Skilling Up

[biggrol]

Looking for a little insight from those that have already walked the path :D

Long term plan is making 65 Nec, shaman and cleric spells and Unholy Bellow spells for crystal turnins. Currently, sitting at a skill level of 80. Looking to powerlevel to 220. Looking for subcombine paths that are store bought and hopefully will be usable later on. Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

[Rijak]

i did it back in the days when you could buy your way to 200, but you might wanna look into old spell research (http://www.eqtraders.com/recipes/recipe_page.php?article=122&rsa=Spell%20Research&rc=NEC&sb=item&menustr=080105060000) for at least getting the first 100 points or so... words are cheap and easy to farm in many cases

[GnekroeGnomicon]

Think you can only go store bought to 54? Then the rest has to be spells, practice runes, or parchment solutions (along with cleaning parchments, and then making spells from the cleaned parchments). And very costly or time consuming. With the new spell research, it is made easier as the abundance of sulfur and saltpeter makes it easier (so you can actually have mass combines) but it isn't cheap.

If I were you, I would not do this solely to make those spells. If there is even one or two others on the server making them, the supply of the right parchments is going to be very, very slim. And I do know that the Devs are aware of these combines so I would bet their lifespan in profitability will be short lived now.

However, having said that:

1. Collect Underpants.
2. Buy up all the Saltpeter and Crystalized Sulfur that you can get your hands on (you will need 1000's of both).
3. Make a ton of "Oil of Vitrol", then take half of what you made, make "Vial of Muriatic Acid" and the other half make "Aqua Fortis", then combine the "Aqua Fortis and Muriatic Acid" into an Aqua Regia... to get to 102.
4. Then comes the first parchment solution to get to 144... this will cost you ~90pp a combine for 42 points. But after you made all those Aqua Regia's that may be all the cost you have.
5. Continue on up the list of parchment solutions till you hit 216 (fine vellum parchment solutions) or 243 (runic parchment solutions).
6. Profit $$$

I would suggest spending 18 aa's on Salvage 3 and 18 aa's on Arcane Tongues 3. This will minimize failures which are costly especially once you get into making the spells themselves. I find that some of the subcombines have a rather high failure rate which can be frustrating at times.

My run from 218-241 on parchment solutions used 1000's of sulfurs, and saltpeters... hours and hours of subcombines... ~60k in materials (not even counting the cost of saltpeters and sulfurs which were purchased mostly in the bazaar).

At 250 now, I have done > 200 spell combines, and I buy up every parchment that makes me a profitable combine... if there were a couple of others on drinal that did the same thing I would not make much profit. Profits on Drinal have already taken a nose dive as crystals have flooded the market (though I don't think from spell combines as I can let vendors sit for a day with $$$ parchments on them without anyone else buying them).

Alternatively to the new research you can try and skill up on practice runes (from what I hear is a major pain in the butt) or you can do old research which means a lot of farming/vendor diving for words and likely pulling your hair out in the process.

Again, I wouldn't recommend doing this just for those combines. They will make you money, but only if you work hard and quick. If you are working to supply your guild with other spells then you will be well off afterwords, but I would advise against it just for the money combines.

[FCseven]

Originally posted by biggrol@Nov 29 2005, 10:05 PM
Looking for a little insight from those that have already walked the path :D

Long term plan is making 65 Nec, shaman and cleric spells and Unholy Bellow spells for crystal turnins. Currently, sitting at a skill level of 80. Looking to powerlevel to 220. Looking for subcombine paths that are store bought and hopefully will be usable later on. Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated.
It would seem turning in the fear spell for crystals is an oversight on SOE part and IMO research should not be abused this way.I can't beleve this hasent been nerfed yet.

[Xelgadis]

Give them a patch or 2 and they probably will. I'm not hurting for cash in any way, so have no need to research/sell fear spells.

[GnekroeGnomicon]

It would seem turning in the fear spell for crystals is an oversight on SOE part and IMO research should not be abused this way.I can't beleve this hasent been nerfed yet.I agree with you, though for the time being I am using it to level my research. For me it is a way of funding the cost of trying to Master spell research - a very, sick and twisted goal to be sure. I just hope they leave them in until I hit 262 so that I will have trivialized those level 62 spell combines.

It would seem turning in the fear spell for crystals is an oversight on SOE part and IMO research should not be abused this way.I can't beleve this hasent been nerfed yet. Actually in some sneaky way I bet it was planned by SOE, it allows for a few researchers to climb in skill and master the skill. As soon as the fear recipes are removed, it will be very difficult to raise your skill past 243... since each combine is going to cost you 2kish (or a lot more) and if you are doing a lot of combines don't expect to see much money coming back for a while. Heck it cost probably in the neighborhood of 100k or so between spell combines, purchasing saltpeter and sulfur and making solutions to get 200-243 alone.

At any given time in the past few months I have had 1-200kpp sitting in parchments, and I still do - I buy all the types of parchments that break a certain price threshold and I also have a buyer setup buying parchments. However, as I hit 262 skill I will likely not budge from there for a long time - 63, 64, and 65 spells are more valuable but there isn't a large demand for them (er, there isn't a large demand for profitable 65 spells that I see, only ones that really would sell for any profit are those rare GoD's and enough people have them/can get them now they are not selling at that quickly for me) at 2k+ per combine, those 38 points to "Master" could easily cost a million or two pp. I figure when I start in on the 63 spells I will make a list of 20 spells and just keep a running inventory of 10 copies a piece and hope to make my money back slowly.

And yes, I am sure these combines won't remain long in the game (or they will produce a 3rd version of the spells that isn't sellable back to DoN merchants). Ngreth at EQtraders is well aware of the combines and he has talked with other Devs about it, so I am sure they will make a move sooner or later. I was actually surprised there wasn't a patch this week...

[Aryse Andenter]

Okay, I'm going back to skill-up info. I'm going to say, while you're going ahead with the solutions and whatnot, do some of the original spells and swatches too - it's going to take you a long time and a lot of vendor farming to skill-up anyway, take advantage of everything available to help you get there faster.

For word farming, your best bets are Words of Crippling Froce and Words of the Ethereal. Both you only need a single one for a 182 trivial combine. Swatch parts are really common on the vendors in Natimbi, Nilitim's Grimoire pg. 115 (112 trivial), Rune of the Inverse (112), Rune of the Astral (132 triv), Flake of Lodestone (132) were the most common for me, but I found stuff for quite a few swatches in my vendor farming.

[Damudge Deeler]

It would seem turning in the fear spell for crystals is an oversight on SOE part and IMO research should not be abused this way.I can't beleve this hasent been nerfed yet.

So you combine the fear spell, then turn it in for more skill ups (using crystals)?

WHere do you turn the spell into?



For word farming, your best bets are Words of Crippling Froce and Words of the Ethereal. Both you only need a single one for a 182 trivial combine. Swatch parts are really common on the vendors in Natimbi, Nilitim's Grimoire pg. 115 (112 trivial), Rune of the Inverse (112), Rune of the Astral (132 triv), Flake of Lodestone (132) were the most common for me, but I found stuff for quite a few swatches in my vendor farming

Are those all combines that you can do with just one item (not counting the quill and parchments)?

[Eyez]

Originally posted by Damudge Deeler@Dec 10 2005, 10:36 PM
It would seem turning in the fear spell for crystals is an oversight on SOE part and IMO research should not be abused this way.I can't beleve this hasent been nerfed yet.

So you combine the fear spell, then turn it in for more skill ups (using crystals)?

WHere do you turn the spell into?



Turning the fear spell in for crystal was fixed on the last patch.

[Aryse Andenter]

Originally posted by Damudge Deeler@Dec 10 2005, 10:36 PM

For word farming, your best bets are Words of Crippling Froce and Words of the Ethereal. Both you only need a single one for a 182 trivial combine. Swatch parts are really common on the vendors in Natimbi, Nilitim's Grimoire pg. 115 (112 trivial), Rune of the Inverse (112), Rune of the Astral (132 triv), Flake of Lodestone (132) were the most common for me, but I found stuff for quite a few swatches in my vendor farming

Are those all combines that you can do with just one item (not counting the quill and parchments)?
Yes, all of those you only need one item for, and in the case of the words, you don't even need parchment and quill.