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The shaft, and how Archaeology got it.


Grayseven

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Scavenging: One node for both mats. Ditto for Bioanalysis. Plus, they get to harvest from strong or better mobs of the appropriate type.

 

You can't travel the new planets without tripping over Scavenging and Bioanalysis nodes.

 

Archaeology? Five separate nodes. One for Power crystals, one for Artifacts and one each for the colors and they do NOT give you Artifacts as they did previously.

 

And their nodes are sporadic to say the least, not to mention having no ability to harvest from mobs.

 

What give Bioware? What exactly do you have against Artificers and Archaeologists?

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I have noticed the color crystals are overwhelmingly common compared to power crystals & artifacts as well. However, this expansion is actually the most archaeology (and as a result, synthweaving & artifice) friendly update ever. Mats are easier and cheaper to get via missions and we can craft endgame stuff like kits for less mats now. So while it might be tedious to gather them in the wild, the high mission returns make up for it IMO. Edited by Beltane
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I have noticed the color crystals are overwhelmingly common compared to power crystals & artifacts as well. However, this expansion is actually the most archaeology (and as a result, synthweaving & artifice) friendly update ever. Mats are easier and cheaper to get via missions and we can craft endgame stuff like kits for less mats now. So while it might be tedious to gather them in the wild, the high mission returns make up for it IMO.

 

The mission returns are the same for the other skills, so it's still a decided disadvantage for Archaeology when it comes to materials gathering.

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All I know is that the Training Grounds area on Yavin is absurdly flush with Arch gathering nodes.

 

Not sure about how the drop from each of those nodes stacks up against the drops on other Crew Skill nodes, but there are so... damn... many of them that I can't imagine anyone's hurting that much for mats.

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Sure. But what kind of nodes. I see plenty of color crystal nodes but Power Crystal and certainly the Artifact nodes just aren't there on Rishi like the Scavenging and Bioanalysis nodes are.

 

That's the issue. Arch has 5 different nodes each giving a different mat, while Bio and Scav only have one node that gives both of their mats on top of the fact they can gather from strong or better mobs while Arch can't.

 

Arch is on the short end of the stick.

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The new artifice dyes are fairly awesome. And it looks like the slicing/augment mats are competitively efficient to extract. It's true that scavenginig is much easier to level (my scavenger zipped to 500 doing the forged alliances fps) but that''s always been the case. My artificer is happier than he's ever been.

 

My solution to even out the extracting would be to do what Wow did - let us extract from certain mobs - pirates/smugglers might carry artifacts or crystals?

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Considering I can't throw a rock without hitting an archy node, how exactly has archy gotten shafted?

 

I hit 500 in about 3 levels so not like it was hard. Seems to be harder to find artifact fragments and power crystals but that's just RNG. Send out 1 or 2 companions for power crystal missions and fragments while i mine color crystals. easy!

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I hit 500 in about 3 levels so not like it was hard. Seems to be harder to find artifact fragments and power crystals but that's just RNG. Send out 1 or 2 companions for power crystal missions and fragments while i mine color crystals. easy!

 

That simply isn't the point.

 

The point is that the other two gathering skills have one node that gives them one or both of the mats they use, while Archaeology has 5 different nodes they have to gather from and which seem to share spawn points.

 

The other point is that Bio and Scav get to harvest from mobs, Arch doesn't.

 

By the end of Rishi, I had over a stack and a half of both Metals and Compounds. Bio was the same way. But with Arch, you have to hit separate nodes to gather the 5 mats you need.

 

It isn't about missions. Anyone can send out companions. It's about the fact that Color crystal nodes don't drop Artifact mats and there are separate nodes for Power Crystals and Artifacts...unlike the other gathering skills.

 

There needs to be parity. Were the color crystals also dropping Power crystals or Artifacts, this wouldn't be an issue.

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Well, you could make the case that arch has always gotten the shaft then. Artifice and synthweaving are the 2 crafting classes that use it and they both use totally different mats. So if you're a synthweaver you have no use for color crystals, whereas the crew skills that need bioanalysis and scavenging can use all the mats.

 

I understand your frustration but IMO it's not that bad. Power crystal & archaeology nodes are out there, and bio and scavenging were always more plentiful.

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Well, you could make the case that arch has always gotten the shaft then. Artifice and synthweaving are the 2 crafting classes that use it and they both use totally different mats. So if you're a synthweaver you have no use for color crystals, whereas the crew skills that need bioanalysis and scavenging can use all the mats.

 

I understand your frustration but IMO it's not that bad. Power crystal & archaeology nodes are out there, and bio and scavenging were always more plentiful.

 

The problem being that every single time EA/BW has had a chance to fix their mistake, they haven't.

 

The simplest solution would be to make Force using mobs "harvest-able" and to have Color crystals also drop Artifacts and Power crystals...or have Artifact and Power crystal nodes also drop Color crystals.

 

Yes, Archaeology has always gotten the shaft but there doesn't seem to be any move to fix that.

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I hit 500 scavenging just doing cz-198,and don't forget oricon

 

Also I think this early access is a final beta , we find some of the bugs that don't appear until a very heavy pop server is running it.

Edited by MadHobbit
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Would be nice to see a few changes...

 

1) MORE Artifact nodes

2) Higher drop on existing few

3) LESS Color Crystal Nodes

4) Add Artifact mat to Crystal Nodes (Problem solved)

 

Seems I'm seeing roughly 75-90% of the nodes around the template are Color or Power crystals. For every 10 of those I'm only finding a single Artifact node.

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I'd prefer that there only be Power Crystal and Artifact Fragment nodes, and that Color Crystals be an occasional bonus to both. There's no point yet (to me) in creating dyes that use the very limited Midlithe Crystals I have, when there are hilts and enhancements still left to learn and make.
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It's a game. Things need to have some balance.

 

there IS some balance in crafting. But at the same time... different crafting skills have different mechanics and hence they are different.

 

But let's be honest... if they made all crafting skills literally identical.. you would be here complaining about how awful and boring it is to have no differences between crafting skills. You know it.. and I know it.

 

Archeology is fine as is. Yes.. it's different.. but it's fine. I have never had any real issue with leveling it (I take it on most characters to be honest) as I go along. Personally, once leveled, I like the diversity in nodes for Archeology.... I simply bypass nodes where I have no use for the materials (ie: color crystal nodes).

 

If any gathering profession has suffered over time it was slicing in the first year (because everyone was tromping on slicing nodes for credits). But they balanced that to some degree by making the crafting missions viable to level at not cost.

Edited by Andryah
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Personally, once leveled, I like the diversity in nodes for Archeology.... I simply bypass nodes where I have no use for the materials (ie: color crystal nodes).

But with Scavenging and Bioanalysis that kind of issue just doesn't exist. You will always have a use for the materials you gather from those nodes.

 

Color crystals seem to take up 75% of the spawn points on Yavin 4. If people aren't picking them up, then those points won't spawn the materials we really need.

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