Help w/ High Elf Smithing (188 and beyond!!!)

[Xpolgara]

Pheww, finally made it to 188 with Fine Plate. Now...
I've seen a lot of horror stories with other recipes go get to 200+

I have several questions.

1. The higher up I get, it seems like getting skill ups get farther and farther apart. Ok, I can accept that, but is there any other way to cut that down? maybe +smithing kill items?

2- I would love to do the High Elf cultural armor for skill ups. The only thing holding me back is the lack of Morning Dew ~!! Yes forage, but High elves, thats a big negative! Anyone know which ground spawns have a chance of dropping it in Lfay ~??

3- Any other tips from you GM Smithers? =)


Thanks for any and all help~!!

[Sinuuyanea Nocturne]

1) Boost your int/wis/str, whichever is higher. Those will help your skillup rate

2) As mentioned in http://mboards.eqtraders.com/phpBB2/...pic.php?t=2396The Dead Horse</a>:

Morning Dew--Is now a mob drop.

3) Lots and lots of asprin

[rassy fleetfoot]

high elf cultural isnt exactly the prized way of working skill. I am mixing it in a bit with a judicious amount of shadowscream to make some cash, but simply because you need a TON of morning dew its just not worth it to try to skill up solely on that.

[ArrakeenNaedShoj]

Does anyone know how to search?

From a highly similar thread, a page or two back...

I am a 54 Hielf cleric whose skill has been at 193 since just before the June 8th patch that lowered them. I have done over 300 non-trivial combines since then with no skill-ups.(mostly bad luck with the RNG)

You know your options pretty much boil down to 3, which I will explore seperately as advice.

1. Cultural.
Unless you have a pocket enchanter, and a pocket forager, this really isn't a good skillup path for clerics. At 49, I could easily farm the EoM in Mistmoore, and the Swirling Mists in steamfont both in ample qualities to make this a valid skillup method. It isn't too expensive a method for the materials, and I could actually earn a little cash in MM while I farmed. Unfortunately, because you need a minimum of 3.5 Morning Dews per peice, you will never be able to forage enough of them. Even if you do, if you are like me, you will be forced to spend upwards of 1000pp just to attract the attention of a 49+ enchanter to come enchant bricks for you. To make this a 'quick' skillup method you will need to do them at minum of blocks of 50, which may take as long as an hour for the chanter to do, depending on level. No 49+ chanter wants to sit down for an hour doing the most boring thing possible when they have soooooooooo much else they can be doing.

2. Shadowscream.
This is an extremely viable method for you. It is easily farmable if you are careful, and extremely cheap. The only downside to this method (if you consider it one) is that in order to make it truly 'quick' you will need to farm your wailing and shrieking substances in blocks greater than 100 (or you will waste more time than it's worth for most people reseting the war, or trying to catch it, running back and forth for each set of components etc.) This is something you are easily capable of doing. But if you don't have the time to do it all in one or two sittings for each set of 100, it's EXTREMELY frustrating. If you like me, only play for an hour or so at a time 2 or 3 days a week, it makes this method worthless.

3. Sickles.
People talk about this being extremely expensive. And it is. It isn't just expensive either, it's a pain in the wrist. You will have to make I believe 9 trivial subcombines for every 1 non-trivial combine. Talk about long-winded. However, since you are a cleric, you can do this entire process entirely by enteracting with the server. All your supplies will be vendor bought, and the only thing you have to worry about is farming cash. If you can find ways to farm cash while farming XP or faction or whatever, all the better. But this isn't a method to just jump into. If you cannot farm more than 1000pp an hour or so, or if you cannot save up a good 200kpp to blow all at once(total cost from 188 to 250, minus sales to players is estimated between 200k and 600kpp) then this probably isn't the method for you.

So my advice to you, as one Highelf cleric to another. Is to explore your options. If you have, or are close to a high to midlevel enchanter, and can find a friend to help kill brownie guards for xp/morning dew, or don't mind leveling up a woodie druid, Old cultural may be your route. If you can bring yourself to farm 400 or 500 of the same peice, you should probably go with shadowscream (overall the easiest choice for most). If you would rather XP over farming greens, and willing to try and hang out at cash camps in places like Sebilis, DN, SG, or whatever, you might be better off just saving up and going for sickles.

[Cavel]

Brownies in Lfay brownie village now drop Morning dew as a rare drop... I suggest making a WoodElf Ranger and foraging with that character in Lesser Fay, or if you are in a guild ask them to keep an eye out.

One method I used when I was in a smaller, younger guild was asking druids to bring me 2x the materials needed for the chain tunic and belt (By far the best sellers I had). If you are successfull on the first attempt you have some extra for yourself, if not then you have another attempt for them. Most people accept this as a standard thing when you ask someone to do a combine.

Good Luck!

[Morfien]

I too am a High Elven smith and yes the Morning Dew is the major stumbling ingredient. I can easly farm the Swirling Mist and can generally buy them for 30 pp or less just by continually keeping an eye out for a bargin at the bazaar. For Essence of Moonlight, at level 39 I can't really farm the stuff myself, but I can get help and at least half the time there is a high level person/group slaughtering the castle for an epic drop. I always ask if they are looting the Essence and that I will buy it from them if the prices are reasonable. Most of the time they are just letting the corpses rot and after I ask, they start looting it. I have yet to actually pay andy them for any of it as they generally just give it to me when they are done. I guess I have been lucky because everyone in MM I have contacted like this are tradeskillers themselves and understand the hassle of farming.

Anyway, you can kill the Fairies in LFay as well as the Brownies. But drops are very rare. If I get 2 or 3 Morning Dew in an evening (usually about 2 hours of slaughter), Then I feel lucky. So, I collect what I can, keep letting friends and guildies know I will buy any from them (yeh, like they ever charge me) and again look for bargins in the Bazaar.

I have found that by collecting enough to do a run of 10 to 20 Elven culteral (I can only do chain right now since I am at skill 137), I will get a skill up or two or three, etc. But I do get a decent selling product that is funding my Fine Plate runs. I am not sure how well this will work after Fine Plate is trivial as one of the best skill up paths seems to be the Shadow Scream and all components are farmable only, but maybe you can sell enough High Elven cultural to finance other paths such as Sickles or Acrylia.

Morfien
High Magician of Tunare
Ayonae Ro Server

[Xpolgara]

cool, all your input is sinking in =)

I do have a lvl 51 enchanter that is willing to enchant blocks of mithril ore for me, no charge!
Swirling Mist, Essence of Moonlight, those are all easy to get, via bazaar or farming them.

Morning Dew is only holding me back =/

I think we should all petition to have MD dropped more, or make it a more common drop~!!

Thanks all for your imput

[Cavel]

I have feedbacked, buged, emailed and generally made any verbal/writen complaints about Morning Dew and HIE smithing that I can. Here were my suggestions:
Make the sub-combines (large bricks to blocks, blocks to sheets etc) use elven wine.
Make a "reverse brewing" process for elven wine to allow us to extract the Morning dew (ala the drops of Merury from mercural ore in poison making).

All of my suggestions have gotten me only form letters back thanking me for taking time to give input.

[kiztent]

I do have a lvl 51 enchanter that is willing to enchant blocks of mithril ore for me, no charge!

If you are making old style cultural, be aware that each enchant takes 325 mana and you need 4, 7 and 10 enchants for 1, 2 and 3 sheet items (and will have a jointing left over). Dunno how this compares, but my enchanter weighs in just under 2700 mana at level 51, so I run about 8 enchants per mana bar. And you know that even with clarity, regenning a mana bar isn't a quick thing.

Enchanting ore for old cultural is a HUGE time sink, especially if you are doing skill runs.

[Mubar]

kk
I must be going nuts or has anyone else noticed that Mobs in SF for Swirling mist are not spawning the last few days.

Nm saw 2 tonight

[Marteeny]

I have feedbacked, buged, emailed and generally made any verbal/writen complaints about Morning Dew and HIE smithing that I can. Here were my suggestions:
Make the sub-combines (large bricks to blocks, blocks to sheets etc) use elven wine.

I couldn't disagree more. I am also a HE smith. Yes, it does suck to have a bottleneck, like morning dew, in tradeskills. You have to realize that all cultural has a bottleneck.

Be careful what you ask for. Maybe if they increase the availability of morning dew, they will decrease the trivial point even more. Cultural was not put in the game to give an easy path to get closer to 250, just as an alternative.

Flame if you want, but I don't want it to be very easy to GM smithing. The easier it is, the more GM's there will be. I still want to be able to make a profit when I get there.

Marteeny
46 Enchanter
Vazaelle

[Angelsyn]

I have feedbacked, buged, emailed and generally made any verbal/writen complaints about Morning Dew and HIE smithing that I can. Here were my suggestions:
Make the sub-combines (large bricks to blocks, blocks to sheets etc) use elven wine.

I couldn't disagree more. I am also a HE smith. Yes, it does suck to have a bottleneck, like morning dew, in tradeskills. You have to realize that all cultural has a bottleneck.

Be careful what you ask for. Maybe if they increase the availability of morning dew, they will decrease the trivial point even more. Cultural was not put in the game to give an easy path to get closer to 250, just as an alternative.

Flame if you want, but I don't want it to be very easy to GM smithing. The easier it is, the more GM's there will be. I still want to be able to make a profit when I get there.

Marteeny
46 Enchanter
Vazaelle

On Xegony, it's nearly impossible for a GM High Elven Smith to "make a profit". Simply put, there are at least half a dozen (more likely a dozen) High Elven Smiths with skill 240 or more.

Acrylia Plate (and Chain... the tunics &amp; leggings aren't trivial to me yet) doesn't sell and Mithril Plate hardly budges either.

Given the sheer quantity of armour I end up producing on a skill run, I know that I'll never "make a profit" even when I finally do get to the point of making Full Mithril.

I just want to make it for myself.

[Xpolgara]

Make a "reverse brewing" process for elven wine to allow us to extract the Morning dew (ala the drops of Merury from mercural ore in poison making).

Cavel, that would be something I would like to see put in. Not sure for Elven Wine, but for anything. Unless that's already been implemented?


Right now, I'm trying to lvl a Necro as fast as I can to the mid-30s so I can go farm Morning Dew in Lfay.

But I'll probably be doing that for months and months to get enough MD for skill ups =)

Enchanter doesn't seem to mind enchanting the bricks for me, yes it does take a while for him, but hey, we're all addicts, he doesn't mind =)

As for going the ShadowScreen Steel way... HELL NO !!!
As a Cleric, we just can't go farm that stuff like other classes. Yea, sure, if maybe I'm super uber and stuff. But I'm just a regular EQ player.
The road to GM smith is hard, and will do my best to get there =)

Thanks again for all your input!

[Sarcazzm]

I have found that by collecting enough to do a run of 10 to 20 Elven culteral (I can only do chain right now since I am at skill 137), I will get a skill up or two or three, etc.

Hmm well troll cutural starts at 220ish for half decent success rates so maybe im wrong, but dude there are way better ways to get your skill up to 158. Find a spot to farm fine steel weapons and convert it to ore>hq rings>ornate chain. I pulled a profit selling it back to vendors, and in a sitting of 10-15 combines, i'd skill at least 2 or 3 times. This meathod requires a little bit of farming, as 3 fine steel whatever = 2 hq rings, and a little plat for patterns but youll get the money back almost in full, and during the gold ornate youll pull a profit if your cha is decent (mine was 35).

Just my 2 cp. will be faster and cheaper than farming rare drops or paying bazaar prices.

[Arum EQ]

What I have done

What I have done in pursuit of Smithing Grandmastery can be found on the Lanys tradeskill thread

link

I am a Paladin, so have to find my enchanting and imbuing, not to mention SOWing and teleporting (back in the day).

I would, without reservation, recommend Shadowscream armor as the path to follow. You just need to abandon gaining levels or loot for a few months. The hollowshade war is the way to go, especially if the wolves are up. You can always get a few Owlbear substances in the Paludal Caverns. I would say my experience is 10 substances an hour at the Hollowshade islands. As far as swirling shadows, the lesser shades are the easiest, just run around and gather 20 swirling shadows per hour. So you could gather the necessary components for 20 combines in 6 hours.

That is the worst case, if you have partner(s), especially an AoE friend, you can get maybe 25 substances an hour, and maybe up the rate a bit on the swirling shadows (25 per hour).

Net result
Solo 20 combines in 6 hours yielding average of 1 skill point.
AoE 50 combines in 8 hours yielding average of 2 skill points.

My memory and math might be a bit shaky. But it is possible to get 1 skill point in about 4 hours of work. Note, you need to hoard substances when the Wolves and Owlbears are up. Get as many as you can until the zone or server reset. Then hope the other animal wins the war and gather the other substance. Get 200 or more of each, then worry about getting 100 swirling shadows, do 50 combines, and then celebrate by getting some xp.
Rinse-repeat.

In the mid 220s, I started doing BD armor and also crafted my Trophy. Acrylia and Black Acrylia are not viable in my eyes. I do them as materials make themselves available. I very much enjoy Tae Ew combines, and have had success with them.

My story is at the other end of that link. I see the end of the tunnel (240 being the end for me). Leave a note, or just use the data for computations. All I ask is that you don't tell me how many hours (weeks) of time it looks like I spent on this path.

Arum Arelius
Paladin of Tunare 58
Humble Smith 237
&lt;Lanys T'vyl>