Sewing

Sewing is the fifth trade skill, and you train it by sewing cloth armour from the cloth humanoids drop. There are fifty patterns, one every two points of skill: every piece of the world's ten cloth sets, from the common Hedge-Witch's Garb to the rare Astral Regalia and Gravecloth Shroud. Nothing you sew is epic; that is still a dungeon hoard's alone.

You start knowing no patterns. Each one is a scroll, and it drops as an alchemy recipe does, from creatures from its home level to five levels above it: a kill rolls once for one scroll, picking from every trade skill's recipes and patterns together. The higher a pattern stands the rarer its scroll: the first drops from 0.5% of kills in the wilds, the last from 0.05%. A kill below ground drops one 2× as often, and a warden, a veteran (a zone boss or a keeper's guard) or a keeper 5×, but never more than 0.5%. Click the scroll in your pouch (K) and press Learn. A scroll you already know is not used up: sell it to a vendor or put it up at the auction house, as you can any scroll.

Each tier of cloth opens two sets. Linen Scrap sews the Hedge-Witch's and the Pilgrim's, Wool Cloth the Scholar's and Midnight's, Silk Cloth Emberweave and Frostweave, Mageweave the Tidecaller's and Briarwood, and Runecloth the two rare sets, with Felweave for the Astral and Grave Wrappings for the Gravecloth. A robe takes the most cloth and gloves the least, and past linen every piece is lined with a little of the cloth below. A pattern is at home at the level its cloth starts to drop (1, 4, 7, 10 and 13): that is the level you need to read it, and the item level of what it makes.

Every piece you sew rolls its quality: Standard, Fine, Superior or Masterwork. A Fine piece carries a fifth more of each attribute than a Standard one and sells for a fifth more, a Superior two fifths, and a Masterwork about two thirds; even the smallest piece gains at least a point at each step, and the quality is in its name. The better your sewing, the likelier a better piece. A novice sews a Fine piece 10% of the time, a master up to 60%; of those, 10% to 40% come out Superior, and of those 5% to 30% Masterwork. The Sewing frame, opened by clicking Sewing in Professions (K), shows your odds for the pattern you have chosen. Alchemy rolls its potions' quality the same way, and so does every skill that makes gear: leatherworking, armorsmithing, weaponsmithing and jewelcrafting.

What you sew goes into your bag, a cell a piece, so a full bag sews nothing. Each piece takes 2 seconds, up to 20 at a time, each training the skill, and a craft bar over your action bar shows the work; moving interrupts it, with nothing taken for the piece under way. Sewn gear is not bound until it is worn, so it sells to vendors and goes up at the auction house like anything else, and it counts toward your collection as a found piece does.

See every pattern.