Tailor Archive

Hi all. I am training up a Novice Tailor and have a couple of newbie questions. (For reference, I also have a Ranger/Creature Handler characternear to master in both professions already.)

• For standard clothing (e.g. nothing modified by BE components) do any of the resource stats have anything to do with the combine? Do we need to experiment on clothing at all?


• I don't want to grind! Can someone perhaps offer suggestions on what the more marketable items are in the lower end of the trees? I was thinking of Field Wear first, is this a popular choice?

I could conceivably grind up at least half way to Master Tailor on existing funds without selling a thing, just to be competitive with the rest of the market, but I absolutely want to avoid that if possible. I'd rather build up my shop and work on presentation, but if no one comes to buy due to the fact that they're not interested in lower end gear, I can't see going through all that effort just to have a shop void of customers.

Anyways thanks ahead of time for any response.

Razu & Razu Kanaka - Kanaka Brothers Outfitters

Stats mean nothing to the clothing ... and there is no experimentation ... it was removed since it has no effect. I make it a point to tell miners and scouts to sell me the crappy stuff that weaponsmiths and others do not want

I always recommend new tailors go up the Field Wear line first ... lots of popular items there to sell to earn money (backpacks, dusters, Heavy Reinforced Jacket, Uniform Boots, Link Steel Gloves, etc.). These items can also be sold on the bazaar (saving you the need for a vendor) until you can get better established.

Then perhaps the Casual line for the popular muscle shirts, Flex form Shirt, hotpants and light bustier.

Then do the Tailor Experimentation tree to get new colors ... no hurry on this line since everyone in the game is fixated on black, black and more black as the color for clothing.

Hope that helps

Hi there.. <grins> I'm er, going to answer your questions back-to-front here, because I'm still waking up, and the second's the easier one. *g*

I started up Field Wear first myself, and found it very rewarding in terms of sales -- the one problem with it is that, while the garments are very popular (dusters, paramilitary camo's and so on), you'll need a wearables factory (or access to one, or crates from someone else's) to make most of the very popular items from this tree. As far as I can tell, a great many tailors choose Casual first instead, for this very reason: Casual has cloaks in tier III, and the only 'rarity' they require is a bunch of hide -- no factory needed at all.

As for big sellers around the lower tiers: the various packs sell wonderfully (I did great business on tech packs for at least a fortnight before I gained some more boxes), as do uniform boots, sleeveless dresses (on our server, anyway), bangles, shorts. Thin-striped pants always seem to go, too -- heck, I'm selling at least three pairs a day of those even now. *grins*

As for experimentation -- we can't experiment any longer; they took that away from us, along with the non-functioning 'decay'. Technically, the quality of resources you use now will impact the quality of the finished garment, when decay finally is implemented.

It really depends who you are gearing your market to...If you are selling to entertainers (which the market for profit is quite large) than you want to start in Formal Wear or Casual Wear for the dresses & bustiers. If you are gearing towards those in combat or the general male population than Field Wear will make you millions on account of the dusters.

A general piece of advice is to try selling everything - the advice about packs, boots, etc. is good, but not the *only* stuff that can sell early. (And, in fact, if most novice tailors are also specializing in Field Wear, the market might be saturated, even.)

The Novice Tailor Jewelry items can be good sellers, and often seem to be overlooked. Check out the local bazaar markets sometime. You'll probably see lots of clothing available, but often little, or even *no* jewelry for sale! The market for Bangles and Large Pendants probably isn't as large as that for packs and boots, but it's not insignificant.

My advice is to look on your local bazaar and see what's NOT available for sale. If you're somewhere with a glut of tailors like Theed or Coronet this might not be as helpful, but in the smaller cities you can often find a niche for yourself. If someone's got a ton of bustiers on the bazaar then maybe go for field wear first, or if there's a lot of uniform boots then casual wear might be better in your market. Pretend you're Joe Fighter or Suzy Entertainer and think about what you'd like to be able to purchase from the lower tiers of the tailoring tree.

But as a rule, cloaks, dusters, packs and bustiers seem to always sell well. I also do amazing business with the large-pocket pants (in solid colors) and uniform boots.

If you end up having to grind, ribbed shirts and link-steel reinforced gloves are good xp producers. I, too, said I wasn't going to grind, but I've found it's a requirement to some extent, or else I'd be working toward master tailor for the next six months.

I'll second what other have said about packs.. I really funded a lot of my business early on by selling packs. I'd constantly watch the bazaar and restock in several cities at least once a day. You can also grab delivery missions to those cities to cover your shuttle tickets.

Black just about anything sells well - I've had people say they could never find black leather gloves (or work gloves), black work pants, etc. Some of my other big sellers were sleeveless dresses (black or dark red), smocks (before they were stuck in with dresses /sigh), uniform boots (black, black or black) striped pants (black w/yellow, red, or white stitching), and thin striped pants (denim blue or black w/white stripe). I'd say try different things - only put 1 of each item on the bazaar in a particular city. If something sells quickly, try putting up two next time. At novice you can make a solid black soft undershirt - those sold real well for me. Not going to help with your tailor exp, but at least will add to your bank account.

My other tip would be to keep the names straightforward so people can find stuff easily. The only item I renamed was the smock.. I called it Trenchcoat/Smock. I think that putting the color in the description helps as well.

I think new tailors have to work hard these days to find a niche - but with a little hard work I think you can definitely still be successful.

"" Ri'a Ocoli
"" Master Tailor, Kettemoor
"" Fine Attire by Ri'a is 1km north of Keren at 1190, 3770
"" .. my door is always open, stop by any time!

Thanks everyone for your replies so far. (By all means if you have more suggestions feel free to post!)

I'm looking forward to "opening up shop" so to speak, even if it's bazaar sales early on.

Take care,

Razu/Raku

I must echo what Anita has said about colours: absolutely label your items with the colours they've been made in. Most people I know simply won't even look at something if it doesn't have the colour listed.

Oh, another thing about at least adding the color to the name.. it shows that the item is tailor-made and not some really fugly NPC dropped item. :-)

"" Ri'a Ocoli
"" Master Tailor, Kettemoor
"" Fine Attire by Ri'a is 1km north of Keren at 1190, 3770
"" .. my door is always open, stop by any time!

Trying to sell items from boxes 0-2 is a struggle, that's what I found, and trying to do it that way may very well burn you out. Yes, you can sell military packs, but the market is so variable on those. One day, a large city may have none and you'll be able to sell 5 for 1k each, the next day, a couple ofnewbie artisanswill put 20travel packson the market priced at 100cr (I've even seen them for less than that) and you're completely hosed.

As far is level 0 or level 1 box stuff, I couldn't for the life of me find anything to sell from those boxes other than backpacks, so I ground up to 2-0-0-2 pretty fast, and found several items that I could sell from there (I chose casual first because, as others have said, everyone and their brother does fieldware). Also I've seen others build their skill tree like 3-4-0-0 or something like that (casual + fieldware with no tailoring) but that's gotta be rough because even at 2 and 3 in the "tailoring" area I still constantly get asked for colors I can't make (especially red... grrrrr!)

People suggesting doing formalwear first is interesting. I do have people ask me for necklaces and such fairly often (usually when they are buying other stuff though)and I always have to turn them down (don't have enough skill points to persue formal wear). I think the market for formalwear stuff might be much smaller than the others, but on the cities where I sell, no question it is an underseved market. There is no doubt that you could name your prices for those items with little or no competition (at least on the bazar).

I actually would recommend a bit of grinding *sigh* I know that sucks, but I think you're probably in for a rough ride if you try to hock too many level 0 or level 1 box tailoring wares. And most of your sales are likely to be "pity" sales until you get at least one level 2 or level 3 box.

Good luck to ya

Another suggestion... if you're going to include the color in the name of the item (which is a very good idea), make sure to add it to the end of the name. For the most part I'd strongly recommend against changing the actual name of the item or adding anything before it. If someone's looking for something specific, like Uniform Boots, they're going to scroll down to the U's to look for it, and if your boots are named "Black Uniform Boots" there's a good chance they're not going to find them.

Lots of good ideas there, however if you don't want to grinf, you need to know that just making things to sell in bazaar will give you very low exp.I got my shop pretty fast, and putting 2 to 3 items of each kind everytime I got a box on the vendor was giving me maybe 10% of the total of the box. That is a lot of items to make to get a box.