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Get Crafting, Crafters!


Panteleone

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I'm on a high-pop server (The Harbinger) and it never ceases to amaze me how few item mods are available to purchase on the GTN. I like to go with profiteering skills and then just buy what I need to upgrade my orange gear while leveling with credits and commendations, but it's become impossible to do as there just aren't enough mods available on the GTN to buy. (And really... ten thousand credits for a blue level 3 mod? Seriously?) I'm ending up using green drops in place of orange pieces because I can't mod them well enough.

 

Unfortunately I'm going to have to start a cybertech alt just to make mods for my alts, but I feel I shouldn't have to. Get crafting, guys! *thumbs up*

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Most people don't sell lower level mods because of the planetary comm system. Most people would rather spend 2 comms instead of the credits for the blue even though the comm vendors don't carry all of the mods. And since the purples take 4 rare mats each for most levels, almost no one is will to spend the credits for what those items are worth because they will just out level it in a day or two.
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Yup its been mentioned a million times already its not the crafters fault.. we are limited by the GTN amount and the high cost of purple item mats verses what they actually sell at. Obviously planetary comms dont help too. But mainly its a logistical nightmare for a hard core crafter trying to craft every item from every teir from several different crafting characters then keep them listed every 2 days over and over and over and then relist 50 returned mails on 5 - 6 characters just beucase you need the extra gtn selling space....

 

We are doing the best we can with the system we have been given. Its up to bioware to impliment a better crafting system.

Edited by RichyYoung
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I've run into this issue as well with my Marauder. With two orange sabers and 5 moddable gear slots, commendations simply can't fill the gap. But I had trouble finding mods on the GTN.

 

After awhile, I just stopped looking. Had credits to throw at some enterprising cybertech/artificier. Nodda.

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And that's why I stick to blue armor instead of commendation armor while leveling. IMO it actually ends up cheaper in the long run.

 

Less/no need to repair (and cheaper when you do)

Cheaper to upgrade (assuming already tapped out on commendations, or are actually trying to get stuff "your level")

Typically more readily available on the GTN.

Stats (particularly secondary) tend to be better, especially at lower levels.

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I'm a cybertech and I don't even craft my own mods. The price of metal is usually more than what I could sell low level mods for. So I'd be whacking robots all day to make mods at a loss when I could have either sold the raw metal or made it into ship upgrades. At 2 tokens a piece there is just no reason to craft them. If you're worried about outfitting alts, make a armormech or synthweaver, and don't worry about orange gear til 50. Way easier that way.
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Mid level mats on my server sell for about 500 credits each, and rare mats are often 1000 credits each. Add in vendor mats and the new GTN fees and you can easily have a base cost between 7000 and 9000 credits to make and sell mid level Blue Armorings, Mods, and Enhancements. Then you are competing against dropped mods, and quest mods, and Heroic purple mods, and commendation mods -- all of which people are quite willing to sell for < 5000 credits. There is no profit in it.
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Mid level mats on my server sell for about 500 credits each, and rare mats are often 1000 credits each. Add in vendor mats and the new GTN fees and you can easily have a base cost between 7000 and 9000 credits to make and sell mid level Blue Armorings, Mods, and Enhancements. Then you are competing against dropped mods, and quest mods, and Heroic purple mods, and commendation mods -- all of which people are quite willing to sell for < 5000 credits. There is no profit in it.

 

Which always makes me wonder who the heck is paying those 500-1000 credits for mats. I'm convinced either nobody is, or they're somehow using it to launder credits for gold selling websites.

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Yup its been mentioned a million times already its not the crafters fault.. we are limited by the GTN amount and the high cost of purple item mats verses what they actually sell at. Obviously planetary comms dont help too. But mainly its a logistical nightmare for a hard core crafter trying to craft every item from every teir from several different crafting characters then keep them listed every 2 days over and over and over and then relist 50 returned mails on 5 - 6 characters just beucase you need the extra gtn selling space....

 

We are doing the best we can with the system we have been given. Its up to bioware to impliment a better crafting system.

 

If you buy epic item mods then you are usually set for 7+ levels unless you have to have the best of the best every level. Me personally, I only buy epic ones every 10 levels or so if they are going for a good price. It doesn't make much sense to me for a crafter to make epic mods for every level.

 

Epics should be made every 10 levels, blues every five.

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And that's why I stick to blue armor instead of commendation armor while leveling. IMO it actually ends up cheaper in the long run.

 

Less/no need to repair (and cheaper when you do)

Cheaper to upgrade (assuming already tapped out on commendations, or are actually trying to get stuff "your level")

Typically more readily available on the GTN.

Stats (particularly secondary) tend to be better, especially at lower levels.

 

Well I like moddable gear. I find the gear that looks good, and I mod it. Changing looks every couple levels doesn't appeal to me.

 

and let me repeat that commendations DON'T cover all my needs. With 5 armor pieces and 2 hilts, that's 49 commendations right there. Another 28 would be needed for mod/enhancements. Simply do not get 80 commendations per planet.

 

As for saving money...what else do I have to spend money on? My Marauder had credits to burn leveling, and nothing to burn them on.

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I loved crafting in LOTRO, but I find crafting to be way to expensive to justify making pieces for the GTN or hutt cartel in SWTOR.

 

For starters, even with the increased chance of getting blues and purples, it still takes a long time to craft quality at level gear. Therefore I inevitably end up crafting a head of level, which is incredibly draining on my creds, so that I can at least craft myself and if I'm lucky, my companion the best at level gear.

 

Some issues I've seen with crafting here are:

1) cost of mats, especially rare mission items

2) the choice to mix tiers of crafting mods (what do you mean I now need those Opilia crystals I sold on the GTN for the advanced gear in the next tier!?)

3) making the nodes varied so that sometimes you get a [insert basic mat here] but other times you get a [insert rarer basic mat here] however, the frequency of the nodes vary by planet AND only one type of basic mat is frequently available via missions. Opilia crystals and bacterial samples come to mind.

4) the sheer number of crafting skills that require scavenging just make getting the mats for your specific skill an absolute nightmare

5) the way you are pigeon-holed by your companions good crafting skills, and the inability to easily tailor your crafting droid to meet your needs

 

These issues and more have me more or less giving up on crafting. Now, to make money I choose slicing and two other gathering skills. I just gather things on planet and ship to alts who now only have to worry about gathering mission items. Slicing = great creds, and for me, crafting should be a profitable pursuit.

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If you're in a guild, chat up those that have those crew skills. If you're not in a guild then when you group with others, try to find if any of them craft those items and ask if they mind doing commission work. Worst case is asking in Fleet/Planet in General or Trade.

 

Thankfully I'm an altoholic that likes to craft so I've got the crew skills covered. Combined with the fact that if you follow story progression and complete planets you tend to be out-leveled for the next planet, the stuff you can buy with planetary comms is already obsolete for you BUT, works well for the next character in line. And while the comms aren't tradeable (really wish they would be bind to account), the mods/enhancements/hilts/etc are.

 

As for putting stuff on the GTN, plenty of folks have already answered that question but, wanted to add one more thing. If you haven't skilled up an Artifice you might not realize that the last two tiers of enhancements you learn (I think lvl 43 and 49 but could be off slightly) has fourty-eight (48) enhancement schematics to buy ... 48! The amount of mats needed to just get all of them bumped up to Prototype, let alone Artifact versions is staggering.

 

You would be better served researching what can be made and then putting it out there specifically as a "WTB Might Mod 18" etc type of things in chat channels.

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I feel your pain but as others have mentioned the crafting system is less than ideal.

 

I have 8 toons on my main server. I have all the crafting disciplines covered plus two characters that are harvesters/material farms.

 

But there are certain elements that work against us even when go heavy into crafting:

 

You level through the first two planets so fast, there isn't much point in selling anything at the tier 1 level (Levels 10-16.

 

You can purchase a full set of PvE gear from the PvP vendor at level 20, which seriously dents the demmand for anything at tier 2 (Levels 17-24).

 

You can purchase ANOTHER full set of PvE gear from the PvP vendor at level 40, which holds its effectiveness surprisingly well through the last 10 levels.

 

You can purchase a full set of PvE gear at level 50 from the PvP Recruitment Officer which is almost as good as anything you can craft at level 50, unless you start with a high level (blue base) recipe and fully reverse engineer it.

 

Reverse Engineering is still a crapshoot, and you burn through most of the materials you gather through normal level progression just LEARNING the decent schematics. There's nothing left over to actually CRAFT anything you learned.

 

Too many roadblocks, not enough rewards. The only things that the crafters are producing are the 'home run balls'. Moddable gear with an augment slot that will fetch upwards of 100k.

 

There ARE sub-50 markets that are thriving but not enough crafters take the time to dip into those areas.

Level 23-37 is the sweet spot if you're looking into selling mods of blue quality or finished gear of blue quality. Far enough away from the level 20 PvP gear that it starts to lose its shine and you need to upgrade, up until you approach 40.

 

What would my fellow crafters change about the current system?

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I know what you mean, I can never seem to find implants, enhancements, or earpieces for mid-levels on the GTN, same with color crystals.

 

So, I decided to try making a few earpieces to sell on the GTN, for leveling. I did sell most of them, but the problem is, they were pretty cheap and it is not an efficient use of my crafting time/companions. I could make more running higher level missions and selling the materials I get. Plus, crafters are competing with drops/rewards people get for free and sell on the GTN.

 

Also, the system for selling things is annoying. If I don't sell an item, I have to get it from my mailbox, and then go back to the fleet to list it for sale again. This isn't too bad on my level 50, but while leveling my characters usually only hit the fleet between planets. And I can only imagine what a royal pain it must be if you are selling a whole lot of items.

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I came to the conclusion that the dev's expect crafters to specialise in only a handful of items from the huge list available to each profession.

 

Just RE'ing green L24 earpieces to get ALL the blue variant recipes for all of them cost me a few full stacks of materials, which take a few hours to gather. I'd not be surprised if it took 4 or 5 hours of dedicated gathering to get together the materials to RE all those L24 earpieces to Tier 2 recipes. It's a staggering amount of work to gather the materials, and they vanish in a few minutes of RE clicking :)

 

I'm an enthusiastic crafter, but I do it for own use only. Crafting for the GTN is really a waste of time and effort, imho. Nobody REALLY needs the crafted stuff, it's nice to have, yeah, but not if it's "too expensive". The pace of levelling is too fast to justify spending on decent gear, which you'll probably outlevel tomorrow...

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Which always makes me wonder who the heck is paying those 500-1000 credits for mats. I'm convinced either nobody is, or they're somehow using it to launder credits for gold selling websites.

 

Mats have found a new life now that almost all oranges are viable as sale pieces (excepting the hideously plain or ugly). Mats are also useful for crafters gearing themselves when they need that "just one more compound" to craft their next level item. As for bulk sales for making blues/purples, there's no longer a market.

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Also, the system for selling things is annoying. If I don't sell an item, I have to get it from my mailbox, and then go back to the fleet to list it for sale again..

 

+1.

 

If you have not already, please add your voices to this thread on GTN suggestion/improvements.

 

After fixing all the horrendous bugs I think adding "buy contracts" would be a huge improvement. With buy and sell contracts it would be an easy next step to match of compatible contracts across servers and create larger markets.

 

Of course the annoying issues like the one above, lack of a per unit cost column and other basic tools for analysis make the current crafting game pretty weak.

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The pace of levelling is too fast to justify spending on decent gear, which you'll probably outlevel tomorrow...

 

If the pace is too fast then it is not worth a players time to find a GTN node and upgrade. Ignoring that case, the pace of leveling is not the issue so much as the earn per level. If folks are rolling in credits, they'll spend them. Lord knows for PvP I'd love to buy every little edge I can if I could afford it.

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