Tradeskilling

Between tradeskilling and marketing I've managed to get Jalia up a few levels.  She's 64 now.

Lately though, I've been doing little besides hunts for dyes and high quality skins needed to make the colored backpacks that I sell, and bouts of making potions and halas 10-lb meat pies to sell.  Ornate Defiant armor drops quite a bit off the bears and wolves that I hunt in Mesa, so that provides extra stuff to sell.  And that's been almost everything I've done -- just occasionally I've traveled to Blackfeather Roost or Undershore or wherever to gain some actual experience.

This past weekend I finally got around to doing the tradeskill quest that nets you the evolving tradeskill trophy.  I did this for alchemy first, of course.  I was worried about doing this after having waited so long, and true to form the Journeyman's Alchemy Test required me to make several things that included dropped ingredients -- things that I couldn't just buy.  But after a little research I realized that all I needed to finish all of the challenges was some hearty goblin blood... several at least.

After a little research I traveled to Kunark and headed to the Frontier Mountains.  The two places I wanted were the Mines of Nurga and the Temple of Droga, but the temple was closer to where I zoned in so I picked that.  Soon I found myself in a warren with goblins that were all green or light blue to me (some were even dark blue), and which dropped not only hearty goblin blood for alchemy, but green goblin skin which is used to make black dye.

For a brief, shining moment, I thought I'd found the perfect hunting ground.  I could earn experience, I could gather ingredients for alchemy that would allow me to increase my skills, and I could solve my black dye problem.  Black dye is one of the hardest to come by, and I need it not only for black but also for the light gray that I use to make purple backpacks.  You get it from charcoal, which is an extremely rare drop, or from blue slumber fungus, which is an extremely rare ground spawn in Lesser Faydark (if I'm lucky I can find two on any given trip).  There are other things that make black too -- all of them difficult to come by, it seems.  But here I could amass a large collection of green goblin skin while doing other things!

Well... it didn't quite work out like I'd hoped.  I set myself to 100% AA experience and I probably earned 20 to 25 AA points in an afternoon of hunting in Droga.  That worked out well.  But for all the time I spent there, I came up with only 20 hearty goblin blood and 7 green goblin skin.  So... not exactly a solution to my problems.  I read later that for skilling up in higher-level alchemy, everyone agrees that Deepwater Ink or Nodding Blue Lilly are the only ways to go.  I'd already learned to farm Deepwater Ink in Kedge Keep, and it looked like I'd be heading back there for many more trips.

But on the bright side, I finished my quest and got my Journeyman's Alchemist Trophy!  I picked up the baking and tailor trophy quests to work on later.

Tuesday I set out to do the baking quest.  This was also a journeyman's quest that required a lot of dropped items.  I had to hunt treants in Blightfire Moors -- and I learned that only the treants in the swamp area dropped what I wanted, and I'd never been to that place before.  I had to travel to the they Abysmal Sea to fish for saltwater crab (it's not an easy place to get to either), and I had to travel to Cobalt Scar once again to buy ingredients from the otterfolk vendors there (also not an easy place to get to).

But by the time I was done I had my baking trophy.  This one was even more difficult than the alchemy one, but it's done now.  Tailoring will be next.

Late last night I discovered a couple of vendors in the bazaar selling massive quantities of Deepwater Ink and Nodding Blue Lilly.  Now, I've been amassing a tiny fortune through marketing for weeks -- not really spending money on anything.  I had nearly 150,000 plat, which is not a lot to some people, but was quite a lot to me.  But the prospect of not having to hunt interminably for alchemy ingredients was too great to pass up.  I spent a bit over 50,0000 plat on hundreds and hundreds of Nodding Blue Lily and Deepwater Ink, and tonight I spent several hours working my way through well over a thousand alchemy combines.  Ultimately my skill jumped about 50 points, from 243 to 294, but things were going so well in the middle of that that I really thought I'd hit 300 and become a master... then, over the course of the last 350 combines, I only managed 4-5 increases.  This was very disappointing, although overall being 6 points away from master status is pretty cool.  One good round of Deepwater Ink gathering in Kedge Keep should get me to master now.  Or maybe I'll just buy some more Nodding Blue Lily when someone has some to sell.