Tonight I GM'ed Bowcraft with a final board count of 58,200 boards. However, from what I learned, I think 4-7k less boards could be used to gm this skill. Simply put, once you can make the next bow, immediately start on it. 0-30 Train from NPC 30-60 (SHOWN) regular bow 60-80 (SHOWN) make Crossbow. 80-100 Make Heavy X-bow. I did the following method, 0-30 NPC train 30-70 bow 70-85 Xbow 85-gm Heavy X bow. I'll tell you why the method I used was wrong and the suggested method is better. When I was making the Crossbows, I was consistently making them without fail at an item cost of 7 board per make. The gains were very slow and i was burning through lumber at a high rate. So i switched to heavy crossbow at 85 (instead of the recommended 90 from the master guide). The gains were quicker and it was more productive gaining off the fails of the heavy X-bow. I was able to get great gains off the fails at an item cost of 5 board per fail.
Thanks for the info. I have been mulling around making a Bowcraft/Fletcher. Just wondering if it is worth it since fletching can't produce anything that can match magic weapons. Unless I am mistaken and runic fletching kits are in the works.
Just did GM fletching from 30 making next weapon as soon as I could. 28k boards got me to 85 9k got me to 92 10k got me to 96 6.5k to GM = 53.5k boards
I just GM'd using this method. Final board count of just over 53k. For those interested I sold all weapons I made and got a return of 126,275g. Considering 53k boards would cost 159k at average market price of 3g per this means you can quite easily GM Bowcraft/Fletching for under 30k. This is definitely the cheapest tradeskill I have GM'd. What is important to note with the upcoming addition of the Carpentry/Tinkering/Bowcraft combined BOD system is that this skill is definitely cheaper than tinkering (although decidedly less useful) and although the board use is very similar if not slightly more than Carpentry is that if you care enough to sell all the items you make to npc vendors Bowcraft will be significantly cheaper than Carpentry.
I've also used this method of creating a bow-crafter character. He has just past 60 so I have started him on crossbows. He is also my main income-generating character. It is slow but steady as long as you don't try to sell too many in one day.
