Tradeskill Saga: The New Beginning

Yes, I've picked up the sewing needle of glory once again and decided to give tradeskilling another try. I started from level one in my quest to defeat the loom. Here are some things I noticed:

Harvesting is a lot less unpleasant then it was when the game was first released. Your skill goes up more quickly. Also, harvesting on Nagafen is much more interesting then on a PvE server.

At first I didn't like the way the Freeport tradeskill area was set up but now I find it much more fun then the Qeynos one if you have safe-fall.

The tradeskill quest is great. It just makes things more interesting and it lets you try out the different subclasses. I did have the following issue:

The first thing the quest asked for was White Tea. The only thing was, I had no recipe for White Tea and no idea of how to get one. I had to ask in Guild Chat like a noob and was informed that White Tea was (I think) a level 3 recipe. So I had to level up to 3 before I could get it. Very confusing. This has already been addressed on the forums (and Blackguard responded) but since it happened to me personally before I read that post, I'm echoing the concerns. Edit: Actually it sounds like a similar problem but not exactly the same one.

The quest also didn't recognize the fact that I dinged 10 before completing it. It would have been nice if it told me at that point to go select a class. It took me a while to figure out why I wasn't leveling and the NPC was hard to find. Might as well make it the tradeskill quest NPC who let's you pick your class rather then sending players to another obscure area without any guidance.

I also missed the quest when it was gone at Level 10. Some nice tradeskill quests (in addition to the writs) could keep things interesting.

I actually had a decent time until the mid-teens when the subcombines got really annoying. I'll likely be waiting for the tradeskill revamp before I continue the saga further. And wasn't there also some talk of batch combines? That would be great.

All in all, I would say tradeskilling is a good deal better then it was at release and I hope the revamp improves it even further. I'm not claiming it's fun, because it's not. But it can be slightly entertaining or at least relaxing at times.

Also, note to EQ2-Daily: If you can, edit all those tradeskill tutorial audio segments by Vaddir (sp?) into one file and have SOE link to it because it should be required listening for new players interested in tradeskilling. It's a clear, excellent guide.