Calculating cost for using robes for skillups

[Canto Wolfheart]

You will not skill up on nearly one of twenty combines on solstice robes. Nor will you sell all the robes you would make if you skilled up 70 points on them =)

Tailoring is a hard skill. If you make it to 250, you do it by combining anything you can get your hands on, at all, that isn't trivial.

[Batuda]

Just for stats:

83 combines of robe
261 wisdom w/o Geerlok equiped and no c3
159 skill before
169 skill after combines
3 robes made

I'm pretty wealthy so I don't really care about the cost. That being said, I did make my all compenents myself (have access to a 250 jeweler and a Tunare druid). The only thing I paid for was spider silk. I found prices ranging from 2p to 5p. I did buy some swatches for 10p.

I am just trying to make (200). /shrug

[Nysse Tulee]

As a note about Ceremonial Solstice Robes.

I'm level 65 druid, have wisdom 280. Used Geerlock during combines.

I did 31 Solstice Robe combines.
1 skillup
0 robes made

My tailoring was 192 when i started and skillup came in the last 10 batch of the robes.

After that I did some acrylia reinforced and halfling culturals too. no skillups on next 30 combines. Acrylia Reinfoced had like 50 percent success rate on that batch.

[Liwsa]

There really is no reason to despawn the rockhopper in DSP since the drop rate for flawless and superb is so low anyway. I have been popping in and out to farm a bit there where the rockhoppers are up and onl;y get about 2 superb and 1 flawless a hour of steady killing(about 1 every 2 minutes or so).

You rarely see anyone in the bazaar on Terris-Thule with large quanties of these types of hides. It is usually 1 or 2 folks with 1-5 each. Once in awhile you see 1 person with 20-50 but you see his price and can tell he has been buying up the 1-5 people.

[Cendorly]

Making robes is very, very random. Recently I sat down and did 66 attempts at robes. 2 skillups (194 - 196), 6, yes SIX successes I'm still recovering from the pain... Another time I did about 70 robe combines, and got super lucky - NO robes and a few skillups. However, add the recent 6 robes I made to the 10 robes I previously made eons ago while getting from 158 to 192 and...well...I didn't even break 200 yet and I've got more robes then I'd like and that my server can bear.

My best advice to you is keep your eyes open! Send the word out to friends, guildmates, etc., that you're looking for tailoring supplies. Never, ever, ever pass up something that can be used for a combine in tailoring. It's not the cash involved in making the robes that's the hard part, it's the inventory of robes you will have left with when all is said and done. Keep an eye on things in the bazaar. You never know when someone will be selling tailoring stuff at an extremely low price either due to not knowing prices or just wanting to dump the stuff. You can sometimes catch a good deal or two there.

I still have about 400 Misty Thicket Picnics sitting on a mule when I used those for working baking up to 250. Fortunately, MTP's are a LOT lower in cost to make then robes...but the point is the same.

While your research is good, and I'm sure you can learn something from it in the long run, it may be best to not lock yourself into only one way of getting tailoring to 250. Taking tailoring slow and steady, will help keep your sanity and robe market intact.

Just my 2 cp's worth...

[Shjinn]

Diversifying

I would completely agree that you should diversify, not only for your own benefit but for the benefit of all others.

In short I'll show you how one person NOT diversifying and being selfish and/or dumb about market forces.

I did Solstice robes 2-3 times a week, doing 30 to 33 combines each time. On average, I'd get 2 to 7 successes (doh). But I was selling almost at the same rate in Bazaar, even with 2 or 3 other main sellers.

Then comes a person who dumps 41 Solstice Robes at 750pp in two days. This was about 3 weeks ago. Her robes are still on the market (less than 10 left last I checked). Since then, everyone who was making olstice Robes have not been able to sell any, which means unless you're rich you stop making them.

That was NOT very friendy of that person. But hey...there are no rules to how you go about it. But I know one thing: I will always undercut her on major tailoring items when I GM shortly. :twisted:

So, please diversify to spread out the market to help the other tailors out and not create bad blood.

Shjinn

[monocot]

skillups

Past the 230's it becomes too expensive to skillup off these robes. At 234 I hardly ever fail robes. With one chain per attempt it's just not cost effective.

Monocot

[Scirocco]

You have to consider timing. Robes were a hot ticket item way back when the quest was introduced and the FT 1 earring was fixed. I could sell Robes for 13K to 20K as fast as I made them.

I stopped selling Robes when they dropped to 2500 pp a few months ago. Not worth the trouble. I now see them at 1500 pp from bulk suppliers who don't sell any for weeks. The demand is no longer there.

The trick is getting in when the demand is high and the supply is low.

[Velurian]

The trick is getting in when the demand is high and the supply is low.

You miss the point.

In the context of skillups, the Solstice Robes still make some amount of sense on those servers where the market hasn't totally tanked. The price per attempt, if you can (and do) manufacture your own components, is only around 50pp per (failed) attempt (575pp on the occasional success). It's not a matter of making a huge profit, it's a matter of affordably getting lots of attempts in. (And all of the components for robes are store-bought or easy to farm.)

I certainly wouldn't make them if I were a high-skilled tailor looking to make huge profit, but as a GM JCer trying to skill up tailoring and generally finding the available supplies of acrylia awfully expensive, the robe path looks attractive enough that levelling a Tunare druid up to 29 (well, 30 for specialization) for the emeralds seemed like the best way to proceed.