It’s been bugging me for awhile that my Woodworker, Eraindiel, never mastered apprentice woodworking. She just leveled out of the area too soon, and needed to get making journeyman and now expert weapons — without mastery, so not as good as they could be, but good enough.

Last night, Windfola was acting up and moving around was difficult, so largely we stayed in the Bree crafting hall. I felt that would be the perfect opportunity to finish off master apprentice woodworking so that at least the journeyman-level weapons I was making for kinsfolk would count.

But what to make to gain the skill the fastest with the least use of resources? The opportunity cost of gathering resources is immense, way more than the cost of crafting an item, so I didn’t mind making more things if they took fewer resources.

I scoured the web looking for a good crafting guide that would answer this question, and also cover the topic for all my other crafters as well, and also take advantage of synergies between specialties, for instance in the case of a Weaponsmith, looking for opportunities to level Prospecting and Woodworking as well as Weaponcrafting if points in all three were needed.

I couldn’t find such a program. Now the smart thing to do would have just been to pick a recipe and grind it until done. And I would have been done last night before bed.

But instead, I wrote a program. Here’s the output. The following four recipes are the most efficient way to level apprentice woodworking, when you don’t need points in prospecting or weaponcrafting (but do have a forester handy to gather and treat the wood, as I do).

goal is 90 points in woodworking

Rowan Staff
    9 Rough Leather Wrapping
    18 Rowan Wood
    9 Wax

Rowan Great Club
    9 Rough Leather Wrapping
    18 Rowan Wood
    9 Wax

Rowan Bow
    9 Spool of Rough Thread
    18 Rowan Wood
    9 Wax

Rowan Club
    9 Rough Leather Wrapping
    18 Rowan Wood
    9 Wax

I actually needed 140 points in apprentice woodworking, but I ran out of wood last night.

Next job: Typing in the Expert Tailoring recipes so I can find the quickest path to Artisan. Or maybe get my Metalsmith, Dera, up to Artisan because Eraindiel will need a new suit soon…

But she already looks pretty cool! Using junk armor to stamp appearance slots, plus some cosmetic items and recipes, makes her look like one bad elf.

While I love MMOs, the idea of playing a game where wanton killing is the only path of advancement just seems morally wrong. If anyone acted like that in the real world, they’d be shut away. Yet in MMOs, it’s meant to be heroic to kill as much as you can, until killing itself becomes so humdrum and ordinary that nobody ever talks about it. Even killing a god is just a means to an end. At least EverQuest had the decency to be shocked when players finished killing the pantheon of Norrathian gods, when Druzzil Ro reset time itself so that it never happened. The gods remembered, though, and left Norrath rather than serve as the Raid Target of the Day for a new generation of adventurers.

The dwarfs went through all this trouble of building crafting workstations and laying in supplies before they remembered they didn’t know how to craft.

In my perfect MMO, every kill mission or raid would have a peaceful way to finish it, through cleverness, or trickery, or puzzle solving, or maybe even just by crafting. In fact, kill missions would be so unusual (in my perfect MMO) that when you got one, it would be appropriately serious. Even though The Shadow Odyssey’s three crafting missions just have you craft twelve each of nine different things, one for each craft, it’s a start.

I was kind of hoping for something a little more dynamic from the crafting missions. Like, you have half an hour to equip a village to fend off a dragon attack. Will you focus on armor, weapons, or resist gear? Or will you make some special spells or abilities? Or a combination? The things you made would determine how the encounter went, and you could definitely lose if you made the wrong things or not enough of the RIGHT things.

I turn my back for ONE SECOND and Goudia swoops RIGHT IN and steals my crafting station!

There’s no urgency in current crafting missions. You can solo them. It will take you about three hours to do so, but that’s okay, no rush. Take all day!

Not to say that running the missions isn’t worthwhile — you can get crafting books as rewards that let you make and upgrade TSO gear for FAR fewer void shards than would normally be required. Plus the special crafter gear sold in the Village of Shin requires the tokens earned from running crafter missions. New, five-use recipes are sold there as well. I’m not entirely sure how recipes with uses work — I guess that means I can make five things from those recipes before I have to buy them again. It’ll be awhile before I reach level 79 so I can scribe them, though.

Too bad the dwarfs didn’t ask us to make them some decent looking armor. What are these, the Terracotta Dwarfs of Firemyst Valley, or something?

The night before last, we were all still locked out of all crafting missions, even though we’d cleared our lockout timers. That was a little disappointing. Last night, Kasul was STILL locked out. Why? Makes no sense, but there it is. Stargrace and I decided to try duoing one. She logged in her dirge alchemist for the run, because doing a crafting mission when you’re already at max level is just wasting good experience. I’ve leveled from 63 to 67 tailor purely through TSO crafting quests and missions. For most of that, I didn’t have to harvest anything or buy any fuel, because the crafting missions supply everything you will need, for free.

With me doing the outfitter items and Stargrace taking on the scholar items that Kasul would normally craft, there was a big giant gaping hole of the craftsman items in which neither of us had any but the minimal artisan skill. It must have taken me a good five minutes to make one item that just didn’t want to be made, but I eventually muddled through, and if the Heavy Shields I made weren’t quite dwarven quality (the foreman took a LONG TIME to approve my craftsmanship), they served to fend off the undead hordes that were attacking the encampment.

Don’t look at my feet. Oh no, you looked ><

Afterward, I had the faction and the tokens required to GO SHOPPING! The crafting faction merchant in the Village of Shin had these sleek armors of a kinda unique design that also boosted crafting skills, if you wore a full set. I bought the vest and pants of the Midnight set, getting server discoveries on them both. Guess they aren’t that popular.

I noticed that the new shoulder armor for the Tier 1 Sackcloth and Tranquil Sackcloth sets looked really fantastic, so I chose that for its looks. I’d love to have bare feet, but I’m not sure if you can buy the appearance-free armor from the Void Invasion merchants any more. I’ll have to check up on that. I still have three banners to spend, and I’m pretty sure the “bare feet” shoes cost only one or two.

Sackcloth Armor

Tranquil Sackcloth Armor

While it’s not exactly gi-like, the Tier 1 armor sets do have a fairly unique appearance that a young monk or bruiser might really enjoy.

Crafting missions? I’ve done all three of them now. They aren’t terribly exciting, but it’s very nice to do missions with decent rewards that don’t require killing. I’m hoping for a lot more of this type of content in the future.

No, really, I’m sure there are millions of puns out there about “crafting” and “tradeskills”. No laws against them. They aren’t WEA-PUNS of LAUGHS INSTRUCTION, after all.

So, yeah.

Still shocked and awed by the coolness of the Shadow Odyssey crafting quests. No killing. NO FRIGGIN KILLING. I had a quest to rebuild a cannon for some quick ballistic travel between a couple of areas, and after gathering ore, it asked me for a wire from a sweeper bot. “Okay,” thought I, “finally some killing!”

So I stealthed all up, got in position, targeted the sweeper bot, and the quest text said I yanked a wire from it and the quest updated. Didn’t have to kill it.

This is the first expansion where you really, truly, honest-to-God don’t have to kill stuff if you’re a crafter. Spent more time in front of the loom than behind a shield? NO PROBLEM. TSO’s got ya covered. These quests aren’t gonna ask you to do something you don’t want to do.

Lessee…. let’s count up the number of other popular MMOs that decouple adventuring and crafting levels. Um. Vanguard? LotRO? (I think they aren’t coupled in LotRO but don’t remember for sure). One of the things that really bugged me about WoW crafting was having to level my alt in adventuring in order to train up some other tradeskills.

Anyway, even though I had to drive all over New England to bring my son back from college for Thanksgiving (well, I didn’t mind), nothing was going to stop me from finishing the Moors of Ykesha crafting quest line in order to get enough faction to do crafting missions with my guild, who were totally wonderful about holding off on trying one until I’d finished the quests. They are so totally awesome.

Dinged 141 AAs from discovery xp and level 64 tailoring from tradeskill xp (yeah, all the quests give tradeskill xp as a reward. How cool is that?). I had to make things from several different crafting disciplines. All the recipes were 70, and yellow to me, but I didn’t have any trouble with them. Bard Power Song gives me the freedom to use the really expensive crafting arts with wild abandon, so even doing things WAY outside my comfort zone, like wood working, was no problem.

Should be fun. We’re planning to try a dungeon after our Nostalgia group in EQ tonight.

EverQuest 2′s game update 49 is pretty much the most exciting single update since Kunark. As the last (I believe) update before the launch of “The Shadow Odyssey” expansion, they seem to be rolling out a lot of their new tech to prepare for what we’ll be seeing live in November.

During “Raising the Banner” (GU49): A team of dedicated excavators and researchers have begun to uncover a remarkable find in the dunes of Sinking Sands. They have numerous tasks for any recruits willing to help defend the site, excavate relics, maintain their assisting clockworks and provide crafted supplies for the team. They cannot fathom how important this project is and how it is fated to reshape the world of Norrath for years to come!

We’ve known for awhile that the next expansion features a struggle between the Goddess of Undeath (formerly Prime Healer), Anashti Sul, and the current Prime Healer and UFO alien, Rodcet Nife. This is like one of those Hal Jordan vs Kyle Rayner face-offs, and very likely ties into the return of the Void. Could their struggle be behind the alien incursions?

Construction of the Guild Halls has been completed. Guilds of qualifying levels can now purchase halls in a variety of locations. Smaller halls can be found in North Qeynos, South Freeport, Kelethin, Neriak, and Gorowyn. Medium halls are found in South Qeynos and North Freeport, and large halls are found off the shores of Antonica and Commonlands. Click on the corresponding doors, or mariner bells on the docks, to access these new structures.

I don’t know how popular guild halls will be. The larger guilds can get huge benefits, but for most smaller guilds, it will just be an additional burden, above and beyond the actual leveling of the guild. It sounds like there will be entrances in all cities. It would be nice if any guild entrance would bring you to your guild’s guild hall, regardless of which city you or it is in.
With the work completed on the coastal fortresses in Antonica and Commonlands the involved parties have retired to their cities and the guards have been recalled to the barracks.

The experience requirements for levels have been significantly lowered primarily affecting the 20 thru 70 level range. Along with the experience changes, the drop rate for Adept I spells has been increased slightly.

This is a good thing.

The Invasion of the Vale quest is now a more appropriate level for its difficulty. The Shattered Vale in Antonica now has an escape point inside it.

The first raid I ever went on. I was level 15, and still on the Antonia Bayle server, about a week after launch. It was pretty hard. At the time, I was really psyched that you could start raiding at such a low level.

Mentoring other players now grants greater achievement reward for the mentor.

While nice, I would like to see increased benefit to the ment-ee. 5% bonus experience just doesn’t make all that much difference.

Player made house items can now be scaled using shift+mousewheel.

OMG OMG OMG. This is HUGE. Or small, depending on which way you’re scrolling.

No, seriously, this is very cool.

Spells which do not expire have been made uninterruptable. There are some exceptions which include spells which summon pets or have limited uses.

Unless I’m reading this wrong, this means you will be able to BUFF. WHILE. RUNNING. This is something people have been asking for since the game launched. FINALLY buffers won’t get left behind.

Shadows should no longer disappear unexpectedly.

This always kind of bugged me; I’d be trying to take a nice high res screenshot, and the shadows would be gone. I’d have to restart.

The game automatically detects if you have more than one CPU. EQII now runs better with more than one CPU. There is an option to control whether the game uses multicore mode in the Options Window under Display -> Performance. If you’re running multiple clients on the same computer you may want to disable multicore mode. Setting the multicore option has no effect on machines with one CPU.

YES. OMG. My laptop isn’t the best in the world, but it is multi-core. I can’t wait to see how well it runs with this. Note to self: patch test tonight :)

Rare cure potions have been removed and standard cure potions have been upgraded to cure the appropriate levels of effects. This in turn should help reduce some of the demand for dusts.

Raiders are thanking you. Note to self: Put all rare dusts on the market TONIGHT.

Artisans have designed some new recipes for threadbare and sackcloth vests, and will continue to work on more vest-type cloth armor appearances for the future.

Thank you. Also, there are a BUNCH of special one-off appearances, mostly on trash armor, that would be very very nice to see on tailored gear. Outfitters should be able to make the best appearance armor AS WELL AS damn good master crafted armor.

A few of the fae in Kelethin react to a good aligned arasai now.

The special insults reserved for evil-aligned Halflings in Freeport make me smile. I’m happy to see more flavor text like this put in the game.

Tunare’s touch has reached the door step of the Teir’dal. The druid ring in Darklight Wood has sprouted a Blessed Shrubbery. Druids and adventurers alike should seek out the ring to extend their travel possibilities.

This is cool. I’m not sure how USEFUL it is outside of PvP servers or as a shortcut to the Shard of Hate, but it’s good.

Sir Valinayle in Stormhold now corrects himself after calling Stormhold Befallen.

Ha ha ha…

Removed the option to go to Prize of Prexus and The Maid for the Mist on the mariner bells unless someone in the group is on that part of the quest.

Thanks. That’s been incredibly annoying for years.