I decided to tip my toes in to crafting this past weekend. I managed to do fletching up to 200 pretty easily in Plane of Knowledge. Then I tried blacksmithing because there are some things I need to make to go along with my fletching. Getting to level 100 was relatively painless in the Plane of Knowledge. Then I headed out to farm materials (iridium ore and fulginate ore) to try to get up to 150. That's where it got tedious. I spent all day Sunday farming mobs to get ores, and ended up with about 20 Iridium and 40 Fulginate. There were none for sale on the bazaar by the way, but I would prefer farming it anyway. Those supplies got me to about 130 blacksmithing. So... off to farm I went again before calling it a night and going to bed. Someone mentioned that I should be able to get to 200 blacksmithing from vendor bought materials alone in Plane of Knowledge, but I failed to find out exactly what recipe they were referring to. I've read web site after web site and tried combing through the recipes to figure it out, but alas I am still not finding it. Does anybody know what black smithing recipes fit the following criteria: only vendor bought materials can get me from 130 to 200 Thanks
I was going to recommend the quick trivial list on eqtraders, but I'm getting an error message trying to access their website (bandwidth exceeded). Let me check my ui in game. You could do High Quality Hinge to 162; looking through the ui is a bit cumbersome since search results are so limited (too many results). Will see if I can find some higher ones, though. If/when eqtraders comes back up though, the quick trivial list is handy. They also have some tradeskilling guides on the forum side.
Most of the newer smithing guides use the cultural ores (your iridiums, fulginates, etc.) because at one time they were plentiful in bazaar because they only had usage for cultural armors and weapons. But since the Shawl 2.0, 3.0, and most importantly, Artisan's Prize, anything that can be used to skill up any of the tradeskills easily is priced through the roof. That said, smithing has some easy steps to get to 162. Since you are already at 130, I can ignore a number...but they can be found in: https://everquest.fanra.info/wiki/Smithing at the bottom. You want to make cultural sewing kits. 3 simple ingredients (needle mold, thimble mold, water flask) and 1 store bought ore. The ore determines what kit you will make. I'd make a couple for whatever race you are, but mainly I'd stick to the Antonican Sewing Kit. The ore is a small brick of high quality ore. Now, here's the trick...high quality ore was at one time only stocked a certain amount (ie finite) on server restart. But in Crescent Reach, there is a smithing vendor Smith Yahya who has an unlimited supply. I was shocked when I found this, but I contacted Ngreth and it is legit so feel free. There are forges there and plenty of vendors so easy to make your run at 162 there. After 162 (or 163...I think a few of the sewing kits triv at 163), for purely storebought, you look at the energeiac recipes (which are from The Buried Sea). But honestly, those get really expensive and you need JC or Tinkering skill to make the subcombines. After 162, I would bite the bullet and start farming the ores like you did before. Find a good zone with lots of humanoid mobs and go to town. Good luck.
Thanks! That's exactly what I was looking for. I will get up to 162, and go back to farming. I think that range is Rhenium which I found drops in Halls of Honor. It was pretty slow farming, so if anybody knows a better place to get Rhenium ore, please let me know. Thanks again!
Just to clarify, I kill the mobs fast in Halls of Honor as an 86 ranger. It's the respawn timer that makes the farming of Rhenium slow there.
Some ores are a bit easier to come across than others, and you might have a better chance using a higher-skilled item than you need. A 220-trivial (pulled that number out of thin air) might have a farmed component that is significantly easier than a 160. You're going to burn through more of them, but you might end up ahead in the long run. When EQTraders is up and running again, check out the trivial lists. More often than not, when you're grinding away you're doing the "same" combines with slightly different bought or farmed items. Pattern + Vendor1 + Farmed Ore 1. Pattern + Vendor1 + Farmed Ore 2. + FO3, + FO4, etc. If you're doing a bracer combine, look for a bracer with a higher trivial. Also, don't forget to get your trophy before you progress to high! The quests for the trophies get harder the higher your skill becomes. You can get the first trophy at skill 50 (51?), and they get harder at 50-skill intervals.
I have 9 toons maxed (300 that is) in all the base trade skills and I still think the best place to farm anything is in the bazaar. Yes prices are steeper than they have ever been but depending on how much you can farm items to sell for plat vs how much ore you are farming it might make more sense to go a different route. For example if you can farm 10k/hr and ores cost 250pp each in the bazaar you are basically trading that 10k for 40 ore an hour. Now if you can farm more than 40 ore an hour it makes more sense to farm the ore but if you can farm more plat an hour and buy the ore it makes more sense to do this. In reality you should stumble across some ores in the process of farming which will also increase your ore per hour. There are certain items in game that even a mid level toon can make a killing on. Granted a lot of these are trade skill items that you will need in the future if you ever want to go beyond 300 but if your short term goal is 300 it might be a worthy tradeoff. If you do a google search: Everyquest the ultimate tradeskill guide it is done nicely. A little outdated and there are a couple of skillup pathways I would do differently but for starting out it is pretty solid. It is actually something someone posted on eqtraders but its much easier to find via a search engine.
I've done all TS to 300 recently and Aurastrider is right. Cash is king. If you have a second account leave a buyer up 24/7, hit the higher ores, they're less popular and there's more of them.
heh - if you have access to a tunarean druid, you can do Mistletoe Cutting Sickles. Lots of subcombines, but the three items that go into the 250 trivial end combine all trivial ~180ish, but pretty much all store bought except for the imbuing of emeralds.
Also, don't be afraid of using a combine with a much higher trivial than where your skill is now. Get the salvage AA. Anything you salvage on a failure becomes an additional combine. If you farm ores, look up the recipes for barbs (for each ore). They are easy, low cost combines once you have the ore.
Look into farming/buying Tantalum Ore or Vanadium Ore as it drops from a lot of mobs frequently. I used to have so much of those 2 ores that I was able to get 3 toons to 300 with it and give some to guildies.
Leveling my smith to 300, I made barbs for a while, then switched to bracer templates. I bought vanadium, tantalum, anything in the ranges I was in from the bazaar. Watch the prices and buy when someone has a good price. You can set up a buyer, too. The only problem is (even on my backwater server) there can be a lot of buyers playing markup games. You'll have to stay competitively priced to buy. Advertise you're looking for tradeskills, maybe you can get some sellers looking for you.
