Adorning is just... holy crap... what?

Valdimere wrote:

You must be a doctor?
Even though it completely SUCKS that before gu55 i was able to make virtually all of my adornments (80 armorer, 80 jeweler, 65 alchy, 59 tailor) and now I'm HOSED ... this new system is better. /sigh

Leveling the adorning skill is WAY easier than transmuting ever was. So, all those transmuters who reached 400 before the xpac EARNED their shiny, new 400 adorning skill. You think you have patience? Trust ME, those transmuters had a LOT of patience. I had a 'muter @ 150 before the xpac so at least I got somewhat of a head start. AND, its a LOT better just to have ONE dude make all the adornments, instead of switching from crafter to crafter.

SO... even though I got hosed, I like the new system. Grr, I hate it that I have to admit that!

Best thing I've found to do is this:
Take your level-whatever toon that you want to make your primary transmuter/adorner and run them through
1. Timorous Deep
2. Darklight Wood
3. Greater Faydark
Start with the level-1 newbie, just created questgivers and run the entire series for each zone (usually up to about level 22 or so). Every single item you receive as a quest reward can be transmuted (although most are no-trade, which is why I suggested taking your main muter/dorner---if what you're looking for is xp as well as mats. If it's just mats, run EVERY toon you own through these areas and have them mute stuff).
You'll be hitting the higher levels in no time with this method---I did it on my main and it worked like a charm. High enough, at least, to match your current adventuring level and the drops you'll get from that.

Go easier: Roll a newb toon on one of the Isles and lock it at about level 3. Then farm trash mobs. While you're there harvest for rares, because Mastercrafted equipables are transmutable.

Just like Transmuting, you can level it up fast, or cheap, but not both

Well as a pre SF transmuter let me just say first and formost I love this new system, seporating transmuting and adorning is so much better than it was before where you had to get those mats and one out of ten combines would get you a lvl up and you couldn't lvl up by simply transmuting. You think it is a pain in the butt now you should have tried it pre SF! The adorning is not for everyone it takes patience, persistance, time, and plat, Lots of all of those. you will find that rather than trying to grind out your max lvl in one night of frustration you take a different approach. I suggest that you not worry about your lvl but rather whatever low lvl stuff you have that doesn't get sold on broker, sacked to diety, etc.. gets transmuted. then as you start to aquire the materials you begin your adorning trait, also watch the broker too because sometimes the mats can be purchased cheaper that the items to transmute. so take your time slow down and enjoy the journey rather than getting frustrated you can't do it in a few hours.

Toodles,
Avi

Killing mobs in Darklight Wood will never yield as much transmute fodder as a dungeon. Get to level 20 or 25 and do Fallen Gate, Wailing Caves, etc.

It is an achievement to level up, but it is definitely totally optional. While I would like faster progress I also don't want it to be a easy grind where at the max level there are 1001 people trying to sell their products to a saturated audience.
For this reason I think they have gotten adorning just right, well apart from the fact that newer characters don't have the same leg up apparently that pre-SF people had in getting to 100, this way though it is more logical in the way its levelled as otherwise people will always be questioning why they stopped levelling at 100...
After that though it should be something to keep the truly dedicated busy in the game, there is already plenty of more accessible content for tradeskillers to do, so it makes no sense at all to just convert adorning into something at the same level of ease as other tradeskilling to do.
If people want something of that difficulty level to do then they could just roll another character and start up another tradeskill. I love this about EQ2 where there is always something easier, the same as, or harder to do, and its my choice to choose what to do. Whereas other games seem to have everything just as easy...
(and my adorning is 102 ish I'd like to get it higher, but I'm patient and I also want if I do put that sort of effort in for the result to be something special, right now I think it is).

I think a great number of the people that replied to this thread missunderstood my motivation behind creating this thread. I am not complaining about not being able to skill up adorning in one night. I never expected to do that. If it was able to be done in a single evening, I wouldn't want to do it at all. There is no challenge in that.

The thing is that after my experience with adorning, I came to the realization that it will likely take me a year or more to skill up adorning. I just think that their could be a happy medium somewhere between the two extremes that is more in line with the crafting norm in Everquest 2.

I wasn't asking for an easymode fix in any shape or form haha. The sky is not falling people. It's ok. Breath in... Breath out

At any rate, I mainly just wanted to share my experience with the community, and it was intended to be taken light heartedly. I apologize if some people took it as a slap at the system or some attempt to dumb down the process. It was not intended that way.

Avianna@Butcherblock wrote:

And you walked to school uphill both ways in the snow 7 days a week?
The lowest percentage chance for a skill update was 1 in 4 (25%). You could level to 100 by transmuting. Since we were grandfathered in for both adorning and transmuting, this now translates to getting the first 100 points of adorning for free.
I would guess new transmuters no longer would get a dual update in adorning and transmuting just for transmuting from 1 to 100, as we did, but don't know for certain. I have no intention of levelling a third transmuter to 450.

Valdimere wrote:

Thats the thing though, it's intentionally not in line with the crafting norm, because it's not mean to be by design. As of the current changes, everyone can be an adventuer, a craftsman in one of 9 area, a tinker, a transmuter and an adorner. Adorning, transmuting and tinkering have to inherently be harder to level and increase so as to not have every character maxed out in that skill and keep it a rare and special thing.

What is driving me crazy about adorning right now is this: I was 380 "transmuter" before the expansion. Now I am 450 "transmuting" and 380 "adorning".
I had stacks of transmuted items in my bank so I thought I would take a shot at some of the new adornment items. I wasn't even concerned about leveling up. (Tradeskilling is frankly a chore for me, but I have an 80 provo, 84 carpenter, a lower-level woodworker and an alchemist - plus having worked up to 380 transmuting before the expansion.) So on my main character, I'm a carpenter, with a secondary skill of adornments.
What happened to the little tradeskill/counteract buttons (row of six at the bottom of the combine screen) when you're doing adornment combines? Why don't they exist when doing adornment combines?
I cannot MAKE any of the adornments. Not even the trivial grey/green ones. I tried a bunch tonight on a variety of recipe levels. Finally, after a bunch of combines, I managed to make ONE, green-con recipe. But since the recipes burn up all your fragments and powders and infusions ON TOP of burning up your fuel, it becomes a mind-blowingly frustrating experience. (To add insult to injury, I was almost killed by the workbench several times and had absolutely no way to counteract the various events that came up with tradeskilling.) And why do the combines burn up everything except the mana?
I have spent a great deal of time collecting and transmuting items to work on this tradeskill, and now it is just waste after waste after waste, as combine after combine is fail, fail, fail.
It's confusing to see other people keep saying the "new" adornment system is "easy". It seems ridiculous that I'm a 380 level adorner, and I can't even make a grey or green level recipe combine without multiple fails - never mind having any hope of successfully combining a blue or white recipe - and I cannot counteract any tradeskill events, plus I might die from doing a combine.

Meryddian you need to go rebuy the counters from Butcherblock mountains. I really hope you didn't burn through all of your mats without asking for help. I don't know how it is on your server but the crafting channel on Crushbone has very helpful people who would have been able to tell you right away what was wrong. And it is so much easier now to level transmuting and adorning (and the adornments are better in my opinion) that I am once again working on adorning and happily farming/harvesting low level areas and making adornments for all my alts.

Valdimere wrote:

This is arguably the worst possible way to go about levelling transmutation. I spent about a week intensively harvesting in Timorous Deep.
I used all the rares I obtained to craft level 1-5 Expert Spells, and any remaining rares to craft level 1-5 mastercrafted transmutable gear. If you have other crafters, you can have them make items in their specialty areas, but at this level, any crafter can make this stuff.
Then I patiently transmuted all the stuff I had made. Skillups come off this low-level stuff, too.
Valdimere wrote:

Your perceived drop rate is going to make such a strategy tedious at best. If youw ere just levelling a new toon, and passing over everything you got for crushing via the shared bank, it becomes less tedious. However, the harvest, craft, then crush strategy I outlined above is faster and more sanity-sparing.
Valdimere wrote:

***A Better Suggestion*** -- Before you start, take a moment to read the excellent Transmuting -- A Guide over at EQ2 Trader's Corner. Then you would know what can and cannot be transmuted!
Next, read Transmuting & Adorning: The New Model (a thread on the forums).
Valdimere wrote:

Perhaps all mobs should have their number of hitpoints tattooed on their hineys as well so you can see ahead of time whether you can kill it?
Valdimere wrote:

You went about leveling transmuting in the worst possible way. Use my method and you would have a lot more shards and powders to work with. Also, you can level adorning doing low-level combines, so you just keep working the cycle of harvest TD, craft mastercrafted/Experts, crush, then craft adornments.

Sigrdrifa@Lucan DLere wrote:

Well, it's not really fair to call it 'the worst possible way.' Personally the 100-200pp I burned through to raise transmuting was far easier to earn back than a week of harvesting. It doesn't help that I hate harvesting.

@Stormdove - No, I got incredibly annoyed after about a dozen or so combines and gave up. But I did lose a variety of mats at different levels.
It was most annoying to lose the infusions, especially the higher-level ones.

Thanks for the info.

Detor wrote:

I agree. It was far easier for me to earn plat adventuring, and then spend it on materials and transmutables other people were selling. Today's market may be skewed in a different direction, but pre-SF it was an easy choice.

It was never fun, I have had a max transmuter since close to when it was put in game. It was the least fun thing I ever did in EQ2 (wait.. maybe making a jillion gray pre combines so I could craft food & drink with the original craft system was less fun) and I would never do it again, but I have a lot of nutty friends who insist that now that they can do that and tinkering they will level their 2nd or so transmuter & adorner. I say they are nuts, because adornments are tradable, and I am always willing to make them for my friends no charge and even for non friends, I don't charge much. If you know one on your server, I wouldn't bother with it... transmuting does have a benefit of course for no trade loot in groups & raids & getting adornment materials out of old gear.