Can anyone point me in the direction of a blacksmithing guide? Looking to craft Banded for myself and Plate for my buddy.
0-21 Trainer 21 - 41 Metal Scalers 41 - 68 Large Lanters 68 - 77 Dairy Spoons 77 - 88 Lockpicks 88 - 122 Embroidering Needles 122 - 132 Bile Spines 132 - 162 Your cultural tailoring kit 162 - 188 Fine Plate 188 - 200+ Your races cultural OR Mistletoe Sickles Somewhere in the 140's - 150's you can start making plate armor pretty reliably.
If you have the means, I went from lanterns to cultural tailoring kits to limit having to keep switching materials, I failed a lot but you can still skill up on failures. Another thing to consider is the Mistletoe sickle component, Blessed Sickle is around 180, so once around 150 you can skill up on that and any blessed you make you can try to make the final Mistletoe with. The other blessed components require more expensive gems, so that's even more expensive. Also the blessed combines require components made via brewing and pottery too, so it's an option if you're trying to improve across multiple trade skills.
Cultural sewing kits are not available for every race, so you'll be doing more plate as a result if you are one of those races. The Leather Padding will be your bottleneck. Cultural smithing is not available for every race, tempers can be problematic, and the sickle route can be expensive. Acrylia or Shadowscream Armor in Luclin can help beyond Fine Plate, if you want to go a cheaper route than Sickles, and can wait until then to skill up your smithing.
Basically get to 188 with Fine plate and STOP unless you a race with cult blacksmithing and just wait for Luclin when you can do shadowscream cause unless you one rich @$$ mofo you don't want to burn through plat doing mistletoe sickles
You just brought back nightmares for me. Managing that stupid war for the owlbear and sonic wolf drops and those stupid shadows in Twlight, hours and hours camping those stupid shadows for those swirling shadows. I may not sleep for a week now.
fine steel vendors back at a good price i wanna say u lose 5-10p tops PER combine with sucess if the recipe is DB or LB you'll lose next to nothing if your doing mass combines and a 80-90% success rate think i took a 2-3k plat loss from 150-188 if money is not an issue or your a race thats has no cultural like i am [HEF] can 165-222 with: http://www.eqtraders.com/items/show_item.php?item=9525&menustr=035000000000 Enchanted Velium Bits but it's lore and no drop so its pure plat loss but it's an additional option if u get tired of other combines or run out of materials since velium is plentiful and rest is vendor mats
If your Cultural tailoring kit is not available (I'm looking at you, Wood Elfs) check the other cultural items. For example, the Feir`Dal Fletching kit is in game and is just over 6p per combine, though it does have 3 molds. 1 Water Flask 1s? 1 Container Lid mold 1g 1 Container Base Mold 1g 1 Hinge Mold 1s 1 Small Brick of Mithril 6p1g Trivial 163 All materials can be bought in Kelethin
While we are on topic, is there any Iksar cultural armor available to get past 188 please? I finished making fine plate and the next step (velium bits) is too expensive :S
Yes, but good luck farming Iksar blood for the tempers. AFAIK they only drop from Iksar necromancers in Seb and they are fairly uncommon from the few you'll find in there. You're better off doing sickles or making an alt for your smithing needs. If you wait until Luclin, you'll have the smithing options to get past 188 however. On EQMac I skipped the cultural option as a Beastlord and went to shadowscream to make planar metal sheets for all my plate boxes (war clr and brd).