Tailoring 101

or
So You Want That Prayer Shawl, Huh?

Lots of folks would like to do the Thurgadin Prayer Shawl Quest, which needs a very high Tailoring skill. Others would like to increase their skill in Tailoring just to be able to make 10-slot Hand-Made Backpacks. Yet more would like to be able to tailor cultural items or make Wu's Fighting armor. I'm not, however, going to get into Velious Tailoring or Cultural items for the purposes of this guide, which covers a method for getting your Tailoring skill as high as you can without ever having to leave the Old World, or even Antonica. If you need to find a merchant from which to buy those components that are purchaseable, check EQ Traders Corner's Trade Supplies section. One of the reasons Tailoring is such a hard skill to advance, however, is because the silks, threads and various pelts & skins used in Tailoring must all either be looted from kills or bought from other players who have done so. Finding them for sale on merchants is a hit-or-miss proposition.

Tailoring Skill Progression

Whatever the reason, you want to know how to increase your skill in Tailoring. Using only Old World ingredients, from mostly stackable materiel, here's what I suggest:

To get to:
	Skill 21	Train at your guild using your practice points
		If using practice points is not an option:
			Silk Swatches - combine 2 Spider Silks until skill 16 (strongly recommended)
			Silk Thread - combine 2 Spiderling Silks until skill 16
			Silk Bandages - combine 2 Silk Threads until skill 21
	Skill 26	Patchwork/Tattered armor - combine any Ruined Bear/Cat/Wolf skin and an armor pattern (recommended)
		Silk Cords - combine 3 Silk Threads
	Skill 82	Make Cured Silk Veils by combining 1 Silk Swatch, 1 Heady Kiola and a Mask Pattern
	Skill 128	Wu's Fighting Sashes or Gorgets from 1 Silk Swatch, 4 Heady Kiolas, 1 Vial of Viscous Mana and either a Belt Pattern or a Gorget Pattern
	Skill 135	Wu's Fighting Bracers or Veils, 1 Silk Swatch, 4 Heady Kiolas, 1 Vial of Viscous Mana and either a Wristband Pattern or a Mask Pattern
	Skill 144	Wu's Fighting Mantle, made with 1 Silk Swatch, 4 Heady Kiolas, 1 Vial of Viscous Mana and a Shoulderpad Pattern
	Skill 151	Wu's Fighting Sleeves, from 2 Silk Swatches, 4 Heady Kiolas, 1 Vial of Viscous Mana and the Sleeves Pattern
	Skill 158	Wu's Fighting Shirt, from 3 Silk Swatches, 4 Heady Kiolas, 1 Vial of Viscous Mana and the Tunic Pattern

You can make Studded Leather Masks in-between Raw Silk and Cured Silk to get to skill 56, but that requires you have some Smithing skill to make the Studs, and you'll have to find Medium Quality Bear/Cat/Wolf skins. It's the skins that are the real problem, and would entail a great deal of hunting. The recipe is 1 Stud, a Medium Quality Bear/Cat/Wolf skin and a Mask Pattern.

Along the same lines, you can make Reinforced Leather Wristbands to get to skill 108 and ease that gap between Cured Silk and Wu's Fighting armor. That takes 1 Steel Boning (also made with the Smithing skill), a High Quality Bear/Cat/Wolf skin and a Wristband Pattern. (It would be insane, though, to make it with the bear skin, since the High Quality Bear skin is used for 10-slot Hand-Made Backpacks.) Then, if you really want to, you can make Quivers from a High Quality Cat skin and a Quiver Pattern to get to skill 115. That's a little annoying because they're containers, and you have to hunt down the HQ cat skins.

Don't let the naming inconsistencies between skin and pelt throw you off. As long as it says High Quality Cat, Low Quality Wolf, Medium Quality Bear or any variation between those, you can use it. Other named skins are used for other things, usually quests.

There's also a way to get to skill making Crystalline Silk Armor, a Velious recipe. It requires Crystalline Silk Swatches, made from two Crystalline Silks off of various Velious spiders. At the time of this writing, the trivial levels were in flux. It used to get you to skill 131 by making the shirts. If you're able to hunt in Velious and wish to pursue making this armor, check around for information on it.

Other Skills' Products in Tailoring

Brewing

I recommend getting your Brewing up a little way by making things with all store-bought ingredients.

To get to:		Make:
	Skill 31	Short Beer out of Barley, Hops, Malt and a Cask
	Skill 42	Mead out of Yeast, Hops, Malt and a Cask
	Skill 62	Fish Wine out of a Fresh Fish, Grapes and a Bottle

Just make Fish Wine, if you don't care about burning platinum. All the ingredients stack. Once that's trivial, you won't fail as often making Heady Kiolas (from 2 Packets of Kiola Sap, 1 Water and 1 Bottle, trivial at skill 46), which are needed for all of the Wu's armor, and a few other Tailored items.

Smithing

In order to make either Studs or Steel Boning, you'll need some Smithing skill. I suggest going to skill 51 so that when you make Studs and/or Steel Bonings, you won't fail as often.

To get to:
	Skill 21	Metal Bits, which you'll need anyway, are made from 2 Small Pieces of Ore and Water
	Skill 41	Studs	Metal Bits, Water and a File yields 2 Studs � stackable, and the File is returned
		Steel Boning	Small Brick of Ore, Water and a File � stackable, and the File is returned
	Skill 51	Toolboxes	Metal Bits and Water — 8 slot containers that hold giant-sized items. They're good for the bank box slots that aren't taken up by trade skill containers or 10 slot containers of whatever variety.

There are two other Smithed items you'll need in the course of working on Tailoring:

	File	Metal Bits, Water and a File Mold, it's trivial at skill 21. Used to make Studs and Steel Boning.
	Skinning Knife	Small Brick of Ore, Water, a Dagger Blade Mold and a Hilt Mold, trivial at skill 41. Combine it in a Sewing Kit with a High, Medium or Low Quality skin/pelt to make the skin/pelt one lower quality grade (Low Quality goes to Ruined).

Enchanter-made Items

For the purposes of this guide, the only Enchanter-made item you'd be concerned about is the Vial of Viscous Mana. It's created when an Enchanter casts the 12th level spell Thicken Mana, which requires a Poison Vial and a Pearl as its spell components. The Thicken Mana spell and all the others in that line are only available from the brownie merchants in their small walled town in the Lesser Faydark. Poison Vials can be bought from a few poison-making supplies merchants scattered across Norrath, or made via the Pottery skill (combine a Small Block of Clay, Water, a Vial Sketch and an animal skin [zombie skin is lightweight and stacks] in the Pottery Wheel, then fire in the Kiln with a High Quality Firing Sheet). Pearls are used in Jewlecrafting and as spell components for several spells, so can be bought on many merchants. Advanced Velious Tailoring requires using higher-level versions of this item.

If you need to know where to buy the things that can be bought, check out EQ Traders Corner's Trade Supplies section.