[TLE] Leveling Crafting on a TLE Server

Discussion in 'General TLE Discussion' started by Sigrdrifa, Jul 7, 2017.

  1. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    This started as a response in another thread, but since this issue keeps coming up, I thought I'd make a special post to help folks.

    To start with, go to your home city and speak to a Crafting Trainer at crafting level 1. That gets you bumped up to level 2. Then speak to a Tradeskill Tutorial NPC to start the Tradeskill Tutorial line, which ultimately gets you your Artisan's Tunic, which gives a small boost to your crafting skills.

    [IMG]

    As soon as possible, do the Tutorial: Learning To Harvest. This nets you a 12-slot harvesting bag and a big harvest storage box for your bank. When you harvest, clearcut. By this I mean harvest EVERYTHING, including bushes, logs, rocks, roots, etc. As an "Artisan" at levels 1-9, you can craft at every single crafting station. You don't just focus on tubers (I'm assuming you want to grow up to be a Tailor). No: instead, craft Journeyman spells out of the loams until you run out of loams, craft some piece of tin/iron armor/weapons until you run out of the common metals, craft low-level jewelry until you run out of the common soft metal and gems, cook yourself stacks of one food and one drink, and so on.

    On regular servers, at about level 5 you should start the Shipwrecked Timeline (Altar of Malice) and A Gathering Obsession Timeline (Fallen Dynasty). The regular servers also have a crafting timeline from level 20 up (Echoes of Faydwer) that results in several nice mounts plus tradeskill XP for the quests themselves. The TLE servers won't get these until the associated expansions become available.

    You absolutely need good drink equipped while crafting. Otherwise you run out of energy. Read the recipes, or check Niami's helpful guide to food/drinks, You Are What You Eat. I try to craft up or purchase whatever drink (a) lasts the longest and (b) when possible gives good stats (same for food).

    You will find that a LOT of low-level common harvests are being sold on the broker for 1 copper... especially food materials That means that even if you don't want to harvest, you can pretty reasonably get crafting materials. Roots and hard metals are typically expensive at every tier, food common materials, usually dirt cheap.

    Once you hit level 10, you are forced to choose a crafting archetype (Scholar, Craftsman, Outfitter). You still are not limited to just one crafting station yet! Scholars will have recipes for the scribing desk, work bench, and chemistry table. Craftsmen have recipes for the woodworking table, stove & keg, loom , and forge. Outfitters have recipes for the forge and loom. Use all the crafting stations available to you to craft up common materials to level. Pick some one thing at each and craft until you run out of materials for it, then move to the next.

    At level 15, you will be able to get normal crafting writs, and those level you FAST. Crafting writs don't just pay you a little cash, they give you tradeskill XP *in addition* to what you get doing combines.

    Pretty soon after you hit level 19, talk to the crafting trainer to choose your final profession, and they'll jump you to level 20. Once you are in your final profession, rush writs become available, and so that's what you want to grind to level crafting the fastest.

    Also at level 20, you can start the Journeyman Service quest, which you should absolutely do before starting to harvest in T3. T3 harvesting is easiest in Thundering Steppes because you can see both harvesting nodes and potential monsters easily (FP and DLW toons, go to Nek Forest docks and thence to Thundering Steppes). Near the docks, pick up harvesting quests from Duggin Brandywine: each of his quests gives tradeskill XP, plus you're going to be clearcutting ANYWAY, so you might as well get credit for it! On a regular server, you'd want to start with Quo Augren's harvesting quests even earlier, but this isn't available on TLE.
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  2. Sambril Well-Known Member

    You can harvest and craft on Outpost of the Overload or Queen's Colony, but there is no tradeskill line there. You might consider leveling up your crafting anyway just to make some gear, spell upgrades, etc. that will help doing adventure quests on the Isle.

    The tradeskill quests mentioned here are available in the new player areas of all the main cities.

    I'd advocate doing the harvest tutorial first, because when this is complete it opens a tradeskill quest If I Had A Hammer to make a charm with +3 to all green stats and a 17% speed boost [Lucky Wolf Charm] - make 2, it's an easy way to fill your charm slots at low level. After you complete the first part you will be directed to a craft center in a city to start the tradeskill tutorial.

    In any case you will need materials to complete the tradeskill tutorial so you will be harvesting anyway.
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  3. jsbake2 New Member

    Great post, thanks for the info!
  4. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    With all due respect, if I keep a toon on the tutorial island (and after doing so once, I finally remembered how little I did so in the past ;->), I'll just harvest a lot of materials from nodes and such there and that's it. I made the mistake of trying to do crafting while still there, and you get very little at all in the way of coin coming in, and the recipe books cost. I'd hold off on doing anything craft-wise until getting to either New Halas or wherever the Evils go these days after the Island of the Overlord (don't have Evils in there yet, me), since the books are now free quest rewards. The very cool thing is, nowadays you can ask your first greeter on the Island how to leave (perhaps after loading up your bags with materials! :D), do your crafting stuff in New Halas (or wherever), get to crafter level 10 there, then come back to do your quests on the Island at like adventurer level 2 or 3, but with lovely armor, weapons, bags, etc. waiting for you when you hit the right level to use them. :)

    Uwk
    who really, really should've done that with my first toon on Fallen Gate... X-P
  5. Sambril Well-Known Member

    That's a fair point Uwk - xp is way better for the tutorial quests and you get a lot of the books for free (you can get 1 free book on the Isle, but only 1). When writing that I had forgotten that you can return to the Isle after leaving it on FG.

    In any case I do advise doing the harvest tutorial first (in the post-island starter area) as it naturally leads to the crafting tutorials and gives the nice low level charm.
  6. Niami DenMother Well-Known Member

    Ignore me, missed a post, it's already been covered :D

    Leaving the isle, doing the tutorials and such, and then belling back is definitely the way to go :D
  7. Meirril Well-Known Member


    Some really good advice, and some really questionable advice. The Journeyman Service quest at 20 should be saved till you've tried to buy your advanced 20-29 books. The series of quests from Journeyman all the way to Master rewards you with 1 advanced recipe book per tier. If you can identify which book is going to be the hardest for you to obtain you can save yourself a lot of coin. For instance the high demand book for jewelers is the level 28 recipe. Right now that is going for over a plat on FG!!! Wouldn't you feel silly if you took the level 20 book which brokers for less than 30s?

    At level 10 you can travel to New Halas and do your faction specific tradeskill questline. You'll get a mail about it telling you which NPC to start it with. Finishing the quest line will let you buy the advanced recipes for 10-19 very cheaply. You'll also get some rare materials so its well worth doing, even if you have to run from Freeport to the Antonica Docks to get to Frostfang Sea.

    Unfortunately the mail you get to do the next quest in that series requires you to head into zones that won't open up till EoF is released. That won't be for another 8 months.

    Harvesting: Well, of course you are going to prioritize the materials you want the most. If you are just harvesting a few nodes while you hunt, you don't NEED to clear cut. But if you are going to be serious about harvesting as much of what you need as possible...you'll need to clear every node you can find. Why? Because in the Shattered Lands (everything we have access to on FG except for Frostfang Sea and DLW) any node can pop in any location in the overland zones. For every node you don't harvest, there is 1 less chance for the kind of node you want to spawn happening.

    Lets just say you don't need wood, and you skip it. After a few passes the entire area you are harvesting will fill up with just wood, or any other node you aren't harvesting (unless someone else harvests it for you). Cherry Picking (taking only the best nodes) isn't only rude, its counter productive. Trust me, if I know you are in the area I'm harvesting and I think you are cherry picking I'll start cherry picking too until either you or I leave. On the other hand if I see you going after every node, I'll do the same. Though we'd probably both be happier if the area we harvested didn't overlap.

    The best way to harvest in the Shattered Lands is to find an area that you can patrol where you can make a loop and catch the respawning nodes as they appear. This is really dependent on how fast you can clear the nodes. if you get to them about when they spawn, it gives you first pick and lets you come back to the less desirable nodes after you've made sure nobody else is getting as much advantage of your hard work as you are!
  8. Atan Well-Known Member

    So, I wanted to give a 'pro-tip' type hack for crafting, particularly the gap between the low level quests and level 15 when writs come available.

    You get XP for completing only the first bar of an item and hitting stop. In many cases the first progress hit is substantially more than the subsequent, so it is very fast to fill the first tier of the item. When you stop at this progress point you basically just craft fuel back to yourself. You receive less xp than doing a full item, but you can craft 7 or 8 first tier items in the time it takes to craft one complete item.

    This results in a slightly more expensive process in terms of coin and resources, but you can level much, MUCH faster.

    For me resources and coin are abundant, time is always the greatest limiting factor, so this is how you power level crafting.

    Your results may vary.
  9. Bekkr Well-Known Member


    This is a good point, except you can actually leave the reward window up while you browse the broker to see which book is most expensive.
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  10. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    That's what I always do for those particular quest rewards; or if I know I'm going to be going into that tier, I'll frequently check out the Broker ahead of time. Used to be, in the glorious days before massive runaway inflation, if there was anything less than 10g, whatever it was, I'd snap it up in a heartbeat. Nowadays if there's anything less than a plat or two, boom, it's mine. If there's something missing from the Broker, not available at all (which happens), I'll look to get that from the quest. Likewise, if there's no book on the Broker going for less than 100p, I'll look very carefully at what each volume has in the way of recipes. With armor, for example, I don't see any point whatsoever in getting anything made that can't be Imbued (jewelry, too, to an extent; I won't spend gobs of plat on books that "only" have Scout maneuver upgrades and nothing to wear). If the books that only have helmets, boots, gloves/gauntlets, etc. are cheap, I'll get them; if not, to heck with it. Unfortunately, that often means that yeah, the chest and leg recipe books are often the most expensive... :-/

    Atan is right, apparently, especially when it comes to Tinkering. Since we have Tinkerfest (but just not all the quests) coming to the TLE servers, and you have to have level/skill 25 in Tinkering to even scribe the recipe books (not sure if the Cloak quest is there, but DON'T GET THAT if you want to scribe the books. That +25 it adds to your Tinkering doesn't count for reading the books!), do whatever stuff you can with the Tinkering skill until just the first line. You'll get your fuels back and apparently a Tinkering skill-up, though I've had limited success with that. YMMV. /shrug

    What I would add to Meirrill's post: please, please, please, if you're clear-cutting harvesting (and if you have a Provie and/or are doing Duggin's stuff, might as well get the shrubs, too), PLEASE, clear a node completely. Please. Seriously. It's really, really infuriating to come upon a node that you expect to hold 3 harvests and get only 1 or 2, especially if you're in an area where things are yellow->red to you and everything is aggro. You need to know how much time you can spend on each, and you can't necessarily hop and skip blithely about to 87 other nodes to get your quest requirements, for example. Plus, yeah, it's very, very rude. It's also infuriating in the Frostfell Village, where people will just snag the one thing they need and leave the nodes hanging, not able to repopulate quickly back to their fullest. :-/

    Uwk
    who used to believe in "leaving things for others" until being informed that, if everyone in the Village is clear-cutting, things will come back, full, that much faster (don't try this in RL, it doesn't work that way :-/ [also, don't expect to find tanned leather pelts in critter burrows in RL, especially not from elephants and other large animals from a hemisphere away ;->])
  11. Lyyle Member

    Lucky Wolf Charms sell for 10s each at the vendor. If you are truly just starting out and that's still a lot of coin, make more than just the 2 for your slots.

    Another tip for getting a little early cash: buy up that annoying handcrafted vendor-trash that's been dumped on the broker and priced below what you can get from the vendor. Vendor it yourself and save the economy from undercutting. Nuff said.

    Another tip: don't hang on to a crafting class that isn't working for you. The worst that can happen is you restart at lvl 10. The New Halas quest is still Completed and you can still buy your advanced books for 10 - 19 even after you respec. If you are obsessively uncertain about your class you can actually try them all in this way without rolling alts.
  12. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    Ah! I never knew that last bit! Then again, I've always been really stubborn about making my "free seven" all on one server (at a time... ;->) and then buying two more character slots to get the full nine craft specialties...just in case I can't find what I need on the Broker, or not for less than 5 arms and 3 legs, and my guildies aren't available to mooch off of (I play on odd hours). ;->

    Uwk
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  13. Carynn Well-Known Member

    For those of us who like hard numbers, Rush Writs give you 9%-9.3% per writ or 11-12 writs per level without vitality. This is the same as live after level 96 sans vitality.

    Rush writs can take as little as two minutes if you do the writs that give you materials rather than product for the first three levels on your crafting menu (i.e. sandpaper, coal, candles, etc.). Provies are kinda SOL in this area, but you will make more money if you craft to sell.

    Woodworker specific: do writs that ask for weapons rather than arrows, totems, and shields. Delete your rush order and ask again if you get the other two in your window. If you need to make some quick money, craft weapons sans writs and sell them to the vendor for twice as much as you paid for sandpaper.

    Getting from level 1 to level 20 is the hardest part. Suffer through that, and the rest is a day of binge watching.
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  14. Nuhvohk Active Member


    So, wait, you get credit for the rush orders just by completing the first bar? You don't have to do all 4? Cause that's what it seems like you're implying.
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  15. Dude Well-Known Member

    You don't get credit for the rush order, but you get xp.
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  16. Carynn Well-Known Member

    I didn't say that. It was mentioned by Atan that you can do the first bar and receive fast XP at the cost of materials. This is helpful at levels under 20. What I said was to do writs that give you fuel for the first three bars as it goes faster than those with product (arrows, pots, etc.).
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  17. LordTiras Well-Known Member

    I'm in the process of leveling a crafter on FG and I'm at a point where the XP earnings seem off... so can anyone confirm that "Yes, that's what it should be":
    I'm level 18, and doing the level 15 writs. I have no Vitality, but I do have a 50% potion running. So I'm earning 1.5x XP on things.
    While doing the writ, for each item I make, I earn 5XP (so 3XP without the 1.5x I bet). When I turn in the quest, I get 47XP (Which means probably 31XP as 32XP would give me 48). Thus, for a full writ, I earn 62XP (40XP without the 1.5x potion). I need 3,800XP to get to level 19.
    So in order to get to level 19, I need to do the writ 62 times (95 times without the potion!). Is this right? This seems very low...
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  18. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    Read the potion carefully. Is it BOTH adventure XP and crafting XP?

    At low levels, it doesn't require much XP to get to the next level. However, as you get higher in level, it takes much more XP to get to the next level... it's a rising curve.

    Are you doing Rush Writs? They reward better than the other writs.
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  19. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    I don't think they have Rush Writs available yet until level 20? I may be misremembering... :-/

    LordTiras, when you do the Writs, does it ask you to make 6 total of something or 12? The 6 is with a Rush Writ.

    Uwk
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  20. Bekkr Well-Known Member

    No rush orders until 20.
    But xp apparently wasn't working properly, and has been fixed now.
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