I heard gweth talk the other day about work-order ingots, so I started poking around and found that some traders sell bronze ingots that are 70 bronze/30 silver, 99 quality, and that these ingots substantially improve work order payout. This got me playing around with mining and smelting, which prompted me to wonder about a few things.

Is ingot quality capped at the purity of the metal? Even with Basic Metal Smelting through Master Metallurgy, if an ingot is only 84% pure, the quality is 84.

Any opinions on mining and smelting your own work order ingots prior to doing work orders? Is it too much work for not enough reward, etc.

Should I stick to mining silver and buying society bronze? Society bronze is 70 quality, mining gets me to about 85 quality, for the extra steps of gathering copper and tin and smelting it into bronze. I lose 20% of society bronze refining it to 99 quality, and only about 10% of my own mix. It seems like just looking for silver and loosing a little by buying and refining bronze works out better.

>>Is ingot quality capped at the purity of the metal?

Yes, the quality and purity are the same thing.


>>Any opinions on mining and smelting your own work order ingots prior to doing work orders? Is it too much work for not enough reward, etc.

>>Should I stick to mining silver and buying society bronze? Society bronze is 70 quality, mining gets me to about 85 quality, for the extra steps of gathering copper and tin and smelting it into bronze. I lose 20% of society bronze refining it to 99 quality, and only about 10% of my own mix. It seems like just looking for silver and loosing a little by buying and refining bronze works out better.

I mine the silver and buy the bronze. The money spent is negligible for a lot of time saved. You want to be putting that time into using the ingots, not making them.

I buy society bronze (and iron) and mix with mined silver (and electrum, gold, lumium, niniam, platinum) to get workorder ingots of the desired workability.

> Does purity even effect price?

Yes.

> And does it effect it enough to offset the loss of raw materials?

Maybe. But does it affect it enough to offset the time spent refining? Not in my opinion. If you're able to complete your workorders at the current quality, then you shouldn't waste time refining. Having the appropriate quality-boosting technique helps.

About how much skill do you need to start doing that, out of curiosity?

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Thayet
Follow @thayelf on Twitter for absolutely nothing of any value whatsoever!

If you have the refining tech, the value of the lost material is significantly less than the value increase due to metal purity. As stated, its a matter of the value of time.

If you are using work orders as your main source of income, its worth it to refine the largest ingot you can carry - 210 volume past a relatively low strength threshold. Of course, if work orders are your income, you're probably either an explorer or at a relatively low level.

Taking stock of its defensive abilities, and attacking with a book of apprentice carving instructions, you are certain that the dire bear is a truly skilled opponent.

>if work orders are your income, you're probably either an explorer or at a relatively low level.

Yeah, I'm with ELFVERHAN on this one. I'm bringing in hundreds of platinum every month just based on Tailoring and Blacksmith work orders. Granted, I can make as much or more than that on a single custom order from another player, I still can say that I've made most of my miniscule fortune through WO.

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You say to Tathalus, "Have you ever tried to clean a troll den? The smell sticks around for years to come."
Liev says, "That is my cue to leave."

>>How much can one make hunting high-level critters?<<

That varies with skill, if you have your lock skills up with critter level it can be very substantial. If you can only get dropped coin and gems it drops quite a bit.

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WARNING: You are carrying an extremely large number of items on your person.
Having a very high number of items can cause character corruption or

I know this is an older thread, but I wanted to express my thanks for the information here. If there is a good source of information besides the forums and Elanthipedia (very useful, but mostly mechanics information) please let me know as I've been very interested in learning more about crafting since returning to the game.

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"Give a man fire and he's warm for a day; light a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life." - Terry Pratchett
"You're Michael Jackson's hair and I'm a Pepsi commercial!" Bucky from Get Fuzzy

Thank you for the heads up! The only problem is waiting a whole week! Thanks again, everyone. I also found out about the reddit page and I'm attempting to join their chat channel.

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"Give a man fire and he's warm for a day; light a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life." - Terry Pratchett
"You're Michael Jackson's hair and I'm a Pepsi commercial!" Bucky from Get Fuzzy