reward cloth doesn't take up much space????
LOL.....
I turned in 214 BODs last night - 212 were smalls. I came back home with 2 pair of sandals, a runic (horned), a CBD, and 21k of cloth!
That's from 5 tailors (none of them under 70 skill), doing 1-3 runs per day (about 60-80 BODs a week half being cloth) and the replacement BODs that ALSO ended up as cloth (or normal leather that doesn't go to a Good reward large) from previous trips.
Once you get your tailor skill going, if you get a normal cloth BOD, it is cheaper to buy the items to fill it, than to buy the cloth. Only Bonnets, Full Aprons, Body Sash, and Surcoats can't be bought, though only about 1 in 3 tailors sell regular shirts. On top of that, most of the hats can be bought from the provisoners as well, and all the non-bone armor can be bought from an armorer.
I've accumulated 10k+ of every cloth of levels 1-3, about 6k of level 4 types each, from constantly filling cloth BODs for new BODs. That's not counting the approximately 500k reward cloth of those levels I've sold at auctions over the last 4 years (when I get up to 20k of levels 1-3, and 10k of level 4, I sell lots of 160k cloth - 10k each of all 16 types). Along the way, I try to keep numbers constant per type - so if I have 12k of the dark green level 1, and between 12.5-14k each of the other level 1s, I reduce the other 3 to 12k, dye the extra, and use the dyed cloth to fill exceptional and non-buyable bod items.
Half the BODs you get back (if not more than half - see the thread on Tailor BOD testing) are cloth, so if you keep doing these until you run out of BODs, then refilling the cloth ones, you end up getting back almost as much cloth as you put in - more if you actually fill some of the normal leather, spined and horned smalls for training, to turn in small. If you actually buy the normal cloth items, you'll always get back much more cloth than you use.
Currently, my cloth stash sits at (not done the color balancing yet from last night)
about 15k each Level 1
about 13k each level 2
about 12k each level 3
about 6k each level 4
level 5 types are about 1-2k each, as they don't come from cloth BODs.
about 15k dyed cloth that started out as reward cloth (the numbers above will go down, and this will go up into the 25-30k range after I balance out the totals - it sometimes gets as high as 50k)
about 10k bandages that was reward cloth at some time in the past, in my fountains of life.
I've yet to resort to oil cloths with any of the 3 tailors in my 5, that I'm currently trying to train up to at least GM, if not 120 (all have used 120 PS)
My BOD filling method is as follows.
1. Fill all the exceptional cloth small BODs, and the normals of the types one can't buy already made, with reward cloth.
2. Fill the cloak BODs with my trainee that's still in the low 70s; fill the robes with the trainee that's in the 80s skill range. Both can get gains that way. This is for both normal & exceptional.
3. If I have a crafter that hasn't hit GM arms lore yet, I fill the hat BODs with that character (which is probably my highest consumption of cloth at the moment - one of my accounts doesn't have a GM lore person yet)
4. Make a round to my favorite tailor shops. Buy everything else I need to fill the cloth BODs.
(those wanting to buy the leather armor from armorers, for speed, can skip step 5)
5. Switch to my leather BODs. Fill the Studded BODs with my 104-skill tailor trainer; fill the leathers with the 80s guy. One can keep in leather using just a human (with no weapon skill other than jack of all trades), a bovine slayer, a physical resist suit, and going out to kill cows, bulls, hinds, great harts and llamas, so often they harvest their own and fill BODs as they kill the creatures.
6. After making sure that all of my full sets (large with all smalls) of Spined, Horned and Barbed leather are filled (and fill each small with the character most likely to gain), then fill as many of the colored leather smalls that don't have good large rewards as I can.
7. At this point I have a book of about 100-200 filled BODs. I go turn them in, and bring back about that manyx100 reward cloth. the new BODs are about 20% keepers, 50% cloth BODs for the next trip, and 30% junk leathers (half of which are smalls to fill for the next trip, the rest are larges and bone armor to throw away)
Even if I wait a week to do this all over again, I end up with a net gain in reward cloth. And an ever-increasing supply of BODs (I just GAVE AWAY 100 cloth BODs, because I was getting too many to fill per weekly trip - a beetle can only hold 160 BOD's worth of reward cloth).
IF you fill normal BODs with bought stuff, exceptionals with reward cloth, and keep at it, eventually you'll end up with a massive pile of reward cloth for oil cloth/cloth ninja hood training or crafting. As it is, I got a character to 104 skill without even using oil cloth, just by filling the junk armor bods and the smalls to complete larges. And, I probably won't go the "cloth ninja hood" route unless I run out of the junk leathers (not likely, with about 1 in 6 BODs being regular leather, another 1 in 6 being spined, and the normals being about 2/3 of those and the studded suits (and half the 6-parters) not being worth filling a large).
BTW, for those buying cloth - I suggest shopping nujelm. With the vanguard there, few are shopping, and when the berserker demons kill the tailors and weavers, their replacements respawn at the base 100 per bolt cost.
