169+ ?

[Gladiuss]

Hey there I haven't been smithing for quite awhile, my main is a human warrior and his diety is Rallos Zek - can anybody tell me whats the best way to grind to about 220.
My guess is Acrylia armor till the breastplate becomes trivial..though i'm sure theres a easier path after 170, thanks. I have a necro alt for solo farming and a druid toon with forage aa for foraging components if that helps.

[Angelsyn]

Hey there I haven't been smithing for quite awhile, my main is a human warrior and his diety is Rallos Zek - can anybody tell me whats the best way to grind to about 220.
My guess is Acrylia armor till the breastplate becomes trivial..though i'm sure theres a easier path after 170, thanks. I have a necro alt for solo farming and a druid toon with forage aa for foraging components if that helps.

Enchanted Velium Bits.

Plus any other junk combines that fall your way.

[Astroshak]

If time is less important than money spent, farm Crystal Caverns. Sell (don't convert) the velium weaponry and other junk to the vendors in Froststone, break down all velium into the small pieces. This will take you longer than breaking down the weapons, but the plat you obtain in coin and junk loots, and from selling the velium weapons, will cover the cost of the other ingredients for teh Enchanted Velium Bits combine.

If money spent is less important than time spent, either farm the Tizmac caves for velium weapons to convert, or (faster yet) buy out the bazaar of velium.

[KyrosKrane]

Leather padding is still a good path to 188 (give or take a point, I forget) and it's very cost effective -- you essentially lose just the cost of padding by selling back to a vendor. If you farm your own padding, it's pretty close to free. Past that, you have a choice of a ton of things. LDoN armors, EVB, old human cultural, DoN human cultural (if you can get supplies), various types of Acrylia armor, probably more I haven't thought of. EVB is by far the fastest due to sheer availability of velium compared to other items, but there are other options too. =)

[Therac]

I think he meant....

....Fine Plate. Not leather padding. Do the fine plate til it maxes out at 188. Then jump to EVBs and/or a mix of the LDoN armors. The farming ideas are good for velium: Crystal Caverns rocks as does farming weapons in GD (Tizmaks) from what I'm reading.

The downside to EVBs is the approx 20pp per combine cost even if you farmt he velium. Thats the temper (which does stack and is like 5pp)+ the spell (which doesnt stack as is like 15pp). On the plus side, on TEST at least, the recipe can now be recalled via the TS UI so no more manually moving the stuff an item at a time.

I would add that you always go for the closest trivial item that you can reasonably do. The reason is that getting the items gets harder and harder so don't blow hard to find items on skill ups until necessary. Save the acrylia bps until you max 222 on EVBs. Again, only my opinion.

[mewkus]

You could also try to hook up with someone working on sickles and make the various parts for them that trivial up to 183ish. Also, make sure you've got a geerlok hammer at once you hit 210, make the ethereal rings (can start earlier if you have more than 5% bonus item) for essentially free skill ups to 212.

Once you hit 220, you can do the Cleansed Breastplate up to 227 (which I would assume is why you're trying to get to 220). Keep in mind that 220 is the level at which you can start the quest, but the trivials on some of those combines are much higher and unless you want to repeat parts of the quest, you'll want a higher skill than just 220.

[KyrosKrane]

... I can't believe I said that. /bonk

Yeah, of course I was talking about Fine Plate. Sorry about that.

And yes, EVB is learnable on live servers too.

[Astroshak]

The downside to EVBs is the approx 20pp per combine cost even if you farmt he velium. Thats the temper (which does stack and is like 5pp)+ the spell (which doesnt stack as is like 15pp). On the plus side, on TEST at least, the recipe can now be recalled via the TS UI so no more manually moving the stuff an item at a time.

If you take the time to farm the velium from Crystal Caverns, breaking down the bricks and blocks of velium into small peices and selling the velium weapons, you'll farm enough plat to cover the costs of the ore you farm up at the same time, to make EVB's with. End result : negligible gain or loss to the bank when you farm velium and then make EVB's, if you farm from CC.

Farming elsewhere, you might get velium faster/slower (dunno) but the plat won't be quite as good (guesstimate) enough to cover the temper/scroll costs.

[mewkus]

Reminder - you can extract the velium from those velium weapons now.

[Astroshak]

Yes, you can. However, for farming CC for them, if you're concerned with the 20ish pp per combine cost, I would suggest not doing so. Breaking those weapons down instead of selling won't yield as much of a plat haul. Each time I've run through those caves, I've come out with just enough plat to cover the cost of the tempers and scrolls required for the amount of velium farmed.

Breaking down those weapons, instead of selling them, simultaneously increases the amount of velium farmed (which is good) and decreases the plat haul of that very same trip (bad if you're concerned about your bank account).

Thats why I said sell them

[Qaladar Bragollach]

You could always sell some of the extra velium in the bazaar. You'd still come out ahead. The velium you extract from a weapon has a much higher price than the small amount of plat you get from a merchant for the weapon. Selling the weapons to a vendor just seems silly.