Tradeskilling AFTER the Live UpdateFollow

I was just curious how some of you were handling all the big changes after the live update this month? I am a lvl 36 Tailor on Luclin D'ler server, so can only speak to that tradeskill, but have several observations. In general by cutting out all of the subcombines they have made the tradeskilling experiance a bit easier. No more spending hours making thread just to go in a larger recipe. Experiance is gained by making finished items which can be sold through the broker or sold back to a merchant for what appears to be nearly the price it took to manufacture it. No problem with that. I seem to be able to get most of the raw materials it takes to make a wide variety of items and get them in sufficient quantity to get usefull practice. One BIG concern I have is that SOE has nerfed the stats on a wide range of armors so that they are now not as good as some of the more easily quested armors. Why would they do this? I made some pristine Tailored Etched Armor today and compared it to some that I had made before the patch. It is quite inferior to the pre-patch armor as well as being inferior to some easily quested armors like the Emerald hide series. So NOW we hard working tailors can only sell 2nd rate armor to those who may be too lazy to go quest some better. I find this troubling. Of course there is still the rare armors to look up to, and I have not determined if that has been nerfed as well yet. Will try to post when I find out. One other small observance. It seems the overall success rate may have been messed with a bit. At Level 36 I was trying an Etched leather skullcap (level 30) with my Tailoring skill at like 178. It took me about 10 tries to get my 1st Pristine one. That is just wrong! Bad Luck?

an update to my previous post:

Over the July forth weekend, a guildie asked me to make her a specific rare wand that I didn't quite have the lvl to make, (my woodowrker was parked about half way into lvl 36 and the wand recipe was lvl 37). So what I did was grab a bunch of rares and grind through the next half a level so I could scribe the next rare book and make her wand.

It took about a half hour making a dozen or so - white con - long and short bows plus a few oddball blues and then another 5 minutes to make her item. In the "old days" this would probably have taken me at least a whole play session so once again I was a happy camper!

Meantime, following this rush of crafting, I noticed that while scribing the lvl 37 common book, I got all of the harvesting tool recipes for that tier. I thought "Oh great, now I can make a bunch of these too!"

Only problem was, I was about out of T4 raw materials by this time so I took a run to EL figuring I would have to blow the rest of the night there in order to scrounge up what I needed in lumber and feyiron.

Two hours later I had all the commons I could carry plus a handful of raws for my dilligence! A quick CoQ put me back home where I was able to craft 5 complete sets of T4 harvesting tools before having to log off for the night.

So once again, to date, my experience with the new crafting system has been all good. The only down side I have seen to all of the changes has been the drop in sales of common items but I feel this is a small price to pay for the level of convenience we now have.

Ryneguy - you're not going to see a drop in the sales of staples like bags and boxes. Every new incoming character needs them and always will. And maybe more importantbthan the basic need, there are only a few small quested bags and no quested boxes so there are nfew viable dropped options to player made bags and boxes.

The drop in sales has been in areas like common cloth, leather, chain & plate armor and wooden and metal weapons. So tailors, woodworkers, armorers and weaponsmiths are the ones who are feeling the bite.

Before LU24, I was able to sell as much common grade cloth & leather armor and as many common grade bows and staves as I could make. Nothing ever sat on the shelf for more than a few days and things often sold the same day I put them up for sale. And I am talking about multiple complete sets of armor and multiple bows and staves in stock 24/7, not single items.

Post LU24, I am lucky if a single common item sells within a period of a week.

But don't get me wrong, I am not complaining about the status of the market. I believe that things will either improve, or I will find and secure alternate revinue streams. (Examples of these are more totems from my woodworker and the new LU25 line of casual clothes from my tailor.)

Edited, Jul 7th 2006 at 10:53pm EDT by OldBlueDragon

Wyldewood, if you're on the good side, you might try crafting in the instance below the Ironforge estate in NQ. As far as I know, it's still accessable and although there is no sales NPC or broker, you could bring your fuel and supplies and craft in peace there. I have made items there before and it is almost always empty.

I'll try and check it this weekend to see if it's still open for business.

Another option for you is to craft on the island. If you start one or more dedicated crafting toon(s), you could pass recipe books, mats and fuel through the shared bank slots and take an island crafting toon from lvl 1 to lvl 70 in relative quiet. The island instance is fully functional but only offers T1 fuels and of course, the island is only viable for T1 mats.