Storm volaas hair

[Qaladar Bragollach]

I acquired 300 tailoring without leaving the bazaar pretty much. Othmir fur available by the bucketload. There are not however enough parchments available and too much competition for them. I've sold more than 10 million plat worth of PoP/GoD spells since DoDh went live. For some of that time period I was the ONLY character on server making those spells. I'm still at 287.

[Ndaara]

I got to 300 Tailoring with GM symbols. It was not difficult at all, although it was dreadfully expensive to get started.

i spent the first couple of months post-DOD buying saltpeter, sulfur, and parchments before actually beginning to make spells. got to 227 skill before starting on DOD recipes (had lots of supplies, was trying to use them up!).

tailoring skill 253: 25 February 06
tailoring skill 300: 11 June 06

research skill 228: 16 December 05
research skill 276: 2 September 06

so Qaladar wasn't the only one actively working on research, but it took me longer to actually start making the spells =) sorry for the competition Qaladar! but i never undercut you, and i TRY to make different spells than the ones you are selling. you've still made WAY more plat from spells than i have =p

I'd have to agree with Qaladar that tailoring was MUCH easier for me than research. after days of coercing my group to hunt Storm Volaas Hairs, i did one wild afternoon of otter slaughter. i decided i'd rather just buy drake hides. my /buyer bought a handful of otter hides, sporali skins, and storm volaas hairs, but looking at my notes, virtually ALL my skillups were from GM symbols.

i'm STILL slogging through research. making the solutions is the bit that slows me down, all those subcombines just feel so daunting. otherwise, I really like the research system. just that, when faced with 3 things to combine for a tailored symbol, vs. a bazillion subcombines before i can even start making spells, i picked tailoring, til i ran out of supplies =)

[Qaladar Bragollach]

Oh I didn't really mean competition for sales, but competition for the limited parchment supply. I had the market totally to myself for the first 3 or 4 months after DoDh came out though. Its still a steady market, but I made the bulk of my profit in that early period.

I got desperate towards the end of my tailoring run and was paying 500pp for othmir furs. Thats around 2200pp deadweight loss per combine. That's pretty bad but at this point I am regularly paying 5k for runic parchments. If I really worked at it I could probably get to 300 but it would take more capital than I am willing to invest and the amount of time it would take to sell off that many spells is too long for me to feel confident in price stability. In other words, I would probably lose a lot of money. A lot more than I lost in tailoring. I'm not willing to do that and it seems no one else on the server is either.

[Luvimt]

I guess it's server and luck dependent then. There are very rarely othmir, holgresh, velium hound/mastodon fur or ice silk in the bazaar on AB but always at least 20 runic parchments and a good supply of sulfur and saltpeter.
I gave up on the GM quest after the 50th or so creator mission - i just found it too boring. So I didnt have GM symbols as an option.
293 tailoring took 177 combines and i also had a run in the early 200's of 320 combines without a skill-up whereas the researchers longest run without a skill-up was 51 so I guess that skewed my results slightly.
For me, tailoring was 10 times harder than any other skill, but results obviously vary for different people. Nonetheless, I think it's atrocious that the master's drop rates havent been evened out. It should be a level playing field for all races and tradeskills.

[Madmax1939]

Thought I'd add my two cents on this camp.

Ok for some reason the giants don't seem to follow the 20 minute repop timer most pop mobs do. Seems a fair bit longer. I rountinely clear the main fort and the one directly behind with the two pathers on the bridge and the 3 standing there also on the bridge. A clear and a half of these two forts will net you about a dozen strands give or take a few. Haven't quite figured out the other two without getting the named runnig out and beating me up but haven't really worked at it yet.

Giant notes
-Proc a feign death and way more frequently then the spiders in pon This is actually helpfull sometimes but mostly a pain in the but. I can remember a few times though with my cleric fded I just had to wait a couple minutes after a wipe and cleric could get up rez everyone so it does have its selling points.

- One type is Partial slow mitagation the other fully slowable. Although as a chanter it sometimes takes me up to four slows to get it to stick no idea what it would take for a shammie to get a slow to stick. Mobs have crazy bad pathing here I even pulled one one time who ran toward me then ran right back into fort to grab all his buddys, again thank god they procced fd on my cleric. The good thing about thier pathing and the fact that they like to cast spells i usually get to make all my slow attemps on inc.

-They seem to have a tendency to blur themselves also and have short agro range so don't run to far ahead on the pull. I pull them to where the lake meets the river and just don't throw around to many aoes as you'll agro the native wild life.

- Now if the main camp named is not up clear normally but its gets strange when you pop him, though He does seem to be like a lot of the alternate quest mobs that if you don't directly agro you got no worries pulling his buddies. Except every time I've cleared this and waited for a full repop, with named you seem to get way way more mobs and they all seem to be swimming, totally crazy if you ask me. They are also really bunched together after repop. All I did at this point was cast pac like crazy for 40 seconds and then pull. I still get three or four but I rely then on the horrible pathing and their chance to what I think is bluring themselves plus the low agro range and I usually only end up in camp with one or two.

- Pretty sure both types rootable but only one type is mezzable. All summon of course. They seem to hit about the same as the valorians in hoh.

PS- if finding a group for this camp is tough all you really need is double charmers grab two frogs (don't summon) or even any local wildlife if you can handle being summoned by expet. By using two charmed pets the agro of the giant on a charm break will only switch agro to other pet allowing charmer to regain pet and hopefully reengage and build up agro before other pet breaks charm. Remember though 4 person agro list applies and your effectively stuck as a duo going this route. Although druids charm nicely here along with chanters.

All in all pretty good xp here if your in the 65 range and its a fun but buggy camp.

[Taushar]

Going off eqrankings, there are more 300 skill tailors just on my server than there are 300 skill researchs across ALL servers. There are in fact, zero 300 skill researchers on my server. Obviously eqrankings is not a complete list, but its fairly representative.

You have the most extraordinary luck imbalance I've ever seen if it honestly took you thousands of hours to farm for tailoring and only 10 to farm for research.

Suffice to say that most people don't experience what you did.

As for profitability, tailoring has ALWAYS been lucrative if you had the high skill in it. Quivers, Wu's, Velious leathers, Solstice robes, PoP silk/leather, Tae Ew leather, DoN armor have ALL made big big money in their time periods. Tailoring has always been difficult and always been lucrative. Research was an utterly worthless skill pre LoY. Post LoY it was mildly profitable on a very few spells. Its only been hugely profitable since DoD. Coincidently also about the same time that it got very difficult.

Problem #1, only certain classes can do research. I am almost to the point where all my tradeskills are at 300. However, being a Cleric, I can't do research. Nor can I do it on my Druid. Or my Shammie. There is a reason why there are so many more tailors than researchers. That doesn't mean that tailoring is easier than research.

[Ngreth Thergn]

There is also the fact that until DoD... you could NOT get spell research to 300.

You have been able to get tailoring to 300 since the 300 cap was given.