Dragons of Norrath Cultural Equipment  

I wonder if this was changed with the patch? I made my armor patterns before the patch, and had no problems. Last night, I was trying to make the symbol patterns, and it wouldn't work. I was using the same quill that I'd used before (the non-stackable "quill"), and it didn't work. I triple checked, using the book, this site and eqtraders. Everything seemed right. In frustration, I checked my hometown merchant and saw that she now sold stackable "a quill" instead, so I bought one, tried it, and it worked.

So, to sum it up: Before patch I used "quill" and it worked. After patch "quill" didn't work and "a quill" did. Does anyone else think this may be one of the "tradeskill changes" mentioned? Maybe they decided to change it because of all the confusion with the two quills?

Edit: Now that I think about, I bought "quill" from the same merchant that I bought "a quill" from. When I was there last night, she didn't sell "quill" at all. Now I'm quite sure that this was a patch change.

Edited, Sat Mar 5 18:28:16 2005

Granted the tasks for the pattern books take countless hours. The reward however, I personally like. It's nice to be able to raise your tradeskills up with the less expensive, more common items. It takes more time to start, yes but, you're not looking at 1-5k combines at the 200-250 level. And as a halfling, I hated killing all the brutes in DL and Warsilk Woods to maybe get 1 HQ brute hide.

So is it worth your time and troubles? Financially yes, time wise, yes if you farm your own pieces. If you're sitting on millions of plat and spend most of your time with tradeskills or buying/selling in the bazaar.. probably not unless you want a piece of this market too.

It's really an individual choice if it is worthwhile or not. I for one am looking forward to finishing off the Master's book and raising my skills to the new cap without putting a huge dent in my bank account. Grandmasters I wouldn't rush into unless you're bent on getting the newest stuff out on the market first while inflation is high. I'm taking the Grandmaster's book whenever it finishes itself off. My suggestion though, if you want this book, is to get the task now while the zones are still littered with people. A couple of kills here and there add up and you won't have to push to work on it as a direct task.

I haven't done a stillmoon DoN for awhile but, I'm finishing off the mission for the 2nd AA tomorrow and will check if the instanced zones count aswell as the normal.

GL in your questing,
Wyre

Edited, Thu Mar 3 00:32:16 2005

Hmm, just troubleshooting here: Are you using "Quill" or "A Quill" -- the quill you need is just "Quill." The other one is for research purposes. I'll add this note to the text above to make that clear.

Maybe also double check which type of Vellum you are using for your combine.

LOL nevermind I see at the begining it answers my question.

The skill cap on tradeskills has never kept combines from having a higher than 250 trivial. Most velium and platinum jewelry have trivials well over 250, the old cultural armors all have trivials over 250, baking and brewing have long had many trivials well over 250. All a 350+ trivial does is ensure that the resulting item is suitably difficult to achieve and in theory won't flood the market too quickly.

In short, there have always been "impossibly difficult" combines, we just didn't know how difficult they really were until the new tradeskill interface was released.