Best way to 220+ as a DE smith?

[Curras]

Sickles

I think Sickles is the best path from where you are now (220), as long as you have enough cash to get started. I went from 214 all the way to 250 over 1.5 months. I started with 15K. I was successful enough at the beginning to break even. As my skill went up, I was a little bit more successful to make a profit selling in the bazaar.

[Sayleth]

I am not at 220, I guess my subject is a little misleading. I am only 115 now, I want to get to at least 220 in order to do that sick earring quest.

I think I will fail a lot on sickles at 188. How much does a stack of sickles cost to combine? I think I read somewhere around 7K? How much do vendors buy them back for? They dont seem to sell well in the bazaar...at anyone time there are dozens forsale at maybe 500.

Thanks
Sayleth

[Reflan]

Kiztent, when I do sickles I don't have to deal with people screwing up the Hollowshade war. EVERY bit of time I spend on sickles is purely productive. As I noted when speaking of just not even bothering to loot owlbear substances anymore for the most part, much of my time in Hollowshade is completely wasted. It won't be fixed by looting more owlbear substances so instead of 220 owlbear to 33 shrieking I have 500 owlbear to 80 shrieking.

As to speed on the sickles themselves, I tend to do a dozen or more stacks of blessed dusts of tunare and mistletoe tempers at a time. My last trip was 17 stacks of elven wine in Felwithe, the time before that was almost 30. Sometimes I buy celestial essence, but mostly I've made it. Takes a while to make a few bagfuls but not THAT long. Once you have the elven wine and CE ready, the combines to melt them down is pretty fast; it just seems longer because it's so dull -- like most tradeskilling.

The blessed dusts are much worse. I'd suggest buying them to most people; I've seen very good prices in the bazaar and even bought some myself even though I have my own druid. It's always possible to commission, people, too. I just commissioned someone to imbue things today, as a matter of fact. Just by sending out a few lines in my server's /market chat channel.

Compared to needing 1 1/2 to 2 hours to get 40 swirling shadows in twilight, and lord knows how long to get 20 shrieking substances on a RELIABLE basis, free from people pulling monkeyshines in Hollowshade and constantly switching the war ever few minutes, and then of course scraping up 20 owlbear substances, I spend less time on sickles.

It really helps a whole lot to do everything on an industrial level of effort. When I get ready to do sickles, I generally have anywhere from roughly 10(very rarely) to 25 stacks(less rarely than having only 10) of mistletoe tempers, CE's, and blessed dusts of tunare. It's flitting around constantly from zone to zone and stopping and starting that takes up more time than people realize. Sickles for 60 combines, like some people do? I don't bother. I sit down and devote an evening to imbuing emeralds, then significantly less time to CE and mistletoe temper, and I am good to go for a LOT of combines. And NO amount of my time has been spent gazing off into space like I sometimes have to do in Hollowshade because there isn't even one single productive thing I can do.

There is one thing, though. I have two accounts. I can store a whole lot of excess dusts/CE/tempers on mules on more than one account.

If you have only one account, you may well find sickles quite a bit slower, because you will be doing things in smaller dribs and drabs than I have to. That's simply inefficient compared to the efficiency I enjoy.

You would I guess have to take into account how screwed up it can be on my server trying to fight to control Hollowshade so you can get the drops you need, and the fact that I have a second account so I can take good advantage of the efficiencies of mass production, when you consider how successful sickles are compared to shadowscream for me.

But on the other hand, you have to judge also how efficient it is being able to round up 30 green mobs at a time with my shaman and have my monk help kill them at the same time. Hasted monks kill green mobs VERY quickly. Hasted higher level shaman pets do a surprisingly non-lousy job on greenies too...and even better, they chase them down while I concentrate on looting. I'm a lot more efficient at shadowscream, too, than many non-AE people with only one account. A LOT.

Not that it helps in Twilight when I farm shadows. Keeping the isle clean is keeping it clean, period. There's another sticking point.

Anyway, I've made my case as clearly as I can. For me, shadowscream certainly has nothing on sickles. The fact that so much of the Hollowshade war is completely out of my control and leaves me staring into space while people switch the zone every five dang minutes is not the whole of it, but it matters.

Like most people, though, mine is a special situation. Just like lots of other people's situation -- being an AE toon, being lower level or higher level, richer or poorer, having friends coming along and wasting hours helping you kill, having your own toon that can imbue emeralds or being able to buy imbued emeralds in the bazaar or not, etc.

It's just a post to take from whatever one can, depending on how much it relates to one's own situation.

[Reflan]

It actually costs more than 7k per stack, especially since failing the part of the subcombines that uses the expensive gems(rubies and sapphires) is not really all that uncommon).

I started sickles at 209 because I got tired of going 42 combines per point and the aggravation of the Hollowshade war. I had hoped sickles would skill me up faster. It turned out that they did.

But my experience on sickles at 209 leads me to advise against doing sickles at 188 unless you are basically really, really rich. At 209 I would often go through a stack of combines and get NO sickles. Sometimes I would luck out and get two. Pretty darn rare. You can forget about getting anything remotely like your money back at that level; I can only imagine how rotten your luck would be at 188. You would basically be hoping for the 5% success rate as being actually hugely lucky for you, and your best case scenario.

As crummy as it sounds, you might want to consider just doing shadowscream as long as you can stand it, and then moving into sickles on about the 20th time you definitively want to give up on it forever. By that time, perhaps you can actually make two or three sickles per batch of 20 combines and make at least a perceptible amount of money back. At least you won't QUITE be feeling like you're burning 20 to 40k a night. Just close.

As to cultural, some is cheaper than others, but...a lot of that stuff is utter garbage nobody would buy. Start talking about all the enchanted ores and blue diamonds you need for the BD cultural, and you are talking about a whole lot of chanter time, and money. I'm saving my cultural combines until my skill gets higher. 231 and counting.

[kiztent]

Compared to needing 1 1/2 to 2 hours to get 40 swirling shadows in twilight, and lord knows how long to get 20 shrieking substances on a RELIABLE basis, free from people pulling monkeyshines in Hollowshade and constantly switching the war ever few minutes, and then of course scraping up 20 owlbear substances, I spend less time on sickles.

I agree that sickles are probably faster, but I'm not sure they are as much faster as people make them out to be. It's not like you hit the magic sickle button and get skills ups quickly after spending a pile of plat.

Of course, no one is EVER in hollowshade on my server (well, sometimes maybe).

[Velurian]

I am not at 220, I guess my subject is a little misleading. I am only 115 now, I want to get to at least 220 in order to do that sick earring quest.

I think I will fail a lot on sickles at 188. How much does a stack of sickles cost to combine?
I think I read somewhere around 7K? How much do vendors buy them back for? They dont seem to sell well in the bazaar...at anyone time there are dozens forsale at maybe 500.

There's really just one question you want to answer before going this route:

Do you have 300-500kpp in the bank?

This is a realistic estimate of the cash involved in skilling up on sickles from 188 to 250. And the majority of that comes in the early part of that range, because you'll have very few successes to sell. Until you reach about 205-210, you'll likely average no better than 1 success per stack of combines.

(Just as a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation: from 188-200, if you're lucky, you're looking at 240 combine attempts (12 stacks) -- 20 per point for 12 points. The per-stack cost is closer to 7500, so you're looking at 12 * 7500 = 90k out of pocket. Again if you're lucky, you can still sell them for 2k or so each -- that seems to be about the standard price on servers where the sickle market isn't totally busted these days. On those 12 stacks, you can expect about 12 successes, so about 24k in sales. So you're 90k - 24k = 66kpp in the hole, just to get to 200. And this is optimistic, since most people seem to take a lot more than 20 combines/point through this range.)

And it sounds like you've got it even worse -- the sickle market on your server looks to be busted. So even once you reach the point where it might be worthwhile on some servers, you'll still be pouring money into it. (Using the calculation above, you'll be on average 84k in the hole to get to 200, using your 500pp price.)

If I were you, I'd stick with shadowscream.

[Minuit]

As to cultural [...] a lot of that stuff is utter garbage nobody would buy.

NPC merchants will happily buy old style cultural armour. In my experience the resale price is roughly equal to the cost of the ore, but does not go up for imbued pieces.

You won't sell adamantite plate in the bazaar for tens of thousands of platinum but as long as you have a good supply of tempers (which involves obliterating camps full of shadowed men for hours on end waiting for essence of shadow to drop) and can get the ore enchanted (which is safe and easy, but slow and incredibly dull for the enchanter) then I don't see why skilling up on old style cultural should be so unthinkable. Compared to messing around in Hollowshade it seems almost pleasant and easy by comparison.

Of course, I play an enchanter and don't have the patience for sickles _or_ shadowscream, so your milage may vary.


Minuit
Brell Serilis
Yada yada yada

[Sayleth]

What do you guys mean by 'old style' cultural? What is the new style?

I still am not sure what route I am gonna go, except to say that sickles are not going to be it at least early on. I have been buying up essence of shadow when I see it for 50 or less, or find it on a merchant. So I have a few stacks and will give cultural at least a try. If it doesnt pan out, then Shadowscream. I really hate to farm, but hate it even more when you are trying to farm something that is contested because very few folks respect camps. I have a feeling I'd rather buy essences of shadow at 100p than farm for Shadowscream.

Sayleth

[Mahlig]

New cultural is Blue Diamond. Old style is not, I believe.

[kiztent]

New cultural is Blue Diamond. Old style is not, I believe.

Correct.

To be more specific, old cultural is trivial in the 200 range and uses enchanted folded adamantium sheets (enchanted/imbued adamantium plate and chainmail) - or is trivial below 188 and uses enchanted rings.

new cultural, also called BD cultural, uses infused folded sheets and trivials over 250 (dark prince blah blah blah).

[Sayleth]

Hmm are these trivials correct then? http://www.eqtraders.com/secrets/recipes_smithing_darkelf.htm

They show Enchanted Adamantite Plate armor as being trivial at 212/213, and the next stuff up Imbued Enchanted Adamantite Plate could take me to the 220 I want and beyond. Neither style uses BDs as far as I can tell.

Thanks
Sayleth

[kiztent]

Hmm are these trivials correct then? http://www.eqtraders.com/secrets/recipes_smithing_darkelf.htm

They show Enchanted Adamantite Plate armor as being trivial at 212/213, and the next stuff up Imbued Enchanted Adamantite Plate could take me to the 220 I want and beyond. Neither style uses BDs as far as I can tell.

Thanks
Sayleth

As far as anyone knows, yes they are correct.

[Caesium]

Enchanting ore is nothing, go buy a mana stone and box a clr/dru.

Essence of shadow seems somewhat common, but the spawn rate of shadow men is very odd, the camp in wc for example can have anywhere from 2 to 9 shadow men spawned/resawn can kill 2 and 6 will spawn, kill 6 and 4 will spawn etc.

[Saebriel]

I farmed the essences a bit the past two days. Didnt seem common to me. I tried the LFay, WC and Lavastorm camps. Didnt have hard numbers because I mostly AFK farmed, just would sit in the middle with pet, and check corpses every 6-7mins while I did stuff around the house or played some PS2.

Didnt even get 2 stacks in 4 hours across all of this. Blearg. Then I made some tempers, and with 250 Brewing and a trophy, I failed 3 of 30 combines. Ha. Then I discovered some trivials (should have known better, pretty obvious greaves and cloak werent gonna be tougher than BP), blowing 2 more tempers. Yay!

Sayleth

edit: Wife was logged in.

[Reflan]

Tons of fun, isn't it? heheh

I'll be so glad when smithing skill ups are over. I shudder to think that I might tradeskill again after that.