Help to 188

[Vel'RothX]

I have recently gotten to 120 skill in blacksmithing in a couple of hours just hopping from merchant to merchant and forge to forge in POK. Now that i have reached 120 i noticed that the recipes i want to us enow to get me to 188 skill without extenive farming require a lot of cash. I have the money but im not sure if i am ready to start shelling out hundreds of plat to make high quality metal rings for ornate chain armor or leather ladding and whatnot for fine steel. I went farming in EC with my ranger for about two hours and got 22 spiderling silks and probly 15 LQ/MQ/HQ pelts for the leather padding. With my tailoring skill at about 28 (leather padding trivial at 31) i made 7 leather paddings. Two hours of farming turned into --> 7 leather paddings --> three fine plate visors --> two skill ups... Is there an easier way to get skill up than 2 skill for 2 hours of farming and somewhere around 100pp or the alternative of really expensive bazaar shopping (spiderling silk 13pp each -- leather padding 40-80pp each)...? Any help would be GREATLY appreciated =D

[Agosia]

I don't think so , but both types of armor sell back to vendors fairly well. I did ornate until I had to use platinum bars then moved on to fine plate. Smithing is either a major time or money sink from here on out and it only gets worse.

Make sure you do the combines that are closest to your skill level. If I read the formula correctly, you are more likely to skill up and succeed which means you won't lose as much money.

[ronc]

Go to stonebrunt and kill the higher level tigers in the northeast highlands. Your pelt drops will be much better. Spiderling silks are just a pain, no way around it.

Check the bazaar every so often for HQ rings. I lucked out the other day and found 80 of them selling for 5 plat each (which means the trader was selling at ~ 2.5 plat loss per ring). Must have been a fire sale.

Rockhopper hides and shadeling silks are another good alternative for the padding. As for other methods to skill up, none are easier than fine plate that I know of.

[Footsore]

Ronc is correct about the shadeling silks and hopper hides. That is the way to go for the leather padding. Silk worms spawn in alternating cycles with the hoppers in Shadeweaver thicket. You should be able to get at least a couple stacks per spawn cycle. Be considerate of the low levels skilling up, though often you will be the only person in the zone.

Get the hopper hides in Marus Saru off Netherbethan Lair. If there are people skilling up they will usually be on the hill near the zone out. The zone is big enough for you to move further away and still have plenty of hoppers to slaughter. Or even better yet for quality pelts, the hopper caves in Dawn Shroud Peaks if you are high enough level. Though you will have competition most of the time.

I used fine steel from 165 to 188 and never bought padding, pelts, or silks in the bazaar. Even had a few stacks left to donate to a guildy working on smithing.

And btw, if you were upset about 2 skillups in 7 combines you might want to give up now to avoid the pain when it gets to over 20 combines for one skillup.

[Greymantle]

As far as the hoppers in MS are concerned, if they are green to you then they are super easy to get stacks of hides. Load up all of your stackable damage shields to max, run around untill you have a bunch aggro'd on you. Use your one and only AE nuke, turn on auto attack and then nuke as well, they kill themselve on the dmg shields and the ae nukes makes it faster. It is possible to get several stacks of hides in a hour. Shadling silks still gonna be the bootleneack but they are easier tha spiderlings to get. Don't forget to check the venders in Shar val and surrounds for silks.

[Malathos]

For spiderling silks, hunt the crab spiderlings just outside Gukta - they seem to drop silks with slightly more regularity than anywhere else. Pelt supplies have already been mentioned - and don't forget if you come across any medium quality hopper / wolf / bear / cat pelts, you can turn them into low quality with a skinning knife. To improve your pelt production - if you have GoD, get to the ship in Abysmal and do the beginning tailoring quests - it's a real grind, but it will take you to 50-odd, which will save you a lot of angst in the long run.

Also, don't forget you can convert fine steel weapons into high quality ore so if you can hunt in Sol A for example, the goblins there drop both FS weapons and HQ ore.

As ever, THE best guide for smithing is Zeralenn's guide - linked to from the Learn A Skill -> Smithing link on the front page.

[Nolrog]

Shadling silks still gonna be the bootleneack but they are easier tha spiderlings to get. Don't forget to check the venders in Shar val and surrounds for silks.

I doubt that. You can get shadeling silks by the ton. There is a spawn point in ShadeWeavers that has a bunch of them up, and they respawn quickly. They drop 2-4 silks quite frequently too. As an added bonus, they drop swirling shadows for you too. If there is someone farming SS, ask them if you can have their shadeling silks. I had one person give me almost a backpack full once, that he got there (and at the time, I only needed like 6 or so for my rallic pack.)

[Kieroth_whiteleaf]

For shadeling silks that camp is awesome.

I generally have more from hunting shadows there than I can reasonably use, so I give a LOT of them away to rallic pack hunters and such. I'm past fine plate so don't generally have a lot of padding needs (doing ldon now and those require superb paddings :/) so keeping more than a stack of threads is a waste of bank space.

I think one of my alts got like 6 stacks of shadeling silk while trying to get 8 or so swirling shadows, so drop rate is definitely favorable.

SFG

[Vel'RothX]

thanks!

Thanks ton for the great info. I am new to this site so i was surprised at all the feedback. I'll definitely check out shadeweavers thicket. Even though i was upset at my 2 out of 7 skill up thing im stayin with smithing i was only upset because i only had 7 =P and it was a lot of farming. I have recently started making ornate electrum until 145 i think when the mail is trivial. I picked up a geerlok hammer and im makin the mail (25pp) nearly every time. The Large bricks of HQ ore dont bother me at all anymore. I camped my bro's 52 paladin in High Keep and i farm FS short swords and convert them into ore. In about 15-20 mins i have the two bag limit for shared bank full of fs short swords and i can usually make about 9 or so lrg bricks. But ill definitely go to shadeweavers, it seems like a general consensus. Thanks a ton! You have become better at smithing (140) =D

[Bebinn]

the pit in sharvahl is a good place to get silks too. Don't loot the nodrop stuff off the worms unless you are sure no one in the zone needs them. I was getting 3 silks at a time when I was playing my newbie in there yesterday.

[Aalar]

Another little tip for when you want to go beyond 188.

Do a lot of LDoNs and keep all the temper components that drop. It seems the Rujarkian LDoN drops the most components (Goblin bones). Even with a couple hundred tempers you will not see that many point increases. Smithing is a tough skill to skill up.

You can either choose to do shadowscream or EVBs (enchanted velium bits) post 188. EVBs will take you to 222 and shadowscream can take you all the way to 250. I suggest you pick your path and get exp while getting skill up components. Makes it so much more pleasant to farm. Velks is still a good place for exp around 60 and it has a lot of good drops still. And this is a great place to get the mountains of velium that is needed.

Aalar

[Qilue Shar'Molo]

I had a guildie farm HQ ore from Fine steel weapons in Sol A..

You can get silks from a pit in FoB that spawns alot of spiderlings.. they don't seem to drop more/less then others, but they don't wander and you don't have to go looking for them.