Easiest way to skillup for picnic baskets?

[Custard]

I want to start tailoring to make picnic baskets without fail so how much tailoring will I need and whats the easiest thing to make so I can skillup to that level? Thanks in advance.

[Cigarskunk]

Personally, I just bit the bullet with my troll and skilled up on the mandrake root till it trivialed (giving me about three and an half stacks of coiled) and then the baskets themselves till they trivialed.

After that, HQ cat pelts into quivers till they trivialed so that I'd get a consistant 95% doing the finished baskets.

It's not the cheapest way, but hands down it's the easiest way and as a bonus, since you're going to use the final result anyway, you only have to count your failures as an expense when you're doing the mandrake root/basket part of the process.

Figure on spending about 700-1k on mandrake roots skilling.

If that seems expensive, then think of it this way - silk swatches still go for 10p easily (atleast on my server) - if I would have purchased or farmed them, then it would have cost me an easy 1500 plat to get that far in my skill. Whether you farm or buy them, each silk swatch you use is 10plat in either actual lost plat, or lost sellable plat.

[Calabar]

*hands Custard a link with great reverence*

Here is a link to the best smithing guide it has ever been my pleasure to read. If you ever want to pursue smithing use this as your bible. On the same page you’ll find a link to SMITHING FOR TAILORS. Download it and read through it, I’m sure it will answer a lot if not all of your questions.

http://www.crimsonsnow.org/pdfs/guides.html

The problem I have with Cigarskunk’s theory about spider silks, which I’ve heard stated by other players about different items, is that its based upon what I feel is a false assumption. If I go out and farm 5 stacks of silk swatches those swatches have cost me noting but time. To say that they cost me 10pp each because I could sell them for that is assuming that I could sell them for that. That, I feel, is a false assumption. First of all, like many people who have posted about this subject on different boards, I can’t keep a vendor up 24/7. And even during the hours that I could leave my computer connected to the net, it refuses to do so. I’m lucky if my vendor stays up for two hours before it goes link dead. So based upon my schedule, the most I could hope for would be to have a vendor up four hours a day and most likely less. Add to this fact that most times when I check on my server there are anywhere from five to twenty vendors selling silk swatches. Even matching the lowest price I’ve gone weeks without selling my swatches.

On the other hand, if you have a good hunting spot where you can make lots of money and be able to buy those swatches from the bazaar in half the time, then hunting those swatches yourself is probably a waste of time. Unless of course you enjoy whacking giant spiders to death, then by all means go for it. :P

[andyhre]

Well, the amount of the cost to you may be in dispute, but there is clearly an opportunity cost to using a item you could sell.

(Okay, I am an economist in RL, so golly I better get this right)

Think of Leather Padding as a case study. Assume non-Luclin ingredients (I could get into the slightly higher value of rockhopper hides as they can use either silk but that's another session)

Anyway, it takes 2 spiderling silks and one LQ pelt (or a skinned down MQ, etc).

On E'ci, one can easily sell spiderling silk a 2-2.5pp per (in less than an hour) or sell as high as 5pp with patience. On E'ci, cheap LQ pelts go very quickly at 5-8pp, and people have no trouble selling them for 10pp.

I will assume, however, that b/c of your connectivity issues, you would sell at close to the rock bottom prices, 2.5pp and 6pp.

Leather, by the way, sells very quickly at 25pp and fairly slowly (but eventually) at 30pp.

Let's say you "farm" the bazaar for goods.

(also, let me ignore the 5% fail rate on the final combine, since that's the same through and complicates the numbers)

If you are in a buyers market, you need to buy 5pp of silk and 6pp of hide, for 11pp and you turn that into 25pp. Your profit is clearly 14pp per pad (again ignoring 5% fail rate).

If you go out and hunt, you have a choice. You can sell the ingredients for 11pp, and that is the profit from the farming you did. Or you can turn it into padding and sell for 25. Then your profit is 25pp, BUT it's not all due to the leather. 11pp of profit is the earnings on the farming, as that was what you could get for the ingredients, and the other 14pp is the profit on the tailoring.

So, think of yourself as two people. One of you goes out and farms and then sells to the other of you at 11pp. You can see where the value is coming that way.

It might be that you can get the ingredients for 10 LPs in a set amount of time of farming, say 30 minutes. But in this buyers market you might be able to get the ingredients in 5 minutes. So, the trade is not Free vs. 11pp, instead it's 30 minutes and zero pp vs. 5 minutes and 11pp. if you can buy in bulk in the bazaar and sell quickly, you might make more on the 14pp of tailoring profit on a greater number of leather pads, than you do on the 11pp+14pp of farming+tailoring profit from the farming.

having said that, sometimes the bazaar is not a buyers market. Then the cost in time to find cheap inputs goes up, making farming more attractive. However, as the cost of the inputs int he bazaar rise, while it makes farming more attractive, it doesn't make the whole process more profitable. So if spiderling silks go up to 5pp per, then the total inputs cost 16pp, not 11pp. if Leather padding is still selling at 25pp, the profit for bazaar-bought components is 25-16=9pp. And with farming, the profit is 16pp for the farming and the same 9pp for the tailoring. And if, say the price of hides jumps up as well, to say 12pp, then the inputs are worth 22pp and if the leather is selling at 25pp, the profit is 22pp for farming and 3pp for tailoring.

I still like 3pp for the price of a click or three, but some might not. At the point where the "cost" of farmed goods in the bulk of the price of the tailored good, it starts making more sense to just sell you farming and skip the combines.

(obviously if you want to skill up, that's a different story - I am assuming your tailoring is higher than 31 in this example)


Whether it feels like it or not, the price at which you could easily sell your inputs *IS* a cost to you. Every time you do a combine of something you could have sold, ask yourself if you would have done it if you had to pay the price you feel you could easily get in the bazaar (assuming you had the additional platinum). If you would, it's the right choice. if you only do it b/c you have a "free" pelt, consider selling the pelt. The pelt isn't free, even if it falls into your lap from Tunare. Its cost is what you can sell it for, as your decision to use it is a decision to reject the platinum you could have just had through sale.

I fidn that seeing where the profit comes from helps make economic decisions. The way to see that in this example is to always ask, what can I sell the components for. For you, with a sometimes bad connection, the cost may be a little lower, as you'd be inclined to sell cheaply. That may make you more inclined to do the combine. For someone with a 24-hour bazaar bot, the cost will be higher, as the price they can sell for is higher. But even if you would just sell to an NPC merchant, there is a cost (1gp or whatever they pay) to using that "free" pelt.

[Cigarskunk]

The problem I have with Cigarskunk’s theory about spider silks, which I’ve heard stated by other players about different items, is that its based upon what I feel is a false assumption. If I go out and farm 5 stacks of silk swatches those swatches have cost me noting but time. To say that they cost me 10pp each because I could sell them for that is assuming that I could sell them for that.

I'm going to have to agree and disagree with you on this one.

If you personally are incapable of keeping a toon on long enough to sell item X, then opportunity cost is moot for you because you can't sell anything, so in your personal case, this is true.

But unlike zero sum gain, opportunity cost IS real, so anyone who can actually keep a trader toon on long enough to sell something is subjected to it.

This was best illustrated when my buddy wanted to skill his tailoring so that he could consistantly do leather padding for sale as well as his silk swatches.

It ended up costing him just short of 1k using the mandrake root technique.

However, we kept track of his combines and if he had actually used his stock of silk swatches instead of selling them to others, it would have cost him in excess of 1600 plat worth of his inventory. This doesn't take into account all of the additional time it would have also cost him to make the heady kiolas, do the more complicated tailoring combines and then have to sell back the non-stackable end results.

So as you can see, opportunity cost is real for those who have an opportunity to do something else with a given item - for my buddy, this cost if he had used his own supply of silk would have been 600+ plat plus whatever time was wasted brewing and doing a more complicated process.

[Silound]

Its all about time = money. Is it more efficient to make money some way and buy skillup materials, or is it more efficiant to work via farming and hunting? If I can average about 700pp an hour doing HK guards, then in one hour, how much materials can I farm for sale/skillups? if Ican farm 4k worht of leather padding in one hour, I am sooo going hte padding route and selling it for 4k instead of a measly 700pp. 4k will take me to 150 on just about any tradeskill, 700pp will barely get me to 100 on some...all bout time v money

Silound
Minstrel of Prexus