Frustration with skilling up

[Screambringer]

Hey all,

After my last skill up taking like 70 combines *Mostly Vazu and Magnetic) and now working on 30-40 sickles without a skill up...Guess my question is, am I having bad luck or do you have less chance to skill up on items that are far above your skill or does anything above your skill raise at the same rate?

I cannot afford to pay for 70 suckles per skill up, that is just insane. So the question would be, bad luck or should I not be tryign sickles at 227 skill? At this point I raid and do not have time to farm stuff for Shadowscream at this point so while sickles are and incredible pain, I do not need to farm.

Thanks for any advice,

SB

[Zaltak]

Are etheral metal sheets and rings trival at 227? I forget Also cleansing the BP for the Aid Grimal maybe not trival yet but you need some PoP zone access for this:-)

[Tokkyl]

You didn't mention your race so not sure about old world cultural or DoN master's as options???

But unless you have a ton of plat NO at 227 since Sickles are a 335 trivial, and you won't succeed as much if wanted to sell or tribute. Many forum posts already go in lengthy detail about skillups so suggest browse unless somebody wants to post more details here. But basically closer to your trivial level is better as you'll succeed more often - and you have a higher chance of skillup on a success than a failure.

As a comparison I was lucky enough to be a Karana worshiper for fletching and did Steel Guardian Arrows (trivial 335) from 202, and in the beginning it was between 40-120 combines (once went 187) without a skillup as I failed a ton in the beginning. Did get skillups on some of the failures, but this was actually cheapest route so just bit the bullet on the quantity of subcombines. Not comparing cost here - just what to expect if try sickles at this low of a skill.

So you have a choice of farming for components for stuff like shadowscreen, or buying/farming parts for cultural/DoN, bazu/magnetic as mentioned, or forking out the dough to vendor buy your skill to 300.

And finally just suck it up as the RNG can be finicky. Just have the Champagne ready for when you get 2 or 3 skillups in a row - enjoy the moment and take a screen shot for those longgggggg droughts

[Zolina]

I'd definitely recommend looking into your DoN cultural armor. There's a minimum 5% chance of skill-up on Master level armor. Also, make sure your stats are maxed (with Wunshi I can get 450 Str), they make a huge difference in skill-up rates.

[Lillanu]

I thought past 400 your skill didn't matter that much? Also, Expert's DoN cultural trivs at 222.

[Centuri]

Actually, at 227 skill, one skillup every 30 to 40 combines will be almost normal. This is the range where I'd start expecting a skillup.
More than 40, the RNG's just being mean to you but that happens sometimes too.

I actually counted skillups per combine when I was doing baking and my average between 200 and 250 came out to one skillup every 26.5 combines. It seemed like every 30 or so when I was doing the combines.
I've found this trend to be consistent across the tradeskills.

So, you're not being singled out by the RNG for some particular vendetta.
Now for the bad news... it gets worse.
Once you hit 285 or so, the skillups start going one every 50 or so if you're lucky. So, enjoy the -relatively- easy skillups.

[Sharrien]

If you have access to GoD materials, don't pass up making weapons. Large initial investment in plat but you can sell them back for nearly the same amount. Stick with h2h weapons since they only require one bar of enchanted velium each instead of two each for the other weapons. Pre-KT zones yield materials that can get you to 232. KT+ drops are needed for combines that trivial at 242 and above.

There is also acrylia armor. Requires farming windstones and essence of wind from greens for the temper but so does the stuff for shadowscream. Farming acrylia is a breeze and you even get xp and plat while doing it. You will make money on this skill up path if you farm your own material. Besides, killing grimlings is just good clean fun.

I don't like doing shadowscream for skill ups since killing things so far below my level puts me to sleep. However, others have enjoyed success there.

I hate MCS due to the numbers subs and how hard it is to store the parts and the finished blades. Huge money and time sink with little fun involved.

[KyrosKrane]

MCS is a decent skillup choice for bulk combines at skill 227, but realize that you'll fail a LOT on them, and failing reduces your chance at a skillup pretty significantly, depending on your prime stat. You're also looking at a cost of 350pp or so per attempt, and depending on your local server market, you may not even be able to sell successes to players.

Sadly, there are very few feasible bridge recipes, certainly nothing you could make in bulk. GoD weapons and Acrylia are the only things that spring to mind for all races. Some races will have cultural options, like Master's armor or old-world and blue diamond cultural, that can help ease the transition.

If you have Mastery 3, you could start making grandmaster armors as well. You'll fail quite a bit at skill 227, but around 235 or 240 you'll succeed enough that you can skill up profitably by selling your successes. Don't forget the augs either; they're another skillup opportunity and a chance to sell armor combos to your customers (armor plus aug).

[Ozadar]

Attribute Stats and Skilling Up?

I'd definitely recommend looking into your DoN cultural armor. There's a minimum 5% chance of skill-up on Master level armor. Also, make sure your stats are maxed (with Wunshi I can get 450 Str), they make a huge difference in skill-up rates.

I thought past 400 your skill didn't matter that much? Also, Expert's DoN cultural trivs at 222.

I'd really like a good answer to this. I was told after 315 your skill didn't matter. Thus, I have an INT of 345 and put raising it on hold.

Does your attribute skill (INT, WIS, STR) max out (at some point) your chances of improving skill ups? If so, what is the max the stat should be raised to?

Playing with the calculator does not show any change. If it does matter, back to raising it to 390ish.

Ozadar of the 70th Corpse
Tradeskiller of Zek
Member of 1450 Club

Baking - 202
Brewing - 250
Fletching - 200
Jewelry - 253
Pottery - 219
Smithing - 227
Tailoring - 202
Research - 200
Fishing - 200

(+5% to all skills) + Salvage 3

[KyrosKrane]

This is a bit tricky to answer without delving into some icky math. The upshot is that your chance to skill up is determined by two calculations, called passes. Only pass one looks at your prime stat, as follows:

%-chance to pass = ( (S * 10) / (Y * D) ) / 10.0

S is your prime stat, Y is the tradeskill difficulty (1-4), and D is 1 for a success or 2 for a fail (on the result of the combine).

Obviously, the chance to pass is capped at 100%, so you want the value of S that sets your chance to pass at or just over 100%. So, the values depend on the tradeskill difficulty and whether you succeed or fail. Here's the short version:

Difficulty = 1: Prime stat at 100 on success, 200 on fail. Effectively, no benefit from a prime stat over 200.

Difficulty = 2: Prime stat at 200 on success, 400 on fail. Effectively, no benefit from a prime stat over 400.

Difficulty = 3: Prime stat at 300 on success, 600 on fail. Effectively, no benefit from a prime stat over 600.

Difficulty = 4: Prime stat at 400 on success, 800 on fail. Effectively, no benefit from a prime stat over 800.

The net result is that with a tradeskill of difficulty 1 (like research) or 2 (like smithing or tailoring), you get no benefit from a prime stat over 400. For difficulty 3 or 4, you get some benefit from raising your prime stat as high as it will go.

[Ishwar]

The only way to ease the fustratin is to try tun understand the nature of a geometric distribution.

Most random event we encounter have a normal distribution. This means that they are most liekly to yield results near the average. The number of combines you need to get a skilup has a very different behavior. It is very likely to use fewer than average combine, but it also has a significant chance to use a lot more than average number of combines.

Normally it averages out over the 300 points of skill you gain, but along the way you should expect to see a few stretches of 50-100 (or more) combines without skillup, as wel as several back to back skillups. I think i did some calculations that there are 50% or so chance that at least one point skilling up 222-300 you will go 100 combines without a skillup.

[Kibber]

Shadowscream is the way to go. If you can 2 box some kind of AE nuker then I think its not too bad. Being a paladin myself without a 2box option, I did it the hard way *sigh* Bash every single mob on the head.

It does take time, but thats mostly in the beginning until you get a hang of the way the war works.

You'd want to save your sickle-time for when its the last option, i.e. when shadowscream gets trivial. Mostly due to the fact that its a big cash sink, as well as being a pain with all the ingredients.

Of course, it took me a year or so real time after finishing shadowscream before I even contemplated going back to that frigging zone.

So maybe its not so fun after all. I did have 100 combine skillups with shadowscream, but then again, you can also get 3 skillups in 5 combines. Its what makes it all so much fun!

Kibber, 300 smith

[Kaaba]

I skilled up to 232 on GoD weapons, I didn't feel like selling them in the bazaar so I mostly sold them back to a vendor or tributed them. I've been told that 232 with mod item + all the aas is pretty much max chance of success anyway, and I've yet to fail on a GM combine.

[Lillanu]

It's more around 250+5%+Mastery 3 I think.. how many combines have you done?

[andyhre]

I had a tremendous good experience with DoN cultural smithing, much much better than 30-40 per skill up in he range you are talking about. I used Master's level (not Expert as mentioned that stops at 222) all the way from 223 to 290.

I don't think you mentioned your race, but if your uses something with a decent farm rate, this is the way to go. As the skill up chance drops down to 4% or so, a +5 point boost means you skill up more than twice as fast, and that's a wrist-saver!