Smithing progress advice

[Cigarskunk]

OK, my masocistic tendencies have kicked in again and I'm looking to get my smithing fully maxed. I'm a 50 (soon to be 51) troll SK and have a friend with the same discription who's willing to help.

What's the most efficient way for us to go once fine plate has been cleared?

Where are the recomended areas to hunt and what should we expect in the way of farming to combining ratios? (ie/four hours of farming area X will give you 20 combines)

[Daeneb]

Efficient how... fastest time to do it or least cost involved? As the FAQ says, its a tough question .

If you have an unlimited bankroll, by all means do Sickles. If you don't, your best bet is to do Shadowscream. There is a thread a couple down from this one all about the joys of shadowscream.

-Daeneb

[Zeralenn]

And he does mean UNLIMITED bankroll -- as well as a huge tolerance for doing subcombines.

Each of the three pieces of a single sickle requires 1 blessed dust of Tunare (imbued emerald + celestial essence + acid), 1 mistletoe temper (mistletoe + celestial essence + elven wine) + sheet metal (required combine if you can't buy it -- you can only buy it in certain places)) + mold + yet another celestial essence.

Gems are emeralds (13pp) or sapphires (105pp) or rubies (113pp). For 20 sickle combines, you are going to need a total of 4 stacks of emeralds (260pp per stack, times 4 stacks equals 1040pp -- 1 stack for sickle blades and 3 stacks for the Blessed Dust of Tunare for each of the three pieces), 1 stack of sapphires (2100pp) and 1 stack of rubies (2260pp). Your gem budget ALONE is about 5,400pp for ONE stack, not including the molds, sheet metal, temper, and the stacks, stacks, and more stacks of celestial essence.

I got 1 skillup making 1 stack. If you could get that many, your gem budget just to get you from 188 to 200 would cost over 64,000pp.

That's only the gems.

And you don't succeed that many times.

If you have it, great.

...Zera

[kiztent]

Shadowscream is misleading in terms of combines/hour because it can take a while to get HSM reset (5 hours for Menion yesterday). So if the right mob is up, you farm 1-2 stack/hour. If the right mob isn't up, you farm 0 stack/hour for as many as 5 hours, then 1-2 stack/hour after that.

You need drops from 2 different mobs (with 2 different resets).

So if you want drops/time spent efficiency, park in HSM and check the war status daily and farm when it's correct.

If you drops/elapsed time efficiency, block out 5 hours to get the war reset then 10 hours to farm (or a weekend online for 1k of each substance - which is best since it minimizes the resetting time as a percent of farming time).

If you don't want to block out 5 hours to reset the zone, and you don't want to check HSM every night, you can do sickles or complain about windstone drop rates (note I do NOT suggest skilling up on acrylia).

Sickles cost ~300pp a combine with best prices, PLUS imbue costs. I've done 2/10, 0/10, 0/8, 3/18 and 0/14 on sickles runs in the 195-197 range. They still sell for 3k on SH. You will fail subcombines at 188 skill (which is why the runs aren't in even 10s).

You make the call.

[Zhorn]

Also note that the sickle market can be quite fickle.

It seemed ok last week on The Tribunal when they were around 1800pp.
I did my first run of 20 sickles at 205 skill and made 8! (OMG)
They all sold quite fast.
Note that I got lucky with those... next run I got 4 sickles... then zero... then 6... then 3.... thanks RNG!

This week however I have noticed a few other peeps must have decided to skill up as there are LOTS of sickles for sale in bazaar and there is some vicious under-cutting going down.

Every hour or so I check my Trader someone has under cut the next lowest seller by 100 plat. This sets off a chain reaction.
Last night I had mine set down to 1400 (one guy had 26 sickles for 1500pp).
This morning they had dropped to 1300.

So I dropped mine to 1kpp (which is barely break even point at my skill).

My hope is that even if I wear a loss of 1kpp per 20 sickle attempts... that my 80kpp savings wont run out before I get my last 26 points to hit the magic 240 skill (+geerlok = max modified skill).

However, offloading the occasional Tae Ew shield for 14kpp will offset this $$

[Menion]

On the other hand if you have the patience, an iron wrist and do not care if you loose your sanity you can actually break even and hell even make small amounts of cash doing Shadow Scream. Be warned, this path is NOT for the faint of heart.

I started smithing 2 weeks ago with 28k in my bank account. I started with 21 skill...(bought from my trainer) then I did banded until 115, then cultural fletching kits to 163 (only availible to wood-elves you may be forced to go the Ornate chain or some type of lower cultural to bridge the gap between banded and Fine Steel). Then I went from 163-183 on Fine steel, this cost me around 2k to get this high farming all of my own pelts.

Before you can even start to make Shadow Scream armor you have to do a PITA quest in Shar Val for a special Hammer / Anvil. The quest really isnt hard, but the 1st parts drops are kinda on the RARE side.

Presidents day weekend I spent in Hollowshade Moor farming substances, I ended up farming wailing/shrieking substances most of those 3 days. I came out on Monday with 1000 of each shrieking / wailing substances. The substances are really the easy part of Shadow Scream, the hard part is the fact that you need 2 NO RENT swirling shadows per one combine of shadow scream armor. Hunting swirling shadows in Twilight Sea, you come out with a 10 slot Backpack roughly every 6+ hours. That is 100 combines of shadow scream armor. Oh, did I mention that the guys that drop the shadows proc a 150 pt life tap? Wait till you get 3 on you and they start procing like crazy.

Of the 2000 substances I farmed I probably made around 950ish Humming orbs.(failures on the orbs just grate on my nerves) and I ended up going from 183-229 smithing off those 950 combines. I spent the last couple days farming up another 300 of each substance and hope to finish this 3 week trek to max my smithing this weekend.

Shadow Scream is a cheap alternative overall to smithing, I currently have 33k in the bank and never once killed a mob not dealing with smithing, nor have I sold anything other than armor back to vendors. But I would definately research other possibilities(Cultural?) throughly before I made the SS leap. For me it was the only viable option, not having cultural smithing, nor having 400k in the bank to burn on sickles.

Hope this helped and good luck whatever path you choose

[Meirril]

wow

I have to say I'm impressed. 223 in 3 weeks is great! Now if I only had the time and patience to do that...hehe. ops: :roll:

[Bennan]

If you have the time, and the FOCUS, with a little bit of luck. Smithing to 250 via Shadowscream, can be done quickly, quickly being under a month. If you don't have the time, a player with around 14 to 20 hours per week can still max Smithing in a few months.

Menion, has posted a very good example of what can be done. I would add, whatever mob is up. Farm *at least* 1k of the substance it drops. Then bug etc for a zone reset, and farm the same amount from the other mob. While you are waiting for Hollowshade Moor to be reset etc (because its not generally going to just happen straight away), farm shadows and corpse them.

That way you will maximise your time. In point format;

1. Gather 1k of each substance (at least).
2. When you are unable to gather a needed substance, gather the swirling shadows and corpse them.
3. If at all possible, get an AOE person to partner you. If you AOE, you will greatly increase your rate of collecting substances.

If you believe going at a more moderate pace suits you then gather about 600 of each substance and go from there.

Btw my average drop rate on Swirling Shadows in T.S is about 1 every 2mins (normally takes me about 40 mins to gather 20 of them).

[cattywumpus]

Before you can even start to make Shadow Scream armor you have to do a PITA quest in Shar Val for a special Hammer / Anvil. The quest really isnt hard, but the 1st parts drops are kinda on the RARE side.

If you know a smith who has done this quest find out if they still have their bloodling mail. If they do you can borrow it and skip the first couple of parts of the quest. The mail is droppable and is returned after it is handed in for the quest.

I still hang on to mine just for that purpose.

[Shmity]

Actually, try checking vendors in Shadewever Thicket and Shar Val first, I did my first part of the quest in 5 min just buying stuff off vendors.

[HoshiAdam]

I get a rate of around 10 substance per hour from the moor, because at 51 I can only keep two islands clear. With your friend helping, you should be able to get 20ish per hour. When fighting the wolves, use a snare or root on them, because they have a shaman type mob that sow's them. It has been a while since I fought the bears, so I can't remember if they ran fast or not.

I get about 20 shadows in an hour in the NE corner of Shadeweavers. With your friend it will probably take around 80 minutes or so for 40. Don't bother with trying to track/Sense the Dead, just kill anything that moves up in that corner.