The Hydra Helm recipes can no longer benefit from material conservation effects.

By similar I meant 'get your peices, go to the NPC have have them craft it for you'. I didn't mean it had to be as bad with getting lucky on the pattern drops.
They could do it almost exactly like they do it now.. but instead of the character 'scribing' the recipe, they take it to the NPC with the components to have it made. Almost same mechanic and it doesn't require special cases, exclusions and protective code.

Six of one. Half a dozen of the other. There's really nothing to it.

So your mean closer to the Relic Gear from the Kingdom of Sky Expansion?

That was before I started playing (I started just before Shadow Odessy came out) so I don't know how that worked.

For what it is worth, the recipe you get from Gen'ra is limited charge. You're looking at 4-5 Gen'ra kills to outfit an entire roster.

Don't you also have to kill Psillon'Ris to actually get everything you need to make the Hydra Scale Helm?

Or 1 person logs in any number of crafters x any number of days that equals up to 125 blue coins and then buys the components from the vendor, plus 20+ minutes of crafting experimenting. Compare that to getting 20-ish people herded together and managed to kill some of the easiest t10 raid mobs for something equivalent, and repeat this until you actually win the drop you want out of those 20 some people (assuming a ring for your class actually drops). Now do this again because you use two rings.

Yeah, a little plat and a few days worth of blue coins is a lot easier than a few weeks raiding. Not as potentially profitable, but when you split it between a raid force the crafting looks like the easier route to get the same item.

Sort of?

The effect/buff on all 3 iterations of the helm is actually needed to be able to kill Psyllon'Ris. Everyone needs to either be wearing a hat, or be buffed by someone with a hat. People receiving the buff suffer a stat penalty, so there is an incentive for everyone to get it.


Step 1: HM Gen'ra achievement component + Furnace of Ages achievement component + Abyssal Aqueduct achievement component + Antechamber of the Automaton achievement component. Crafted by an armorer using the 7-charge recipe dropped in Gen'ra's chest (one recipe per kill).
This gives you the basic ~211 stat hat (e.g. \aITEM -448571275 -1314625564:Tavalan Hood of Psionic Shielding\/a )

Step 2: Add the achievement reward from killing HM Overlord Talan to the crafted helm.
This upgrades the helm to the ~220 stat hat (e.g. \aITEM 1256854975 485369983:Hydra-Scale Hood of Psionic Shielding\/a )

Step 3: Add one "\aITEM 705204987 -1048976272:A Pair of Ancient Gold Flecked Rubies\/a" to the upgraded helm from Talan to be rewarded with the final version. The pair of rubies drop in the Psyllon'Ris chest, and you get a guaranteed drop per kill, with a low chance at a 2nd.
Final item is the ~275 stat one that you see go out as a server-wide message (e.g. \aITEM 1856343342 1032797322 0 0 0:Indestructible Hydra-Scale Helm of Rending\/a )

If raid loot is imbalanced, that's another subject, and definitely worth discussing. I'm saying the SAME heroic mob in the SAME heroic zone, and you get equivalently-statted items for 1 kill vs. 5 kills plus a bunch of tradeskilling work. The fact that something else in the game is dumb doesn't mean this is brilliant. (And at least raiders have the choice of continuing for a 2nd ring. What's the crafter making for his other slot? Colossal-reactant? Non-tempered azure?)

If you want to talk about how easy it is for the person with 9 max crafters and only 1 adventurer... well, ok, but I've never met him. (I've got 9x95 crafters, but even more 95 adventurers.) For people like me, 125 days x 3 items = 375 days. He'll be all geared up on his own 10 days after the next paid-for xpac, if he's a hermit who never takes a vacation... yay? Why, precisely, is he gearing for heroic zones for a whole year if he's never running heroic zones?

And if your example 375 days divided between 9 crafters is 42 days to get enough components to make all 3 items. That is if you don't actually do heroic content or even spend a few plat to pick up the cheapest of the required ingredients. Its even possible for your crafters to trade 25 days worth of apprentice quests for a rare component and broker that for a decent chuck of change.

And exactly what heroic content are you talking about that gives an equivalent ring to the refined and experimented tempered ring? I'm not aware of any such beast. The equivalent rings I know about come from AoA and Harrows. Last I checked, that is still considered raid content. And if you do know about some equivalent rings from heroic content, then they are on par with low end raid content.

I never said "equivalent ring". I said "equivalently statted items". Is there something special about rings and forearms that means they should take five-to-six times the effort to get than wrists and pants? Or is it just that tradeskillers are getting the short end of the stick?

If you want to complain about itemization, go complain in the itemization forum. It is wacky, but it is consistent with overall itemization in the game. As for effort... crafting in and of itself doesn't directly receive drops of any kind. We've never had a mechanic before to acquire the components on our own. Any method of doing so is a big step in what I can only see as a positive direction.

And as far as adventurers go, the body parts aren't the main reward. Greater spirits, the chance of a fabled drop and even the plat split probably come ahead of the body parts for reasons to go run the CS instances. Even when a body part does drop it isn't like it replaces the regular drops. It is an additional reward. Saying you need to run heroic instances 5 and 6 items to collect body parts is like saying your playing slot machines only to collect frequent player reward stamps. Like hitting a jackpot isn't the main reason your playing slots. Trying to ignore the main reason that content gets done in favor of something that was added on top of rewards from other similar content more or less as a bonus.

And Tradeskillers don't need to make two rings. We sell this stuff to adventurers. Crafters in an of themselves don't need the rings, and all these recipes do is open up one more avenue for adventurers to fill one of those slots. Rings are nice since itemization in the range of the tempered rings is a bit weak. Charms and wrists would of been nice too, but itemization on those are actually a little bit stronger.

I'd rather complain about tradeskill itemization here. (By this logic, this forum shouldn't exist, since it's all covered by itemization, look&feel, and homeshow... the two or three actual mechanics could be discussed in general.) And this conversation started with "the new TS prestige skills are being made irrelevant by silly itemization"... either making the skills unsuable on powerful gear, or nerfing normal gear so the "bonus" skills are "required" to bring it up to par with drops.

...that's unfortunately true. And why they're completely redoing itemization (for the 5th or 6th time, now?) in the next xpac.

When non-azure reactant gear was the crafting "endgame", we could get our reactants without adventuring. In fact, it was probably easier to get the Colossal ones that way, since almost all of the level 90 zones dropped level 80 reactants. Not really relevant to my point, though.

All of which, while true, is irrelevant to my point.

Entirely missing my point. My complaint, that the tradeskilled items are parallel to the ordinary drops despite requiring far more effort, is like complaining that the penny slots and the quarter slots have exactly the same payouts. Which, I think, would be a valid complaint... (since the alternative, "then don't play quarter slots == then don't tradeskill", isn't a good solution.)

Again, irrelevant to my point.

...now I'm completely lost. I didn't say we needed to make two rings; you brought up the two rings thing in how much harder raiders have it! (I just said in response to that, that while it might be hard to get 2 rings by raiding, at least you have the opportunity. TSers don't. But I don't care that they don't; I don't want to tradeskill fabled-level stuff for every slot.) I said, for the 43rd time, that if the gear we make is tougher to acquire than ordinary drops, our gear should be better. That's all. (And our gear is tougher to acquire, based on broker prices, /auction prices, and the simple math that "5 drops" is more effort than "1 drop".)

At current broker prices, not much of it. Visionary-tempered-azure is too hard to make to compete with other stuff. Based on broker prices, I'm better off just listing the body parts to sell to other crafter-adventurers. Maybe your server's economy is different? (I tried selling the stuff at not-much-over-parts for a few weeks... gave up and gave the pieces to my alts. That included a mage ring, which is arguably the best of the 12 visionary-tempered-azure items.)

I'm not even sure what this means. Of course the crafted gear is for adventuring. Most of us are both crafters and adventurers, though...

The issue with Experimetned/Refined gear is that the Materials commonly sell for more than the Visionary Item itself.

Back in Skyshrine people thought I was crazy for selling the Plate-Tank Visionary Shoulders for 2.5K except when you look at it the cost of all the materials to make said item was 2K in itself roughly.

So yes, commonly it's more cost-effective as a TS/Adventuring player to just sell the components rather than make the item because people are "overpricing" the components for sub-par gear because of rarity. I could probably spend as much money making a Visionary Tempered Azure Ring or I could have bid on a piece of Raid Gear for probably less, especially EM-Rings which sell for 300-500p on SLR.

From my standpoint as a Tradecrafter and a Raider I see no point in making the Tempered Azure items because of a few things.
- My plat for alts can be better spent on gear within my guild in buying it from my own raid.
- My time could be better spent farming materials to sell for more profit.
- I can then use that profit again... to buy EM-Raid gear if I cannot be bothered to run it myself.

Basically the Tempered Azure items are Heroic Gear meaning that if you Raid. There is no reason to make it and sadly right now there seem to be two playstyles in EQ2 and those are Raiders and Soloers. I am sure Heroic Players still exist but by no means as commonly as they used to. It's part of why threads seem to be "raider vs soloer" arguments. Because those are the represented playstyles.

Anyway, I already gave my piece about where the rings fit in Itemization currently and they fit just fine. There are other items that are outliers.
Stewards T2 and Solo Fabled being the major outliers in power compared to rarity/playstyle. However, those items aren't "harming" the player base. They just kinda make it moot to actually do anything outside of the quicky zones. That's why I almost wish they instated a 6 or 12 Hour Lockout on Zones. You can run Dreadcutter in the morning and evening but if you want to run more zones you have to do other zones. There are enough of them that when you finish all of them the 1st one is unlocked again.

I just realized i talked about 5 threads worth of different topics above. Itemization discussions tend to get me thinking about the whole game again >.>

This shouldn't be news to anyone but the person that harvests the ingredients for crafting both set the prices/value and make the majority of the profit from crafted items. That is true for mastercrafted items, that is true for items that require drops. It has been true from launch and is still true today. The only point that breaks down is when you get to common harvests which generally drop off to having no real value due to a lack of scarcity. (incidentally, that is why I've been arguing for lots of drops to make an item instead of the current collect 6 parts).

If the tempered items were so horrible that they weren't being made then the body parts would drop in price rapidly. Guess what? The prices aren't plummeting due to a lack of interest.

Also when does a non-crafter get interested in something like the tempered rings? The answer with similar dropped components is after they get a few of them. Once you have a few, you don't go and buy the finished product. You ask around and try to get it crafted. Then you find out that you need 3 of these, 2 of those and 1 of that. Honestly, the same exact formula that has been used for crafted recipes that require body parts for a good long while now.

So the people that get the rings made aren't paying full price for the components. They generally have a few already. People that just see the rings for sale at the price of all the components think its over prices. Generally speaking they are, but when you consider that people generally only have to buy a few components to make a full set the prices seem more reasonable. People don't pay 600p for these rings, more like 150p for one part, and 30p for another and then a 50p tip.

Except a lot of the Reactant Gear is still very very high level compared to Easy Mode raid gear.
Rings = Best before HM CoE. (Better than CoE EM / PoW)
Forearms = Best before Sirens Grotto (Better than PoW etc.)
Charms = Better than CoE EM + PoW.

People just need to learn to:
a) Refine
b) Experiment properly (Not base stats)
c) Realise the effect it has on adorns equipped on gear.

Anybody got a screenshot of this hat? Is it even worth it? I guess it would be since I think someone said it is the best hat ingame? Stats wise? Or what? Defense? Style?

It WAS the best helm in game, when you were level 95. It's a closed helm, meaning you can't see the toon's face, and it looks like a dragon's head done in patinaed bronze or some such. It's a cool appearance now, is all.