Realistic Skill level ups?

[RattyZ]

I'm looking to start Erudite Cultural tailoring.

brand new at tailoring and have that awesome guide for tradeskills favorited,

I'm trying to make a logical path for leveling up via using the silks method as I have a very large quantity of them saved up.

my question: How realistic is the tradeup process doing the Quest, Woven Mandrake, followed by Tacky, Sullied, Crude, Natural...etc Silk Patterns?

the comibines with Silk Curing Chemicals, Filaments, Pattern, Needle, and Silk.

Would this make sense? I've been hearing about "negative" skill ups and such, so I'm not positive. Is there a better route? Plat is no object.

[Aldier]

First, the negative skill up thing was a bug when the cultural first came out and has been resolved and is a thing of the past.

It as all a matter of preference. I do not know how those levels of silk templates compare with the more traditional skill up routes of Wu armor and whatnot that were the only real choice when I was starting tailoring. I can tell you that at the high end, 250+, tailoring templates seemed to go on forever for skill ups, but I think that was just some bad runs with the RNG.

Since plat is no object, my suggestion would be to look at Sunshard armor and search the bazaar and just get your hands on as much as you can.

Sunshard armor starts with the dust then pebbles and then ore. You can go all the way to 300 on it, but that would be a lot of combines. Pebbles can get you to 250s. Ore trivials 300+. I do not know dust off the top of my head.

Again, the guide is a nice suggestion and a generally agreed upon easiest to gather materials/cheapest route, but it is not a you have to do this in this order. Get your hands on as many parts as you can and work your way up with what you have available. The purpose of all the different tiers of the new cultural template/armor system was to provide a smoother skill up route by templates, but they are slanted to the level ranges people hunt at.

[RattyZ]

Thank you!

Thank you for the quick reply!

I appreciate the advice, and it will help in figuring out a decent path to take.

[caster66]

Sunshards

Sunshard Dust will take you up to 170. Sunshard Pebbles will take you to 255. Sunshard ore is all 300+. Note that a jeweler or tinkerer with the same skill is required for subcombines for anything involving sunshard items.

When I skilled up to 300 it was with a combination of items since tailoring requires so many dropped items.
Rough outline of what I used:
1-54 Quest
54-66 Woven mandrake
67-76 Picnic Baskets using the mandrake from previous step
76-100 Crystalline Silk
100-158 Wu's Armor
158-188 Studded hopperhide and Ornate armor
188-255 Reinforced hopperhide and sunshard combines. Some Ornate armor.
255-275 Fine, Excellent templates, Intricate armor, limited sunshard
ore combines
276-300 Fine, Excellent, superb templates, Intricate/elaborate armor,
sacred augs, sunshard ore combines.

Sunshard at higher levels is tricky to work with cause you need someone with either good tinkering or jewelcraft skill. I had a tinkerer that I was leveling at the same time which helped. A decent size run of sunshard stuff can get expensive. With ore I was making trips running upwards of 30k plat and that was only 3 stacks of silver where it takes 5 stacks for 1 stack of ore. You get a portion of that back by selling what you have made but its not great. Really only made money back off the smithing combines by selling them in the baz. Tailored stuff just don't sell well.

As one last note my last skill up to 300 was off of a sunshard ore combine.