If a Gnome character is created solely for the purpose of getting tinkering skill to 300 and maxing out the trophy for trade skill combines is there any point or advantage in leveling that character beyond level 16? (e.g., faster skillups?)
You cannot get to high skill levels in any trade without gaining levels. This includes tinkering. And yes, higher levels will speed skill-ups as your intelligence gets higher with leveling.
I'm pretty sure you can get to 300 in tinkering without additional levels, but I think you'd want to at least get to 59 for the basic Tinkering mastery AAs and 60 - 85 for the various levels of salvage. Then of course, if you want to get all levels of Tinkering Mastery, you'd need to go all the way to 105. EQTC Learn Tinkering
18 AA's for 3 levels of Tinkering Mastery and 30 AA for 6 levels of Salvage. Lvl 85 is needed to get them all. That would get you to lvl 300 Tinkering with maximum salvage chance and reduced failure rate with the Trophy. This is a practical minimum - lvl 85 with 48 AA. And 425 more AA's to get Tinkering Mastery to enable skill level 350 in Tinkering and reduce failure rate even more. But this is not truly necessary, it has a marginal practical effect. And now you'll enter the misterious land of Luck. With very high Luck your Tinkerer will have a notable chance to luckily succeed on otherwise failed attempts. Not really meaningful but notable chance. That would mean - welcome to level 120 and ToL Tier2+ gear.
Thank you for the informative and helpful responses Summarizing : TINKERING MASTERY (L59) Ranks 1-3 reduce the chance of failing Tinkering combinations by 10, 25, and 50% SALVAGE (L60 - L85) This ability gives you the chance to automatically recover an item that would otherwise be lost on a failed tradeskill combine. 60 : 5% 65 : 15% 70 : 25% 75 : 30% 80 : 35% 85 : 40%
One other level of note: Level 66 (maybe 68, I forget). Skillups happen at the fastest possible rate when you have an INT/WIS of at least 420. Low level chars max at 255. Once in the 50s (60s?), there are AAs which raise the cap. By level 66, you still can't reach 420, however, at that level, the lowest chanter buff which raises the INT/WIS cap (Precognition) will land, and that will take you past 420. So, that's my floor for raising an alts tradeskills, level 66. Doesn't matter that much through tradeskill values of 200 or maybe 220, but after that, the attempts required to reach 300 are quite different between INT/WIS at 255 vs. 420.
In case your wondering how to get 200 tinkering cap to 300 tinkering cap. Do this quest, https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4301 Advantage of leveling beyond 16 is the 50% more chance at successful combine. Its a big deal especially if your making the conflagrant, ice, and bloodied belts. Theres a lot of stuff to farm unlike the smithing, tailoring, jewelcraft, and fletching tradeskills.
For clarity - that quest is not required to advance your skill from 200 to 300 - as you and most of the other posters on this thread have called out, it's for the standard AAs that reduce your failures .
Ugh. I wish those TS AAs had a much lower level requirement. Back in the day, before I started 2-boxing (zerk/sham), I created a shaman on my zerk account to be my alchemy alt. I never considered that alchemy trivials would get so high and that tradeskill AAs would have such high level requirements. Now I'm considering skilling up my boxed shaman in alchemy because it would be easier to go from 100 - 300 in alchemy and get the AAs on the box than to get from level 75 to 105 on the same-account shaman. Bleh. =\
Higher levels you get luck stat too so getting higher level is good. Plus all the tinkering aas u can get salvage ect.
But remember to not get salvage or the mastery AAs if you want to use a DotC to get to 300. You want the failures.
If you are just going Gnome for the Tinkering, I suggest you go Rogue for the Poison making Something I failed to do at the time.
I went with a gnome enchanter - enchanting mana and metals is more useful than just making poisons, imho. Also enchanter can summon Spell Research components for skill-ups (all int-casters can). Overall - gnome enchanter is a more profitable investment than a gnome rogue.
The gnome rogue can cover all TSs except Alchemy (or have they slipped in that race-class combo). Of course, there is an issue were enchanted or imbued components are required. Enter the enchanter ALT, friend or the bazaar. Going back to the days of one skill past 200, I have alts for each TS. I did switch over to slowly advancing my main's TSs past 250. If your going all in on one character, I can't really say gnome enchanter is a bad choice. As for profits, I don't see enchanting items making you a fortune, but there is an element of luck involved. Turns out I really don't use the products of poison making, but you never know what the next expansion brings to the table.
Starting from RoS the tradeskilled jewelry (rings, earrings, pendants) are made from enchanted bars of expansion metal, so an enchanter is a must-have for a functional tradeskiller. One would use many more enchantments and mana-crafting than a rogue poison or a shaman potion. And, by the way, enchanter expansion metal bars sell for many K pp ea in-era and some even after. Both Artisan Prize and Rallos Zek earring quests are so rewarding, that many (if not the most) of players have 7 main tradeskills at 300+ level with trophies maxed. But not all classes/races can do poisonmaking/alchemy/tinkering (obviously), so alts are made for those tradeskills, and in my opinion gnome enchanter alt is better than gnome-rogue alt. A tinkering enchanter alt is quite useful even as a buffer (haste + mana regen), and it doesn't even have to be well-developed, just leveled up. A tikering rogue is useless for anything but tinkering/poisoncrafting, unless you really develop that rogue to the max. So, unless an enchanter, rogue or shaman is one of your main characters make gnome-enchanter max level, a rogue lvl 85 and a shaman lvl 95 (to easily PL new toons from 65 to 90) tradeskill alts.
