Casual smithing, 158+

[kiztent]

Re: thanks peeps

Thanks for the advice people. A few questiosn though, would it be feasable for me to start making leather padding at a tailoring skill of 0?
(-laff-)

Well.... You'll have a passable chance of success if you do it (just make sure you get to 15 skill on silk threads first to increase success - it's a no fail combine). I'd recommend a two step process:

1 - go to mseru and slaughtering everything. Loot grey hoppers. You collect hides. Render the medium quality to low (make a skinning knife). Keep the low. Sell the ruined (or let them rot). Make the high into backpacks (skill up, if you succeed, that's nice, just sell it). Make the greyhopper hides into greyhopper armour (again, skill up - the boots give a mod to safe fall, but just vendor it). Just make sure you do the skill up stuff before making the paddings.

2 - Go to shadeweaver. Lesser shades drop shadeling silk like mad (you make that into thread and then make padding). Bank the swirling shadows for later.

[Zeralenn]

Re: thanks peeps

I soooooo do not want to master another tradeskill to do this

Well, you're gonna run into problems as soon as you run into the brick wall that is level 188. The only path past 188 that does NOT involve another tradeskill is shadowscream.

You either need to get your tailoring skill to 31 (hardly mastering) to make leather padding. It's easy -- making the spider silk thread will take you to 15 nofail, then get to 26 with some ruined pelts and sewing patterns. You can even skill up the rest of the way on padding if you want to avoid raw silk armor, though I would not suggest it because quality pelts aren't that easy to come by.

If you have any desire to make ogre cultural armor, you need brewing skill to make the tempers, which trivials around 136 -- or you are going to have to find someone to make your tempers for you. Believe me, they are never online when you need them to make your tempers. Buy a brewing geerlok when making tempers. They're disgustingly cheap these days, and brewing is very easy to advance.

High level ogre cultural and mistletoe cutting sickles require pottery skill to make celestial temper and blessed dust of Tunare, respectively. You will need pottery around 122. I'd get them higher to be safe and use a pottery geerlok. You can become a pottery master with a skill well above what you need for a total investment of less than 30pp. See the pottery section on EQTraders for instructions on just how to do that.

Most trade skills rely to some extent on another tradeskill for parts or tools, especially at the upper levels. You CAN get away without doing it, but you are depending on others for that. If you do ogre cultural you are already going to have to depend on enchanters for enchanting ore and shamans for imbuing; why add to your dependencies? I'm big on self-sufficiency for smiths.

...Zera

[Velurian]

Re: thanks peeps

1 - go to mseru and slaughtering everything. Loot grey hoppers. You collect hides. Render the medium quality to low (make a skinning knife). Keep the low. Sell the ruined (or let them rot). Make the high into backpacks (skill up, if you succeed, that's nice, just sell it).

There are no medium or high quality or ruined pelts on the greyhoppers in Marus Seru; they only drop LQ and greyhopper pelts. The former are perfect for padding and the latter can be used to get your tailoring up to 95.

[Prizzle]

Might also try making the parts of the mistletoe sickle and sell back in bazaar. People who are looking to skillup past 188 and doing so on sickles would love to buy parts I am sure.

This would take you to 180ish

[Xorshaik]

You can get your next 10 points making humming orbs which you can hang on to until you're ready to start shadowscream.

Or you could just start shadowscream if you didn't want to start spending money, but 168 to 188 I'd go with fine plate.

[Macbrea]

Best place to get low quality hides has to be Marus Seru. This is the quick way to get alot of the greyhoppers.

Grab a sow.
shoot 1 greyhopper
run about past the rest of the greyhoppers in the area
when you have 10 or so greyhoppers turn around and hack them down

As you kill each one. Something else will drop from the sky elsewhere in the zone. Each greyhopper either has a Greyhopper hide (trivial 95 tailoring) or a low-quality rockhopper hide (leather padding). My guess is it would take someone about 1 hour of farming to have a stack or two of low-quality rockhopper hides.

[Meirril]

Level 52 warrior...got any friends around your level?

Instead of farming greens, try this: grab a healer and a ranger/necro/sk (or just a druid, or maybe a druid and a melee) around your level and head off to Dawnshroud. Grab rockhoppers from the rockhopper/sambata cave. They drop ruined, low, medium and high quality hides occasionaly. Also they'll drop superb and flawless rockhopper hides which you should split with whoever is helping ya. Sell the superb and flawless to fund your smithing, turn the rest into padding. Definatly kill the shades in shadeweavers thicket for all of your silk needs, and bank any swirling shadows you get.
Option 2: go to jagged pine forest and kill poachers. The poachers drop (poached?) low, medium, and high quality old world hides perfect for making padding out of with a decent drop rate. You'd probably need friends for this as well.

The advantage of both of the camps I've mentioned is your getting xp as well as hides for leather padding. The best one probably is the rockhopper camp as your getting something you can sell for plat as well (though the xp for rockhoppers isn't all that great considering).

Also, for casual smithing you could fool around in TM killing the grimling miners. Loot everything, keep the acrylia and windstones. After you trivial out FS plate, start making acrylia plate. You won't do many combines, but its fun. Oh, and if you need more blocks of acrylia, shout that your trading 2 small/large bricks for 1 block, 4 peices for a block. Some tailor out there might take you up on the offer.