Skilling up Smithing from 131 to 170ish...

[Skratchen]

Greetings,

I have two paths that I can currently follow up to get to 170ish in smithing. I have amassed 5 full stacks of leather padding and I have 3 stacks of both Shrieking substance/wailing substance. I plan on doing Shadow Scream once I get to 170ish, but I was wondering which stack of supplies I should burn through first to approach my first goal of reaching the 170 skill range. Do I work on fine steel first or should I work on Humming orbs first?

Who knows, maybe the answer to this question could unlock the mysteries of the universe... :P

Thanks for the input.

[Troodon]

Humming orbs triv at 168. Since you need to make these anyway for when you pick up shadowscream, go for it. Once humming orbs triv you can do some fine plate to 188, and that's when I'd go for shadowscream in earnest.

If you don't mind farming, suggest doing electrum and gold ornate for the next 10 points. Or just whip out your geerlok and start working on humming orbs. Whichever you find less of a pain to farm.

I'm personally less fond of farming hq ore than padding, hehe, so am thinking about skipping ornate and going right for fine steel. Post 188, ew... don't like any of my options really. Suppose I'll have to do farming for shadowscream, can't afford fearsome skyiron til I know I'll suceed a lot on it, hehe.

[Zeralenn]

Do yourself a favor and don't do ANYTHING but fine plate until 188. Do NOT jump off and start shadowscream earlier than this. Shadowscream is a TOTAL pain in the patoot to make -- keep saving ingredients to make that post-188 only. You have so very few options after 188 and you will be doing HUNDREDS of shadowscream combines after 188 to get to GM -- why not save those for those difficult levels instead of wasting them early when other options exist?

Failure rates on fine plate are low if you stick relatively close to your trivials, and the sellback to vendors of fine plate items is high enough that you actually lose very little money making fine plate.

...Zera

[Skratchen]

Thanks for the advice! Your suggestions have paid off. I went from 130 to 179 in a couple days and I only spent about 3k. 2/3rds of the 3k was spent on leather padding (I'm just too lazy to farm LQ pelts and those darn spiderling silks ) I should hit 188 tonight and I have about 50 humming orbs waiting to become armor. Oh, I need to farm those darn swirling shadows. Oh well, no one said smithing was going to be easy :P