advice needed post 165

[euridice]

Hi,
Just wanted to know after having read lot of stuff here your thoughts about this.
My first goal is to go to 188 quickly to make an attempt on my 6th shawl.
As I actually have 165, very few golden ribons still work for skilling up and platinum ribbon is quite expensive but I read that skilling up was faster.
on the other hand I've about 300 sacred tunare silk, that means 100 trials on solstice robe and I can make more thanks to my druid friend.
if I'm right people tend to say that at my level, on solstice robe, you get a skillup every 13-17 combines, let's say 20.
That means that with theses silks I'd be at 170, far away from my goal.
But to go to 188 with plat ribbons, if I get 1 skillup every 10 attempt, that means about 23lvl X 100pp X 10 = 23k pp
harsh !
If I say that a solstice robe costs me about 50pp per attempt, with 23k I could make 460 robes divided by 20 = 23 levels
about the same..... assuming that I always fail
I'm lost, enlighten me please, knowing my goal =>188 quickly and my too low level that prevent me from farming stuff like rockhoppers hides or acrylia in mass (chanty 40)
ps : why solstice alos : because I got 250 in jewelry

[Silound]

Ribbons are on average, a much higher skillup to combine ratio. They also have some value right up to a merchant, unlike most servers where Solstice robes are valueless to both merhcants and palyers(and fails cost you 50pp anyway). You'd be best off doing ribbons to 187, then trying your luck on solstice robes till as high as you can stand

[YurienStonebow]

as much as i HATE suggesting this go farm acrylia and hides to get to 188 ansd make the masks. OR you can just get the materials you need and bring a friend or two along and hunt in CS. get 6 wolf hairs and a beard for each of them. that way you can get 3 chances to combine while you hunt the sirens. i think i did 5 attempts before i got it made. not too awfully bad and that was without a geerlok at 170

[Ziela]

Up until about 180 I actually got a skill-up on ribbons every 1 in 5 or so, at 180 it switched to 1 in 10. This is with a wisdom of 310. I was lucky and sold a stack of seagreen plat to a guildie, but other than that I ended up dumping them on merchants...do the last 2 points you can on gold ribbons though first if you can. The drolvargs in fv are easy and drop both honey berry and lichenclover, and they weren't nearly as boring to me as hunting in dagnor's.

[mewkus]

killing kobolds in Steamfont had a much faster drop rate for springwater than Drovarg's Lichenclover drop rate. When I did it, I had some newbie/lowbie run around looting the corpses. If I recall correctly, I was getting about 30 drops per hour. I've heard the minatours also drop springwater which you could kill while waiting for kobold respawn and get an even better drop rate.