Keeping Costs Under Control While Raising Skill...

[Grimsoul]

Thanks for the update Balkin

Regarding HQ ore... how much are the MQ and HQ ores for a person with good faction/charisma? I know that fine steel daggers only sell for around 2pp, and they make a small brick of HQ ore... This seems to me to be a good way to get HQ metal sheets.

I believe you are thinking of just a plain dagger for around 2pp. Fine steel daggers sell for about 42pp with 115 chr. small brick of HQ ore goes for a little over 17pp

[Rachan Tammerion]

""I have thus far saved up a stack of metal sheets by converting rusted weapons like mad""


What are you talking about here? PLease don't tell me you can get metal from rustys!!

HOW??

Where is this written

[attriel]

""I have thus far saved up a stack of metal sheets by converting rusted weapons like mad""


What are you talking about here? PLease don't tell me you can get metal from rustys!!

HOW??

Where is this written

I think he just didn't mention the rusty->tarnished step
but then tarnished->metal is listed on http://www.eqtraders.com/secrets/smithing_conversions.htm

--attriel

[FeroceFV]

What attriel said.

[Zeralenn]

Tarnished weapons conversion

I have run the numbers on the tarnished weapons > ore conversion and have discovered something important here:

It is only profitable if you restrict your conversion to five rusty weapons: daggers, maces, broadswords, short swords, and two-handed swords.

On all other weapons, you can sell them back to merchants for more money than it would cost to buy the ore it converts to.

For example, a rusty scimitar, sharpened to tarnished and converted with water, yields 1 small brick of ore.

- A sharpening stone costs 3c.
- A flask of water costs 1s.
- The rusty scimitar sells back to merchants for 1g 8s 1c.
- Total cost of 1 small brick of ore with conversion: 1g 9s 4c (opportunity cost of selling scimitar, sharpening stone, water)
- Cost to purchase 1 small brick of ore from NPC vendor: 1g 1s 9c.
- Loss on conversion: -7s 5g.

Only daggers, short swords, broadswords, maces, and two-handed swords sell back to vendors for less than the cost of purchasing the ore directly.

Here is a list of all "conversion costs" for rusty weapons you can sharpen to tarnished and convert (rusty halberds and rusty 2-handed hammers can't be converted). Each lists the sale price to a vendor + the cost of sharpening stone and water (1s 3c), followed by what they convert to, the vendor cost of what they convert to, and the gain or loss per conversion:

Dagger: 4s 2c (1 small piece, 4s 8c, +7c per)
Short sword: 4s 2c (2 small pieces, 9g 6c, +5g 4c per)
Broad sword: 7s (1 small brick, 1g 1s 9c, +5g 9s per)
Mace: 1g 3c (1 small brick, 1g 1s 9c, + 1s 6c per)
Two-handed sword: 2g 9s 9c (1 large brick, 1p 5g 7s 5c, +1p 2g 7s 6p)

In fact, you with the 2-handed sword conversion you can actually MAKE MONEY! You can sell a large brick of ore back to the merchant for 1p 4g 2s 9c -- quite bit more than you can sell back the sword for. (I don't know at present what rusty two-handers sell for from merchants so I don't know HOW profitable this could be).

Longsword: 2g 3c (1 small brick, 1g 1s 9c, -8g 4c per)
Spear: 2g 3c (2 small pieces, 9g 6c, -1g 7c per)
Short spear: 1g 4s 9c (1 small piece, 4s 8c, -1g 1c per)
Bastard sword: 2g 4s 2c (1 small brick, 1g 1s 9c, -1g 2s 3c)
Scythe: 2g 4s 3c (1 small brick, 1g 1s 9c, -1g 2s 4c)


I suspect something similar about fine steel conversions and I am in the process of running the numbers on those as well.

...Zera

[Velurian]

As a followup to what Zeralenn said:

While it is generally unprofitable to convert rusty->tarnished->ore in order to get the ore rather than buying (except for the five weapons Zera mentioned), it is frequently profitable to do the rusty->tarnished conversion and sell that to the vendor rather than to sell the rusty weapons directly. The cost of one attempt to sharpen is 1s3c (1s for water, 3c for the sharpening stone); for virtually every variety of weapon, the difference between sellback costs for rusty and tarnished weapons is MUCH more than this, so even if it takes you multiple attempts, you will likely come out ahead (since you don't lose the weapon if you fail).

So while it frequently doesn't make sense to convert to ore, it can be a relatively lucrative pursuit for a very young smith to convert any rusty weapons gained from adventuring to tarnished before selling them. I don't have numbers on vendor purchase prices for rusty weapons, so I can't say whether it's profitable to buy rusty weapons, sharpen them, and sell them back.

[FeroceFV]

you neglect two things:
1. Sharpening weapons does not require any water at all.

2. Ore can be made into metal bits and metal sheets. Metal bits are needed to raise skill, and metal sheets can be either sold (for 1pp each) or used to make banded armor or other stuff.

[FeroceFV]

My skill is 122, and I've actually made a profit smithing so far. Then again, I'm doing the slow but cheap method, using lots of recipes so as to have optimum success rates, and selling to players whenever I possibly can.

This will probably change fairly soon. Ornate Chain can net me some decent platinum if sold to players at a reasonable price to keep prices under control. I might go as high as gold ornate chain. I plan on farming as I level up to 40 (I am level 17 now), and spending a LOT of time in Highkeep, Runnyeye, SolA, and Permafrost. This should mitigate my costs pretty well.

Once Ornate Gold runs out, Fine Plate will be my curse. Fine plate sells for very little, and I'm going to take a substantial hit when I skill up with it.

My personal route after that will probably be human cultural stuff. I'll have to become an OOT junkie when I hit 40 so I can fish up the saltwater seaweed and kill the seafuries for mugs of sea foam. Beyond that is imbued field plate, which sells pretty reliably in the low hundreds of plat per piece, mitigating the costs fairly well.

I suppose the lesson is this: Either smithing is going to take a long time, and not cost insane amounts of platinum (the farming approach), or it can be done in a short time costing obscene amounts of platinum (the vendor/bazaar approach).

I think tradeskills generally go better when you do them as you level. It takes longer, but costs a LOT less, especially if you're smart about where and how you level up. Smithing as you level is easier if you kill lots of blues and light blues than if you take on single yellows and reds. When you get in a group, explain that you're working on smithing, list the particular items you need, and let the others take the other vendor trash items. Most groups are pretty sympathetic to a tradeskiller.

One thing a lot of folks seem to do here is have insane tradeskill sessions, where they do nothing else but try to raise skill. While this is a legitamite way to get through the early levels of any tradeskill, this leads to crazy price fluctuations in high-end products. I suggest doing plenty of different recipes of the same difficulty and price, and not doing more than one stack of combines per session, with a nice night between sessions to sell your produce.

[Zeralenn]

you neglect two things:
1. Sharpening weapons does not require any water at all.

Sharpening weapons only requires a sharpening stone. However, converting the tarnished weapon to ore DOES require water.

...Zera

[Araon]

My personal route after that will probably be human cultural stuff. I'll have to become an OOT junkie when I hit 40 so I can fish up the saltwater seaweed and kill the seafuries for mugs of sea foam.

Not a bad idea at all to do seafuries as much as you can while you can get xp from them. Unfortunately, they only drop mugs of sea foam about fifteen percent of the time (roughly) and you will need alot of them. Try to arrange groups to hunt the seafuries so you can hunt more in a shorter period of time. Nonetheless, you will still most likely end up buying them off merchants/haunting the Bazaar/doing ooc's while in OOT.

Beyond that is imbued field plate, which sells pretty reliably in the low hundreds of plat per piece, mitigating the costs fairly well.

By the time you are skilling up on imbued, you will be getting about one skill up per 20 combines (possibly better, I may be somewhat unlucky). That means you are going to have an awful lot of imbued to sell, and it will all most likely be Karana (plains pebbles) or Erollisi Marr (star rose quartz) because they are the cheapest gems to buy/forage. You will inevitably be flooding your own market with the sheer quantity, unfortunately. That merchant on the top floor of Ithkars in EFP has got literally hundreds of pieces of my imbued dumped on her by now....

Don't be discouraged though, it's a hard slog but it's fun, specially if you can get your friends and guildmates involved

[FeroceFV]

I doubt it... At this point (127), the ornate gold chain I'm making is going to myself and my guild. Since it's kinda pricey to make, they're footing most of the bill right now. We're a newish all-bard guild on FV, so the +CHA armor with better AC than banded is much-wanted. Most of us worship dieties, and would love some of their specific imbued armors. there's enough recipe variety out there for me to make plenty of different armors, so I'm not fretting too much over whether or not I'll be able to sell the stuff.

[FeroceFV]

My one big problem thus far is that I'm giving most of my products away to my guild's newbies. We're in our infantile phase right now, so they really can't pay much of anything to me. I may just have to stick with Banded armor until I can start farming HQ ore on my own. So in the end, I'm doing a lot of good for the guild, and helping out our newbies with gear that'll last them quite a while, but I'm not getting a whole lot of funding. This should change as people raise level.

[FeroceFV]

Just sold two gold chain pieces for 25pp each. Not great, but it helps.

[FeroceFV]

I've found one good way to help with having enough platinum to work up smithing. Buying, sharpening, and converting Rusty 2-handeds in East Freeport, I can make a couple hundred plat per hour if I need to. It's slow and required a goodly bit of clicking, but so far, it's the best way to raise cash at my level.

Feroce
22 battle bard, master smith (139) of Molto Espressivo
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