Advancing Combat Skills/Arts - Please HelpFollow

Here's the short version:
When you leave the island and go to town, in EACH of the suburbs is a scribe, marked on the in-game map. Go to that building, and either inside or just outside you'll also find a trainer that sells skill upgrades, just like scribes sell spell upgrades. They are all apprentice II. Cost is very small, 24 to 36 coppers for skills under level 10.

When you MAKE a skill or spell, it depends on whether you build the skill/spell to pristine level or not. For the apprentice skills/spells under level 10 (ie Tier I), your quality of the finished item yields (worst to best) {AppII, AppII, AppIII, AppIV}. However, the first listed ingredient determines the highest possible success, in this case for all of them it's "Sepia Ink", which is made from Sepia Dye, which is made from a reagent which is made from lead (which you forage using the mining skill). Each of those needs to stay pristine to eventually have pristine ink. Until you hit artisan skill 10, however, you almost certainly won't make pristine items, since they decay as you're making them unless you have tier II reactions -- in scholar (and thus implicitly reactions for alchemy (inks and warrior skill essences), jewelry (used for scout runes), and spell writing (mage spells).

In general, the simplest and cheapest way to build skill as an artisan is to go to town (I'm based in Qeynos), and fish a lot (I use the Forest Ruins, lots of easy and safe harvests, even more than Island of Refuge, in tiny area). Then bake up the sunfish, make jerky from them, and bake the flounders. Two stacks of each will ding you to 10, and you buy kindling and packets of spices at 1 CP each. Its boring, but 2 hours later you're an artist... and now can make those scrolls, assuming your level 10 specialty is "scholar". It sure beats buying them on the market, which is vastly overpriced.

For level 10 artisan you'll cap at skill 9.99 and then you visit Albert Ironforge in Qeynos Harbor. To get to Qeynos Harbor you must be adventure level 7, that is, finish your citizenship quest, which starts in your room at the inn. Anyway, if you have even a few hours ambition, you can make all your appIV upgrades by this time tomorrow, assuming you can sit still and fish without getting antsy. Its very fast -- maybe 40 minutes to make citizen, 50 minutes fishing, 2 to 3 hours baking monotonously (hey, you end up with enough food to keep your hit points regenerating many times faster the next 10 adventure levels). Fish boosts agi, which is nice. If you feel wealthy and want boosted stamina for hit points, make pasta instead. It sells well to the broker, but is only skill 3 rather than skill 6 like baked flounder or sunfish jerky.

You'll actually turn a profit, although small, if you make only pristine quality noodles; they sell for 24 coppers to the right favorable vendor. My advice for favorably priced vendors is pick one and do errands for him; even better if you do two favors. After each errand, you get higher prices from selling to him; check out the vendors that seem to really like you in their dialog and then compare prices with the others. For sure there are some that offer me much better prices than others.

Enjoy
DobriyStefan /Splitpaw server