Cheapest way to 188??

[Aphois SwarmCaller]

I am working on my Tailoring skills to complete my Shawl quest. What is cheapest way to achieve a 188 skill level?

[Pockets FullOfGold]

Farming Components is THE Cheapest way.

Pockets FullOfGold
Farmer Extraordinaire *giggle*

[Kytelae]

I agree. If you buy stuff to get to 188 (either in bazaar or going the ribbon route) you best have plenty of plat to spend. Otherwise, farm your own.

[solinear]

My advice, not THE cheapest, but cheap and still very fast.

1-21:

Silk swatches. Don't bother with silk thread (spiderling silks), it's worthless IMO.

22-66:

Unless you want to spend a LOT of time farming, I'd say just spend the 400 plat doing Mandrakes... it's well worth the time to avoid farming pelts... just skip farming pelts altogether, since once you hit 66 you'll never have to worry about it again unless you want to do smithing also (padding, which will take you to 31). It cost me only about 200 to go from 35-66, so take from that what you will... saved me EASILY 20-30 hours farming pelts for studded and reinforced.

67-82:

Cured Silk. Brewing is a nightmare, but if you spend 50p on brewing to get it up to around 50 or 60 (very easy, almost as easy as baking), then you'll only spend another 10p to make all the Heady Kiola you need. Definitely go well above the trivial because trivial with Heady is only about a 50-75% success ratio and I hate failures.

83-115:

Crystalline silk caps. Crystal Caverns (in EW zone, by the Orc tribe) is the best/easiest place to farm this stuff. Buy silver threads, they're not too expensive and they'll go a long way. 1.1 plat per combine (for the thread), but at 1 skillup every 5 combines (1/2ling with Focus and KEI, crappy int/wis), it's a deal. You'll get about 8 gold back per success (guess, can't remember offhand right now), so it will still be pretty darn cheap. If you want higher success rates, go Gorget to 103, mask to 108 and cap to 115, that way you won't lose as much money on it. The good news is that the spiders drop gemstones (from the 1p crap to peridots and black pears and the 10-15p gems), so you'll get all your money from the threads back, so don't whine about having to spend money, you're not, you're farming the money for the threads too at the same time as the silks.

You'll probably need about 2 tailored backpacks full of silks through all the crystalline silks, but 1 took me all the way to 115.

116-131:

Crystalline Sleeves to 124, Tunics to 131. This should use up your last backpack of Crystalline Silk. Now back to Heady Kiola and more silks...

132-142:

Wu's caps. Again, the Heady Kiola is really cheap, so don't worry about this cost, you're still probably positive from the Crystalline silks and gem farming, even considering that you spent all that money on Mandrake Roots. The only downside is that you'll have to find a chanter at least level 12 to make the Vials of Viscous Mana and the 4.5 plat per combine for the gems used in the Viscous Mana. Alternatively you can just make one, that will take you what, 3-5 hours to level them up? Plus the fact that you can now use some of that Crystalline Silk armor that you made

143-151:

Wu's sleeves. Same as caps, but 2 silk swatches.

152-158:

Wu's Tunics. Same as caps, but 3 silk swatches.

159-188:

Acrylia Studded masks. Only 1 stud (other pieces also trivial at 188, but use more studs, plus the masks might actually sell, considering the 5Wis on it). Go to DSP for this stage, killing Rockhoppers for their pelts and the Sambatas for the Acrylia. If you're higher level (55+), just kill the rockhoppers here and when the Sambatas pop, kill their chief as soon as you can to get the rockhoppers back. Then go to acrylia Caverns for the ore, since the drop rate there is awesome.

I admit that this isn't the *cheapest* method up to 188, but if you're up to where you're ONLY looking at doing the Coldain Prayer Shawl quest, then you should basically just get the stuff for the quest and do the combines. 5% success rate will net you a probable success at 20 attempts and will take less time than all the rest of this stuff, just to be honest.

However, my listing is pretty darn cheap (probably less than a K spent total, including the money you made while farming crystalline silks) and it will get you up to skill about as fast as you can get there without spending anywhere near the 10k that other people commonly spend getting up to 180+

[solinear]

BTW, this is the path that I'm currently taking and while it's not *the* cheapest, it is very fast and any farming is usually short-term farming. I tried it with the 'farm everything' method and all I got for my effort was a week's worth of headache and 35 skill. The studded leather just took forever to farm enough pelts for the skillups and going after reinforced would take even longer, since you need higher quality. I literally went from a headache of 20 combines every day to 200 combines every day by just not farming bear/cat/wolf pelts and going after spider silks. In the last 3 days I've went from 35 to 116 and that's counting a 6-hour NToV raid.

If you're high enough to actually try the prayer shawl, I sincerely hope you can come up with around 1k for everything that I posted, if you can't, then you're looking at some real problems with cash flow. Even a 45 Ranger can farm the cash for that stuff.

[Morani]

I disagree with Solinaer's route from 22 to 95. Here is what I did:

22-26: Silk Cords
3 silk threads. Save the cords you make for the next parts.

27-31: Tailored Small Bags
1 silk cord and 1 low quality wolf pelt. VERY easy to find on vendors in a lot of newbie zones. I made 10 of these before they were trivial.

32-36: Tailored Large Belt Pouches
1 silk cork and 1 low quality lion skin. If you are going to farm your spider silks for latter, all the wolf and cat pelts you'll need for this can easily be gotten in EK while farming spiders. I THINK I used 14 skins, less than a stack for sure.

37-41: Large Tailored Bags
1 silk cord and 1 low quality bear skin. I got these dumpster diving in the Commonlands. I used less than a stack.

42-56: Studded Leather Armor Masks
1 medium quality wolf/cat/ OR bear pelt, 1 metal stud (mask is the only piece that uses 1 stud, the rest are 2 or 3). Granted you might have to make metal studs, but they are cheap and only require a skill of 35 in smithing to be trivial. I used a little more than 2 stacks of pelts but again, you'll get them while farming spider silks in EK.

57- 66: Woven Mandrake
2 mandrake roots. I had a bad run and it took me 6 stacks to do it. Save the success, they sell back at a HORRIBLE rate.

67-76: Picnic Baskets
1 steel boning and 1 wove mandrake (yield is 10). Again, some smithing but you said you were after the Shawl so you need to do some of this anyway; might as well make use of it. Save the baskets (you'll need room) and sell them in the Bazaar for 1 plat each. I ended up with 20 stacks of baskets and had sold ALL of them in less than 6 hours. Even buying the low quality spiderling silks and wolf and bear pelts off the merchant, spending 252 plat on mandrake roots, and buying smithing stuff to get me to 40, I actually MADE ~100 plat after selling the baskets.

77-88 Handmade Backpacks
1 backpack pattern, 1 high quality bear skin or hopper hide. I only had a stack of them so that's all I used before I moved on to the next step but that's because I'd gathered 3 stacks of Greyhopper hides. I've not hunted them, but I bet HQ hopper hides are MUCH more common of a drop than HQ bear hides. If you have the time though, you can go to Commonlands or Shadow Weavers with a couple/few stacks of patterns and announce that you are working on tailoring and will give back any backpacks you make to the person supplying the hides. Or do what I did and go to greyhopper hides.

8?-88 Greyhopper Hide Armor
1 pattern (mask, gorget, belt, cloak, gloves, wristband, sleeve, helmet, or shoulderpads; cost is the same for all of them) and 1 greyhopper hide.

89-95 Greyhopper Hide Boots
1 boot pattern and 1 greyhopper hide (pants and tunic also triv at 95 but take 2 hide each). From 82/83 to 95 took me slightly less than 3 stacks (with an 85 WIS at the time). There MIGHT be a market for these at 10 plat (or less) each since the boots have a +2% safe fall. Depends on the amount of newbie Monks

95-115 Quivers
1 quiver pattern and 1HQ cat pelt (again, EK silk farming). It took me a little less than 4 stacks. Solinaer's suggestion of Crystalline Silk Gorgets-Masks-Caps is a good one to do here too and is probably better than quivers. I couldn't get to CC at the time and I had the cat pelts so I just did it.

I would also insert Wu Shoulders (Mantle) from 14?-144 since they only take 1 swatch. My guess is that Solinaer missed the Mantles or it would have been mentioned; everything else was quite thoural.

This route is likely to be THE cheapest over all if you farm and if you merchant mine some then it's pretty darn quick. After gathering the materials and spending about 8 hours farming silks & pelts in EK, I whipped through the combines to 115 in about 2 hours and still have nearly 10 stacks of silk swatches waiting for me to make Wu with. It took me 3 weeks for all this but I only play twice a week. I also worked my smithing up to 133 in that time so it includes 2 days of fishing for clockwork koi and making needles/cultural needles. Between Zeralenn's guide and this route, I have spent less than 50 plat and 30-35 hours on getting smithing to 133 and tailoring to 115.

[Kommisar]

Actually, you don't need 188 tailoring to do the 8th shawl.

I've done all the tradeskill stuff needed with my druid, and started making the soft fur padding with a Geerlok when I had 162 skill. Since starting that, I've failed ONCE in about 20 attempts at the padding, and gotten raises out of it, to boot.

From my experience, the combines needed for the 8th shawl items are fairly low failure rate, which is nice.

[Marteeny]

If you are an Int caster, you have another route from wu's to 188. If you are, look up the recipe for your racial robes. The lowest robe is trivial at over 200 (I think), and the components are more than likely very easy to come by, and very cheap.

[OberonMiM]

acrylia studded masks arent going to sell at all for even 1/10th the price it cost to make them. That is because too many people skill up on them so they are basically worthless

Id say honestly if you want to get up to 162 do steam dye ribbons. You buy the ribbons for like 31 plat sell back for around 14. Sureits 17 plat lost per a combine but its alot cheaper and quicker than any alternative. Also i consider plat ribbons cheaper/faster than rockhopper hides (mainly cause of the pain involved in farming stuff

[PinyonTreedotter]

At 160-162+geerlok, an alt of mine failed on 7 velium hound furs to get the 8 needed for the 8th shawl. Fortunately, I had about 5 stacks of the silly furs, so it was not a big deal. Get to 160, which makes your effective skill 168 -- Unless you can easily get the furs.

[Morani]

Actually, you don't need 188 tailoring to do the 8th shawl.

The 8h shawl tailoring component trivials at 176. However, the 6th shawl component trivials at between 204 and 209… I'm assuming that Aphois has not done the 6th shawl yet since there wasn't any communication about already having any skill in tailoring. 188 plus geerlok should put him in the 95% chance to succeed range for the 6th shawl combine.

If that doesn't really change the point of view, I'd like to hear about it. I've not done ANY of the shawls yet and I'm not looking forward to tailoring through Wu let alone AFTER it.