[imported_mpfplush]

First off, you can make daggers with any ingot, so locking skill at 34.9 was a silly idea. Good job investigating that

Actually, I don't think locking it was a silly idea at all... sure, at 90, you can "mine up a storm" as you put it, but you can't smith most of the ingots you're mining until you reach the appropriate skill in smithing. so the time spent repeatedly mining and banking ores useless to you at that stage in development, is better spent mining up iron you can use to raise your smith.

That's my take on it, anyway.

Also, the reason I chose blacksmithing as an example, is because along with perhaps carpentry and bowcraft, it's one of the few skills that happens to turn a decent profit at non gm level, assuming you don't plan to adventure at first. I tried inscription, and the completed scrolls don't cover HALF the cost required to buy the ingredients, unless you sell them to players, which isn't a guaranteed purchase when you need it. Same thing with Alchemy. With mining skill, a starting character can always sell the ingots to vendors for a profit, and a fletcher can make bows that sell.

Most skills cost more to raise, than they return. So there's the reason for choosing mining / blacksmithy.

Also, while WE are all well aware of how great the times we had on the old IN server in the old days, your standard newbie tends to have no idea how great this server really could be with a little participation, or the good times about to be had, so he tries to smith for a few hours, sees the slow rates, and runs off to find another shard.

It's unfortunate, but it does seem to be a fact.