Personally I think some level 50s is just doing that on purpose maliciously, going to start zones and bugging the nodes. I have tried salvaging and archeology node hunting on other characters, and these 2 professions rarely have any frozen node problems at starter zones, whereas slicing ALWAYS does.

Several high end scythweaving crafts use it, although most of them are junk, generally speaking. Battle for ilum also drops 2 alloys iirc.

If you think GW2 will have better gear statwise from whatever constitutes as raiding there (if there is even raiding in it), you'll be sorely mistaken. Guild wars traditionally had the BEST gear available via vendors, with their dungeon gear being only graphically better, NOT better stat wise. From total biscuit's latest videos and commentary, it seems all their dungeon gear will give is gear with different stat weights from what the vendors have, which means they're keeping this trend in the game.

Decimal points are BAD, BAD, BAD! KEEL ALL THE DECIMAL POINTS!

You could, you know, test biochem on PTR and see if he was making a typo by crafting a lot of implants on PTR and seeing if an aug slot will proc. Because I really doubt they'll remove all the current implants with augment slots, and I'm pretty sure he just screwed up his typing.

But you get shiny crystals!

Forcing a loading screen resets missions (such as logging in and out, going on and off your ship). I agree it is still annoying to do so to get the missions you want though - might as well just list all of them since we're doing this log on/off thing anyway.

Orange pieces are available for as low as level 11. If you're THAT concerned about it, all you need to do is get to 100 skill in scythweaving, crit craft the stuff, then you can drop it for other stuff because NOTHING scyth/armormech makes for orange stuff has a "requires xxx scythweaving/armormech" on it. You'll do that, get the stuff you want, and then drop scyth for something else that's fotm. There isn't any reason to keep scyth/armormech AT ALL unlike the current biochem, unless you want to sell augments. Once you've made your crit orange gear, gear, you'll keep it all the way till the expansion (if this game lasts that long), and perhaps even beyond the expansion, unless expansion stuff crits for 2 aug slots or something since its moddable all the way.

But the material needed for purple augs, does it come from slicing, or from those augment crafting profession's related missions skills (eg, underworld trading for scythweaving)? I know the base material (normal white/green mats) will be from slicing, what I'm not sure is the blue/purple mats for prototype/artifact augs.

Can anyone who has a character on the PTR with slicing tell me what the missions actually give now? Are lockbox missions still available, do blue/purple 1 time mission items still come from any slicing mission, do cybertech schematics still come from slicing and if purple augments require purple items from slicing, or from the augment crafting profession's related mission skill itself (for instance, if mandalorian iron is needed for level 49 purple augs)? Thanks for any answers.

You're not looking hard enough. I never had this problem and leveled biochem to 400 without any "roadblock". Try looking at the implants or stims.

If you're a level 50 trying to farm that, justicar sector on corusant for republic. You can use your mount in that area, which makes it a lot faster than the earlier zones. Don't know about empire.

I don't get WHY they gave the consular only 1 crafting crit, and it is armstech, of all things, which most consulars won't get unless you already have every other crewskill that a force user could benefit from with your other characters and are just getting that for completion's sake (or you REALLY want to get qyzen an artifact techblade yourself). Additionally, giving nadia a scythweaving efficiency bonus, when you get her so late in the game (and thus most likely have maxed scythweaving making the efficiency bonus effectively useless, since you'll want the increased crit chance for augment slotted armors now), is pretty stupid as well. I would trade anything for kira's +5 crit scythweaving if I could. On a less whiny note, great guide bowser!

In a few thousand years, they won't have to beg for that.

If you want +28 stat purple augs, run 340 purple slicing missions (its called "a test of intelligence"). You're guaranteed to get at least 1 purple aug, although more often than not the stat for the aug isn't something you want. I run it with T7 and he crits pretty often on them. On several of those missions he came back with 2 purple augs (once he came back with a +28 str and +28 willpower aug), a blue lockbox (8-9K in it) and another 340 purple mission (several times it was another 340 purple slicing mission, which meant I effectively spent nothing and got 2 purple augs + more credits). The actual repeatable rank 6 augment missions aren't really worth it. You rarely get a purple aug from those, even if you crit.

They're random. I've gotten patterns from running gift missions.

Here's one thing people pissed off about undercutters don't understand.: its a game. It doesn't affect if you'll get your meal each day or any other daily necessities. A lot of people just want a little bit of profit, and they don't care how large it is, as this is virtual currency, and maybe they just enjoy making stuff to sell. Punching a mob to get a fistful of credits gets dull after a while, and some of them don't even drop stuff.

MMOs are no longer games really, just a form of social entertainment that companies use to draw in revenue. Its cheaper to simply add in "hard modes", and thus not requiring you to spend additional resources designing entirely new zones, boss and such, not to mention all the artwork required for armors, bosses and environments and all the additional work required to ensure that it gets patched in smoothly. If the majority of their audience accepts this (which, apparently a majority of MMO players do), they'll keep doing this simply because it's cheaper, and they're still sucking in your money.

I have watched a symphony muted on youtube before. Just saying. I wanted to see if any of the people playing the instruments were actually watching the conductor.

If biochem remained as it is, they'd just level the proff, make the orange crit gear (some of which can be gotten at level 15) and reroll biochem. Again.

Hey now, blizzard hasn't fixed vanish in 7 or 8 years of WoW, and its STILL broken, so I don't think bioware can break that record - just yet.

There are no companions with artifice crit atm, empire or republic - only efficiency - which does not help with critting at all. You were just lucky.

They could have just removed the "requires biochem" thingy on those reusables and make more people happy. I'd think that's even easier to code than removing all your reusables.

The only way is to buy them off the GTN (or make an alt to run savaging missions)

Every 20 points you just get a few new schematics. At certain breakpoints you'll need new, higher tier materials, but its not always at every 20 points.