Carpentry - seeking GM's for advice

[lordlp]

I've burned though enough logs to deforest Oregon and still I'm stuck. I'm at 96.2 - I went though nearly 15k boards to gain .2%. Now I'm making all Gnarled staffs - should I be mixxing it up?

[Pirul]

Nope, mixing it up really does nothing for you. Stick with it, sometimes it seems like you hit these dry patches, but it will pass and gains will continue to go up.

[lordlp]

You sure about that Pirul? I did a test and decided to blow 1k on panting stands and gained .3%. Granted the wood went quicker, I've been tossing wood at gnarled staffs like candy with zero gains.

Guess I'll do a test after I do a lumber haul - 5k on staffs 5k on something more difficult and see what the gains are.

While staffs are cheep and you can sell them back (or in my case throw them into a trash barrel) - if it takes 10x longer for gains given it's a 78% difficulty maybe raising the bar is a smarter move.

I can handle tossing resorces away to GM - but I haven't had this problem on this server with BS,Tink,Alchemy,or inscription. I would make the same progress with Carpentry if I just hauled wood back and tossed it in the nearest trash barrel.

[Pirul]

Don't get me wrong, there is no absolute right or wrong, but switching back and forth just for the sake of switching will not make you raise faster. However, it IS pretty logical that if you try to make an item which requires higher skill that it will rise faster after a certain point.

[fdtreece]

While I definitely agree with Pirul that gnarled will take you to GM in the cheapest manner, I can also confirm mixing higher level items in randomly seems to help kick start those gains. One my first GM carp char, I stuck with gnarled staffs the whole way and had a few maddening nights like you described wasting through thousands of boards for little to no gain. But all the while I was selling every staff back and then buying more boards with that money thus in the long run using less boards but taking more time.

The last char I just gmed carp on I already had every secondary skill in place so she could make every house add on and instrument. So as soon as I would hit a wall, I would mix in not only a yew table or armoire, I would make water troughs, flour mills, and especially beds. I used many, many more boards especially when I was failing on troughs and beds, but I would gain like even off the misses just trying to make the harder items.

So I guess it all depends if you already have enough gold and feel like doing it the cheapest way or not. Either way it still ended up costing me gold to GM since there was no way I was chopping that many This is definitely a skill you have to want to GM as it will probably never make you the money back, even with a vendor that sells all add ons cheaper than anyone else on the shard. Good luck!!!

[mr mahony]

carpentry is VERY slow at the 96- gm range. It is best to just set up your macro and walk away... I used close to the same ammount of boards from 1-96 as I did from 96-gm

[lordlp]

Well I'm going to eat my hat and go with Pirul - while I got a few gains off of other stuff gnarled staffs are still the most effecient. Atempting to sell them seems like a waist of time imo - but board for board my gains are pretty much the same with staffs vs everything else.

At 99.1% now - we'll see if I sing a different tune for the last .5

[lordlp]

Done - GM'ed. after 97 I made gnarled staffs - if I used 1.1k wood without a gain in gnarled I switched to easles for 1.1k wood then went back to gnarled. Following that technique I had pretty steady gains - the last 2.5% took 9k wood.

Not sure if the switching realy helped or if it was in my head.. but it worked.