Low Cost tailoring?

[Sparkling]

Is there such a thing? I saw the post of the guy who spent over $150,000pp getting his tailoring to 250 skill. What about those of us less fortunate types who have 5kpp for the first time ever and thought we were doing well (until we read stories like that *sigh*) and still want to get tailoring up? I can farm my own silks and even have a couple friends who help me for free on occasion. (THANKS Cloud and Teas if you ever read this!!) And I have been trying to forage my own Morning Dews and Oak Barks. Just realised this morning however that there is also a BLUE DIAMOND involved in every combine attempt for the high level wood elf Cultural armor. So for now (Tailoring 121) that is completely out of the picture.

My question is this, I saw people are making the POTC robes for skillups? And THEN making Arctic Wyvern armor? Isn't the AW armor less expensive? And how does Cultural tailoring fit into this pictuire? What is the CHEAPEST way to get tailoring to 250?

Thanks for any input.
-Sparkling Icewolf

[Idana Phoenixfyre]

Well, if you can farm most of your own materials, then yes, you can do most tailoring relatively cheaply. There are ways around most of the expensive items that you will need to get your skills up. The problem is... farming the silks, pelts, metals, and other supplies gets EXTREMELY tedious. Also, it seems like the stuff that you can make with farmed items don't sell well. You can farm all kinds of velious items, but you often can't sell them back for cost in the bazaar and certainly not to vendors. It is also my opinion that you get fewer skill ups from these items. I think the reason most folks go the way of the the Solstice robe is because they can be sold back for a profit usually (albeit a very small one these days) and the skill ups aren't too painful.

As far as cultural armor, don't make it unless you have someone willing to buy it. It's expensive, you will fail the good items a lot. You probably won't sell it for what it's worth in the bazaar. If folks bring ALL the items to me and realize that there is a chance I will fail, even at max skill, then I just combine for free (or a small donation). I often put on my afk message "Erudite cultural armor by appointment at <insert my e-mail here>." If someone wants it, they e-mail me and I take care of it. Skill ups weren't too bad on these items but the cost to skill up ratio wasn't so great.

No matter what you do, it takes massive amounts of materials to get anywhere with this skill and farming is so labor intensive that most folks give up and just go buy the stuff at outrageous prices in the bazaar. If you really are serious about farming all of your own materials, I recommend rockhopper/acrylia armor as long as you can force yourself to farm it. It just takes a very very very long time to get enough materials to make it worth your while.

Of course, these are all the opinions of a cleric and I don't farm so well. There are certainly some classes that are more suited to tradeskilling than others. Maybe others had a different view. Anyway... good luck!

Idana

[Sparkling]

Farming/buying combo

I was planning on trying to farm some and buy some to offset the insanity induced by perpetual farming. My main is a Druid, and I always wanted to get 250 So I could make the Cultural Armor. Thought I had finally reached a point where it might actually be possible to get these skillups... That and I'm trying to work on the infernal Shawl Quest, so have all the other skills to work on as well.

Getting there... slowly... Thank you for your input. I actually haven't done any Rockhopper stuff yet. So that will be new at the very least. For the first few combines anyway. LOL!

-Sparkling Icewolf

[Hzark]

Once you get up to 180, put most of your effort into Acrylia Reinforced armour.

As long as you don't make the 1 boning items, you can buy the ingredients in bazaar and sell the products at a break even/slight profit. That will take you to 242.

Velious tailoring is a complete loss (because nobody wants the 1 stud/boning items, and because the failure rate is so high anyway), at least till you in the high 230s.

Even at 250 I cannot make a profit on Arctic Wyvern gear, the failure rate is still greater than 50%. (Black panther gear seems to have a slightly lower failure rate).

I am also under the strong impression that my skillup rates were higher on acrylia reinforced than on any other type of combine. Considering the huge amount of preparation required for Solstice robes, having an apparently lower skillup rate on them really sucked.

[GunnyBurlfoot]

I would agree with the Acrylia Reinforced Armor route to 242, then use either AW Masks or Ceremonial robes to 250

Just remember that overall, from 187 (Swatch trivial) to 250, you'll get around a 1/20 (Lucky!) or 1/30 skillup/combine ratio. So plan accordingly. To avoid discouragement, I'd farm or buy Flawless Hopper Hides/Acrylia Bricks until I reached 200-300 combines' worth of materials. Then get a KEI, put on your lucky rabbits foot/bunny cap/whatever, sit down in your lucky spot, and crank 10 skillups out at once! and just keep saying to yourself, you will only have to do that 6 or so times!

Nowadays, the only hard part is 187-250, so that's *only* 1800 Flawless Hopper Hides or so... I'd do them over Ceremonial Robes, after extensively trying both of them back when I was skilling up.. Robes much bigger pain to prepare for, especially if you aren't a Tuna worshipper.

Good luck with your endeavor, and don't give up!

[Astaldo]

If you are able LOY robes offer nice steps to increase your skill. It is not fun but it is a cheap option and vendor farming works well.

[Pockets FullOfGold]

The one thing that I have found very advantageous to doing Acrylia Studded and Acrylia Reinforced, in my climb up the Tailoring ladder, has been the amount of Platinum I have been able to aquire without selling anything whatsoever in the Bazaar.

Since I've only done Acrylia Studded Masks or Acrylia Reinforced Gorget's for skillups, the selling of said Masks and Gorgets in the Bazaar would have been non existant I just sold them back to the merchants I sat next to to do my skillup run. But I have been able to make, I think (I've given alot of the platinum to guildmates), between 30k and 50k Platinum just farming Acrylia in Tenebrous Mountains (TM) in the Grimling Caves and selling everything (except some smithing tradeskill items) I loot to the merchants in Katta Kastellum. The good thing about TM is that it's so easy to run to Katta, sell/buy items you don'tneed/need, break down/build up the Acrylia Bricks to the size you need, bank, and run back into TM to continue your camp.

Usually in a 3 or 4 hour farming period I have made between 600 and 1000 Plat. I may have ended up with between 10 and 20 Acrylia Bricks of differing sizes after farming. The most PP I have made so far in one day, just from farming in TM has been around 1600 PP over a 7 hour period. All of the Acrylia was used for my own Tailoring and the Smithing Tradeskill items were given to guildmates who do Smithing.

You can make good money without having to deal with the Bazaar

Pockets FullOfGold

[Sparkling]

*listening* Few more questions...

Okay, I'm studying all the information you guys have given me. If I seem to repeat questions, please forgive me. This is a lot of information to absorb (especially while suffering with allergies and my eyes itching and blurry, and asthma making me so I can't breathe).

1. I realise the response was both specifically for me, as well as in general to other readers who might come along, but I am a wood elf druid and I have both the Imbue Plains Pebble as well as the Imbue Emerald spells. So I can do those things easily. And I know my guild is excited at the idea of someone getting skill high enough to be able to make the Solstice robes inhouse. So I'm sure I will end up making a few of those here and there. However I'm not that excited about things that take a lot of prep work before I can do the final combine, so yeah, sounds like I will be avoiding these unless neccessary.

2. What are these LOY robes? I have ALL the expansions (I'm a junkie, I know) and I've seen the ribbons for sale and heard people mention them... is this something that I can get skillups from just by buying the ingredients froma vendor? Or are there more farming things requred here? I like vendor purchaseable skillups. *GRIN* I haven't really looked at the LOY recipes yet. Guess I will have to go search those some more...

3. You lost me on the 1 boning items... I guess when I get more experience I will understand what you mean. The idea of not having to sell stuff in the bazaar is very appealing to me. I haven't remembered to turn on my Bazaar merchant in several months (partly because I actually play that alt sometimes too and by the time I think about it I don't want to run her back to the bazaar from wherever she was last camped). So The idea of makign pp just from selling the acrylia armor to the NPC merchants sounds pretty cool to me.

4. I have like 3 backpacks full of velium in the bank right now. So... I gather that I should just donate this velium to my friend who is actually AT that point in her tailoring and replace it with acrylia? it's taking up a lot of space. If it is not the best option for skillups I think I will get rid of it.
It just seems easy to get.
4b. I haven't seen a way to reduce, or change the "size" of velium bricks/blocks/pieces etc. And I can't find a recipe for doing so in the smithing section on EQtraders either. Am I missing something here? Or is Velium a "what you see is what you get" metal? No way to change it?

THANKYOU ALL for your helpful advice and input. I really appreciate all the comentary and encouragement to get tailoring to 250 with low cost and as painless as possible.

-Sparkling Icewolf

[Kongming]

generally the ones that spend 150k are the ones that want to PUSH to 250 NOW, given tailoring isn't cheap and you might end up buying alot of items for your tailoring, cause if not farming about 5k arctic wyvern hides or flawless rockhopper hides will just be to painful. But it what will you pay, will you pay 10pp a hide or 50pp, how long are you willing to wait, how much are you willin g to farm

[Calabar]

Keeping in mind that my tailoring is only 131, though it will be 158 as soon as I can find the time to make all that Wu’s armor, I’d like to make a couple of observations.

First of all, as a wood elf druid you won’t be able to imbue plains pebbles. Trust me, I’d forgotten that and was reminded of the fact recently when my wood elf druid tried to scribe the spell and wasn’t allowed to. That spell is for Karana worshipers only. Though I have read that a loophole may exist for those wood elf druids that already had the spell in their spell books when that change came along. If this is the case for you then count yourself among the lucky. *smiles*

I believe the LOY robe reference is for the ribbons used to make the racial robes. Anyone can make the ribbons. The plus side is that there is relatively little farming involved to make them. The down side is that they can be very expensive. They are also no drop so be careful how many you buy. Here’s a link: http://www.eqtraders.com/secrets/LoYrecipes.htm.

As long as you don't make the 1 boning items, you can buy the ingredients in bazaar and sell the products at a break even/slight profit. That will take you to 242.

I may be mistaken, but I believe what Hzark meant by that is that most people make 1 boning items for skill up and the market is often flooded with them. So there just isn’t a market for those items. But fewer people make items that take more than 1 boning so the market for these items should be better.

And from what I’m reading you should be able to change the size of velium. Take a look at this link and read all the lines in italics under things like “small pieces of ___ ore” and I think you’ll find velium listed as one of the types of ore this conversion works with.
http://www.eqtraders.com/secrets/smithing_conversions.htm

Best of luck.

[Morani]

For now, I'd recommend going to Crystal Caverns and farming Crystalline Silks to make the armor. That'll take you to 131 and many of the mobs thee drop gems so you can easily MAKE money over all on this step. It'll cut out some of the dread WU armor and the cost of it. The mana vials for WU are nearly 5.5 plat in material costs to make and you could go though 200 or more of them. After Wu is done, it's on to what's been mentioned above.

[Sparkling]

Imbuing

*Smile* Yes, I have both the Plains Pebble and Emerald spells scribed and can cast them both. I have done so on many occasions. Sister Karana smiled on me and has allowed me to cast this spell for her followers. I always do this free of charge. I am aware of the privledge that I have been afforded as my cleric is limited only to her Imbue Saphire spell as she did not achieve sufficient level in time to be able to scribe more than her diety's spell. Innorruuk is cranky anyway. In case you are wondering, I have been playing for 2 years now, I just finally decided to get around to working on Tailoring. I have been procrastinating it for very long time.

-Sparkling

[Sealody]

Re: *listening* Few more questions...

4b. I haven't seen a way to reduce, or change the "size" of velium bricks/blocks/pieces etc. And I can't find a recipe for doing so in the smithing section on EQtraders either. Am I missing something here? Or is Velium a "what you see is what you get" metal? No way to change it?

Just use a smithing chisel. I break blocks down to large bricks, then again down to small bricks. I need bonings from the small bricks. If you break it once more, I believe you get pieces. But I have no real need of that atm. I still have 20ish stacks of small pieces from my CC PBAEs. :P

You can also 'combine' them to make them bigger. But that's expensive. I think it requires a temper, while breaking it down cost nothing (but the occasional 5% failure)

Sea!

[Hzark]

Err, what they said.

Although you will be able to make LOY ribbons as a wood elf, you will not be able to make the robes, as they are race restricted.

I was fortunate that, having decided to be eccentric and turn my iksar main into a GM tailor, SOE unilaterally decided to give me some cultural tailoring to do. I missed the ribbons, as I was already too high when LoY came out, but I got a few skillups on the robes.

[Pockets FullOfGold]

If you look under the here... http://www.eqtraders.com/secrets/smithing_conversions.htm it gives you all the info you need in breaking down and building up all types of bricks and pieces. And this location... http://www.eqtraders.com/secrets/smithing_implements.htm it will give you all the info you need on files and other things and then here... http://www.eqtraders.com/location/smithing.htm so you can find your Smithing Chisel. It's very easy to look it up and read it's how I learned about it

Pockets FullOfGold