Abusing Draught of the Craftsman to Level a Heroic Char's Tradeskills

Yes that's completely true but has no bearing on the different mechanics between the AS and CR freebies.

These were both level 85 heroics and they both maxed skill for the recipe in a under 10 combines.

Thats sad i did it back in the old days before the combine all and stuff. People will do whatever they can to do it as easy as possible. what ts did they max out?

All right, Alnitak, break out some crayons for me. Which jewelry recipes are you talking about here?

Don't think Alnitak is talking vendor bought. Highest vendor bought compartmented only trivials at 231. Dwerium would get you to 306 - but you'd need raw faycite crystal for that. Or Cosgrite or Feymetal or Temporite or Alaran metal or Planar alloy - all subcombines requiring drops.

Practice Dwerium doesn't require a chanter at all and can get you to 316. But again - not vendor bought.

Velium and Blue Diamonds will get you to 302 - should be able to pick up BDs just looking on PoK/Bazaar Vendors.

Which reminds me of something I've always wondered about. Whenever I check /buyers on my server, they're always paying less for diamonds and BDs than what I can get from the merchants in PoK. Why would I sell to them?

Catching folks unawares?

Caveat subscriptor

Sure, I can see some folks doing that, but I've never seen a single buyer paying the same or more for the D/BDs. It's like none of them actually want to buy any or something.

Re: the tradeskill mastery AAs, ex: Fletching Mastery, I need to get the AAs that give decreased chance to fail in order to raise the cap of more than 1 tradeskill to 300, right? So before using a Draught of the Craftsman to level to 300 I need to max these AAs that reduce the amount of failures and recombines.

1: Decrease Chance to Fail Fletching Combine by 50%
2: Increase Fletching Skill Cap with Recipes by 50
This passive ability reduces the chance of failing Fletching recipes by 50% and allows you to increase your skill past its Specialization cap by 50 points by learning more recipes.

Tucoh,

With respect to leveling using the Draught of the Craftsman you actually WANT to fail because you then get the mats back and have another "FREE" chance to skill up so having the AA masteries done is counter productive.

On the other hand I don't think getting to 300 was so tedious that using the Draught will save you time.

I prefer to be able to do TS stuff in chunks.

Get your baking/brewing/fishing done first because they are the easiest. Then pick fletching, pottery or JC'ing and work them up. By the time you get those done you are about half way done and have the hardest three left to 'power' through.

It would drive me nuts trying to get everything all lined up so I could try and power through the last 50-100 points using just the Draught.

But that's me, and I've done the push to 300 on 3-4 characters now.

It sounds like you're looking for the New Tanaan Crafting Mastery AA in the General Tab. With all six ranks, you can reach the 300 cap in all of the seven basic tradeskills (Baking, Brewing, Blacksmithing, Fletching, Jewelcraft, Pottery, and Tailoring) by practicing/making non-trivial recipes (typically only a few different recipes). The AA description says it allows you to raise more than one skill to 250, but that's because it was never updated after the tradeskill caps were raised to 300.

If you want to go above 300 in a recipe, then yes, you do need to purchase the EoK tradeskill mastery AA, which requires you get the ranks that reduce the chance of failing. For tradeskills you're planning on raising with the Draught and failures, you'd want to skip the tradeskill mastery AA like Baking Mastery.

So this description has been wrong for years?
https://www.raidloot.com/aa?name=new tanaan&effect=&class=&level=&tab=&exp=

That's funny and good to know!!

Yeah now that I'm going through it I'm going to do them in line with the RZ earring quest. That requires JC for the first quest and tailoring for the next pass. So I'm leveling JC right now (up to 214!), will do the first quest then level tailoring when I need it.

I'm kinda still hoping to justify a DotC usage for fletching and research because, well, I made this thread so I may as well try it.

Yes I vaguely remember reading a bug report on it, but I just checked to make sure. There are actually several. There are even 2 that have the Confirmed flag.
This one from 2019, and
This one from 2020.
I've just gone ahead and given them a like.

Tucoh,

Windance had it right. Using DotC in the classical way, you DON'T want the mastery AAs*, because you want more failures. Since, with high enough stats, the chance of a skillup is just as good with a failure as it is with a success.

Where Windance is kinda wrong, is about DotC not really saving time. It's true that the click-fest to raise the skill takes the same amount of time (remember, a failure has the same chance as a success). But where a DotC DOES save time (and potentially a lot of time) is the mat gathering process. If you keep your combines to the minimum 5% chance of success, you only need 1/20th the number of mats as you would doing it the traditional way. Well, maybe 1/15th, since even without DotC, you'll still salvage some of your mats.

If it takes 2 hours to get all the mats you need for a DotC run, then it'll take ~30 hours to gather the mats you need for a traditional run. That's a LOT of time savings in my book.

* - You can go ahead an get the mastery AAs ahead of time, as long as the recipes you choose are still a 5% chance of success. This is where the advanced calculator on EQTRaders comes in handy.

Not sure how any of this applies at all to what I said that was quoted.

No, you do not! In order to get all of your TSs to go to 300 you need the New Tanaan Crafting Mastery AAs, NOT the TS specific Master AAs (e.g. Fletching Mastery, Baking Mastery, Brewing Mastery, etc.).

New Tanaan Crafting Mastery, each rank allows you to increase your raw skill to 300 on the next TS that skills up over 250, there are 6 ranks.

The Mastery AAs by contrast allow you reduce the failure rate with the first 3 ranks, and the the subsequent 10 ranks increase your skill cap up to 350, based on how many recipes that you have learned. There is absolutely no reason to buy these until after you are already at 300 in all your TSs. Furthermore, they are insanely expensive.

I'll totally agree with you that it may be faster to buy up some a couple stacks of expensive mats and burn a potion, but ...

It all really comes down to what mats you have easy access to which drives which recipes you have to choose from for skilling up.

Your server may have a ton of cheap mats available in the baz.

Personally, I tend to save everything so I have a ton of mats. I have stacks of diamonds, silks of all kinds, parchments, etc.


Tatank, Have you tried leveling up using the the DotC?

Guess you didn't see my posts upthread.

I've taken two chars through all but fletching and research in the last couple months, old-school style (no DotC). Mainly because I had mats on hand (packrat ) or they were quick to get through Overseer.

I don't play enough to bother having play sessions where I'm farming mats in gray zones. And there has been no good market for mats on my server in the Bazaar for a very long time. So, if I can save dozens of hours (or more) by using a pot, I'm going to do it. That time represents weeks of EQ time for me, when I could be doing quests/hunters/fun things elsewhere.

And I don't buy expensive stacks of anything. Too poor to do that. The recipes I've targeted for DotC for fletching and research will use mats I gathered from Overseer for another trade, but different mats than the ones I used for that one. And also another mat which I still have stockpiled from over the years, and haven't had a call to use yet.

blog update: Got all the Freshman Trophy quests. They're harder than the beginner quests and like multiple people in this thread it's better to take a new char to 50 using Abysmal Sea quests and get the trophy quests before taking a char to 100 heroic than it is to get the trophy quests after getting the char to 100 heroic and leveling their TS to 150. Buuuut it's not so bad. The only tough one was the Smithing quest that requires https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=47125 Platinum-Bladed Long Spear which requires you to do the quest for https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=26762 .

I actually had all the stuff needed for all the trophy quests onhand except for the Turepta Shell for the reinforced bag, so the trophy quests took about 3 hours in total. Would be longer without the TS infrastructure but still not a huuuuuge task compared to the Beginner Trophy.

As metioned above - not vendor bought components.
Blue Diamonds can be merchant-mined in PoK, but same as previous recipies - BD combines tend to sell back to a merchant at about 90% of component costs, still a money sink.

There is a whole set of compartmented trio jewelry to consider.
Basic scheme: expansion-wide tradeskill component converts into an expansion metal with gnomish heat source and a platinum bar (cost about 107pp,))
Then a vial of distilled mana is summoned by an enchanter (hence - the enchanter access is important). Cost to summon 212 pp. (about x20 per cast)
Enchant the metal (enchanter again x10 version)
Combine a mold (around 40 pp. returned if success, lost in failure), enchanted metal, trio jewelry tool (always returned, sold under 5pp by JC merchant) and a vial of distilled mana. The result Compartmented Metal Trio Slot (earring, ring, pendant, mask, bracelet) sells for about 575 pp to a merchant. That's about 255 pp profit.

Raw Faycite Crystal makes Dwerium.
Dream Dust makes Feymetal Bar
Chronal Resonant Dust makes Temporite bar
Cosgrove Powder makes Cosgrite Bar
Essence of Alaris makes Alaran metal
Planar Energy shard makes Planar Alloy

Pendant trivials range from 302 to 322. Good for JC trophy evolving (with profit to make)

Those ingredients can be farmed in bulk, or accumulated from overseer Research quests (also Harvesting and Crafting).
Sometimes you can merchant-mine and find hundreds of those dumped by bot farmers. Those usually cost under 1pp per item.

Personally I would take them to 50 using normal TS recipes from the vendors in PoK. (unless you plan to become a pro TS'er and shoot for 350 )