Purple geared as you level....Hope you've got time on your hands!

[Sanchpanza]

The last couple of days I haven't had much time to actually sit down and progress my characters, but I've been able to get to the pc regularly enough to collect some figures.

 

I wanted to see the feasibility of crafting yourself the best items you can as you go along. By "best" items, I mean those recipes you get as standard for your craft and those you get from Reverse Engineering items you make.

 

Basically the way the stats work on an item, taking the lowest heavy armour you can make from Synthweaving as an example:

 

Green Item : +10 Strength, +5 Endurance

Green Item (Critical Craft) : +10 Strength, +5 Endurance + 1 Augment Slot

 

Blue Item : +10 Strength, +5 Endurance, +3 Defence/Critical/Power Rating

Blue Item (Critical Craft) : +10 Strength, +5 Endurance, +3 Defence/Critical/Power Rating + 1 Augment Slot

 

Purple Item : +10 Strength, +5 Endurance, +3 Defence/Critical/Power Rating, +4 Shield/Surge/Accuracy/Presence/*

Purple Item (Critical Craft) : +10 Strength, +5 Endurance, +3 Defence/Critical/Power Rating, +4 Shield/Surge/Accuracy/Presence/* + 1 Augment Slot

* : I think that there is a fifth but not in game right now to confirm

 

Now... Down to the figures. I do want to point out that these figures are from My Own Personal Experience and are NOT official figures. I did over 75 of each type of gathering missions and got 70% the blue recipes for the first 4 items of Synthweaving Light Armour, Medium Armour and Heavy Armour. I got 1-4 Purple recipes for about 50% of those items I put together a few numbers to see how long it would take for someone to do that as they went along. These figures were collected with all skills high enough to make the item difficulty grey, as well as the difficulty of the missions.

 

When collecting the stats, my chance of crafting a Critical Purple Item was about 1/5. If someone was reasonably lucky they might be looking at a 1/3 chance and craft it on the second attempt.

 

2 Purple Items = 2x 5:00 mins (being generous), 2x 2 Rubat Crystal, 2 x 2 Agrinium (Purple crafting material from Underworld Trading)

Total = 10:00 minutes, 4 Rubat Crystals, 4 Agrinium

 

 

To get the recipe used, Blue Items must be Reverse Engineered. When collecting my stats I got a figure of roughly 1/7 chance to get a recipe from the Reverse Engineering. There are up to five recipes to learn from this, but lets say this person is lucky and has a 1/4 chance of getting a recipe from Reverse Engineering and gets the recipe that they want on the second attempt. That would be 8 Blue Items they would have to craft

 

8 Blue Items = 8 x 3:30 Minutes, 8 x 2 Rubat Crystals, 8 x 2 Terenthium (Blue crafting material from underworld trading)

Total = 28 Minutes, 16 Rubat Crystals, 16 Terenthium

 

 

To get the recipe above that was used, you need to Reverse Engineer Green Items. I got roughly a 1/8 chance of getting a recipe from Reverse Engineering at this stage. There are also 3 recipes, so a 1/3 chance of getting the one you want. Lets say this person's luck has prevailed and they only take 5 Reverse Engineering per Schematic. And they get their Schematic on the second time. That would be 10 Green Items needed.

 

10 Green Items = 10 x 1:00 Minutes, 10 x 2 Rubat Crystal

Total = 10:00 Minutes, 20 Rubat Crystals.

 

Total Crafting Time : 48:00 Minutes

Total Crafting Resources : 40 Rubat Crystal, 16 Terenthium, 4 Agrinium

 

Then there is the missions to GET those items.

 

The best value for money for getting Rubat Crystals is an "Abundant Yield: Grade 1 Power Crystals" mission (I never got a higher yield mission offered), these take 3:00 Minutes, and cost 120 Credits. Every successful mission returns between 6-9 Rubat Crystals. At a generous 8 recieved from every mission this would take 5 Missions, totalling 15:00 Minutes and costing 600 Credits.

 

The best value for money (that I found anyway) for getting Terenthium and Agrinium was to do "Abundant Yield: Grade 1 Underworld Metal" missions (I never got a higher yield mission offered), which yields 4 Terengthium on a normal completion, and a 1/8 chance of yielding 6 Terenthium and 3 Agrinium. Even being lucky and getting a high yield every 5 missions, that would still be 10 missions to collect the 4 Agrinium, totalling 1:00:00 Hours and costing 1450 Credits, but this also provides upwards of 40 Terenthium

 

The final thing to add is that because there is no refresh button on the mission select pages, the only way to refresh your missions that I've found is to actually log and log back in. This takes me about 25 seconds, and it averaged out that I was having to log out and in twice for every mission I selected. If we add this on, 50 seconds for every mission, that's an additional 12 Minutes and 30 Seconds

 

 

 

So, adding all of that up; If you were consistently lucky, the total time and resources to create an augmented purple item of gear, at level 9 (only having one companion) would be 2 Hours 15 Minutes 30 Seconds and at a cost of 2050 Credits.

 

That's if you're lucky...

[Nangasaur]

Too much theorycrafting, not enough having fun, imo.

 

Also, tl;dr.

Edited December 24, 2011 by Nangasaur

[Warsyde]

Players aren't really intended to grind out full sets of crafted purple gear during the leveling process, it's a waste of time. In the time it takes you to do all that you could level to the point of wearing greens that are more effective.

 

Now, when you're level 50, yeah, spending time on that will be worthwhile, or when lots of people have level 50s and want to twink out their new alts in purple gear, it'll be worth the trouble.

 

But while leveling? Getting the occasional purple item while leveling is just a cool bonus and should be seen as such.

[Sanchpanza]

Well, the thing is, I wasn't fussed about purple gear at all for any of my other characters, but I've just started up a Sith Warrior - Juggy. I was looking into the possibilities of upping his defence and shield percentages. The only way I saw was a) Blue and Purple gear, or b) Augmented stuff.

 

As for the not having fun comment, I didn't eschew fun for those figures. I couldn't sit down and do missions so I thought I'd craft whenever I got 5 mins to log on. And it wasn't theorycrafting, the actual figure is higher easily. Example: Just logged on to the 10 sets of blue boots I'd crafted, RE'd them all and not a single purple schematic.

[Randomness]

Blue is easy enough to do for mods and the like, and the improvement noticable enough, that it's worth going for that as you level (and it gives you a use for the stuff from your mission skill)... but not purple. Purple mats alone are horrifically rare.

[Sanchpanza]

I did say it was a test to see the feasibility of it I think it's a definite NO!

 

As you say, Blue + Augment is pretty easy to get hold of, that's what I've been doing today after levelling up, plus my main has slicing, so I usually someone out getting augments

[Dynamitemonkey]

Say your stuck for a long while and you progress as slow as i do, then you would want to upgrade your crew skills for better armour and weapons.

And when your able to craft puple items people will pay some high prices sometimes making it easier to send your guys on more missions.

But if your realy good you can both fight and send guys on missions at the sametime, then that will help you alot.

In order of importance in my opion to level up in is your characters level, valor, crew skills,social, and then lagacy since legacy has no effect or abilities other then giving you a name so far.

[Dulwaithe]

I re-'d a number of purple recipes while leveling up. It wasn't too bad overall. Thankfully, they can be crafted while you're offline and you get quite a few of the non blue/purple mats while running around in the world.

 

Also, picking and choosing the slots where you have worse gear helps.

[Stadulator]

all my toons use orange moddable gear, either dropped, quested or bought w/ comms with full purple mods (armor, enhancements, mods, crystals, barrels, hilts)

 

imho, contrary to the common thread that it's not worth time, it's VERY worth the time.

 

Start w/ your primary toon making the "mods" you need. Roll an alt when the first one is 50/400 et al. Level up that toon now using the first + whatever c/s the new toon is (Artifice + Cybertech is my current with a 3rd toon stuck at lvl 25 who is bio.) My 3rd 50/400 is TH, UT and Slicing.

 

This allows me to faceroll people in PVP (just inspect some of the gear you see in the sub 50 bracket and you'll understand why,) well into the 50's bracket (50/50 cent.champ gear atm and not many BM's can take my DPS spec Commandor or my heal spec Sorc. And, literally destroy PVE content.

 

Keep your pets in your hand-me-downs OR use those comm's to keep them current.

 

Granted, I've been playing since early release, but it's so rediculously easy to lvl a toon in this game there's no reason a casual can't have 2 50/400's after 2 or 3 months if your'e so motivated.

Edited March 12, 2012 by Stadulator

[DizzD]

I recently leveled a Bounty Hunter alt to 50 and was determined to level his Armormech crewskill simultaneous with his adventure level and outfit him with his own creations.

 

I ended up getting him in blue's for most upgrades (roughly an upgrade for each armor slot every 10 levels) with purple chest and legs for most tiers as well as a random other purple here and there.

 

In total it probably extended my leveling time rather than shortened it. Plus there was absolutely no way in hell I could have possibly gathered all the mats I needed myself without totally abandoning the leveling process for days at a time to simply go out and harvest by hand for the mats that were needed just for the blues. let alone the purples(easily 8x more than what I needed to RE the blue schems).

 

As a result, I ended up spending way over 1mil. on mats between lvl1-50/400.(more than it would have cost to just buy upgrades off the GTN or do the orange/commendation method)

 

TL;DR - Just wait till 50 to level a crewskill, otherwise it will slow down your leveling, cost you a fortune, or both.

Edited March 13, 2012 by DizzD

[outsidermatt]

I levelled my main with Artifice. I pretty much always had purple saber hilts and crystals for both me and my companion. At some levels, I was also decked out with purple enhancements.

 

The trick is to keep your crafting skill ahead of your character level. You don't hit level 20 and go "Hey, I need to craft new purples now". You should probably have crafted them by the time you were 19. You don't have to sit around doing nothing for the supposed 2 hours it takes. Even if your "2 hours" claim is accurate, your companions should be doing that 2 hours for you while you're out levelling, requiring little to no time investment for yourself.

[Stadulator]

^^this guy gets a cigar!

 

my crewskills are always far beyond my current lvl. I start making my mods for lvl 13-15 and usually ding 400 in all 3 skills by lvl 45 or so

Edited March 13, 2012 by Stadulator

[TheVoidStalker]

To get the recipe used, Blue Items must be Reverse Engineered. When collecting my stats I got a figure of roughly 1/7 chance to get a recipe from the Reverse Engineering.

Then you are the luckiest person alive. Go buy a lottery ticket right now. Actually with that kind of luck, you'll probably just find one.

[EricJS]

Then you are the luckiest person alive. Go buy a lottery ticket right now. Actually with that kind of luck, you'll probably just find one.

 

He's not talking lvl 49/50 recipes though, so I'd say those odds are in the right ballpark for low level gear by my experience. I'm in the process of grinding out epic barrels/hilts of all types and levels on two of my toons, and even for the lvl 30 stuff, I'm mostly seeing 10% discovery during RE. Yeah, it hits 1-2% by the time you hit lvl 50 stuff.

[HanzBlix]

For what it's worth, this is how I did it.

 

I would craft to blue (necessary for me), then I would either craft blue until I got a purple OR an augment slot on my blue. I chose a couple pieces I would keep orange in order to cut down on needing every piece (I chose 3, head, chest, legs).

 

Worked for me while leveling.