you haven't purchased all your AAs for stat increases yet. I saw a big difference between 280 and 330. You might want to stop and farm AAs to raise your ceiling first.

2) If you have friends/guildmates/etc who can supply the LDoN tempers OR you are willing to spend a little for them in the bazaar, LDoN smithed armor is your best bet to 210. Just follow the most natural progression (I think Zeralann's smithing guide has a section for this now).

3) DO NOT FORGET Etheral Rings from 210 to 212. Very cheap, assuming you loot the bricks yourself or get them from friends, etc.

4) Enchanted Velium Bits are more expensive than Shadowscream from 212 to 222, but much easier to farm. Skillup rate seems to be better as well. CC orcs are a breeze. Assuming you buy the tempers, will cost you about 18 pp per shot.

After 222, shadowscream is definitely the cheapest option. Just remember, if you were not farming shadowscream, you could be farming money, xp, etc. So there are always costs to farming....

Brickhaus
(now 222 smithing)

[Optimum1]

I know I know..

Having multiple 250'd smiths I can say that I would never EVER again waste my time doing Shadowscream of any type. It has been my experience time and again that Shadowscream provide the WORST skillup rates when compared to anything else you could possibly do. I know, I know, they can triv right above where you are and sickles (for example) triv much much higher but you will get a skillup faster doing sickles. Never fails. Also I cannot suggest EVBs strongly enough. They are THE only way to go til 222 (notwithstanding the 2 ethereal skillups). After that you can torture yourself farming Shadowscream combines OR go farm anything more enjoyable (ie anything at all) and buy sickle combines. My 2 cents. Hate to sound so overbearing, it's just that I have been down this road to GM smith almost 4 times now.

PS I even PLed a PBAoE nuker JUST for farming bears and dogs and I still prefer doing any other combines lol.

[Chenier]

I disagree about the sickles. I felt I had just as much success with SS as I did with sickles and SS didn't cost me 40 gazillion plat.

Remember that the poster is a wizard, and farming SS is super easy. I think a better way to spend your money Kumulas would be to beg, borrow, steal and beg LDoN tempers to 210, do your eth sheets to 212 and then farm velium and buy tempers to 222 and *then* do SS (or Aid Grimel BP cleaning to 22whatever it is and then SS)...

[Kumulas]

thanks again

stopped in to check out some things and wanted to thank the other ppl that have made suggestions. The etheral and evb combines will definately be on the list of items to make. I might even try to use the aid grimil quest to skill up a few points. I haven't been able to much farming or smithing lately as I have been raiding the ele. planes hard the last month, maybe little longer. so my tradeskills have not been worked on.

I make a pass through the bazaar when I log on, windstones still aren't in line with my bank account for the number needed to skill up

then I gate to twilight can clear the shadows.

Off I go to raid which is usually 3 to 5 hours

check bazaar again, gate to twilight ... so on and so on...

[crimson69]

LDoN/EVB

If you have the money, which it does take 18pp or so a combine i highly recomend doing EVB's the entire way and skipping out on LDoN. I did over 1000 combines on one character with a wisdom and strength of 315, to go from 192-196... I than took a week of 3-4 hour farming sessions and farmed enough velium for 700 attempts and got 19 skillups. I than did smithing on another character who's wisdom was 335, 500 LDoN attempts to go from 192-199. Off to farming more velium in 4 days i got enough for 500 attempts and went from 199-222 off those attempts. The advantages to EVB's in my opinion is that while farming for velium i made more than enough PP just to recover probably 75% or more of the pp needed to buy the temper/spell. Plus i was able to sell all the LDoN tempers at 50-75pp apiece and turn a rather nice profit, and than sell the remaining velium i had left over from 40-60pp apiece. so all in all for 2 characters it took me a MINIMAL amount of time to farm the pieces unlike shadowscream where you have to farm many different and time consuming drops for one attempt.

[Yitara]

I did tons of SS before I found out you could make Velium Bits. /e sigh

Ran through those and went back to SS. The part I hated most was the swirling shadows as I got no experiece and they took a longer to farm. Now I find out you can farm the swirling shadows in ME and get experience, plat, akheva blood and other good drops. /e sigh

[Aalar]

If you have the money, which it does take 18pp or so a combine i highly recomend doing EVB's the entire way and skipping out on LDoN. I did over 1000 combines on one character with a wisdom and strength of 315, to go from 192-196... I than took a week of 3-4 hour farming sessions and farmed enough velium for 700 attempts and got 19 skillups. I than did smithing on another character who's wisdom was 335, 500 LDoN attempts to go from 192-199. Off to farming more velium in 4 days i got enough for 500 attempts and went from 199-222 off those attempts. The advantages to EVB's in my opinion is that while farming for velium i made more than enough PP just to recover probably 75% or more of the pp needed to buy the temper/spell. Plus i was able to sell all the LDoN tempers at 50-75pp apiece and turn a rather nice profit, and than sell the remaining velium i had left over from 40-60pp apiece. so all in all for 2 characters it took me a MINIMAL amount of time to farm the pieces unlike shadowscream where you have to farm many different and time consuming drops for one attempt.

You had some bad luck in the amount of combines you had to do to skill up. I averaged less than 15 combines per skill up under 200 and about 20 per skill up above 200.

Aalar (int maxed at 355)