Serverwide First, I think.

[Lilosh]

According to the cost numbers you did, the run of success/failures you had would have cost you 2.5k. :-)



Smalltim is sitting at 135, and it took me 6-7 attempts for one success. I'm not sure this is a viable skillup path, but then again I haven't looked at my options recently.

(Edit: After re-reading your post, I realized I did this without a Geerlok. I'm a moron. Even so, starting at 140+Geerlok is only 147. 166 + Geerlok = 174, which is why you probably had a MUCH better success rate)

-Lilosh

[andyhre]

I had 248 successes and 22 failures.

Sell back on the successes is a net loss of 5.01pp, and the loss on a failure is 48.1pp.

So I calculate:
248*5.01=1242.48
22*48.1=1058.2

Total of 2300.68.

Maybe I am tallying my numbers wrong!


As for viability, I have convinced myself that the ideal skill path involves making Aqualungs until 148 and saving all the successes. What I next did is made rebreathers until the Aqualungs were gone (and sold them at enough to cover the cost of my failures). If I had had this recipe, my thought is that I would have used this recipe to get up a littel higher, like to 160 or 165, and then used the Aqualung to try to trivial out the rebreathers. By doing so, the same number of rebreather combines will likely net me more successes, and since there a failur is like a 900pp whallop, avoiding failure is a good thing. And then, once I hit 176, I would go back to these.

Clearly, if you are a good farmer, you can farm Luclin items and go into the 200s making geerloks. But for me time is very expensive relative to platinum (e.g., I could have saved several hundred platinum by doing the SH faction question on my tinker, or I could have bought it al with my main, who has the amulet of the havens, and slowly transfered 270 non-stacking gloves to the alt, but instead I chose to pay a few extra hundred to do it in one session), and so storebought recipes provide a good option for me. And in truth, 29 skill points for less than 100pp per skill point is pretty good, I think, in this range. I have several bags full of geerloks that will sell very, very slowly over time, which probably will end up costing as much as the 5pp per success.

Anyone need a brewing or fletching geerlok on E'ci?

EDIT: Lilosh -- yes, clearly you will lose more money if you start earlier, b/c of failures. So I would certainly get to 148 the old fashioned way. But at 148, with geerlok, you'll succeed 60% of the time on the fire bolts and 75% on the rebreathers. Depending on how quickly you skill up, the cost fo the 25% failure on the 890pp item might exceed the 40% failure rate on the 50pp item.

[Libbie]

(All numbers are close approximations, except for the total plat loss and my failures, which I counted for some reason. I don't bother with logs.)

Starting at 174 and roughly about 4000 in my pockets total, I did flame bolts all the way to 195. After an achy wrist and three hours, I finally reached it. Total, I performed about 260 combines for 21 skills-ups and lost about 1300pp. I did start with 40 gears and 40 sprockets though. So total loss is probably closer to 1800pp, even though those were drops from POI or bought for less than 5pp in the Bazaar.

I had KEI on, which put me at 255 WIS and allowed me to free up a hand for my Clockwork Contraption. All in all, I failed a total of 13 times. I actually failed more often on the final skillup to 195 (3) than on any other skillup.

My best run was from 174 to 184, which was accomplished in 70 combines. My worst hangup was at 186, which took about 50 combines. After that, it slowed down to about 15 to 20 combines each.

I would consider this a better option than skilling up on geerloks (save for the brewing one).

I also noticed that the sellback price didn't change whether I conned indifferent (Melina) or kindly (Bikel). And looking at the above posts, the sellback isn't apparently very variable to begin with. I was selling for 43pp 5 silver 6 copper at 119 CHA.

[Lilosh]

Ok, I looked up aqualungs and rebreathers..


Even assuming I keep the aqualungs around, and make rebreathers, isn't that an extraordinary amount of investment?


If tinkering.org is correct, each rebreather cosst almost 1k to make. Figure that you may well go through 20-100 of them, and it's a **** lot of money to lay out all at once to get 20-30 skillups. I know tinkering is expensive, but this seems to be un-neccessarily so.


Unless I've missed something.

-Lilosh

[Libbie]

I can tell you that I never ever used aqualungs and rebreathers as a skill-up option.

Mind you, I only tinker in spurts. Usually, when guildees hand me loads of porous mineral blocks or I find some off a vendor. From 102 to 174, I made geerloks (brewing, LoY, and planing tools mostly), collapsed sewing kits, and the occasional crab cracker.

Unless you have loads of money and desire to grandmaster tinkering in a day, rebreathers are way too expensive to make, even if they are entirely storebought. Firebolts are a brand new avenue for store-bought skillups. You're likely to have more successes than failures--once you hit a reasonable level--and the failures won't hit your pockets quite as hard.

Tinker for fun and tinker when you find the materials. I always always check vendors for porous mineral blocks. If I'm using a merchant for anything, I scroll down and see if they have blocks too. If I enter the Bazaar, I fleece down the NPCs first and then look at the PC merchants list. And if the PC merchants haven't smoked pipeweed that day and priced the blocks for 5pp or less, I snap them up. Gears and sprockets too.

But really, just tinker for fun and the skill-ups will come.

[Koru]

Brell below! Skilling up on aqualungs and rebreathers? Gotta say this for you, you have guts. I'd be too chicken (and too poor) to have done that.

Even selling all the rebreathers at a nice success I think I prefer my brewing geerloks to 215, LoY gearloks to 236 and recoup on trivial combines approach. Less inventory to worry about after the brewing one's done and recouped all my cost on a few sales of corking devices. I haven't even gotten to makeing collapsibles yet - and I'm not afraid of the subcombine ones - and I'm still ahead of the game pp wise. Heck, I've even been buying components from the robbing overcharging scoundrel who call themselves bazaar traders and still in the +. (I mean that affectionately of course as I am one of the robbing overcharging scoundrels) I doubt most of us are wealthy enough to skill up on such expensive items, but kudos to you for having the balls to try it.

[andyhre]

Well, my guild needed rebreathers for epics, and I had a decent sized cash stash at the time. it's not so much that I had money to burn as that I did not have much time I wanted to devote to farming items. Besides, geerloks sell for about the cost of the non-farmed items, so even if you farm those, you don't make up your losses on the failures.

In retrospect, though, it worked out really well. I got to 135 on tinkered catapults, then just chugged through the Aqualungs to 148. I had a very good success and skill up rate rate on the Aqualungs and with those success I slowly made rebreathers. They cost 890 to make, and I was able to sell them all for 1,250pp in bazaar, except for 2 I gave to a guildie for his epic. I am certain that I more than broke even.

It probably helped that this was a tinkering alt -- I had tons of inventory space so I could store all the Aqualungs. I now have tons of geerloks sittign there waiting to sell off someday, to the point where if I want to store more components, I may have to vendor them (no worries, I'll sell to a full merchant).

But again, had I know about the Flame Bolts, I would, I think, eat more failures on those at 148 to boost up my skil rate on the rebreathers. Even though those are trivial, I was thinking of making a few more to fund more skill ups.

[Chenier]

Shoot, this is a great recipe. I did a lot of geerlok hammers have powered gloves, buying velium in the bazaar. This fire bolt recipe would have saved me a TON of money. Super cheap and all vendor bought? hello!

[GuildorOJemz]

yay =/

Thanks VI. Those of us who are already GMs look forward to new exciting GM recepies that actually DO something.. make the skill worth having.. instead you release expansions to make things easier and easier to get to 250 skill. Way to reward the dedicated. =P

I suppose others have felt the same pain in smithing and tailoring lately though - might as well take the challenge out of tinkering too. I'm obviously in the minority here so I'll shut up now.

P.S. still waiting for tinkered pet =( . Our hometown is full of clockworks, you'd think we'd figure out how to make one by now.

[eniamn]

um? this has prolly been in game quite a while. i think the recipe was ony gotten with the new ui on test. could be wrong though. it happens more than i prefer. its SOE anyway. there is pop smithing and tailor you know? don't those "DO" something.

[Libbie]

I fail to see how this "ruins" tinkering or any such notion. Just because SOE has created, or at least revealed a new recipe, does not mean that tinkering is on par with brewing or jewelcraft. And who's to say that this firebolt won't be a subcombine for a new GoD recipe?

Yes, it takes you to 195 quickly if you're willing to burn some money. But it's not going to take you to 250 in a heartbeat. And it still requires a subcombine.

Besides, the people who choose to get to 250 in a day will still be around. Tinkering was just as easy to do back then as it is now. Just takes lots of money and a walk through the Bazaar or a few well-placed shouts.

[EDIT: Removed some of my slightly flame-y comments. If you can't say something nice... ]