Crafting is a Waste of Time and Credits

[Gidrea]

My first toon has Artifce. I spent a lot of time and a massive amount of credits to get purple level crystals. Then BW comes out with the Crystal Vendor, and my crafted ones were nearly worthless. The going price is less that the cost of the materials. And before you say to gather the materials, I do, but Corusca Gems are from TH, which costs credits to run the mission, and it takes abut 10 missions to get enough gems to make one crystal.

 

Then the crystal Vendor goes away and Rakghoul event comes out with crystals. So again, mine are nearly worthless.

 

My second toon has Biochem, because while outfitting my first toon, I noticed the high prices of good stims and medpacs.

 

And again, and probably foolishly, I spent a lot of time and an even more massive amount of credits to level up stims to Purple quality.

 

Now, the Black Hole vendor has schematics for better stims, that are already purple quality, and the finished products are being sold on the GTN for very low prices.

 

I've heard from synthweavers that their crafted gear that luckily came out with augment slots have plummeted in price now that people can just buy augment kits.

 

There's just no reason to have a crafting skill unless you really, really like crafting, and have the means to support it.

 

Crafting may have been a good idea at the start, but it's ruined now.

[Mokigilbert]

You are doing crafting wrong. I made 2mill in a day crafting and selling augments.

[Tearsscream]

I've made several million off Artifice making Magenta crystals and pre-1.3 augmented lightsabers.

I also made money selling Corsuca gems for awhile.

 

Biochem I took on my main for convenience and the money it saved me on medpacks.

 

Money can be made by crafting, but it takes time and learning your niche with the economy.

[Gidrea]

You are doing crafting wrong. I made 2mill in a day crafting and selling augments.

 

No, you're answering wrong. Artifice and Biochem can't make augments. If you can't post something useful, don't post anything at all.

 

 

I've made several million off Artifice making Magenta crystals and pre-1.3 augmented lightsabers.

I also made money selling Corsuca gems for awhile.

 

Biochem I took on my main for convenience and the money it saved me on medpacks.

 

Money can be made by crafting, but it takes time and learning your niche with the economy.

 

Magenta Crystals are about 40K. How many times did you have to go get the adegan crystal to make millions?

 

But yes, biochem is good for using yourself, I got the reusable AIm stim and medpac. Do you know if the new schems from the BHvendor can be RE'd into a reusable ones? That I might spring for.

Edited July 10, 2012 by Gidrea

[Elyx]

My first toon has Artifce. I spent a lot of time and a massive amount of credits to get purple level crystals. Then BW comes out with the Crystal Vendor, and my crafted ones were nearly worthless. The going price is less that the cost of the materials. And before you say to gather the materials, I do, but Corusca Gems are from TH, which costs credits to run the mission, and it takes abut 10 missions to get enough gems to make one crystal.

 

Then the crystal Vendor goes away and Rakghoul event comes out with crystals. So again, mine are nearly worthless.

 

My second toon has Biochem, because while outfitting my first toon, I noticed the high prices of good stims and medpacs.

 

And again, and probably foolishly, I spent a lot of time and an even more massive amount of credits to level up stims to Purple quality.

 

Now, the Black Hole vendor has schematics for better stims, that are already purple quality, and the finished products are being sold on the GTN for very low prices.

 

I've heard from synthweavers that their crafted gear that luckily came out with augment slots have plummeted in price now that people can just buy augment kits.

 

There's just no reason to have a crafting skill unless you really, really like crafting, and have the means to support it.

 

Crafting may have been a good idea at the start, but it's ruined now.

 

Crafting will always go through cycles. I still spend many hours crafting and thoroughly enjoy it. people still buy crystals of various colors that I can sell...but I mostly craft for myself. crit crafted gear with augmement slots doesn't sell, but the kits i make with the same craft do sell (and I don't buy the mats...it's more of a spare material sink then a purposeful cash flow process). I enjoy being able to craft gear for an alt when none of the gear on the AH is what I want.

 

what you really saying is that you don't find the crafts beneficial...but many others do. and I doubt that I will be able to convince you that your wrong about what you feel...and I shouldn't try. that's your opinion. But don't tout that post as fact....the simple fact is crafting does many different things for different people. your obviously looking for a maximum profit at minimum expenditure. yeah, the crafts aren't necessarily the best for that. but that's not all they're for. That's just what you use them for.

[Branch]

The game is still new and Bioware is still figuring out the economy of the game. The whole crafting thing should smooth out.

 

 

Personally, my SW is Artifice and Im not really having any problems Im still gaining credits and stuff. The only problem I have is storage. My cargo bay is nearly full and my Inventory is always full. The best choice i have is buying another cargo bay for 40k

[Gidrea]

I guess what I'm really trying to say is don't do it to make credits, do it because you like to craft. I did biochem for my guildies, but now they can buy better stims on the GTN.

 

And what really gets me is Bioware jumping in and making stuff available and ruining the market. If I'd known the crystal vendor was coming, for example, I wouldn't have bothered to make those purple schems.

 

My third toon only gathers, and she's the one with all the credits!

Edited July 10, 2012 by Gidrea

[Gidrea]

"I just hit 50 and finished my class storyline, but I still haven't been able to decide which AC to choose. Leveling solo as a warrior wasn't difficult, so I kept putting off the decision.

Anyone else having the same problem? "~ lagerhat - And who says warriors are broke?

 

That's the funniest damn thing I've read all day. Maybe all week! :)

[Elyx]

I guess what I'm really trying to say is don't do it to make credits, do it because you like to craft. I did biochem for my guildies, but now they can buy better stims on the GTN.

 

And what really gets me is Bioware jumping in and making stuff available and ruining the market. If I'd known the crystal vendor was coming, for example, I wouldn't have bothered to make those purple schems.

 

My third toon only gathers, and she's the one with all the credits!

 

I can get behind that and in all honesty, most MMO's place a high degree of emphasis on how the crafting impacts the market...I certainly made some nice cash the first few days of augments being out, but they really throw the GMT out of whack now.

 

and yeah, lagers thread was pretty good hehe...motivated me to try it myself (was my second jugg). It gets boring after awhile tho, i miss my special abilities

[Gidrea]

I found it hilarious that he made it to 50 without an AC... who knew that was even possible? Thought i funny that anyone would try.

[Kyriosgundam]

The game is still new and Bioware is still figuring out the economy of the game. The whole crafting thing should smooth out.

 

 

Personally, my SW is Artifice and Im not really having any problems Im still gaining credits and stuff. The only problem I have is storage. My cargo bay is nearly full and my Inventory is always full. The best choice i have is buying another cargo bay for 40k

 

I agree until I figured out how to use the crew skills my characters were hurting for credits now they are not. As another said and I can say from experience from other games the value of crafted items will vary from time to time its just a matter of figuring out what skills you need for yourself and what items are needed more by other players at the time. I mean you can change you crew skill set if you really need to. All of my charcters have Artifice and are always selling crystals and lightsaber parts since many people need them. To be honest this is something people shouldnt worry about too much in the long run.

[eiramronoele]

"I just hit 50 and finished my class storyline, but I still haven't been able to decide which AC to choose. Leveling solo as a warrior wasn't difficult, so I kept putting off the decision."

 

- If you dont mind me asking, how did you get to 50 without advance class?

[parmie]

You can make credits from crafting and even more simply just gathering (I don't mean mats).

 

So I go on Operations a lot, I'm in them at least 2 hours of an evening. All 5 companions are out on rich UT gift missions all the time I'm in it, call it half an hour per run, I could gather say 20 gifts. I underprice the rest of the market through choice so I make 1k on a blue and 5.5k on purples. It at least pays for repairs. I get schematics sometimes, yes I generally have them all, but they add to the return of the mission even via vendor.

 

On my artificer when doing the same, it's lockboxes. I get credit boxes sometimes, mostly blue/green items but the occasional good seller - an orange set of bracers, a grade 3 critted and gave me an artifact set of boots which I passed to an alt but could have sold.

 

None of it is massive margin that people seem to assume they should be making but it keeps my credits ticking over and if you've got simple cost covering activities like the above your balance starts to make a bug jump when you do a dailies run.

 

On crafting, I've found purple sells. I don't subscribe to any of the formulae people try to use about the cost of mats. If you've covering the costs of gathering some how (space/dailies/gathering as above) then you can afford to sell at reasonable prices and overall as a character (not just by looking at crafting in isolation), you should not be failing to accrue lots of credits in the game.

Edited July 11, 2012 by parmie

[Tearsscream]

Magenta Crystals are about 40K. How many times did you have to go get the adegan crystal to make millions?

 

I sold most of my magenta crystals for around 200k. (Talking the +41 ones here.)

[Pearasite]

Crafting may have been a good idea at the start, but it's ruined now.

 

So, crafting is broke because you're not making millions and millions of credits crafting and selling your garbage.

 

Guess what, you're not entitled to be rich just because you queue up crafted items. You say it's a waste of time and credits but look, you no longer have to purchase color crystals for your toons. Now you can make stims to support your raiding. Sounds pretty far off from being a total waste.

 

Stop QQing. Just because you craft doesn't mean you should be rolling in credits.

 

 

My artificer makes me a LOT of credits. Just by selling lower level hilts even! Find a hole in your market and fill it. Endgame stuff is super competitive. Here is the formula for getting rich:

 

Max listings + time = credits.

 

It's that simple!

[GnatB]

Just want to point out, strictly speaking, one of the primary points to crafting in games like this is it *is* both a time and money sink.

 

People are spending time crafting/harvesting/selling/etc. that they could otherwise be spending getting to lvl 50. This is good for devs, because many people, once they finish the game, (and yes, there IS a finish, most don't do end game content) stop subbing. So devs naturally want to slow that down as much as possible in order to give themselves time to add more real ontent.

 

And, of course, there's all the money flowing out of the system buying vendor mats, running missions, buying schematics, etc. Now sure, ideally the crafter is making (himself) more money than he's tossing down the sink, but he's behaving as a funnel down the sink for everybody ELSES money.

[angrydurf]

I think there is limited truth to the OP's statement. I also think that that is just fine. My perspective is that crew skills are not supposed to be must haves they are supposed to be alternate paths.

 

So you can level without crafting just fine. Mission rewards, commendation vendor gear/mods, drops and maybe a trip or two to the GTN let you get the gear you need to level as you level. You won't be optimized at all levels but you will be well enough geared to continue to level efficiently. You need to keep drops for yourself/your companions, you'll spend your commendations on yourself not your companions and may not get enough to get all the Items that are upgrades.

 

You can also level crafting as you go and spend some time and money on crafting. You'll usually be slightly better geared than someone who didn't but perhaps slightly poorer (dependent on how savvy you are with GTN sales as you go) you can spend your commendations on the gear you can't craft alone and on extra stuff for your companion as you have comparable to better gear on your crafter already. IF you sink some serious time and money in at the last few levels you can even be pretty well geared to jump into heroics or raids at fifty instead of having to grind out gear from dailies. And all through the process you get to pick and choose stats not just go with the best you can find.

 

Both have advantages and disadvantages and the balance may be imperfect. Some crew skills are more useful than others between what is available as rewards and to crafters and the vagaries of GTN sales on a given server. If all you are interested in is making money hand over fist go with gathering skills. I suggest scavenging, slicing, and bio-analysis, or alternatively just grind dailies for cash. Either way it's a grind and takes time not just queing five companions to do four hours of work in a block.

[Veeius]

No, you're answering wrong. Artifice and Biochem can't make augments. If you can't post something useful, don't post anything at all.

 

While I agree with you that artifice (and cybertech, and armsmech and armormech) needs work, you're wrong that Artificer can't make augments. In fact, Artificer is the ONLY skill that can make str and willpower augments.

 

Magenta Crystals are about 40K. How many times did you have to go get the adegan crystal to make millions?

 

But yes, biochem is good for using yourself, I got the reusable AIm stim and medpac. Do you know if the new schems from the BHvendor can be RE'd into a reusable ones? That I might spring for.

 

First, I would say that it should not ever be possible to just do dailies and get something better than can be crafted. Sorry, but no, that's *********. It completely OBE's the crafting skill. I agree that you should be able to get stuff that's better than crafted items in ops - that's fine. But just doing dailies gives you BH items which is TONS AND TONS better than crafted gear. This is just wrong.

 

Second, I've said this before, I don't understand why bw can't get this - biochem gives you advantages in every aspect of this game, pvp, pve, high end, grinding, all of it. You always have a stim, you always have the best usuable med pack. What I would suggest is that EACH craft gives you THAT type of advantage.

 

Why can't cybertech get a buff that says "every insert yo uhave is x% more effective because you're a cybertech." For example? I hate using the wow example, but wow crafting system beats teh hell out of swtor's because there is NO craft that you look at and say "you're an idiot if you do this" Which is EXACTLY how swtor is set up - if you're not biochem on your main, you're just dumb, even after the plethora of nerfs biochem has.

 

Why? Because every armor insert, every barrel, every crystal, enhance, mod, everything I can make I can get better just by doing dailies EXCEPT biochem. You can not cheaply buy stims or medpacks that are BETTER (actually not even as good) as biochem. Not to mention that even if you could it STILL wouldn't be worth it. You buy a barrel (or w/e) once, and it's good until the next one comes out. You buy a stim, and it's gone in 1 hour, even if you spend that hour just banging around in fleet waiting for a wz or lfg pop.

[Astarica]

Given how little effort it takes to get crafting to 400 and getting the recipes, there's no reason to expect to make money consistently from crafting.

[SentinelDranoel]

No, you're answering wrong. Artifice and Biochem can't make augments. If you can't post something useful, don't post anything at all.

 

 

 

 

Magenta Crystals are about 40K. How many times did you have to go get the adegan crystal to make millions?

 

But yes, biochem is good for using yourself, I got the reusable AIm stim and medpac. Do you know if the new schems from the BHvendor can be RE'd into a reusable ones? That I might spring for.

 

What server are you on where magenta is 40k?

[GnatB]

While I agree with you that artifice (and cybertech, and armsmech and armormech) needs work, you're wrong that Artificer can't make augments. In fact, Artificer is the ONLY skill that can make str and willpower augments.

 

Artifice doesn't make str and willpower augments. Synthweaving does. Artifice doesn't make any augments.

 

Second, I've said this before, I don't understand why bw can't get this - biochem gives you advantages in every aspect of this game, pvp, pve, high end, grinding, all of it. You always have a stim, you always have the best usuable med pack. What I would suggest is that EACH craft gives you THAT type of advantage.

 

Perks are a HORRIBLE idea that ruins the whole point of crewskills. The correct fix is to fix biochem by removing it's perk, (which supposedly bioware thinks it's doing by simply phasing out the reuseables) not break the rest by giving them perks too.

[Jerid]

Artifice doesn't make str and willpower augments. Synthweaving does. Artifice doesn't make any augments.

 

 

 

Perks are a HORRIBLE idea that ruins the whole point of crewskills. The correct fix is to fix biochem by removing it's perk, (which supposedly bioware thinks it's doing by simply phasing out the reuseables) not break the rest by giving them perks too.

 

He's not talking about what goes in the Augment slot from a critted (or Aug Slot Kit added) item.

He's talking about the 3rd normal slot on an item(The one that ususlay has +END and +Power). Cyber makes the the items for the other 2 Slots.

Edited July 12, 2012 by Jerid

[jamescloutier]

He's not talking about what goes in the Augment slot from a critted (or Aug Slot Kit added) item.

He's talking about the 3rd normal slot on an item(The one that ususlay has +END and +Power). Cyber makes the the items for the other 2 Slots.

 

If he means enhancements, yes artificers are the only ones that make them. But they do not have STR or WILL on them. So he's completely mixed up in what he's trying to talk about.

[OwnzYou]

Here's a secret, for BioChem make the blue lvl 48 Stim Packs, they sell like hotcakes on the GTN. Profitable

 

Another secret, make low level gear. Seriously, people spend more money gearing up their alts than they do buying lvl 50 stuff, because at level 50 you get all your gear for free (Commendations)

MY biggest gripe with crafting right now is that Crit Crafted gear is becoming obsolete because now the Augment Slot you get from the Crit needs to be upgraded as you level up

[DarthTHC]

I craft and I make decent money. I never have to run dailies or grind for credits. Week-to-week the credits I have across all characters increases significantly.

 

If you're not making a good profit crafting, you're doing it wrong.

 

Now it's true that some crew skills are less financially productive than others and certainly need some BW attention. But each of our characters gets 3 crew skills and we get 8 characters per server... so like I said if you're not making a good profit crafting, you're doing it wrong.

 

Some ideas:

• Know the cost of what you make. If you see a finished product posted for less than cost of materials, buy it and repost. Eventually the undercutter will run out of money or materials. Or prove to you that you don't really know the cost of what you make. If you can't post it for enough profit, wait. Again, the undercutters will eventually run out of resources.
  
• Play the materials price vs. finished goods price game. If you can sell the raw materials for a lot more than the finished product, sell the raw materials.
  
• Watch the market for trends. The market will fluctuate, with the price of items swinging down to 50% of average all the way to over 150% of average price in any given week. Post when prices are high, wait when they're low.
  
• Watch for emerging markets, especially by paying attention to patch notes and changes on the PTR. Prepare yourself ahead of time by ensuring you have plenty of raw materials to produce the new recipes that will be in demand.
  

 

Some examples:

• Before 1.3 dropped, I suggested to my guildmates they should buy the "good" augments at a ceiling of about 75k per and hold them until 1.3 dropped. There were a lot of them out there at that price. Prices for these augments on my server peaked at over 225k and still are well over 75k. Pure profit for those who took my advice.
  
• Exotech Stims schematics are expensive if you want to gear your character up for top level raids. If you don't care so much about top level raids but can do HM FPs, they're not so expensive. The cost to produce them is nothing when compared with the Prototype Hyper-Battle equivalents. Yet they sell for much, much more.
  

Edited July 12, 2012 by DarthTHC