Droidist Posted July 18, 2012 Share Posted July 18, 2012 So, is it just me, or has anyone else noticed a total lack of resources on the heavily populated servers? I used to have no real problems finding enough resources, now I'm lucky to find any, especially with new charcters in the lower end areas where there are regularly over 100 people playing. Perhspa a scalable resource respawn timer. The more people in an area, the faster the resources respawn... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Telanis Posted July 18, 2012 Share Posted July 18, 2012 So, is it just me, or has anyone else noticed a total lack of resources on the heavily populated servers? I used to have no real problems finding enough resources, now I'm lucky to find any, especially with new charcters in the lower end areas where there are regularly over 100 people playing. Perhspa a scalable resource respawn timer. The more people in an area, the faster the resources respawn... Good idea, definitely post it in the suggestions forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shlamorel Posted July 18, 2012 Share Posted July 18, 2012 Is there still sharding of the lower level planets? If so I imagine that would help and that they intended for that spawn rate. I always imagined that Bioware envisioned that people would harvest nodes while leveling while also supplementing with sending companions out on missions (which costs credits). No clue if that's actually how they intended, I guess that's just what I figured. For the record, I too have noticed competition for nodes. I guess I have just tried to capitalize on it by selling them for higher on the GTN and making a profit off of sending my missions out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kerensk Posted July 19, 2012 Share Posted July 19, 2012 I think it's a good idea but I've actually noticed the opposite problem with Scavenging (I assume Bioanalysis does the same). Goto an area with droids that are scavenge-able and you'll find 2-3 carcasses per spawn point from people playing through. Unfortunately because this kind of traffic only happens on low planets you end up with bays full of lv. 1-2 materials. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asbalana Posted July 19, 2012 Share Posted July 19, 2012 I think it's a good idea but I've actually noticed the opposite problem with Scavenging (I assume Bioanalysis does the same). Goto an area with droids that are scavenge-able and you'll find 2-3 carcasses per spawn point from people playing through. Unfortunately because this kind of traffic only happens on low planets you end up with bays full of lv. 1-2 materials. I would first note that my wife and I would never ninja a node from another players kill, but indeed many do the kills and move on without taking the mats. My wife and I do the Ilum dailies just to run our cap level SW and SI respectivly. There is one area that we have to go through to get to a daiily quest where Republic players appear to have to destroy gun emplacements and those kills can be scavenged for grade six mats. The first time we hit the area, my map lit up like a Xmas tree with stars everywhere. LOL, it must be disconcerting for Republic players to try to quest while being followed around by a heavily geared Imp team and their companions (PVE server), but we do that from time to time and suck up tons of top level scavaging mats. We have not found to many higher level areas liike this, but then again we have not looked for them and can't really say whether others do exist. Our experience in moving from a very light server to a very heavy server is that indeed we have found some areas stripped clean, but most still seem to have plenty of nodes for all. Like that other game, we find that there are many areas with few to no nodes and a few that are super dense. You have to explore to find out where the nodes are. We do notice that most players will avoid a silver or gold droid or beast that is not necessary for their quest, but we kill every one that we see and suck them dry for mats - sort of like channeling our inner vampire. Swtor is different from that other game in that one can run crew missions for mats. As a serious crafter in the other game, I had to allocate time to gather necessary mats. Here I just crank up the companions on my alts which sit on fleet and then go about my busness. The nodes seem only important while levelng a character and gathering crew skill sso there are much fewer players hitting them and hence less competiton. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
finelinebob Posted July 20, 2012 Share Posted July 20, 2012 Swtor is different from that other game in that one can run crew missions for mats. As a serious crafter in the other game, I had to allocate time to gather necessary mats. Here I just crank up the companions on my alts which sit on fleet and then go about my busness. The nodes seem only important while levelng a character and gathering crew skill sso there are much fewer players hitting them and hence less competiton. Idk about running missions on a regular basis for harvest skills, other than for those items you would need to buy from the Crew Skills Vendor. This is particularly true for Grade 4 mats and higher, where missions can take 30 minutes or longer to get perhaps 8 items in addition to the cost. I have an armstech, and armormech and a cybertech so I do a LOT of scavenging and have noticed that for any particular grade of materials, there is always some location on an appropriate level planet with a high concentration of harvesting nodes. In 15-20 minutes, I typically get 2 full stacks of scavenged compounds and 2 full stacks of scavenged metals ... that beats running missions any day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asbalana Posted July 20, 2012 Share Posted July 20, 2012 Idk about running missions on a regular basis for harvest skills, other than for those items you would need to buy from the Crew Skills Vendor. This is particularly true for Grade 4 mats and higher, where missions can take 30 minutes or longer to get perhaps 8 items in addition to the cost. I have an armstech, and armormech and a cybertech so I do a LOT of scavenging and have noticed that for any particular grade of materials, there is always some location on an appropriate level planet with a high concentration of harvesting nodes. In 15-20 minutes, I typically get 2 full stacks of scavenged compounds and 2 full stacks of scavenged metals ... that beats running missions any day. I have to agree that getting tons of mats for free over a shot period of time is unbeatable. I just have not found that to be my experience. I know areas that are rich in nodes, but when I send out my alt who has 400 level in Arch, Bio, and Scav I find that I do not get the time return that you indicated. It takes travel (multiple loadings) to get to the planet and then I usuallly have to go half way around the planet (sometimes fighting along the way) to get to the nodes. That takes a good deal of time and can easily eat 10 or 15 minutes before I start gathering. When I get to an area with an abundance of nodes, I usually also find an abundance of mobs. I have to kill the mobs before I can harvest most nodes or travel between nodes. If some of the mobs are creatures or droids that are silver or gold, I can harvest mats from them but killing silvers or golds at level takes time. You cannot two shot them. The mobs respawn as quickly (or more so) as the nodes, so I cannot clear an area and happy harvest thereafter. When all is said and done, I end up with plenty of mats, but have never come close to 198 pieces - two stacks of 99. Then it is on to the next planet which takes a quick travel to the space port, the run to my ship, and repeat the process described above to get to the next set of nodes. Also as has been pointed out, if I end up in an area where there are other players harvesting, I am not going to do well at all because most nodes are in the spawning process as a result of being taken by someone else. On the other hand, if in the same time I send out all of the companions of my alts (and the unused ones on my main) to run missions and then hop off to Ilum to do dailies I may have spent about 17 to 20K. But in half an hour, from soup to nuts, I make about 60K running the dailies and end up with mats and commendations from them. When I get back to fleet, I just collect the mats that my alts have recieved from the companion missions and although there are not two stacks, there is a great deal of mats. I can take a fifteen minute break at work and sacrfice the conversation at the water cooler and send out all of my guys to gather. In other words, I can do a ton of other things while running crew skill missions and actually keep my guys working when I do not have time to "really" play. My last act of any play session is to send everyone out just before I hit quit and my first act after logging on is to collect the goodies. I have level 400 in every crafting skill and rarely find that I do not have the mats I need in my cargo hold when I want to craft something. I stopped keeping track of the profitability of running gathering crew missions a long while back. In the end, running missions and splitting the returns between stock piling and selling nets me between 300K on days I hardly try and 500K+ on days I push it a little. I have yet to go anywhee near all out - neveer felt the need. That is more than enough for me and I do not feel any need to spend time on gathering runs. So we each play in the way we like and the way that works best for us. I love to go on harvesting runs for just fun reasons, but find for me that my main reliable source of mats is the crew missions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Khevar Posted July 20, 2012 Share Posted July 20, 2012 ^^ Exactly. I will do free planet gathering on whatever toon I'm playing, but I have crew missions running as well, and on alts sitting around on the fleet. I've even done that while watching tv on my laptop, keeping about 18 companions across 6 toons running constantly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
finelinebob Posted July 21, 2012 Share Posted July 21, 2012 (edited) I do hope to add harvesting route video guides to my YouTube channel soon ... just waiting for a new external hard drive to store them on and the one I was shipped was dead on arrival . It's true that many nodes have mobs around them but if your harvester is a level 50 or close to it, the aggro radius of lower level mobs is fairly small. Even for mobs close or equal to your level, the radius seems to be around 8 meters and you can harvest a node from around 10 meters. You need to position yourself with the node between you and the mob, mouse over the node so your gather cursor comes up, then tap your forward key until the cursor turns active. That should eliminate 99% of the aggro. If you stay on your speeder and you have speeder 3 training, you can just ride away from most mobs, even gold elites, without getting knocked off. Furthermore, if you start your gather when mounted, you do the harvesting and not your companion. Companions have the nasty habit of running up to the node to gather it, ruining any distancing you do from a mob ... so if you are on foot already, always use shift-right click to gather (unless you changed the default keybinds). It's odd, I know ... I don't think that companions are supposed to aggro mobs and it seems that way when I'm just going around killing stuff, but it always happens when my companion runs to a node no matter what distance I keep. Sure, travel times eat into harvest times, but not as much as killing mobs does. For scavenging, sometimes you simply have to kill strong or higher droids in certain areas, like the Works on Coruscant which is the aluminum/laminoid-rich area for Republic scavenging. Not only does killing droids take more time, no matter what your combat level is, but droids tend to return an average of 1.5 scavenged items per kill compared to around 6 scavenged items per harvested node. The ratio isn't quite as bad for bioanalysis, but harvesting mobs is still time-consuming and returns are smaller. If you are a hard-core crafter with toons that cover all the professions, it may be worth your while to have a level 50 with scavenging, archaeology and bioanalysis. Some of the resource farms can be fairly rich in more than one type of node. If anything, when you go out to harvest you will not have to worry about travel times multiplied by three. If you are starting off your crafters, get them their crafting skill, the associated mission skill and slicing. Use your harvester to grind out harvesting the green mats for all of them at once. Get your crafters to level 25 to get your three companions enabled for missions, and you can easily harvest the mats you need to grind those crafters to skill 400 without them ever leaving fleet or sending out a gathering crew mission. Even when it comes to those items that are cheaper to run missions for than buy from the Crew Skills Vendor, your harvesting toon, should be up to at least skill 340 and be able to run missions to gather the white mats you need. You can run those missions with your five companions as you do your harvesting. Split between three different gathering skills, you should always be able to find a bountiful or rich yield mission for each of your five assignable companions. That will minimize the cost per unit for the mats they bring in. Edited July 21, 2012 by finelinebob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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