Cobalt/Nickel and T4 woes.

[Dhalin]

So I got my Blacksmith up to 68 today, after a bunch of running around, _trying_ to find something that actually works, and actually awards a noticeable amount of experience points.

I tried granite tools, those were slowing down big-time. I could maybe get a level or two, but those would be slow-crawl grinds at best. I'm 2:1 on granite bricks almost, and I've been 100% efficiency with the said tools for a long time now.

I then tried Steel Weapons. Back when I was doing Steel Bars before it started slowing down, making the stupid bars gave me far more experience than doing the actual weapons or tools. With it being an expert blacksmith shop, I enjoyed many a nice xp gain there. But, of course, it eventually fell through and now doesn't even give 25% of a level with not only me and my disk, but my dragon's disk full of ore. Said disk loads take 15-20+ min to acquire.

So, I decided I would try Cobalt.

I go to Dralk, run north to the cobalt fields.

T3 Smelter in a "public" lair. Nice. What to do with the Cobalt Bars since there are no anvils? Hmm.... I'll give the bars to my dragon and he can make/hoard cobalt scales. 400 a pop, that's nothing to sneeze at.

Problem? there are only two freaking nickel spawns at the cobalt field!!!. They are also low-yield, with my dragon's 100% efficiency on Platinum and Cobalt, I can only manage 100-120 nickel (one tier down, so I know I got maximum mining rate on it) before the spawns are depleted.

Honestly.

You guys make a cobalt field... make it so that cobalt requires nickel... and only stick _two_ low-yield spawns in the field? Come on... that's a bit ridiculous. Let alone the fact there are no anvils anywhere in the Dralk Area, just how do you guys expect us to work Cobalt with that?

Someone said "Go west of that spot!" . I did, and found 2 more. With a 5+ minute walk that goes waaay over by the ogres and not too far from the spiders. Oi.

Would it have seriously killed you guys to put a few more nickel veins in amongst those cobalt to actually make this Reasonable?

Anyways, after figuring that's a bust (I'll check the map pack on this computer tomorrow morning to see if there is any more cobalt, SOMEWHERE in the world, that is within a reasonable distance to a smelter/anvil that has more than 1-2 nickel veins in its spawn), we decided to try Obsidian Tools.

Long Story Short, 1500 bars worth of tools (10 bars per tool) barely gave 25%. And those 1500 bars took a bit of time.

Ugh.

I've already blown the greater part of a week and a half on this, doing one, sometimes two 4+ hour sessions per day, and I'm still only 68....

[Ahael]

Hmm...?

I always go *south* from Dralk / SW from Kira, to a large Cobalt/Nickel field where cobalt golems live. That place has an Imperial smelter & anvil.

There I find plenty of nickel, BUT if I take lots of nickel from the western portion, they may all start spawning east, so I have to change direction.

There's a spot where I've seen 5-10 nickel nodes right next to each other, nearly all the time, only a stone's throw away from the Imperial crafting station. I've never ran out of nickel really...

Being able to fly of course helps there, the area is quite large.

[velveeta]

altho the nic has been a tiny bit more plentiful in dralk (and the public lair with the workstations and the open silos), when trying to grind for levels (and you can get a babysitter if you can't handle the gols on your own - i still hunt down isotope whenever i can) on cob, i always use the kira area.
always enough nic and cob nodes and a complete mws close at hand. the upper nic field right around the corner and up the hill never runs dry for me and if you can avoid the gols, plenty of cob.
fill your floating silo with nic, park it at the ws, go get your cob, come back, make and decon, rinse, repeat.......

however, with all the gems and metal around (and if you know the shortcut to the area in question, you know you pass a complete gws as well just before entering the metal/gem valley), this would be a great place for some imperial silos, i have always thought, even just t2 ones.....(not to resurrect an old topic..... )

[StalePopcorn]

What tools are you making? You probably already know about this, but make sure you are conning/deconning tools that are as close to your optimum skill as possible. See the Optimum Efficiency section on the Crafting Guide for more info.

Getting the bars is definitely the hard/long part, no doubt about it. and 25% is pretty good for a disk-full of bars. Are you 2-1 on cobalt bar creation too? That is pretty much essential for efficient bars->items construction.

If you have the coin you could try and ask on Marketplace if anyone wants to sell you bulk Cobalt bars, that definitely helps. But *always* make sure you are creating items that you are at optimum efficiency, otherwise you xp gain will be crippled.

[Ry]

Hmm I am wondering, could you do obsidian bricks and tools? theres a good spot south of Dralk allong the road. Theres a craft cave with the machines needed.
The nodes are very close to the craft cave.

[Radamanthas]

First of all, consider yourself lucky, regarding the nickel in that particular field...usually there is only one node there...two nodes only happens rarely. Having said that, however, that happens to be my favorite spot to gather cobalt (and I have made tens of thousands of bars out of there...used to sell them). The little secret there, is that all the nodes - cobalt AND nickel - respawn almost instantly, so you never have to wait too long for another nickel node to spring up, once you've depleted the node...literally only a few seconds.

Dunno about the anvil thing...but it's not that far a run back to Dralk proper, once you've loaded a disk with bars....

[Dhalin]

Stalepopcorn:

Nowhere near 2:1, but on things I _am_ 2:1 (Granite, Steel, etc.. no wait, I'm not even 2:1 on Granite/Steel yet... 3:1, yes), I can fill a lv100 disk on my dragon (which takes like 30min plus), and only get like 25%... that seems much too slow to me, you're talking 1 level every 2 hours non-stop grinding... that's nearly 70 hours of doing this, provided it doesn't slow down _even more_.

The XP was going decent, until not too long after I got 100% with Granite tools, then it just took a nosedive. It went from giving me 80%, to 75%, to 50%, and then last I checked, less than 30% for ~2000 granite bricks.

Unfortunately, there's nothing else I can really make with BLK that involves stone (other than the tool I am 100%+ with public machines); so I'm kinda stuck with pounding out either Granite or Steel.

And the thing with Cobalt and Anvils...

So they *expect* us to drag a diskful of Cobalt to Dralk, Teleport several times (or pay the price for teleporting with disk) JUST to get to an anvil?

We need a public anvil in the Dralk area that DOESN'T involve Teleport or High-Level Mobs... that's basically saying "Adventure or Don't Craft at all". Especially when they refused to give us much of anything to make out of Platinum or Obsidian other than a couple select tools, and made it so that the only sources of Cobalt (that I've yet to find) come from a Dragon area, thus No Anvils except for like, 1-2 in the whole stinking area. There's an anvil/smelter way south of Dralk, but with Lv70+ beetles walking not more than 50 meters away from the public machines, umm.....

[StalePopcorn]

Hmmm I can't offer much advice about that then I'm afraid. I got Gatherer to lvl 100 - don't ask why I started with that school, I love the punishment I guess And that *is* grind - mushrooms and tannin, rinse and repeat. So i was maybe getting 1-3% a level max per disk load. So when you say 25% that sounds like heaven to me

I'm not sure if it is expected for you to grind like that - you'd have to get a designer to answer that. Istaria does have some grind no doubt about it.

Are you at optimum efficiency on the tools you are making? That's the key, sorry if I missed that in your post. If you aren't at optimum efficiency, then you need to find a form you can get optimum with. I usually check the Horizons Crafting Calculator to see which form I should make next.

[awdz]

i've been advised that the best way to work cobalt is to mine the nickel and the cobalt separately, store the diskloads of raw ore in silos near player-built machines, and then work it all at once. the only place i immediately recall on order with silos open to the public near a smithy is near the mithril, a long haul for cobalt... not sure where the best spot to work cobalt would be.

[Vahrokh]

We need a public anvil in the Dralk area that DOESN'T involve Teleport or High-Level Mobs...

The question has been posed several times.
Dralk is the home of the grumphy Lunus, and roleplay makes them not warmly welcome bipeds.
As for cobalt, if Istaria did not change in the last 6 months, there's lots south of Dralk where Isotope lives.
I'd take loads off there and then mix it with the much nickel I made at S Aughundell caves.

I don't know if it's anywhere optimal but I had a guy in need of T4 construction nearby so I had to be near Aughundell anyway.

[C`gan]

I've gotten thanks from several people processing cobalt for my setup at Acul on Order shard. It is very much along Awdz' post. North of Acul is a balanced steel field with lots of nickel. Gather it like crazy and either store it on your cargo disk or in a silo. Then, find one of the convenient guildhalls in the area to bind to. Gathering cobalt, you won't be using your disk, only your inventory. Head north of Dralk and gather away. Then recall back to Acul and process bars. Every couple inventory loads of cobalt, you'll need to refill your cargo disk with nickel ore.

Or, you could have one person mine the nickel, another mine the cobalt and meet at an available smelter/silo combo of your choice.

[Tathar]

I hear there's cobalt around my lair. It's not as close as gold, but my lair has a smelter and "anvil" about 400m east of Kirasanct. If you don't see any nickel with the cobalt (since I've never personally went to check) then just head down to the third floor and put the cobalt in your vault.

[Xzchatchyk]

When you are in dralk just port o trandalar, the north-east region, there are vast amounts of nickel.
Just fill up your disk and port back to dralk so you only need to get some cobalt ore to your disk, which you leave at the crafting lair next to the portal.

That is how I would do that...

[Dhalin]

Update:

I went back to the granite fields today. It seems I was missing a couple tool forms (coulda sworn I had them all, but didn't...) and managed to gain about 5 and a half levels over the course of 5 hours.

I suppose the shock of going from 2-2.5 levels per hour down to 1 or slightly less than 1 per hour is partly what caused me to want to find a recipe that gives more XP.

I have 73.5, and once I gain this level, I will have 2:1 with granite bricks _and_ 100% with Granite Brew Stirrers. I also have the Glassblowing Rod form, I estimate I will be 100% with that at Lv79. Surely that would last me at least a couple levels, and by then hopefully I am at least 75% or better with Obsidian Essence Siphons.

My apologies if I sounded too rantish in my first post, but the grind does get to one after awhile, and I've been on kinda a time limit, as I was getting help from a family member (who I taught how to run my dcra100 dragon to help me) and said family member has numerous times expressed their boredom and has told me that if we quit now, they may not feel like getting back into the game to continue it.

[velveeta]

yeah if you are just leveling, i would, first thing - do it on stone. you only need to gather one resource - much easier to level!
second thing - make obsid stuff asap you can. char, outside of dralk (a very short run) has a vast and extensive safe field of obsid with a complete ped usable stone workstation in the craft cave right next to it.
vel got to 100 blacksmith there.......

doing stone makes leveling way more easy, and there are unguarded resource nodes very near ws all over the place.
i am sure you already know about the granite field with sws in the upper aug minefield.......