TLP Do tradeskills now or wait for trophies?

I have been plagued with the question should I start working on tradeskills now in kunark to prep for velious for the ring quest or should I just do the only required one (tailoring to 75ish, rest on alts as needed) and wait to do tradeskills on main toon until they are easier with trophies and the trophies get the chance to level up...from the combines...or so I've read this is how it works?

I just want to do this the most efficient way possible without wasting time or resources on trade skills if they are going to be super hard later on to get trophies because I maxed them all out early to 200.

So advice please? trade skills now or wait?
Thank you for advice

Prophecy of Ro 2024-01-04 (Thu)

If you want to make TS stuff in the next 16 months you want to level up the skills, the trophies will be harder to make but you have 16 months to pre-farm:

Create 1 Studded Boots using tradeskills - ALL
Create 1 Crystalline Silk Collar using tradeskills - ALL
Create 1 Platinum Forestgreen Ribbon using tradeskills - ALL
Create 1 Etched Scale Snake Whip using tradeskills - ALL
Create 1 Arctic Wyvern Cloak using tradeskills - ALL
Create 1 Grandmaster Tailor's Needle using tradeskills - ALL
Create 1 Holgresh Fur Moccasins using tradeskills - ALL
Create 1 Fine Silk Robe Template using tradeskills - ALL
Create 1 Othmir Fur Cloak using tradeskills - ALL
Create 1 Ice Silk Amice using tradeskills - ALL

I 3 boxed on Phinny & what I ended up doing was just alchemy on my Shaman, I managed fine with just that until PoR unlocked at which point I did the trophies, and banking a lot of plat & any & all ts mats beforehand helped immensely, once PoR opened the Krono price dropped a lot due to massive demand for plat.

It depends on what your goals are.

Velious has a lot of good tailoring items.
Luclin has Blue Diamond culture armor and Seru Bane weapons.
PoP has lot of good trade skill content, and quest for a very good item that require 222 in each skill.
DoN brings in the main culture line, and symbol that go with it. (have 300 smithing or tailor will allow access to the short recipes)
DoDh has AAAA for raid augs to go with Culture.

If you want to work on Smithing, I max out fine plate during kunark, then do enchanted velium during velious, and wait for Luclin to go further.

My advice should not be followed since I do not have experince (Aradune first time tradeskiller) and got to between 200-250 range on all tradeskills and one trophey at 6/7.
It either takes alot of time farming materials or plat or both no matter what (through TSS). If i did it again; I think waiting till PoK is available - at least you get a single zone where you can just get alot of materials to work on alot of the tradeskills at lower levels. So maybe load up on plat now with higher Korono prices to save to buy the vendor mats.

1. Is this stuff just for tailoring or all trade skills?
   1. If I did any trade skills I would likely do them all.
2. I am trying to follow and understand what this list is for if you could explain in a bit more detail please?

So are you suggesting the best path might be to bank items for the purpose of leveling and not actually working on trade skills until PoR due to how difficult the trophies become if you do actually work on the trade skills?

Sorry if I wasn't clear some how? What I am trying to figure out. If it is worth waiting due to difficulty of trophies or if it is worth it to start doing some now with regards to certain in era quests requiring trade skills like the Coldain ring or Shawl quests. Or should those just be skipped and ignored as a Warrior or Shaman (you said had shm?)

My goal is to enjoy the game from Classic to Live. I however don't want to make more work and stress for myself as a warrior by not doing trade skills if they could help me or by doing them if they will make my life a nightmare later on due to trophy quests and some possible insanely rare item drop that might never drop for days or weeks if it would be easier to just wait to do trade skills at all.

I am just noticing that there are some quests in velious the shawl and ring quest that might be useful to myself as a warrior or others as casters. If it is worth it to level up trade skills while keeping trophies in mind later in PoR

That's the quest for the Master Tailoring Trophy that becomes available in PoR, the quest is a lot easier if you have lower skill but gathering the materials for even 5 attempts at every item in the next 16 months is trivial. Every other trophy is the same thing, https://everquest.allakhazam.com/ and enter Master xxxx Trophy in search for whatever skill, Blacksmith is Smith.

The trophy's aren't going make a big difference in the skill improvement rate. They just give you a skill mods that make it easier to hit trivial over 300. Prior to TSS you aren't going to run into to many combines over 400. There also other skill mod item that can help, XTC(Ssra) and Blob1(VT) can both drop 15% smith mod item, Shei (AR) drops 15% tailoring mod, and 10% tinkering mod items. These fights are easily farmable with 1 group or less by the time OoW comes out. Geerloks should be craftable in Luclin (?) with a 5% mod to whatever skill.

There a number of times where trade skill are useful, however most of those times the items are tradable, so someone else in your guild can do the high triv if they have already done the work.

If you want to do the Signet of Might quest PoP.
Warrior 1.5 TS items are tradable.
From DoDH- TBS most tanks wear the culture armor with symbol and raid augs. It can be hard to find someone to craft the armor for you if aren't one of the more common races.
Shawl quests in UF (300 in all TS).
At some point later on there is a crazy aug with huge heroic done with trade skills.

I am surprised that no one has mentioned to you that some of the best time to make plat off of tradeskill has long since sailed by the time PoR launches. Not only can trade skills provide you the means to an end as far as certain quests and gear go but it also allows you to bank a decent amount of plat, which in turn can be exchanged for em que's, loot rights or just plain old baz gear for upgrades.

So it seems to me you are missing an even bigger opportunity to help gear yourself up by waiting. It really would make no sense to me to wait just for the trade skill trophy, especially if it was for the wrong reason that it is a harder combine. If you hit 300 before PoR, it means you have done a ton of farming for mats and in that time it would make sense to save mats for the trophy combine as the path to 300 may sometimes include these very same materials. That or at least you will see them, have tons of time to buy them and if you are actively raising your trade skills and selling the excess gear you make, you will have tons of plat & time to buy the mats needed for the trophy.

So being a long time trade skiller, going as far back as 2000-2004 in my first run of EQ on Druzzil server, waiting makes absolutely no sense to me.

Selling Trade skill mats is more profitable then selling crafted items.

Also - selling high level tradeskill items requires quite a bit of time or a team. you need to farm the mats and do all the skill ups and then also be farming for the material to make the items, and the time to sell it. You can certaintly do well with selling those items, but if you view yourself more in the 'casual' type of player and without a squad to do this, i do not think it is that feasible.

You can do the ring or signet of might in pop - basically getting some raid level loot for free if you do tradeskills so it can* be worth it depending on your needs in the game. and it doesnt require the full maxing out of TS - so you can get started on TS, work on those useful items and then go back to the trophies. The Tropies on their own won't do much until you can make that artisan augment (unless you are crafting items for friends / guildies or to sell).

While I have no experience with this as I typically sell excess mats way too late to make any sort of profit, I am pretty sure that is not what this thread is about. I was simply pointing out that if OP is planning on doing trade skills at some point, the most sensible time to do it is when there is the option of potentially selling what they make.

Once you level up during PoR because the trophy is easier to make or for whatever reason the OP has for waiting to do the combines, the market will be brand new players who may or may not be able to afford the gear and twinks. Neither of which is much of a market.

Doing your combines in PoR or later essentially means that 95% of everything you make will be merchant sold or destroyed. Maybe this is fine for the OP, maybe not. I just thought it needed to be pointed out that there is an opportunity to make plats that can translate into gear if done while in era.

On Rizlona, where I am now, during and not long after Velious I was able to level 3 different tailors to the 252 mark while making tons of plat & krono selling Velious armor sets, black panther, tigeraptor, etc. There is absolutely no way the OP will be able to do that if they begin the combines in PoR, the market just wont be there. Why would anyone miss out on that opportunity if they plan on trade skilling at some point.

Not to mention, you miss all the opportunity for the quest gear upgrades that require trade skills if you wait, which seemed important to the OP. I just do not see any reason to wait.

I am curious Powerpuff, are you new to the game? Do you have any sort of understanding what sort of time sink trade skills are in this game? Have you give consideration to the time requirements needed for farming mats or how you might pay for materials in era while they are actively being farmed? One way or another, there will be a huge investment of time needed for this endeavor and if you plan on farming materials with just a warrior, you might be in for a rude awakening with how it plays out for you.

You can get to 250 smithing in original eq making mistletoe sickles which will sell to some degree or another through and for some time after after Luclin releases. However these combines cost a bit of plat to make (250p+/combine) and sometimes you will need to make 40+ combines to see one skill up. After 250, its basically waiting for Luclin and cultural gear which again takes a ton of plat per combine, leather padding (farmed), enchanted ores (enchanter) & imbued gems (caster/diety specific). If you are prepared to make this gear (there will be many failures) come Luclin, if you are playing a popular race for you warrior, you just might make some plat during this time, I know I did...

Bear in mind, if you plan on selling what you make to recoup your investment and or make plats, there is an additional time sink prior to Luclin launch of playing the meta trader game in the CL tunnel. Once Luclin drops and the Bazaar opens, this time sink vanishes.

Even the most difficult trophy quests might inconvenience you by an extra few hours per tradeskill so I wouldn't super stress about min/maxing it.

With that said if you don't have an epic 1.5/2.0 that requires tradeskills or want to do the PoP tradeskill quests or have a plan for making extra plat in PoP/Omens/DoDH going hard on tradeskills with a bazaar mule I would just wait on them unless you are bored and want to get it out of the way now. Personally, I much prefer waiting until the global drops appear so I don't have to do a bunch of subcombines to pray I get a skillup past 200 but some people really enjoy that aspect of TS.

I wasn't really concerned about trophies for skill improvement or even the skill mods. My concern was the difficulty of the trophy quests. If it was worth it to do trade skills before they come out in PoR or if it would be more worth it with content and other previous era quests to actually work on them or not. I believe I said it before that for me it would be an all or nothing thing. I would work on all the trade skills or none at all and just save materials for it if I should wait due to the possible difficulty of the trophy quests.

1. If you want to do the Signet of Might quest PoP.
   • Yes, I would like to do this.
2. Warrior 1.5 TS items are tradable.
   • That is good to know
3. From DoDH- TBS most tanks wear the culture armor with symbol and raid augs. It can be hard to find someone to craft the armor for you if aren't one of the more common races.
   • I am a wood elf. I don't suspect I am a common race for warriors?
4. Shawl quests in UF (300 in all TS).
   • I am not certain what UF stands for. I know only of the shawl quests in velious that I've been told about?
5. At some point later on there is a crazy aug with huge heroic done with trade skills
   • Yes, I wish to do this if it is the "Radix" you are referring to. This is my end goal is that I plan to take my TLP warrior all the way to live and raid in live content.

Thank you for your reply!

My concern was the difficulty of the trophy quests. Are you suggesting I save certain combines or the "materials" for the possible quest combines like I believe another did and to go ahead and push forward with the trade skills now?

I believe from your final comment your suggestion is the level my trade skills now and attempt to make profits where I am able and save combine materials for the trophy quests later or purchase them with the "possible" returns on investments?

I do not have a team or squad. It is just me on a single computer without any boxes or any desire for any. I've nothing against those that do this. It just isn't my style. I am not against selling completed products to obtain funds to continue my trade skills but I figured now being almost in velious any profits I could have made e.g. banded, plate, JC, talioring(bags/wu?), research spells, fetching bows, food/drink stat items has long since passed? I am not very experienced with this stuff. It would be nice to make profits of some type, but I am mainly doing this for me and any possible quests in each era along the journey to live.

I am not super familiar with some jargon in this reply so I am assuming OP means original poster? Has this opportunity for profits not already passed since my server Yelinak is now in kunark and almost velious? (p.s. yes, this is my in game name too if wish to msg me there. I am always looking to learn)

I was under the impression that the quests are ridiculously harder if you get your trade skills to 200 or even max and that was the reason I was considering waiting to do any trade skill combines.

I thought 95% of what I made would be merchant sold or destroyed anyways no matter since passed classic? I didn't think their was any further opportunity to make a ROI for leveling the trade skills in my current era of late kunark.

1. Why did you have 3 different tailors at 252?
2. How did this make tons of income?
3. You are saying velious armor sets. Was this tailoring only or did you do blacksmithing also?
4. Why would anyone miss out on that opportunity...fear?
   • I was told about some of the max combines to obtain the final trophies the materials being in camps that literally took over a week or two to drop 1 item for the combine. The person explaining this saying they wished they would have not leveled trade skills early so could have done an easier trophy and level it it with combines instead of the quest. Also, the main purpose of this entire thread to get more feedback.

They are very important to me!

I like it seems many on Yelinak are new to the game. I had some minor attempts to try and log on during other server launches but work and then covid (causing mass lay-offs oh #$@% gotta find new job) prevented me from being able to get a foot hold into the game. This is my first time actually getting to really check out the game and decided to start with the new classic server over the "special" ruleset servers. That way I could get as close to real original experience while getting to live (p99 won't make it to live so was ruled out as an option).

Otherwise, I got a general idea what I am getting myself into with the time sink and difficulty. That is the reason I wish to make sure I am making a good well researched and educated choice here that this is the best opportunity cost for myself to experience everything EQ has to offer without hopefully any painful mistakes aka #4 with fear spoke about above.

My goal would be to work on all trade skills to 200 and try to figure out which would be the best trade skill to take beyond 200 as I believe I read I am only allowed to take 1 beyond 200 until luclin era. I reach fetching, research, alchy, poison making all could be taken beyond 250 as are not primary trade skills or require classes I don't play so doesn't quite matter.

I am playing a wood elf warrior. I don't believe this is considered a popular race for warriors haha. I read "Divine Intervention" success rate was higher on those with higher CHA so decided the female wood elves looked awesome in plate and could reach 100 cha with starter points this would be my best shot at having a high success rate with that buff or similar ones on my warrior. So far this has proven correct and I don't regret the choice in the slightest!

I can see that as something I should also bear in mind thank you. I wonder what will be the most difficult to sell in CL tunnel supply and demand wise if I move forward with trade skills and which I should choose to do beyond 200. You seemed to have some success with tailoring and brought up blacksmithing?