Theory on Tradeskills

Zxeses · Post by **Zxeses** » Wed Jan 07, 2004 1:20 pm

So I ran out and grabbed some HQ cat pelts, 2 stacks I think. I went back to the POK and made quivers, one after another. I got maybe 3 skillups in 38 combine attempts. Sad. I used a combine script, which basically made the items as fast as the script ran.

The next day, I went and farmed again, but this time, I made one--then I went and did something else. Every 5 minutes, sometimes 10, I would stop, make a combine, then move on.

I got a skillup 17 out of 20 tries!

Z's Theory: The skillups are designed to be anti-macro and therefore the faster you combine, the less chance of a skillup...

Has anyone else found this to be true for them as well?

Elric · Post by **Elric** » Wed Jan 07, 2004 1:25 pm

Not yet. But I'll test it as soon as I get home tonight.

Since I need to bring my smithing up (at 10), it will be the perfect chance to test your theory.

Hey, who knows, you might just be correct. SOE has been known to do assanine things like that, that keel the game for regular players as well as macro-players.

gnome001 · Post by **gnome001** » Wed Jan 07, 2004 3:10 pm

not true.. did 2 skills to 200 without mq and the combine rate was roughly the same.. and i got roughly the same skill up rate as posted many many times on eq traders..

Tuna · Post by **Tuna** » Wed Jan 07, 2004 3:52 pm

Neat. You could make a cheap tradeskill macro upper, like for brewing or baking, and test the point gain on level 1s at different delays between combines.

Zxeses · Post by **Zxeses** » Wed Jan 07, 2004 5:54 pm

gnome,

Your response indicated that you combined by hand, but that doesnt mean you wernt also doing combines at a rate of at least 2 per minute right?

Ever try 1 combine every 5 minutes?

gnome001 · Post by **gnome001** » Wed Jan 07, 2004 7:55 pm

1 combine per 5 minutes is... pointlessly slow..

i did em by hand when all you could open was 2 bags total so it did take awhile to do combines.. don't know exactly how long it was between combines, but.. my experiences are comprable to what has been posted many many times on eqtraders.. there are just toooo many people posting skill up rates there for something like this to not have been noticed before now.. i mean, people have been doing skills for years, and virtually everything imaginable was tried to increase the skillup/combine ratio..

its a random number generator that decides skill up rate really, based upon your intelligence... the higher your int the more likely you'll get a skill up, but its still a random roll done each combine to see if you skill up or not.. think of it like this:
1. at 50 int you have to roll over a 90 to get a skill up
2. at 150 int you have to roll over a 70 to get a skill up.
3. at 355 you have to roll over a 40 to get a skill up..
each time you do a non trivial combine the rng does /random 0 100, and if you roll over that # needed you get a skill up, if not, no skill up... keep in mind also that the rng is actually truely random over like a billion rolls, i.e. it you really do have as good a chance to roll a 100 as a 23, even if it doesn't seem like it sometimes.. all this info is over at traders corner, and note, those minimum roll #'s are just for an example. soe has stated also in the past that int/wis is the ONLY thing that will affect your skill up rate on all skills other than smithing, smithing has str as a 3rd possibility to affect skill up rate. the highest of the two/three is what it bases your chance to skill up off of.

edit in: it does appear however that some combines seem to give skill ups more readily than other combines so there might be some combines that are better to do to get skill ups, but this is very much a debated theory.. (usually stuff that requires farmed items seem to give a better rate than fully store bought combines, but..like i said, this is debated.. )

Catt · Post by **Catt** » Thu Jan 08, 2004 7:29 am

Though it seems more like:

1. at 50 int you have to roll over a 95 to get a skill up
2. at 150 int you have to roll over a 93 to get a skill up.
3. at 355 you have to roll over a 90 to get a skill up..

Grumpy · Post by **Grumpy** » Thu Jan 08, 2004 8:58 am

and Dex for Fletching (only), this is true as I've gotten a ranger to 255 Dex and he skills up at the standard rate that way (114 wis, 88 Int, 130 Str).

Your 2 out of 20 and 17 out of 20 runs on Quivers (which are low trivial) are both just examples of you being lucky with the RNG (one bad, one very good), normal skillup rate on quivers is like 1 in 4-6 (or 3-5 per 20).

Achy Wrists · Post by **Achy Wrists** » Thu Jan 08, 2004 10:20 am

You can have insanely great or insanely poor runs on skill ups with the RNG. It's more or less luck. Unless you begin to do what I'd consider statistically accurate tests of the RNG ( minimum of 200 combines per run ). Then you'll see that all the tradeskills average between 20 - 30 combines per skill up. Also, looking at your skill up rate below about 190 isn't really important in my mind. Under 190 your skill up rate is totally different, much easier. 190 is when hell starts for all the tradeskills. Whenever I tradeskill, I try to have a minimum of 200 relevant combines, that being combines that can generate a skill up, not sub combines needed for the attempt at skill ups. You almost have to coax the RNG to be kind to you by doing enough combines that statistically, it evens out. Because I can't count on my luck to skill up on 20 or 40 combines at a time, since my luck always runs bad!

There are also myths about relogging to reset the RNG if you have a bad run of combines. I personally don't believe in that, I actually believe in not logging or zoning so as not to mess with the RNG in any way. Because in the long run, it evens out, and I don't want to screw that up.

But that's just me.

Indent · Post by **Indent** » Fri Jan 09, 2004 3:34 pm

Sorry if this sounds retarded, but doesn't it *seem* that it gets harder to skill up the higher your skill gets?

So for the test to incorporate my silly idea, it would be helpful to test what range you were skilling up in. Like did you go from 40-80? or 120-160? That kind of thing..

No?

gnome001 · Post by **gnome001** » Sat Jan 10, 2004 12:12 am

in general the skill up rate is roughly the same between 1 - 250. (note there will be stretches where you hit hell areas with 300 combines between points and in general this point is 170 - 210, everyone hits it at some point, but not everyone hits it at the same point)

note, some skills go up faster than others..

again.. all this info is available at www.eqtraders.com go check out the forums there for questions..

and yes, in general it seems like its harder to get skill ups as you go up in skill level.. generally because combines are more complex, have more sub combines, require more farmed items/imbued items, etc.. in general the higher you go in a skill, the longer it takes to prep a final combine - either imbue time, sub combine time, or farming time.. (jewelry is one exception as everything is storebought, it just gets more expensive)

JimJohnson · Post by **JimJohnson** » Sun Jan 11, 2004 12:34 am

255 is max skill check for any skill gain not 355.