Skill values

[kalan60]

Realistically speaking, how high do you have to get sewing/smithing/carpentry/cooking? I'd imagine eventually you'd exceed the quality on almost every resource, wouldn't you? Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm still pretty new. xD

[MagicManICT]

You want them just high enough so that you don't softcap what you're making. Of course, you can usually raise your skills a bit higher to make up for a lack in a related attribute, so if you have really poor dex, you can increase your sewing more so that the sqrt (dex * sewing) comes out a bit better. Take note that this is the geometric mean, so that you have to dump too many LP into sewing to significantly increase the softcap. In a few cases, it can be a bit harder to increase the related attributes beyond a certain point, and so skill pumping might be your only choice. (Namely Psy for silk crafting. If I recall right it becomes difficult to get up past 80-100 even with using feasting bonuses, black pepper, and high quality hemp buds. Compare to Dex for sewing, Per for cooking, and Str for smithing, which are all easy to raise to 150-200+.)

[_Gunnar]

Realistically speaking, how high do you have to get sewing/smithing/carpentry/cooking? I'd imagine eventually you'd exceed the quality on almost every resource, wouldn't you? Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm still pretty new. xD

Carpentry I see no reason to increase it past about 200, or in fact a bit less if you don't have great resources.

Smithing you really need barely any, since with forges and, say, 250str you should have about enough for most purposes. You could put 50-100 points in here, since sometimes you may want to wear other jewelry while forging certain large axes/shiny helmets . This world I am putting 100 points on my alt, since her strength is quite pathetic. [normally smithing is sqrt(str*smithing), making wrought may be an exception where you need pure smithing not to softcap it - if so you could put a bit more into smithing - but I'm sorry I can't remember ]

Cooking I just put 100 in on my main, but I guess more would be good for some purposes - I think most recipes use sqrt(cooking*per) [eg sausages, doughs, rennet, maybe others], so if you are raising per (which is pretty easy) you don't need that much.

Sewing recipes are normally sqrt(sewing*dex), and you probably want that number to be about 200 eventually. Like Magic said dex is pretty easy, but I am planning to put 200 sewing on my alt (if i ever can be bothered to put curios on her, i hate using alts :p)

edit: it should be said that you should not worry about getting there really quickly if you are just starting out; just make sure you don't softcap the stuff you are working with as a first step