I have a few questions about some high level stim recipes, so I'm hoping someone has insight.

 

Take first, the Prototype Hyper-Battle Fortitude Stim: (104 Endurance, 43 Defence for 120 minutes, persists through death). The recipe is marked as level 48 and takes the following ingredients:

 

-1 Hypo-Syringe

-4 Smart Cells (Grade 6 Medical Supply)

-4 Immunity Cell Culture (Grade 6 Compound)

-4 Mutagenic Paste (Grade 6 Sample)

-4 Neurochemical Extract (Grade 6 Sample)

 

All items you can get from 340 level Bioanalysis or Diplomacy books, or by running missions for grade 6 supplies.

 

Now, look at a different stim of the same level:

 

Prototype Hyper-Battle Reflex Stim

(104 Aim, 43 Power for 120 minutes, persists through death)

-1 Hypo-Syringe

-4 Psychoactive Compound (Grade 5 Compound)

-6 Quick Growth Agent (Grade 5 Sample)

-4 Red Goo (Grade 5 Compound)

-4 Experimental Serum (Grade 5 Medical Supply)

 

All of these materials require level 300 Bioanalysis/Diplomacy books, or running tier 5 missions.

 

The Might (Strength/Power), Resolve (Willpower/Power) and Skill (Cunning/Power) stims of the same rank all have identical recipes to the Reflex stim. (The only one I can't speak to is the presence stim, as I have not reverse engineered that to the blue one, so I have no idea if it's recipe is more like the endurance one or the others)

 

My big issue here is that, with more and more characters reaching level cap and more and more crafters being there, level 300 bio/dip books just aren't very common on my server. And while I'm aware that I can always run the regular missions, there is very little return on the ingredients (Especially the grade 5 compound, as there are two possibilities and its often I find I need to run 2 or three missions before having enough to make a couple of stims).

 

Speaking with guildmembers, there doesn't seem to be another craft that relies so heavily on non-grade 6 components. The argument could be made, I suppose that since these are technically level 48 recipes, they fall under grade 5... but the fortitude stim uses all grade 6. It's worth noting that the green versions of all of these stims are the same, with the fortitude stim taking grade 6 mats while the others take grade 5.

 

I'd like to be able to provide stims for my guild, but I'm finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with materials. The books on the GTN are rare and mats are either insanely priced (5k per individual unit for quick growth at the moment) or not for sale at all. I have no trouble getting 340 books as there are always several on the GTN, but these 300 books are so few and far between that it's become difficult to even find one every few days.

 

My question, then, is what do other biochemists do? Is this just a quirk to my server that the books I'm looking for are so rarely for sale? I believe there's stim recipe drops from ops but we haven't seen any yet, so these are what I have to work with. Furthermore, are there any other crafting skills that have this sort of strange discrepancy with the grade of materials required for certain recipes? Specifically ones that are as consumable as these stims?

I have the same problem as you also. What i do?...i make a search to know what kind of beasts drop the items i need, and i go there and farm them for some hours!

IMO is the best way to get a lot of itens we need in a easy way.

Selling the loot after will bring you also a good amount of credits after the farm!

If you're doing it for your guild, how about mentioning the fact to your Guild and getting them to do some of the running about for missions for you? Y'know, cooperatively.

Yeah, I get some good drops from Voss, though I find a lot of animals tend to drop grade 5 and grade 6 materials, very few consistently drop grade 5. Just another reason I wonder about the reliance on grade 5 materials for these stims.

 

And, my guild is fantastic and always checking the GTN and buying missions whenever they're up. Not much else they can do short of speccing biochem themselves or hoping to get the right missions by grinding tier 5 slicing ones. Or maybe going on a nice killing spree somewhere so we can farm mats, lol.

Edited February 16, 2012 by ralyse

After reading this I decided to do a quick Voss run. I spent 60 minutes farming nodes, with very little time spent farming kills - only when I got aggro on strongs/elites. I am sure with some planning, mapping, etc. I could do better, but this is just back of the envelope stuff anyway. Over that 60 minutes, I came up with:

 

30 - Red Goo

50 - Quick Growth Agent

67 - Psychoactive Compound

58 - Parasitic Microorganism

 

The first three average about 1,500 credits each on my server (Keller's Void US), and the Parasitic is only about 100 credits each atm. That's about $226,000 credits in materials if I took the time to sell them.

 

I also did an Abundant Yield Grade 5 Bio mission which took about 20 minutes (using Vector), and that yielded 2 Quick-Growth Agent and 3 Parasitic Microorganism at a cost of about 1,500 credits. So, normal missions cost are probably less than 50% of the cost compared to what I pay on the GTN. With almost zero effort that is a pretty good return.

 

The annoying part is that the stims are going for about 21k on my server, which is at or around mats cost. I don't know the crit rates real well, but I suppose that is the only inherent benefit to making stims vs. selling mats.

 

Bottom line is that if you do ops 3 times per week and use 1 stim per night, it is costing you about 63,000 credits or so per person to provide for the group. Using REALLY dirty math, about 3 hours of farming per week?

 

Or put another way, you are a really generous person!

For Grade 5 crew missions, why on earth would you do an abundant mission? There's a Rich and Bountiful for both Compounds and Chemicals. Just send your guys on these and you'll be swimming in mats. Though, I keep SWTOR running in the background at work and just keep running these missions.

I don't have a problem with stims materials, as they last two hours and persist through death, but the adrenals are the problem. They need to up the amount of adrenals given per craft (and 3 on normal, 4 on crit craft like exotech medpacks would still be too little).

no point in bothering with reusable stims/medpacks/adrenals. they are super expensive and worthless -- cant sell them and you wont use them once you get an alloy for rakata stuff (which is available in abundance).

For Grade 5 crew missions, why on earth would you do an abundant mission?

 

It was the only one available this morning. Rich and Bount aren't available 24/7.

It was the only one available this morning. Rich and Bount aren't available 24/7.

 

Yes, actually they are. =) Just zone in and out of your ship, or run a rank 1 mission Bio mission and all missions will repopulate.

Like you already mentioned, it's because these are L48. The Exotechs uses all Grade 6 mats though.