Tradeskills - is this normal?
 

I'm working on tailoring. At this point my only options are variations of one type of armor. I know it's a steep hill to climb. It can cost a lot, ingredients are time consuming to gather etc. but I'm wondering if it's normal to make 20 attempts and not get a single skill point.

The last 3 skill points required a total of 35 tries. If it's perfectly normal, I'll suck it up and /or slit my wrists but just making sure there isn't some problem.

Any tips on how to raise chances of gaining skill points are very welcome.

It's normal. I can't remember who posted it but I read something a few years back where someone tried over 250 combines for a single skill up.

More Int/Wisdom.

Also trade skills (and really anything involving the RNG) are evil.

Tradeskills are a plat sink, don't do them if your goal is high skill and don't have 20-40k plat.
As mentioned above get as much int or wis as possible. Str works for blacksmithing I believe.

Find an enchanter to buff your int/wis. your goal is 255 stat. I actually keep gear in my bank for tradeskill training that has high wis or int but I wouldn't use it combat.

Aside from INT/WIS working for trade skills, STR works for blacksmithing and I thought DEX worked for fletching and tailoring. A trades master could verify or confirm to be sure though.

In my experience most crafters reached high skill fastest when they had a guild that fed them mats.

Gathering all the mats yourself will take a vast amount of time and resources, setting you back thousands of plats and hours on top of hours farming them.

JC aside, just be prepared for carpal tunnel on the combines...took me ages to go from 245-250 on my red enchanter.

Thanks, buds.

Tradeskills?
 

Let me follow up with a question. At the higher levels, are there better skill up chances with different combines? Example Arctic Wyvern vs. Cobalt Drake? Assuming the same trivial value. Or is it same skill up % regardless of rcecipe, at the mercy of the RNG?

Thanks.

I think its based on the trivial level and char skill level only.

There is an equation in the wiki (Wiki:tradeskills) but I think its just a guess.

I did grandmaster level several times and near the top end I was happy with the rare 1-in-20 skill up.

Same skill up % regardless of recipe or trivial. It doesn't matter if you're crafting the most expensive 300 trivial item possible or a trivial 30 sock that sells for two copper: as long as the combine's trivial > your skill you have the exact same (relatively small) chance.

Literally the only thing that impacts your skill up chance is your Intelligence/Wisdom (or alternate stats like Strength for blacksmithing). If you want to increase your skill-up rate you need to shop for some tradeskill gear and/or get an Enchanter buff.