Signet of the Arcane

[Ukator Iceblood]

I have started down the path to try to do this earring. I'm elemental flagged nowadays, never thought about it until friends had gotten this done. Starting it with hardly trade skills done, i.e. pottery at 122. This isn't really a post about the quest, just more a post to try to make myself do it:)

How many have done this?

Oh and without the new UI I wouldn't even have thought about it at all.

[Mindlet]

I'd suggest doing the hardest ones first, tailoring and smithing. If you can get them done the others are simple in comparison. If you can't well you saved time on not doing the others.

[Dumpty]

Check magelo in sig.

[Shrouded]

I am currently working on the AG earring myself, but, to be honest, if you are in a raiding guild and can get an earring with similar stats and have MP4 in a different area, the time invested in completing the earring is not worth the time.  Since I am really not planning on having MP4 anytime soon, nor do I have an earring that comes even close to the AG, it is definitely worth it to me.  I farm the bazaar for components and even doing this takes a significant amount of time, not to mention the platinum cost.  So far, I have blacksmithing at 222 (but I am done with blacksmithing since I completed the first signet), tailoring at 194 (it took me 300 combines to go from 188-194 which is ~175kpp), jewelcraft at 200, baking at 200, and brewing at 200.  Fletching will not be a very hard one to go from 0-200 in, but I have heard that 200-230 will be roughly 40kpp.  Pottery, from what I've read costs ~500pp to go from 0-200 and around 40kpp to go from 200-250.  I have yet to spend the AA on advancing my tradeskills because I would like to get them all at 200 before I start the 200+ runs since the signets need to be done in order.  All of that being said, let me rank the tradeskills by ease and cost, according to my experiences/knowledge.

Ease (Easiest to Hardest):
1.  Brewing  (Heady Kiolas --> Minotaur Hero Brews)
2.  Baking  (xxx Meat Fillets --> Patty Melts --> New GoD Recipes)
3.  Jewelcraft (I believe I did Silver up to Peridot, Electrum up to Peridot, Gold up to Peridot, Platinum and beyond up to Star Ruby ~~ Can't remember exactly, but go in order of the trivials up to a certain point for each metal)
4.  Fletching (Vendor bought arrows --> Vendor bought bows or GoD Arrows)
5.  Pottery (Have not done yet, but everything can be bought, I believe)
6.  Smithing (Can vendor buy up to 188 IIRC, then do enchanted velium bits to 222 (they are a quest recipe so they won't add to the recipe book so you will get a cramped hand, but it is still the easiest way), 222 + no idea)
7.  Tailoring (up to ~158 it is not too bad, but from 158-188 acrylia studded masks, 188+ either acrylia reinforced masks, solstice robes, arcitic wyvern masks, or anything else you can get your hands on)

My rough costs are from purchasing all materials that needed to be farmed in the bazaar + relative vendor purchases for combines.

Cost (Least Expensive to Most Expensive):
1.  Brewing.. < 500pp for 0-250 (ALL VENDOR BOUGHT)
2.  Baking.. < 1kpp for 0-250 (Fillet/Patty Melt components from merchant, GoD recipe meats are cheap in the bazaar)
3.  Jewelcraft.. < 20kpp for 0-250 (Can not enchant metals, but the sell-back value to merchants keeps the costs of jewelcraft fairly low, regardless)
4.  Fletching.. < 50kpp for 0-230 (using vendor bought components, if you do the new GoD arrows, this should be cheaper)
5.  Pottery.. < 500pp for 0-200, < 50kpp for 200-230 (Have not done this yet, but I believe that is the rough cost)
6.  Smithing.. < 1kpp for 0-188, < 20kpp for 188-200, < 60kpp for 200-222 (Velium prices can vary depending on server/times you look)
7.  Tailoring.. < 3kpp for 0-158, < 40kpp for 158-188, 188-194 < 200kpp, 194+ = A Shitload of PP (Superb Rockhopper Hides are roughly 150-200pp on DRo, Flawless are ~400pp, I bought all acrylia blocks/bricks up to 60pp per---for 188+ you basically do whatever combines you can and hope you get luckier than I did on skillups)

Good Luck.

[Oneiromancer]

7.  Tailoring (up to ~158 it is not too bad, but from 158-188 acrylia studded masks, 188+ either acrylia reinforced masks, solstice robes, arcitic wyvern masks, or anything else you can get your hands on)

LoY Ribbons can get you from 158 to 187 as well.  If you have a foraging alt you can try to farm the components for the dyes, or just keep an eye on the bazaar.  Has the potential to be much cheaper than acrylia, I think, and now that there's a Gunthak stone it's much less painful to get the ribbons.  Still not sure how far I'll go before attempting the 6th shawl...considering how slow skillups are coming I might just eat the shawl failures wile waiting for the dye parts to show up in the bazaar.

Game on,

[Chubaka]

Hey Shrouded, you think the free GoD tradeskilling would have cut your costs much? Or is it just low cost stuff at the beginning anyway?

[Oneiromancer]

I did the free GoD skillups...and I'd say that it doesn't save much money, in the long run, but it will save time especially for Tailoring.  Not sure about Smithing.  With Jewelcraft it will save more money than the others but it definitely takes longer.

Game on,

[Hereki]

I have all skills at 200 apart from tailoring (158) and smithing (I forget!).

I found pottery gave far fewer skillups per combine than the others, and I'd put the cost of 200 closer to 1k than 500pp.

JC was well under 10k to 200, probably closer to 4-5k.  If you can enchant, it is actually profitable above about 120.

Always have VoQ for the most wisdom before attempting skillup runs; get some cheap wis gear to help - 2 x velium jasper rings add 14 wis, etc.  Geerloks help with successes, but have no direct impact on skillups - apart from the fact that a skillup is more likely on a success.

Tailoring to 158 is Wu's.  After that LoY ribbons get you to 188 the cheapest.

There is a very good smithing guide at the crimsonsnow site; check for the exact URL on eqtraders, in their guides section.  Shadowscream is the cheapest from 188-222, but means endless farming of Hollowshade.

Fletching to 200 is cheap, I'd guess under 1kpp.

[Ukator Iceblood]

Thanks for the info. Mindlet had a great point, so I'm doing smithing first. See how I do with that before I waste time/money/aas to do it.

[Shrouded]

Here is what I would suggest:
1.  Every time you log on, farm the bazaar for 188+ tailoring supplies-- you will need a whole lot.
2.  Do all other tradeskills before tailoring; this will give you time to have enough components in tailoring to take a fairly large chunk out of the upper end, when you get there.

I did 300 combines to get from 188-194, but I'm probably just unlucky.  However, the materials I used to get the 188-194 took me weeks of bazaar farming to gather.

On the note of GoD tradeskill quests:  most of the costs for tradeskills are minimal below 200 (158 for tailoring), so it probably does not matter much if you do them or not.  If a GoD tradeskill quest will take you above 158, do that one, otherwise, I don't think it would really matter too much.

**NOTE** I do not have LoY so I had no idea about ribbons, but they sound like a much cheaper (and faster) alternative than acrylia studded masks~~ do those from 158-188.

[Hereki]

The GoD quests can take you to 51 in all skills for zero cost.  But rather more combines than you would to do it normally - you need in excess of 300 combines to max out the trivials and progress through each stage of the quest.

[Oneiromancer]

54, actually.  :D

It depends on the skill, whether or not this is worth it.  As I said, I did it for Tailoring and Smithing...and I'm thinking about doing it for Jewelcraft.  It's very easy, free, and you can do it while /lfg for that LDoN, since you're 2 zones away from any LDoN camp because of the Nedaria's Landing Magus (especially now that there's Magus travel to and from the boat).

Game on,

[Ttony]

I still wear this earring and I can concur that Tailoring is by far the worst aspect of this quest.Slow and expensive skill ups and the Obsidianwood saps are also a little rare and the combine has a high failure rate. Don't get discouraged. Only other stumbling block was getting the supplies from PoAir for the bow. Mainly because my guild was past this content when I got around to doing it. If your guild is doing Air on a regular basis then should not be a problem.

[Eatbugs]

I'm in the middle of raising Tailoring for this, and boy is it a pain in the rear.  I found all the other tradeskills fairly easy by comparison.  (Well, I had smithing maxed before I started.)

A suggestion for Jewelcrafting and Smithing - don't bother raising them much past the 220 needed to get Grimel to talk to you about that stage.  The combines for those two steps are relatively cheap compared to the cost in time and platinum to raise them to 250 - you could fail them a large number of times and still be better off.

[Kaarraj]

I did the quest as well.  I thought the worst part was farming the waters in PoV.  I avergaed about 1 water to 6hrs of farming.  

I know that was bad for that camp, but everyone has their own horor stories