Erudite Tailor looking for advice

[Yizan_Pet_Pimpin]

I am a Erudite Tailor working ever so slowly to that magical 250 tailoring skill. I recently finished out ribbon tailoring at skill 187 and was wondering what the best advancement options were from here.

I have looked at the various trivial levels and to my novice eye it looks like LoY robes would be the next logical step in progression, though Erudite Cultural Tailoring looks promising as well. I would need Salil's Writ 64 right, Rune of Inverse, Words of Ethereal, Dew Clover, Yaeth's 78 right, and Rune of Tempest for the Erudite LoY robes, but I dont know how difficult aquiring these research pages will be on a large scale. My question is at what point (if at all) is it beneficial to move onto Cultural tailoring as a means of skill progression to 250?

Research pages seem like they would be somewhat hard to farm due to their random nature, and the few I find in the bazaar are usually priced way too high to consider them as a means of skilling up. Not that Blue Diamonds for cultural tailoring are any cheaper, but at least Blue Diamonds are easier to farm because they are more consistant in the right zones (Sebilis comes to mind). I play an Elemental geared 65 Magician so farming isnt really a problem, I just am not sure which recipe would give the best chance for skillups and what ingredients would be easier to come by; Blue Diamonds or Research pages.

My hope is that some skilled Erudite Tailor (or another race with similar cultural options) might post here with his/her experiences and help me to decide which recipes to commit my time and money into for the purpose of skilling up. Thank you in advance for any help you might be able to provide.

[Anaxo]

Off the top of my head, the drop rate for the research components are:
Salil's Writ 64 right - common
Rune of Inverse - common
Words of Ethereal - uncommon
Dew Clover - rare
Yaeth's 78 right - extremely rare (used also to research KEI, so if you find any it'll be at exorbitant Bazaar prices)
Rune of Tempest - rare

Personally, I would avoid Erudite cultural tailoring. Steelsilk, Woven Platinum and Steelweave are expensive combines to work on, unless you have a pet imbuer and enchanter. Terrorantula silk is an uncommon drop, even with the new baby versions of the Terrorantula wandering around the Ro deserts.

Most people, after they have finished the Yksesha ribbons, do a mix of whatever recipes they can get their hands on. Othmir leathers, arctic wyvern masks, cobalt drake hides, solstice robes (only until 220), Ykesha robes, and cultural tailoring, if they managed to find the components cheaply.

[Xorithra L`Amante]

I agree with Anaxo but to add to Terrorantula silks, there is a Guktan illusion quest that one could do to spawn a very large spider that spawns baby spiders. The baby spiders all drop silks... I never loot them myself, my Erudite husband does, so I can't tell you how many stacks, but the loot spam scrolls off my screen usually. It's not very dependable (the lady that spawns the spider is maybe once a day, not sure) but it could supplement your farming.

[Yizan_Pet_Pimpin]

Thank you for your responses. Funny you should mention the enchant/imbue character as my Girlfriend plays a 65 Eru Enc and a 56 Eru Cleric. I have all the Quellious Imbues, Metal Enchants, and Mana Vials that I need. I also have a decent supply of Terrantula silks from friends who have been collecting for me for a while. Really the only components I need for Cultural combines that I dont already have are the Blue Diamonds.

It sounds like the advice I am getting here is just hit combine as many times as I can regardless of how high the trivial is and hope for some skill raises.

[Cragzop]

My main is a 65 Erudite wizard. A few weeks ago I finally finished GMing tailoring.

My advice is to avoid the robes, unless you want to spend a literal century doing tailoring.

The real issue isn't the research components, it's the dyes. The seahorse roe drop rate is horrible. With a forager and killing the 3 seahorses and all of the land mobs you can average about 5 an hour. The bamboo is even worse - you'll need a tracker to find the mobs (and then the drop rate sucks) or you'll need that same forager to live in SB. I averaged between 2 and 3 an hour.

On the bright side, you'll have fishing at 200 if you forage and fish by the boat.

My path was solstice robes to 210, then the 2 free points, then Othmir to 222, then solstice to 230,then wyvern to 250. If I had to do it again, I'd save any furs until after I finished solstice - but I would still use solstice to about 230. (I hate velium that much - also Cod fishing isn't much fun)

BTW: all told I did about 80 robe combines for 2 skillups along the way, so for me at least they didn't have anywhere near the skillup ratio I saw on ribbons.

[Yizan_Pet_Pimpin]

Very very usefull information, thank you. I have noticed that the Erudite robe dyes seem to be much more rare than the dyes for other races. I have been watching for them in bazaar, but they are a very rare find indeed, so I went to farm them myself. I cannot believe how bad the drop rate was on either of them but I just assumed it was my own bad luck. It is comforting to know it wasnt just me.

Is your suggestion then to do Solstice Robes to 230, then go to Velious tailoring, or did I read that wrong? I am not real familiar with the details of Solstice Robe tailoring, does anyone have a link they might be able to provide? I read about it enough I figure there must be some info on it somewhere on these boards, but alas my search skills are not the best. I hear a lot of people talking about using this method, but it seems like it would be pretty expensive and time consuming progression path compared to some other options. I think I remember hearing that you get the "expensive" part of the recipe returned in the event of a failed combine, but what are the parts you need to farm in bulk for skilling up on Solstice Robes?

One last question I would like to ask if I may Crag. Did you attempt any of the Erudite Cultural as a means of skill advancement? If so what kind of luck did you have with it and would you say it was easier or harder than Velious tailoring? I just keep thinking that with the access to a Quellious Cleric and an Enchanter for the metal I could turn out a few dozen Cultural attempts without too much trouble. Having never farmed a Velious combine I am not sure how one would stack up in time and plat investment versus Cultural recipes.

As usual, thanks in advance for any help you may be able to provide.

[Rhyianna]

/growls
stay away from MY otters!!! MINE MINE MINE

lol.

[Cragzop]

I didn't try Erudite cultural except at its very inception, back when your silk option was only the single big spider (who btw was a blast to kill). Howver with just the single rare mob as a silk source it wasn't a viable route at the time and I never looked into it farther.

The issue with the solstice robes really comes down to the cost of the gem studded chains. (This is the item you get back when you fail.) The raw cost of the chains is about 250pp or so and they trivial at 335. This should give you about a 50% success rate when making them if you have maxed JC. So on the surface it doesn't seem to be too bad, an average of about 500pp or so per chain.

However these are a PITA to make. Enchanters with JC3 see rates of about 60 - 65%. Normal JC (read non-JC AA folks) see rates as low as 20%, so you can see a net cost of about 1000pp per chain.

The reason folks usually don't do Solstice robes all the way to 250 is how often you use these chains. At a skill of less than about 205 (by the way I stongly suggest never doing these with a geerlok if you're just skilling up) you have the minimum chance of 1/20 making a succesful combine. By the time you're at 230 you should average 3/10 and at 250 see something at 1/2. When you switch off of robes is simply a question of how much cash you want to throw at tailoring.

Besides the chain the consumables for each robe attempt include silk swatches (3 per attempt), 3 emeralds, tunic pattern and 6 celestial essences.

The new UI really helps this recipie. There are a lot of subcombines in it which are now much much less painful.

I used Solstice robes until about 230 and then switched full time to velious furs (with one attempt at each of the cultural robes along the way just for completeness sake). What I regret is that I used up a ton of otters around 220, before I switched back to Solstice.

For me, getting together stuff for solstice was easier than getting together stuff for the furs. In retrospect I wish I'd still had the otters for the final stretch as it would have saved me some fishing and some CC farming.

[papyscott]

One little piece of good news:

Your last tailored LoY robe --Robe of the Tempest-- has a tribute value of 20k!. Yes this is post trib value nerf.

One strategy to try: solstice robes to 210 or so, then advertise to your guild (or anywhere I guess) that if someone brings you the components you will do the tempest robe combine for free and give them the robe for tribute. I bet you get some takers since rune of tempest is not THAT rare.

You will have a pretty good chance of success too since that the tempest robe trivials at 262. Too bad the human robe only has a 6k trib value lol.

Papy

[ChaseFV]

As someone who has recently sworn off LoY robes (on FV all races can do all robes, since the patterns are tradeable), here's my experience:

For the Erudian robes, the foraged components aren't too bad to come by. The kerran snakes and kerran spiders on the island in Erud's Crossing, while dropping Seahorse Roe only rarely, do drop it. It took me less than an hour to get the 6 I needed. Compared to Maneater buds, that's pretty quick. The bamboo shoots are also not overwhelmingly difficult to obtain, though having a tracker/forager with you while in Stonebrunt and hunting pandas exclusively will make your life a bit easier. I did only the silver ribbon robes. Salil's Writ pg. 64 (right) is not terribly uncommon, you just need to be willing to do some vendor mining. I had good luck in the Jaggedpine Forest village, and, of course, in PoK. Runes of the Inverse can also be found in those places, though aren't quite as plentiful.

It took me probably about two stacks of robes to get from 187 to 192, with a stack of acrylia reinforced masks thrown in for good measure. The tribute values for the silver ribbon robes, while low, is probably better than you'd be able to get from selling them in the Bazaar (though being on a server with no alts might affect the market for low-end gear and tint my view on this matter slightly).

Best of luck, whichever path you choose to follow in your tailoring career!

[Optimum1]

Having a 250 trophied Erudite tailor I can say I gave some Rigid a shot and quickly went back to Studded Acrylia and then Reinforced Acrylia. Course, I did all mine before LoY but I had excellent excellent skillups with those. Presumably because the trivs are not so crazy high as say...Solstice Robes. Go clean out the caves for hides and buy the acrylia, or set up Grimlings in bear caves in Hollowshade and unleash your pet on them.