Get Crafting, Crafters!

[Veeius]

The real problem is that biochem and only biochem gives you a character only benefit. Therefore, most people are biochem.

[evanfardreamer]

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.

 

This is more or less what I did on my Sentinel's artifice - I'd go to the effort to get a blue Might hilt, and then skip the next one, and do it again. About every three iterations I'd also do a blue Prototype for Kira's lightsaber. Up until the last tier, we actually used the same enhancements, so once I got the prototype there I was set for all 3 lightsabers and 8 pieces of orange gear between us. Hardest part was finding the armoring, and mods - as noted, by the time I had enough comms on a planet for those blues, I was well past their level, and it just seemed wasteful to me.

 

Now that I'm close to endgame, I'm transitioning to getting the Artifact quality of Might and Force Wielder hilts, and the appropriate enhancements. With the lack of other crafters making the mods and armorings, I'm resorting to leveling an alt. I'm in favor of another idea suggested, the buy contracts - put up a 'want to buy' listing and price, and see when it's satisfied.

 

Beyond that, I don't know what I'd want to see to help out crafting without unbalancing it against the rest of the game. It really does seem like they're looking at it as an addon that is beneficial to dabble in, but something that you can't really turn into its own game or system. It just turns impractical unless you have a ton of spare credits.

[siegeshot]

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.

 

This^^.

 

It isn't that we aren't trying. There were no enhancements that I needed on GTN. I made my own blues, put a few up for sale. None sold. So I vendor trashed them. I would keep purps up but nobody wants to pay for what the mats actually cost. Same with barrels.

 

Now hilt mods sell just fine. I have no idea why. So do armoring and mods.

 

Why enhancements and barrels don't is beyond me. So confusing. Then color crystals is a whole different situation.

Edited April 28, 2012 by siegeshot

[Karkais]

Why enhancements and barrels don't is beyond me. So confusing. Then color crystals is a whole different situation.

 

Depends on the level I guess, for lvl 50s, on empire, the Ilum heroic 2+ poisonous strategy gives a lvl48 purple enhancement reward which most people are propably happy with.

Edited April 28, 2012 by Karkais

[asbalana]

My wife and I have two four hundred level crafting skills (Synth and Bio) and are leveling up three others and are well along the way with them. I think that there is only one that we have not touched. We also have a number of the gathering and mission skills at 400 so mats are no problem most of the time.

 

I have three observations.

 

The first is strange but when I want to find a low to mid level crafted item on the GTN I never can and yet when I try to sell one it sits forever and ends up returned in my mail box.

 

The second is that I reverse engineer almost everything that I craft. Not only does it give the possibility of enhanced recipies, it also returns mats which then can be used for more crafting. When you are leveling a crafting skill this really helps reducing the time involved and eliminates making, finding, and/or buying mats. Every piece I reverse engineer is a piece that does not go up for sale.

 

The third is the cost of leveling crafting skills. I rolled a character on a high pop server and took three gathering skills. No crafting at all. He is a millionaire at level 22 without any special effort while my advanced crafters have kept all of my characters poor on the other server through the cost of the crafting leveling process. I am starting to make back some of the investment by selling a few high level purples, but am still way behind the investment cost. It just does not make sense in many ways, considering the leveling and mat costs, to craft mid level gear and mods and bio products and put them up for sale. You do not recover your cost or could actually sell the mats for more than the finished product.

 

On the whole I (and wife) really enjoy the crafting. Our mains are level 44 now and they and their alts have better gear than we would have been able to get without the crafting and have excellent mods and consumables.

 

One last thought (maybe the fourth) is that crafting takes time, especially if you are trying to be somewhat active in the GTN or are out gathering mats. It slows down the leveling process. That is fine with us, but a lot of players will likely not care to take the time to craft and list mid level stuff.

 

One last last thought. My wife and I play together as a team and have run all possible (for two players with companions) group content. We have run a number of flashpoints and all of the heroics that we can get our hands on. But it may be a while if ever before we run the highes level flashpoints and operations. She has a number of synth recipies that require grade 7 and grade 8 mats, Some of the grade seven are for sale, but the price is out of the world and I understand (may be wrong) that the grade 8 are BoP. I may be wrong but I believe that the grade 8 mats only drop in ops or heroic fps. So now she has recipies for equipment that she cannot make. That is demotivating for people who play mostly solo and dsicourages them from leveling certain crafting skills. It kind of reminds me of WOW. I did not raid but had the highes level in every crafting skill. There was a ton of good stuff that I could never make. I understand the rational of that. It forces players into raiding, but it also makes non raiding crafters second class and discourages crafitng.