Smithing Advice

[Keslin]

Presently I am at 238 in smithing and looking to return to both EQ and tradeskilling. With all the changes, what would be a good skill up path without an ungodly amount of farming?

[Roanne]

Theres no such thing as a good skillup path without a lot of farming in smithing. You can choose to either farm for yourself or pay bazaar markup to have others do it for you. There is also the benefit of Mistletoe Cutting Sickles until the trivial is lowered with the next patch but Im guessing if you arent already invested in this recipe it wont be of much use to you now because there are a ton of subcombines involved in each one.

About the "easiest" path for skillups now are making cultural templates. Im not going into specifics on it because the topic is too involved but if you browse the rest of the forum you'll see what Im talking about.

[Naxy]

I am in the same boat. Does anyone have any good hints about which threads to start reading to understand how the new cultural templates work?

Thanks

[Yther]

Abbreviated guide to new Cultural Smithing

The first thing to do is go to PoK and buy all the books you can from each of the a tradeskill armor historian merchant and the other merchants in the same area. Once purchaged, place the book in an inventory slot, right-click to bring up a window, and click scribe to learn the recipes.

Next step is figure out which items you need to skill up on. For smithing templates, all you need that is farmed is the Ore. Here is a basic guide on trivials.

Cobalt Ore - Toluene Coal - 348
Tungsten Ore - Lustrious Black coal - 310
Rhenium Ore - Black Nitrous Coal - 272
Indium Ore - Dark Brown Coal - 234
Rubicite Ore - Brown Nitrous Coal - 196
Fulginate Ore - Dull Black Coal - 158
Iridium Ore - Nitrous Coal - 124
Thalium Ore - Brown Coal - 90
Silvril Ore - Sulforous Coal - 66
Iron Ore - Natural Coal - 40
Tin Ore - Crude Coal - 20

The coal is purchased and is the only other variable part of the template recipes. You can purchase all vendor bought supplies from Kertak Hammertail in PoK also.

If you're planning on making armor also, the Thalium, Fulginate, Rhenium, and Cobalt templates are used for the various armors, and you will also need a farmed loam as well, which are: Alkaline, Malleable, Bonded, and Soluble, respectively. You will also need the quested books for the molds for armor, and patterns for symbols, and the combines to create them are the same as before.

The rest I think is pretty self-explanatory, if you go to a Forge (or your cultural forge for armors) to look at the recipes.

Yther Ore.

[Elyssanda]

I am in the same boat. Does anyone have any good hints about which threads to start reading to understand how the new cultural templates work?

Thanks

http://mboards.eqtraders.com/eq/showthread.php?t=30202
http://mboards.eqtraders.com/eq/show...418#post209418
http://mboards.eqtraders.com/eq/showthread.php?t=30072

Any of these threads should be exactly what you are looking for.

[Zaltak]

Also farm the sunshard ores and pebbles to make TBS armors.If your strapped for cash you can do the shadowscream armor quests.These are farming nightmares tho but cheep.:-)

[Zopharr]

Presently I am at 238 in smithing and looking to return to both EQ and tradeskilling. With all the changes, what would be a good skill up path without an ungodly amount of farming?

First recommendation - take a look at the Complete Guide to Tradeskilling 5.0 in the Tradeskill Guides and UI Mods forum.

Everything will require farming mobs or farming the bazaar.

To get to 267 I recommend Shadowscream. This is easy to farm – I was able to farm enough for 40+ combines an hour. Not sure how that compares with Rhenium farm rates – I passed Shadowscream before the new system - but either should work.

Past that, depends on race. If you are human, dwarf, ogre, elf, or dark elf you can make cultural bracers which use blue diamonds (usually readily available in bazaar for under 500pp each) and velium which can be easily farmed in Velk’s Labyrinth or Crystal caverns. That can get you to 300 and you can tribute the results from 2-8k depending on race, etc.

The other option is probably the rhenium (to 272)/Tungsten/Cobalt templates, interspersed with intricate/sacred cultural armor/augs using alkaline loam for the bonus skill-up chances if you find the loam cheap. (I wouldn’t recommends the soluble loam combines just to skill up – too pricey.) You can hunt the ore and loam in normal exp groups, or if you are in a hurry buy them in bazaar.

Lots of other options, but these provide a decent balance between (easy) farming and hitting up bazaar.

Garshok

[Yther]

Minor correction to Zopharr's reply:
Bonded Loam is for Intricate / Sacred. Alkaline is for Simple / Blessed.

[Lixivia]

making DoN cultrual symbols (in my opinion) is the best skill up path, you need to do the quest to get the patterns for the symbols, sacred is enough to get you to 300, go in buyer in the bazaar and you can buy ingrediants for less than the rediculous price people try and get away with. It will cost you money, but not nearly as much as it used to before these changes were made. or you can farm them but who really wantssss to do that.

you can still make all the templates you want, but the skill up rate on cultrual is awesome.

[Zopharr]

Minor correction to Zopharr's reply:
Bonded Loam is for Intricate / Sacred. Alkaline is for Simple / Blessed.

Yther - thanks. I'm no longer doing them so don't track the items all that well. <grin>

And I agree with Lixivia. Instead of going to bazaar to pick up stuff - whichever route you choose - set up a buyer. You'll pay far less the gougers charge in bazaar.

Garshok

[Naxy]

Thanks all of you for your help!