Raising skill with Shadowscream vs Field Plate?

[FeroceFV]

Shadowscream:
-Requires a lot of heavy camping, components and armor must be made in the same session they are collected.
-The camps are a pain in the butt. Getting any kind of serious experience off them seems to be a lost cause.

Field Plate:
-Every combine requires a sea temper which, while not hard to get, takes time. Saltwater Seaweed is a pain to fish up, so I hear.
+You can spend a lot of time in OOT raising level and farming for the AC ring. As most people set up camp close to the shore, you can fish during downtime. You can also fish while reading a book, doing homework, eating, etc.

-You need imbued gems to make the very advanced stuff. While you can find cheapish rocks to imbue, (star rose quartz, jade, plains pebble, opal,) it's a bit trickier finding a willing cleric.

Both paths eventually lead to a max skill (with a geerlock, 242 is effectively max... right?)

The costs seem to me to be comparable. I'm thinking of doing a lot of hunting in OOT in preparation for my post-188 smithing career. (at 111 now)

[Perseverence Rewarded]

I have tried both paths and find Imbued Field Plate to be the easiest route.
I did Shadowscream from 188 to 195 and it took 164 combines. Then Field Plate bracers to 200. Got to 201 on an Acrylia Chain Tunic for my froggie twink. I then did Imbued Field Plate Bracers to 210 then 5 combines of Ethereal Rings to 212 followed by more I.F.P. Bracers to 214.
I did a total of 200 I.F.P. Bracers and 5 Ethereal Rings over the weekend and got 13 skill ups with 255 wisdom. It took 2 weeks to stock up all the parts needed for the run. Spent 3pp per plains pebble, 10pp per mug of seafoam and 52pp per folded sheet of HQ ore. So I spent around 16k for the supplies and farmed pelts and spiderling silks. I fished all the seaweed in Timorous Deep and achieved 200 skill. I now pull in 20-25 seaweed an hour there.
I found this to be preferable to Shadowscream armor even if it costs money. I find it easier to farm plat to buy stuff then farm Mugs of Seafoam. I also sell Nightmare Compound Bows to pay for this skill btw.
If the no rent tags are removed from the swirling shadows as is rumored then I will return to doing Shadowscream combines. I still have a hundred of each substance in the bank. I just really hate running around killing 1 hit wonders and hoping to get 15-20 swirlies an hour. 10-12 hours in the planes would net enough to buy the components to do I.F.P. and I get experience doing it. I dinged 54 the day before the run.
If you are getting good experience from the Seafury Cyclops than you might want to farm your own Mugs of Seafoam. I always find the island crowded on Qellious so have avoided it.
Getting Plains Peebles imbued is no problem as its cleric or druid castable. Just buy them a c3 and keep them company plus a donation.

[Kingbobb]

Baring any upcoming changes to Shadowscream, do both.

I'm reaching the end of my smithing skillups (236 and climbing, I hope), and most of my skill increases post 190 came from Field plate. I'd throw in a burn of SS when I had 20 combines worth of substances/orbs or more, and didn't mind spending an hour or 2 farming swirling shadows in Shadeweavers.

Once you get your fishing up past 150, you can get more than enough Seaweeds in a brief time to make tempers. Mugs of Seafoam may be dropping less than before, but you can get decent exp off the Cycs in OOT up through mid 50s, and the cash isn't bad. You can gather shadling silk for padding if you hunt Shadeweavers for shadows. Hides re pretty easy to come by, too, and you'll need a supply of them, anyway.

Once you get to imbued, find and befriend an ogre shaman to imbue jade for you. We opted to created and PL a shaman just for this purpose. Eventually, every smith needs an imbuer, plus an enchanter, to help make the high end stuff, so better off finding them now.

Of course, if shadows do get the no rent dropped, there's a chance the trivs on SS will drop as well, making your options very different.

[Kradlum]

Shadowscream -
+I got XP from level 40 to 50 farming Shadowscream as I just finished killing sonic wolves in Tenebrous Mountains, at 51 it's pretty rubbish as the Wolves are light blue.
+With faction, you can make money on Rallic packs if you farm from the Grimling Tunnel. The perfect owlbear pelts and shade silk are byproducts of farming anyway, so even without faction you can make good money.
+Windstones, Essence of Wind, Acrylia from other wandering mobs.

Also you only have to do the farming for swirling shadows in the same session that you smith, the substances are not no rent.

[kuronekosama]

Plain and simple if you have the extra cash, imbued field plate is worlds easier than Shadowscream. I prepped runs of 200 skill up combines at a time with it maybe every 2 weeks or so. This was spent a few hours a night fishing and auctioning for sea foams, and then a few hours purchasing hq or and converting it to sheets, a good number of hours farming padding, etc, you know usual stuff. So, yes, that's 100 skill up attempts a week, or 14 skill up attempts per day, not too bad. Especially since there was no danger in what I was doing (I never farmed any foam myself) I work full time, so that fit my schedule better than hunting down components for Shadowscream. (No rent & no drop sucks too) However, it's sooooo going to cost you pp wise.

[Zopharr]

Supposedly, per a report from a trade faire (please don't pin me on what thread it was from--it was on the old forum methinks) the "max effective" skill for tradeskills is 252.

If that is the case, then 240+Geerlock would yield the max effective skill 252. Saves you some combines. <grin>

[Hateborn]

Do both

Hello again Molto,

from your last thread about smithing I think you are in the same boat as me regarding level and cash - ie not very high and not much cash. So, like me you need to be cost effecient and within the bounds of your level.

The approach I am taking is to do a bit of both Shadowscream and cultural at the moment (all this may change post today's patch when we may find a reduced trivial on shadowscream).

As previously discussed I convert fine steel for HQ ore. For tempers my group set up camp at the AC isle right by the shore and fished in downtime. The seaweed could be caught at any fishing skill - even the 0 skill cleric started hauling it out of the sea (and rising fast in skill). We were able to camp the AC (didnt see him) and pull Seafuries to AC isle (levitate and sow works wonders). Using this method we found that seaweed was less of a concern than the foam - ie we got weed faster than foam with three fishermen of starting skills 72, 14 and 0.

For shadowscream we have been collecting screaming in tenebrous while camping near the zone - which also yields acrylia, windstones, rallic pack patterns via the runner and tormented vah shir skulls (plan ahead I say!). I have been gathering wailing from the owlbears in paludal - there are 8 in total in paludal that can drop it. (Adopted this policy because as a group in our 30s we have had trouble manipulating the war in Hollowshade, the defenders are nasty snots! That said one time we found the war in our favour (wolves on the islands) and it was easy for us to harvest some screaming while we could).

(At my current skill of 147 I have had success on both unimbued field plate and shadowscream - which for our levels is very wearable).

(The final thought is one that is specific to you being on Firiona Vie - shrieking and wailing substances (hear the other smiths wail) are NOT no drop there, so it should be alot easier to get friends / group mates to pick some up for you in their travels and to keep an eye on the bazaar for underpriced examples, from young players in Paludal for example)

[Kingbobb]

Well, with shadows no longer bearing the No Rent tag, SS just became a better option, especially if you don't have a lot of cash to buy the HQ ore needed for field plate. Your options now are to spend a LOT of time farming 3 different substances (wailing, shrieking, and swirling) and then a little less time preparing for a burn. But all you're paying for in SS is the molds, large bricks of ore, and water. And SS sells to vendors for a few plat, so you can recoup some of your efforts. Or, if you're patient, you can try to dump some in the Bazaar. I manage to sell a few pieces a week at about 10-20pp each.

[xaanru]

I know this will sound crazy to some of you, but before you sell back all of that Imbued Field plate to the merchants, see if there is a market for it in the bazaar.

I sold a ton of it, originally at a price scheme of 250/500/800. However, mudflation has taken its toll, and now, to sell the stuff, I have to price at half that.

I found that the ero marr, rodcet nife, rallos zek, and karana armors all sell, albeit slowly. I keep my trader up at all times, while not playing, unless I'm booted off for a patch ) It took about 2 weeks to sell out full visible sets of all four of those armors. Not fast, not huge money, but positive cash flow.


BTW, on what to make post 188, I definitely recommend making imbued field plate, but don't limit yourself. Make anything that you have a decent shot of succeeding on.

That includes acrylia plate armor, as soon as you hit 188. You'll have to watch prices carefully to make money on this, as the windsones have gotten expensive, and the armor has gotten cheap.

Shadowscream. If you can handle the farming, go for it.

At 210 skill, Definitely make ethereal rings for 2 pts. This is your easiest post 188 smithing. real narrow band for skillups (210-212), unless you have a better skill mod item than geerlok.

Once you hit 212, add mistletoe cutting sickles to your menu. Success rate at that level seems to be 15-20%, which was good enough for me to make back my investment in materials. Reports say that these have a 50% success rate at max modified skill, and you subtract 1% for each point below that. So 220 raw skill (231, modified) is 21 pooints below the 252 cap. success rate should be approximately 29%, which sounds right to me, although its streaky. (had one run with 14/38 successes. next run was 11/60). Totalled, thats an average of about 25%.

Also, start making black acrylia weapons. At 209 skill, I made BA rapier and LS. Sold both for a nice profit. The halberd seems to be harder, went 0/3 at 209.

At 221 skill, I am 2/2 on rapiers, total. 2/3 on LS. 1/3 on SS, and 1/7 on halberd.


By this point, you should have an ok success rate on Tae Ew stuff also, so if you get the items, go for it. If you get a success, that will bankroll a LOT of smithing.

[Perseverence Rewarded]

By this point, you should have an ok success rate on Tae Ew stuff also, so if you get the items, go for it. If you get a success, that will bankroll a LOT of smithing.

I have made 4 Tae Ew Shields so far. I gave 1 to our 60th level Cleric and sold 1 for 14k. I'm hoping to sell the other 2 soon. Great way to pay for smithing.

I now have 60 essence of sunlight and 12 blue diamonds.
66 Mugs of Seafoam and 18 Sea Tempers.
30 Bricks of Nightmare Iron, 23 Nightmare Mephit Blood, 1 Raw Diamond, 1 spell:Imbue Nightmare, 1 Night Terror Temper. 1 Enchanted Brick of Nightmare Iron.

Gonna have some very happy guild mates soon.

[FeroceFV]

I guess I should start looking around for cheap CT ingredients (if there is such a thing). Really, though. this is a ways off. I'm still making ornate chain right now