My Knowledge of Tradeskill Arts(buffs) thusfarFollow

As far as the tradeskill 'buffs' (referred to as tradeskill 'arts') go, each one has a description in your book of knowledge (accessible by pressing the 'k' key or from the EQII button). This description is very important, as it tells you exactly what using that art will do.

Note: Several times I refer to a 'crafting round' or 'crafting tick'. This is the moment while crafting that occurs every few seconds, that modifies your progress(green bar) and durability(blue bar). When I say that something effects your crafting tick or crafting round, I am referring to the next set of numbers that pop up.

Take tailoring for instance, this is what I do so I am most familiar with these arts.

One of the arts(knots I think) will increase your progress (blue bar - up goood) "a medium amount" at the cost of some of your power bar. This is good to use, but constant use will eat away at your power and if you run out, you may not be able to respond to a crafting event.

Another of the three arts (sorry, I can't remember if it's stitching or dextrous) will lower your durability (green bar - down baaad) by 1 and give you 7 progress (a good tradeoff).

Some arts that you get later will raise your durability - outfitter gets three tailoring arts, one that raises durability at the cost of power, another that raises durability at the cost of some progress, and another that raises durability at the cost of 'success chance'.

Arts that alter your success chance actually increase or decrease the result of your normal crafting round - this has an effect on the seemingly random -100, +100, and even the normal -10/+50. (-10/50 means 10 durability loss and 50 progress gain from that crafting tick)

The exact thing that each art does can vary widely from craft to craft - I know most basic alchemy arts raise progress at the cost of power.

IMPORTANT:
The effect stated in the description will ALWAYS happen when using the art. The same effect happens regardless of critical success or failure on that crafting 'tick'. This is the key to getting pristine items!

An art that lowers durability by 1 and raises power by 7, for example, will have a consistent result on any given crafting tick. The difference is the modifier that would have occured on that crafting tick regardless of whether or not you used the art. For example:

A good tick:
Without: 0/+100
With: -1/+107

An average tick:
Without: -10/+50
With: -11/+57

A very bad tick:
Without: -100/0
With: -101/+7

As you can see, in every tick the art does the same result of -1/+7. The only difference is what would have happened normally without the art being used. It may seem insignificant since the normal result can vary so widely, but even if only ten crafting ticks occur during item creation, just the use of that ONE art every round would result in a total modifier of -10/+70. This is the effect we want.

Events:
Occasionally a tradeskill event will show up on the bottom of the window. A small icon with a brief description (Ex: A glowing blade edge icon with the text "White hot metal") will appear. To counter that event, use an art with the same icon.

Countering an event doesn't seem to modify the result of using the tradeskill art! They seem to have the same effect as if you used them without ever having the event happen. However, countering events is good for two reasons:

1) If an event is NOT countered, possible negative side-effects include:

Loss of health (Yes, you can DIE while crafting)
Loss of power
Lower success chance on next crafting tick

2) If you succeed in countering the event, there is a greater success chance next tick. I will very rarely have a bad tick after successfully countering a tradeskill event.

Conclusion: Use your tradeskill arts strategically to minimize durability loss (green) and maximize progress gain (blue). When you choose your tradeskill class at level 10, you will gain tradeskill arts that will allow you much finer control of your durability, often the ability to gain durability on a crafting tick. Use these to your advantage to keep your item pristine! If you lose enough durability to drop below pristine level, you can actually gain back the durability and finish the item pristine!

If anybody has any additions feel free. If I can think of anything else useful, I'll either edit or write a new post.

Edited, Thu Dec 9 20:52:41 2004 by Arvec

Edited, Thu Dec 9 22:25:12 2004 by Arvec

Forgot to explain that #/# is durability/progress in that order eheh. An edit already. Any other reason you were confused?

It assumes you have a bit of tradeskill knowledge already, but if you don't tradeskill you don't need to know about arts anyway.

Thanks for the post Arvec.. I'm still confused with this whole buffs thing though..

1. Increase in durability. Sometimes I have *increase* in durability -- and I'm level 7 artisan, so I don't have any buffs increasing durability. Is it true that some crafting rounds with no buffs can add durability?

2. Timing. Can you miss an event because you cast the proper buff just before the event happened, and recast timer prevents you from casting again -- or it will still count as countered? [Btw, the answer will clearly change in the new patch since they will put all buffs on one timer.]

3. Do all buffs cast in the same round stack?

So far my experience has been it's more random than strategic. But maybe at higher levels things change...

Lomendil

If you want to understand this without being confused then there is a very nice pictorial guide HERE and here.

The second is a downloadable document. Both are from EQTraders.com

Not dissing the OP. It was a valiant effort with a difficult subject but pictures make a big difference

If you right-click and examine the recipe it will tell you which skill is needed.