Blur generally runs 10 projects at a time that take roughly a month to make per minute of footage. If they dedicated all of their staff to one project full time and didn't have loose guidelines of "have it done by E3", they could produce a full movie in about a year and a half to two years. The Budget for old republic was 22 million, and I believe only 2 million was set aside for advertising. 80% of that is buying ad space, so it cost about $300,000 - $500,000 to produce all three trailers. If we follow a conservative formula of $300,000 per six minutes, that is only 12 million in budget. If we add in option costs, licensing, marketing, distribution, disc sales, and ancillary costs, this movie could very easily be made for 50 million in under two years. Hurray research.

I make a killing as armstech selling techblades. Consulars pay a fortune for purples.

I'm the only purple techblade supplier on my server, so I price it how I want to price it. No competition = me making ridiculous mounds of money.

Wait I thought the fleet and a planet like coruscant feed into the same GTN? Dont they?

I'm not sure what these people are talking about, because artifact crafted pistols are better than every quest drop and vendor weapon in the game until very high levels. Plus, consulars pay very good money for purple techblades. I'm rich as hell and have awesome weapons. I love armstech.

You're wrong about armstech. Barrels don't give nearly the profit of techblades and other companion only gear.

Armstech Remove PvP buffs and go to a straight bracket system with no stat-balancing. Making PvP bracketed for similar levels keeps the skill levels pretty balanced while taking away the auto-buff makes gear matter a lot more in PvP. That boost to gear dependance makes buying weapons, and all GTN items actually, a lot more attractive and will boost the economy.

At the moment the only way you can get blue or purple scatterguns or vibroknives is drops or commendations. You cannot successfully RE them (I'm not sure if that is on purpose). Armscrafters can't make anything above a green, which we all know is absolutely worthless. If we can't make blue/purple gear to keep ourselves competitive, then what is the point of us being able to make these weapons at all?

I don't care what I can make at 50. I care what I can make at 21. I'm sure I could make millions selling weapons at 50 (if they ever make them worthwhile) because they are more expensive.

everyone going biochem has made me richer. Less competition in selling purple weapons = more money for me.

Well, it took me a long time to finally get myself into this position, but armstech is really paying off. After three to four weeks of camping out on Coruscant and Taris manufacturing weapons day and night, I have gotten all of the purple schematics for blaster pistols, Assault Cannons, and techblades up to level 25 (all the worth while ones at least), as well as most assault rifles. I have constant supplies of weapons for all levels in the republic and Nar Shadaa GTN's, and generally when I go to bed I can feel confident that a sizeable chunk of my inventory will be gone in the morning. On average I will rake in between 60-80k in a night's haul...at level 21. I'm not even selling mid or high level weapons yet. The majority of these sales are techblades (I am the only supplier on my server) and blaster pistols on Nar Shadaa, but I have seen every gun become profitable once you get purple schematics. I guess the point of my post is this, while endgame armstech might be useless at the moment, I have made an absolute fortune supplying the lower levels with great gear. My purples, especially the mastercrafts, outperform every other piece of gear they can get. Their commendation mods can't hold a candle to purples, so they forgo their oranges and buy my purples. If you are struggling to turn a profit making weapons in your server, just make sub 40 purples. People can't get enough of them.

so now people don't even have to buy purple mods for their boots? They can just go raid for them? sure Bioware...make us that much more pointless.

Wait, I don't think I understand this statement. We can mod purples now?

I dig this. They probably won't add these, but they are good ideas.

I RE'd about 40-50 level 13 items in several categories and got nothing. Then I RE'd one green level 29 and got a blue.

I've been doing this for 3 days, so I'm fairly confident I'm not going crazy at this point, but I was hoping ya'll could help me figure out if this bug is real or not. For me, at least in the last few days, I have only gotten schematics from re-engineering weapons that are of yellow difficulty or higher. For weapons that are grey, denoting no difficulty, I have never gotten a single schematic out of about 300 total RE's on several different grey items. Am I crazy? Or does RE'ing only work on difficult guns now?

They really need a GTN on Taris.

Hello everyone, Just to preface this first part of my comprehensive armstech crafting guide, I would like to say that I have not hit level 24 on any character yet. As such, I have no idea what the markets look like once you get off Taris and beyond. That being said, I have spent three straight weeks crafting and selling as a Republic Smuggler in the lower level zones and have turned quite a profit for myself, as well as gotten myself to the point where I am able to outfit all of my guild mates with incredibly powerful weapons on their alts. I have read over and over about the worthlessness of crafting at higher levels, so I am in no rush to get there. I am making plenty of money off of lower level sales, and I find that being a well-known arms dealer on my server for people to outfit their second and third toons is much more satisfying than racing up to 400 and going into a deep depression over finding nothing useful. I do not know if you will find the same satisfaction out of my slow, yet methodical approach to crafting as I do, but I do know one thing – it works. I have become the leading weapons supplier on my server for everyone up to level 21, as well as cemented myself as the only techblade manufacturer for Consulars. I don’t aim to have one or two blue weapons per level group, with maybe a purple every once and I while. I sell purples and nothing else, and I make a lot of money by doing so. If you are going to run the weapons market on your server too, I suggest you go purple or go home. So, what do you need to be a successful arms dealer? Well, for starters a healthy sense of patience. There are going to be times when you craft over a hundred blue rifles just to get nothing out of it. You need to control that frustration and hang with it, because eventually the universe will balance itself out and you will get a purple on the first try. Just remember, for every purple that seems way too hard to get, there will be one that is amazingly easy. The second thing you need is an alternate character with which to farm credits and materials. Slicing, scavenging, and investigation are a must on this character. If they are a high enough level to run through the works and kill mobs to get to nodes, then you will be good to go. Use this character to build an emergency credit fund as well as a healthy supply of crafting missions from the GTN and slicing. Your main crafter should be used to produce goods as often as possible, so leave the back-end economic tasks to your farm. The third, yet completely optional, thing you need is a bulk materials supplier. You can find these kinds of people on every server. Just go to the GTN and look under scavenged materials. If you see hundreds and hundreds of different metals all listed under the same name, then that is your guy. These players general spend a good chunk of their time farming mass quantities of materials to sell on the GTN for profit. If you can work out a deal to buy large chunks of metals and compounds for discount, then it will save you a lot of time and money in the long run. Fund these deals with your farm, and stash excess materials in the bank. Now, for your actual crafting character, you have two choices in the republic that make sense. Trooper and Smuggler. Troopers get Aric, who reduces crafting times, while Smugglers get Corso, who increases the chance to crit craft. Personally, I went with Corso so that I could make mastercrafts more often, as these can be augmented and sold for higher prices. These mastercrafts also make very, very powerful weapons for yourself. At level 11 I ran with duel mastercrafted blasters that were critting with comparable damage to a level 18-19 commando. With those blasters I went back and solo’d Esseles at level 13. That is how good mastercrafts are, so don’t sweat on jacking up the price after augmenting them. It’s worth it. After you make your character, run through Ord Mantell as fast as you can. You should be able to get off somewhere between levels 8 and 9 depending on how many mobs you kill. It should take about 4-5 hours. Once you get off Mantell, learn arms crafting, scavenging, and investigation, and start running missions. If you run low on cash, transfer funds from your farm and keep running them. Head down to Coruscant, and once you feel like you have gotten enough materials to craft your first weapon (which should be one you can use), do so. When I started crafting I had 100 silica, 40 carboplas, and 10 Nyasteel. This is the beginning of the process of getting your first purple. Grind out the green of the weapon you are looking at, and reverse engineer them as you go. Eventually you will get a blue, but don’t stop until you get it. If you run out of materials, build them back up and start over. Once you get the blue, immediately repeat the grind process while your farm replenishes materials and cash. Once again, you will eventually get the purple. Make how many ever you need for yourself and/or your companion, and then go pay a visit to your craft trainer. All that grinding probably leveled you up to the next tier, so grab the following schematics from him. 1- Any assault cannon available. 2- Any rifle with aim. 3- Any blaster with cunning. 4- Any scattergun with cunning. 5- Any techblade. These are going to be what you focus on. I generally stay away from barrels because people just use commendations to get upgrades for orange gear (even though orange gear sucks at lower levels compared to purples). After you learn these schematics, you want to do a little market evaluation. First step is to open up the /who and take a look at the class make up on Coruscant, the fleet, and Taris. Take notes of how many commandos, vanguards, gunslingers, scoundrels, and consular there are. Order them by percentage of population, and then go to the Galactic Trade Network (GTN). Look at the list of classes in order of prevalence, and compare that to the weapons available to them on the GTN. Look at levels 9 through 25. If there are only greens, then you might as well not count any worthwhile gear for those classes at all, and that is the area you will focus on supplying. Make sure not to make weapons where other dealers are already flooding the market with purples, as that leads to deflation. Focus on areas where there are little to no blue and purple weapons being sold. In my server, that is techblades. We have an abundance of sages and shadows, and nobody other than me supplies their companions with blades. That means I control the supply, and the market, of techblades for these players, which means I stand to make a lot more money. After you’ve establish the market you want to target, go to work on crafting those items. Start at the lower levels and work your way up. As you get purples, place 2-3 on the market and post a small (DO NOT SPAM) advertisement in chat letting people know they are there. Most players don’t go to the GTN unless they need something specific, so you have a better chance of making a sale if they already know beforehand that a desirable weapon is waiting for them. After you get purples for the lower levels, work on the next weapon. Keep grinding and posting new sales as you go until you finish an entire category. Once you get all four purples, keep a constant supply of 3 of each in the market. Post advertisements once every 30-45 minutes so as not to annoy general chat, and then do another market eval to find your next target category. Keep repeating this process until you master every category. Now, the hardest part about this job is educating the masses. Most people assume that oranges > all weapons, when in reality that is not true at all. For the levels I craft for, purples are actually far, FAR, superior to any other item you can find or buy. Short of outfitting an orange item with all purple mods AT ALL TIMES, which is a lot more expensive than just buying a weapon, then oranges will almost always be inferior to purple weapons until higher levels. Make sure your customers know this, and don’t be afraid to post examples with shift clicks in your advertisements. Don’t abuse the shift click as it tends to annoy people when you clog their chat with pretty colors, but little reminders here and there of what they are missing tends to help. Now, for pricing, I price based on effectiveness of the weapon relative to value of drops, vendor sales, and production costs. Here is generally how effective certain weapon colors are compared to other weapon colors by level. Each tier has the same damage value (give or take a couple points), but lower purples make up for a couple points fewer of base damage compared to higher greens by having ancillary properties that greens do not have such as crit rating, crit damage, extra power, armor penetration, absorption etc. In a way a level 13 purple might actually be better than a level 21 green by having comparable base damage, yet far superior burst damage or defensive properties. That is what makes purples so darn good, and as a result, very profitable. Tier 1 - Level 9 green Tier 2 – Level 9 blue, Level 13 green Tier 3 – Level 9 Purple, Level 13 blue, Level 17 green Tier 4 – Level 13 Purple, Level 17 blue, Level 21 green Tier 5 – Level 17 purple, Level 21 Blue Tier 6 – Level 21 Purple So, as you can see, Purples are generally equivalent or in some cases better than green weapons 8 levels higher than them. That makes them very attractive for buyers as long as your pricing is on point, so here is a general pricing format I use for techblades that suits me well. I only list blues and purples (but mostly purples). 900 – Level 9 purple 1200 – Level 13 blue 1500 – Level 13 purple, Level 17 Blue 2250 – Level 17 Purple, Level 21 Blue 3000 – Level 21 Purple, Level 25 Blue 4000 – Level 25 Purple Random tips: - If you need an emergency stash of anything, send your alt down to the Works on Coruscant. There are lost of scavangable droids for aluminum, bronzium, and laminoid, as well as tons of nodes. - Nobody likes an annoying salesman. Keep your advertisements on the general chat to a controlled minimum if you can. You want to notify people of your products, not shove it down their throat. - Whispering people is a good way to find customers. C/p a premade message and go down the row of people. Don’t send more than one message, just a quick note letting them know what you have to offer. - COD’s are painfully slow. Do trades if they don’t want to buy off of the market. Saves a lot of time. - Keep your wares fully stocked at all times with extra items in the bank. You never know when you’ll get hit by someone on a spending spree and you will be glad when you save yourself from immediately taking two hours to craft replacements. So, that is what I have done so far. It’s a lot of grinding and spending, but in the end I have made a lot of money by being smart about what I make and when I make it. If you want to be a prosperous crafter, you have to know your market, and be committed to getting purples. If you can’t or won’t do any of those things, then there is no reason for you to expect success. Thanks for reading. When I finally decide to move my operation to higher levels I’ll write a part 2. Peace, - TLS

Please add /Tebow as an emote to this game in a patch somewhere down the line. I would love to Tebow over people I beat in PvP. I can't think of a better alternative to teabagging than getting down and praying to Cthulu.

You can't learn artifact schems by re'ing another artifact.

No. You are supposed to have difficulty getting good patterns. That is what makes them valuable.

You can't board the shuttle until you finish the class quest on Mantell.

As you level your skill, the difficulty for low level missions becomes less and less. The less the difficulty, the less those missions level your skill. By the time they hit green and grey on the difficulty scale, you don't get anything.

I spend all this money on missions on the GTN, wait forever for them to come back and give me what I need, and I get a failure and use all that time and money. I'm basically paying to sit and do nothing. How is that fair...

You just have to keep plugging away and don't give up. As soon as you get that purple you'll have an amazing sense of accomplishment, and you'll be happy that it was so hard to get, because that means it is less likely for someone else to be as complete as you are.