Who this Guide is For |
There's
a lot of good money to be made in salvaging drops in DAoC. Better
money than any cash farming location I know. There are also a lot of
people who are interested in leveling a crafter specifically for
salvaging and trinketing but aren't sure how to go about it. My
goal was to find the most inexpensive craft and then determine the most
economical way to level both the trade and secondary skills for
salvaging. This guide is designed to give new crafters
information with those goals in mind.
To start, I had heard Tailoring was the most inexpensive mundane trade
skill to
level by far. So I decided to roll a tailor to get some actual
numbers on how much gold it would cost. I documented everything
as I went and learned a lot. The information below is based on the knowledge
I've gained through leveling that tailor and three other Legendary
Crafters. As you read this guide note that some of the terms are
Hibernian specific although I've tried to make the overall content as generic
as possible. |
Powerleveling Cost |
|
I leveled the Tailor completely
clean room. I dumped money on her, leveled her skill and sold
everything back to the merchants. No sales to customers, no
commissions, no tips, nothing. Any transactions I did were
through a second character who brought materials to the tailor for
grey items she could craft. By doing this I didn't artificially
skill her up or make her money on anything she made. This was the
only way I could be sure what the real leveling cost was. While
randomness varies, I’m hoping my numbers are fairly typical after
1100 skill points. It turns out getting a tailor to 1100 cost me less
than seven platinum. In fact, getting to 1060 only cost six platinum
(darn those last few points.) |
Secondary Skills Cost |
|
At each 100 mark I would stop leveling
Tailoring and level all secondary skills to catch them up with my
Tailoring level. So at 700 Tailoring I would get to 700 in Clothworking,
Leatherworking, Metalworking and Woodworking. I tracked additional costs
to raise the secondary skills separately from the Tailoring costs.
It cost me just over 48 gold to raise the other secondary skills from
1-1000. Raising secondary skills is fairly inexpensive if you
plan out how to use the other crafting skills in advance. |
Salvaging / Trinketing |
If you haven't done salvaging before
here’s how it works. Your ability to salvage an item has nothing to do
with your declared trade skill or your skill in any of the related
crafts. It’s completely based on secondary skills. So for example, I
can have Weaponcrafting at a skill of one yet be able to salvage arcanite (tier 10)
weapons if I have 900 in metalworking. The catch is, your
secondaries can never be higher than your main trade skill. So
your actual trade skill doesn't matter, but you have to have it high
enough to get your secondaries to the level you want. All mundane
crafters (not Alchemists and Spellcrafters unfortunately) have the
ability to salvage and trinket all materials by raising their secondary
skills.
Leveling secondaries can be done through trinketing but it’s boring and
slow. The best way to level secondaries is to take advantage of the
other trade skills at their low levels. The most important thing is to
plan ahead before you start your crafter. For example, you can fletch
arrows to get a cheap and quick 400 levels in metalworking and 500
levels in woodworking. But if you do that at the start you’ll run out of
cheap, low-level trade skills as you get close to capping your crafter
and you’ll be stuck with the slow and more costly task or trinketing
tier 7-10 materials to cap some secondaries.
What is trinketing you ask? It's a mechanism Mythic put into the
game that accomplishes two things, first you can use it to raise
secondary skills independently from the main trade skill. Second,
trinketing can be used to turn raw materials into a product you can sell
back to the merchants at about 98% of the purchase price instead of the 50%
you get from selling back the raw materials. There are trinkets for each of the secondary
skills like Hinges and Brackets for Metalworking; Dolls and Puppets for
Clothworking, etc. So salvaging is only half the picture. First you
salvage an item into its material components, then you trinket the item
into a product to sell back to the merchant at a much higher value than
the raw materials alone would sell for. |
Trinkets by Secondary |
|
The table below shows the Hibernian
trinkets for each of the four secondary skills and the
materials they require. You can use these items to both raise your
skill in the secondary trade skill as well as convert salvaged materials
into a higher cash yield. Notice that some skills like
metalworking and woodworking can be trinketed without any additional
materials while Clothworking and leatherworking require other materials
to complete the trinket. |
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Salvaging Yields |
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Secondary skills are the determining
factor in which items you can salvage. Before salvaging an item
it's good to know what materials the item will yield so you can make
sure you have the appropriate secondary skill to successfully salvage
that item.
Each item you salvage will yield a quantity of one material. This
includes drops, merchant bought and player crafted items.
Regardless of the number of materials the item is composed of, salvaging
yields a quantity of only one of those materials.
Material yields are based on item type. Here's a table with the
material yields for salvaging the different categories of items:
|
|
Target Skill Level |
The first thing to decide is what level materials you want to salvage and trinket. Pre-Shrouded Isles the highest materials
you generally saw were tier seven (Diamond metal bars, etc.).
Darkness Falls seals were turned into gold by purchasing items and
salvaging them for large quantities of tier seven metal bars which could
then be trinketed. Many drops like the popular Hibernian Finlaith Firebrand also
yielded tier seven materials. To salvage and trinket at that level you
needed to have 700 in metalworking or the comparable secondary skill
like clothworking for cloth items. woodworking for staves, bows and
instruments, etc.
But is 700 enough? At that level you can trinket one metal bar at a
time with a yellow con trinket. You can’t increase your
secondary skill beyond your main skill so if you’re only 700 in
tailoring it’s going to take you a long time to get the trinketing done. I remember the first
Firebrand I trinketed. 68 Diamond Metal Bars and I had to do 100+ 13
second trinkets just to get it converted to gold because I failed a lot
on yellow. If you raise your skill to 750 you can
make hinges. Hinges trinket two metal bars at a time, so you’d only need to do
half as many trinkets, still all at 13 seconds though. If you raise your
main skill to 800 and your metalworking to 800 then you’ve got it made.
You’re successful every trinket, you can trinket two bars at once and
the hinge is grey so each trinket takes only 6.5 seconds to complete.
You can turn a Finlaith Firebrand into 151g in about eight minutes, not
bad.
So, 800 sounds good? Enter Shrouded Isles where most of the high level
drops yield tier 10 materials. Now you need 900 skill in each secondary to be able to successfully salvage drops and start to
trinket. One aside here; yes, you don’t absolutely need 700 or 900 skill
to salvage an item of that tier. However, if you’re
significantly lower than the required skill you may yield fewer materials or fail and
lose the item altogether. Bottom line, the ideal goal is to have 1000 in
all secondary skills. Then you can salvage and trinket everything in the
game at half trinket time. You can buy drops off people and pay them a
percentage of the yield value, you can salvage your own drops and make
sometimes upwards of three times the money you made in gold and loot alone. |
Leveling Secondary Skills |
Okay, you're ready to start a crafter
and get to salvaging those drops for cash? Sounds great, but let's
look at how to get the secondary skills up first. Different trade skills raise
different secondaries. Here’s a general rundown of what secondaries are
raised by each trade skill:
|
- Tailoring – Clothworking, Leatherworking (leather),
Metalworking (studded armor Albion/Midgard)
- Armorcrafting – Leatherworking, Clothworking, Metalworking (scale)
- Weaponcrafting – Metalworking,
Leatherworking (blades, piercers), Woodworking (blunts, shields)
- Fletching – Woodworking, Metalworking
(arrows, staves), Clothworking (bows), leatherworking (instruments)
|
Note that not all items you craft in
each trade skill raise the same secondaries. In fact, you can read that
table the other way around and say “Tailoring requires Leatherworking
and Clothworking.” As a tailor, if I level on cloth items to 1000 and
then I want to make some leather items I’m in big trouble because I’m
1000 points behind on leatherworking. Same goes with Armorcrafting. As
an Armorcrafter if I level on Reinforced to 1100 and then I want to make
AF102 Scale I’m out of luck until I figure out how to get 1100 levels of
metalworking. Fletching is the most challenging trade skill for
secondaries as it requires all four skills to make the full range of items.
You can use low levels of the other trade skills to get the levels in the
secondary skills you need though. How does this work? It's pretty
neat. Let's say you're a Weaponcrafter and you've gotten 400
levels of woodworking already through making weapons. If you do
some Fletching even though your Fletching is at level one and your
Woodworking is at 400, as long as you're leveling on a non-grey item
you're eligible for all the secondary skills that item grants. So
you can use low levels of main trade skills to get your already high
secondary skill even higher. Taking best advantage of this feature
of crafting will save you lots of money and time. |
Planning Your Leveling |
Before you start on a trade skill you
want to plan out how you expect to level your skill and secondaries.
You should be able to get all secondaries to 1000 by using the alternate
crafts in the inexpensive, fast low level ranges. By low levels I mean 500 in Fletching and 200 in Armorcrafting, Tailoring and Weaponcrafting
in general. To raise your other three skills
that high you’d probably spend less than 35 gold and in so doing you can
get most of your secondaries in the 700-800 range. Your main trade skill
will be leveling some of the secondaries automatically so the plan is to
supplement the other trade skills to get the remaining secondary levels.
In general, you can’t get 1000 levels of secondaries by leveling the
other trade skills at the low levels. So to level them as quickly and
cheaply as possible you’ll need to trinket a bit at the beginning.
Consider this; if you start at the beginning using the other
trade skills to level secondaries, when you get to the higher levels in
your main skill you either have to do more expensive and slower levels
in the other tradeskills or you have to trinket higher materials. While
trinketing has a good return on investment at over 98% of the materials
purchase price, it’s so much easier to plan ahead and trinket early on.
Higher materials trinketing will cost more and is much much slower.
Low level trinketing goes by amazingly quickly and the cost is
negligible.
Map out how you’ll use trinketing and the other trade skills to get to
your target level. Once you know how many levels you can get out of the
other trade skills start off by trinketing what you’re missing. For
example, in the
Tailoring template included below you trinket 300 levels of wood and metal initially
to save time and money for when you get to the 800 range further down the
road. |
Crafting Templates |
When I initially wrote this guide I
included a template to raise a Tailor for salvaging and trinketing.
Based on many requests I've expanded the template section here to
include a plan for each of the mundane trade skills.
Each of these templates shows a plan for getting a crafter to the level
where they can make all items in that trade skill (1000 or 1100 depending on the craft.)
Each template includes a plan to raise all secondary skills to 1000 so all trinkets are grey. The
templates are broken down by 100 skill points for crafters who want to
level only to a certain point.
|
Tailoring Template
Tailoring is the least costly trade
skill to level for someone looking to make a salvaging and trinketing
crafter. This template shows skill leveling details for each 100
points of tailoring. For a total cost estimate to level a
Tailor check the bottom of this
guide.
Armorcrafting Template
Armorcrafting is the most
straightforward craft to level secondaries as you can take advantage
of the cap in fletching to gain levels in both metalworking an
woodworking easily. When following this template note that you
will cap your fletching but that you are still eligible for the
secondary skills those skills grant. Just keep making those
arrows until you cap out your secondaries.
Weaponcrafting Template
Weaponcrafting has the most
complicated plans but is worth following as the cost to level a
Weaponcrafter is one of the most expensive. This template is
designed to level on the most inexpensive items through each 100
points. Some comments if you're following this template include:
1) Make shields as soon and as long as you can. The round shield
is by far the cheapest thing you can level on. Make these well
into blue.
2) When moving on to the next tier you won't be able to see or map the
dirk haft until you've gotten your leatherworking to the 100 mark.
If you're not seeing the haft go back and level your leatherworking
some more.
Fletching Template
Fletching is the most inexpensive
craft to get to 500 but is one of the more expensive crafts to get to 1000. The template shown leveling on bows for levels 530-1000.
An alternate option not shown in this template that may be more
economical would be leveling each 100 with bows through 10 points,
instruments through 35, staffs through 90 and then back to bows to
finish the tier. Thanks to Caedric of Albion/Kay for this
suggestion. For a total cost estimate to level a Fletcher check
the bottom of this guide.
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Spreadsheet |
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The templates above were built using Excel. If you'd like to download this workbook to
customize your own crafting template you can find the source here:
Crafting Spreadsheet |
Frequently Asked Questions |
|
Q: |
Is this the cheapest, fastest way to level a crafter in trade skill X? |
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A: |
I've got no guarantees. I'm
basing these templates on the knowledge and experience from the
crafting I've done and the feedback I've gotten from the community
from this guide. I'm definitely interested in alternative
least-cost crafting plans. |
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Q: |
The template shows at each 100 mark
certain secondaries at that level as well. Mine are behind by
10-15 points, is that okay? |
|
A: |
Yes, it's not uncommon for secondary
skills to lag behind the main trade skill some. In most cases
it's not
necessary to get all secondary skills to the 100 mark or at your
level before continuing. However some skills have a minimum
requirement to move on to the next item. If you fall below
that level you won't be able to continue until you increase the
secondary skill to the minimum required level. |
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Q: |
What con items should I craft? |
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A: |
In general you'll get the greatest
gains from crafting orange and yellow items. I wouldn't recommend skilling on red items as the critical losses in materials
or component parts can be costly and the skill gains low. Some
people keep crafting an item into the high blues and continue to see
reasonable gains in skill for another 10 levels or so. |
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Q: |
I'm already a LGM Crafter in tradeskill X but I didn't level my
secondaries. Are there trinketing alternatives to leveling the
secondaries? |
|
A: |
There are, but they aren't necessarily
the most efficient. For instance, in the trinketing table
above, notice that the Clothworking
trinket Puppet can be
used to trinket wood while the leatherworking trinkets can all be used to
trinket metal. It's not the fastest as you're only trinketing one
bar/board at a time and you have to buy the materials you're lacking, but it's a better option than reselling the materials back to
a merchant. |
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Q: |
I have all these strips I got from
salvaging reinforced armor, how do I trinket those? |
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A: |
Unfortunately there isn't a secondary
skill associated with strips and subsequently no trinkets. Your best best it
to find a crafter working in that tier and sell them to them at a
discount. |
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Q: |
How
do I tell if I have enough skill to salvage an item? |
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A: |
There
is no way to definitively determine if you have enough skill to
salvage a particular item but you can take a pretty good guess.
In general the best way is to look at the DPS, AF or con of an item
and check what skill level you would need in order to make that
item. To be safe, you'll most likely need the associated
secondary skill at about that level for salvaging. |
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Full Cost Breakdown |
How much will all this cost? Here are exact costs for my
Tailor and Fletcher, both whom I clean room power leveled. The
Gold column is the total amount I spent to get all skills to that level.
The Secondaries column is a cumulative total of the gold I spent to
level the secondaries. I didn't follow the templates exactly from
above as I learned a lot in the process but I was fairly close. The overall totals should
be a good indication on what actual costs should be.
|
|
Tailoring Cumulative Cost |
Fletching Cumulative Cost |
| Skill |
Gold |
Secondaries |
| 100 |
0.1 |
0.1 |
| 200 |
2 |
0.3 |
| 300 |
7 |
0.6 |
| 400 |
29 |
6 |
| 500 |
108 |
7 |
| 600 |
277 |
10 |
| 700 |
629 |
19 |
| 800 |
1,260 |
25 |
| 900 |
2,113 |
43 |
| 1000 |
3,377 |
48 |
| 1100 |
6,971 |
48 |
|
| Skill |
Gold |
Secondaries |
| 100 |
0.08 |
0 |
| 200 |
1 |
0 |
| 300 |
2 |
0 |
| 400 |
6 |
0 |
| 500 |
37 |
8 |
| 600 |
1,177 |
8 |
| 700 |
3,605 |
11 |
| 800 |
6,320 |
20 |
| 900 |
10,377 |
66 |
| 1000 |
17,599 |
66 |
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Thanks and Good Luck |
I'd like to thank the many people who
emailed me with thanks, comments and suggestions on this guide.
I've tried to incorporate the ideas and suggestions into this revised
version of the guide. If anyone is interested in the original
guide which presented the templates in a different format you can find it here:
Original Guide
|
|
Best of luck with your crafting. I hated crafting at first but it grew on me and now I'm
addicted and don't plan on stopping. If you have
questions or comments you can email me at
pharaoh@guardiansofvalor.com
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Last revision:
1.60, 3/22/2003 |
