How much and How long?

[casualeq1]

I was thinking about smithing. I was wondering if I bought everything from vendor/bazaar VS farming items how much it would cost to be my skill up to about 240 or so?

About how long would this take as well.

This is asked with the assumption I put 35 skill points into smithing ( I think that is the max I can put into it) and my wis/int/str is over 200, and charisma over 150.

I am an ogre warrior BTW

I am just looking for general guidelines.

Thanks.

[Saleani]

You have to farm stuff. Or forage stuff. Or buy tons of leather paddings or imbued plains pebbles in the bazaar.

Check this page: http://www.eqtraders.com/learn/learn_smithing.htm

Look for the skill up path to suit your needs (budget vs time vs farming).

[Meirril]

If you dug a bit in this forum, you'd find what your looking for actualy.
Not willing to dig for you I'm going to pull a few numbers out of the air.

If you went the cheepist route possible, the best time I have EVER herd of is 3 weeks. More likely 3 months of dedicated farming and an expendature of around 1kpp. I mean dedicated btw, on for at least 6 hours a day, and farming greens for drops or making combines the entire time. Getting to 100 should be 1 day, getting to 188 should be 1 week, the rest of the time being 188 to 240.

If you went with what you can easily buy from vendors, as long as you had access to a worshiper of tunare that was able to imbune emeralds on demand...probably 1 week and 600-1000kpp. Thats a rough estimate.

Oh, also all of the above assumes you do reserch, follow the high level guilde that can be found in a post on this forum, you ARE high level (50+), you have one of str/int/wis at 255 (dosen't matter which one), and you ignore the rest of EQ to exclusivly work on smithing.

And the most skill points you can put into a trade skil is 22, and only the first 22 points.

[Stilts Stonebender]

Re: How much and How long?

I am an ogre warrior BTW.

I think that first off, unless you have a ton of cash, you're barking up the wrong tree. Smithing doesn't really compare to Pottery or Fletching in that you can sit in front of a vendor and skill up.

The "buying you're skill ups" pretty much trickles out once you finish fine plate @ 188. About all you're left with are Mistletoe Cutting Sickles. They triv @ >250 and are costly to make. Expect ~ zero return for quite some time.

Cultural is probably your best bet, but you will probably end up at least farming merchants for the blood temper components. You may be able to purchase cultural tempers (or their components) in the bazaar, but for ogre tempers, it would be less then plentiful and spotty at best. The bloods needed are rarely sold in any quanity.

Merchant farming would be a viable alteritive if you could travel unmolested to the far corners of Norath to buy your items. But again, you're relying on luck to actually find the bloods you need.

Putting the word out to your guild and/or friends to grab any that they see on merchants or drop off kills while farming them yourself is probably the fastest and easiest way to get them.

To get from 188 to 240, I'd estimate you'll need in the neighborhood of ~50 stacks of tempers if the 20 combines/skill point average hold true.

Now, keep in mind that for each cultural combine you need a level 49+ enchanter to enchant each large brick of adamantite that you need. Three large bricks make a block, one block makes a folded sheet. Plus, you need a chain jointing for each piece made from an enchanted large brick. This is a 2 for 1 deal, so you get 2 jointings for one brick. Total of 3.5 large bricks per combine until skill ~228 (20 points).

So to recap:

20 points needed to trivial 1 sheet combines.
20 combines per point (on average) is 400 combines.
3.5 large bricks for each combine is 1400 large bricks.
400 leather paddings needed.
400 Blood tempers needed.

Keep in mind that you will fail roughly 5% of all trivial combines, so for every 20, one goes up in flames. You have a chance to fail making the block (there's an extra 120 large bricks) and a 5% chance to fail at making the folded sheet (another 120 large bricks). Don't forget the enchanted rings you need for jointing, so throw in another 10 bricks there. So, now we're up to 1650 large bricks.

(For dwarves) a large brick costs ~18p/ea. So there's 29700 plat for your 20 points. (Plus ~1200p in jade and ~8000p in leather padding.) That comes out to somewhere around 2000p per skill up. Selling it back your successes to a vendor will get you some back, but not a lot. You'll lose at least half of that 30K from failed combines and "less then cost" buy back prices. Selling to players could make some back, but just how many boots and bracers can the market absorb? You would single handedly ruin the market and drive the prices down. Your buyers would be competing with you before you could sell all of your pieces.

Now here's the fun part. Since you're not an ogre shaman, you need to find someone else to imbue 20 stacks of jade for you. Then, you need to find an enchanter willing to enchant 1650 large bricks for you. Granted, it won't be done all at one time, but you can see the sheer time involved in the process. And to make matters worse, the enchanter shouldn't be KOS in Oggok so you can be making bricks > blocks > folded sheets as s/he's enchanting them. Remember, folded sheets stack, large bricks and blocks don't.

Now, you've trivialed one sheet combines. On to helmets! Same story as before, except now you need 6.5 large bricks per combine (plus those darn trivial failures!). That should take you maybe another 5 to 8 points, then you're in the 3 sheet combines at 9.5 bricks each. That should trivial in the 242 area.

Hopefuly you can see where this isn't the best method of doing things. Actually, keeping track of the numbers isn't a good thing (rather depressing, to be truthful...). Just start in and slug thru it. When you've collected the components, do the combines. Look for other people that need or want stuff made and do it for them. Get firmiliar with other methods to skill up. It really takes a mix of all the paths to get to the end. Sometimes it's more efficent (in both time and money) to work in a different directions. Shadowscream, cultural, acrylia, ethereal rings, what ever you can get your hands on that will give you a chance at a skill up. I think it's rare to find a smith that can, in all honesty, tell you that, "I GM'd smithing making only XXXXX." If they did, they probably know who Jonathan Yantis is.

[Kradlum]

1) you can only put 21 points in.
2) Charisma over 107 doesn't really have any effect.
3) I'm an ogre warrior - best to get your STR to 255, don't bother with the other stats.
4) You can either take the cheap route - Shadowscream armour, or the expensive route - mistletoe cutting sickles, or the inbetween route - cultural/acrylia/Tae Ew armour.

Shadowscream - endless farming or greens (depends on your level). I am currently on 207 smithing and estimate I need 35 stacks of Wailing substance, 35 stacks of shrieking substance, and 70 stacks of Swirling shadows to hit 242 (that's a conservative estimate, based on 1 skillup every 20 combines).

Mistletoe cutting sickles - never tried them, I don't have the cash to waste.

Cultural Armour - You need an enchanter to enchant the metal and a shaman to imbue the gemstones. You need to be able to carry large amounts of ore from Neriak 3rd Gate to Oggok. You also need large quantities of dwarf, elven and human blood, and a brewer over 135 to make the temper.

Acrylia armour - either you farm acrylia, windstones and essence of wind, or you pay about 300pp per combine getting the components in the bazaar. You also need a 122 brewer to make the temper.

Tae Ew armour - don't know if this has been suggested as a skillup path. I'm not high enough to get the components, so I won't comment on it, but you still need a master brewer to make the tempers.

Basically there is no quick, easy or cheap method to do it. Even with Shadowscream armour you will need to pay out around 1Kpp for the ore to make the metal rings and for the armour molds.

[Zeralenn]

If you have several hours a day to devote SINGLE MINDEDLY to smithing, you could probably do it within a month.

If you enjoy playing the game and socializing and doing other things, it can take you several months to get to 250. Some have been picking at smithing for years.

You didn't mention what level you are as an ogre warrior. If you are not at least in your high 40s, preferably low 50s, forget farming for acrylia stuff. Unless you are higher level, or you ebay plat, you probably don't have the cash reserves to get to 250. Even with farming it takes TENS OF THOUSANDS of plat to get to 250 -- perhaps a few hundred thousand plat depending on the route you take.

The farming is killer in smithing. You just THINK it's bad when you're having to farm LQ pelts and spiderling silk for stacks and stacks of leather padding. Wait til the post-188. It's a lot worse.

You basically have four options past 188, with their difficult points:

- Shadowscream - farming 2 nodrop items that depend on a buggy Hollowshade war, farming swirling substance, cheap but hella farming.

- Acrylia - farming or buying acrylia, farming or buying windstones. Windstones are so rare that few smiths recommend it for skilling.

- Ogre cultural - farming blood for temper (elven, human, and dwarf). Getting stacks of jade imbued by a shaman of Rallos Zek. Getting hundreds of large bricks of adamantite enchanted by a level 49 or better enchanter (yes, you need enchanted blocks, but enchanters can only enchant large bricks and then you need to combine 3 large bricks into 1 block to get enchanted blocks). Oh, and you still need leather padding for much of this.

- Mistletoe cutting sickles - need 60 imbued emeralds (imbued by cleric or druid of Tunare) for every 20 combines; extremely costly with few successes to offset costs (over 6,500pp per 20 combines, adjusting for expected 5% failure on subcombines), over 360 subcombines required for every 20 sickle combines; unwieldy number of parts; trivials above 250 so is very slow skilling from 188; needs pottery skill of 102 and brewing skill of 136 for blessed dust and mistletoe temper.

This is mostly to point out the realities of smithing: It is NOT cheap and easy to skill up. If it was, grandmaster smiths would not be nearly as rare as they are. It takes a great deal of persistence, dedication, and yes, money to get there.

I agree: concentrate on strength as your primary skill, but also buy some INT or WIS items -- otherwise you are going to have trouble with your needed secondary skills, namely brewing, pottery, and tailoring.

...Zera

[Alyxia]

Ah...Smithing. Not for the Faint of Heart and Spirit, and Shallow in Pockets.

Zeralenn has a good list. My suggestion is to research ALL your options, and pick the one (or combination) that you can live with. What works best for someone, may not be the best for you.

Since I didn't really have cultural smithing, and refused to farm, I chose to do the Mistletoe Sickle route from 188-250.

Against my better judgement, I tried farming for shadowscream components. I went insane. So I didn't make a single shadowscream combine.

Even if you had the cash to "buy" your skillups, by doing Mistletoe Sickles, it doesn't happen overnight. With 255 wis, it took me 4.5 months and 500kpp to get here. And smithing every night. I made quite a few sickles, but given the low demand and decreased prices, don't expect your successes to fund your skillup sessions...ever.

Sure, that's nothing compared to what the smiths had to endure before, but this is just to point out that it's not easy, even with unlimited plat (which I didn't have). I threw money at sickles, but I had GM Tailoring to fund my smithing.

To do sickles, you either have to be a Tunare cleric or druid (which I am), or be REALLY good friends with one...and I seriously mean REALLY good friends. (Imbuing Emeralds Suck!)

That being said, it's incredibly rewarding when you hit that final point! I almost had a heart attack last night when I saw it show up on my screen

[Fallwell]

Re: Time to skill up

I gasped in shock while reading this thread. Three months! One month! 3 weeks!!! I took me much longer than that playing about 5-6 hours a day, doing nothing but smithin-related stuff. I went human cultural route going 0-250 for around 100k.

By the time I was through, I actually thought that if I tapped my feet (left foot first, ofcourse), held my hand over the text box and said a well rehearsed incantation that I would increase my chance at a skill point. (not kidding)...while holding the mouse button down just long enough...but not TOO long when pressing combine...

"Comon, comon, please please, comon, comon, please give me a point."

~Fallwell