High Level Character's Guide to Smithing

[iggyzillious]

yeah

That is exacatly what I have been doing up to 155 skill and I am now on fine steel armor. What you should do is go from Banded to Lowest levl cultural then to Ornate chain gold then fine steel plate. At least that's how I did it for cheap pp cost with nice sell back rates. The only prob I have encountered now that zones with alot of PP like cazic-thule are nothing but green's at 65 making new pp is very hard. Since all the nice loots in POP re common drops thus yielding little sell value. Any suggestions, besides just farming fine steel weapons for ore. I am down to 8k pp now and all the leather padding and such is gonna be costly so I will be out of funds soon.

[Oath Hipacraticus]

Also of note, XTC Hammer + 220 alone is 250

220 + 15% = 253

So skill only need to come to 219 really to be at max(if I'm figuring my math right :P )

[Ollimonger]

In responce to the costs. Yes this guide is the expensive way to do it up till Shadowscream, but you can go from 0 (or 20 if you spend your points) to Banded being trivial on less than 1.5k plat. Also Shadowscream is the cheapest way to get your kill over 200 that I have seen. I was able to farm the parts with very little trouble at level 50 as a Mage, and when I needed money...the Grimlings in TM are a nice source of cash that is easy to farm as well. Great guide thanks for taking the time to post it.

Ollimonger
Humble Mage

[Brooza]

nice guide

Decided to take up smithing... I used my human mage, level 61, has 243 INT with KEI. Took me about an hour to get to level 115 in smithing. Now on to the slow part

[kiztent]

It is, however, written to be at absolute quickest way, as I am sure folks have figured out. Skipping right to banded then FS is a bit.... Costly..

Costly is relative Lilosh. Banded is 1pp per sheet plus molds which run less than 1pp each. Assuming you drop banded mail on the floor, it's 94 skill ups from 21 to 115. 1900 combines at 2-4pp each is about 6k. And that's a very high estimate since skill ups are much faster below 115 and sellback pretty much completely covers the cost of the combine if you have a success.

For plate, it's about 30pp per sheet per combine for a fail and a loss of about a plat on a successful sellback, so you're talking 53 1 sheet skill ups, 10 2 sheet and 8 3 sheet. 97 skill up-sheets. assume 5 failures and 15 successes per skill up and you're talking about 15k plus padding costs.

Less than 20k to smith to 188 assuming you are really sloppy about doing it and want to do it quickly. While that may seem a lot, I could put that aside in a week without a terrible amount of effort (and more with luck, my prime cash source is Thurg quest MQs, if I see a BP drop I'd be set for a while), and I don't move at anywhere near Monual's level of the game (you'll notice he had 50k banked at the outset - which is significantly cheaper than a fungus covered scale tunic).

Given that tempers for cultural smithing from 188 to 250 will run on the order of a quarter million plat if you buy (assuming you can find them on sale, and there's no shadowman war - or wyvern or seafury - to manipulate to increase drop rates so the alternative is spending months farming), dropping 15k or so to get to 188 isn't that intimidating - and you can do it for much less if the money is important to you. Of course, that quarter million plat for tempers assumes you have an enchanter on call and don't have to pay 100pp per ore enchant (which is the going rate on storm hammer nowadays).

The bit about the hollowshade war looks interesting. It's a **** well written guide if nothing else.

[CaiserSoze]

errr..wait a sec.....almost positive that ethereal sheets are trivial at 212, along with the rings...... is this confirmed that they'll actually skill you to 220 if you have enough mod%?

[papyscott]

You are correct that the sheets do NOT trivial at 220. My recollection was that they trivial at 212. I just tried them again at skill 215 and they were trivial.

The described method could get the aspiring smith up to skill 212, but not skill 220. In fact, there is no reason to use sheets at all since the rings use one less brick.

One other note: I found the condensed chunk of XXX + flask of water (arrowhead recipe I believe) approach to getting to 115 VERY fast. I could buy all I want of the condensed chunks in the bazaar (100pp a stack, but this is the high cost version...). Nothing beats a 2 item combine :-)

Papy

[Monual]

Hurm...

I was afraid of this. I wrote this guide as if I've already gotten up to 222, when in fact I'm only up to 204. (I was going to hold off submitting this to Denmother until I'd actually used it to get to 222.)

The web site used to list the trivial on sheets as being 220, and had been reliable so far, so I made a rather large assumption without trying it out for myself. I double-checked and triple-checked the information on the website just to be sure before I submitted this.

I just now went back and checked, and the trivial for Ethereal Sheets is now listed as 212. /sigh. Ah well, so much for that.

I will make the appropriate changes before I formally submit this.

[BalXCatholic]

Sickle Territory

At 212 + some 15% mod device I think you just hit sickle territory. If you are a high elf cleric, you can do all the emerald embuing yourself. You can probably give your fishing some skill increases between imbues if you do them in Felwithe as I did!

Edit: Oops, sorry, you don't seem to be a high elf... Maybe you could find high elf cleric (or druid) in need of sickles willing to do all the prelims for you...

[Niteraptor]

Hmm

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but you said the max skill with a modifier is 255, if i'm not mistaken i thought that number was 252, i could very well be wrong though.

[Monual]

Ah, thanks Niteraptor. Yes, that's quite useful to know.

(whips out calculator)

219 + 15% = 251.85

220 + 15% = 253

Anyone know if modifiers round up - that is, does a 219 raw skill plus a 15% modifier mean you have an effective skill of 251 or 252?

[Monual]

Edited the guide to reflect the feedback I've received; thanks everyone.

Anyone know where I can find buy-back prices? That is, you've just made a banded helm; approximately how much will a NPC vendor pay for it?

Again, my appreciation for the help y'all have given me with this guide.

[Monual]

Thanks for all the help. One more question:

I mention in the guide that I got about one skill-up per twenty attempts. How consistent is that with everyone else's experience after they made that smithing patch recently? Does one skill-up in twenty combines seem right to you, especially post-200?

Thanks.

[papyscott]

My experience has been between 188 and my current skill of 218 I have been averaging a skill up every 15 or so attempts.

Edit: I was using imbued field plate and had a wis of 255 for this data btw...

Papy

[Araon]

I am averaging about 1 skill up in 20 (188-199, 180 combines, 239 wis).

I am somewhat surprised that a high level human would go the shadowscream route. Freeport cultural is fairly straightforward, the only bottleneck being sea temper. Now that saltwater seaweed is droppable, even sea temper is easy, assuming you have a bit of plat to spare.

If you can get the Gornit camp in OOT, you can hunt Gornit (a fast spawning Hill Giant who drops about 220pp an hour in plat alone), fish for seaweed while you med and even do the odd seafury cyclops if you have the mana.

Better yet, persuade a group of high 40s/low 50s friends to come hunt seafuries while you heal and buff them in return for any sea foam drops. You can still fish at the same time....

Araon Trueheart