Guide to Crafting
by credits on Jan.20, 2010, under Uncategorized
1. Create an artisan character with at least as much health as action and buffable to at least 1000 health.
2. Visit an NPC trainer and acquire Novice Marksman.
3. Purchase a player-made CDEF weapon of your choice (pistol, carbine, or rifle) ? ?Rorr?s Ore & More? keeps a ready supply of these to sell at cost to help the beginning artisan.
4. Begin hunting and working towards fourth tier in your chosen weapon. Run combat missions to get XP and credits. You might consider taking scout so you can harvest organics, which along with 3 cereal, can be used to make Travel Biscuits that give 20 GCXP each (plus 5 more if your friend eats them). This is optional, but generally worthwhile ? you can always sell back the Novice Scout skill later. Craft and survey as you like, but this is primarily for entertainment, not advancement at this stage.
5. Boot up your Mineral Survey Device and survey for all the ?metal? types of resources you find listed. Find the metal with the highest concentration in the spot where you are standing. The device will set a temporary waypoint to the highest concentration of that resource in your range.
6. Hit the ALT key to switch to mouse mode (the survey screen will be hidden) and run to the waypoint (if you are good at estimating gradients from the survey device?s output, run a bit beyond the waypoint to save time surveying).
7. Hit the ALT key and your survey screen will re-appear. Survey again. Repeat these steps until you have reached the highest concentration in the local area of the chosen resource. If the concentration is not at least 70% try a different area (such as another town).
8. Open your datapad and add a new waypoint. Use the ?Set Name? option on the radial menu for that waypoint to set the name to ?XX% ?. Trust me, you will thank me later when you have a dozen different survey waypoints. Note that your ?Resource Survey? waypoint will vanish the next time you use the survey device, so you MUST create a new waypoint.
9. Once you have found your mining point, wait until you don?t feel playing SWG to do this next step. Click ?Gather Resources?. You will start to gather the chosen metal. If you are in a reasonably safe area, walk away from the computer and do something else, coming back to check every 15-20 minutes and make sure you do not go auto-AFK and get logged out. You will stop gathering resources when your action pool runs out, but you will start resting automatically. You will just need to restart the resource gathering when you are rested. You also need to watch for creatures nearby, but since you have fourth tier in your weapon skill, you should be able to handle anything that molests you ? just be careful. You should be able to gather approximately 300-500 units of resources in an hour, depending on the percentage of the site. Remember, each resource is worth 2 GCXP, so this is a significant fraction of the XP needed to advance.
10. At some point, gather (or purchase) 4 units of any chemical using the Chemical Survey Device. Use this with 16 metal (stacks of 12 and 4) to create a second Generic Crafting Tool. You are now ready to begin crafting in earnest. Your best bet is to make survey devices, which require 27 units of metal and give 55 GCXP each. Specialized crafting tools give 65 GCXP, but because they require10 units of chemical, so they aren?t efficient to make. The Generic Crafting Tool gives the best return for a single type of resource.
11. Make certain you are still gathering resources at your chosen spot ? you can both craft and survey at the same time. If you are a scout and are in a buildable zone, put up a camp so that you can get some Wilderness Survival XP at the same time.
12. Use the ?double-barrel? approach to crafting. While one Generic Crafting Tool is tied up moving the finished item from the output hopper to your inventory, use the other Generic Crafting Tool to start on the next item. By the time that item is complete and fabricating, your first tool will be cleared out and ready to go. Periodically destroy or give away the Generic Crafting Tools you have made (anathema, I know, but keep in mind this is only until you get to your ?real? advanced profession).
13. The problem is that even with Surveying III (and much more so with Surveying I), you will burn through your resources slightly faster than you can gather them. This is why harvesters are essential and why you should focus all your efforts on getting to Engineering III as soon as possible.
14. You will need approximately 6000 units of metal (allowing for critical failures) to get to fourth tier in each of the Artisan branches. Approximately 20,000 units of metal are needed to reach Master Artisan. ?Rorr?s Ore & More? sells all types of resources at a flat rate of 2 credits per unit. This amount of cash can easily be obtained from missions if you do not wish to gather resources yourself. Note that you do NOT need steel, which is popular and sometimes hard to find ? any kind of metal will work.
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