Just curious, roughly speaking, how much plat would it cost to level up Blacksmithing to 330+? I would like to minimize hours of farming and would be open to buy components off the Bazaar.
If you're talking on TLP servers (either Coirnav or Agnarr) it's going to be expensive and/or time consuming farming. Coirnav (currently in Kunark) it'll be costly because the only thing to get you above 220ish is Mistletoe Cutting Sickles. Once Luclin drops you can get to 260s cheap, but it's going to be a lot of farming, as most of the components are no-drop. You can get to 220 (or 212, I forget) in Velious making Enchanted Velium Rings, but it's god awful expensive.
Helps to understand the expansion you have access to. I wouldn’t recommend BS for most races until you are in Luclin; reason being you want the +15% mod hammer or gloves. With the hammer / gloves you only need 257 raw skill to maximize success rates on 335 skill combines. Check out eq traders corner calculator if you don’t believe me. Your best route once obtaining gloves will be the velium rings (which sell for nothing really) to that 220 Mark and then sickles for the last 30 to 250. Then it’s just random skill ups making those humming orb thingies from Luclin. Shadowscream armor I think? That’s your most expensive and fastest route. Making shadowscream is your cheapest by far but most time consuming with the required farming.
Once in PoP - your best option will be the elemental armor from Fire. People grind there so much you’ll have solid access to the necessary mats for getting to 300. But as I said earlier - you’re throwing away plat from 257 raw skill on if you have the 15% TS mod because 257 raw skill or 300 raw skill both result in the maximum 95% success rates on all the PoP element armor options.
For smithing, the run to about 162 is reasonably quick / cheap. Guildmaster to 20. Large Lanterns to 68. Banded Armor to 95. Make sure to pick up your trophy (or at least the quest) before you hit 100. Ornate armor to 122. Cultural sewing kit to 162. From here, the next jump is to 220ish. Some people make barbs, some people make Enchanted Velium Bits, and some people start on global ore template recipes. It kinda depends on what you want to farm and what's available in the baz. This run should take about 500 to 600 attempts. If you just straight bazaar burn it, it's probably 300ish per attempt (making barbs), call it 150k. I would recommend farming the Velium or maybe buying leather padding to make fine plate to 185 and avoid this cost, but it's up to you. The next jump is to 250 (Mistletoe Cuting Sickles). Call these 350 per attempt. The run from 220 to 250 is probably 350ish attempts. Rough estimate..125k. This can be done with global mats as well. Depends on what you want to farm. The final run from 250 to 300 is global mats. This will take you about 1400 attempts. Current market is about 300 per which works out to 420k. So, the short answer to your question is....about 700k if you avoid all farming, provided the baz keeps up.
Oh, I didn't realize this was for the prison server. I assume you just make whatever the warden assigns you during shop hours. I think I ran mine up to about 250ish in era with the methods outlined above (If you're willing to farm, can substitute shadowscream for the sickles). Past that, you can make some PoP armor, but I never saw any real market for it that would justify the cost / effort. Someone with more experience making it would have to run you through the math.
[quote="Brady, post: 3693647, member: 424379"Banded Armor to 95. Make sure to pick up your trophy (or at least the quest) before you hit 100.[/quote] This is good advice in general, but the trophies do not come out until PoR, and the OP is on Agnarr. With tradeskills, there is fast, and there is cheap. There typically isn't fast and cheap, especially for smithing (tailoring, pottery. . .) Shadowscream is relatively cheap but takes a mind numbing amount of farming and manipulating the Hollowshade war. If you are a wood elf or karana worshiper, there are better paths thru the mid-levels available.
