Three hours, a sore wrist, and 500 platinum later:

[Karilis]

Hi all,

I decided Sunday morning that I wanted to have 100+ tailoring for the epic combine, since I plan on grabbing the roaring grass sometime this coming weekend, and am going to be camping the walrus in Siren's grotto (I spent a few hours here a couple of days ago, it didn't pay off, I'll go back again and try to get him again.  I've already got the petrified fangshrub from Riww, and I've got about a dozen blue diamonds, though I only 'need' three for the Gunthak handin.)

I first went to Velk's lab, because I knew that crystalline silk threads can be combined into crystalline silk fibers, and they trivial around 60 tailoring, and I had 21 tailoring.  Also, crystalline silks, and velium stuff can be used to make velium vapor vials(lore no drop gate potion to Thurg), which I used to carry around, but hadn't remembered to do so for a while.

I realized that my shadowknight was the one who used to make the vials of velium vapor, when I checked my tradeskills and saw 0 in pottery.  A quick check on EQtraders.com and I was able to find a variety of recipes that were cheap vendor buyable to get above 100 in Pottery...

So I had no idea why the "search recipe" function seemed to be nerfed, so I was doing manual combines in pottery (I asked in general chat, and found out, once you experiment, as long as you succeed, your character 'knows' the recipe, and you can search the recipes for that one in particular, while some other ones just show up, whether it be from racial knowledge, books you have right clicked in the past, or other flags your character has.)

So pottery to 100+ for vials of velium vapors, and made myself a gate potion, yay.

Now tailoring, wait, I've got silk swatches in the bank, let me go get some more:  I ran to Kaesora, and trained the entire upper half of the zone on myself all the way down to the strathbone runelord spawn, I popped my damage disciplines, bestial alignment, etc, and everything was dead before it ended.

Here's the kicker:  There was almost no regular silk on those spiders, but plenty of the new tradeskill stuff.

Anyway, I go back and start making heady kiolas and combining crystalline silk threads into crystalline silk fibers for the coldain prayer shawl and destroying them, and make it to around 35, maybe 50 skill... and realize my brewing is at a crappy level for successes on kiolas, so I look up on EQtraders again, turns out, a fishing grub and a water combine to a fetid essence that takes you to over 100 skill in brewing.

Little while later, check, 100+ brewing and good success rate at heady kiolas.

Checked EQ traders for tailoring, the mother of all tradeskills, found out you can buy mandrake roots in a store, and combine two, to make a woven mandrake root, that trivials at 66, few minutes later, 66 skill.

only had enough silk to attempt 17 cured silk gorgets anyway, and that netted me about 6-10 skill ups, so mid to low seventies tailoring.  Up to this point, I had only spent about 30 platinum after selling back the extra heady kiolas and other stuff that I had made, and the cured silk.

Now, I had a boatload of different types of tradeskill silks, the thread filaments is where the next part got expensive, I just did searches for "crude silk" "natural silk" "fine silk" ... most of the stuff trivials well over 100, so I picked the combines with the least required silk, making stuff like 'crude Silk gorget template pattern" because I almost never succeeded at these, I couldn't add the recipe to my character, and by the time I had gotten to about 90 skill, I only had 17 combines worth of silk left, and they required 23 platinum filaments each, at 99 skill I only had 2 combines worth left... but I am a proud 100 or 101 skilled tailor, with incidental brewing and pottery up as well.  :)

Sadly, my shadowknight put in the work to get jewelcraft, pottery, fletching, baking, and smithing all to 100 long before I ever started my beastlord, back when it was even harder than it still is, but also back when large lanterns could be sold for a 4 silver profit based on your success rate with metal bits heh.  Honestly though?  Who designs a tradeskill system, where you buy things with maximum faction and charisma, and put work and effort into making those supplies into something useful, and the vendor gives you less(often far less) than what you paid for the supplies? :P

Err, my rambling was just for this: If anyone needs some pointers on tailoring, eqtraders is wonderful, even though they don't have an updated rundown of cheap or vendor buyable combines, at least the "quick trivials list" works awesomely for any skill you desire to increase, especially if you find you have a bunch of the creature-dropped ingredients for combines.

[Kancho]

There is a tradeskill guide in the EQ Traders forums that lists easy/cheap paths for all tradeskills.

As for the new tradeskill drops, it seems complicated at first, but ultimately means a more sane path for skillups.  Worth checking into.

The reason you don't get as much money back when you sell combined stuff is because of cheating.  In the past, there were cases of tradeskill combines that were worth more and consequently people setup macros to automatically do combines and sell to merchants, thus making thousands of plat.

Good luck with the rest of your 1.5!

[Karilis]

Whew, thanks, Epic 1.5 done (bagged though, it's a bit better ratio than what I've got, but I mostly solo, and the mod 2s, procs, and ac and hp on my other weapons are way better, I use it for the right click when I remember I have it, I wish it was potionable.))

I now need the frenzied spiritphoenix clay, two epic fights, and an orb, orb I have a small chance at with pickup raids and such... *Shrugs*  the two fights I won't be able to solo/box for quite a while though, so we'll see if I can even solo Erlysai.