Smithing Advice needed?

[Cruento]

I have a question:

i'm level 57 frg/shd (maxed str/int) and did the easy and fast route to 222 (banded, fine plate, enchanted velium bits).

Now i'm wondering if i should go level to 70 or so, get the planar power aa's to raise my stats a little, get the salvage AA's and get the smithing mastery AA's before i try to raise my skill anymore. money isn't a problem to me, my mains have accumulated a lot of wealth over the years.

should i make mistletoe cutting sickles to 335, or should i make pure enchanted velium bars to about 300? i have about 100 stacks of celestial essence in my bank already, but the MCS use about 9 celestial essence per combine plus a lot of gems and has a lot of other subcombines, plus requires me to level a druid to 29 to enchant some emeralds, and the PEVBs only use one celestial essence and one enchanted velium bar (one of my mains is an enchanter and already has the spell "mass enchant velium", so that wouldn't be a problem". the thing is, 100kpp would only get me about 400 velium bars, and i dunno how many points of smithing skill i could expect to get with 400 combines at only 255 str.

i guess i have two questions, really.

1: should i level some more, raise my stats and get the mastery and salvage aa's before trying to increase my skill more?

2: which route should i go, MCS or PEVB?

i want to get to about 335 because there is nobody on Stromm making froglok shadowknight DoN cultural armor.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

You can't get to 335. 300 is the max.

Pure Enchanted Velium Bar uses 3 bars of enchanted velium, not 1.

You could do sickles all the way to 300 but you will go insane.

Might want to consider shadowscream armor.

[Astroshak]

You don't need BSM or Salvage to skill up. They're useful when you desperately want to succeed at an item, but for simple skilling they're not required. Helpful, for you tend to get more skillups on a success than a failure, but seeing as how you got to 222 without them I'd not worry. Levelling, on the other hand, can help you out a bit - and is certainly a viable means of increasing your skilling rate by increasing your stat caps (and hopfully your stats with them).

I'd suggest making MCS. Get brewing and pottery up to near (but not over) 200 and then find a druid to imbue your emeralds. You're gonna want to imbue a ton of the things (figure one full ten slot toolbox per 60ish MCS combine session) and it will take forever on a 29 druid, even if decently twinked (my 30 druid has about 1500 mana IIRC, and the mass imbue costs 600 per cast). Best thing to do, IMO, is to prep a ten slot container's worth of emeralds, then make mistletoe tempers to match the number of dusts you made successfully, then get CE's to match, then go to abysmal sea because the zone's fairly quiet.

Just bear in mind though, that 300 is as high as you can go. Despite items having higher trivials (386 for Grandmaster BP/leggings) you won't get over 300. Also, if you DO choose to get the AA's, then all you really need is roughly a 260 modded skill to achieve the best success rate you'll see on the GM armor, due to failure rate floors.

(For those who care, and I'd love to see someone correct me if I'm wrong, I don't believe that success is checked, I have come to believe that failure is checked - and thus success rates can be manipulated by merely adjusting that recipe's failure rate floor; floor being the opposite of a ceiling, the lowest it can go. Floor the failure rate at 25 percent, and no one will ever achieve, barring the fickleness of the RNG, a greater than 75 percent success rate over time; floor the failure rate at 35 percent for GM armor (something I read on the EQlive boards suggests 65ish is the best success rate one can expect to see on GM armor) and you'll have a 65 percent success rate.)

[Qaladar Bragollach]

(For those who care, and I'd love to see someone correct me if I'm wrong, I don't believe that success is checked, I have come to believe that failure is checked - and thus success rates can be manipulated by merely adjusting that recipe's failure rate floor;

What's the difference? The formulae that Tanker revealed returned chance of success as a percent so I tend to think thats probably the way it is in code. However, mathematically, it makes absolutely no difference one way or the other, except for possibly a very minor discrepancy due to round off going in the opposite way.

[Ishwar]

I have a question:

i guess i have two questions, really.

1: should i level some more, raise my stats and get the mastery and salvage aa's before trying to increase my skill more?

2: which route should i go, MCS or PEVB?

i want to get to about 335 because there is nobody on Stromm making froglok shadowknight DoN cultural armor.

Getting the AAs wont in reality change you skill up rate all that much. Id not worry.

If you can afford the PEVB then go for it. Lat i heard someone do it the estimate was 1.5M pp. The is pretty much the expected: 80 point * 20 attempts per skill * 800 pp. If 1.5M pp sounds like a lot, you should stick to sickles.

[Sharrien]

Mastery AA perhaps won't help all that much if all you are looking to do is skill up, but Salvage is a good investment, especially if you are going to do any combines like MSC that triv significantly higher than your skill.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

Mastery AA perhaps won't help all that much if all you are looking to do is skill up, but Salvage is a good investment, especially if you are going to do any combines like MSC that triv significantly higher than your skill.

Actually, thats precisely the situation under which mastery WOULD be helpful.

However, if you're just aiming to throw money at mass quantities sickles or PEVB, I wouldn't waste the AA.

[skdog]

id agree with Sharrien above.

Get salvage... do not get your master aa's while u are trying to bang out skill ups, ESPECIALLY if money isn't a problem

it is the best thing when u fail a combine, Get a skill up on it , and salvage the hard item back. that is the best possible outcome for purely skill up'ing and not worry'n about selling back the item to vendor for pp.

so buy salvage, do your tradeskill skill-up grindage..then buy master aa's..then make your wanted item that u are skilling up for.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

so buy salvage, do your tradeskill skill-up grindage..then buy master aa's..then make your wanted item that u are skilling up for.

This doesn't make any sense. If you're going to buy mastery, buy it now while it helps a small amount. If you're not going to buy it during the skillup period then don't buy it at all. It won't do ANYTHING for you later.

Failing is only good under 1 special circumstance... that being that an item that is very expensive and/or compared to the rest of the recipe is automatically returned on failure. This only applies to Solstice Robes. It surely does NOT apply to sickles or PEVB's.

Salvage, as others have noted, is fantastic. It's ALWAYS helpful, works on ALL tradeskills, and has no diminishing returns. Anyone who's going to do any kind if serious tradeskilling should certainly buy it ASAP.

[Maevenniia]

Get Salvage so you can save some plat when you salvage components.

If you want to try some grandmaster DoN cultural items anytime before reaching 300, get the smithing mastery AAs.

[Astroshak]

What's the difference? The formulae that Tanker revealed returned chance of success as a percent so I tend to think thats probably the way it is in code. However, mathematically, it makes absolutely no difference one way or the other, except for possibly a very minor discrepancy due to round off going in the opposite way.

I know that this is a digression from the topic, but ...

The main reason I have come to think this is the way the tradeskill Mastery AA's work. They cut the pre-capped failure rate in half. They're not adding X percentage to the success rate, they're cutting the failure rate, and that failure rate is then subject to the 5 percent minimum success chance and 95 percent maximum (unless over the triv) success chance.

Lets say, using made up numbers to illustrate the point, you are attempting a 400 triv combine and have 100 skill. What're the odds that you're going to succeed at the combine? Odds are you won't, and you've got about a 5 percent chance of success. You likely have about a 300 percent chance of failure - which is then subject to the 95 percent cap, which gives you the 5 percent chance of success. If you have the Mastery AA maxed out, that 300 percent chance of failure is cut in half to 150 percent, and then capped at 95 percent, still giving you a 5 percent chance of success. Now lets say you skill up to 300, and have a 40 percent (without AA) chance of failure at that 400 triv combine. That is less than 95 so is unaffected by that cap. The Mastery AA will cut that failure chance in half, to 20 percent. You just went from a 60 percent chance of success to an 80 percent chance of success just from the AA's, or a gain of 33 percent (of the 60) - a number that has nothing to do with 50 percent in and of itself.

Such calculations are relatively simple (if you know the numbers) when approached from the failure rate side of the equation. They're impossible to determine without going over to the failure rate side. That is why I have come to believe that the game checks for failure instead of checking for success. The end result is mathematically the same, 40 percent chance of failure is a 60 percent chance of success, but only due to the caps.

Calculations made with extremely triv combines would work in the same manner - only instead of being hit by a 95 percent failure rate cap, they'd be hit by a 5 percent (and decreasing depending on just how triv the combine is) floor. You have a skill of 300 and are attempting a 40 triv combine. Your chance of failure would be in the negatives somewhere, hitting the floor at 0 percent (due to being more than 200 skill over triv). The mastery AA in this case would be irrelevant, because no matter what it did (would it take the negative number and double it, or cut it in half? who cares?) the end result would still be subject to the skill adjusted floor.

[Cruento]

Wow, thanks for the responses, guys!

I neglected to notice the PEVBs were *3* bars pere combine. that's a bit expensive for me. looks like i'll be leveling my druid to 27 and enchanting a crapload of emeralds. le sigh. i'll get salvage and planar power right away though, and wait to get mastery AAs, i guess.

MCS's, here i come! well, after leveling!

[Qaladar Bragollach]

Take a look at the first post in this thread and you'll see exactly how its done... from the success side.

http://mboards.eqtraders.com/eq/show...ghlight=tanker

Mathematically the same, but using all adds and subtracts and a single multiply. Your method would use division which takes a lot of processor time relatively.

[KyrosKrane]

Actually, that post is slightly out of date. Tanker posted some clarifications later that show you do NOT have a 50% chance at zero skill and mastery 3. The site calculator takes all that into account, and it's a better guide to the success rates. I think I posted a Visual Basic function that can calculate the rates as well, but I don't remember if I did that before or after I got Tanker's clarifications incorporated.

[nimchip]

I'd suggest taking the (far cheaper!) route of buying raw PALE nihilite in the baz (spend less than 100 plat per, if possible) and aligned ore (not the shimmering stuff, again, don't pay more'n 100 plat per) and make the 232 triv thing.

Shimmering smithing materials, imo, aren't cost effective. You're better off making Mistletoe Cutting Sickles with how much shimmering stuff costs. Heck, if you loot shimmering stuff, you're better off selling it in the baz and using the plat revenue for making MCS.

What's the difference between those two? I just checked the recipes and they exactly the same aside from the shimmering / pale difference. Am I missing something?

Also, im at 227. Not sure if i should start doing Yttrium for DoN master's to skill up or what. Pale velium inlaid cestus seems reasonable but a tad expensive seeing it requires an enchanted velium bar. Any suggestions?