Midlithe Crystals

[Draaconis]

Is there a crit booster for crafting that I am not finding somewhere? Rich Treasure Hunting for Gems takes about an hour with the droid who has a +2 to crit. I've only found a dozen Midlithe Crystals. Are they always this ridiculous to find or can I boost the crit chance somehow?

 

I came back a couple weeks ago after a long break. I'd like to do the new quests, but I cannot craft and stupidity has apparently taken over GTN. Being halted by an inability to upgrade my gear properly is ludicrous.

[Nebdar]

Dust to Diamonds -> i had 8 crits on 23 attempts....

others avoid

[JouerTue]

also you can buy missions from the gtn or use slicing to find the same missions..or nodes even

[MaximilianPower]

Dust to Diamonds -> i had 8 crits on 23 attempts....

others avoid

 

Dust to Diamonds (bountiful) and The Long Way There (rich) are the only two regular (i.e. non-discovered) missions that will return midlithe crystals with a crit.

[psandak]

Is there a crit booster for crafting that I am not finding somewhere? Rich Treasure Hunting for Gems takes about an hour with the droid who has a +2 to crit. I've only found a dozen Midlithe Crystals. Are they always this ridiculous to find or can I boost the crit chance somehow?

 

I came back a couple weeks ago after a long break. I'd like to do the new quests, but I cannot craft and stupidity has apparently taken over GTN. Being halted by an inability to upgrade my gear properly is ludicrous.

 

OK let's take a step back for a moment...

 

What level gear do you have?

 

The reason I ask is because I ran the new content through Rishi with a character and companion in rating 156 gear (entry level to 2.x) and did just fine. My point is that there is no reason to craft rating 186 gear (the only reason to want midlithe crystals), unless you are so bad that overgearing is the only way you can succeed. Furthermore, have you checked your basic comms total. You can probably buy all the 172 rating item modifications you need from the Rishi vendor on fleet and on Rishi.

[Draaconis]

OK let's take a step back for a moment...

 

What level gear do you have?

 

The reason I ask is because I ran the new content through Rishi with a character and companion in rating 156 gear (entry level to 2.x) and did just fine. My point is that there is no reason to craft rating 186 gear (the only reason to want midlithe crystals), unless you are so bad that overgearing is the only way you can succeed. Furthermore, have you checked your basic comms total. You can probably buy all the 172 rating item modifications you need from the Rishi vendor on fleet and on Rishi.

 

So by this logic, why upgrade your gear at all I guess.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

So by this logic, why upgrade your gear at all I guess.

 

I think the point is you don't need to craft you upgrades for new content.

 

You can get everything you need ( except new grade 10 augments and their slots ) by just playing the game ( namely the rish content to start with ) and using drops and basic comms.

 

If you are trying to min/max which is what a lot of people use the crafted gear for as it's slightly better than the comms gear ( though of course no better than the dropped set piece gear ) then this is something you WANT to do and don't NEED to do so there would be little point complaining about the GTN pricing etc.

[MSchuyler]

OK let's take a step back for a moment...

 

My point is that there is no reason to craft rating 186 gear (the only reason to want midlithe crystals),

 

Umm, er, no. A +41 endurance crystal, a vectron archaeologist speeder, and several dye packs all require midlithe crystals. Both artifice and cybercrafters can use them, at least. Don't know about that speeder, but dye packs sell quite well. Just sayin' I don't like contradicting the most knowledgeable poster in this forum. Sorry.

Edited February 19, 2015 by MSchuyler

[eartharioch]

Is there a crit booster for crafting that I am not finding somewhere? Rich Treasure Hunting for Gems takes about an hour with the droid who has a +2 to crit. I've only found a dozen Midlithe Crystals. Are they always this ridiculous to find or can I boost the crit chance somehow?

 

I came back a couple weeks ago after a long break. I'd like to do the new quests, but I cannot craft and stupidity has apparently taken over GTN. Being halted by an inability to upgrade my gear properly is ludicrous.

 

As mentioned by others, if you are seeking Midlithe Crystals, you should only run the Bountiful (Dust to Diamonds) and Rich (The Long Way There) missions, or the Wealthy ones (available through Grade 11 Bountiful/Rich/Wealthy Slicing missions and on the GTN), since Moderate and Abundant missions don't return Midlithe on a crit.

 

In addition to the ship droid, a few other classes have companions with bonuses to crit on TH; Vette (Sith Warrior) has a +5.

 

You can get +1 crit for every 2K affection, for a max of +5 crit at 10000K crit. There are no conversation bonuses for the ship droid, but you can get it to 10K with gifts.

 

The Rich and Bountiful missions are base 15% crit, so max affection ship droid with +2 sensor will have a 22%, so (assuming you are max affection), you would crit just over 1 in 5 attempts. The Wealthy missions always return Midlithe, and return even more on a crit, but it's base is 10%, not 15%.

 

The Bountiful costs almost as much as the Rich to run, and returns fewer crystals, but (at my server prices, at least), the Bountiful is still quite profitable, and I run it when it's available.

 

That said, you only need 22-26 Midlithe: 4 each for two Relics, and 2 each for 7 enchancements, plus possibly 2-4 more for Hilts. If you were lucky enough to learn the schematics before gathering that much Midlithe, you should just sell the first few pieces you make and buy the Midlithe to make your set. On my server, I'm selling relics,hilts, and enhancements (and dyes) for well above twice the lowest prices for Midlithe.

Edited February 20, 2015 by eartharioch

[psandak]

Umm, er, no. A +41 endurance crystal, a vectron archaeologist speeder, and several dye packs all require midlithe crystals. Both artifice and cybercrafters can use them, at least. Don't know about that speeder, but dye packs sell quite well. Just sayin' I don't like contradicting the most knowledgeable poster in this forum. Sorry.

 

None of those crafted items are REQUIRED to do new content. that's my point. I was responding to : "Being halted by an inability to upgrade my gear properly is ludicrous"

Edited February 20, 2015 by psandak

[Elracor]

None of those crafted items are REQUIRED to do new content. that's my point. I was responding to : "Being halted by an inability to upgrade my gear properly is ludicrous"

 

It does seem odd at least, especially considering Midlithe Crystals are AFAIK only used for lvl 58 gear, and by lvl 58 you should be well into the SoR storyline where 178 gear starts dropping.

[eartharioch]

It does seem odd at least, especially considering Midlithe Crystals are AFAIK only used for lvl 58 gear, and by lvl 58 you should be well into the SoR storyline where 178 gear starts dropping.

 

Gear using Midlithe crystals is item level 186 -- you can get this at level 55 if you run NiM DF/DP, level 58 if you craft it, and level 60 if you wait to use Basic Comms. The main issue is that Midlithe crystals are used for Hilts, Enhancements, and Relics. You can't buy the Relics for Basic Comms, so you need the crafted or NiM DF/DP versions. You can't buy BiS Enhancements with Basic Comms, you can only get them from crafting or by running NiM DF/DP. You can buy an OH Strength Hilt with Basic Comms, but you can only get the MH from crafting or NiM DF/DP.

 

So, for BiS endgame (char level 60 / item level 186) hilts, relics, and enhancements, you really do need Midlithe Crystals, even though the BiS gear can be worn at lower levels than the non-BiS enhancements.

 

You don't need the 186 gear to complete the SoR story (I'll buy psandak doing it in 156 even though I don't know how he'd get gear that low without trying, since I've sleepwalked through it in mixed 162/168), but (due to bugs), you pretty much need 186 to be able to reasonably complete level 60 HM FPs and SM OPs.

Edited February 20, 2015 by eartharioch

[psandak]

You don't need the 186 gear to complete the SoR story (I'll buy psandak doing it in 156 even though I don't know how he'd get gear that low without trying, since I've sleepwalked through it in mixed 162/168),

 

It was more accidental than anything else. I was leveling an alt, did not even look at the gear; I assumed it was a mix of 162/168 because I had SOOOOO many extra comms by the end of 2.x on my main and primary alts. When I did finally look, the character's gear was unaugmented, mostly 156 with an item modification here and there at 162 or 168. One of the implants was a crafted level 50. I did not have enough comms on the character to upgrade and did not want to bother switching characters to get upgrades so I used what upgrades I had acquired through leveling and pressed on.

 

but (due to bugs), you pretty much need 186 to be able to reasonably complete level 60 HM FPs and SM OPs.

I'll concede this, but JUST having the gear is NOT enough; you need some semblance of "skill" to run 60HMFPs.

[eartharioch]

It was more accidental than anything else. I was leveling an alt, did not even look at the gear; I assumed it was a mix of 162/168 because I had SOOOOO many extra comms by the end of 2.x on my main and primary alts. When I did finally look, the character's gear was unaugmented, mostly 156 with an item modification here and there at 162 or 168. One of the implants was a crafted level 50. I did not have enough comms on the character to upgrade and did not want to bother switching characters to get upgrades so I used what upgrades I had acquired through leveling and pressed on.

 

I wasn't doubting you, it's just that I thought about doing that myself, but it was going to be too much trouble. I didn't want to waste mats crafting 156s, and my alts without better gear were finishing Makeb in low 30s gear -- too low for Oricon (to get 156s), no point making/grinding <156 gear just to run Oricon for 156s, and no point running Oricon [just for the 156s] once I've got better gear. It's actually more cost efficient to just buy 172 blues from the Rishi vendor than to transfer 156/162/168 leftover gear from my alts (since the 172 blues are BoE). And if you hadn't run Forged Alliances before SoR, you don't even need to gear up, since the "FA intro" is bolstered with a GSI droid, and you'll end up with 162. My sorc in low-30s leveling gear is doing fine.

 

 

I'll concede this, but JUST having the gear is NOT enough; you need some semblance of "skill" to run 60HMFPs.

 

I wasn't arguing the point, I assumed you were only discussing leveling (Rishe/Yavin) not needing 186 gear, I was just trying to make that clear. I think I have argued that 178 should be sufficient for the level 60 HM FPs in the past, but it's not that I really believe it, it's because I think it's stupid for people to complain about not having BiS 186 gear so they can run content to get them non-BiS 184/186 gear. If you can't do the content in worse gear than you can earn, either you or the content is the problem, not your gear.

 

As much as I don't like the HM tacticals because they aren't fun, I do appreciate that BiS 186 + Fail = Fail. An important thing to note about enhancements/implants/earpieces is that the tertiary stat (the most important for those pieces) is the same for comm and BiS/crafted/token of the same level (e.g., 102 accuracy for 186). So unless you are consistently wiping just before the boss dies (at/during enrage), it's not because you didn't have good enough gear (assuming you were in 186s).

 

And I'm not being an elitist, I really have no clue (other than the massive number of complaints) about how hard they are, since I don't run them. I don't run them because I wasn't impressed with most of the SM versions and because I don't know of anything they drop that I want.

Edited February 20, 2015 by eartharioch