As I've been a craftsman/trade person since birth, the arrival of new Apprentice skill quests was originally viewed as crafting luv'in, FINALLY! At an early age I had spec'd Cooking, Fletching and Alchy with several of the trained supporting skills like Mana Conversion Mastery and Healing. When tinkering arrived I acquired those four skills trained to better my selection of goods to those I served. Which means not much is left credit wise for useful questing skills. As MissileD is 4 less credits than MeleeD that was trained so any majors found could be tinkered from meleeD to missileD (if necessary) and then equipped to improve my crafting skills. So crafting luv'in is something of keen interest to myself.

So I traveled to the nine various cities these apprentices were dispersed too and confirmed my worse fears. It is just way too little four years too late. The apprentices will accept one item per week paying the modest sum of 5K XP to your skill and a X note. So you can recover at least the cost of purchasing the raw ingredients of making the items. But after getting all the items (stock piling several weeks would be an option but a messy one), making the items and then traveling across a good section of Dereth yields you meager 15K (total) in cooking, alchemy & fletching trade skills and nine X trade notes. I could buff up, I'm a good friend of the buff bot, and go bash a few monsters behind the mansion and get far more XP in far less time!

The masters are all in one town for a convenient one stop shopping trip. Four years ago, nine different towns may have made sense as it would have permitted greater access for all the newbie trades persons. With portal mules/bots, housing portals, portal gems abundantly available the seperation makes no sense. Far more practical would have been placing the three Sho (or Ghar or Alu) crafts persons together in one town just like the Masters.

Four years ago, 15K XP into a trade skill may have been useful to those just starting out; but, these days it doesn't help a majority of us. The next skill in cooking (fletching and alchy same situation) only requires 60,777,410 XP. At 15K XP a week that translates into 4051 weeks or 77 years from now to gain one point in each of the three skills.

Long ago I stopped bothering with the Ivory Gromnie teeth for the every same reason. Despite the fact I still travel once a week to Glendon Woods to turn in my Ash Gromnie cravings. The amount of time required to get the three ivory teeth is too much of a hassle for the 15K XP (while jade and swamp Gromnie teeth are worth more, see below, they fall into the same 'too much of a hassale to acquire for the XP returned' pitfall). The ash teeth at 25% of level are however practical.

So if you are an experienced tradesman, you can forget about getting much help from the apprentices. If you are a newbie just starting, sure it would help for a week or two but by week three I would expect that you will have become very tired of the effort. Much better to just have three or four healthy melee toons to pledge to you, as they grow you grow. As you grow you can make their weapons better and their armor stronger. As your cooking skills improve you can even dye armor. Melee's love color coordinated armor, better weapons and strong armor!

Even better would be archers. They always need concentrated oils or wrapped bundles of heads. If you make them for them, they can save the XP and four skill credits for something more productive. Just needing then fletching for making arrows in the field.

Non-Player Killer

     Allegiance Craftsman during Mumiem III's sabitical

But hey, that's just the opinion of a geriatric old fart, your views could be different so let me at least give you the full details and you can check things out and reach your own informed decision.

Some merchants, like the one in Hebian-to will sell you noodles otherwise you need flour & water + the Chicken, Fish or Mushroom.

Yaraq

Shoushi

Holtburg

Al-Arqas

Lytelthorpe

Nanto

Yanshi

Samsur

Rithwic

Inside the tent on the grassy mall in Glendon Woods is found the three masters: