Tradeskill viability/usefulness

[Xallis]

Thinking about levelling specifically tailoring for monk armor/bags. But wondering how possible it really is to do any tradeskills being piss poor. Tailoring you can at least get most everything you need to get startes while levelling and most people will be willing to get rid of spider silks for spell money or whatever but blacksmithing/alchemy seem like they're going to be delayed a bit if you aren't having others actively feed you mats to get to banded and beyond.


I guess the real point of this post though is: are tradeskills really worth it and if so which ones? Anybody can benefit from some extra ac or a non rusty weapon at low level but how big a difference will a blacksmithed mace make vs something you find by lvl10?

[Hoppkins_Wytchfinder]

Probably? Almost all low level weapons with any actual stats/procs etc will probably be permacamped with massive rusty trombone lists (with preferential access to friends etc)

I dare say there will be an influx of low level characters for some time and people making alts wanting easy(ish) access to smithed weapons/armour.

[soronil]

I guess the real point of this post though is: are tradeskills really worth it and if so which ones? Anybody can benefit from some extra ac or a non rusty weapon at low level but how big a difference will a blacksmithed mace make vs something you find by lvl10?

Tailoring - Raw silk is great upgrade from cloth and will take a long time to replace all of it. Cured silk even more so, there are some slots that probably wont get replaced until planar gear. Patchwork, Studded, Reinforced are useful for druids, which there will be a ton of. Kind of weird they only put 1 leather class into the game (monks don't really count). Hand made backpacks. Tailoring is very cheap besides the droppable mats, great/easy tradeskill at launch. Many people will probably do it

Blacksmithing - Crafted weapons aren't that useful. many you see on the wiki won't even be in the game until velious. Banded armor though is super valuable for the 8 classes that can wear it. There full suit upgrades but they have issues (bronze - very heavy, 5 classes...rubicite- permacamped) So many people are gonna be in banded until 50, minus whatever they found in dungeons. Blacksmithing cost a few hundred plat (I think) to level up to make banded, at which point you can make it all back on selling a few sets. The nice thing is that all the mats come from the vendors.

Other tradeskills:
Alchemy(Shaman) - SoW, Shrink, and other pots are a luxury that most will not be able to afford for a while. I suspect the market for these won't be there for a while.
jewelcrafting(Enchanter) - Very in demand, but also there will be a ton of enchanters, not sure how many jewelcrafters. Margins may be low...
Brewing, Baking, Pottery range from useless to situational/support tradeskills in vanilla. You won't ever really make money off of these.
Tinkering is pretty bad too. Rebreathers are cool but leveling up costs thousands of plat.

[Jimjam]

What I perceived as worthwhile

Tailoring:
Patchwork armour*
Raw silk armour*
Tailored bags
leather whips

*if you have access to guk these are only really worthwhile for the boots... unless you also have access to qeynoshills. There are nice quest boots there.

*studded and reinforced armour arguably worthwhile if you are skilling up blacksmithing. Some reinforced pieces match blacksmith AC but beat it on light weight (face, collar, feet iirc).

Blacksmithing
Tarnished weapons
Large Lanterns (ground place them for convenient illumination, give them to pets for mobile illumination / forced quad)
Javelins
Banded armour
Fine plate (if you want fashion quest... I think it is an easier combine early in the server)
cultural (race dependant and later in the server)
Smithed weapons/shields not really worth the hassle in my mind.

Alchemy:
Sow pots

Pottery:
idols

[gelatinousmutantcoconut]

I seem to recall that raw silk was a later addition, can anyone confirm?

[loramin]

Thinking about levelling specifically tailoring for monk armor/bags. But wondering how possible it really is to do any tradeskills being piss poor. Tailoring you can at least get most everything you need to get startes while levelling and most people will be willing to get rid of spider silks for spell money or whatever but blacksmithing/alchemy seem like they're going to be delayed a bit if you aren't having others actively feed you mats to get to banded and beyond.


I guess the real point of this post though is: are tradeskills really worth it and if so which ones? Anybody can benefit from some extra ac or a non rusty weapon at low level but how big a difference will a blacksmithed mace make vs something you find by lvl10?

Tradeskills will be worth it to the people who go all in. If you want to focus your Green experience around being one of the first to level up a useful tradeskill (Alchemy/Blacksmithing/Tailoring/Tinkering, maybe Pottery), it can pay off. But to be clear, you're going to be spending tons of time farming components, and tons of time selling in the EC Tunnel.

If you're not looking to "play a vendor", then no, tradeskills will not be a path to easy riches. Maybe consider getting Tailoring to 100 so you can make 10-slot backpacks (that's not too hard, and while they won't be fantastically profitable they will sell, and your friends will want some). If you're a Shaman maybe get to Blood of Wolf levels with Alchemy.

But otherwise, if you're smart you'll skip tradeskills. And I say this as an avid EQ Trader's Corner devotee back in the day: I <3 tradeskills, but in classic through Velious they just weren't that good, and once a few people get decent skill the profit margins fall fast.

[AbstractVision]

The other problem is once we are far enough into velious for the tradeskills to start matter we will be rolling into green.

So I would follow up on what Loramin said and focus on handmade backpacks, sow pots, and I'll add 45hp rings if you're a chanter.

I was able to get HMB and 45hp rings in less than a week of casual playing on my first blue character.

[Benanov]

Pretty much what everyone has said.

Blacksmithing: The banded market is going to have high demand. Forged Javelins are awesome (highest range throwing weapon craftable by non-humans) but heavy. Fine Plate was not day 1, but there will be a bit of Fashionquesting going on when it enters.

Fletching: IMO pretty much every Ranger on the server will be making their own arrows to pass the time while soloing. :) If you really need a player-crafted bow, you should be able to find one.

Tailoring: a few folks will level this to where hand-made backpacks are trivial then parked until Velious. You might see some raw silk & cured silk sales when the recipes land.

Pottery: mostly a support skill. Dieties came much later, so it's gonna be poison vials (which iirc was not day 1) for poison (ROG) and vials of mana (ENC, Tailoring). Make Poison is such a money sink, too. It's kinda cool, I guess.

Brewing: Support skill - the cultural smithing recipes will not be in day 1, so you won't need brewing for much other than Rogue Redemption, iirc. (Alcohol Tolerance wasn't really even useful until LDoN). Heady Kiolas will be in demand, but the trivial is low so most tailors will probably just skill this up themselves.

Baking: Maybe someone who wants to faction in Oggok. Monks might raise this for fish rolls. The rest of the server will be happy with their muffins, milk, foraged food and looted rations.

Fishing: You might see the odd baby necro doing this to fish up rusty daggers for pet weapons.

[brussel]

Tailoring: a few folks will level this to where hand-made backpacks are trivial then parked until Velious. You might see some raw silk & cured silk sales when the recipes land.


Oh, I didn't realise that raw and cured silk wasn't in the game at release. Could you tell me where I need to go to see when it was added to the game please?

[soronil]

Oh, I didn't realise that raw and cured silk wasn't in the game at release. Could you tell me where I need to go to see when it was added to the game please?

Also not aware of this, could not find p99 topic on this, could not find evidence of this.

So unless there is evidence that can be found today, and Nilbog found it and patched it on his own (with no bug report thread or patch notes), I suspect we will see raw silk / cured silk day 1.

Silk does't stack for like 2 years, tho. so be sure to take your sewing kit with ya.

[loramin]

Oh, I didn't realise that raw and cured silk wasn't in the game at release. Could you tell me where I need to go to see when it was added to the game please?

The general answer to that question is: http://wiki.project1999.com/Patch_Notes

But then the devil's in the details: lots of stuff isn't explicitly mentioned in patch notes, and for that stuff you have to go see Allakhazam comments, the Wayback machine, etc. to try and figure out when it was added.

[Canelek]

Rangers: Get used to making arrows, and carrying around piles of mats to make more arrows unless you are leveling near a vendor. I don't imagine there will be a market for arrows, but maybe crafted bows will be a thing? Not sure if Trueshot and Rain Caller quests are available from the get.

[brussel]

The general answer to that question is: http://wiki.project1999.com/Patch_Notes

But then the devil's in the details: lots of stuff isn't explicitly mentioned in patch notes, and for that stuff you have to go see Allakhazam comments, the Wayback machine, etc. to try and figure out when it was added.

I hunted for ages, I found no information pertaining to a later addition of silk tailoring recipes. So I don't understand why some people are saying they are not in at release.

[Xallis]

I hunted for ages, I found no information pertaining to a later addition of silk tailoring recipes. So I don't understand why some people are saying they are not in at release.

I spent some time searching as well and could only find that wu's was added later EXCEPT the gloves - which seem like they were vanilla. Not sure if we'll get any confirmation one way or the other from devs so may end up trying the combines regardless.

[brussel]

I spent some time searching as well and could only find that wu's was added later EXCEPT the gloves - which seem like they were vanilla. Not sure if we'll get any confirmation one way or the other from devs so may end up trying the combines regardless.

Yup, Wu's gloves only, other recipes later. Loads of info pops up about that.

[loramin]

So, Wayback machine is awesome for this sort of thing, but you also have to know what sites people used back in the day. Luckily I remember being an eqtrader.com addict, and if we check that site on the Wayback Machine we can find this (from November 28, 1999):

https://web.archive.org/web/19991128064236/http://www.eqtraders.com/

For silk armor: The first thing you're going to need is spider silk, and lots of it. Now, we're not talking of mugging spiderlings here, as their silk is too small to do any good. You need the bigger spiders to pull this off: large spiders, giant spiders, carrion spiders, crag spiders, wooly spiders, etc. You can get your skill in tailoring from 0 to somewhere in the teens by just taking two pieces of spider silk and combining them in either size sewing kit. Set the resulting silk swatch aside -- you're going to need lots of it. Once your sewing skill is in the teens (or sooner if you want to risk ruining more silk swatches and patterns), you combine silk swatches and patterns in the large kit to produce raw silk armor that spellcasters and monks can wear. The number of swatches you need varies with the item being made, but always, always, with any trade skill, remember that if something needs 2 or more of an item, that those items must be unstacked in your kit before you combine. Once raw silk armor is trivial for you, then you can start teaming up with a brewer to make cured silk armor, and with an enchanter to make Wu's Fighting Gauntlets for the monks (the only piece of "glowing silk" armor in the game so far), but definitely don't even think of trying to learn how to tailor on the more advanced items unless you have a lot of money you're willing to waste as you ruin things.

So we know for sure that by November the game had both spider and spiderling silk, and had Wu's Gauntlets. But it's possible any of those could have been added between March and November.

To know for sure we'd either have to go digging through other forums, looking for references to tailoring ... or someone would need to go through the old Bugs forum posts here to try and find such "classic evidence" that someone else has already found.

[Benanov]

It is entirely possible that I am wrong. After all this game was 20 years ago, and memory is fuzzy.

[brussel]

It is entirely possible that I am wrong. After all this game was 20 years ago, and memory is fuzzy.

I've tried my best to prove you right, just I can't find any evidence to support it. I'm going with Cured Silk will be in the game at release. I'm actually going to take my time and work some tradeskills, tailoring will be one of them I think.

Cheers for being wrong :-)

[kaev]

I hunted for ages, I found no information pertaining to a later addition of silk tailoring recipes. So I don't understand why some people are saying they are not in at release.

Was added shortly after I started in July of '99.

That was before Verant got "good" at patch notes, around the time of the jewelry crafting revamp, before Rogues got the evade ability, after healing of mobs was disabled (I only heard about that), before invis became group only (people used to grief pet casters with invis), before first Vox kill on Tunare server (I remember the server GM's serverwide announcement about 26 players from 5 different guilds downing Vox.)

Silk did not stack in those days, the small sewing kit quickly became standard gear for casual lowbies to combine their silk into swatches which did stack and were a decent way to raise small amounts of cash selling to other players.

[loramin]

Was added shortly after I started in July of '99.

That was before Verant got "good" at patch notes, around the time of the jewelry crafting revamp, before Rogues got the evade ability, after healing of mobs was disabled (I only heard about that), before invis became group only (people used to grief pet casters with invis), before first Vox kill on Tunare server (I remember the server GM's serverwide announcement about 26 players from 5 different guilds downing Vox.)

Silk did not stack in those days, the small sewing kit quickly became standard gear for casual lowbies to combine their silk into swatches which did stack and were a decent way to raise small amounts of cash selling to other players.

Great ... now if we can just find some kind of evidence for all that we can start marking up the wiki properly!

(To be clear, I 100% believe you Kaev, but I feel like we need specific dates, and ideally some external link to point to, before we can say "this ____ will come out on ____ date" on a wiki page).