Best Way to Level Tailoring Past 158...
 

The wiki is very helpful and the traditional tailoring path to 158 is a little tedious but not too difficult.

1-15 -- Silk Swatches
15-36 -- Raw Silk Masks
36-82 -- Cured Silk Masks
82-88 -- Hand Made Backpacks
88-108 -- Reinforced Armor, Crystalline Silk Mask
108-115 -- Tailored Quivers, Crystalline Silk Cap
115-124 -- Crystalline Silk Gloves
124-131 -- Crystalline Silk Shirt
131-135 -- Wu's Fighting Wristbands
135-142 -- Wu's Fighting Cap
142-151 -- Wu's Fighting Sleeves
151-155 -- Wu's Fighting Pantaloons
155-158 -- Wu's Fighting Shirt

Once you get to 158 things get exponentially more expensive and time consuming. For a long time fleeting quivers and halfling and wood elf cultural armor were all we had. Velious brought us new recipes for Ice Burrower Armor, Reinforced Cobalt Drake, Reinforced Black Panther, Reinforced Haze Panther, Studded Arctic Wyvern, Studded Tigeraptor, Othmir Fur, Holgresh Fur, and Velium Hound Fur. Yet, each combine after 158 is still very costly.

So I ask... What is the most efficient way to raise tailoring above 158?

Cheapest: Probably rolling a halfling and doing their cultural, if you're willing to farm brute hides...

Otherwise go wood elf and doing that cultural instead :) It's costlier because you have to use mithril and morning dews for studs and boning, while for halfling cultural you use regular ore. This'll take you to 228 for either one. After that you have to do Velious stuff.

If you aren't either of those, uh...do Velious tailoring but farm everything yourself? That should keep costs down.

Edit: You can also do cultural as an Erudite, buuuuuuut...also costly.

I found fleeting quivers a real pita to find components for, whereas you can get stacks of everything you need for arctic wyvern masks (or whatever your choice combine is) relatively easy. The chance for success is terrible and the odds of skilling up are even worse, but it's really the only way.

Are you working on tailoring for your coldain shawl? It's much easier (cheaper) to take the 50% success/fail coin flip at 162 tailoring for the shawl 6 combine.

Yeah, I have like 170 tailoring on Evocar and did his shawl at 164 but wasted so many resources. I even yolo'ed some haze panther combines haha. I was trying to see if there is an easier way.

Mefdinkins is at 158 and working on shawl 6 now.

If I were going past 158 I'd probably murder Othmir and skill up on their hats. Probably the cheapest way (counting time to farm as a resource), no?

Yep, and then sell Crusty armour on the side to cover costs.

Or sit in zone and ask someone already killing them for the fur if they have no need for it.

Othmir Fur stuff will be cheapest if you farm the furs. Arctic Wyvern hide is also pretty cheap (especially if you farm the velium and cobalt cods). Cobalt drake stuff is pretty easy, too, provided you can get the drake hides (there's not as many of them in CS and they have that nasty AE if you are in range)

But as others said, for the Coldain shawl, it's far easier to just risk the 6th combine at that skill (you can farm 5 of the combines worth of items in a few days).

Yeah, I guess the real issue is farming up all the other mats for combines.

I farmed up 2 stacks of 20 panther skins, but only had 3 yew leaves in that time. Maybe I should try othmir.

Another big factor is difficulty of getting Velium Bonings vs. Velium Studs... does anyone have good strats for farming these?

Crystal caverns probably has easiest drop rate of velium stuff. Velks has a good drop rate but obviously harder mobs.

Go farm more, I'll give you a stack of yew leaf tannin for every Haze Panther skin you bring me <3