Hi all. I finally took the time to get all my tradeskills to 300. I read much online about how to go above 300, which of course is totally different -- involving learning new recipes rather than doing mindless combines. However, my question stems from the fact that with no trophies equiped, my tailoring, pottery and blacksmithing went to 315, 314 and 314 automatically after reaching 300 and buying all available recipes books etc., that I could scribe. However, all the rest of my tradeskills sit at 301. Is it possible that I have done WAY more work with tailoring, pottery and blacksmitting (as I have... for years)... and hence have way more recipes actually tried in the past counting towards those 315, 314 and 314? I have also done the Rallos Zek Earring so not sure if that affects it. OR.... are there simply no recipes books etc., that you can buy and scribe that raise the other tradeskills? I am being lazy here and was just hoping that I would at least get a few more points over 300 by scribing more books for the rest of the tradeskills before the hard journey begins Cheers.
You need to buy the [skill] mastery AA's. You may have learned enough receipts to actually be 310-315 in most of the trade skills but are caped at 300 until you buy them.
True. In which case I'd have to wonder if he's really gotten all the TS books. This is the guide I used to work my way though the books. https://www.townshiprebellion.com/tradeskills-home There is another site that lets you upload your known recipe list and get a list of what you need to do. Sadly I can't seem to find it at the moment.
God I should have mentioned, 115 Necro max everything... so I do indeed have the AA's. Thank you Windance for the link and I will check that out. I have so many. And I found the link you mentioned where you can /fileoutput recipes XXXX and then upload it and it gives you a list of the recipies (that you need) and/or can buy/scribe (http://eqrecipes.free.fr/index.php) I believe this is it. For all the other ones, that are stuck at 301, it says now that I have none that I can scribe so I guess, those simply cannot get past 301 with scribes... just actual WORK! Thanks guys.
You are seeing the large "automatic" scribe gains in smithing, tailoring and pottery due to the old cultural recipe system. The other tradeskills do not have recipes from those old cultural books so your gains in those are much smaller from scribing books.
I've seen a couple of these sites where you upload your /output and it tells you what you're missing. Just need 1 now that will comb the missing recipes and output a list of farmed mats required. Tailoring? spits out a list of 17 Immaculate Animal Pelts, 32 ice worm silk, etc etc.
EQRecipes runs on a free hosting with limited resources. As for a website that would provide a full list of what components you need to gather for each missing recipe, that would be a great tool indeed, but also would require some significant work. For example, let's say you would have the Hurricane Plate Breastplate recipe still not learned. This requires an Emblem of Storms (which itself requires a Blank Emblem, an Enchanted Electrified Copper (which itself requires a Brick of Electrified Copper, a Vial of Distilled Mana (which itself requires 1 Poison Vial, 3 Sapphire, and either an enchanter or 1 Celestial Essence (which itself ...) and 2 Coalesced Mana))), a Full Breastplate Mold, a Hurricane Temper (which itself requires 1 Powdered Sandstorm Pearl, which you get 4 of by combining 3 Sandstorm Pearl in a mixing bowl), etc. you get the point.
The moral of the story is: Do as many recipes as you possibly can from other expansions to reduce the number of PoP era recipes you have to do. Seriously...f**k PoP recipes.
I am a little confused by the first paragraph. Are you saying it's good but limited, and doesn't show you what you will need to complete the example you give? The Eqtraders link is on each recipe so it shows all the mats needed and sub combines. If it's just me reading the post incorrectly I apologize, just how I'm hearing it.
I've been avoiding commenting on this thread, so far. When it comes to the decisions regarding increasing skill past 300, I was trying to go by the saying, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything." But I just can't help myself, because the whole system for getting skill from 300 to 350 is a huge miss when it comes to fun gameplay. The enormous pain of the process seems only designed as a way to put obstacles in the way of getting the full benefit of the Artisan's Prize. I don't imagine many people would bother with it at all, if not for the AP. (The rest will be my reasons for disliking this process so much.) The AA cost to raise more than one of the base tradeskills past 200 (New Tanaan Crafting Mastery): 3 for each skill (the class skills, Research, Alchemy, and Make Poison, aren't subject to the limit of one skill past 200 even without this AA, I'm not sure if Tinkering was, but I suspect it was exempt as well.) The AA cost to raise a skill 50 points past this previous cap: 425 for each skill (20 for the first rank of the mastery that gives you 5 points more, 25 for the next 5 points, and so on) That was just a ludicrous amount of AA to require for this, in my opinion. On the concept of the number of recipes you "know" being the thing that determines your gains in skill past 300 - This might seem fair in one sense, figuring that experimenting and innovation and a variety of experience with different materials would factor into someone's skill at crafting. But it is a complete departure from the way all skills increase in EQ, which is based entirely on the concept of practice makes perfect. You can cast See Invisible hundreds of times to raise Divination skill, swing the same war hammer hundreds of times to raise 1 handed blunt skill, and make only a handful of recipes over and over again to get a trade skill to 300. In theory, you could even use a Draught of the Craftsman and then use a single trivial 300+ recipe to go all the way from 0 skill to 300. But to reference the point of the original post, the very fact that simply scribing a recipe from a book has the same effect as making the item in question destroys the logic of "learning" a recipe as a method of gaining skill. Lastly, the fact that few books exist to scribe means a truly ridiculous amount of farming old content. I did this for quite a while, but I've basically given up because slaughtering a zone full of mobs half my level is entertaining for about 20 minutes. After that, it's just tedious and boring. It is especially annoying that this kind of farming is something that is quite anti-social for an MMO. If the zones weren't so empty on live servers anyway, it would be disruptive of people trying to quest or xp in those zones (although, if the zones actually had people playing in them regularly, then a buy line would get you what you need without having to farm it). And it is something no one is going to want to help you with, as if you would need help, kind of defeating the social aspect of the game. I don't think that there is really anything that can be done to change it at this point. But I wish I could have avoided thinking about it. The more I think about it, the more bitter I get about the time I feel like I wasted getting as far as I did.
The current system is in place BECAUSE of the limitations of the old system. The way the 0-300 skill up system works, the chance for raising a skill (getting that next skill point) goes down the higher in skill you get (it's just the way the formula works for tradeskills). By the time players get to 300, the number of combines you have to do on average for the next skill point is over 100 (remember, it's an average, so you can get lucky or you can get unlucky). Doing 301-350 with this method could mean thousands of combines to get a skill point by the end. Ngreth did not want to have skillups be so hard for the average player (paraphrasing) so came up with the recipe count method. In a vacuum, the recipe count method is fine. Unfortunately, there wasn't really a cleanup of either (a) recipes that counted (like how 4 gems control jewelrycraft or how many total recipes there are in research) or (b) ease to get some of the tradeskill drops (like pyrilen flames and stone beans). Since he's held the number required for each skill point constant, most of the issues with either of the two problems has largely gone away as each new expansion release since has had multiple new recipes for each tradeskill to substitute for the hard ones. He's also added a number of recipes that has made getting to 300 super easy in a number of tradeskills. Factor in the tradeskill items coming into the game from Overseers, and 3+ expansions later ... the system isn't so bad these days. The aa costs are large ... but then so are the aa costs for things in general the last few expansions because there hasn't been much. At this point, with the collection rewards and Overseers to get aa xp/xp, it's really not that much of a burden compared to other things at the end game. I can understand folks getting bored with farming old stuff ... but that's pretty much what Everquest has been for the length of the game - going back to kill stuff for quests, materials, special clicky gear, etc. The real issue is everyone wants to zoom to the end game/point and no longer enjoys the journey. I'm not sure there's any fix for that in a 22 year old game.
You raise a lot of good points. But, I don't think they should change how it works. It's just useful to put things in perspective.... For myself, perpetually behind in AAs, the cost, as you say, is ridiculous, so there's one reason to put it off. And then the sheer time involved in collecting all the mats, etc. For me, it works like this.... everyone gets 40% of the AP max (1200HPs, etc), just by default. So what we're really haggling about here is the last 60%, or 1800HPs (plus the rest of the stats, obv.). Well, we're really arguing about ~45% of the total (~1350 HPs, etc), because just scribing all the books mentioned in Adetia's well-known list, plus whatever other recipes you've learned just by leveling tradeskills and pursuing the AP to begin with, will get you that far. Of course, you need some of the AAs to get these points, but it's the cheap ones, the ones which cost 20 and 25 each. So, for the average Joe, it's ~1350 HPs for the rest of the effort of AAs and mat collection/recipe tracking/etc. How long does that take? I can't see it being less than 300 hours, and I think that's being generous. So, each hour's effort, on average, gets you ~4.5 HPs/etc. That's your benchmark for comparing it to other activities which will net you other skills, or farm other drops, which will increase your stats. To me, there are plenty of other things I can pursue in EQ to benefit my character, which have a better payoff than that. Which is why, I think, finishing the recipes to max the AP is really a pursuit for those who've already beaten most of the game, and need to do something for bragging rights, or getting that last fraction of a percent advantage. Even at 55% of potential, the AP is still gonna make the cut for augs you want to use. In my case, I actually have enough AAs purchased to get about another 110 skillups (~15% of the aug total), but still haven't hit the point where I feel like learning the recipes needed is time better spent than other things I'd be doing. The only reason I have the AAs done is because as we approach a new expac, I can't justify spending AA points on things which will be auto-granted soon, so I spent some on the TS AAs.
Yes, the last 15-20 points to get to 300 can mean a large number of combines per point. But, I don't see why they had to completely abandon that method of skill ups to fix that. It isn't like we have to cast 100 divination spells to get single point in divination skill after we hit 300. I see casting and combat skills in that range going up immediately when I level. The skill up formulas are just math, and the math can be adjusted if the skill up rate isn't where they want it. Way back in the day, when there were only recipes in the 250-300+ trivial range for smithing that cost a lot of plat to buy from players because the end result was so desirable, then I actually only gained skill points by making things to put in the bazaar. The DoN cultural recipes had a bonus to skill up chance because of the rarity of the materials and high chance of failure, if I remember things correctly. That is why I wasn't already at 300 blacksmithing when I came back to the game in 2017 after a ten year break. But you are right, additional recipes put in since those DoN days meant I could buy in the bazaar fairly easily the materials for the hundreds of combines to finish it off. And yes, additional recipes put in since EoK means the ability to skip some of the most obnoxious to farm recipes and do the new ones instead. And overseer helps some as well (now just add in the ability to get materials from expansions prior to RoF, and we're golden). But the slow addition of ways to mitigate the pain doesn't get them off the hook for a system that wasn't fun when it was implemented. The AA requirements for tradeskills was fairly minimal compared to the AA points needed for boosting your adventuring power at the time, and there was a very long gap between the implementation of New Tanaan Crafting Mastery, the individual tradeskill mastery AAs (3/6/9 for the 3 ranks of those), Salvage (6 per rank, I think?), and EoK. For several years, there was nothing to spend AA on for tradeskills. It wasn't just a large jump in AA costs*, it was unjustifiably large, in my opinion. Especially when you consider the gains from increasing skill from 300 to 350 that you get from that 425 AA + all the time invested in farming the materials and then still having to make all of those recipes. Again, the effect of having 350 skill vs 300 is small other than what you get from the Artisan's Prize, and even that isn't as much of a boost as what a character would get upgrading a couple of slots from EoK era gear to ToV gear that you can buy in the bazaar. I started putting more time into tradeskills than all but a few of my friends and guildmates pretty much right away back in 1999/2000. I did blue diamond old cultural when hardly anyone else was doing it. (Made good money making that armor back then, too.) I've never been someone that wanted to "zoom" to the end game. But the journey has to be enjoyable for its own sake. Gathering materials as I adventure in challenging content is fun. Obliterating zones in GoD with my 115 wizard looking for aligned ore (annoyingly rare) or shimmering aligned ore (ridiculously rare) is not a fun journey. And not enough people do that content now for my buyer to get it. Yes, I can skip those recipes now and do others instead, but that isn't my point. My point was that it wasn't a fun journey when it was implemented, and it still isn't. It is just less painful than it originally was. *To be honest, the AA point structure of the Focus AAs is another point of contention with me. Everything to do with AA point costs seems to be with end game players in mind that would get bored if they didn't still have something to spend AA points on 3 months after an expansion is released and they have settled into farming the newest expansion for those last few pieces of gear they need and for alts. Anyone still several thousand AA points short of maximum, like I am, even with autogrant, looks at having to spend a couple hundred AA points just to make the focus AA that used to work for the previous version of a spell work for the new one as almost a punishment for having leveled.
It isn't about the amount of time it takes to get the materials. It is about how it isn't fun to farm for that length of time. I can tolerate a little bit of time farming trivially easy content to finish a quest. But not many months of daily effort. If I was spending 300 hours having fun while gaining enough materials to raise my skills to 350, I wouldn't have any complaints. Getting to 300 skill had much more benefit than bragging rights, or some small increase in success rates. (They made some good items in later expansions that you could only craft once you hit 300, for instance.) To put what you said here in other words, gaining skill past 300 is really for those with nothing better to do with their time. Keep players on the treadmill, even if they aren't having much fun. If they get off before the next expansion when they can have fun again, they might not come back. That would be pretty cynical, if MMO designers really think that way.
They abandoned it because it became impossible to skill up at a certain point and it is likely they would have had to rewrite the entire tradeskill skill up process. Tradeskill skillups do not work like any other skills ups in the game.
1st part: I generally agree, but the slippery slope for that is, fun is relative. Some enjoy it. 2nd part: Fairly well restated. And I don't think it's necessarily a big deal, as long as you realize it. Everything we do is a trade-off. The fact that we're even playing EQ means we think that's the best use of our time at that moment. Once in, what's the most worthwhile (however you define that) thing to be doing in game? And that answer can be different for different people. My main point in bringing up what I did was because sometimes people don't really think through the cost-benefit stuff, and it can cause burn-out and frustration, which seemed to be the case in your post. Another thing to keep in mind with lower-cost-benefit tasks which can be really grindy.... they don't have to be done all at once. And even within that one task, it can be broken down to smaller tasks, and again, you can prioritize the sub tasks. For instance, you get another 1% for the AP with each 7 TS skillups over 300. Those skillups don't all take the same effort. For instance, every 2.5 new recipes for fishing gets you a skillup, while every ~54 new recipes for spell research gets you a skillup. So, if you want to work on the AP, start with fishing, before spell research. Could be, once you get to just the really horrible stuff left, your AP is at 95%, and then you can determine if that whole load of crap that's left is worth the last 5% of progress
I'm not seeing why rewriting the skill up process for tradeskills, if that would be necessary, would be less work than implementing a whole new process. I suppose that there are some differences necessary in how tradeskill skill ups work compared to other skills. Such as only non-trivial recipes giving a chance to skill up, but I'm still not convinced that 300 was a magic number that would have made it unavoidable for skill ups to be prohibitively rare above that. Is there an old post or something where Ngreth or someone else explained this in detail?
