Lvl 20, is it too late to start Crafting?Follow

Hi all, I need some guidence from you expert crafters out there. I'm trying to start crafting but I don't know where to start. The only crafting I did was at refugee island and now I'm still only Artisan 3. From the guides that I read, they all suggested to have the crafting levle as close as your character's level as possible... is it too late for me to start?? My character is in Qeynos. PLease help. ^.^

i dont think its to late. where you should start is by harvesting in the newbie zones to raise your skills and get some materials that you will need to craft your basic items. then just sit in the crafitng guild area and craft away. the reason they say to start crafitng as soon as possible is because your artistry skill max i think its called raises every time you lvl so if your lvl 20 you will have to raise your artistry skill like 95 points to be able to have a better chance at making pristine items. but my advice start crafting if you want to if you really dont feel like doing crafting then just dont worry about it.

The first ten lvls of artisan go by fast if you do what the guy above said and try different recipes. I can't figure out if you get an exp bonus for the 'first time u combine anything regardless of outcome' and 'for your first pristine combine' -- or just for the first prist.

Mostly do combines that are hard for you, the harder the better. You will level really fast. You get a lot of orange colored skill combines, esp on the forge. That seems to up exp a lot.

Tier 2 slows down quite a bit and is a bummer, cuz u have to buy stuff u need from other players - although they have relented and set the merchant to sell at least some of this stuff now.

How do you do it? Okay. You need to find which 3 "tradeskill buffs" match the thing u are making. Hit K and tradeskill button. See those? Okay, let's convert elm to lumber. Get some elm, sandpaper, and ... whatever else is needed - resin or someting. Start the process.

Ok, u have a "master bar" of progress vs decay at the top. And four bars showing the same progress lvl below. Your goal is to get the blue progress bar all the way across before the green "durability" bar (i think of it as the decay bar, cuz as it creeps down, your product decays) goes to the left - and you lose the fourth bar and the chance at pristine.

If u lose pristine it's no biggie, unless u wanted to have lumber for a final product that is pristine - u need to start w/... o man, this is complex. Let me get back to the basics.

How do you make the blue bar go really fast while keeping the green bar from decaying too much? At tier one u have 3 skills to help u w/ lumber. Cutting, measuring, and the hand one. Read them. One advances progress at the cost of power, one at a slight loss of durability, and the other probably at the cost of a slightly lower "chance of success". I dunno what the last one means, except maybe it slightly lowers the chance of improving the product each "pulse" of the production cycle.

Okay, every few seconds the bars pulse - the blue bar goes forward and the green bar inches down. The three buttons - put em on a skill bar for handy access - buff u if u cast them before the pulse - and usually they make the blue line move forward a whole lot rather than just creep. So regardless of the price, u can buff yourself w/ two or even 3 of them - and make progress go so fast that u get way more pristines. Examine them and read them. And make a pile of lumber experimenting w/ this - and don't sweat if u make pristine or not-just get used to this.

Getting yer skills up - it happens as u do this - makes the whole thing easier in the future - much easier to get prists.

Okay, at the bottom of the window where u make stuff sometimes a "problem" occurs. The buff buttons also serve to fix these problems. If a "knot" happens u need to hit the 'cut' button, a measurement prob needs the measure button and so on. These two buttons have same icon, so read. Ok, if u are buffing self, sometimes u will accidentally hit the wrong button = when the problem icon appears the 'next' button u hit must be the one to fix it , otherwise the problem occurs - either u will lose some durability or get injured. I still spam those buffs - the BIG progess u make is almost always worth it.

Well that should get u started. U should look for artisan guides here and in other sites. Go google 'eq2 artisan guides' or something. And no it's not too late to start artisaning, just be prepared to invest some serious time. I gave up on it once i got some of our toons up where they could make bags and boxes and food and drink for us. And at least tier 2 'app 3' upgrades. I found it really boring. And tedious. I wish there was an option where u could gather the junk and just PAY an NPC to make something for u. But I guess that would hurt players who invest in this. But some are so bloody greedy that... I mean, prices for some of these items are silly. So I don't have any sympathy for them, at least not on my server. I mean, more than one gold for a maple strongbox that costs ... let me think ... under 30 copper to make - pretty sure that's right - that's pretty outrageous. I guess the counter argument is that well, not many players are artisaning on my server, and u can't sell many boxes at a time (slot restrictions), and if the market bears that, so what? Well, to that I'd say - we'd have a better and fairer game market if there were fewer barriers to entry, like the fact that you can't sell off line. Etc. And it's Karl Marx in the red corner, and Addam Smith in the blue. And there's the bell! Karl Marx swoops down on Smith with a vicious left hook. Smith counters with a right upper-cut. Oh this is going to be long, bloody fight folks. And it's slated for 499 billion rounds, with no knock-down rules - can't be saved by the ref - and....

I'd even go so far as to say that you are at an advantage to lower level crafters. You will have a lot more money than lvl 10 people. When you have 3 gold from selling adept drops, you can buy a ton of crafting supplies, whereas with a lower level guy, you're constantly going to be on that hairy edge of not having enough cash to buy the fuel you need, so you have to stop crafting and go make money for a while.

I have an outfitter that I started crafting when he was like level 7, and kept the artisan/adventure levels even up until lvl 18. I also have a 23 templar that I just started crafting with, and I must say I'm finding the experience much more pleasant.