Cost of being a grand master smith

[Vishino]

hello everyone, i was thinking about becoming a smith, i had an old smith with a skill of 178 but my accout got hacked :evil: and it got deleted :evil: , anyways back to the subject, i am thinking of taking up smithing again and i would like to know how much money i should get together to become a grand master smith with a skill of 250 or close to it.


thanks
38 Bard
Brell

[Sethlic]

Well I would say a better question is how much time will it take you to get from 188 to 250.

[Kahlmer]

Yes, that certainly is the question!! The other night, though, I did 60 imbued dwarven plate combines and went from 202 to 205. I'm slowly making progress! Now to collect more bloody lava rocks! :evil:

Honestly though, I've spend 10's of thousands of pp on smithing. It isn't cheap. Especially now that fine plate is trivial at 188. The old cultural recipes are a great way to skill up if you have pp. Unfortunately, because I'm a Dwarf, I get to buy all of those expensive rubies.

[Kozak]

sittin around 170kp spent for 222 . but i refuse to camp anything that dont help the guild ( seru bane / Zek bane )

[Torm Of Quellious]

I'm around 27K now at 190 in skill, Started at 0 skill but I bought alot of highly priced Leather paddings (Average price was like 30pp each =/) So your milage may vary.

Make a ranger or a druid and play them till level 20-25 then start farming for padding materials.

[Flabbo McFattyfatfat]

Depends on your servers sickle market really. A couple hundred k will get you to the point where mistletoe sickles will be profitable. Then you'll have to sell a LOT of sickles to break even. Then ayou will see some profit. I hate to discourage people, but the bandwagon has been missed on smithing. Its not a money maker anymore unless you are among the first on your server to achieve it. Most aspiring smiths time is better spent elsewhere. Theres more money to be made at this stage in the game by leveling and selling drops. If you want armor, its cheaper to buy it from another smith or second hand (or third or 10th hand) than make it yourself.

Shadowscream has little direct plat cost, but huge opportunity cost. Tiome spent farming annoying greens in a buggy zone is time that could be spent leveling and getting plat (or gasp, doing something interesting in real life).

[Aarial]

I'm up to probably 100kish now an I'm up to 212.

Hehe I failed a couple stacks of sickles a couple of weeks ago. After that I sort of have went cold on smithing. Decided right now I needed a break. I buy everything though. I've been doing quite well at making blue diamond cultural bracers. Going 1/3 for my level. So I've made some of my money back

I'm spending about 3 to 4 k per 20ish attempts I'm guessing.

[Bennan]

Vishino,

Considering your skill is at 178, one possible method of reaching 250, with a mindset of keeping costs low is;

Finesteel to 188, that will cost 1k to 2k...depending on fails.

Shadowscream from 188 to 250, that will be around 5 to 6k (1.5k for 750 large bricks of ore, and molds at 4 to 5k, I am assuming molds are 3pp or lower).

This is the method I am currently following myself.

[Sethlic]

I apologize, I should answer the question.
I did 180 something before the patch so spent maybe 3k there.
I have been doing shadowscream since then and will continue doing this and Elven old cultural. Will probably spend 50k or so. Then on my server seems no one has sickles for sale the last few days, so there is still money to be made. I do smithing because I'm crazy. Blessed fishing rods have been more profitable by far. Was like 4 days fishing 5 hours straight then bang costs aboth 300 pp to make sell for 1000 to 1500, Hehe pays for smithing. I spent more time collecting 200 owl bear stuff then all of fishing alone. I suggest you level to post 62 and use you AA to increas you wisdom cap. I have seen an increase in skillups per combine with my wisdom at 265 now.

[Kahlmer]

I think the higher stats may help as well, like Sethlic mentioned. Also, there was a patch that says it made skilling up a bit more lax. Anyhow, from 60 combines the other night, I went from 202 - 205 which, imo, is a huge improvement over past attempts to skill up before I was 65. I currently have 280 wis when I smith.

[Arghargh]

Ever since 188, I've made a profit smithing. I skilled up on shadowscream, and sickles. Shadowscream makes tiny profit (~4sp) selling back to NPCs. Sickles made me a bunch, but prices are taking a beating now.

The real cost isn't how much more, or less pp is in my bank, but in how much time it took. It takes a huge amount of time, either farming componants, or farming/earning pp to buy componants.

Arghargh Grumble, Darkblood
58 Ogre Shaman of Rallos Zek
Alchemy – 170
Baking – 200
Brewing - 200
Fishing - 200
Fletching – 200
Jewelcraft –200
Potting - 200
Grandmaster Smith - 250
Tailoring – 161

[sir0die]

if you read the original post, he is starting fresh with smithing, not 178.

here's an idea

buy all the chunks of condensed shadow you can find in your bazaar (i wouldn't pay more than 3p each)

figure about 20 combines per skill up (this stat is taken from more of the high end stuff that has been posted)

condensed shadow arrow heads trivs at about 116. figure you're probably gonna train smithing up to 21 in your guild, so thats 95 skill points till triv.

95skill pointsx20attemps per point x3 plat

so you're looking at about 6k (including cost of file, flasks of water and allowing the purchase of a geerlock for 200p or less)

thats is if you want to do it all in one pop to 116. of course, if cost is the concern, it's all poprtional to the amount of farming/dumpster diving you do.

once you make all those arrow heads, they can be used to get fletching to 250, so give/sell them to fletchers. I gave mine to my warrior alt.

there is also plenty of guides on this site on how to do it. you have to ask one question first. Do i want to just pay a ton of plat, and do it i'm a few sessions? or Do i want to farm as much stuff as possible to keep the cost down low?

once you can answer that, we (the community) can give you a better idea as to the route to go. Heck, if ya got all the plat you need, just train up and start folding sheets of Mq ore, and start on plate. I believe the subcombines alone will get ya to a decent level before attempting to make the final plate combines. of course ya wanna start farming/buying pelts to make leather padding.


me personally, i like the combines with a small amount of ingredients (2-4) and i get tons of those ingredients. so what if from skill 21-60 you fail alot, if skill is your goal those failures are acceptable.

some people do one recipie for 2-3 skill points then change recipies to something else. example :
electrum ornate chain bracers till 128
gold ornate chain masks till 130
gold ornate chain gorgets till 132
gold ornate chain bracers till 135


i hate having to sell back unused patterns, so i just do gold ornate chain bracers till 135.

sellback is nice, some people pick their recipes based solely on what sells back at the best prices, therefore reducing the overall cost of skilling up.

I have found, the cheapest route is usually the most time consuming (farming, buying/selling to vendors, researching recipies and their trivs, making all the subcombines yourself or with an alt, PLing alts to enchant/imbue stuff, sitting in bazaar trying to sell you warez)

soo there really is not diffinitive answer to your question, what might be an acceptable success/failure rate for me, might not be acceptable to you.
what might be an acceptable cost per combine for me, might not be acceptable for you. What takes me 5 hours to farm and subcombine for 20 attempts at a skill up, could be done in 20 minutes but cost you 80% more plat.

so all i can really suggest, is read all the lovely material provided by all of us here and make your own decisions.

(p.s. my bank has not had more than 1kpp in well over 3 months, i don't sit in trader mode alot, and i give alot of my warez away to guildmates and newbies, and i donate alot of my baked goods to those generous KEI casters.)

oh, and i'm currently working on brewing, pottery, smithing, tailoring and baking. which leads me to another point, it's quite common for you to work up more than one tradeskill to support another.
examples:

smith/brewing (need tempers don't ya)
smithing/brewing/alchemy (wanna make that purdy blue platemail?)
smithing/tailoring (where do you think the leather padding comes from)
tailoring/brewing (need all those heady kiolas for Wu's)
Tailoring/pottery (need vials of _______ mana)
baking/brewing (jum jum spiced beer in a misty thicket picnic/picnic baskets)
fletching/tinkering (tinker those bow cams for your fletchwers)


now that i look at that, brewing, a good way to get brewing up to 122 is fishing grubs (bought in PoK and OOT) and flask of water make fetid essences, triv to 122. cheapest combine in the game for it's trivial lvl, for any tradeskill.


hmmm, feel like i've been rambling, i hope it all makes sense.

[Meirril]

Just want to make a point/ask a question: is skilling up to the trivial worth it? I've read in the past that the best skill ups come from around 20 below the trivial. If that's true, wouldn't it be worth it to go from say 30 below the trivial to say 10 below the trivial instead of trying to squeeze to the last number on a trivial? (I've had very bad experiences trying to do the last 5 points up to a trivial, and usualy find myself with a stack of the materials for the next recipee and so...) In some cases the next recipee is 30 points beyond the trivial, or costs 10 times as much as the old recipee so I can understand wanting to stick with it as long as possible. I just don't think this is going to be the fastest way to skill up.

[sir0die]

i've read the same thing, so if it is correct it would be wiser that way.

[Abazagaroth]

Why in the world would you pay 6k and all that time doing those arrowheads to get to 116 when banded trivials at like 115? Metal bits then some of the cookery crap then banded will take you that far and cost you like 150pp or so total, and can be done in a couple of hours.