The argument for cultural needles to 132 -- free smithing!

[Zeralenn]

As the last touch to my smithing guide, I am taking a human bard toon of mine named Otavis from 1-188 using my guide, keeping track of her combines and items used and progress.

Well, I just finished 132, having gone from 122-132 on cultural needles, using cinnamon sticks she had foraged. She had 41 cultural needle combines and finished 132 with 31 successes. She then sold all the needles back to the NPC vendor for just over 9.5pp each.

When I did the math up to that point, imagine my surprise to discover that the proceeds from those 31 cultural needles were not only enough to pay for ALL the smithing completed to date, from levels 1 to 132, but she actually came out 69p 9g 5s 2c ahead!

I know this trend will not continue as she progresses beyond 132, and you DO need some money to front for expenses, but if you can forage or fish the essence for the needles, it can be very inexpensive.

Of course, you also need to develop brewing, which is not a free skill to get to 122, but one of my other toons actually made the essence. I could easily get Otavis to 122 in brewing very cheaply with fetid essence, but that wasn't the point of the exercise, and even that would NOT be anywhere near 69pp.

...Zera

[ChaseFV]

Thank you!

Thanks! I knew there was something that could get me around ornate chain, but I couldn't remember if it was needles or shears. Whee! 1 more pottery point, 9 more JC points, then off to forage my fingers off. As usual.

[Ariene]

Re: The argument for cultural needles to 132 -- free smithin

When I did the math up to that point, imagine my surprise to discover that the proceeds from those 31 cultural needles were not only enough to pay for ALL the smithing completed to date, from levels 1 to 132, but she actually came out 69p 9g 5s 2c ahead!

I had the same results except that I spent 60p on cin sticks because I can't forage so I only made a 10p profit. But I think two of us coming up with the exact same cost numbers means that you can reliably say that you can get to 132 smithing at below cost as long as you have a few plat to play with to get started.

[OberonMiM]

Re: Thank you!

[quote="ChaseFV"]but I couldn't remember if it was needles or shears. quote]

shears are easy too. If you like paying 78.5 plat for an unstackable mold and .5 to 1 plat for an stick. (oh and you cant combine in the same zone cause as far as ive seen there is no forge in gunthrak)

Sheers just have too many subcombines (and are too expensive)

[Calabar]

I’m working my way up to 188 smithing with my shaman and I used the cultural needles as well. Since I can’t forage and I could only find two cinnamon sticks on the merchants in GFay, I took my fishing pole to Ak'Anon and spent a couple of hours reeling in a stack of clockwork koi. It only took me about 20 combines to trivial on the needles, but the sell back price was nice to see for a change.

But maybe we shouldn’t be saying this too loudly. In spite of the fact that you have to either forage or fish up one of the components, it wouldn’t surprise me if Sony nerfed the sell back price.

[Jarilon]

LOL Calabar! I was thinking the same thing about keeping quiet on the sell back price.

[Lilosh]

I was thinking the same thing.

Can we have this thread deleted?


-Lilosh