She's Crafty!

[Ingmar]

Or something you like MORE! Who knows what kind of wacky orange recipes are out there not being made right now.

[Sjofn]

I doubt there's anything out there I will like more. My robe is a pretty blue color AND doesn't have a fucking hood up. That's pretty goddamn special.

[Fordel]

I think they're just going to make all the current crafted purples into oranges is my guess.

[Paelos]

Raids should just drop mods, it's a perfect way not to employee artists on anything except crafted recipes.

[Nevermore]

I'm torn on the OJ aug slot thing just because I already like how my sage looks. If the robe she's wearing doesn't have a crafted oj equivlient (and I don't think it does, at least not yet), it means I have to dress in something I like less, and that is disappointing.

This is why I don't see a problem with making a consumable crafted aug socket thingy, as long as it's crafted by the same skill that crafts the OJ of course.  So a Synthweave one that only works on STR/WILL gear and an Armortech one that works on CUNNING/AIM gear.  They could do something like REing a crafted OJ that has an aug slot pops out that aug thingy to use on another OJ piece, to preserve the 'sanctity' of only getting augs on crits.

[Sjofn]

You know what it is? It makes me think of DAoC crafting, where 98 and 99% shit you couldn't GIVE away. That's what non-crit oj's are going to wind up being, I suspect.

[Fordel]

You know what it is? It makes me think of DAoC crafting, where 98 and 99% shit you couldn't GIVE away. That's what non-crit oj's are going to wind up being, I suspect.

That's not true!

Enus gave me plenty of 99s 

[Nevermore]

It's not quite as bad if you can shift the aug slots around, though.  But I'm not holding my breath for that.

[eldaec]

Raids should just drop mods, it's a perfect way not to employee artists on anything except crafted recipes.

Raids should drop materials.

[Bunk]

Anyone noticed changes in RE rates after recent patches? I took a green pair of lev 37 boots to Blue on one try and Purple on two tries this weekend. Was rather shocked.

[Ingmar]

I've not noticed any change, and I've been doing 20+ REs a day on my cybertech.

[apocrypha]

Yeah I've been trying to RE some implants and have given up in utter, utter exasperation. 40+ blue lvl 49 implants and not one fucking purple. Retarded fucking system.

[caladein]

Well, there is this dev post from last week:

The reverse engineering return rate is not currently working as intended. In an upcoming patch, we are improving the reverse engineering rates – especially for the higher-level items. We are also looking into the issue where a player receives "You already know that schematic" instead of learning a new research variation.

Patrick Malott
Systems Designer

That said, I've been getting new patterns on my Armormech and Biochemist at a similar-enough rate this past week.  Small sample sizes and all that I guess.

[Sky]

"An upcoming patch" - one of their favorite phrases. I've left off doing much RE until I see it in the patch notes.

Though I ran my BH completely out of the last tier blue mats trying to make stuff already.

[Fabricated]

I can't believe that people actually farm the mats to make the BOP bracers and belts over and over and over again until they get a crit.

I inadvertently made half my guild hate me because I mentioned I crit on the first try for both Rakata items.

[01101010]

One thing I can't wrap my head around is why shit takes so long at lvl 45+ to complete. Missions take forever... Why? My companions have been doing this shit since level ~12. You'd think they would be proficient at doing this stuff by now. They actually get worse as time goes on. I get it, it is a time sink... but still. Mastery accounts for nothing. You'd think my comps would pick up shortcuts on getting metals/crystals/fabrics they could use later on. Nope... they get dumber.

[Merusk]

They're taking on harder and harder missions which are more complex and yield rarer materials!

Which would only work as rationalization of the earlier missions continued to decrease in time.

[Fabricated]

Personally I was kinda hoping that raising your affection with your companions would increase their crafting bonuses.

[apocrypha]

Personally I was kinda hoping that raising your affection with your companions would increase their crafting bonuses.

It kinda does - they complete missions faster, they fail less often and they return higher amounts of materials. It's particularly noticeable with the high level mission discovery missions - I never send anyone except my max-affection companions on those any more!

[Fabricated]

Personally I was kinda hoping that raising your affection with your companions would increase their crafting bonuses.

It kinda does - they complete missions faster, they fail less often and they return higher amounts of materials. It's particularly noticeable with the high level mission discovery missions - I never send anyone except my max-affection companions on those any more!

For real? Huh. I was talking more along the lines of their actual bonuses (like Tanno Vik's crit for Armormech/Underworld Trading), but that's awesome too. Looks like I need to butter up Vik some more.

[Raknor]

So general question on crafting to those that have played a few MMO's in your life (I'm sure there are a few out there lol).  What are your expectations on the crafting updates? 

Here is my dilemma.  I have far too many crafting resources due to stocking up on materials when I thought crafting was actually going to make me some money.  Also several friends have dropped level 400 skills to take up biochem and have dumped their stuff on me as well. I've become overly frustrated with the RE experience, 75 blues = 3 new purples... oh wait you already know that recipe x 2.. so you only get one new recipe.  At which point I pretty much swore off making anything until things got fixed.

My hope is that RE'ing gets fixed/improved.  But I still can't make anything that I can't get from a level 50 daily.

Do you foresee them making new recipes?  Adding level 23 mods (yay I can make daily rewards /golfclap)?

Maybe adding new, higher end materials, making the materials I have now worthless? 

As it is, I steal mods out of HM drops to put into my gear. I just can't see in my head how they can fix this easily.

[Fordel]

The RE rate should improve in a weekly patch I believe, they've said its bugged. Might not be this one, but pretty soon'ish.

[Sky]

If you're doing dailies and HMs, then why do you need crafting?

[apocrypha]

If you're doing dailies and HMs, then why do you need crafting?

I can now say with some experience, this.

I've now got 1 of each crew skill to 400 on my small army of alts, and have been crafting and selling for a couple of weeks on most of them. Turns out that there's very few ways to make a decent amount of money with actual crafting. The baseline for this is two things: 1) daily quests at 50 and 2) the best money farming activity I've found so far - chain running Boarding Party solo with a 48+ character. Just farming the 3 large and 5 small chests in Boarding Party and only killing the bosses * mobs you *have* to kill you can make about 120-150k Cr/hour. Level 50 dailies may be better than that with 2 people or if you're a well-geared DPS plus ofc you'll be getting daily commendations, but as a badly geared healer I find them slow, painful and boring, and lower income than Boarding Party.

Orange armour (both Armormech and Synthweaving) sells fairly reliably, but only in small volumes and not for enough money given the time taken to get mats and make it.
Purple armour sometimes sell, but again not for enough and regularly enough to be worth it, and certainly not for enough to actually grind RE'ing for them at the moment.
Armstech is a waste of time, in all respects.
Biochem is great for personal use but nearly everyone has on their main anyway so there's very little market for medpacs etc. Implants sell OK, especially the low level ones, but for small amounts of profit. Nowhere near enough to outweigh the other money makers.
Artifice is a pain in the arse. Too many things to make, not enough market for any specific group of items, although mods sell OKish, but again not for enough money to justify the time and hassle.

As for gathering it's a mixed bag. Guaranteed sellers are the purple grade 5 & 6 UT mats - Promethium sells very well but only at limited volumes. Same with Mandalorian Iron but at lower volumes still. Most other gathered mats are a bit hit and miss. Sometimes you can sell huge stacks of Archaeology mats (especially the grade 5/6 artifact fragments) but other times they'll sit on the GTN for days and days. Same with Bioanalysis mats. Scavenging mats aren't worth the bother, just vendor them. Too many people have Scavenging.

Mission discoveries sell well but the market is priced too high generally. If you price them sensibly then UT, Scav, Slicing and to a lesser extent Investigation & Treasure Hunting 300+ missions sell very well. However if you have alts that can use them they're better off used yourself for the purple mats, especially 300 skill UT ones.

Out of all of the crew skills the only guaranteed regular income is from Slicing. And only from crit successes on grade 5/6 lockbox missions. Those small number of crits make the entire skill profitable. Oh, and in-world lockboxes on high level planets, but even then only if they're actually right in your path. Don't go out of your way for them, you're better off spending the time completing quests in a pure Cr/hour sense.

So, my view on it is get Slicing on every single alt you can. Get your companion affections high - all of them. Constantly send every companion on every alt you can out to do slicing lockbox missions - preferably grey con ones. Use or sell the purple mission discovery drops, especially 300 skill UT ones. Apart from that don't bother except to make nice things for your leveling alts. If you just want to make money then crafting is a complete waste of time. That said, you quickly hit a point where there's no use for money. I've got about 10 million between my alts now so I don't feel any need to even think about it any more.

Long post, sorry, but the TL:DR is only Slicing makes more money/hour than other methods.

[Evildrider]

I'm sitting at over 4 mil just from PvP.

[Fabricated]

When Bioware fixes crit-rates on crafted items and makes raid-epics fully moddable (or rather, DE-moddable), armormech and synthweaving will be the new thing to make shitloads of money.

[apocrypha]

Agreed! Hopefully the RE rate will be fixed soon too. Just fixing that could make quite a difference to crafting tbh.

[Fabricated]

I think Synthweaving will be mad cash on the Empire side because WOW their tier sets look bad for the most part.

[Sjofn]

For artificing, I picked two enhancements to give a shit about getting purple versions of (battle and ... I forget the other. Something defensive). I sell 'em for 40k a pop. And I know most of the different colors of crystals now, which sell between 25-30k. I do virtually nothing to make these, when I happen to see a cheap crafting mission up or get them on my slicer, I go on another crafting jag, essentially. When RE rates get fixed, I'll get around to REing some decent shields and focuses.

Yeah, I could make more doing dailies, but then I would have to do dailies. And fuck dailies in this game.

[Raknor]

I'm an artifice as well and I hope they start adding in more recipes. Every EV raid we get two BoP crafting recipes for the other professions.  Kind of feel left out. 

Found out yesterday I can't even make a shield for our assassin tanks. Apparently they were switched in beta from STR to willpower but artifice was not updated.  Which sucks because I've made it a habit of sending out crystals/focus/shields to anyone in the guild who hits 48 so they can start gearing up a little faster. Everyone likes a free purple in the mail!

[Fabricated]

You can get a decent shield for flat credits on Corellia I think?

[Sky]

BoP raid-drop recipes are awesome.

 

[Wolf]

How much does a purple lvl49 main-stat augment go for? I've sold two, and both insta-sold (40k for a str and 45 for Willpower) and I really cba to find out what the adequate price is.

[Evildrider]

How much does a purple lvl49 main-stat augment go for? I've sold two, and both insta-sold (40k for a str and 45 for Willpower) and I really cba to find out what the adequate price is.

Look at the mat costs on the GTN.  Then build your costs from there.  Alot of people are starting to stock up on augments right now, since there will be more new slots in 1.2.

[Wolf]

isn't slicing the only craft that makes augments? So you can't really calculate the cost - it's hoping to crit on a lvl6 mission or getting the purple mission. And even then getting a stat one is a bit of a crap shoot, since you have alacrity, crit, power, surge, etc and stats.

Umm, new question, do raid epics have augment slots? Or is it only crit crafts?

edit: it doesn't, so they either have to add augment slots to raid gear, or crit crafts will become bis once they allow the de-moding.