I have seen quite some players on my server that are crafting endgame gear and I am wondering how did they manage to get to 200 crafting on so many tradeskills that quickly?
Are those players being fed materials by big companies?
Are they buying gold from gold-sellers and using that to buy off the trading post?
I fail at understanding how a single person could achieve that so quickly.
They probably leveled their skills early on when it was easier to do so.
That could be true, nonetheless it was quite hard at the beginning, too. Maybe less hard than right now, but still not a walk in the park.
Does owning a territory help you in any way concerning tradeskills? Do you get gold as a player? Do you earn the resources people cash in at the town board?
A number will have achieved it pre-1.1. Basically when the game launched the most “efficient” way of levelling a profession was to make thousands of low-level items. 1.1 changed this so that you need to use higher level items with a ~25% increase in XP required too.
The old way was still challenging and required vast quantities of low-level resources, but not having to move beyond a few locations made it more straightforward (if duller).
Some certainly will be fed bits from their companies or co-ordinated between a group (e.g. if you pass me your sandpaper & wood, I’ll pass you my flux & ore).
There are also some players who have put in vast quantities of hours (some in the 1000+ hour mark)
it was about 20% easier before, but mostly its just putting in the time and effort. There are definitely ways to do it more efficiently, but its never been easy.
except if you are super rich, but thats like the 1%. and even out of the 1% many of them don’t bother with crafting.
Yes, WW and Everfall make 2mil a week on my server… It’s actually disgusting and quite frankly wrong
Bet, who do you think is selling the gold look up at the last statement
What’s even worse is it’s most likely the same people who dupe, exploited, cheaters got ahead and stayed there, we’re slaves to a broken system, death by taxation
20-25% easier is definitely a lot less time needed if you look at it that way.
I have been looking at stonecutting which seems the easiest of them all. To get from 100 to 150 now it requires about 4632 lodestone and 24704 stones. I can see myself gathering stones… they are easy to come by… you just need time. But for the lodestone that’s a whole different story. You have to compete with other players and for a lot fewer nodes. I can’t imagine other tradeskills that require even rarer materials. I wonder if anybody at AGS did the math.
In my case I found something to do while the player base was being robbed of all their efforts with dup/cheat/exploits. I know these things still are happening but this is what I did instead of participate in any other parts of the game, which were or are broken. I leveled to 60 this way. Gathering my own mats to craft is all I did. It became unbearable upon transferring to Camelot on the first round transfer. Too many bots, farmers, and international players have a player base here too, so there isn’t a dead time to run around to gather. You fight bots and farmers around the clock for every node.
Then they made it tougher to level crafting.
Other players were fed by dups or companies all they needed to get maxed out right away. Many players are there from duplicate cheat/exploit and spent their dup stuff given to them on crafting asap.
I am 200 in all but 163 Weapon 125 carpentry, 69 fishing. I don’t know I will bother to do those anymore. I could probably spend my 140k, 100k of it made inthe last week, on finishing those skils, but then I would quit the game.
How did you manage to make 100k in just one week? 
But ues I get that all the exploits/dupes did help those players reach their level so quickly. At some point in time I thought I would try to level up by crafting but it seemed way too time consuming and boring.
I guess there is also people playing the trade post buy/sell in quantities to manipulate prices and make a profit. That might be another way to gain gold quickly
Aptitude in smelting. I saw chat where people were talking ya ya i know about it but we can only hold 500k.
Buy materials to craft Orichalcum ingots. Sell all the ingots, cinnabar, Tolvium, Bottled Azoth. Buy more materials for Orrichalcum ingots. Sell…
Same but not as effiecient in market for Ironwoood.
Until Legnedary crafting mats and lowest price of orchaclum ingots are too low to repeat profitably.
YOU GOTTA SMOKE A LOT OF WEED ALL DAY AND BECOME ONE WITH THE …grinc
Dont forget players like asmongold using farm bot exploits . getting thousands of gold for being a streamer.
Getting companies to donate and give best information dump.
Getting ahead in general cause best crafters got the most materials which equals even faster leveling.
I started by grinding the materials for a few particular trade skills. In these professions, I was among the first people to sell key items - Starmetal & Orichalcum gathering tools (1-2k+ each), then pristine jewelry (2-3k+ a piece).
I was able to use these proceeds to purchase materials for further profession training, at a time when material prices were much lower. Also I leveraged buy orders (which few people seemed to use at the start) - I was able to get iron ore for 0.01 each, and similar extremely cheap prices for other key materials.
I’m now 200 in all trade skills apart from fishing & weaponsmithing (no interest in anything I can craft from WS)
Once you obtain a decent amount of money, the easiest way would be to place buy orders through the trading post. Depending on your server, you might be able to make back money while leveling your craft.
For example, the cost of Oakflesh ingredients can be cheaper than selling the potion itself. That means you can level up your crafting and make back the money.
Another route I’ve seen people do is place buy orders and sell the item back for a higher amount. Unfortunately, there isn’t a quick get rich scheme; people are putting the work into to it and getting rewarded in doing so.
If you are leveling armoring, arcana, weapon, engineering, jeweling, etc. see if you can borrow trophies from your friends. This way when you’re leveling it, you can sell some of the items and make some money back.
Crafting is really very cheap and easy IMO. As I’ve said before I played other games where hitting cap took many months. Here you can just easily buy your way to cap in a day or 2 if the market is in a good spot.
Getting to 200 isn’t really a big deal, it’s fairly easy. However for say armor crafting, the bonus gear is like 2k each (besides the common drops) and the trophies are like 75k each…
That to me just ruins crafting
I leveled armoring first and was just focusing it, just going to ck rawhide and boarsholm over and over again, then arcana, alot of mote, azoth water and hyssop farming, then jewelcrafting a lot of silver runs. I havent basically anything from anyone. Just used a lot of hours.
Invested time is likely just going to be the biggest factor of difference. Post 1.1 it became a bit lengthier, but it certainly wasn’t easy mode already to begin with.
Another good possibility is buying your way there. That way it can be really fast. You do need the coin in order to make this possible though. Dedicate crafters in pre-existing guilds are likely easiest to fall in this category.
Company crafters got to 200 because the company fed them mats via purchases from the trading post and a collective effort from their membership.
Your taxes aren’t just sitting around collecting dust
Thank you all for the replies! It’s very interesting to hear different opinions from people that have been playing through different times and that have experienced leveling up in different ways.
I need to take some time and munch all this information and come up with a strategy that would work with the current state of the game. It could be a mix of different activities like playing the Trade Post, gathering some resources, trading them for others I need, planning how much of the different resources I will need to level up the tradeskill. Maybe focus on just one tradeskill at a time instead of leveling them all together.
It also looks like being part of a big company and doing some regular trips out there to collect caches from elite regions might help with hard to find reagents.
If you guys have suggestions please keep them coming.