My first impressions of successfully making my first 3 AAAA's

[Devilcharm]

My gnomes raw skill is at 267, I attempted my first 351 trivials at 255.

First off, I am unable to farm shadowmane pelts ATM. I have to buy them. I thank Tunare they only go for 4k-9k average on Tunare I failed 2/5 five attempts at these and was happy with that number considering my relatively low skill

Having made threee of the readers, and have a raw smithing skill of 274 on my gnome... even though there are trivials on making the high quality stuff upto and including the sheets... I do believe they are no-fail combines. Outta Tunare knows how many of them I made, upto the sheets I never failed a single combine. Past the sheets, I failed one combine. A cover. So was not that big of a deal

JC'ing part. I always had to pay a enchanter to make the vials. My chanter can not do them yet But other then then that, failure rate on them is very low upto/including the indicators.

Fletching. I know it will happen sooner or later, but I have not failed the combine yet for the burin I have heard of other people failing it tho.

However doing the 351 combines is costly for me just from the sub-combines. All but the pelts I can farm, but even then. AAAA's do not yield me much profit percentage. Tho the plat they do bring in is nice. I sold them for 100-110K depending on my mood. But it still costs me roughly 60-80K per combine. I have not failed a final combine yet

Overall... it is not fun making them. Gnomish heat source needs to be made available in PoK or at the very least, the bazaar

Bank space issues on these subcombines needs to be addressed. They should all be stackable I think, minus the AAAA iteself.

Anyways, just happy to have made my first 3. Profit on them in terms of percentage does not IMHO justify mass producing them. I am finding making older OoW augments more profitable for yielding a decent chunk of change. Buy slugworms at 15K and white gold inlays for 2.5K and sell them for 35-40K I dont deal with the +primary stat augs, just the +saves augs. Radiant cut ones sell 150-300 plat on server. I can sell them in less then 1 day whereas the AAAA's take a little time to sell.

[Ngreth Thergn]

Overall... it is not fun making them. Gnomish heat source needs to be made available in PoK or at the very least, the bazaar

It will be a "one stop shop" in Crescent Reach

Bank space issues on these subcombines needs to be addressed. They should all be stackable I think, minus the AAAA iteself.

PART (not all) of the difficulty of this is also some of the annoyance factor of some of the sub combines.

The number of recipes and the stack-ability of the AAAA combines will not be changing.

[Bobaten]

To be honest.. my first impression was, "Wow, this is so much easier than spell research".

[Natem]

I just started about 3-4 weeks ago with 241 skill to start. At first, it was brutally expensive due to all the failures, but I still made about 100k when I sold the first one I made. That made it all worth it.

I thoroughly enjoy making them, but I don't know why. I have friends helping me farm supplies, and, on a good day, I can put one together in 2-4 hours start to finish.

I have no intention of stopping production.

[Devilcharm]

It will be a "one stop shop" in Crescent Reach

PART (not all) of the difficulty of this is also some of the annoyance factor of some of the sub combines.

Sweet Part of my biggest problem is a slow internet connection that has to go through a satelite, there is no way around it as I am in a remote area in the world. Abysmal sea has most, but not all. This will be a great thing for me and many other people who have slow net connections, having it all there can save littlerally hours. Thanks Ngreth

The number of recipes and the stack-ability of the AAAA combines will not be changing.

Well dont remember mentioning the number of recipes changing... normally bank space is not an issue for me. I have plenty of room to store tradable stuff on different characters. But even with the additional 8 bank slots, and only at level 53 with the rogue now, my bank space is filled with a lot of no-drop gear that I can not use yet. Or quest items.
If stackability wont happen, any chance of increasing bank space again, or at the very least allow containers that hold greater then 10 items. Say upto 14? Either player made (prefered) or dropped off fun and game?

[Aldier]

Bags cannot exceed 10 slots. This is something that was hardcoded into the game at the very beginning and is too much of a change for them to address at this point.

My suggestion, do the best you can to look through all the subcombines and figure out the best points to stop and store items and if you can offload to an alt through the guild bank do so.

[Wymp]

I'm quite sure that AAAA's were never intended to be made in bulk just to sell for profit, heh.

There's no reason to make the sub-combined components stackable, imo.

Just be glad you can token the final product.

[Aldier]

I was not implying that they should be stored only for mass production. I have slowly begun working on my tinkerer again and with baking, brewing, and fletching skills of 300 I have helped some guildies make them. The amount of components and the number of subcombines make for a large amount of bank space even if you are only attempting to make 1 item and spend some time gathering components and collecting them, especially if you already work in multiple tradeskills and never seem to throw things away.

[Giddy Gonzalus]

I've been working on the AAAA for a while now. After weeks of farming I managed to get everything together, only to have the final combine fail. Well, that happens.

What has really bothered me about this is the extreme rarity of Clockwork Gnome Bolts. I have stacks of other components and have only seen the 5 bolts that got eaten in the failed combine. So far, in the last 35-40 hours of farming bad bots and good bots I've had no bolts drop. There's only a few for sale in the Quellious Bazaar and they're selling for 7-8k each.

Is anyone else having this kind of bad luck?

Anyone know if there's any intention of turning up the drop rate of bolts a tad?

[Evram2]

What has really bothered me about this is the extreme rarity of Clockwork Gnome Bolts.

Giddy, they specifically limited the drop rate of the bolts to slow the number of AAAAs that enter the game. It is the sole limiting factor, or people would be making AAAAs by the dozen. So not expect any increase in Bolt drop rates unless they increase the drop rate of the augments themselves, and create a lack of enough AAAAs to go around.

[Carlo the Curious]

For my guild the limiting factor on DoD augments is lack of Last Blood steel rather than the bolts for the AAAAs (which are easy enough to farm, just tediously rare).

[Grants]

What has really bothered me about this is the extreme rarity of Clockwork Gnome Bolts. I have stacks of other components and have only seen the 5 bolts that got eaten in the failed combine. So far, in the last 35-40 hours of farming bad bots and good bots I've had no bolts drop. There's only a few for sale in the Quellious Bazaar and they're selling for 7-8k each.

Is anyone else having this kind of bad luck?

Anyone know if there's any intention of turning up the drop rate of bolts a tad?

I have no problems farming Bolts.. Have 40x bolts in bank waiting on me to do the combines for AAAAs. Just dreading the ore combines.

The way i farm em is to AE the whole CC :P. Its not many that can pull it off but with a cleric its very easy. Usually clear all good bots in 2 pulls.. and pull the reapers in a third pull (when I can get that camp).
Usually get 3-5 bolts per 1.5/2 hours

Farm the Shadowmane pelts in DSK. Usually get 2-5 per night. + 1-2 last blood steel/fine silk.

Wouldn't suggest ruin your faction in CC before you finished DSK key / demi key (if you are a high-end raider).

[Mattius]

If you are killing both good and bad, you should average about 3 clears per hour and usually get around 2 bolts per hour. Thats about the average I have seen myself when farming bolts to make the 4A's. I have probably made about 50 4A's, and the only annoyance that I can see is going to all the work to convert ore to steel, only to fail the final combine and salvage only the screws. I have only failed the final combine 3 times, twice salvaged several items each time, but the last time was the one that really upset me the most.

[Taushar]

Farm the Shadowmane pelts in DSK. Usually get 2-5 per night. + 1-2 last blood steel/fine silk.

Wouldn't suggest ruin your faction in CC before you finished DSK key / demi key (if you are a high-end raider).

Sorry for being a bit ingnorant. I have done everything but the Shadowmane Pelts at this time. I am interested in farming the pelts but I have no idea what to expect. I see that it drops only in one zone. Can you give me some details about the zone? Key requirements, instanced or not, which mob drops the mane, etc. Thanks in advance.

[Zolina]

Shadowmane pelts are a rare drop off the "elder" shadowmanes in Stoneroot Falls. If you don't have harmony/pacify, you can get a single shadowmane elder each spawn cycle by going all the way into the tunnel (hug the right wall on the way in or you'll aggro the see-invis yellow-con named and his buddies) and set up camp at the water's edge. Watch for witherans that roam by, you'll need to root them.

There are other elders outside, some roam around the bridges and some don't, but most are tricky to get solo without harmony. They hit fast and self-buff, so consider pulling with dispel. Consider using a Steadfast Servant here if you have difficulty tanking them.

The pelts also drop in several raid instances, like the Shyra raid.