But... why?

[Snakespeare]

OK, I was farming Meathead with my level 5 and he dropped some "Scrap of Plate" on me. So I went to Burke to try to figure it out. The scrap of plate, combined with another scrap of plate, and some sort of special thread, can be used in a recipe to make a piece of plate. The recipe costs 10 plat, for God's sake! And then you have to do this three times, so you pay 30 plat, and then get some gem that I now read is worth 200K. Once you've done all that, you have to buy a fourth recipe and for 40 plat and 200K, now you have level 15 pink plate mail?

Who would do this?

I'd rather farm Brom Dandy in Balefort 2 with a level 15, and save my 40 plat and 200K gp for something worthwhile.

Unless it turns out that recipes drop, too, and gems are not as rare as people say. But even so, I got one plate scrap of meathead after ten kills, so it may even have been lucky, and it would take 100+ kills of Meathead by my level 5 in order to make her the well-deserved level 5 pink. And then I ask again, why? If my level 5 kills Meathead 100 times, I should get more than a chance for enough scraps and recipes and gems, to possibly make a pink. If she kills that big zombie 100 times, she deserves some kind of medal, not just some scraps of metal.