Dragon Crafting at rating of 40+ (Help)

[Fisz]

I am a Helian dragon looking for a better advantage on crafting, after getting to crafting 40 I found it very tough to get experience for crafting. I did a few quests which got me 54.86 into my level, then I started making orbs and iron bars, I went out of my way to learn granite and the journeyman metals. which only helped a slight amount on the exp, but took 3-4x longer to get. The rest of my level took me a little over 7 hours to get... is this suposed to be like this? If so, crafting is done for me. I do not have this kind of time to watch the paint dry.

So I am here seeking a new way of crafting. I am not looking for a super cure or magic fix, but I am looking for what I am doing wrong. I am sure many others have already figured out what to do next and what is needed to be done. I am just looking to spend less time craftingand a decentamount of exp. Since I can go hunt and in about 2-3 hours (sometimes longer)have a complete level to show for it, I feel it should be the same with crafting. But 7+ hours for 45.14% of a craft level is completly crazy. I am now crafting level 41.

[Tympest]

I don't think I've ever spent 7+ hours on a single craft level. At 41 you will be horribly inefficient at crafting tier 3 items, so you should stick with T2 for the moment. Here's a few tips that should help ya:

- This is obvious, but do all your crafting quests. Don't forget the capacity trainer in tazoon. Also, make sure you have the best scalepack and a good cargo disk for your level (I think that would be a deluxe slate disk, or a slate tarbash if you want)

- Stick with your current tier of materials until you are at least at a ratio of 3:1 in making stone bricks, metal bars, etc. Things go much faster when you aren't converting a whole pack full of ore into only 20 bars. You will also be much better at harvesting the resources if you wait a few levels to switch tiers.

- Pick a scale or spell that you are just at or above optimal efficiency at making. Make and deconstruct as many as you can until you run out of materials. Look at experience per resources used. (Construction exp + decon exp) / (resources used - resources returned on decon)

- Find a good location to craft at, one where all the materials and machines are close by without porting or running forever. Spells require two types of resources instead of one, but sometimes it's easier to craft spells than it is to find a nearby scaleforge or anvil. Stay away from the alloy metals if you can help it, steel is a pain and cobalt is horrible.

- Look into crafting scales if you don't already have them. Techs such as smelting & stoneworking will get you closer to 2:1 on processing resources and allow you to move on to higher tiers sooner. Also consider speed and/or velocity on them, a lot of crafting is spent running between resources and machines.

- Oh yeah, I usually park my cargo disk at the machines and fly back and forth to the resources. I find that it's a lot slower to drag my disk behind me the whole time, in most cases (there are exceptions).

That's all I can think of for now, I hope this helps. :)

[Fisz]

Thank you. This is going to help a lot. I do have the disks up to date and my capacity quests are done for my level. I am very pleased with my wt allowance. Stepping back some does make a lot more sense, and sticking to an opt. item is making more exp. Thank you very much for this info.

Fisz the Mighty Tiny

[Vizharan]

At level 40 you can use T3 scales(what is your adventure rating?). You can use 5 scale slots at level 40.... If your working with stone, try to find somebody to make you scales with Quarry III and Stoneworking III on them(5 total, giving a bonus of 60 skill to both). It will make Stoneworking go much, much quicker. I personally have 3 sets of crafting scales. One with QuarryIII, Stoneworking III...One with Essence Harvesting III and Essence Shaping III, and one with Spellcraft III and Scalecraft III. It is a pain to switch back and forth all the time, but getting 1 craft level in about an hour is worth it.

Depending on how nice your guild is(heh, heh), or if your adventure rating is high enough to gather the tech comps, you might be able to get the scales kind of cheap. The servers are kind of old, so theres bound to be some dragons that can make all of that without much of a problem.

Good luck = )

[HAG]

I can second all what has been written by the Elder Ones before ... but i have something to add.

1) Use Reaping Potions
They are worth their money, just believe me! Given the guess that you have to have round 225-250 Gathering-skill per tier to be at best efficiency, use potions to get to that level. So for Iron you should use potions that get your skill up to ~400-450.

2.) Find a place where you have all needed things at hand.
Speaking for our level (41 myself), upper Chiconis Ironfield is perfect, as it has Smelter and Anvil at one place! I will return there this week, justwhen i have finished my ROP ... :)

3.) Use Hotkeys
There is no better thing than a single click on a hotkey to:
(- Equip Strengthscales of smelting)
- Use Ability Smelting
- Craft item:xxx-bar
- Wait:5 seconds (this value i have found to be best)
(- Equip Strength Scales of Mining)
- Use Ability: Dragon Mining

With all these tips you should ZOOOOOM up levels compared to be4 ... [;)]

[Arekaine]

K people keep saying "Pick a spell you are optimal at and make as many as you can and decon it." But I have done that. If I make a say, prime bolt I which I am maxed, I get 10 exp. Then I decon it to get 1 of the sandstone shards back. why not make a spell where I can get almost 400 exp as many times as I can and then decon them untill I run out of materials? Maybe I am missing something but it just doesn't seem to work to make a spell I am completely efficient and compared to a spell that I am just able to make because I got my spell crafting up to that lvl

[Tympest]

First of all, it's not craft just any old item you are optimal at, it's craft an item you are just barely optimal at. If you have 203 spellcrafting, find a spell that becomes optimal at 200 spellcrafting. When you reach 210, look and see if there's a new spell that's optimal now.

Next, you have to look at the formula: (Construction exp + decon exp) / (resources used - resources returned on decon) to find the best exp per resource used (the larger the number the better). It may not always be the item you are just barely optimal at, there are always exceptions. Test a few different items around your current skill level, see which one gives the best exp/resource and run with it.

Oh, one more thing. At optimal you get back 1/2 the resources on decon. If an item has an odd number of resources it rounds down - so if you have a choice between something that takes 5 resources (decons to 2) and something that takes 4 (decons to 2), choose the item that takes 4.

Hope this helps,

[imported_Lycaunoss]

All of the advice given so far has been excellent and there isn't a lot I can add. I will however point out that if you are going to do spells for xp you should look very carefully at what Tympest is saying with the decon resources. When I was levelling with spells I found that there were only two that did this well. I'm thinking they were Flame Strike and Ignore Mysticism thoughI might be wrong about IM being the second. You must be optimal at making the item to take best advantage.

Now having said all that I'd still recommend that you use scales for levelling rather than spells. Start with the stone scales when you are low in the crafting tier and switch to the metal one as you get higher and eventually to the mixed ones if you get tired of doing single. At least that way you can probably make your way through 2/3 of a tier without having to gather two different resources.

[Talitha]

^_^ I say, make steel!

Heh. But honestly, I'm at Dragon Crafter level 42 now, and got bored with gems, so decided to try something else. I have a nice set of slate smelting scales (not the top of the line, but hey, any little bit helps) and wanted to try the multiple-base-resource crafting. I forget the exact number of my skill level for smelting, but I'm still somewhere around 5 or 4:1. I don't mind that so much.

I parked my disk (sandstone! Yes, I still use a sandstone disk! [:$] I need to upgrade) at the smelter and toddled off to gather iron and nickel. One node of iron, six nodes of nickel later.... (-_- still inefficient at mining nickel) I could churn out about 65-70 bars of steel at my current pack capacity, if I got my ore counts right. And boy howdy! O_O What a chunk of exp from that one load! I'll hate to see that go with the crafter changes.

^_^; So you'll find me out in the mines, making steel like mad. At least until the high exp-per-bar wears off. Then...next victims!

Hmm...maybe granite would be fun...

~Talitha, Dragon crafting nut

[dorrin]

yikes.. don't switch up to the next tier at 5:1 or even 4:1 .. you're killing your XP / time

[silverest]

I've got a few things for ya first off I did my leveling using dex and focus scale con/deconing. It's a pure metal form and offers a 50% return rate on resources if your optimal.Most spells don't offer a 50% return so thier exp isdeceptively inefficient esp when the time factor of making shards comes into play. Shards reall hurt ya since the majority of exp is in the end item production. It's my experience to choose items that only have one step for processing and one step to finish. In addition,I'm not sure which shard your on but if on chaos i'd recommend doing iron(or steel down the leveling road) dex/focus scales and con/deconning the highest scale of those types you can make at OPTIMAL. I have a jman shop in summit community south of mahagra on Chaos shard, if your on that shard I'd recommend you check it out, the anvil there will offer you a +50 to your scalecraft as well as your deconing and there is an unexaustable supply of iron and nickel in my back yard. LOL and if you beg real nice like ;) I'll even open a silo or two for you to use when you get to steel.