I started EQ. I got my alchemist to over 240 and find that I can buy most potions cheaper from an alchemy NPC than I can make it!! Even worse, some potions require looted items that aren't a problem for alchemy merchants. I don't see how I can make money with a trade. Am I missing something? If this is true, why hasn't SOE/Daybreak changed this years ago? The sad part is that this is so easy to fix. Daybreak simply can drop the prices of alchemy ingredients, and other ingredients for other trades, to make the mastercrafted products more desirable and profitable.
Tradeskills since RoS have basically never been better outside of the 1 off Shawl increases for quite awhile now
They dont want materials cheap enough that you can make a profit selling to vendor. If you are at the level that you can buy from vendor for cheaper then do that. Just make recipes to skillup because eventually there will be potions you can make that are not available on the vendor.
Thinking of other values to tradeskilling beyond platinum: Artisan's Prize MAGIC ITEM LORE ITEM NO TRADE AUGMENTATION Augmentation type: 7 8 Slot: EAR AC: 300 STR: +75+150 DEX: +75+150 STA: +75+150 CHA: +75+150 WIS: +75+150 INT: +75+150 AGI: +75+150 HP: +3000 MANA: +3000 ENDUR: +3000 SV FIRE: +40 SV DISEASE: +40 SV COLD: +40 SV MAGIC: +40 SV POISON: +40 SV CORRUPTION: +40 Attack: +127 HP Regen +15 Mana Regeneration: +15 Clairvoyance: +200 Spell Damage: +200 Heal Amount: +200 Endurance Regeneration +25 Required level of 105. Effect: Artisan's Finesse (Worn, Casting Time: Instant) WT: 1.8 Size: TINY Class: ALL Race: ALL Not easy and awfully time consuming to max, but I think it is worth it.
Drinking a healing pot you made with your own hands is a reward all its own. Also way less npc spit in it.
They are definitely not worthless, but at this stage of the game there's not a lot of profitable items until you get to the 300+ level stuff. Part of the problem is that everyone and their bots has a maxed crafter, so the market is saturated. I don't know anyone in my guild that doesn't have at least one 300 crafter. For Alchemy, illusion potions, IVU potions, and gate potions are what I made to sell when leveling up.
I just wish they would have said you don't get those stats when you do the quests and get the prize! I have had mine a long time but to max it and get what you thought you would be getting by doing all the tasks and quests (I had to redo all of the planes) I have not begun to get those kind of stats! I read you have to do every combine possible on the game once each to max it, is that true? No where did I see listed the REAL numbers when you receive the prize!
Get all the TS's to 300, scribe all learnable books and its like 147ish ac, 1470 h/m/e and 73 to heroics
Then you didn't look very hard. I found in at least 3 different places that it starts at 40% of max, and then goes up 1% for every 7 skillups post-300. Just getting the Mastery AAs got me almost 60 skillups (i.e. I already knew enough recipes to get that far), which is 8 1% jumps. So, you get almost 50% of the max right off the bat. None of this is really a secret. At 50% of max, that's 1500 HME and 75 on each heroic stat. So, where does that rank for your augs? Yeah, already the best one you have, even at 50%. ZAM: http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=125811 first (bottom) comment mentions you get it at 1200 HME. ZAM: http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=8120 Right in the description, it says it starts at 800 HME (original values, they later changed it to 1200), and says what's required to get to the full 3000.
Tradeskills are the only thing that differentiate the very top geared and the next tier of equipment levels. The Artisans\Cresta deal makes TSing hugely important. For me, I'd rather take a bath in a barrel of hydrochloric acid than tradeskill, but each to their own.
