Coiled springs

[Druegar]

Fulminate, I shop carefully all the time too. I have not seen a coiled spring on a vendor in WEEKS on my server

I've had exactly the same experience.

would be glad to hear any other practical ideas people have for fixing this problem.

How about limiting the supplies of them, similar to the restocking quests involving Small/Large Bricks Of High Quality Ore?

[Bushnell]

I have been playing EQ since 3/21/1999, and Bushnell was born 3/11/2000. I was tinkering when my only way to skill was with rebreathers, and I had to sell a pair before I could afford to make another pair. I have given away more plat's worth of tinkered stuff than some chars ever own. I just love to tinker, but making geerloks, etc., over and over and destroying them would be pretty stupid. I really just sell them to have a purpose in making them; I don't even spend the plat much, except in supporting my 10 other chars. I also like to think I am providing a service to other players; whole years have gone by when I was the only active tinker-for-hire on Fennin Ro. I have the right to enjoy the game any way that works for me, and this is what I enjoy.

I realize that other tradeskills are having the same problem. However, there are many more baking recipes, say, to start with than there are tinkering, and I just printed out pages of the new DoN baking and brewing recipes. If Jord meat pies can't be made, there are plenty of other foods of different skill levels that can, and some of them will be good enough to be sellable. I don't pretend to be expert in the other tradeskills, but it seems to me that everybody else can just move on to making the new stuff, and has a LOT more choices of what to make.

Secondly, I can't think of any other tradeskill that makes stuff so many other different tradeskills can use. The only thing that I can think of that comes close to being as universally useful as tinkered stuff are Sow potions. Again, I am not arguing that not having collapsed tradeskill kits will be the death of tradeskilling (or that not having new minimizers will make trolls unable to hunt); I am just saying that the lack of one item will hit all new tradeskillers somewhat, in a way that not having Jord meat will not. So tinkers are being hit disproportionately hard, and therefore all tradeskillers will be hit; which is why I believe this one item SHOULD be singled out, and made easier to get than it is now. Perhaps the drop rate could be increased, so one gets more like 10 an hour hunting PoI; I would be happy with 20 a week. And I also like Druegar's idea, of the vendor having to be restocked with a quest after a certain number have been sold.

Any other workable suggestions would be greatly appreciated

Bushnell of Fennin Ro

[splunge]

Yano what would be cool?

Smithed springs.

Theyre metal right? Theres metal wire in the game, right? All youd need is some sort of temper and a forge to give the wire/springs some shape,

One cool thing about WoW is that a good number of tradeskill combines are dependant on some other tradeskill. To make some leatherworking made belts you need smithed iron buckles.

Theres already a fair ammount of this in EQ (picnic baskets, PoP bow cams/strings) but itd be nice to expand this further.

Its more noticed in WoW because youre limited to only 2 tradeskills.

*shrug* just a suggestion..

[Silverfish]

Think-ering

Bushnell wrote:

"I realize that other tradeskills are having the same problem. However, there are many more baking recipes, say, to start with than there are tinkering, and I just printed out pages of the new DoN baking and brewing recipes."

This isn't a very fair comparison. See, I printed out a list of all of the tinkering combines that I (a Halfling cleric) can do, and it was startlingly short. Sure, it's a more limited trade skill than baking, but that's because it's racially limited.

Bushnell further wrote:

"So tinkers are being hit disproportionately hard, and therefore all tradeskillers will be hit; which is why I believe this one item SHOULD be singled out, and made easier to get than it is now."

See, this is the part of it that bothers me. You don't want tinkering to be easier, you want a specific item you use to be easier. There are a plethora of recipes that don't eat coiled springs that you can use to skill up tinkering. Crab crackers trivial at 282, and woks at 302. Sure, both of those use drops from the Plane of Innovation, too, but if you considered them along with the springs you'd triple your skillup rate for the time hunting there. Your DoN armor doesn't require visits to the Plane of Innovation. Your Old World cultural (Clockwork Observer or Shadowwalker) doesn't even require leaving Velious. Sure, those choices are costly, but have a chat with any over-250 smith or tailor about costly and difficult to get components before you complain too loudly about that.

In short (sorry about that pun), it's sure that the drop in hunters going into the Plane of Innovation has hit the tinkering market, but that's the breaks. Like all tradeskillers, you need to adapt. It'll mean you can't skill up as quickly or as cheaply as you could before, but that's just part of tradeskilling. Tinkering got a real boost from the PoP release, and now it's different. So be it.

Silverfish

[Druegar]

I wonder if (read as "hope that") the newly merged servers will provide more upper-mid-level characters who grind in PoI and sell their "useless" drops to merchants.

Smithed springs.

They're metal right? There's metal wire in the game, right? All you need is some sort of temper and a forge to give the wire/springs some shape.

I love that idea!

I printed out a list of all of the tinkering combines that I (a Halfling cleric) can do, and it was startlingly short. Sure, it's a more limited trade skill than baking, but that's because it's racially limited.

I think a comparison of Tinkering to Poison Making or Alchemy would be more appropriate.

Using Trader's Corner's Quick trivial lists, I arrived at the following quantities of combines:

• Tinkering: 111 (29 above 250)
• Poison Making: 147 (76 above 250)
• Alchemy: 306 (95 above 250)
• ································
• Baking: 765 (53 above 250)
• Brewing: 291 (23 above 250)
• Fletching: 710 (62 above 250)
• Jewelcraft: 612 (187 above 250)
• Pottery: 176 (54 above 250)
• Smithing: 2,810 (405 above 250)
• Tailoring: 1,024 (228 above 250)

No skill has fewer total combines and only one has less options when going from 250 to 300. And since the farmed ingredients for Kaladim Constitutionals are so easy to acquire, Brewers (which I am one of) are not getting any of my sympathy.

[Silverfish]

Agreement and Disagreement

Druegar wrote:

"I think a comparison of Tinkering to Poison Making or Alchemy would be more appropriate."

I agree, which is why I thought the comparison to baking was not appropriate.

Druegar further wrote:

"No skill has fewer total combines and only one has less options when going from 250 to 300."

That's still not a fair assumption. Your count of the number of recipes doesn't carry a lot of weight when you don't factor in difficulty. For example, you yourself state that brewing is simple to take to 300, despite only 23 recipes, while tailoring with its 228 recipes is widely considered to be horrifically difficult. I'd bet huge money that tailors all over Norrath would sell their siblings to get a recipe that goes very close to (or over) 300 that only requires one uncommon drop from a tier 1 PoP zone and a bunch of vendor stuff, no matter how much the vendor stuff costs.

Beside all of this, your suggestion that tinkering is difficult due to rarity doesn't address the fact that Bushnell isn't asking for more recipes, he's asking that one particular item be made trivial to get, where doing so would make tinkering relatively trivial to do. It's nice that coiled springs can be used both for skillups and to make useful tinkered stuff to sell. That's a good reason to keep them rare, not to make them easier. Look at what happened to the prices for Geerloks. People farm the parts trivially, and then make them by the thousands, and these days nobody can make a living doing any of the "skillup" Geerloks (like the fermentation device or planing tool).

More to the point, the only reason springs are getting more rare is because fewer people are going to the Plane of Innovation, and his request just goes around that. My thought is to give the PoI mobs a boost in loot or experience value, to draw people back to the zone. That would solve Bushnell's problem of never finding a group, it would bring people back to an underutilized zone, and it wouldn't make the market for collapsed and Anizok's devices fall apart like an unlimited supply of springs would.

Remember, virtually no trade skill was meant to be mastered by store-bought stuff. To Bushnell, I say again, there are ways to do it, and none of them easy, but all are possible with a modicum of effort.

Silverfish

[Aryse Andenter]

Hmmm, seeing PoI on the list of Hot Spots? That might be a nice solution.

[Rawckett]

I am currently in PoI as I am writing this, and in about 15/20 mintues, 5 coiled springs have dropped. There were even 2 on one mob. Wonder if the drop rate has been upped or just a coincidence.

[Rawckett]

Anybody else confirm an increase in coiled springs drops?

[Evram2]

I've spent a fair amount of time in PoI grinding in search of my epic 1.5 drop. I have seen a few coiled springs drop, but nothing that would make me believe that they increased the drop rate at all.

[Qualan]

I wonder if (read as "hope that") the newly merged servers will provide more upper-mid-level characters who grind in PoI and sell their "useless" drops to merchants.

I love that idea!

I think a comparison of Tinkering to Poison Making or Alchemy would be more appropriate.

Using Trader's Corner's Quick trivial lists, I arrived at the following quantities of combines:

• Tinkering: 111 (29 above 250)
• Poison Making: 147 (76 above 250)
• Alchemy: 306 (95 above 250)
• ································
• Baking: 765 (53 above 250)
• Brewing: 291 (23 above 250)
• Fletching: 710 (62 above 250)
• Jewelcraft: 612 (187 above 250)
• Pottery: 176 (54 above 250)
• Smithing: 2,810 (405 above 250)
• Tailoring: 1,024 (228 above 250)

No skill has fewer total combines and only one has less options when going from 250 to 300. And since the farmed ingredients for Kaladim Constitutionals are so easy to acquire, Brewers (which I am one of) are not getting any of my sympathy.

|Don't forget tinkerers can now do the new cultural armors, but not the augments though

[Neebat]

Don't forget tinkerers can now do the new cultural armors, but not the augments though

Yes and no.

I did the missions and collected the parts so I could start doing cultural armor with my tinker...

Then I looked closely at this: http://www.eqtraders.com/items/show_item.php?item=17688

All the DoN cultural tinkering recipes require over 100 in either tailoring or smithing. I've got that, several times over, on my non-gnome characters, so I don't like having to do it again. I know it's not hard, just annoying, so I forced myself to sit down and grind. Tried to get my max-int gnome to 100 in sewing and smithing. The low-skill bug ate me alive and I gave up.

I don't have a positive feeling about DoN cultural tinkering now.

[Qualan]

Neither have i

But that's a different issue

I don;t have a good feeling about my fletching and the lets nerf skillups post 250 but not put the higher skillupchance for difficult to obtain combines in

[Kakg]

I don't have a positive feeling about DoN cultural tinkering now.

I don't really think those recipes were intended to be DoN cultural tinkering. I think they were added more as a nod to the fact that our old recipes used to be based on tinkering rather than smithing. It's not something they had to do and we are the only ones who got such an alternative route to get the DoN armour. In all it was a nice touch but I wouldn't say they counted as being DoN tinkering as in all other respects DoN has no tinkering.

Just so long as no-one does something really daft like reduce the trivials on Clockwork Observer then the DoN recipes can be seen as not so much as a skillup route but as an alternative method of getting the high grade DoN armour for us gnomes.

[Neebat]

Just so long as no-one does something really daft like reduce the trivials on Clockwork Observer then the DoN recipes can be seen as not so much as a skillup route but as an alternative method of getting the high grade DoN armour for us gnomes.

That's pretty much exactly how I hope to use it. Just got to get the willpower to power through 100 points of tailoring. And the time.

--
Master Zipper Inspector
204 Tinker of Saryn (er. Saryrn)