Need advice for 158+

[GandilTT]

A few days ago I finally decided that I wanted to become a GM tailor(my guild needs one, and I need a hobby). After reading this board I decided to make my 30 necro the tailor(he has 255 int and as a human monk... i uhh dont..) Ive got him to 158 skill and now seek your advice on what route to go next.

Heres what I have to work with:
-For farming and such: 65 monk(137 smith, 100 brewer, 78 fisherman RAR) and 53 druid(seperate account so i can camp two spots at once and port etc)
-Finances:bout 25k.. But I can farm for more money if needed
-A gm trade skiller of every skill in my guild to help me with other combines(for free). and enchanters to summon vials for free.


Solstice Robes:From most accounts Ive read on this site, it looks like this is the expensive and clicking intensive way to go. Doesnt look like it would be worth it to me with solstice robes going for 1400 on my server. Is there any point where it would be easier to do these?

Acrylia route--
-Acrylia studded: I would like to do these till 188. How hard are the hides to farm given my charecters? How hard is the acrylia to get?
-Acrylia reinforced:same as above

Velioius--
-Othmir cap: Is otter faction important for anything? How hard are the furs to farm?
-Wyvern hide mask: These seem relativley cheep(15-20pp a piece). How hard is the cod component to fish? I have 78 fishing.
-Velium studs: Where is a good place to farm these?

Given that the seemlingly rare acrylia armor combines give more skill ups for less attempts then the velious armor(which looks cheeper and easier to farm), which way is more effiecent and cost affective.
Thanks for any input.

Gandil Shadowfist 65 monk
Drunken Tsunami
Terris Thule

[Delandril]

Solstice Robes:

Components are usually easily found in the bazaar. The fact that they sell at all is an oddity in the tailoring world. They are relatively cheap except for the 250-750pp chain you loose on a success. Many tailors choose this route though it is pp and click intensive. You are lucky robes are at 1400 on your server, some people were selling on mine for 600 the other day.
At 1400, if you have a decent success rate, it is possible to recover your expenses.

Acrylia armor:

Acrylia is relative easy to farm or buy in the bazaar. The problem is the hides. The drops rate on these things suck and if you go this route, I suggest doing acrylia studded only until it is trivial. This way you save up a stock of flawless hides to do reinforced acrylia for the next leg of your skillups. I can quad kite the Dawnshroud hoppers w/o too much difficulty and I can really eat them up if i have kei. Still, after 2-4 hours of quadkiting, I call it a lucky day if I have 5 of each type. You get a lot of trash pelts.

Wyvern Hide:

Velium, again, is relatively easy to farm in either CC or Velks or buy in the bazaar. Wyvern hides are usually easy to get a hold of from guildies that quad in CS or from the Othmir merchants in the area or even in the bazaar. The choke point here is the cobalt cod, but if you fish while you hunt wyverns, you can get a decent supply of oil (brewed from cobalt cod). The other thing you have to consider is the temper for making the studds. You can buy it from thurg for 25pp, or brew it in a click intensive/time consuming recipe for 9ppish. A stack of studds takes 40 velium tempers to make. (Assuming no failures)

Othmir fur:

An easy recipe in that the only looted item you need is the othmir furs. Each combine takes 2 furs. At high level, I've heard these are easy. The problem is, if you want to brew coldain velium tempers, one of the ingredients is ONLY sold by the othmir merchants. So if you tank your faction, you have to buy your velium tempers. Also, there are a couple minor quests the othmir offer. You can raise othmir faction by killing Ulthorks. This recipe also uses Enchanter vials, so you have to take time out of your enchanters day to make the vials for you.


Each recipe has advantages/disadvantages. Most people I think end up doing a combination of all of them given the resources you have. Best thing you can do is ask guildies to funnel any hides/velium/acrylia to the make a GM tailor fund. Combine your acrylia and velium into finish studds/boning as soon as you can. I'd also highly suggest raising smithing to 180+ as well as brewing so that you don't have to wait for the guild smith/brewer to make it for you. Good luck...I'm still stuck at 212

[Lilosh]

Re: Need advice for 158+

-Velium studs: Where is a good place to farm these?

Velium Studs = 3 Velium bits + Coldain Velium Temper

Velium Bits = 2 Small Pieces of Velium + Coldain Velium Temper

Coldain Velium Temper = Coldain Heater + 4 Celestial Essence

Coldain Heater = Brown Algae + Water + Allspice + Shotglass.

Everything yields one , except the final combine , turning them into studs, which yields 2.

I fully expect a "Thank you" after all that. <grin>

So 2 studs = 6 small pieces and 4 tempers.
So 20 studs = 60 small pieces and 40 temper.
40 Temper means 160 CE, per 20 Arctic wyvern Mask combines.


-Lilosh

[Zebroxks]

Im at 158 tailoring right now and saveing up acrylia. Right now farming in Tenebrous mtns both caves always farmed by me. I have madeabout 13 studs so far( that means 13 attempts) after about 3-4 hours of farming acrylia. This stuff is rare but im a stubborn guy so i wont buy it if i can farm it. Wyverns hides are easy to get as someone said above never done any so dont know the full recipe. Im going to stick acrylia out to 188 and see what i think then. Hopefully its no more than 500 combines =(

[Gillin Whisperfoot]

My path...

Currently my path for skilling up tailoring is ping ponging between Solstice Robes and Arctic Wyvern stuff... here's my tactics with my highest level character being 43rd

Arctic Wyvern

Getting the base materials isn't too bad...

Velium - Buy it in the bazaar, yes I could probably farm it, but not nearly as effectively as other people, and I'd probably die more than I want to, plus, I really dislike competing for spawns with people, most of the time I just end up frustrated.

Arctic Wyvern Hides - Buy it from vendors, auction for it while fishing for cod, seldom buy it in the bazaar. I'm still kinda young for effectively hunting the Wyverns... and since I'd have to compete with others for them and probably get run over by quadders I'm not bothering to hunt them.

Cobalt Cod - I've gotten my fishing skill from somewhere in the mid 60s to 191 fishing this up. And boy is it boring... BUT! I am one of those silly people who bought a second EQ account. So now I set up my fisher on the second box and log in the other account for some actual playing while the fishing person casts, casts, re-casts and so on.

My main concern with these things is making the Velium Tempers as I don't want to throw away the extra 16 plat (each) to buy em pre-made, I hate making all those Celestial Essences. My other complaint with this is the lack of re-sell on arctic wyvern masks. So I try to make some Bracers, Gorgets and Belts to help re-coup my costs, For an extra stud per combine I get a chance of making something to sell for about 1500 instead of barely getting 50 plat for a mask. A good chance in my opinion.

Solstice Robes

Silk Farming Ugh... but at least I can drop some hill giants and griffons in East karana for some extra excitement. And with my enchantress killing all the snakes in sight as well as spiders, I can get enough silks for about 40 combines in a night if it goes well.

Making the Tunarean Silk Can do the imbues myself, and don't have to make nearly as much celestial essence for these. The Emeralds run costly, but hey, when you consider I buy my Velium, the comparitive prices easily equal out.

The only problem with this one is the darn Gem Studded Chains. However, my girlfriend just got her jeweler to 218, and I got her a geerlock. Her last run of 10 attempts netted me 4 chains. My 38 combines only ate up one of em.

The current re-sell of the robe kind of bites, but at least I'm making some money back. Luckily, being able to make two kinds of the old cultural armor means I can generally boost my bank account at will, so if tailoring costs eats into it too much I just go back to smithing for a little while and I'm set for more combines.

Anyways, that's my current set up, I'm going up... slowly...

[Myrron]

As far as the Solstice Robes, this is my take on them:

After 158, I suffered through studded acrylia until 164. Hides were the main roadblock, there were never enough reasonably priced hides on my server, and farming them at my level would have taken days.

At 164, I had saved up enough money for 4 gem studded chain attempts (each attempt is about 250pp). Got 2 from my favorite GM Jeweler.

Excluding the gem studded chain, solstice robes are actually pretty cheap. Spider silk can be farmed easily, especially with the levels of your characters. The embroidering needle is cheap to make and is always returned, so you only need one. Tunic patterns: cheap. Jar of acid: cheap. Celestial essence: 31pp and some change per stack if you make it yourself. So this leaves us with emeralds, plains pebbles, and the imbuing of both.

The imbues might be trouble for you, but every so often I see someone selling them in the bazaar. If this is for your guild, you probably have someone you can call on to do 10-20 at a time, though. As a 43 druid with high wisdom, I can do about 10 with a full bar of mana, no KEI.

Bottom line: each solstice robe attempt costs me 3 imbued emeralds, some basic supplies, and some farming time. Total cost per attempt: close to 45pp (excluding gem chain). From a skill of 164 to my current skill of 177, I've only had one success, and I'm quite happy to continue to work on them. I'll probably quit though when I start getting too many successes.

I tried 2 stacks of arctic wyvern stuff, and got a few skillups, but making the temper is a bit of a pain. Still, the same could be said for collecting the robe attempts, too.

At a fishing skill in the 180's at the time, I got maybe one stack of cod after a long time of fishing. With a fishing skill of 72, I'd build it up a lot more before I'd expect a decent cod catch rate.

Hope some of that helps.

--Myrron

[Myrron]

<double post> Sorry

Myrron

[Vile]

Solstice robes.

A word on the gem studded chains. I have a 250 Jeweller and find they are about 50% success rate so that 500pp a chain is average.

The other thing to remember about solstices robes is that once your real skill starts to climb to about 210 you will start to make LOTS more robes. I just did a run of 36 combines and made 15 robes The only good thing to come out of it is that robes still sell for 1K on Brell so I can just about break even.

[Meirril]

Looking at your situation, I'd personaly hit the Rockhopper caves with the monk, and start having the druid fish CS out of cod. If I'm correct (I don't play a monk) your bind wounds and mend should be able to keep you farming rockhopper w/o outside healing. If I'm wrong...well...just skip the cod for now. Hides are the major stumbling block for acrylia tailoring. My suggestion is use the superb hides for making studded and sell off the perfect hides to pay for acrylia. You could save the perfect hides to do reinforced acrylia tailoring but at 188 I think its reasonable enough to make the jump to doing Othmir caps.
If you have to ask what good are Othmir, then your monk should probably destroy my lil buddies and skin every single sickningly cute one. Make sure your druid dosen't take faction hits (ya might need those brewing supplies later, and you don't want to depend on others making the trip for ya). If you find yourself waiting for Othmir spawns, kill Drakes for hides as the components for drake armor are easier to get than wyvern (my opinion). At your level the beauty of hunting Othmir is that their still decent AA bait (not as good as PoP mobs but better than nothing.). If you need velium for wyvern/drake armor, head to CC and clean house on the orcs. While their drop rate isn't fantastic, their so green to you that you'll make up for it in volume. Also having a bank in the same zone might be helpful for a monk. 8)
My suggestions for your situation, I don't think I'd make these suggestions to anyone else.

[GandilTT]

..

Thanks for all the advice. As far as rockhoppers go, I tried farming them for a couple hours today. Got about 30 superp or flawless hides. Two boxing the druid and monk, I can keep a lot of the spawns clear(if only there werent others camping rockhoppers as well grr). As far as the othmir thing goes... They are going to still give me xp at lvl 65? Ill give them a try as soon as i get the acrylia srudded done.

After reading through your responses, it looks like I may be wrong about the solstice robe. I have people who can do emerald imbues, JC combines, etc at cost for me so I may consider this road also(although only up to 200)

[Pojodan]

I've been in Mons Letalis lately with my duo partner as it's proved to be the best place for us to gain our AA points with the least ammount of general hassle. Our warders get a regular diet of Mature and Adult Rockhoppers and in the last full AA we've managed to net about 15 flawless and 10 superb. I've spend a good deal of time in TM and have 40 studs and 18 boning for effort and saving up since I first his DSP so long ago.

Acrylia studded is definatly not the way to go for the casual non-quadable player. The drops are just too rare.

In fact tailoring beyond 158 is not at all casual non-quadable player friendly.. in fact it stinks.

I so much want to get my tailoring up near 200 so that I can feel more confident about my combines for the Shawl quests, but it doesn't appear as though I can do this without months and months of farming for parts and/or money just for a little bit of extra comfort.

[GandilTT]

Also, where is the best non quading place for camping acrylia?

[Liwsa]

Tenebrous Mountains Kill the blue aliens outside the caves. They wander so can be a bit of a pain but they have the best drop rate. I use my rogue to farm these and he gets a bag or 2 every hour. They can drop up to 3 bricks at a time. They do not drop pieces but you can break bricks down to pieces to make studs if you so desire.

[Pojodan]

While in TM you can hit up the grimling caves as well.

What I do is clean the cave out (Takes a bit over 5 minutes) then take off into the surrounding area and kill the alien dudes while I wait for the grimling respawn.

Nice thing about this method is that the rate of acrylia droping may be slightly lower since you'll only get 1 or 2 arcylia drops per grimling cave clearing, but you also get a lot of gem drops including Luclinite, which sells to vendors for 90pp, Windstone which sell in the bazaar for 200pp, and Essence of Wind, which sells about the same as Windstones. One windstone will get you 3-4 acrylia bricks in the bazaar depending on what the prices are at.

[Liwsa]

Gandi is on the same server as I am Terris-Thule and acrylia in bazaar is 100-200pp per brick(is crazy). Buying not really an option unless you really have A LOT of money to burn. Pieces go for 50-75pp each too is ridiculious if peeps buying it for that.