Optimum skill levels

[Fearchar]

I have been studying "The Economical Guide to Smithing," by Zeralenn Mancdaman.
In that guide he gives a formula to determine you chance of a sucess at a given level.
The formula is, %Success=(Skill-(Trivial*.75))+51.2. Does anyone know if this formula
works for all crafts, or just for smithing?

I have been running some numbers. If my high school algebra is not too rusty, this
formula should be able to be reworked to give the skill you need for a given success rate.
The new formula would be Skill=%Success-51.2+(Trivial*.75). My ultimat goal is to make
some Blue Diamond armor for my Beastlord. There is a pottery step and a brewing step in
this process. The pottery step is trivial at 93, and the brewing is trivial at 136.

It is my understanding that no matter how high your skill gets, you will always have a 5%
chance of failure. If this is the case, it seems reasonable that you would only need to get
these secondary crafts to the point where you have a 95% chance of success. Using the above
formula, to get a 95% success rate on the 93 trivial would need a level of 114, and to get a 95%
success rate on the 136 trivial would need a level of 146. Does this sound about right, or am I
missing something? Thanks ---- Fearchar

[Zeralenn]

"She", not "he". (smile)

I didn't make up the formula. I'm not even sure who gets original credit. This is a formula that seemed to be among the most widely accepted on these boards but it is not the only formula out there. It's meant mostly to give an educated guess at probability and, like most things, is subject to the whims of that fickle biatch, the RNG.

And no, you are not missing anything. To get to 95% success you must get above the actual trivial level to varying degrees -- farther up at lower levels, closer at higher levels, with the trivial matching the 95% success somewhere around 174. This bears out in experiments -- you will fail more at lower levels than at higher ones. This is a darned good thing too, since failures at low levels are generally cheap and higher level failures are not.

...Zera

[Fearchar]

Sorry about the gender thing. Hard to tell from the name, and I guess old stereotypes just die hard -- you just don't think of lady smiths that often. Thanks for the reply, and thank for all the effort you put in to the guide. It definitely makes life easier for an up and coming smith.

[kiztent]

Actually Zera already did the math for you:

http://www.crimsonsnow.org/pdfs/guides.html

The quick reference trivial chart already has the information you want pre-calculated.

As for the formula...

Laurefin did the first formulation, which Ishwar finalized to its currently accepted format.

[Fearchar]

Thanks for the link. A very informative site.