Engraved Royal velium armor

[saxi]

Could someone clear up the how-to's on this armor? Basically, I just began to gather the components together for this armor and I came to a road block. Soft fur padding! I have been asking about this and apparently I need a velium hound fur + silver thread. Problem is... aren't these items no-drop? Don't tell me I have to become a skill Level 176 (when this becomes trivial) tailor in order to finish my combine on this stuff.
Another question, I have sunk a little over 10k into this skill to get me up to 180. What is a good money maker with my skill level to recoup some of my investment. Please everyone throw out some suggestions. No one wears plate or banded anymore so trying to peddle this stuff isn't worth the time. I need help! This is why I began researching the royal velium armor, I thought I could start making money.
Thanks in advance, Saxi of EMARR

[Phorge]

As far as I understand it, you need the following for Engraved Royal Velium:

about 180 Smithing
about 180 Tailoring
about 180 Jewelcrafting

The original Velium armor is for the Shawl Quest and thus, No Drop. The addition of Jeweling makes it droppable.

As to raising your smithing beyond 180, max Fine Plate BP's to 188, then God help your soul

[Zhorn]

To start with:
Velium hound fur and silver thread are not no drop.
The soft fur padding IS no drop.
This means you don't have to farm the furs yourself

I've sold quit a few pairs of Engraved Velium Legs (for 4500pp-ish each) and I regularly see BP's selling for around the 4500pp mark (on The Tribunal).
Nothing else except maybe gauntlets is worth making (stats wise) unless someone wants a FULL set for their twink for completeness.

It costs me probably 1kpp + time pharming Genoids to make each piece.
(I buy the fur, velium blocks etc in bazaar).

You don't need tailoring 180. The padding IS trival at 176 but I happily combined 16/16 paddings at 158 skill + Geerlok.
I even got 4 skill ups $$$

You may fail a few combines at 158 but if you pharm the fur yourself or buy cheap ones in bazaar (cheap = 700pp on my server) its no so bad.

If you take the slow, cheap method of JCing your sell-back is not too bad and you can get skill 180 or so for 3k-ish (I think).

Definitely get a tailoring, smithing and jewelcraft geerlok (and remember to EQUIP them when doing the armor combines!).

So max out tailoing as far as Wu's takes you (158) then get JC to 190 and go pharm Shimmering Genoids and pray Diamonds drop....

Zhorn - Prophet on the Tribunal
Largeo - 63rd Assassin (every shaman needs a rogue pet!).

[Meirril]

That covers the basics of making Engraved Velium Armor. It also is going to require positive coldain faction to get the engraving tool in the first place (note: you don't have to have done any of the previous shawl quest, but if you have the skill to do this why haven't you?)

As for making plat on 180 or so smithing...the only Acrylia Plate that I see selling is the BP and leggings. They sell from 1500~2k on Fennin Ro. Generaly people make the BP and for some unknown reason avoid making the leggings. My leggings sell just fine thank you, but I'd suspect that if 2 other smiths started making them we'd flood the market.

Also, if you happen to be able to easily obtain the drops for cultural smithing and your race has old cultural smithable items they would be worth attempting. While the old HE breastplate is surpased by many other BPs, it has a very distinctive blue/green tint to it, and some people like to look diffrent. Personaly I only make these for friends but if I was to sell these I would charge about 500pp more than other armors of similar quality (about 3k for the bp as its similar to froglok chain) due to rarity and basic waste of supplies I'll need later to make the new cultural HE armor.

As far as other recipies to make a few plat: try selling skinning knives, dairy spoons, and other smithed items needed by other players. For a skinning knife you might be able to get around 50pp as each person only needs ONE ever. For something like studs, you could probably charge 5pp each (for more exotic materials you could charge significantly more proffit but don't expect to sell these right away.). One of the main ways to make money at any trade skill is to offer for sale subcombines for other trade skills that require relativly high ammounts of your skill (i.e. worked silver chain for solstice robe) or raw materials that you arn't using...

just a little food for though

[myrdale]

velium hound furs

These are dropable and sell in the bazaar for 200pp t0 1kish on Druzzil Ro.
I really wouldnt worry about getting tailoring past 158 JUST to make the padding, even though i am one of those twisted individuals who hopes to have 250 in it one day.

But at skill 158 with +5% gearlock. This is about how it went...
Failed first 3 times
Success the next 12 times or so. Even gat 2 skill ups out of it.
Hope that helps. The soft padding you make is no drop though.