EQ Traders Corner
  


CoE: Experimentation

The tradeskill prestige ability of Experimentation can be quite impressive and/or quite frustrating. Since some of it can be tricky or confusing, and failure will destroy the item that you are working on, I decided a more in-depth look at it was called for. (If you need more information on the other tradeskill prestige abilities, check out the Tradeskill Abilities/Prestige page.

The Basics

Experimentation allows you to improve the stats that are already on a crafted (handcrafted, mastercrafted, mastercrafted fabled) gear item (armor, weapon, jewelry), and/or add a proc to it, and/or possibly add a decoration to it. (Personally, I'd only waste an experiment on a particle effect decoration if it was an appearance item where I didn't mind the risk of loss.) Failure to finish the progress bar before the durability drops down to nothing will result in the item being destroyed.

If you have 1 rank in experimentation, you may experiment on any crafted item only once. If you have 5 ranks in experimentation, you may experiment on the crafted item 5 times, but realize that each additional experiment after the first one will be increasingly more difficult to complete. Taking the full 5 ranks in experimentation increases your skill, which also makes it (slightly) easier to experiment on the item.

Experimentation uses a separate skillset. Crafting abilities, crafting potions, and crafting gear that boost progress, success rate, etc. will NOT work on experimentation. The only thing other than your own button pushing abilities and luck that will impact your experiment is how many ranks you have in the skill.

Knowing Your Options

Each time that you experiment on an item, you get to choose one single thing to experiment on. Your "effect" options are a heal proc or a damage proc (you can only have one or the other added to the item). Your stat options will include most, if not all, of the primary stats and blue stats on the item that you are experimenting on. The decoration options are the various decoration effects that you see on the various essences (nature, runes, etc., etc).

The Procs

You can put one proc on an experimented item. (You cannot stack both on the same item.) The actual stats will vary based on the level of the item being experimented upon. The below examples of the Augmented Smite and the Augmented Blessing are from level 90 handcrafted gear.

Boosting Stats

The first time that you experiment on a stat, it will give you the option to increase it by 10%, and will show in parentheses what that comes out to number-wise.

First round of experimentation on an INT/STA dagger -
Note the options all indicate 10%

If you choose to experiment on a different stat for your next experiment on the same item, you will also be able to change it by 10%. If, however, you choose to experiment on the same stat a second time, you will only be able to improve it by 5% on the second attempt. (A third attempt on the same stat will only boost it another 2.5%, a fourth would only give you another 1%, and a 5th would give 0.5%, so there are definitely diminishing returns if you try to focus on a single stat.)

The same dagger after a round each of experimentation for STA and INT -
Note the drop to 5% for another attempt on either stat

The crafting process

If you have ranks in Experimentation, you will have a second tab when you open up your recipe book for experimentation. If you don't have an experimentation tab, make sure you're using either the default crafting UI, or that you've checked for updates to your custom UI. (Stand in front of any type of crafting equipment - the experimentation process won't care which equipment you use, as long as you use something.) You will be presented with a list of all crafted gear items that are either in your bags or in your house vault, that allow for experimentation. If you wish to experiment on an item that you are already wearing, you will first need remove the item.

Once you have selected the item and chosen what you wish to do for the first experiment, you will note a green circular arrow in the bottom right corner of the experimentation window. Click it, acknowledge the warning that you run the risk of destroying the item, and be ready to click like mad ... and ignore all chat and tells for the next several minutes. :P

You will have 6 totally unique experimentation reaction arts that are on separate timers, and they have a variety of effects. Mashing all of them as fast as you can as often as power allows might not really be the way you want to go, especially since that likely means you're going to mis-key a lot of events that occur, which will destroy your durability quickly.

Start with a tier 1 handcrafted item, like a tin dagger or the like, and practice on that your first time or two. Find a reaction art rhythym that works for you, be ready to vary it as needed. I was using anywhere from two to four reaction arts a round, but four can get kind of dicey if you want to be sure to properly react to an event in the next crafting pulse.

If this talk of using reaction arts every round as buffs is total greek to you or is something that seriously stresses you out, I strongly recommend that you not select Experimentation as your prestige tree. (Remember, this is a game, it is supposed to be fun - if it isn't fun for you to do this type of crafting, then don't do it. :D)

The experimentation process is a cursor-hog. This is not one where you can change the focus to a chat window and chatter away while you're nursing along the experiment. Expect each experiment to take a couple minutes, and to require that you pay attention.

This can be a highly rewarding process, especially for higher-end crafted gear, reactant gear, advanced apprentice gear and the like. Along with those rewards, however, come the extra costs (it is time-consuming) and the extra risks. (The more you experiment on an item, the higher the chance you'll lose the durability and lose the item.) The more tired or distracted you are, the more fingerflubs you'll end up with while experimenting, which will also increase the risk of loss.

It definitely won't be a skill that everyone will enjoy. Nor will it be one that everyone will necessarily "get" how to do without blowing up their every-other experiment. Some folks, however, will find it a fun challenge and a worthwhile prestige skill to obtain.

What's In a Name?

Worried about losing track of how many experiments you have already performed on an item, and how many you have left? Experimented items get a prefix name to help you, and your customers, easily figure it out.
  • 1st experiment adds "Experimented" prefix
  • 2nd experiment changes prefix to "Prototypical"
  • 3rd experiment changes prefix to "Innovative"
  • 4th experiment changes prefix to "Ingenious"
  • 5th experiment changes prefix to "Visionary"

The Nigglies

You cannot experiment on crafted gear that has been reforged. You will have to visit the reforger, restore the item in question (remove the reforging from it), experiment on the item, then reforge the item once you have the desired number of experiments completed on the item.

If the item that you want to experiment on is to be imbued or blessed, do that first, then experiment. If you try to imbue an item that has been experimented on, you lose the results of all the experiments. (The item is not lost, it just ends up a "normal" imbued item, not a lovely experimented one with boosted stats.)

Created: 2012-11-10 12:10:25          
Last Modified By: Niami Denmother          
Last Modified on: 2012-11-25 04:14:07          

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