Call me crazy....

[Meirril]

Call me crazy too. Why in the world they made high elves use 5 morning dew just to make a single sheet cultural plate combine is beyond me. Considering that the BD cultural combines use only 2.5 morning dew per combine, insaine lunitics price morning dew at 100pp on Fennin Ro, BDs are down to 350-400pp each in the bazaar (I buy at 300btw, or from vendors), and the time I'd spend farming those self same morning dew is worth 100pp each when considering my time spent (probably a bit more than that, but I refuse to actualy buy the suckers) and you come to 2 conclusions.
1) farming for shadowscream armor isn't bad at all (but beyond what my smith can acomplish without an inordinate ammount of help) and

2) old cultural plate is going to "cost" about as much as making attempts at BD cultural as far as I'm concerned. While I'd definatly succeed alot making the old cultural (I've made several peices alreay...and depleted the stores of morning dew I collected oh so long ago), and while I wouldn't expect to succeed much with the new cultural armor (or even sell it), the costs are similar and I'd save time (the most important commodity) in collecting materials for a skill up. If the price of morning dew dropped to 20pp, AND there appeared a steady and substantial supply of morning dew I'd do the old cultural route (though its a pain tracking a chanter down to enchant 3 bricks of mithril so I can make 1 enchanted block...), but as it is, its a total waste of resources.

[Galvanid]

That's about my range

As far as I can guess, from the generosity of friends, farming my own velium and frost temper components, the only imported supplies are the blue diamonds themselves. So, I think that my cost per combine is somewhere around 400-500pp so far per.

Windstones, an items I can't farm (<-- Rogue) go for 150-300 apiece, and the blood is rare as well. That with the aquisition of similar parts had me at 5-700pp a combine for simple things.

Which leaves my shadowscream. Since I am a barbarian rogue, I need a group to farm components, otherwise I'd require obscene man hours over the course of several months to amass a similar size of supplies for combines. That, and nobody buys shadowscream. I don't even remember it selling when it came out.

The only other things that can raise trivials is Mistletoe Sickles, and PoP armor combines. Incidentally, I'm going for 20 attempts to yield 5 sickles.

If I was in uber guild 1-6 on my server I could try for a 15% smithing mod hammer. This would allow me to skillup on etheral metal combines depite the required skill being higher than the trivial (assuming that the informatino from EQ traders is correct).

So back to the choices:
1) Shadowscream
2) Acrylia
3) BD Cultural
4) Mistletoe Sickles

The advantage of BD armor is that there is still a partial market for it. The PoP armor hasn't come flooding in just yet. The only rub right now is the competetion of Tae Ew recipies...

Anyway, if I wasn't crazy, I'd go GM baking or brewing.... HUZZAH!