Before we begin, I would like to first state that by becoming a tailor, you are starting down a long, long, long road. The tailor profession is considered by many to be the hardest (but most profitable) profession in the game. In other words, the light at the end of this tunnel will be very bright, but the time it takes to get there will be very long, and the amount of Kamas that you invest … well, you probably don’t want to know.
Secondly, if you are f2p (free-to-play) and plan to stay that way, don’t even bother. You really don’t make any money as a tailor until level 40, and it’s a HUGE Kamas investment until then – much more than what a f2p can bring in. In mean, you can’t even get a tailor manual unless a p2p (pay-to-play) gets one for you – small hint there.
If you still want to become a tailor, the first thing you need to do is get your hands on a tailor manual. This can either be completed by running the Blacksmith dungeon, or buying a tailor manual from either Bonta or Brak scroll shop. Either buying the manual or getting a key to Blacksmith dungeon will cost you anywhere from 5-20kk, depending on the server. If this is a lot of Kamas for you to spend, then you’re in for a rough ride. Get ready to spend a lot of Kamas for very little progress. Secondly, you’ll need a needle and thread that can be found at (2,2) or (-31,-55) for 100 Kamas. Once you have this, you set to go.
Now that you’re a tailor, realize that you are in no position to make any Kamas yet, only to spend Kamas. What you want to do is make Piwi hats and capes over, and over, and over again. This requires:
You will make hundreds of Piwi hats and capes that are for the most part worthless. You might be able to sell one here and there, but the most efficient thing to do with them is to crush them in the mage workshops (do “shatter an item”, not “crush resources”) and sell the runes. It won’t be even close to the Kamas you put in, but it’s better than nothing. Do this until level 20.
Once you hit level 20, you can switch tactics a little. Now you will have 4 slots to craft. Great, right? Well, the thing is that for 3 or 4 slot items, your fail rate is still pretty high. However, for 2 slots, you will not fail anymore. By the way, it will say 99%, but it’s really 100% (bug, Ankama?). You can still do Piwi stuff for quicker levelling, but if you wish to start making better money, you can start making Adventurer Capes. This will require three crafts. The first item to make a Small Dark Cloak, which is:
The Magic Dark Dye is what will cost you a little bit. If you are a decent level Alchemist, you can save a little and just make them yourself by just spending the Kamas for the dyes (and level your Alchemist too!). The second to make is a Bluish Cloak, which is:
Not as expensive as the Small Dark Cloak, but it will still cost a little. You can hunt Gobballs and Larvas to cut down on this expense. Finally, take these two capes and make your Adventurer Cape.
What’s nice about this process is that it’s two 2-slot and one 3-slot craft, so it’s pretty decent experience for the tailor, and you can sell the capes for a little profit from what you spent on the materials. Pretty cool huh? Well, there’s a couple of drawbacks. First of all, you will commonly fail crafting the bluish cloaks, thereby losing the cloak and the materials for a financial loss. That’s just part of the game. Keep playing the odds – you still get experience whether you succeed or fail on a valid recipe. Secondly, there’s only a certain rate at which you can sell the capes and have them sell. I recommend putting up the capes for a tiny bit less than what the cheapest cape is on the market for each market in the game (ie. Bonta, Astrub, Brak). The only exception is if the market’s flooded and the price is way down – you’ll just have to be patient. That’s that life of a tailor – patience. Check the markets tomorrow to see if they change for the better if they’re bad today.
Overall, adventurer capes will make you a little profit, but it will be slower than just making Piwi capes. Chances are you will find yourself putting every Kama you have into Adventurer Cape materials, and then wait for the capes to sell. You can speed up the levelling process by making Piwi stuff, but you’ll lose money this way. The tradeoff of these two is up to you, but I do recommend doing a little of both at least to balance things out a little.
Once you hit level 40, now you can craft 5 slot items. Yay! You can continue to make Adventurer Capes and Piwi stuff, but I would also recommend making Gobbling Capes, which is :
The up side to this is that it’s a good money maker (better than Adventurer Capes), and you’ll get better experience than all the crafting to make Adventurer Capes (100 experience per craft for a 5 slot item). The down side is that, once again, you’ll fail regularly. The materials for the capes are expensive, so failing isn’t going to feel very good. Once again, though, just believe in the odds, and over time you will start noticing you bank account start to go up rather than down now. Of course, you’ll just invest this back in again crafty, but at least now you’ll have a feeling of self-sufficiency.
Once you hit 60, you can now make 6 slot items. For experience, it’s Turkocape time:
If you have a PP set over 200, you can drop all this stuff yourself by hunting dragoturkeys. For a Kamas cow, make Gobball Headgears:
The nice thing about Gobball Headgears is that now you have no fails, and now you can mass produce them! Remember how hard it was to get one when you were new to the game? It just makes you feel good inside, now that you’re the one making them.
Once will get you to 65, you can now become a Costumagus. You’ll probably want to take a bit of a break from tailoring and play around with maging until you feel like going at levelling the tailor again.
"you can’t even get a tailor manual unless a p2p (pay-to-play) gets one for you – small hint there"
That quote really cracked me up. If they restrict trade professions to only paying players it is NOT free to play. What you have is a trial offer. Hence Dofus is not one of the f2p games.
You can train some crafting professions to lvl 30 with f2p account.
What they say is you have to find somebody with p2p account to buy/get the tailor's manual for you.
Cool guide. There aren't much good guides in English yet. Looking forward to see new ones from you :)
For me, when a game restricts skills to paying customers, it is no longer f2p, what you are seeing is what I consider a trial offer. I understand your point that you can buy this in game from someone if you have enough cash, but my general experience is those items are far too expensive for the f2p players.
Hence the game is really not a true f2p and should not be advertised as such.