Crafting/Resource skills to 120 question..

[CMS47]

Which crafting & resource skills are a "must have" for being 120? And, why?

Thanks!

[culichi]

for me personally every crafting and resource skill is a must have since I love filling bulk order deeds. if your not a fan of bods and are primarily interested in hunting for fun or profit then the only must have is probably lumberjacking since it adds to your damage while using an axe weapon. the one exception might be if you like hunting in felucca and don't want to return to tram for repairs then having 120 skill to repair your weps and armour in the field might be worth the investment of time and gold to cap those skills.
recently there was some talk on world chat about there being a chance to break gear while repairing without a repair deed even at 120 skill I don't know if that's true or not but definitely a risk you should be aware of.

[CMS47]

Thanks for the reply!

I don't normally dungeon crawl, since I worry I might mess something up with a group of folks. I enjoy crafting, though, and house customizing (once I get one that's customizeable.. lol). So, basically, it'd be just to craft and possibly sell my wares. I also wouldn't mind doing BOD's. Just finding the right smalls for the larges can be a pain, sometimes.. lol.. took me three weeks to get a 20-count chicken one, for instance.

I heard that alchemy is good for potions for beekeepers. But, I also heard that crafted weapons weren't all that great since the dungeon boss drops are so much better. Is that true?

And, how about armour? (metal and leather). Is the crafted version worth getting to 120 for?

I guess what I'm asking is... is 120 better enough over GM to make it worth my while to work towards scrolls for the crafting professions?

Thanks!

[EndeR]

When it comes to crafting good gear i think high lvl runic tools r needed l... as well as high skill. U will want 120 skill and some gear to get it even higher for the best stuff.

[Maul Binder]

if your looking to make mass profit from 120 and crafting very little money to be made in crafting as main sales will be to newer players for gears and such as for weapons and relayers makes crafted items far less valuable desired. So would more be making things to sell for temp base items for newer less experienced player where the resource itself would sell for better value honestly. In case of bods fill one turn one in collect new one can make you gain smalls to fill larges far faster as ecspecially if have alts to collect normal junk cloth or iron bods then fill those thru hunts or thru bods and turn in on main and take new one to follow it up gives better odds in getting that elusive small for you.

[Devlin]

Crafting is fun, especially if you like bods.

If you want to make money/decent armor from crafting, however, you're going to need runic tools.

[Yoda]

I am going to widen the scope of my answer to this since I think alot of the responses (no offense to anyone) have been rather thin and incomplete, and didn't offer much supporting information.

on the surface crafting would appear to be good for bods more than for making money.. but lets examine skill by skill and give a bit more of a wide scope. It will be a longer post and if you feel like posting "TL:DR" in the thread how nice for you I will ignore it, this is in the interest of informing, and not the interest of forum bickering.

1. Inscription

So the obvious thing it does is allow you to fill your own spellbooks, make necro books, runebooks, and bod books/taming bod books which as my wife Pheobe can assure you makes consistant gold.

for hunting it allows you to enhance your spell damage, which presto gazinga has an impact on spellhits.
so 120 inscription is a good one to have for that reason alone, let alone saving on the afformentioned items (you will use runebooks alot to sort favorite spots in markable areas)

2. Tinkering

The obvious market that most utilize from tinkering is High Use tools, engravers, toolhouses, runic houses, mobile forges & anvils, resource keys, and lockpicks

The side impact for hunting is increasing your profit by not shelling out for any of the above on exex or player vendors, its not a HUGE impact but it definitely adds up.

3. Tailoring

Very underutilized in its power to make money tailoring does more than make an lrc suit for a new player, it just gets by and large narrowcasted in both the type of item worth selling and the style of the item (ninja, hide, leaf, leather) hide and leaf armors work very well with a spirit of the totem since by themselves they have no headpiece.

What I find astounding is A)there only seems to be leather armor from the basic leather armor type B) people sell piecemeal mix and match mostly rather than making a good suit that is designed to be worn together. in order to make really really good suits a +5 tailoring suit is incredibly helpfull.

There isn't any particular combat benefit from tailoring.

4. Carpentry

It is a very misunderstood skill it has very healthy market application for house addon deeds and containers like chests, and reasonably healthy markets for exceptional barding instruments with high uses HOWEVER there is much much more there.

a) 3 of the coolest looking helmets ingame (that can have runic properties including mage armor) the winged helm, vulture and raven helm are carpentry items. and there is also the runic craftable woodland and darkwood sets which have nice graphics, with runic tools and +Carpentry gear all of the above can be crafted to an outstanding standard, as well as the shield offered in carpentry.

the main combat benefit of carpentry at least how I use it more often then not is replacing my barding instrument on the fly in the field, without going home or to a vendor to buy one/pick one up the cost savings and the time savings means more time spent killing.

5. Bowcraft/Fletching

There is consistant exex markets for bulk arrows, so having this skill allows you to tap into this market rather easily. As well with +fletching gear you can have up to +70 over 120. Petrified runic crafted yumis made at this skill can have rather outstanding property sets to the point that they are compeditive with any loooted weapon leveled and turned yumi (which is why crafted weapons get 3 points per level in the first place)

The combat benefit to Bowcraft Fletching is mostly extra profit by not becoming addicted to exex arrows in bulk like a junkie.

6. Blacksmith
Interesting skill and more or less untapped by players economically. you will get the odd guy selling crafted armor & weaps from smithy but its potential hasn't been truely seen outside of devlin. To truely see the impact of smithy gear +gear is essential. with full +5 and ancient hammers a player can have 210 smithy. coupled with runic crafting that allows for

a) fully medable platemail with full resists, lrc and more if matched together
b) really amazingly propertied dragon scale armor (has no gorget combines well with jackal's collar)
c) dragon barding deeds to more heavily fortify swamp dragons
d) crafted weapons that are compeditive with their looted counterpart. (Ornate Axe, Viking Sword, Halberd, etc) in fact its one of the more accessable ways to get a good base to level for an aoe weapon. Its not just for making bases for new players.

7.All crafting skills - coupled with scrolls can make the associated repair deed (which you will use alot) although alot of players offer them for free (which there is no reason to do so) the time spent grabbing them is time wasted from gold earning.

8.Stonecrafting - stone furnature sells period

9.Wax crafting - The hive gear sells, but there is also a good variety of deco items, and a few lesser utilized pieces such as the magic medalion that can prove usefull/profitable

10. Alchemy - Its nice to make your own bee potions and many would rather pay for kegs than fill them this will never change.

onto gathering skills
Mining - There is a healthy exex market for iron and other metals, and a healthy market for platinum granite. if you craft you will have this anyway.. +mining gear reduces the fail from smelting platinum (120 isn't enough to do so)

less combat benefits than most skills

Lumberjacking - provides one of the components for freeish arrows, as well there is a healthy exex market for wood.

The combat reason to have it... it provides a bonus when weilding axe weapons to the damage.

further here is a couple skills people generally don't train up that have nice uses

1. Tracking - sure makes the dark knight in gauntlet easier to find/reveal
2. Cooking - If you are a ninja its great to have trained since it allows you to make egg bombs to complete the ninja fighting style (instahide when aggro'd with a monster)

as for who uses crafted armors, well yes training new players like lrc gear.. and its also quite a bit more cost effective to toss an rpd&other property suit onto a biotech pet.

the thing that gets to me.. is over and over since I have been here I hear the lament of "Crafting is not profitable and is broken, needs to be fixed" its actually completely not accurate to say so. What is accurate is players tend to be uncreative and dismissive with the crafting systems that exist. hopefully this post outlines the reasons for having gathering/crafting skills at 120 and its benefits. If this post offends anyone... that is your problem.

[CMS47]

Thanks, again, for all the replies!

Yoda, I printed yours out so I can peek at it better when I get my skills leveled up.

[Yoda]

cool man nice to hear it. There is alot more I could have written about in depth, so if you come to that crossroads feel free to pm and I can elaborate about most subjects and am happy to help.