Jewelcraft

[Lance Berg]

New mad scheme, flush my alchemy successes, I decided to make a Jeweler
alt. I had a 30 enchanter from a few years back just lying around
gathering dust, so I blew the cobwebs off, went out and leveled up to 32
for Enchant Platinum, then went to work.

CR Jeweler quest to 54 was free, then I did the Trophy quest, which ran
a couple hundred plat in parts. From there, I foolishly looked at cost
to make stuff and decided to do the various Cuts of gems and ladder up.
Things like Round Cut Bloodstone are dirt cheap, and fast and easy to
do, buying only one ingrediant. You can't sell the product back to teh
vendors, but its just not all that expensive at first.

Well this lasted a while, but eventually the gems started to cost "real
money" and I started looking for an alternative. Gold Bloodstone (or
something along those lines) actually cost less than the gem I was
cutting at that point, as the new gem was one of the cheapest, and gold
was less costly than the gem I was currently using. To my astonishment,
though, it turns out you can sell back that old school stuff for nearly
cost... the only real expense comes with fails!

Well I laddered back up and reached into the 200's with a total spent of
around 2Kpp, and a lot of that because I wasted time on the wrong sort
of combine.

One product I had to make while doing the "round cut" sort of combine,
though, was a Jeweler's Glass. Parts trivialling at 50, and my skill
around 75, this was annoyingly hard to do, but cheap enough that my 20
or so fails wasn't a real expense.

Finally comfortable with my skill level, I went ahead and did the work I
decided to do this for: two sets of Platinum Trio jewelry, along with gems.

For the monk, 8 pieces, all with Fire Emerald, Opal, and Peridot: DS,
HP, AC.

For the Shaman, only 7 pieces, as I wanted to keep one bracelet for the
BA III focus. I did two FT, two HP Regen, and 3 DS. With the gear I'm
currently wearing, this puts me very close to cap on FT, and a nice
healthy amount of HP regen and 8 DS... but the Monk is nearly at DS cap,
which along with a skinspike VI potion makes for some very hefty DS indeed.

Then I made the Enchanter a DS set just like the monk's, grabbed
Skinspikes from the bank, and set out to play. With Feedback, which is
a castable 15 point DS that stacks with both, I was at 69 DS at 32, as I
leveled up this jumped to 70 something and then to 81... and I found I
could remove one of the pieces of jewelry and stay at cap; each piece is
5DS at the Reccomended level, so I guess the worn cap is 35

Sadly, on getting the Fire Elemental illusion, I discovered that it
doesn't stack with Potion DS, and the potion is much bigger. Useful
for clearing out trash when I really don't want to spend the money, but
nothing I'd really rely on, at least at low levels, I guess the DS gets
bigger as you level up.

I'm now leveling the enchanter up to 44 so I can enchant Velium, which
will mean even more effect from each piece, allowing me to max worn DS
and still have room left over for Defiant bracers, or for other jewelry
items like the FT and HP regen, or maybe the crazy HP/AC/Stat gems.

Also attractive are Compartmented, these items add a type 7 augment
slot, at the cost of raising the Rec level by 5. I made a couple, and
they do lower the effect significantly at level 32...but in the high 30s
they don't do much worse than the straight items. At this point this
doesn't matter as I'm not swimming in augments, but once I can wear DON
ones I can pick up RC's and go to town, the compartmented will be well
worth it.

Materials, 39 Enchanter, Test

[Don Woods]

Post by Lance Berg
Well this lasted a while, but eventually the gems started to cost "real
money" and I started looking for an alternative. Gold Bloodstone (or
something along those lines) actually cost less than the gem I was
cutting at that point, as the new gem was one of the cheapest, and gold
was less costly than the gem I was currently using. To my astonishment,
though, it turns out you can sell back that old school stuff for nearly
cost... the only real expense comes with fails!

Yup, I've never gone very far with jewelcraft, but my jack-of-all-trades
character got it up to 200 while working on things like the Shawl Crawl,
and yes, my recollection is that successful combines sold back for nearly
the cost of the parts, so it really paid to stick to recipes just slightly
above my current skill.

-- Don.

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[Lance Berg]

Post by Lance Berg
I'm now leveling the enchanter up to 44 so I can enchant Velium, which
will mean even more effect from each piece, allowing me to max worn DS
and still have room left over for Defiant bracers, or for other jewelry
items like the FT and HP regen, or maybe the crazy HP/AC/Stat gems.

Velium with Fire Emeralds in the 11 slot is 7 DS, which means 5 pieces
caps it out, leaving 3 for other types, or for a real bracer from the
Defiant set with its focus and other stats, or other real jewelry or
mask. I went with two HP regen and one Mana regen.... and then I
tanked mobs from 44 to 53. With a skinspike VI potion (best you can
make without farming ingrediants, good for 35 DS) and my Feedback buff,
I was at 81 DS.

In Timorous Deep, I found some swabbies (level 48) and pirates (49)
which hit reasonably lightly. At first, I just kept them slowed, with
my animation on their back and the merc healer keeping me alive. When
they ran, I rooted them, because the DS was far and away the bigger part
of my DPS.

Later, I started charming, the ones with rapiers have Backstab and would
hit for upwards of 430 damage on occasion, and when they broke charm,
they were only hitting me from the front, relatively wimps. The
importance of the DS dropped substantially, but was probably still half
my DPS... more when I started pulling two or three mobs at a time.

At higher levels, this trick will stop working, as I won't be able to
take the beat down... also my DS won't keep getting bigger, the potions
are limited by my being unwilling to farm ingredients, the worn DS is
capped, and I don't have a bigger cast DS or bard DS or anything like
that. I don't plan to make the Palladium DS set, I'll just bank the
Velium DS set for use when farming low end mobs.