Strategy - Master Brew King (1 Viewer)

[Gooberish]

So you always wanted to work at Sam Adams?

Here is your guide to the mastery of the most noble of Everquest skills: making of the ale.

Before you start, two snippets of advice. First, get your tradeskilling statistic to maximum. For brewing, that would be either WIS or INT. Second, don't drink any of your frosty brew until after you are done skilling. While Alcohol Tolerance has a semi-useful role in Everquest (see Uqua or Berserker 1.0 Epic) when you start consuming your tasty beverages, your WIS and INT will go down, thus negating your skill up percentage.

The first stop on your beer kingship is ye olde PoK and a particular gnome named Caden Zharik. Here you will find all the fishing grubs to your heart's content. Thus being able to make the troll essence: Fetid Essence.

122 Trivial: Fetid Essence
Water Flask
Fishing Grubs

Now this item is very cheap, 3 copper for the grubs! But at zero skill, you will have to try the combine a few times before you get to a success and are able to remember the recipe. I think this small amount of work saves massive time in the long run since you don't have to run around to 17 different vendors finding the materials to change recipes every 11 trivial steps. This combine can also be done in Crescent Reach, Abysmal Sea or East Free Port, but I am fond of the atmosphere in PoK.

I highly suggest that after you reach 50 skill but before you reach 100, you take a ride out to West Freeport and get your brewing trophy task from Event Coordinator Baublie Diggs (PoR Expansion required). As you skill up, your trophy will evolve and give you a greater tradeskill modifier which means more successes later on when components before more difficult to get. An alternate to this is a brewing geerlok (made by tinkers). This actually might be a good investment until your trophy is evolved to the 5% level when it becomes obsolete.

We continue on:

135 Trivial: Ol'Tujim's Fierce Brew
Barley
Cask
Hops
Malt
Yeast

All item sold near PoK brew barrel.

188 Trivial: Faydwer Shaker
Cask
Dwarven Ale
Elven Wine
Gnomish Spirits
Mead

Because neither Dwarven Ale, nor Elven wine is sold in PoK, it might be a good time to head to Absymal Sea (or start there from the get go.) The only drawback to AS, is that you must have your LDoN stone or it is a very long run. Also, AS can be a bit confusing at first, but the find feature is your friend.

248 Trivial: Minotaur Hero's Brew (note the oddball stack sizes)
Cask
Malt(3)
Short Beer(2)
Water Flask(2)
Yeast

These can be made in PoK or Abysmal Sea with ease. And here ends your vendor purchasable skill route.

If you were an alchemist and used the foraging method, you can then use your "Steaming Water" from your broodlands forage to make Miner's Mud.

255 Trivial: Miner's Mud

Chocolate (AS or CR)
Generic Coffee Beans (CR or Thurg)
Steaming Water (foraged in DoN zones, a rare drop as well)

This item is a nice upgrade to the Kaladim Constitutional as a permanent stat drink with the resists, but in this day and age, there are nicer drinks to come.

And to take you home, the good old KC.

330 Trivial: Kaladim Constitutional
A Strange Dark Fungus (Kaladim Groundspawn)
Bottle
Celestial Essence (no fail combine made in mixing bowl, components in PoK)
Cork
Corking Device (tinkered item, you only need one)
Fermented Yarrow
Soda Water
Underfoot Mushroom (Kaladim Groundspawn)

The KC requires significant time in Kaladim gathering mushrooms and fungi. There is a script out there, but I did mine by hand by just having my wizard bound there. Anytime I died, or if I was porting around, I would just gate, pick up the bounty of groundspawns, and overtime I amassed great quantities of them. The KC is an excellent drink since it lasts 120 minutes. If you take it one step further and make the Twice Brewed KC, it will last 240 (but become no drop since it is a quest item for the PoP TS Earring.)

Once you have your skill, besides the Miner's Mud and KC's, there are some lovely stat drinks you can make:

Juice of Quellious (Trivial 280) This requires several foraged fruits and an enchanter made mana vial, but also each combine yields 5.
STR: +5 DEX: +5 STA: +5 CHA: +5 WIS: +5 INT: +5
AGI: +5 HP: +25 MANA: +25 Endurance: +25

The new fabulous Nostrum line:

Ranthock Nostrum (requires Ranthok Roots foraged in Loping Plains)
STR: +10 DEX: +5 STA: +5 CHA: +5 WIS: +5 INT: +5
AGI: +5 HP: +25 MANA: +25 Endurance: +25
SV FIRE: +10 SV DISEASE: +10 SV COLD: +10 SV MAGIC: +10
SV POISON: +10

Shade Fungus Nostrum (requires Shade Fungus foraged in Hills of Shade)
STR: +5 DEX: +5 STA: +10 CHA: +5 WIS: +5 INT: +5
AGI: +5 HP: +25 MANA: +25 Endurance: +25
SV FIRE: +10 SV DISEASE: +10 SV COLD: +10 SV MAGIC: +10
SV POISON: +10 SV CORRUPTION: +2

Raediva Nostrum Trivial 160 (requires fine bone chips, dropped in TSS zones, currently the attack does not work in game, known bug)
STR: +5 DEX: +5 STA: +5 CHA: +5 WIS: +5 INT: +5
AGI: +5 HP: +25 MANA: +25 Endurance: +25
SV FIRE: +10 SV DISEASE: +10 SV COLD: +10 SV MAGIC: +10
SV POISON: +10
Attack: +10

Oriaas Nostrum Trivial 160 (requires two non buyable items, Gargoyle Eye that are dropped off Gargoyles in many places and Permafrost Crystals which are both a drop and a ground spawn in... Permafrost. The ac currently does not work in game, yay Sony.)
AC: 10
STR: +5 DEX: +5 STA: +5 CHA: +5 WIS: +5 INT: +5
AGI: +5 HP: +25 MANA: +25 Endurance: +25
SV FIRE: +10 SV DISEASE: +10 SV COLD: +10 SV MAGIC: +10
SV POISON: +10


Now, you may get to drinking!

 

[Gooberish]

Marbury wrote:

I like your way, but if you just want to go to the Abysmal Sea and grab a few items from two different vendors I think it is, you should be able to get your brewing to 248 easily for under a 100 plat. I think your way would be useful for the lower levels, but after that use Minotaur's Hero Brew and you can go up to 248. After that, grab some fungus from Kaladim and make Kaladim Constitutional's until skill cap.

That's all I did, I did Hero Brew from 1-248.

This is very true. The advantage to starting in PoK with the Fetid Essences is that you will be able to jump over to Freeport and get your Brewing task immediately instead of having to come back from Abysmal Sea.

However, starting with Minotaur brews at 0 skill will give you a poor chance at actually making a complete combine and learning the recipe. Additionally, all those components for the mid tier items are on the same vendors, so you can have more combines/components in your bags than you could for the Minos to start with. Less work overall.

 

[Gooberish]

Actually, after running the numbers, it appears that the Fetid Essence and the Mino's have the same chance of success at zero skill: 5%. So that isn't a factor. The factor that will still remain is the ease of combining only two components versus nine. That's a lot more clicking if you are going to have to manually add those components into the brew barrel until you learn the recipe.