Had a lot of harvesting to do the other day. Out of sheer boredom, I decided to do something while harving... see what it would take to get my non-100+ skills to 100.
Particularly, cost-wise.
Att, Def, Alch, Pot and Harv are all over 100. That leaves 7 that aren't.
Ranging - Intentionally left out as it's not easily calculable. Way too many varying factors. And well, it would obviously be blatantly expensive anyway. There's a reason noone has reached Ranging 100 yet.
So with ranging left out, I still had 6 skills to check.
COST NOTE: Costs below are "ideal". That is, if there are no lost ings during the mixing. Of course there's always lost ings, so the actual cost is more than what is shown.
TOTAL ITEMS NOTE: Again, "ideal" using only one item. I of course mix things other than helms in manu (for the daily, for example). And I teleport and heal a lot which would reduce the number of spells needed for the leveling examples below.
Listed as determined to be easiest to hardest, based on cost, ings required, and time it would take to do it.1 - Manufacturing - Current level 72
WITH MANU GOD!
Cheapest method to get to 100 was of course mixing helms and selling them to Trik. The cost of leather, thread, and food is more than Trik pays, so it's still a loss, but not bad compared to schools.
That leather, thread, and FPs are all NPC-purchasable made this the easiest of the skills left to level as well, as there's no concern on finding or self-harving ings.
Selling to Trik, I determined I'd need to make 526,178 helms. The cost of getting to level 100 would be 1,846,885gc. Oh, and it would take 4349 trips from storage to Trik to mix helms at the NPC.
School would be faster of course, with "only" 263,089 helms to make. However, the cost of poofing the ings for those is 6,185,222gc. More than triple the cost of doing them at Trik.
With a tight budget like mine, the cheaper though longer route is better.
2- Crafting - Current Level 69
WITHOUT GOD! (Determined that my god plans for the future had no way to include crafting god in any reasonable amount of time.)
Fastest route to 100 here is moon medallions, selling them to the NPC.
This would entail mixing 168,502 moon medallions, incuding experience from polishing the sapphires and making the silver medallions.
Purchasing all ingredients and food for the process would be an 18gc per medallion loss. That's a total of 3,033,636gc. Almost double the helms at Trik.
Of course, I do a lot of self-harving so that gc amount would be drastically lower.
Glacmor rings were considered but rejected as my craft level is about the rec level of making them, which means a motherload of lost ings. Maybe in the 90's...
Just polishing saps and selling them to the NPC was also considered but dropped as being too costly unless WEs were self-harved and made. And as a 121 alcher I don't want to waste all that time harving and mixing low-level WEs.
3- Summoning - Current Level 51
WITH GOD!
This one surprised me. I was expecting much worse than I determined.
Yeah, it's bad, but not as bad as I thought.
White Tiger Stones are the obvious choice here. It would take 105,034 stones ideally to get to level 100.
If gypsum was bought at storage, it would cost 2,730,884gc with selling the stones to the NPC.
That's less than the crafting! However, this is ideal. In reality, that much gypsum doesn't get sold at storage so there'd actually be a lot of self-harving.
Buying all ings except for the gypsum, there'd actually be a 74gc profit per stone, though it would also mean 5,252 trips from storage to gypsum to mix at the gypsum.
That's a total profit of 7,772,516gc.
Still, I ranked this one lower than crafting due to all the gypsum runs, which are a nuisance.
4- Engineering - Current Level 61
WITH GOD! (Because I already have this god)
The cheapest method here is surely the slowest one. That is, Harvest/Degrade Indicators where turqoise is self-harved. Turq however is extremely slow to harvest, and you can plan almost an hour doing a full-emu trip to harvest and mix at the turquoise.
It would require mixing 235,992 H/D indicators.
If all ings (and food) except turqoise were purchased, there'd be a profit in that.
However, harving over 1.1 million turqoise doesn't sound like a good time to say the least. If you could "ideally" buy it on market instead at the common 4.5gc price (which, face it, you'll never find that much on market) it would be a loss of 4,129,860gc.
I decided a second option to be better, though a bit more costly... Point Defense mixed in the Eng school.
269,923 point defenses in the Eng school would have an ing cost (at current market prices) of 4,723,653gc.
I chose this as the better option because, being a 121 alcher, I'd harv/buy ings and mix the EnEs required myself. Even buying the ings and food for those, I'd save 1,349,615gc bringing the point defense cost down to "just" 3,374,038gc.
Still, ranking it below some of the other skills at that would still take a lot of time. (Of course, School Days getting 3x exp would be nice, but I don't rely on such days actually happening when I'm online.)
5- Magic - Current Level 73
WITH GOD!
Mana draining by itself is of course the well-known cheapest option. However, that's a PvP solution, and as most know I do not do any form of PK or PvP.
There's always MD-ing desert chims while training on them, but that's still incredibly slow and I just don't train that much these days anyway.
So I came up with an alternate option, one which I have already used before to get at least 30 magic levels.
That is: Grizzly Spawn - MD 30 mana from the bear, kill the bear, Radiation Shield which takes 30 mana. Repeat.
This works great as the bear gives the exact amount of mana needed, and bear respawn time is incredibly fast.
At my level, it would take doing 60,732 grizzlies. That's 60,732 mana drains and 60,732 radiation shields.
Total cost of the essies: 9,170,532gc
However, that's a lot of bear furs to sell too ;) The essies used provide enough space to pick up the full bear drop.
Of course, as a high-level alcher I'd wanna mix all the essies myself, which would make the cost much less. That would mean 240k+ magic essies mixed, a sweet alching thought for experience as well as EME chances.
BTW, if I did MD-ing like most PvPers, it would be 138,678 mana drains at a cost of 8,320,068gc for the essies. Less than 1 million difference.
6 - Tailoring - Current Level 39
(No god exists at this time.)
Wow. Yeah, ranging is probably more expensive. But Tailoring was more expensive than all 5 of the above skills combined!
It would take 1,073,053 blue dyes, or 1,430,737 orange dyes to get to 100 ideally.
Orange Dyes are considered as they're the only ones that don't require saltpeter, making them easier to mix.
Blue Dyes were considered because their flower ingredient is the easiest to harv. Doing these would mean a lot of engineering as well due to the saltpeter.
In the end, I decided to kill thoughts of blue dyes as I determined I'd be better off cost-wise doing orange dyes, and doing the aforementioned point defenses in the eng school to get my eng level up.
With all bought ingredients, and selling the orange dyes to the NPC, the total cost would be: 44,352,847gc
Holy crap...
It would also mean 20,030,718 each of red roses and sunflowers.
The cost of course could be brought down by self-harving, but hell, look at the number of flowers to harv!
And yes, that's sadly the cheapest way to level tailoring. :P
The blue dyes, btw, buying ings and mixing own saltpeter, would cost over 63 million gc.
Well, that's it for that fun. Not really a necessary entry, just something trivial I did for giggles.
