I'm actually raising both my smithing and my tailoring so that I can craft newbie gear for my future toons, not just my pally. Banded for most of them, Wu's for the Monk.

100 plat for each new toon? 1k maybe for a set of wu's? you could make a monk and 5 new characters, suit them up with banded or wu's, and still not be even close to the amount of money invested into the skills.

i don't mean to be rude but let me point out something. you posted in the guild section that you are interested in progression. from the perspective of a guild, you have absolutely the worst mindset when it comes to progression. you want to take your time, work on tradeskills. you already have plans to gear out alts and you don't even have a character above level 3!

play the game how you want. but if you're looking for advice on how to play, and you expressed some interest in progression, you need to get out of your mindset. exploit this topheavy economy as much as you can and try to burn through levels asap.

Alright, I guess I can slow down on the crafting. I have 68 Smithing anyway.

Even so, it's not like I'm getting any kind of tangible money from rusty weapons and cloth armor.

Get to lvl 20 or so. Then go kill sisters in Lfay and sell their bronze weapons to the vendors there.

From there you can find somewhere to level until 30, when you can kill guards in Misty Thicket who drop an 11pp spear each and some platinum.

If you level exclusively at these two spots during those ranges, by lvl 40 you should have a decent stock of platinum.

It's certainly nice to have gear when youre starting out, but you only NEED new gear once you start tanking for real groups in the upper 30's to low 40's.

Hope that helps.

I can do without the armor for a while, but I really will need something better than a vanilla two-hander by the time I start hunting Dervish Bandits at Lv12. When I hit WC I do the Dervish Camp from 12-17; they drop bronze weapons, coin, and ivory.

topheavy economy. roll those words around in your head for a while. what are you doing? selling unwanted crap to vendors for a pittance? totally the wrong way to go about it. right now, there are a lot of high level players with both a ton of extra plat and a ton of extra high level awesome items (which there is very little demand for). you need to insert yourself somewhere in the flow of goods so you can earn a fair wage for your time.

you need to be 1. providing services to these high level players which are too trivial for them to do themselves and 2. use the currency you acquire from these services to acquire the goods you need to be an effective partymember.

what do high level people want that you can help with? faction. gnoll scalps, deathfist belts, and bone chips are all in very high demand for their ability to make traditionally kos races non-kos. crushbone belts and shoulderpads are also key items. high lvls will want these in bulk and they will pay well for them. bone chips especially, easy to farm (esp for paladins) and will net you between 5 and 20 plat per stack. wait for the right buyer and try to hit the high end. i know someone in one of my old lvling guilds who had earned 2k by lvl 16 farming bone chips and selling them to priveleged customers who paid a premium.

getting the money is the hard part, spending it is easy. kunark loot comes to east commonlands practically by the truckload and it is very cheap. just sit in ec and you will see tons of stuff getting sold for basically peanuts. be picky and wait for the right item, don't grab the first thing that you can see that you can afford. because in general, these items have a very low resale potential.

I've got about 8 stacks of bone chips saved up.

there you go. should get you 100 plat minimum, maybe more. there's your suit of banded right there, though it would be a waste to spend it on that. keep farming and shoot for that pwc.

ironically, some of the best places to sell them are places where people go to farm them. high lvls go there to farm chips, you can sell direct to them and save them some time.

Honestly, Kunark stuff doesn't interest me that much.

How long will I have to wait for Velious stuff, so I can go farm Geodes in Crystal Caves and stockpile Velium/Chipped gems?

you're saying that a 20/28 2hb you can acquire for less than 1k doesn't interest you?