Best way to max out the final trophy?

[Zolina]

I have about 120 cobalt ore, 8 soluble loam, 30 titanium ore, and 20 tantalum ore. What's the best way to increase the % on my 6/7 trophy with those materials? Are the templates as good for increasing the % as finished armor? Do higher trivials increase the % faster?

[Aldier]

Trophies gain experience and evolve only on non-trivial combines. The amount of experience is equal to the trivial of the combine, up to 350, and anything above 350 is rounded down to 350. There are no evolving bonus for doing armor/symbols that is only on the skill up.

If you do the right cobalt template (not the bracer) then you get the same amount of experience for your trophy for each success. Then the only thing you need to look at is the titanium and tantalum may give you slower results than the cobalt because of the higher trivials are not as good a success rate.

[Zolina]

You're saying the cobalt bracer template isn't good for increasing the trophy? Why not?

[Twistagain]

I think he is saying that every piece except the ones that are trivial at 348 (wrist, face, neck) will give the same amount (350 XP.)

I'd do the Cobalt Plate Gauntlet Template. It only requires 1 ore instead of 2, but is trivial at 350. It's only 2 XP more than the bracers, though...so not a big difference at all. You should have the same rate of success on the bracers or gauntlets, too...assuming you are at 300 with a 12% mod.

Then, you can use the successes with the soluble loam to make the armor (trivial 360). You should succeed 95% of the time, so you'd have about 114 templates for your 8 loams.

Then, Titanium Plate Bracer Template (trivial 386).

Then, Tantalum Plate Bracer Template (trivial 424).

The best you could do would be 178 successes at 350+ trivial. You'd probably get about 23-24%. Assuming average success rate, you'd probably get about 22%.

Edit: Forgot to mention that you could use chain templates/armor in place of plate. I just used plate as my example.

[Aldier]

You're saying the cobalt bracer template isn't good for increasing the trophy? Why not?

Was commenting on the fact that the lowest trivial (bracer) templates for Cobalt are 348.

There would be a small difference between doing those adn doing a 350+ trivial. Thinking about it more, I doubt it would be a negligible difference and maybe a combine or 2.

But you can use 1 cobalt ore in some 350+ trivial templates if you choose a different slot other than bracer. To maximize your trophy evolution you want 350+ trivial combines that you have max chance of success on (depends on mastery aa as to how high you can go and still be at the 95% success rate).

Estimate about 700 successful smithing combines of 350+ to evolve from level 6 of 7 to trophy. That is about what I had. So if you do Tantalum templates, your success rate is lower (success in the 80s instead of 90s with cobalt/titanium) and it will take more combines to max trophy.

Also, would recommend chain over plate as they stack better.

[Zolina]

Thanks for the info guys, one last question: any decent trophy skill-up paths that don't use cultural armor drops?

[Kcalehc]

If you're in to spending forever farming components, the old 'Blue Diamond' cultural stuff trivialises at 355, so is also a good trophy xp getter per combine; although how easy it is to get teh components depends on your race.

[Zopharr]

If you're in to spending forever farming components, the old 'Blue Diamond' cultural stuff trivialises at 355, so is also a good trophy xp getter per combine; although how easy it is to get teh components depends on your race.

The Blue Diamond cultural is generally decent tribute, though.

If you are getting your ore through farming, that's probably the way to go.

If you are buying ore just to skill up the trophy, though, then you may want to look at the components for blue diamond cultural for your race if it has any. For the price of a cobalt or titanium ore that you'll just essentially be tossing away, you may be able to get an item that tributes 3-5k instead. (Varies by race/religion.)

Probably a mix is the way to go - you usually can't find stuff for 80 blue diamond cultural combines in bazaar all at once, but it can be a nice bonus if you are willing to do the extra steps.

[Zyeil]

I just finally evolved my trophy last weekend (Kept thinking it would naturally level while making things, but after a year+ and 22% decided to force it to hehe).

On average 1% gain was from 8 (successful) Cobalt Glove Templates... Like Aldier says above - Had it been 0 it would have taken 700-800 successes to evolve! (Strange thing about that, I did have runs of 5-5-4-8-8 so I don't know if it was buggy or what).The tailoring trophy averaged 1% for every 4 successful combines, seems a bit out of line since sickles trivial were lowered. But in the end, worth the effort