How "hard" or "annoying" is research?
 

The only actual caster class I played up to level 50 ish was a necromancer and that was

on blue

I never bothered with researching since it was pretty easy to farm cash on blue

but on green everything costs an arm and a leg

so I decided to do research

How bad is it?

Thanks ^^

research is a bitch, I did it for mage on blue and never again. my green mage I used whatever pet was available and powered through and saved plat until 49 and bought the fire and water pets

Using the trainer: Be ready to spend 5-6k plat to get into the 160ish range which is good enough
If skilling up the old fashioned way: Be ready to spend a lot more than your trainer, check the wiki because each caster has their own research and its all expensive.

Also while you are at it, learn which runes/words/pages from the wiki are used in Research Only stuff and put it in the in-game /note

/note is account wide for alts and stuff. might be client wide (other accounts) i dunno never tried

It's pretty tedious. There are these practice runes you can buy and skill up with so you don't have to research actual spells with words/runes/pages the entire way, but it's not exactly interesting and you get nothing out of it besides skill points. If you were to level the skill up exclusively through real research, it takes a really long time but can essentially be done for free with dropped pages. And at the end of the day, there isn't much money in research.

Personally, I've never bothered with it. The amount of hassle and time involved is just too much for the payoff. In the time it takes you to level up the skill and obtain the right words, you could probably have farmed whatever amount of money the desired spell costs in EC. The majority of researched spells are crap that you can easily do without, each class has maybe 5-10 research-only spells that actually matter.

Research is nice to have. However it's probably not worth the time/plat on any server more than a year old.

Why?

It's a skill that has depreciating value because it isn't needed for spells above 49.

So Kunark drops tons of mats and research spells become cheap to purchase even if your research skill is 0. I suggest outsourcing Research to EC.

I'd only suggest doing research if you like doing tradeskills in EQ in general.

Otherwise have that higher level Caster or higher researched skilled friend get your spells made for you for far less energy and effort.

Ive done research in my 20 years of ever quest long enough to fail the first spell atempt and go, 'you can fail this?? EFF that.'

*types macro /auc wtb research spells X X and X

Research is a time / money sink as any other trade skill

In my experience as a mage on blue, most of the time the words/ components you need will most probably drop off mobs 5-10 levels above your level.... So unless you have a main/ alt or someone to collect those for you, you'll have to rely on buying them from other players in EC or check every vendor around caster guild/ bank

Then again, you can just buy those skill points, but they're like 50-60pp per when you reach 180+ Research

Except when you're a class with research where all researchable spells are pretty useless. Except for one and that one being not tradeable and 184 triv. Wiz Life :(

As a Wiz, Research is the most annoying thing in EQ to me.

You can always link up with a decent guild as there will likely be someone who has a character with the appropriate research for what you are looking for. Some guild banks even have the spells you are looking for already. Just put in the work and make sure you are supporting your guild and they'll support you!

This tidbit is IMO the key part of this entire thread. If you want to save money farm or buy the components and have a master researcher do the combine for you. If money is no object buy the spells outright. If you have a truckload of plat with nothing to spend it on then do research.

Do tradeskills because you like to do them.

seems like its just tradeskills that are shit in eq

I can see the pain

had to take a break after getting my pottery up to 200 for some shawl XD