Skilling up: 50 to 250

[Aanuvane]

Symbols ok - but ugh the tasks

I did that with my tinker too - but completing the tasks to get the symbol books was tedious. I did more with sunshard ore for both my tinkering and research high level combines than I did with symbols.

[wickedlittlewoodelf]

Alternate route

To get up in tinkering fast, I did cultural symbols. I didn't want to spend mega amounts of plat, so I stayed in CR pretty much from 1-182. I stopped when I attempted to make a crab cracker and succeeded.

Blessed Symbol pattern//Alkaline loam//Thalium ore = 115
Revered Symbol pattern//Malleable loam//Fulginate ore = 186

I used the chest patterns once I got high enough.

[Altara]

wow, ouch. Hmm well I haven't yet done any skilling up on the elemental cams (getting to 250 with the pebbles first) and I haven't collected nearly that much yet. I will blow through what I have and see how it goes. Got my tinker up to 56 (yay for high level druid friend), trying to get to 60 to get some of the AAs. Maybe I'll end up the symbol route after all. I've been collecting the sunshard ores too.

[Zilix]

I'm on the Combine server, so anything past DoDH isn't available to me at this time. I pretty much did random stuff up till I was able to make Geerlok hammers, acrylia ore is very easy to obtain by surfing the baz or even taking a mid 50's toon to AC and farm it. I went to 215 off those then threw in some collapsed items till 240ish.

I had stockpiled Bricks of Molten Ore from PoFire and had several druid friends forage me some Clockwork Grease. I had around 30 stacks of Bricks and around 25 stacks of Jars of clockwork grease, ready to skill up to 300 I thought! WRONG! skillup rate on molten bow cams is very pathetic. I know some people will claim I was bit by the " RNG " bug, but I have a few other tinkers spread across a few different servers and encountered this same problem.

While it's very cheap to make the cams I wouldn't rely on this for a skillup path to 282 unless you have tons of hours to devote to farming bricks/grease or have unlimited platinum and patience to go with them. Personally I have found making cultrual augs to be more effective, I started off doing the low 200's one then started doing sacred ones and am currently sitting at 289 ( 305 ) tinkering with the expert trophy.

[Altara]

I recently (last couple months) tried the gunthak geerloks. I had a few stacks saved up from long ago, then used them up and tried farming the stuff. Farming the quills and rigging just seemed too slow. Cleared the beach twice and got 3 quills, 0 rigging. Then wait for repop. The drop rate for coiled springs in PoI also seemed much lower than I recalled, though I did get a couple sunshard pebbles from there. I very rarely find quills, rigging or any PoI drops on vendors any more. Molten ore was funner and you can get a little exp at the same time if you are high enough level and have fire flag (light blue at 72, dont know if you can still get exp there at 80). I also got the occasional sunshard ore at the same time. I didn't find foraging the grease to be particularly slow. And grease is also available now occasionally as a drop from the clockworks in the SoF zones. I am going to do the sunshard pebble route until that trivials (243 atm) and then molten ore and sunshard ore. Sacred symbols looks like another way to go if you are high enough level to do the quest (my tinker is only 40).

I also found the sunshard dust a nice way to go at the lower levels, it was pretty cheap in the bazaar. Then the geerlok hammer.

[Andarriel]

Sunshard

Or do what i did and goto 300 doing sunshard ore combines (dust/pebble/ore) course depends how much pp you got but its actually not to bad.

Andarriel

[minidoc]

oops, wrong spot

[Aldier]

My base skill tinkering is 300 and my trophy now is at 12%, meaning a skill of 336 when equipped. I have heard differing opinions, to level the trophy up do I have to make a tinkered item over 300 or over 336?

The trophies gain experience based on the trivial of the combine. Only successes gain experience for the trophy. The trivial of the combine must be above your base unmodified skill. At 300 skill, any trivial over 350 only gives you 350 experience. The number of combines needed, ie the amount of experience needed to level from 6 to 7 is dependent on the skill and the rarity/availability of drops/vendor paths of 300+ recipes. For example for tinkering, if you made sunshard ore templates to evolve your trophy, it would take longer than if you were making AAAA subcombines as they have a lower trivial.

[Amaljia]

Over 300

[Rikkitikkitavi]

Tinkering Trophy

My base skill tinkering is 300 and my trophy now is at 12%, meaning a skill of 336 when equipped. I have heard differing opinions, to level the trophy up do I have to make a tinkered item over 300 or over 336?

[Wyvernwill]

Not sure if this has been covered in here much, but Sunshard Dusts were a great way for me to get my tinkering up fast and easy for a fairly small amount of plat.
Did Iron Conduits only until 135, which at about 10pp each in the bazaar for the dusts and 11pp each for the Iron Ingots, it was a rather cheap path with a good sellback.
From there, did Iron Conduit Large Cores to 170 with the Iron Conduits I already made earlier. No real additional cost (2pp or so per pattern).
Currently, I have been working on Copper Conduits and Copper Conduit Small Core / Large Cores. This is a bit more expensive (roughly 100-150pp per Pebble and 182pp per Pure Copper Ingot). The nice part is that Large Cores sell back for 492pp, so it's not a huge loss.

I've been able to farm a lot of Pebbles while stockpiling Yttrium Ore (only usefull for about another month though). Since the Yttrium drops from mobs in the same level range of Pebbles, AEing areas that drop both has been an ultra effective means of farming the supplies.

The other benefit to working on Pebbles and Small Cores / Large Cores is that you can further use those two items to make items in other tradeskills as well. In the end, you gain a lot of different skill ups across a variety of trades.

[Sobizzy]

Base Prototype

The Base Prototype is no trade so trying to store them for future use would be very limiting. I did the run from 122- 215 when Luclin came out and by having a few mules near certain merchants was able to buy a stockpile supplies for a run, and then go to the old EC tunnel and sell sets of geerloks for a nice profit, could even afford to burn plat on selling many to an out of the way merchant to avoid flooding the market. Sad to say, the road to 250 and beyond is harder now as newbies do not level so much on those zones or gather and sell the parts to merchants and with POR trophies the geerloks are much less in demand and sell for much less then before.

[uncleshmoozo]

I just wanted to add some additional info about the Gunthak Geerloks that I posted in another thread, but which belongs here as well.

There are several different tinkering drops in Gunthak that are used for the LOY era geerloks.

Here's the items, what drops them, the geerloks they make, the tradeskills they're used for, and the trivials. (I've sorted them in order of increasing trivials.)

Maneater Roots, various "deep *** lotus" plants in the tunnels, Geerlok Alchemy Set, alchemy, 222

Scorpion Venom Gland, scorpions on the beach, Geerlok Automated Pestle, make poison, 227

Silver Tipped Quill, various skeletons on the beach, Geerlok Automated Quill, spell research, 232

Waterlogged Rigging, various troll zombies and cast out survivors on the beach, Geerlok Clockwork Contraption, tinkering, 236

When I was working through this portion of tinkering skillups I found I could make a full circuit of the beach and then "cherry pick" the lotus plants in the tunnels and collect a fair amount of some of the drops in the process. By the time I was finished my circuit the beach was respawning. Here's a few helpful tips:

1. Collect all the items right from the beginning of your farming, but stockpile the drops that are used in higher trivial combines until you are ready to make them. That way you won't have to mope around on the beach waiting for the mobs who drop the last few items to respawn.

2. Each of the recipes require one item sold by one of the gnomes inside the lighthouse in Gunthak and each of those items are no-trade. Don't make the mistake of sending an alt over to buy them for your tinkerer. [learn from my mistake. ]

3. There is a modest market for these in the bazaar on my server (Cazic-Thule) and I suspect that's true on other servers, too, but you're going to be making a lot more of them than you can possibly sell. Don't hesitate to dispose of them in other ways if you need the room.

4. Unlike the earlier geerloks some of these actually have fairly high tribute values. If you use personal or guild tribute, check that out before you dump piles of them on vendors. (Like I say, you're going to be making way more of these than you can possibly sell in the bazaar.)

5. The least common of the drops by far was the Scorpion Venom Gland. Feel free to skip ahead to the quills rather than getting stuck on trying to farm those.

6. Be prepared to share the beach spawns with those who may be hunting there for experience. Offer to buy the items you need from them. If you offer them a little more than the merchants will give them they may take you up on that. I rarely encountered anybody else hunting in the tunnels.

7. There's a few other tradeskill drops in the areas you'll be farming. You may want to grab those to sell them in the bazaar. I was able to subsidize my tinkering skillups that way. I'll let you figure those out for yourself. Use the search feature on the EQ Traders main page to look them up.

8. There are a few named mobs who spawn at specific fixed spawn points on the beach and in the tunnels who drop items which can sometimes be sold for a little plat in the bazaar. If you clear both the beach and the tunnels enough times you'll probably figure out where they spawn and what they drop. Make mental notes.

9. There's a few quest mobs on the beach you don't want to kill. The erudite spirits (erudite ghost models, both male and female) are needed for useful spell quests. As a matter of courtesy to other players I made a point of leaving those up when I saw them.

10. Develop a pattern for a circuit that clears the entire beach and get used to using it. It speeds things up a bit if you do this in a systematic manner.

Hope those are helpful.

[Golgi]

i maxxed out on geerlok hammers (215) then went to molten metal bow cams.

got to 220 on the first 60 combines, then 1 skillup in the next 40 combines, now at 226 unmod after 40 more combines (140ish total so far) till i forage more grease.

at that rate (11/140) my supply of molten bricks right now will about get me to 265ish. and i have no plans to stop grinding in fire, so i think im on my way.

foraging grease does suck but i have access to 2 druids with the forage AA so hasnt been awful. will have another druid ready to go now just need to get him the AA.

i also made a deal with a ranger friend that i would kill the trash mobs in the fennin script for fiend guts and he gave me all his bricks and some grease. so ive got plenty of resources, just wanted to make sure i wasnt starting cams too soon.

[uncleshmoozo]

I tend to agree. After the geerlok hammers, use the Gunthak era geerloks as far as you can. They're not very costly to make, and the mob-dropped supplies are really easy to farm. Those will get you all the way to 236. Some of them actually have really nice tribute values, by the way, so they can be used for that if you like.

To farm the gunthak supplies just clear the beach and the tunnels in Gunthak and loot the supplies they drop.

The beach area has two general types of spawn points -- undead and live. Most of the undead ones (some of which are in the wrecked ships in the water between the beach that the lighthouse area) can spawn as either skellies or zombie trolls. Live ones can spawn as a variety of humans, bugs, scorpions, and such.

The man-eating plant mobs in the tunnels (the ones that look like flowers) can drop the Maneater Roots used to make the Geerlok Alchemy Set, trivial 222.

Scorpions on the beach can drop the Scorpion Venom Gland used to make the Geerlok Automated Pestle, trivial 227. (By the way, they also drop the Scorpion Poison Gland that don't seem to be very useful at all, so don't confuse the two.)

Skellies on the beach can drop the Silver Tipped Quill used to make the Geerlok Automated Quill, trivial 232.

The zombie troll mobs on the beach can drop the Waterlogged Rigging that is used to make the Geerlok Clockwork Contraption, trvial 236. Supposedly the humans on the beach can drop them as well, but I don't recall whether or not they actually do.

If you clear both areas repeatedly you'll find that you get a lot of the quills, and roots, a bit less of the rigging, and very few of the venom glands. I'd just stockpile everything but the roots, using the roots as you loot them until you max out on the Geerlok Alchemy Set, then use your Scorpion Venom Gland until you get to 227 (or run out). After that switch to making Geerlok Automated Quills until 232 and finish up making Geerlok Clockwork Contraptions to 236.

After that? Well, there's a whole bunch of things you could make before you start on the elemental bow cams, but most of them seem to have one drawback or another. Some of them are lore, though I honestly have no idea why. Others require uncommon drops from POI or other places.

Frankly, however, if you get a lot of the bricks of molten ore while cranking out experience in the Plane of Fire and if you have a way to get enough of the foraged Clockwork Grease from POI to keep up with your molten metal ore supplies then I'd say just jump straight to the bow cams after you max out on the Gunthak era geerloks.