How to raise your transmuting (harvest) skill for less than a gold (also in newbie section)

Hello everyone, this is a cheap and easy way to get your transmuting skill up without breaking the bank. For new people, transmuting skill is the skill of breaking down items into their raw component parts, usually ending up with one (or two, in some rare instances) of four different items. Transmuting has been recently changed, so that it's treated as a harvesting type of skill, so it's able to skill up based upon your crafter or adventure level, just like harvesting regular nodes (trees, roots, rocks, etc.).

Even someone completely new to the game can easily, and cheaply, get their transmuting skill up without requiring anything from another player. Go out and start harvesting any tier 1 zone, every class/race has a starter zone that includes harvestable nodes for tier 1, and has low aggro, so even a level 1 toon can go out and get a ton of harvestables. If you are new, you can wait 1 day to be able to /claim your first 12 slot bag, which will help you out with regards to gathering those harvests. If you can afford it, I would suggest actually purchasing a tier 9 40 slot bag or two, it's going to make things much easier. You can, however, manage with even the 12 slot bag, it's just harder. The whole purpose to going out and harvesting, for the purpose of leveling your transmuting skill, is to be able to hold as many rares as you can, and every harvest node has the potential to give you at least one rare each. I've actually had 2 rares off one tier 1 node, so it's not impossible.

Anyway, when you have your bag(s), then go head out and harvest all the tier 1 nodes you can. If you are low on bag space, I wouldn't recommend the bushes, they give you a large variety of harvests to take up space, and are the least likely to give you any rares. If you want to harvest them, you can just drop the non-rares into empty space and select destroy, if you need the room. Go ahead and harvest as much as you can, and when you run out of room, get rid of your non-rares however you want, keeping all the rares. You can also sell the non-rares, there are alot of people that don't want to harvest, so you can make a little bit of money just selling that.

Ok, so now on to how to get your transmuting skillups. After gathering as many rares as you can (tier 1 should drop fairly often, much easier than any other tier, honestly), then go to your local crafting instance, or your guild crafting hall, if you have one. You want to buy the tier 1 advanced books, which should sell for copper or silver, very cheap. Don't worry about getting the common books, you can get them for free by doing the crafting quests if you want. The whole purpose is to make it easy for you to find the rare recipes without having to wade through the regular recipes. You will need to have access to common raws, btw, so hopefully you had room to carry both the rare and non-rare raws. Or you have access to a guild raw depot, so can just drop your non-rares in and use them freely, without taking up your bag room.

Once you are setup and ready to craft, the only things you don't want to make are furniture and food/drink. Weapons, armour, spells, combat arts, these are what you want to be making with your rares. You want to start with the level 1 recipes, making as many or as few as you want. As you go along, you will start leveling your new crafter to level 9, unless you are an advanced crafter already. You can still make all the tier 1 recipes, even if they are grey, because you still get the end result, which is your whole goal in this process.

Let me give you a little more information about transmuting skillups. Skillups are based upon your crafter or adventurer level, like I mentioned earlier. I believe that the recent change has not changed how you can transmute, so a level 1 toon should be able to transmute any treasured or higher spell, combat art, weapon, and armour, as long as it's level 1-5. The skillups are based on multiples of 5, just like the other harvesting and other skill types. As you transmute items, you will see skillups up to your max, and for each 5 skillups, you will be able to transmute another level of item. Skillup to 5, you should be able to transmute level 6 items. Skillup to 10, you should be able to transmute level 7 items. Makes sense? I hope so.

Once you have items to transmute, which you should have some, if you've been crafting with the advanced tier 1 books, you should be able to find your transmute icon, which looks like a blue sword, or blue flame, in your knowledge book. You have to actively click on it, then mouse over your newly made items, and should see at least a few items turn the mouse blue. That means you can transmute the item, so click and agree to transmute the item. If you are starting out, you will only be able to transmute items up to level 5, so keep that in mind when making your first items. As you skillup, you will be able to start transmuting higher level items, but it will be limitted to your highest level, so also keep that in mind.

You'll also be able to pass these items on to any alts you have, if you have anyone that you want to improve their transmuting skills. So once you are either not getting skillups, or you want to work on another toon, just put the items in your shared bank, and enjoy!!!

The only cost you should have? The cost of the advanced books, your 40 slot bag(s) (if you chose to buy some), and the fuel. This should easily allow you to get through at least the start of your transmuting with a really low cost. Another benefit to this, unless the process has changed, you may be able to transmute grey items and still get skillups all the way to tier 9, but unsure about whether this is the case. So you may still be able to keep churning out the tier 1 rare combines forever, but I'm sure it takes alot more to get skillups if it's possible. You will be able to take advantage of the process however, to get rid of all those no-trade items and make some really nice adornments out of them, instead of just some small cash.

Adornments are another subject, but here's just a brief idea of the benefit of this whole transmute process. Remember I told you there were raws that result from your transmuting (or muting, as it's otherwise known)? The raws that result are used for making items with a secondary crafting skill, called adorning, which allow you to make your gear more powerful, to your benefit. You can add additional health or power, or increase your ability, or improve your casting or fighting, all by adorning your gear with beneficial adornments.

Anyway, if anyone has anything to add, or questions, then let me know. This is my first guide, so I hope it's helpful to both new players, as well as long time players. Just as an aside, I also posted this in the newbie section, because I think this is not just for tradeskillers, but for everyone. I posted this here, however, for those who might not have thought of this and wanted to benefit from the transmuting skills (transmuting all your mastercrafted/quested gear to make those nice adornments). If anyone can also provide a link to the new adornments, I would so love to see that, I haven't found all the tiers posted yet, and want to add that to the post if possible.

I remember transmuting master craft long ago, it's a good idea. I wonder if t1 item can raise your transmuting skill above 100. Is there a cap ? like item level divided by 5 at which your ability stop raising ? I would expect so, since as example t1 node cannot raise your gathering skills above 100 or 90.

Transmuting T1 mastercrafted/experts definitely raises your transmuting above 100. I recently raised transmuting from around 120ish to 171 just using up a bunch of T1 rares I had sitting around (ok, I had a lot...). The skillup rate wasn't bad, at least one every couple of transmutes, and sometimes I'd get a few in a row.

Can you transmute spells lower than Adept I?

Maroger wrote:

No. You can transmute Adeps, Experts, or Masters, but not Apprentice spells.

Thanks for the advice, i have ton of t1 rares in bank that i will use. So indeed transmuting works like tinkering even a grey action can lead to skill up.