What is the most efficient cost/benefits way to upgrade a character?

Question

I play as a mage lvl 500+ with base ML 115 and BiS set, with some gold saved.

I know there are some chances of failure during the forging process, so the numbers might vary, but I was wondering what would be the most effective way to boost my char, if either forging helmet and weapon, or spending that money on exercise weapons during double skills weekends. If forging, what would be the sweet spot? Tier 1,2 or 3?

Comments

Hello, i think your asking many questions in one although their related please in future try to stick with just 1 question per question

Answer 1

As a Druid player myself the first thing i went to upgrade was the gnome helmet. I think the cooldown reduction is very good and since the gnome helmet is only a class 3 item it is not too expensive to do.

What I am doing is making 1 tier 2 gnome helmet with gnome helmets itself and for the 2nd helmet I will make another class 3 item to tier 3 and transfer it over. It doesnt make a big difference in price if you use gnome helmets or other items (considering you dont fail upgrades). But a tier 2 gnome helmet already makes a noticeable difference in hunts (especially places like issavi where you dont have ue for every pull normally)

Answer 2

I will say that it is quite necessary to know how much progression you have so far, several factors impact the price, let me list some of these:

1. Loyalty points (the more progression here the less gold spent on skills).
2. Skills by themselves (there is a certain point where no matter how you progress 1 single skill is much more expensive than tier 1 or tier 2 items and they provide more or less the same impact), btw with exert weapons all skills (ml, dist, melee) cost the same. 
3. The type of Forge (None of the forged items have the same impact on hunting, so I will use only Onslaught as a measure as it is the most consistent and simple to explain).
4. The price of the Forge/TC (Pretty obvious, but we must consider a base price for everything being measured in order to make appropriate data, in this case I will arbitrarily use TC at 35k, Sliver at 10k, Fusion Item cost 3kk).

Having said all that, here are some facts:

• From magic level 100 to 110 In double skill + private dummy you spend 128.52kk with 10% loyalty (5 days, 16h) 
• The same magic level and conditions but with 15% loyalty costs 121k (5days, 8h)
• In a level 1000 character (using the Guildstats.eu calculator), every skill after 100 gives +2 damage, which is barely a 0.4% damage increase.
• To get these results (0.4% damage increase) on a char with 10% loyalty and 100 ml it costs only 7kk, with forge it costs 20kk using 3kk items (lets say a cheap wand).
• On the other hand, if you have the same character with 110+ ml, it will cost pretty much the same (22k).
• Now what about lvl? a lvl 1000 gets +1 damage base every 6 lvls, so it takes 12 lvls to get the same 0.4% damage increase.

With all these data we could say

in stages of 10 after ml 100, each 1 skill point costs the same as 1 tier giving 0.4% or less damage increase (it decreases the higher the skill).

This means that from 110 to 111 you spend the same in a t1 forge as in a training weapon (with cheap items), from 120 to 121 you spend the same in a t2 forge as in a training weapon and so on from 130 to 131, but:

1. Forge progression doesn't escalate because you have to use fusion items to transfer them to your main weapon later.
2.  Forge skills don't degrade, in fact the higher the tier the higher the % increase, so a 140+ skill point might give +0.2% damage increase while a t4 forge item gives +1.47% (0.45% extra compared to t3) and they will probably cost similar.
3. Skill progression is very different at higher levels of loyalty, as it is cheaper.

Conclusion

On average, you should either buy forged items based on your skill threshold (110/120, etc.), or just start using forging at 130+ skills, where it's simply more powerful than your skills in most cases, and just as expensive.

In your very specific case the threshold should be this:

6 lvls >= tier 1 items >= 1 skills > tier 2+ items 

Where if you will buy the tier 1 items (and sell them later) they will impact equal or more than 1 skill and cost pretty much the same or less, but it's not worthy to forge items by yourself.

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Disclaimer: Beside the Skill Progression is the same disregard the vocation, huge chances are that the skill impact isn't the same (specially for paladin and their diamond arrows) but since I haven't found a reliable calculator for those I won't dive too much into this, also, even if the skill impact is different there's a huge probability that skills impact less in both paladin and knights than mages.

Sources:
Tibia Wiki: Onslaught performance, Damage formula
Guild Stats: Damage Progression
InTibia: Skill Progression