Tradeskill for shaman?
 

What would be the most beneficial tradeskill for a leveling shaman? I do not have much dinero, so some are off the scale. Would leather working be useful? I know I can wear mail, so that might be a pointless endeavor. Are there any that are better if it is pointless?

If race matters I rolled Ogre.

Get 25+ and start Alchemy

Alchemy is an obvious choice. It's a long road, but it'll pay itself off. Lots of higher level characters use potions all the time.

I'm leveling a wizard and decided to carry a Spit on me, so I can bake as I go. It's fun to loot animal meat and make a snack out of it. The same can be said for tailoring - tailor as you adventure. This is very level-dependent, though. Pretty soon, you're not killing animals anymore.

ok well i will get to 25 and do alchemy... thanks for the tips :)

iirc; I think it's level capped so u may have to level up pretty high to get it up there

To be brutally honest, the correct answer is to not do tradeskills while leveling up at all :-) All tradeskills are plat-sinks, and you can make plat MUCH faster at higher levels than you can at lower levels.

In other words, if you:

1. spend 100 hours earning plat for tradeskills
2. level to 45

You will have significantly less plat (and as a result, lower tradeskills) than if you do:

1. level to 45
2. spend 100 hours earning plat for tradeskills

Now, that being said, tradeskills are fun and you just might not want to wait (even if waiting is more efficient). In that case you could do a "pays for itself" tradeskill like Alchemy, Jewlerycrafting, or Tailoring ... but they won't pay for themselves for awhile. True, you can make a little profit on SoW potions or 10-slot backpacks, but when you consider both the time to make them, and the time spent in EC trying to sell them, you wind up making very little.

The other option is to go for one of the "cheap but will never pay for itself" tradeskills, like Pottery, Brewing, or Baking. This would be my recommendation. All three are just as fun (IMHO), they all can be leveled up for comparatively little plat, and all three offer small rewards: pottery makes decent ranged slot items, baking makes stat food, and brewing makes tempers for other tradeskills.

It's also worth noting that, with Velious coming soon, you may someday want to acquire the Coldain Prayer Shawl (it gives extra mana regen which, even with Cannabalize, is nice for a Shaman to have). To get that shawl, you need high skill in all of the tradeskills except blacksmithing. If you level up pottery/baking/brewing now, you'll be making progress towards someday getting the shawl.

^^^ Good advice, but I don't think it's necessarily correct. After starting from scratch on this server, I decided to take up tailoring, as I had 0 money to buy armor or anything else. I was able to make armor from the things I looted, as well as collect pelts along the way. A quick tour of FoB got me enough spider/spiderling silks to level up high enough to make raw/cured silk armor to sell. After that I started making backpacks when and where available. Mind you out of the 100 or so backpacks I've made and sold, I probably collected 10 or less of the HQ pelts myself. Anytime I'm in EC or passing through any zone at all, I through up my auction ad that says I'm buying them. After enough consistent buying, I now have a group of regular people seeking me out anytime they get one themselves. Through the sale of backpacks/bearskin potion bags/shadowsilk/and raw/cured silk armor, I've fully decked out my druid with everything I need and have around 4-5k in the bank. I realize this is peanuts to many, but not bad for someone with only one character. All that being said, I can attribute the majority of my success thus far to tailoring, and would definitely recommend it to anyone starting out. Sure its slow, and helps if you have some capital built up, but it's a very practical skill, and one that with not too much effort, can be very profitable.

Send me a tell in game if you have any questions!

While tradeskills are largely plat sinks, consider that Velious is coming and that a lot of tradeskill caps (particularly with blacksmithing) will be altered. If you're considering doing the Coldain Prayer Shawl quests, getting the tradeskill leveling done now as opposed to after velious would be a good plan.

I would reccomend maybe doing a bit of smithing, as I ecall the mid levels shaman quest items require banded armor, and this might help? plus banded only requires a skil of 150 or so max and can net you 1 pp per ac.. 2pp for large banded. I literally saved up 5k this way and was able to buy Noctivagant Blade for my first character on blue

I always like getting my Pottery skills up for the Thurgadin gate potions in Velious.