Tradeskills

Links

 * EQ Traders
 * EQ Traders: Recipes
 * EQ Traders Complete Tradeskill Guide 5.0
 * EQ Traders Complete Tradeskill Guide 6.1
 * EQ Traders The Ultimate EQ Tradeskill Guide
 * EQ Traders: New Lists to help with tracking the new tradeskill AAs - February 2017
 * EQExplorer.com - Call of the Forsaken tradeskill information.
 * Jewelcrafting Spreadsheet (Via Internet Wayback Machine)
 * Tailored Armor (by class and race)
 * Adetia's Tradeskill Emporium

Tradeskills

 * Alchemy (Shaman only tradeskill, minimum lvl to learn is 25)
 * Baking
 * Brewing
 * Fishing
 * Fletching
 * Jewelcraft
 * Make Poison
 * Pottery
 * Smithing
 * Spell Research
 * Tailoring
 * Tinkering

Stillwaters' Guide to Tradeskills
Some suggestions before getting started:
 * Prime Stat buffs: Always get buffs that increase your INT, WIS, DEX (dexterity applies only to fletching and poison making), or STR (applies only to blacksmithing), depending on whichever is highest. This increases the likelihood of successful combines.
 * Do the Trophy Quest for the skill you want to work on before you start to skillup. See Tradeskill trophies below.
 * Make sure you have food or drink in a inventory top slot (The first slot your toon will try to eat from) if you're working with material that you might accidentally eat. This applies particularly to brewing and baking, but also other skills on occasion.
 * As your prime stats will be far greater at higher levels, I'd suggest holding off tradeskills until you're level 90.

Apudark's tips
Tips to make tradeskilling easier.

There are two ways to tradeskill: farm or buy ingredients. With time being money, you are better off buying what you need. Set up a buyer in the bazaar. Check barter to make sure you are the one with the highest bid. You should check your bids vs. that of others periodically to ensure you are still high bidder. Also check bazaar prices periodically, because sometimes someone will sell under your bid without checking barter.

Of course, you should be saving any drops you get while hunting. This include diamonds and blue diamonds, as they are good for maxing jewelcraft. I never sell pearls, emeralds, or peridots since they are reagents for useful spells and good to keep on hand.

Get a house. Get two [or three]. Trust me. Use one house for storing ingredients, use another to store what you have made. For example, by the time you have mastered baking and the trophy, you will never need food again. Get at least one anchor for your house and a Door to No Where from the marketplace. Houses are available from claims, LoN, vendors in the neighborhood, or the loyalty vendor.

Get big bags. Buy in bazaar, marketplace, or do hunter achievements, but get big bags.

There are several vendors in Plane of Knowledge that are standing near tradeskill containers. You can open up the vendor with the merchant, then open the tradeskill container, do your combines (if you have the recipe), and auto-inventory the items you make. You can then immediately sell to the vendor without having to move or open/close any windows. This will make many tradeskills go much faster.

Get your tradeskill trophy when you hit 50 skill. You'll be grateful for this later.

The best way to max your trophy would be to use a Draught of the Craftsman and simply make things you can use or sell.

Tradeskill trophies are trophies. They can be placed in the house and accessed via tribute. They cost 0 tribute to use. However, a trophy must be a equipped in order to evolve it, so only place maxed trophies in your house.

There are freebies in Abysmal Sea and Crescent Reach that will get you to 54 skill. Since those are covered elsewhere, I will not cover them here.

Zyxs' tips
When it comes to the free training quests that get you to 54 skill, whenever possible, use the ones in the Abysmal Sea instead of Crescent Reach. The GoD era quests will usually give you the ability to process drops that are specific to that expansion, which means that you have more raw material available to you as you skill up.

Getting there is easy, from the PoK, go to the Guild Lobby (you don't need to be in a guild to go there), and find the Magus all the way at the back. Hail Magus Alaria, and select the response to send you to Nedaria's Landing. From there, hail Magus Wenla and select "Abysmal Sea".

When they give you the materials to make the component, you only have to use the "experiment" mode until you get a successful combination of the recipe. Then close the bag, and re-open it in the normal recipe listing mode, and type the name of what you just made into the search box, or part of it, like "simple". Then select the item they want you to make, ensure that the Make All checkbox is selected, and hit the Combine button. If you select the recipe that you're making and hit the "Add" button, it'll save it for the next time you open that window. When you don't want to see it anymore, select it and hit "Remove".

If you're on a normal server, and approaching Smithing or Tailoring for the first time, hoping to make armor and getting confused by the "Templates", there's a couple things to know:


 * Some templates are just for training, and can be vendored after you make them. If you look at the item on EQTrader.com and it says that it's not used in any recipes, that's probably just the way it is.
 * You don't have to do a quest to get the materials to make cultural armor, you can buy the pieces from the vendor.
 * After combining the template with the materials to make the racial armor, and slotting it with the appropriate deity aug, the completed pieces are pretty mediocre compared to equipment available via drop or quest up until at least level 75+
 * There are still some utility items that bring value to Smithing at the lower levels, as it's heavily involved in making tools for other skills
 * Tailoring can still make useful weight reduction bags at the lower levels. Starting with the Hand Made Backpack and moving up from there.  If you go pick up The Articles on Holding you can add all of the bag recipes to your list of known recipes without having to experiment.

Starting tradeskills
If you have a skill below 54, several NPCs will give you free materials and quests to get your skill up to 54. The EQ Traders Complete Tradeskill Guide links above have more information on this.

Tradeskill trophies
A series of quests will award you a trophy for each trade skill. The trophy will give you an increased bonus to your skill and the ability to summon an unlimited number of weight reducing temporary bags.

Once you reach 50 in a tradeskill you can get a trophy for that skill. It is recommended that you do so at that time, as the trophy quests get harder at higher skill levels and it is a good idea to have your trophy as you skill up so the trophy also improves.

Combines with a trivial of more than 100 points over your current skill will not count toward trophy evolution. For the purposes of evolving the tradeskill trophies, all combines with a trivial of higher then 350 are considered as 350.

Once a trophy has reached level 6/7 (six of seven), you must have at least 300 (unmodified) skill to increase it any more.

Event Coordinator Baublie Diggs in West Freeport gives out the quests.

Leveling
From a Trophy maxing thread on the Daybreak forum: Back when the trophies were introduced in the PoR expansion, all of the trophies were looked at as to how many combines were required to evolve the trophy. It was different based on the skill and at the time it was set up so the skills with more easily obtainable recipes in the 300+ range required more combines.


 * The trophy must be equipped to gain experience.
 * Trophies only gain experience on a successful combine.
 * Trophies (below level 5/7) do not gain experience on combines more than 100 points above your raw skill.
 * The experience gained on a success is equal to the trivial of the combine up to 350. All 350+ combines give only 350 experience. Therefore, your trophy would evolve faster making 350 trivial combines than 301 but even at 301, it would eventually get there.

Experience Needed:

Baking - 350,000 (1000 350+ successes)

Brewing - 350,000 (1000 350+ successes)

Jewelcraft - 350,000 (1000 350+ successes)

Pottery - 350,000 (1000 350+ successes)

Smithing - 262,500 (750 350+ successes)

Tinkering - 262,500 (750 350+ successes)

Alchemy - 262,500 (750 350+ successes)

Poison Making - 262,500 (750 350+ successes)

Tailoring - 157,500 (450 350+ successes)

Fletching - 157,500 (450 350+ successes)

Research - 157,500 (450 350+ successes)

Tatanka on leveling trophies
The basic: Get the trophy quest early (once you hit 50), since the quest combines are much easier (clarification: the mats you must gather are easier to get), and you get the trophy quickly. Then, once you have it, just keep using it as you go, and it will evolve. There's really not much more to it.

If you wait, and get the trophy quest later, the trophy still starts out at level 1, but you get a certificate to evolve it up to the level your skill is at (more specifically, corresponding to the quest you did).

The trophy can't get ahead of itself. Each level corresponds to a 50 point spread in the skill. So once a level one trophy evolve to level 2, if you haven't hit skill level 101 yet, it stops evolving until you do. So you can see, your trophy can't get to level 6 til you've hit a skill of 250, and it can't go past level 6 til you hit skill 300.

If you get behind, then the trophy levels a bit faster til it catches up.

To get to level 7, you have to make combines with trivials higher than 300. There's a chart in the guide on EQTraders (in the forums) showing how many successes it takes to gain 1% on the trophy for each skill. Unlike general skillups (you can get a TS skillup on both successes and failures), trophies only evolve on successes.

Here's where the rub comes.... some skills are a pain to get to 300, mostly due to mats being hard to gather. Most skills require 30-40 combines per skillup once you hit 250, so that's a LOT of mats needed. One way around that is to use a Drought of the Craftsman on combines likely to fail, since you CAN get skillups on failures. Since you want to MINIMIZE the likelihood of a success, you probably don't want to use your trophy. So, in those cases, your trophy won't be level 6 once you hit 300, and you'll have to do some catching up before it can start evolving to level 7.

Two more helpful points: Getting a trophy allows you to obtain a 12 slot bag. Completing the evolution allows you to get a 24 slot tradeskill-materials-only bag (not that useful in an era of extraplanar bags)

Once you trophy is fully evolved, you can put it in your house, and use it via the real estate tribute window (found using the EQ button). But to evolve it, you must wield it.

Tradeskill trophy bags
Each trophy can make temporary bags. In addition, if you turn in a temporary bag to Jolum (loc 153, -425) in The Bazaar, he will give you a token. Place the token in the proper tradeskill combiner for that skill (forge, loom, brew barrel, etc.), hit combine, and it will make a permanent no trade lore bag.

Skill bonus items
In addition to the Tradeskill trophies, there are a number of other items which also give bonuses to tradeskills. Note that you can only benefit from one bonus item at a time, if you have more than one, only the highest bonus applies. So if you have a trophy which gives a 15% bonus and an item which gives a 5% bonus, your bonuses in total are 15%.


 * Akhevan Shadow Shears
 * Fabled Akhevan Shadow Shears
 * Fabled Gauntlets of Dark Embers
 * Fisherman's Companion - Summons Brell's Fishin' Pole
 * Gauntlets of Dark Embers
 * Geerlok Alchemy Set
 * Geerlok All Purpose Baking Utensil
 * Geerlok Automated Hammer
 * Geerlok Automated Pestle
 * Geerlok Automated Quill
 * Geerlok Clockwork Contraption
 * Geerlok Fermentation Device
 * Geerlok Gem Setter
 * Geerlok Hypermodulating Tool [Baking ]
 * Geerlok Hypermodulating Tool [Blacksmithing ]
 * Geerlok Hypermodulating Tool [Brewing ]
 * Geerlok Hypermodulating Tool [Fletching ]
 * Geerlok Hypermodulating Tool [Jewelry Making ]
 * Geerlok Hypermodulating Tool [Pottery ]
 * Geerlok Hypermodulating Tool [Tailoring ]
 * Geerlok Planing Tool
 * Geerlok Sculpting Tools
 * Geerlok Sewing Contraption
 * Hammer of the Ironfrost
 * Philosopher's Stone
 * Umbracite Swarm Orb

Restock high quality ore
Most smithing supply vendors will only have a limited amount of High Quality Ore on them when they spawn. If the vendor carries them, then they will usually have a restock quest, like the examples listed below.

After you do the turn in, the vendor will respawn with their inventory back to full.


 * Restock High Quality Ore (North Kaladim)
 * Restock High Quality Ore (Plane of Knowledge)
 * Restock High Quality Ore (South Qeynos)
 * Restock High Quality Ore (The Bazaar)

However, in Crescent Reach, Smith Yahya (Blacksmithing Supplies) has an unlimited supply of high quality ore.

Underfoot and House of Thule clay armor templates
Templates are TRADEABLE and are produced through either smithing or tailoring.

Templates Required:


 * Plate Classes (WAR/CLR/PAL/SK/BRD) use Vanadium Plate Templates
 * Chain Classes (RNG/ROG/SHM/BER) use Vanadium Chain Templates
 * Silk Classes (ENC/NEC/MAG/WIZ) use Immaculate Silk Templates
 * Leather Classes (BST/DRU/MNK) use Immaculate Leather Templates

Template Combines:


 * Vanadium Plate Templates (smithing): 1 Brimstone Coal + 1 Metal Tempering Chemicals + 1 Plate Mold + 1 Smithy Hammer + 1-3 Vanadium Ore (number depends on which slot)


 * Vanadium Chain Templates (smithing): 1 Brimstone Coal + 1 Metal Tempering Chemicals + 1 Chain Mold + 1 Smithy Hammer + 1-3 Vanadium Ore (number depends on which slot)


 * Immaculate Silk Templates (tailoring): 1 Faysilk Filament + 1 Silk Curing Chemicals + 1 Silk Pattern + 1 Simple Sewing Needle + 1-3 Immaculate Silk (number depends on which slot)


 * Immaculate Leather Templates (tailoring): 1 Faysilk Filament + 1 Tanning Chemicals + 1 Leather Pattern + 1 Simple Sewing Needle + 1-3 Immaculate Animal Pelt (number depends on which slot)

Trivials and Components:


 * Wrist - trivial 488 - 1 immaculate/vanadium
 * Hands - trivial 490 - 1 immaculate/vanadium
 * Head - trivial 492 - 2 immaculate/vanadium (Silk template takes 4)
 * Arms - trivial 494 - 2 immaculate/vanadium
 * Feet - trivial 496 - 2 immaculate/vanadium
 * Legs - trivial 498 - 3 immaculate/vanadium (Silk template takes 6)
 * Chest - trivial 510 - 3 immaculate/vanadium

Underfoot cultural
Get the task for Venerable Cultural Armor symbols from the same race based npc as all the previous levels. This means going to your starting city and getting a quest from the tradeskills NPC. You can use the Find command to find them.

You will get the text: You have been assigned the task 'Venerable Impressions'. You will receive: Venerable Impression Book

Task details:

Name: Venerable Impressions

Objective Instructions:

1. Kill 40 lavakin

2. Make impressions of some of the patterns in the lavakin's skin (this requires you to do nothing other than kill the mobs while the Venerable impressions book is in your inventory).

3. Kill 20 gold golems

4. Make impressions of some of the patterns in the gold golem's silky skin.

5. ????? (should be turn in impression book)

Reward: Venerable Book of XXXXX Culture

NOTE: Make sure the Venerable impressions book in your inventory while killing the mobs to get the impressions update.

Ok, this quest results in a book used to create patterns for Venerable symbols. It doesn't not allow you to create cultural armor molds or cultural armor patterns. For that you need to do another quest that takes you to level 20 something zones.

Once you have your symbol patterns and your cultural armor molds/patterns, you still cannot make any armor or even templates to make that armor. You also cannot make the symbols yet. You have to learn the recipes before you can make the items. To do this you purchase books/scrolls in the PoK and when you read them, a "Scribe" button will be at the bottom next to the "Done" button. Scribing destroys the book/scroll so read it before you click on the button.

The books/scrolls can be purchased from the vendors in the little cubby to the left of the entrance to the library. The books/scrolls you are looking for are "Smithing Step XIV" and "Tailoring Step XIV" to scribe/learn the recipes for templates. "Smithing Venerable Symbols", "Tailoring Venerable Symbols" and if you are a gnome, "Tinkering Venerable Symbols" to scribe/learn the symbol recipes (ignore any books that have a qualifying word before Venerable such as Reaching, they are used for weapons). "Stalwart Human Cultural Tailoring", "Stalwart Iksar Cultural Smithing" and if you are a gnome, "Stalwart Gnomish Cultural Tinkering (insert appropriate race in the names) to scrube/learn Stalwart armor recipes for your race.

Please note that these books may not be available to you if your smithing/tailoring/tinkering skills are not high enough. By scribing the books you will learn the recipes to make the armor (you cannot make it via experiment mode). These recipes will become available with the search function of the appropriate tradeskill container. (I suspect the required unmodified skill to purchase these books is 300, but it might be as low as 275.)

No, none of this is new. We have had to scribe cultural recipes (and a few other recipes) since SoF.

Making cultural armor

 * EQ Traders Corner: Cultural armor guide for RoF

The armor has 3 components.

The base armor, the symbol, and the seal.


 * The base armor requires a very simple quest from the Tradeskill Quest NPC in your home town and usually involves a low level, maybe 15-20, area where you kill some trash for basic drops and turn them in for a book of cultural armor. This book is used for any level of armor and makes a set of patterns (tailoring) or molds (smithing) as needed for the armor. You can only make the armor of your race.


 * The symbol is the type 16 (previously was type 11) augment that goes into the armor. This can be crafted by anyone that has completed the quest. The Tradeskill Quest NPC in your home town will offer you several different symbol tasks to do. You do not have to do them all or in any order, but if you wish to make that level of symbol, you need the patterns from the book. These are deity specific. You will use a blessed water for your deity in the combine but anyone can make them.


 * The seal is the type 17 (previously was type 12) augment that goes into the armor. There are group versions of the seals that are crafted with pottery as well as raid versions of the seals that require a drop from the raid events. These provide the focus effects for the armor. To make the seal, you need a tinkered box, Ambleshift's Opal Automated Amalgamator (AOAA). Inside the box you combine six items:


 * Tempering Chemicals (for your armor type) - Vendor
 * Template Mold (for the armor type and slot you want) - Vendor
 * Seal (for the slot you want) - Crafted (Smithing or Tailoring or Tinkering)
 * Type 17 base aug - Raid Drop
 * Epictheick's Lubricating Goo - Crafted (Brewing)
 * Mechanoinstruction (for the focus you want) - Crafted (Research).

That is a basic overview.

Rain of Fear cultural armor is called Regal and the symbols are Numinous.

Simplification
From the March 12, 2014 patch: "New recipes for cultural armor are available! These recipes have come around through the hard work of the New Tanaan Merchant Alliance and have removed the subcombines. You can purchase the Compendiums from Culturalist Devari in the Plane of Knowledge. You can also get more information from Instructor Tenn. Please note all old recipes still currently function."

Brell's Bounty
Brell's Bounty (Allakhazam's), (EQ Traders) is an item that can be foraged, found on the ground (ground spawn), and as a drop off mobs. It is useful for making Baking and Brewing items, especially for skilling up.

Ground spawn
Brell's Bounty have a respawn of about two hours.

Here are the map file locations for 25 ground spawn locations in Brell's Rest, and 25 for The Cooling Chamber. The map label 'BB' is in medium font, and green. Some locations in The Cooling Chamber are surrounded by see invisible mobs.

Copy and paste these locs into the following map files:

brellsrest_1


 * P 64.9323, 548.3955, 22.5745, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -76.0414, 634.2207, 28.4794, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -64.5594, 484.5653, 14.9048, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -53.3216, 492.9665, 11.9791, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P 53.8679, 630.0110, 32.5570, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P 278.4306, 55.6167, -14.3807, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P 100.3512, 256.5309, 4.8028, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -40.4274, 64.0777, -18.8932, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -47.8672, 203.7647, -4.1757, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -549.3992, 761.5508, 69.2046, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -421.5904, 679.1838, 52.7636, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -449.7793, 639.8610, 54.5745, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -531.5728, 387.4335, 37.1311, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -708.7087, 170.7173, 30.7383, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -808.7653, 81.0394, 24.9285, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -522.2321, 20.4209, 10.5445, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -517.2347, 139.2946, 10.2502, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -279.4819, 127.0416, -10.4464, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -216.7332, 251.6314, -5.4917, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -297.1866, 310.5108, 17.7771, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -156.0864, 496.2334, 10.7769, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -271.7302, 604.5067, 36.8310, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -27.6899, 619.2203, 35.0167, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P 37.2882, 442.3088, 10.2305, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -48.4236, 268.6773, -5.8589, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB

coolingchamber_1


 * P -28.6637, 109.4100, 3.3590, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -171.5131, 755.2358, -199.2723, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -631.0417, 682.2847, -217.4920, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB_on_the_zone_line
 * P 53.8405, 530.7869, 21.4588, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P 54.7623, 464.6789, 21.7328, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -300.7108, 141.5291, 21.7516, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -355.0044, 86.0223, 21.9888, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -305.9288, 71.6020, 21.8492, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -98.1291, 222.9341, 3.3917, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P 297.1706, 230.7978, 17.9429, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P 345.2180, 214.6621, 17.9554, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P 17.2590, 88.2296, 3.3580, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -14.8950, 9.3810, 3.1313, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P 789.3209, 1107.7351, -220.3485, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P 1181.8966, 1153.7384, -219.0432, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P 1111.9714, 1200.9277, -219.0397, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P 1017.0504, 640.4473, -217.1437, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P 992.2204, 677.0522, -217.1408, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P 1009.3990, 689.3776, -217.1615, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P 5.9917, 1246.0239, -216.3913, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -26.2216, 1365.9175, -216.3718, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -62.7160, 1326.0084, -216.3182, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P 269.6851, 1030.6404, -216.1192, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -457.0983, 1074.0436, -215.7577, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB
 * P -546.1219, 723.3099, -217.6717, 0, 240, 0, 2, BB

Over 300
For a recipe to count toward the progression the following has to be true:
 * Its trivial is greater than 0 (not a no-fail recipe)
 * Its not a recipe that is automatically known
 * You must either scribe the recipe from a book or successfully create it once
 * Its not a recipe that must be known in order to create the item
 * Some combines cannot be done until the recipe is scribed, such recipes do not count for progression.
 * Its a recipe you can learn by successfully combining the items
 * Some combinations of items can be put together but don't teach you a recipe you can use, such combines do not count for progression.
 * Its a recipe that is combined in a 'standard' container type:
 * Recipes that require you to use a particular container do not count for progression; such as expendable containers or race specific forges.


 * Low level weapon quests for 350 Smithing

Tatanka's advice
To get to 300 the fastest, you repeatedly do simple/inexpensive/vendor-bought-materials combines, til they trivial, and then go to the next such recipe, til you get your skill where you want it to be. Getting to 300 has NOTHING to do with how many recipes you know. But, once you hit 300 and want to progress from there, then it depends ONLY on how many recipes you know.

So, if you're eventually going to go through the bother of all the research and gathering of mats materials all of those recipes, you may as well do them while you'll still get skillups for them. It's no more research and busy work to do it pre-300 or post-300, so unless you need to be max skill yesterday, just do it all at once.

You can use Adetia's Tradeskill Emporium to find out what recipes are needed. Then, to know what order they go in, trivial-wise, you can go to EQTraders, and there's a button under each tradeskill in the upper left which will list every recipe for each skill, with the trivial shown, and sorted by that. So you can know what order to make them in.

Now, that trivial list on EQTraders also will show combines which don't count towards the list to get you to 350. But, you will use the list from Adetia's info to know which ones to skip.

It would, however, be strongly advised not to attempt even a low trivial combine that requires a rare material until you are at least 300 with max evolved trophy. Once it's 95% chance of success, there's no point in putting it off, other than to just skip all expensive/rare-material combines. You can get to 350 in a skill without making every single last recipe for that tradeskill.

You can use the calculator page at EQTraders to see what the expected success rate will be for any combine.

OK, upon further review, at lower skill levels, combines near but just slightly above your skill level still have a 30-40% chance to fail.

Of course, if you just want to get your skill up ASAP, then just use the guides to get to 250 the easiest way possible, buy your seals, do Eron's quest and Grimel's quest, and get the your skills up.

Probability of success
In a Daybreak forum thread, Ngreth, EQ Developer, posted code from EQ Traders for working out the success rate of a combine.

When asked to verify if the code is correct for calculating success, he replied: A dev 10 years ago said it was correct
 * 1) 2 Nope :) It is what is on EQTC.

(I'm not aware of any changes to the success chance in those 10 years)