187 - low 200s what to skill up on?

[mewkus]

I just finished making a slew of ribbons and reached 187. I've got about 25 stacks of ingredients for making LoY robes but didn't really want to start on those till around 205-210. So, that leaves me at the point of not quite knowing what to use to skill up on for the next 20ish points. Solstice robes are the only thing that sounds reasonable, excpet that sucesses will basically cost me a new chain since any robes will either sit on bazaar mule for another year to two or get sold back to npc vendors. So, I've got a couple questions...

Anyone know of another route to the low 200s (other than rockhoppers as farming green/light blue is too unfun)?

What kind of sucess rate would I have making solstice robes and how high can I get before the sucess rate would start to get too prohibitive to continue with them? (any tips on reducing sucess rates?)

Anyone know if any of the velius hides/furs drop off of the higher level mobs (eg Siren's Grotto, WesternWastes)?

[bearcaller]

Unfortunately at that point you have only have 4 choices for viable skill paths:

1) solstice robes
2) Loy robes
3) reinforced acrylia (flawless hopper hides)
4) velious tailoring

whether you like it or not you will probably be farming greenies or shelling out cash to raise your tailoring from this point on. And there are only 2 zones where you can find velious hides that are viable skill-up routes: WL and CS. At 60 I still get some AA from othmir, but even half of those are light blue now. I would suggest you bite the bullet and give solstice robes a shot. At your skill level they are still a viable route since you won't be succeeding too often (don't be surprised if you make 1 out of 10 robes at your level though--it doesn't get to be too terrible until 212 or so, at that point I was succeeding a little less than half the time). Or you can just burn through your 25 stacks of LoY robes and hope for a good streak.

Don't forget....JCM is fixed now

[Moraganth]

http://mboards.eqtraders.com/upload/...threadid=10908

In the above thread are links to 10 other threads that ask the same basic question. Looking through them will give you a better idea of what you can do, what you can expect, and possibly some strategies to getting them.

[PetrosDaroc]

I had a horrible time with Solstice robes, even at my current skill of 185. I started them at 180 because LoY tempers are a pain to come by in the bazaar or even through foraging and I found farming silks to be much simpler. The gem studded chain is horrible and being a non-ench, I was failing about 50% of my combines on the gem studded chain (250 JC with trophy), and those don't come cheap. I'm now going back to LoY ribbons since I'd rather spend the time trying to forage rather than draining the plat failing on the gem studded chain.

Robes definitely are a nice way to skill up though if you are an ench with JCM or know of one. Especially with the low rate of success sub-200. Out of about 70 or so combines on the robes, I succeeded at 5 of them. Always frustrated me when I had one or two more combines to go to finish off my swatches and I succeeded at one...

Being a druid, I'd rather go quadding in CS to get furs/hides than trying to make that blasted gem studded chain.