Woes with skilling up post 220+

[lycoss]

Denmother,

I would like your advice. My main is an erudite tailor 224 skill and I have a geerlock +5%. Is the chance of a skill up directly proportional to the distance from the trivial? Am I hurting myself skill up wise by using a gearlock and making my effective skill a 235 to improve successes? Would I do better eating the failures and having the game roll potential skill ups against my raw skill of 224? Also since POP was implemented and my int went to 260 I haven't gotten a single tailoring skill up in over 150 tailoring combines when making Solstice robes, othmir boots and wyvern masks. Has this been occuring to any other 220+ traderskiller? Should I lower my int to 255 and raise wisdom? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks,

Lycoss Gogetit

[lycoss]

Oops

Terribly sorry can you move this to the tailoring section please? Thanks

Lycoss

[Sylphan]

This is a good question. Nobody really knows for sure, and it's difficult to test.

When a geerlock moves your skill to above the trivial you can still get skillups until your actual skill matches the trivial. But that doesn't prove anything -- the percent chance to skill up might still be calculated on your adjusted skill.

Even if that's the case, a geerlock could still increase your chance of skillup in some situations. For example, if it increases your success rate and successes give a higher chance of skillups than failures, it's useful. Or if your skill is 192 natural but 201 adjusted... skillups tend to come faster (on average) in the 200s than the 190s.

We also don't know the effect of int over 255. It's possible that higher int simply means more skillups. But it's also possible that a level 62 character would have to have 265 int (or maybe even more) to have the same skillup chance that a lower level character would have with 255 int. Or perhaps 255 is the cap for skillup purposes (but not for mana pool purposes), so going over 255 is entirely irrelevent.

Personally, I remove my geerlock when I get within ten points or so of the trivial, so my success rate isn't affected. This might or might not help, but it certainly doesn't hurt.

Your lack of skillups with 260 int is just bad luck. Lots of other folks are getting the normal amount of skillups with 260 int.

[finnlander]

I only use my Geerlok when I definitely am trying to make a finished product. I could care less if I make a few extra wyvern masks when I'm trying to gain skill.

Finn

[AlrecRZ]

Im with finn

I only use geerlock when I really hoping to make the finished product.

when busting my way thru piles of wyvern hides I could care less if I drop 5 of the floor or 20

[Ilona]

I tend to skill up making things for friends/guildies or to go in my trader bag.
That being said, I have stopped using a geerlok on solstice robes, because I succeeded on them too much! For other combines I do use my geerlok, but am at 255+ wis as well (lvl 40, so capped at 255)

[Canto Wolfheart]

Well what I know for sure is that I just got my skill to 228 with a ceremonial solstice robe, wis over 260. I also know that at some fan faire a dev said that skillup and trivial level are not directly related.

I also have some things that I have decided on myself, that while they may not be solid fact, I am quite convinced they are true. The primary one is that I believe a skillup is more likely from a sucessful combine. When I look back at my chart where my tick marks show a whole lot of ticks in groups, or not a lot of ticks in groups, and think about when I made hard things like robes, and easy things like acrylia armor, it's nearly obvious. Starting at about 200 skill I made nothing but acrylia armor (supplies were plentiful in bazaar) and othmir caps (i hunted those otters with a frenzy). They both were easy recipies, and I averaged 21 combines per point. Since PoP, acrylia supplies have become rare, and harmony nerf/being over 60 made me not hunt otters anymore. I've been doing 'hard' combines like black panther skin, cobalt drake, solstice robes, and my average from 223 to 225 is fourty combines per point approximately.

Short version? Equip that geerlok, especially if you have over 255 int/wis, as higher success rate will almost surely lead to quicker skillups.

[Meirril]

I've noticed that success and skill ups go hand in hand more often than not, but that's probably due to the RNG. The RNG seems to have a bell curve instead of a "true" randomness to it. Thus, your more likely to get a series of failures or successes within a few moments (moment being a short peroid of time) than you would expect. A distinct possibility is that the formula for determining success and skill ups probably like aproximatly the same entries from the RNG and since both are calculates within a few nanoseconds of each other (if not at the same time) and so get nearly the same random variables entered.
This is just observation of alot of things in EQ, including (and especialy) trade skill success rates and skilling up.
If you want a better test of this, try observing the rolls you get from a group of people doing random 100's. Alot of numbers rolled close to each other make a tight little group instead of being more spread out. Over time you'll find alot of these clusters. Probably more clusters than spread out numbering.

[Hodito]

From tradeskill panels at two FFs last year (the dev could have been mistaken, or code could have changed).

* More likely to skill up on a success than failure.

* Only skill affects success rate.

* Once "trivial", success rate is static (i.e.: no difference between 100 and 250 skill for success rate on a 100 "trivial" item).

* INT/WIS (or substitute attribute) determines chance of skill up (was not made clear if "distance to trivial" affects -- sure SEEMS to!)

-http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=286297Da Ho</a>, Wiz/65

[Pockets FullOfGold]

Your Level "appears" to affect your skillup rate as well. Depending on what your skill currently is. I cannot prove this through testing but I can submit this as information that it sure does seem like it...

I had a Smithing Skill of 47 and was not happy with my combine successes with making Acrylia Studs and Acrylia Bonings. I decided to increase my skill so that my success on combines would be greater, which it is. I made Lockpicks (trivial at 88 ). My Level was 58 at the time. I bought enough supplies to make 60 Lockpicks. Out of 60 combine attempts, I got 30 skillups and my current Smithing Skill is 77. My Str was 170.

I remember when I was in my 30's and I was working on Cured Silk Armor (trivial at 82), I didn't get 30 skillup's on 60 Combines, nor did I get 25 Skillups when I did 50 combines making Quivers (trivial at 115) when I was about level 40. My Wis was approximately 125 at the time.

I could be wrong, but that's how I seem to remember it.

Pockets FullOfGold

[Velurian]

From tradeskill panels at two FFs last year (the dev could have been mistaken, or code could have changed).
* Once "trivial", success rate is static (i.e.: no difference between 100 and 250 skill for success rate on a 100 "trivial" item).

This is observably untrue. Success rate continues going up (to ~95%) even after the trivial. There were a number of threads on this on the old boards; at this point, I'm not sure if there's any way to access them, but they were based on, in some cases, totals of thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) of observations.

In short, this is one of the few things we're really sure of.

[Hodito]

Thus, my caveat.

I've found the 95% figure to be unobserved. Velium studs trivial ~35, and at 210 effective skill, I'm lucky to get 90% success on runs of 30-100.

And on the flipside, in hundreds of attempts (thousands?) I'm ~99% on ">250" SoV-and-earlier combines (Plat/BD, Vel/almost anything). And no ENC AAs.

My *opinion* is that each recipe is on a success scale -- scale of how likely you are to succeed depending on how close you are to trivial, above or below.

For example, on my latest twink, at 60 points below triv, I'm getting ~40% success on brewing Mino Hero. Try smithing Acrylia Plate at 60 points below triv ...

YMMV.

-http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=286297Da Ho</a>, Wiz/65

[Mytheriel]

This is a tricky subect. I have read previously of there being two numbers assigned to a combine: the trivial level and another number referred to as the difficulty level. This would seem to be reflected in several instances.

For instance my Jeweler is 250 raw skill and has his trophy. He can make Velium Blue Diamond Bracelets all day long with about a 85-90% success rate. These have a trivial rating of >250 but seem to have a much lower difficulty rating than say... Gem Studded Chains (For Ceremonial Solstice Robe) which also trivial >250 but yield on average a 50% success.

All velious tailored items trivial at >250 but most will observe a difference in success in creating these items.

With my Tailoring skill of 250 plus my trophy I can make Arctic Wyvern Masks with about a 75-80% success rate. If only this held true for Tunarean Soldier/Scout Armor I would be thrilled, but undortunately I tend to see 50-70% success at these on a good day.

There are many other examples I could quote... acrylia studded masks seem to succeed more often than acrylia studded cloaks even though they have the same trvial... and on and on.

I have read over and over that success improves chances at skill increase. This is something I whole-heartedly agree with. As you can see from my sig I have spent some time in the trades and have seen this hold true time and time again. Whatever you can do to increase your chance of success will invariably also improve your rate of skill increases.