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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|
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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:
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|
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.
|
Spreadsheet
|
| 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? |
| 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. |
| |
|
| 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. |
| |
|
| Q: |
What
con items should I craft? |
| 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. |
| |
|
| 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. |
| |
|
| Q: |
I
have all these strips I got from salvaging reinforced
armor, how do I trinket those? |
| 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. |
| |
|
| Q: |
How
do I tell if I have enough skill to salvage an item? |
| 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. |
|
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 |
|
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 |
