Why is [x] so hard to rank?

• truefire wrote on 2011-03-28 02:43

  Quote from Ryoko;386175:

  Well, I suppose if you have a lot of money in the game, it's basically the luck that you can practically buy everything despite the people that are selling at ridiculous prices.
  
  Carpentry can easily be cut short by buying certain woods to make other woods.
  
  Weaving requires not much effort if you spam Walter's Part Time Jobs and buy certain materials that are really tedious to get, such as Wools.
  
  Refine is pretty easy if you either get Metallurgy to Rank 5 at the minumum to gather 3 ores at once, or buying all the ores from central Ch1 Dunbarton. Either way, you'd still be either buying certain things, or spending things to rank up skills.
  
  Things such as Tailoring and Blacksmithing are simply a quick buying of most of the materials, or rafting for the Iron ingots or so, and still using money to repair everything anyhow.
  
  Kind of shows how easy it is to rank things as long as you have the money to do so, which is sort of just like the buying Nx for advantages.

  
  
  It almost sounds like you're frowning upon people putting their in-game gold to use. And for the record, Dracius is from Mari. Your ch1 is our ch4. :p
  
  On-topic: The single-most beneficial skill anyone can rank for production-based skills is Fragmentation. No matter what production life skill you are ranking, Fragmentation will always be good for training it. Always. No matter what. For that reason, Transmutation and Alc Mastery are also good skills to rank, and fragmentation-boosting gear is a decent investment.
• Omegatronic wrote on 2011-03-28 15:20

  Quote from truefire;386830:

  
  On-topic: The single-most beneficial skill anyone can rank for production-based skills is Fragmentation. No matter what production life skill you are ranking, Fragmentation will always be good for training it. Always. No matter what. For that reason, Transmutation and Alc Mastery are also good skills to rank, and fragmentation-boosting gear is a decent investment.

  
  
  Frag % for cheap silk goes down as the skill rank goes up. Considering half the silk made is cheap, ranking fragmentation for weaving is a balancing act.
• truefire wrote on 2011-03-29 05:32

  Quote from Omegatronic;387208:

  Frag % for cheap silk goes down as the skill rank goes up. Considering half the silk made is cheap, ranking fragmentation for weaving is a balancing act.

  
  
  Considering that the other half of silk made is anything but cheap, and that all of their frag % goes up, it's not a bad balancing act by any means, especially if we're only talking about frag in relation to weaving, as weaving has no use for the silks made, no matter the quality. Also on that note, silk materials are incredibly easy to gather compared to, say, fabric materials. The quality of the silks only comes into play when involving other life skills, in which case the frag fodder wouldn't be the silks but the products the silks went into. Besides, the decrease in frag % is only extreme at rank 1, which we do not have yet. At present, with frag capped at rank 6, the success chances of each level of quality for silk are around the same when frag is capped, with the exception of cheap silk which, at that point, is only behind the second-lowest by 5%. But that's ignoring the fact that transmutation and alc mastery boost this further, and that there's fragmentation gear out there, and that fragmentation receives bonuses on Saturdays.
  
  r6 Frag, r1 Transmute (only 134 AP in and of themselves), and r8 Alc Mastery (bringing the total to 179 AP) set Cheap Silks at an even 50% success on a non-Saturday. Tack on Fragment shoes, Fragment gloves, and Scholar clothing and that's an additional 4% (fragment is inexpensive, btw). Burn Division off of another set of shoes and enchant it onto your Fragment shoes and you get an additional 2% (at the expense of 26 more AP for Mana Crystallization, bringing the AP costs to 205). 205 AP and 1.5, maybe 2 mil gold to add a flat 20% not just to cheap silk successes, but to all fragmentation attempts. The AP and monetary costs are a drop in the bucket compared to the benefits they provide in weaving and anything else; besides, if you're ranking weaving, you generally aren't ranking only weaving for the sake of only weaving. And let's not forget that bringing the success rates of fragmentation into the equation are sidestepping the fact that you've got 30% chance bare minimum (no ranks in anything but rank F frag, no gear, no weather or daily effects) to get your materials back. That simply cannot be a downside. =/
• msong7229 wrote on 2011-03-30 05:38
  lief siklls in maibngoi are ralely fun
• xowhd5428 wrote on 2011-03-31 00:08
  I got my refine from rD to r2 in about 3 day after scavenging thru dunba and clearly its not THAT hard (newb with just about 50 dex with just the title :D)
  I cant "wait" til i step on weaving or blacksmith :D
• Ryoko wrote on 2011-03-31 04:12

  Quote from xowhd5428;390085:

  I got my refine from rD to r2 in about 3 day after scavenging thru dunba and clearly its not THAT hard (newb with just about 50 dex with just the title :D)
  I cant "wait" til i step on weaving or blacksmith :D

  
  
  Weaving is fantastic, Blacksmith is like the new level of Weaving...Better make use of your materials.
• xowhd5428 wrote on 2011-03-31 20:06
  prob not...
  I am one of those with no pets (except the bull)
  so and even with low dex.... all my ingots are disapearing!!!
  so at beginning it would be.... ha.....
• Ailyene wrote on 2011-04-01 02:45
  I just didn't like weaving because it was a chance to make one of several different items, which was another chance (like cheap/common/fine/finest silk). It always made me mad when I'd make tons of commons but actually less cheap for example, or something like that. Refining and carpentry are nice in the fact that at least you know what you're making. Oh, I dunno. I just hated weaving so much, haha.
• Chihaya wrote on 2011-04-02 14:12

  Quote from Ailyene;391454:

  I just didn't like weaving because it was a chance to make one of several different items, which was another chance (like cheap/common/fine/finest silk). It always made me mad when I'd make tons of commons but actually less cheap for example, or something like that. Refining and carpentry are nice in the fact that at least you know what you're making. Oh, I dunno. I just hated weaving so much, haha.

  
  
  This is exactly why I hate fabric and silk making.
  
  But I guess fragmentation can work to get some thin threads back :O I'll definitely save my cheap silks for later ^^
• Navy wrote on 2011-04-28 18:59
  -r3 smithing for avon shield
  
  WHYYOUDOTHIS.
• Peregrin5 wrote on 2011-06-13 20:20

  Quote from Maia;368340:

  Yeah. Refine is a little hard, but only because it's usually everyones first life skill. I had to do it with over 250 dex -.- Thankfully I had help. Weaving and enchant are/were harder for sure, tailor (now) and blacksmithing are just :T_T: compared to refine lol
  
  Either way, I think refine gets a little nerfed in g14, and doesn't require (as many) fails, if any. So it's not as though nexon hasn't noticed this oddity. Although the failure-potions will be a lot less useful, except perhaps for certain mastery titles.

  Where is this help you had? I have over 250 Dex too, and it's killin me. xD I'm devoting a million gold to the goal of reaching Rank 1 (from rank 7) right now. I have a full scarecrow set, using the Experienced Death Title, BnRs, and Personas. But I screwed myself over because I have R1 prod mastery. xP
• Dejosa wrote on 2011-06-13 20:55

  Quote from Naked;427650:

  -r3 smithing for avon shield
  
  WHYYOUDOTHIS.

  
  
  Because, I cannot allow you to smith those... 8D
• Royale wrote on 2011-06-14 02:57
  life skills are so much easier when you have friends to help
• truefire wrote on 2011-06-19 02:20
  Got to r8 Weaving earlier this week. All the thin threads I'd saved up since rC (about 90-100, I believe?), coupled with my r7 fragmentation took me to 16 points, which was actually better than I anticipated. Considering that I anticipated on average one finest per 10 thin thread stacks from the initial 90-100, this means my returns after continually regurgitating silks through fragmentation are actually at least 60% higher than the intended goal. I still think r8 is easier to do than ranks A or D. Why? Because cobwebs will always be less of a hassle to collect than wools. Always. ALWAYS. I chose to save my thin threads for r8 than burn through D or A when fabrics which I will be able to ignore fully after rA (except for master title) could also get the job done. Even if I have to collect 10,000 of them I'd rather do that than gather even a third that amount in wool. Did I mention I hate wool?
  
  Oh, and r7 fragmentation is sex. Once I get to r6, I'll even be able to fragment all those godforsaken mythril ingots from my Refining days and give the materials to my friend's character who I've been training up since he fell off of Mabi. Hopefully he'll return one day.