IMPORTANT NOTE
For a categorical listing of transmuting-related articles, see Category:Transmuting.
Transmuting is a Secondary Tradeskill that allows the a player to transmute Treasured, Legendary, Mastercrafted, and Fabled items down into components which are primarily used to make Adornments. Adornments can add both triggered effects ("procs") or different stats to the equipment they adorn.
Basics
Unlike primary tradeskills where you earn experience, secondary tradeskills like Transmuting used a skill-based progression; you begin with a skill of 1 when you first become a transmuter, and your maximum skill value is your tradeskill or adventure level (whichever is highest) level x5. For transmuting, there are two ways of getting skill-ups:
- Use the Transmute ability to break down an item. This method only works until you reach level 100 in skill.
- Craft a Transmuter adornment. This method works at all skill levels and will become your only post-100 skill method of gaining skill.
- Note that adornments that are crafted with a primary tradeskill recipe do NOT provide transmuting skill-ups since they do not use the Transmuting skill.
There are 4 types of components created by transmuting that are used to make adornments. All components will be one of types, with an additional adjective in the name to describe the tier it is from:
- Fragments - The 'lowest' component, used as a secondary component in all adornment recipes.
- Powders - The medium-grade component, used as a primary component for Treasured adornments and as a secondary component for all others.
- Infusions - The upper-grade component, used as a primary component of Legendary adornments and a secondary component for Fabled adornments.
- Manas - The highest-grade component, used only as a primary component of Fabled adornments.
See "What Can You Transmute?" below for more details on which items reward which components.
Becoming a Transmuter
In order to become a Transmuter, visit a Transmuter Trainer in one of the following locations:
- Tyla Maki stands on the right side of the docks in Butcherblock Mountains
- Noora Maki and can be found in Kelethin at ( 438, 89, 236 )
Note: You must be a crafter before the Transmuter Trainer will allow you to become a transmuter as well.
What Can You Transmute?
In order for an item to be transmutable, it must meet the following conditions:
- Be of Treasured, Mastercrafted, Legendary, or Fabled quality.
- This excludes all Handcrafted items as well as equipment of uncommon or common quality.
- Although marked as Treasured, Journeyman spells can not be transmuted (because they are of the same actual rarity as Handcrafted items).
- Not be marked as NO-VALUE or ORNATE
- Not be a stackable or consumable item (i.e., not be food, ammunition, etc.)
- Have a level indicated on the item. This excludes items such as furniture.
The general rule of thumb is that it has to be a non-ORNATE item that can either be equipped or scribed that you could sell to a vendor. Typically transmuted items include:
- Adept spells
- Treasured equipment (typically of low desirability)
- Expert spells (typical in the lower tiers)
- Legendary equipment (of low desirability)
The rarity of the item you transmute determines which component(s) you can get:
| Item Type | Common Result | Uncommon Result |
|---|---|---|
| Treasured items | Fragment | Powder |
| Adept spells | Fragment | Powder |
| Mastercrafted equipment | Fragment | Powder |
| Expert spells | Powder | Infusion |
| Legendary | Powder | Infusion |
| Fabled | Infusion | Mana |
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:
| Item Rarity | Common (75% Chance) | Rare (25% Chance) |
|---|---|---|
| Treasured | Fragment | Powder |
| Legendary | Powder | Infusion |
| Fabled | Infusion | Mana |
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, which can be found from mob drops or bought on Broker. To level your transmuting skills, you should only create TREASURED items, as these only requires fragments and powders, whereas LEGENDARY and FABLED requires Infusion's and Mana's that commonly are more expensive components.
An easy way to only have relevant 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.)
Transmute Levels
| Transmuting Level | Item level you can break down. | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5 | |
| 5 | 6 | |
| 10 | 7 | |
| 15 | 8 | |
| 20 | 9 | |
| 25 | 10 | |
| 30 | 11 | |
| 35 | 12 | |
| 40 | 13 | |
| 45 | 14 | |
| 50 | 15 | |
| 55 | 16 | |
| 60 | 17 | |
| 65 | 18 | |
| 70 | 19 | |
| 75 | 20 | |
| 80 | 21 | |
| 85 | 22 | |
| 90 | 23 | |
| 95 | 24 | |
| 100 | 25 | |
| 105 | 26 | |
| 110 | 27 | |
| 115 | 28 | |
| 120 | 29 | |
| 125 | 30 | |
| 130 | 31 | |
| 135 | 32 | |
| 140 | 33 | |
| 145 | 34 | |
| 150 | 35 | |
| 155 | 36 | |
| 160 | 37 | |
| 165 | 38 | |
| 170 | 39 | |
| 175 | 40 | |
| 180 | 41 | |
| 185 | 42 | |
| 190 | 43 | |
| 195 | 44 | |
| 200 | 45 | |
| 205 | 46 | |
| 210 | 47 | |
| 215 | 48 | |
| 220 | 49 | |
| 225 | 50 | |
| 230 | 51 | |
| 235 | 52 | |
| 240 | 53 | |
| 245 | 54 | |
| 250 | 55 | |
| 255 | 56 | |
| 260 | 57 | |
| 265 | 58 | |
| 270 | 59 | |
| 275 | 60 | |
| 280 | 61 | |
| 285 | 62 | |
| 290 | 63 | |
| 295 | 64 | |
| 300 | 65 | |
| 305 | 66 | |
| 310 | 67 | |
| 315 | 68 | |
| 320 | 69 | |
| 325 | 70 | |
| 330 | 71 | |
| 335 | 72 | |
| 340 | 73 | |
| 345 | 74 | |
| 350 | 75 | |
| 355 | 76 | |
| 360 | 77 | |
| 365 | 78 | |
| 370 | 79 | |
| 375 | 80 |
Skillup Odds
| Recipe Color Con | SkillUp | Tests | Found % | SOE Official % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grey | 181 | 611 | 29.6% | 25% |
| Green | 14 | 44 | 32.0% | ? |
| Blue | 120 | 231 | 51.9% | ? |
| White | 57 | 97 | 58.8% | 50% |
| Yellow | 42 | 66 | 63.6% | ? |
Ingredients
Tiered Ingredients
| Tier | Fragment | Powder | Infusion | Mana | Icons by tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| T1 | Lapis Lazuli | Ulteran | Earth | Refined |  |
| T2 | Coral | Aether | Air | Processed | |
| T3 | Jasper | Phantom | Fire | Clarified | |
| T4 | Opal | Ethereal | Water | Purified | |
| T5 | Ruby | Spectral | Nightmares | Natural | |
| T6 | Pearl | Vision | Daydreams | Coalesced | |
| T7 | Lunar | Illusionary | Illusion | Hardened | |
| T8 | Emerald | Sacred | Reality | Crystallized | |
| T9 | Underfoot | Void | Void | Distilled | |
| T10 | Frozen | Frozen | Ice | Frozen |
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: