Transmuting

For a categorical listing of transmuting-related articles, see Category:Transmuting.

Transmuting is a Secondary Tradeskill that allows the Artisan to break Treasured, Legendary, Mastercrafted, and Fabled items down into components which can then be used to make Adornments. Adornments can be added to other Equipment to improve them, or to add effects and abilities they did not originally possess.

Basics
When you are granted the Transmuting ability, you begin with a skill of 1. Your max skill value is your tradeskill or adventure level (whichever is highest) level x5. In order to begin raising your Transmuting skill, you must start breaking down items with the Transmute ability. (Admittedly, you can gain skill-ups by doing transmuter combines, but this requires subcomponents.)

Becoming a Transmuter
In order to become a Transmuter, one needs to already be a tradeskiller, have the Echoes of Faydwer expansion, and visit a Transmuter Trainer:


 * Tyla Maki stands on the right side of the docks in Butcherblock Mountains
 * Noora Maki and can be found in Kelethin at

What Can You Transmute?
Items that you can break down generally fall into the category of Treasured Attuneable gear. Adept 1s also work. You can also break down higher value items like Legendary, Mastercrafted, and Fabled gear. This includes Adept 3 and Master 1 spells. You cannot break down consumable items, Apprentice 4 spells (though they appear as Treasured), NO-VALUE items, ORNATE items, items without a level attached to them such as furniture, and more.

What you break down determines which subcomponent you get:

Each item that you break down will become either one, or the other, or both of the raws possible from that type of item. This can make transmuting very expensive especially in later tiers as the cost of each adornment in raw materials increases as the rarity of the adornment and the tier of the adornment go up.

Transmuting Odds
Each item rarity can transmute into two different items in three different ways; two ways are that it produces a single of the lower or higher rarity and the third way is that it produces one of each. Statistical data gathered here on EQ2i suggests a 75% chance of getting the lower rarity item and a 25% chance of getting a higher rarity item when only one item is acquired. In other words, the odds of the results from transmuting various rarities is summarized as follows:

For the purposes of this table, all mastercrafted items other than Expert spells transmute as Treasured items while Expert spells transmute as Legendary items.

The statistical data has been retained on the talk page.

Leveling
In order to increase Transmuting skill before about level 20, you must find items of level 1 to 5 and break them down using the Transmute skill. You can increase your Transmute skill up to 100 simply by breaking down items. You usually can break items 5 levels higher than your Transmuting skill divided by 5. That is, if you have a Transmute skill of 60, you can break a level 17 item (60 divided by 5 = 12 plus 5 is 17). The closer an item level is the the maximum level you can transmute, the higher your chance of getting a skill up. Because the lowest difficulty on crafting by transmutation is 25, it's impossible to level up by crafting tempers until your skill level is about 20. Once you can successfully craft a tier 1 temper, you can level your skill that way using all the components from breaking down items previously.

At skill level 100 you cannot gain skill ups by breaking items anymore, you must create adornments using the transmuting recipes from the "Enigma of Transmuting" and "Enigma of Transmuting Advanced" lines of recipes books. An easy way to have only those recipes show up in your recipe book is to set up a filter on the transmuting skill. The other adornment making recipes (the ones requiring for example Alchemy or Woodworker skill to use) do NOT offer a chance at transmuting skill-up. The fragments and powders that you get from breaking items are used in all of your adornment making recipes. You need 50 skill ups to completely advance out of a transmuting tier. You don't get a skill up on every combine. It takes a large amount of subcomponents in order to gain enough skill to scribe the next Enigma of Transmuting volume.

Making a white con Transmuting recipe offers about a 50% chance of getting a skill up. Making a grey con recipe offers a 20 to 25% (estimated) chance of getting a skill up.

The chance of getting a skill up is apparently unaffected by the rarity of the item created (treasured, legendary or fabled) or the quality of the produced item (crude, shaped, normal or pristine) but making a higher quality gives you back some of the components used in the recipe. It sometimes seems that certain recipes have a higher chance of granting a skill up, but this impression may be a statistical fluke. (Data from a statistically meaningful test would help clarify this.)

Ingredients
Tiered Ingredients

Ingredients Pricing
Ingredients pricing is of course dependent on server and day-to-day price fluctuations but some things seem to be true on most servers at most times: In early tiers, powders are the bottleneck, because early tier treasured recipes require very few fragments. Infusion are also very cheap at early tiers because people are mostly doing Treasured recipes at those levels in order to skill-up quickly.

At Tier 4 or 5 and above, the price on fragments will rocket up and the price on powders will go down. This is because higher tiers' treasured recipes require more fragments and transmuters end up with too many powders on their hands.

Prices for infusions and Mana tend to increase each tier and skyrocket at Tier 7.

As you can see, leveling Transmutation can quickly become very pricey, especially since finished products from recipes that allow skill-ups are virtually valueless. If you go the transmuter way, check prices of all kinds (treasure, legendary, adept 3, harvested rares, powder, etc) at the broker and decide what is cheaper for you (level off T1 recipes or on your current Tier). You could also go harvest and loot or create a new low level character for just that purpose.

What might or might not be helpful for skilling in T7:
 * Enchanted Azurite Capillary requires just two powders and nothing else
 * The quest Kicking the Bird out of the Nest rewards crafting books which produce tradeable non-lore legendary items, made from drops in The Nest of the Great Egg, which are as of today quite cheap on the broker compared to other T7 transmutable (legendary) gear.

Recipes
Transmuting Advanced volumes have recipes that also use Infusions and Mana, but these volumes (called Enigmas) are body drops off mobs in any zone; the level of the mob will directly determine what tier of book can drop. They cannot merely be purchased off EoF vendors. Transmuter recipe books: Essentials Enigma of Transmuting Volume 1 Enigma of Transmuting Volume 2 Enigma of Transmuting Volume 3 Enigma of Transmuting Volume 4 Enigma of Transmuting Volume 5 Enigma of Transmuting Volume 6 Enigma of Transmuting Volume 7 Enigma of Transmuting Volume 8

Advanced Enigma of Transmuting Advanced Volume 1 Enigma of Transmuting Advanced Volume 2 Enigma of Transmuting Advanced Volume 3 Enigma of Transmuting Advanced Volume 4 Enigma of Transmuting Advanced Volume 5 Enigma of Transmuting Advanced Volume 6 Enigma of Transmuting Advanced Volume 7 Enigma of Transmuting Advanced Volume 8

Skills
Transmuters receive a skill, Transmute, which allows them to break down transmutable items. Transmuters also have six counters to aid in crafting transmuter adornments. Unlike primary tradeskill classes, transmuters must buy their 6 abilities from any transmuting trainer. These abilities are:
 * Corporeal Binding
 * Corporeal Weave
 * Infusive Binding
 * Infusive Weave
 * Subastral Binding
 * Subastral Weave