Ok, .... well I wont say what is on my mind ...

I am trying to raise up Crafters on my Accounts.

Alchemy, Inscription, Tailoring
Blacksmith, Tinkering, Carpentry
Lumber Jacking, Mining, Fishing
Lock Picking

Four characters.

I have not touched Alchemy.

Inscription is at 88.9, didn't log that character on for a week, went to make a Resurrection Scroll, NO GAIN, ended up trying 3 to 4 times and NO GAIN. This is not just once but more times than I have fingers and toes to count on (no not waiting a week but 24 hours).

Tinkering, Carpentry, Lumber Jacking, Mining, Lock Picking are all in the same boat. NADA in terms of GGS. If I do them enough times I will see a skill up periodically (or as it seems more likely 2 to 3 consecutively).

Lockpicking. 95.0, GM Tinker Red Box.

Macro ran for 38 hours consecutively, NO GAIN.

Not saying what I think, no I am not going down that road ....

What is it about GGS that I am missing here?

nothing. there use to be a chart over on stratics when you would get your ggs. If I recall it correctly, your ggs is not based on hold long its been since your character was logged in, but your timer is base off how long your character is in game.

sometimes your gains get stuck for no good reason.

only thing I can suggest is try to soulstone off as many skills as possible, if you can get your total skill under 350, you should gain faster.

Lockpicking cannot be raised past 95.0 with a GM tinkered box. There are only two ways to do it. You either have to pick deep level dungeon chests to gain or you have to work the satyr trick. If you do the satyr trick, you'll gain just fine on that GM box.

Just find him in the Twisted Weald I think... Run up and punch him in the face. The run and let him chase you until he disco's you. All your skills will drop (lockpicking to around 69ish). Cast invis on yourself or run out the sparkle gate and run back in immediately. Once you break line of sight he'll stop attacking you for punching him in the face. He's a forgiving sort of goat-man-thingy. You run back to him and stay right near him and your skills will stay low as the effects of the spell remain. Then run the macro and you'll get gains like you used to. It might take awhile because if you run out of lockpicks, you'll have to come back and punch him again. Once you aren't near him for awhile the disco will wear off.

~Gaspar LeMarc

p.s. - I've heard this trick works with many other skills if you can finagle it just right, but I've only GM'ed lockpicking with my main man, the satyr. We're good buddies. Just watch out because sometimes he overreacts and provokes a changling to kill you. That's usually uncalled for and results in death.

Ok, to contrast this to my Tamer.

I can log in in the AM when I get up and go tame a Bull and get a Skill up, log off, log on approximately 10 to 11 hours later, go tame a bull and get a Skill up, Bulls are trivial 71(? 70is anyway) and I am 111.8 in taming and could subsequently tame a 100 bulls and not gain anything.

Hades, I can go to Destard and tame 2 dozen Drakes and 2 dozen Dragons and on an extremely GOOD DAY, as in I should have played the Lottery, I will get a Skill up, and Drakes req is 82.x and dragons are 93.x.

Once on a, I am feed up with this BS, I took my Dread Warhorse to the Kyrin Pass Nightmare spawn and tamed then killed 2 dozen (plus minus 5) Nightmares (skill 95.x to tame) to see if I could get an upgrade to my existing Nightmare. A Nightmare (Paragon) put an end to that spree. In all that time not a single skill up in Taming.

I am led to believe from the experiences that GGS is based on time from last skill up, regardless of time in game.

I do not mean to contradict anyone, and if it seems I am a bit ... put out, it isn't with anyone, it is more with ... no I am not going down that road ... yet.

As for Lock picking, I took the advice of others and mapped out approximately 4 dozen dungeon chests, Vesper boxes and chest etc, that were on the list of places to go. I did this for 2 freaking hours and not a single skill up. Yeah well the gold was appreciated but that was not the point of the effort.

I am going to try the Satyr Trick later on and was wondering if I could get a Guildmate to Disco the character.

Silly question, but have you made sure you aren't skill capped? I did that by accident once (had resisting spells knocked down because of protection). Make sure you click "show real"

Yes

Aside from the Incription/Tailoring character the others are less than 500 skill each. With the high being 430ish and the low being low 300's.

I made my mistake with the tamer and didn't comprehend the GGS. As I understand it, its timer length is a function of your total skill points, such that the lower the skill points the lower the Timer Value, meaning that if a particular skill is tough to nail and your going to depend on GGS then you want to exclusively work that skill, to consistently get the lowest Timer Value on the GGS.

And in one sense, how cruel and cynical on EAMythics part, making Meditation, Focus, Eval Int, SKY ROCKET to GM levels. I simply turned all those easy to raise skills down or locked to make darn sure I have the lowest possible Skill total.