I did a few tests with Blacksmithing. When you craft items, you can choose how much of the raw material to use. As you add more material, the level of the item goes up. Also, the "experience points" you get toward the skill go up. However, what I found was that the gains didn't depend on the base amount of material used.
Example: A greatsword takes a minimum of 5 bars to make. You get 48 xp for making one, and if you deconstruct it you get an additional 13, for a total of 61. (Note: I couldn't test what you got for de'ing someone elses, it is supposed to be more.)
A dagger takes a minimum of 2 bars. It gives exactly the same xp gain (48 for crafting, 13 for de-crafting).
The best result was to use the most possible bars on the cheapest possible item...if I craft a dagger with 8 bars I got a total of 228+65 = 293 points. The greatsword at max level required 11 bars for the same number of points.
So, if you aren't trading materials around, use the most material you can on the item with the cheapest base cost.
I didn't have enough cases to track the amount of material you got back on a deconstruct, but it seemed like the higher level weapons returned more.
I think...that my brain just exploded a little. :D But then it usually does when faced with math after a hard day's work. :)
Thanks for the research H; should help me out grealy when I get around to doing some Clothing. I think I'm going to focus on Clothing and Alchemy for a bit. I like the look of enchanting too...gah! I'm doomed to become the Zoi of ESO. ;P
Math is good. )
I'm currently focusing on Blacksmithing and provisioning. (An orc's gotta eat.) I may fiddle with enchanting or alchemy on an alt, to see how it works.
Oh, and rather than start another thread--the Coldharbour treasure map is not in the tutorial zone. The Stros'mkai and Betnick treasures yielded about 3 blues that were zone-level appropriate. I found a second treasure map in a chest.
swet. I'm going to have to go dig up the Stros M'kai ones then. I think we stumbled on the Betnikh one by accident...but worth a double-check. The chest was full of greens as far as I recall.
ugh. *sweet
Oh, that's helpful, I was trying to figure out how I should go about leveling my professions.
I'm doing woodworking & provisioning, as well as dabbling in enchanting, probably end up doing that on an alt due to bag contraints though (at a glance it seems complicated, but we'll see). So if anyone needs shields, bows, staves or a snack let me know :).
I've got Alts doing clothing (which is both light and medium in one trade skill!) and enchanting. I passed Lierra all my alchemy stuff, for traditions sake. ) As for provisioning, the first level recipes give about 500 IP per combine, with the next up giving 3k. Takes a lot of combines to get to 28 for the hireling.
One problem I noticed with doing armor on a second character is that I now have to find a second of each of the armor style books.
At low levels it's good to have at least one piece of each armor type to level them up and give you choices later. Let me know if you need a piece for a slot that's empty.
One bug warning: at least for blacksmithing, when you go to a forge to deconstruct items, the first thing that will be deconstructed is your helm. No matter what you selected. Take your hat off when you enter a forge, says Garg of many hats.
I did a little more number crunching. When you get to the second (and higher) level of materials, the optimum is to make the smallest thing you can make (e.g., steel daggers with only 3 bars). It appears that the only thing that matters to the ip gained is the level of the item; since you make a jump down in number of bars when you go up a tier, the highest marginal rate of return is always going to be the smallest thing you can make.
I was going to post the numbers I had (thanks to Wizzer and Lierra for help getting them)...but someone with far more time on their hands made a big spreadsheet across several professions:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuW1OwEOgSWddGlxQzNSY3hEY3ZZSlA5ajAwcHFRN3c&usp=drive_web#gid=0
The numbers follow the same pattern but are different values for provisioning and enchanting. With provisioning, the higher level recipes give thousands of ip per combine, so I'm up to level 45 or so there. Enchanting gives small gains like you see for the other crafting classes, and since there are 3 different items to be combined, it is very hard to skill it up.
Oh, and they fixed the helmet deconstruction bug.