A Brief, if Old, Guide to Tailoring by Niami

(updates made 03/27/01 to mention advanced tailoring)

If you wish to make non-metal armor for yourself and others, tailoring is the skill you need to learn. Your first finished products will be patchwork armor for the non-casters, and silk swatches and raw silk armor for the pure spellcasters and monks.

While some folks have expressed an interest in learning simply to make themselves some armor, in order to develop enough skill to make yourself armor, you might as well continue working on the skill enough to pay for all those pelts and patterns you ruined in the process.

I'm not going to tell you everything there is to know about tailoring, but here's some basic information to save you a lot of mis-spent money.

For patchwork:

First, lets clear some misconceptions and confusions: a) Small sewing kits can be used to make armor for all size folks. The size of the sewing kit does NOT affect the size of the armor being made. (I've seen a lot of humans running around looking for "medium sewing kits" to no avail.) b) Somewhere along the way, the powers that be did a name change on things, so some pelts will be called pelts, others will be called "skins". As long as the other part of the description matches the pelt you need, it's the one you want. (e.g., ruined bear pelt, high quality bear skin, etc.)

The pelt or skin determines the size of the armor made. (Wolf for the wee folks, cat for the medium folks, and bear for the large folks.) Ruined pelts are for patchwork, which makes sense, since patchwork is bits and pieces, and you mangled the pelt while skinning it. Better pelts/skin, plus the large sewing kit mix with patterns and certain metal objects, to make studded leather and reinforced leather armor. Of course, these sorts of things are a lot more difficult to make, and so on, so forget about it for now. Just focus on the basics — patchwork. By the time you have mastered that, and have a tailoring skill of 26, then you can start asking around to find someone willing to teach you the tricks to the better leather armors. Until that time, you'll waste a lot of materials, and frustrate yourself unduly.

For silk armor: The first thing you're going to need is spider silk, and lots of it. Now, we're not talking of mugging spiderlings here, as their silk is too small to do any good for armor (there are tailoring uses for spiderling silk, and this guide WILL be rewritten with that information once the DenMother is back from vacation). You need the bigger spiders to pull this off: large spiders, giant spiders, carrion spiders, crag spiders, wooly spiders, etc. You can get your skill in tailoring from 0 to somewhere in the teens by just taking two pieces of spider silk and combining them in either size sewing kit. Set the resulting silk swatch aside — you're going to need lots of it. Once your sewing skill is in the teens (or sooner if you want to risk ruining more silk swatches and patterns), you combine silk swatches and patterns in the large kit to produce raw silk armor that spellcasters and monks can wear. The number of swatches you need varies with the item being made, but always, always, with any trade skill, remember that if something needs 2 or more of an item, that those items must be unstacked in your kit before you combine. Once raw silk armor is trivial for you, then you can start teaming up with a brewer to make cured silk armor, and with an enchanter to make Wu's Fighting Gauntlets for the monks (the only piece of "glowing silk" armor in the game so far), but definitely don't even think of trying to learn how to tailor on the more advanced items unless you have a lot of money you're willing to waste as you ruin things.

Studded/reinforced leather: At one point, studded and reinforced leather armor were the main tailored armor upgrade for druids. With the addition of halfling and wood elf cultural tailoring, especially the imbued versions which cover the druidic deities, this is no longer the case. While these items are good for skill increases, it's unlikely you'll find much of a market for them.

Bags and other containers: There are several containers that you can make via tailoring. Some, such as handmade (10-slot) backpacks and bearskin potion bags (for combining several single-charge alchemy potions into one multiple-charge potion) will have a market.

What's next?: There's still a LOT more you can make with tailoring from this point onwards, but it will be expensive to your pocketbook as well as eat a lot of your time. If you're looking for the "cheapest" path to mastery after cured silk, your best bet is likely to work on quivers until they go trivial at 115, and then work on the crystalline silks from Velious until skill 131. There is no cheap and easy way to grandmaster level tailoring from 131 onwards at this time. All other "advanced" tailoring from this point onwards requires serious amounts of time spent collecting components and serious amounts of cash investments... plus high failure rates. There are many nice items that can be made by highly-skilled tailors, and you may be one of the treasured few who works their way to becoming a grandmaster (200+) tailor, but please, don't say you weren't warned that it would be a difficult and expensive path. :)

The fine print: All text on this site is copyright by the respective authors. The game EverQuest is a registered trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc. This site is not meant to represent official EQ policy, and we are not responsible for errors/omissions that occur due to changes in EverQuest trade skills.