Cultural armor?

[astarothel]

Originally Posted by mmiles8 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/19991013.html
OCTOBER 13, 1999
Trade Skills:
A number of new items have been added to Blacksmithing

^ Here is your cultural, only smithing at the outset.

I have managed to dig up K.C.'s old pages on the wayback machine which show blacksmithing as being capped at 168 until at least May 15, 2000. Fine steel at least coincided with cultural (if not predating it), and in addition to this the Imbued trivials for recipes like breastplates are like 242.

Earliest cultural is with good certainty here with the major tradeskills revamp and tradeskill specialization:
http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20000919.html

Your link to caster's realm falls much more in line with this date, which also corresponds to the massive insurgence of posts involving cultural recipes in October of 2000.

I really wish the entirety of Knarmon's guides were still hosted somewhere, he was like *the* tradeskill guy back then, especially when it came to blacksmithing and cultural tradeskills. I only have bits and pieces of one of his unfortunately, dating from Nov 13, 2000 (which notes fine steel, and cabilis scale [iksar cultural] as being more recent additions to smithing).

ItemIDs between 18000 and 21000 are in the dumping range for all sorts of junk in late Classic and Kunark, and really aren't great for proving anything timeline wise. The single book ID in there originally isn't resounding proof in and of itself. Reliance upon IDs with that book actually hurts your case for October 13, 1999 because ItemIDs for the imbued gems are like 22000, and associated recipes are in the 23000 area. Just because a book is in game doesn't mean the recipes it mentions are yet. There's plenty of recipes mentioned in books with combines that simply don't exist in any form.

Pretty much the only time I look at IDs is for evaluating extensive recipe batches.

Edit: Caster's Realm when waybacked shows no entries in their cleric spell list for Imbue Gem spells before December of 2000, and their previous spell lists don't have it on there at all.