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Crafting in SWG
rex126
Member Posts: 8
I have not played SWG since right after the NGE hit.
I was a artisan char and I wanted to give it another shot but I heard awhile ago that the trader professions are broken and nothing sells and its not worth it. Has this changed since any new updates?
Comments
TCG loot cards now offer the most desirable items, and they sell for millions upon millions of credits. Since there is no decay, once you get a suit of armor and a set of great weapons, you will never need to buy more, so there is little in the way of repeat business for some traders. All trader professions contribute to the crafting of Beast Master components, items and supplies which can earn some decent coin. Shipwright has had the distinct good fortune in dodging the NGE bullet.
Three of the trader professions can make SEA's (Skill Enhanment Attacjments) and power-ups, but it is not really true crafting as much as it is grinding. New schematics have been added (houses, droids, etc.) and some crafted items reflect updates to their stats come in line with the NGE.
The game went from a player economy, to a loot based ecopnomy then to a seemingly TCG based economy. While crafting in SWG is the best out of all other available mmorpg's, it is a mere shadow of what it was. Take a look at the Starsider Trade forum to get an idea of what is in demand and the current prices (the inflation may shock you).
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/forums/show.m?forum_id=494
Havent played since the day before nge went live and all these years later I still sigh when I read certain things about it. I have a hard time understanding how someone can screw something up so bad. Crafting was such a huge part of the game back then, it is to bad they trashed it also. I'd be back today if they would open up a pre nge or pre cu server.
Kazara has it right, as far as it goes.
In large part, crafting itself, didn't change, but the world into which all those items go and are used is totally changed, making a huge portion of craftable items useless/worthless/not worth the trouble.
No decay is a big part. Nothing ever wears out, ever. Buy capped armor once, never need another set. Buy a capped elite weapon, never need another.
In the old days, food and drink were very important, because they were one of the few ways to boost your abilities. Now, there are dozens of buffs and buff items, do the same or better things than food/drink making the entire chef profession next to useless.
The TCG. The SOE moneygrab. From new ships, to new vehicles, structures, ships, armor, decorations and clothing the best/newest stuff almost all comes out through the loot card lottery of the TCG. Because your sub fee is not enough for SOE anymore. They want more of your money and the scam they have is even worse than a cash shop, if you can believe it.SOE screws over every crafter with the TCG, make no mistake.
If anything, SOE let crafting become largely irrelevant by not upgrading it enough as the game was continually mutated from its original form.
Thank goodness the vet trials allow nostalgic people to see the current game before paying.
Burntvet also gives a comprehensive run down on the plight of the traders in SWG.
I didn't even consider what server the OP used to play on. He needs to know that half of SWG's servers have been closed and more than half the remaining servers are near death. If he is fortunate, his main toons are on Starsider or on a dead server which will allow him to have his toons transferred for free to Starsider since its population (the most populated server) makes it the obvious choice for crafters.
If he is on a near-death server like Gorath or Bloodfin, he will find there are not really any players left to buy his crafted wares. There are no free transfers for characters on the remaining servers, so it will cost him $50 per toon. It may be best (and cheaper) just to reroll a character on Starsider.
The last free vet trial only applied to those who had an active account since January 2007, so the OP didn't get a chance to check out the game back in February. I sugggest trying out the free trial to take a look before financially committing to his game.
I concur with the changes to the crafting market posted here.
What has not been discussed is the role of re-crafting of rewarded gear. Weapons and armor both in some cases can be recrafted after being rewarded to a given character to be made with resources to cap their stats. This recrafting process calls for the No Trade reward to be turned into a Bio-linked schamatic that then can be created for the owner. This is one of the steps the devs reasoned to limit the Wal-Mart effect crafters were doing with making Factory loads of top weapons and controling market prices. The other change is most weapons crafted now are bio-linked to limit use to only one character.
So if you want to have the best equip for combat, a crafter is still required in this case.
Meh, crafting is alive and well in SWG period. Anyone that sayz otherwise is not giving it a fair shot.
And don't tell me, I played for a month and could not hack it either. You want to make it as a crafter it will take months at least to be able to make the best consumbable products or durable armor.
Anyone can come into the game and RE their way to the top with PowerBits and PowerUps.
Like anything in SWG it takes some concentrated effort and more than a freaking month.
I know players that earned 100s of millions just selling the rare loot items.
While TCG offers items, the reality is that since the first batch of cards that had combat buffs, everything is decor or ITV or Vehicle or Mount or Greeter or Poster etc. Nothing that really competes for power ups or food.
TCG does offer the best structures in the game and too bad those could not be craftable.
Bottom line is that crafting is still needed in game and credits are there to be made.
If crafting were still good, more people would be crafting... and they aren't. One need only look at the various trade forums to see "looking for SW" or "looking for Weaponsmith" threads all over the place. SOE crapped on the crafters, especially with the TCG, and they walked.
Just the same as the fact that if SWG were still good, more people would play, and they don't. All but 2 servers are dead.
Sometimes the truth hurts....
Yeah i'd actually play pretty much any game that had a good player base with a good crafting system.Nothing touched swg imo ,but vanguard at least had a simi interesting system aside from all of it's other problems at launch.
Emmanuel Egelid <GECKO>
www.geckoguild.com
Crafting in SWG is very much alive, you really need to get information on the game from people that play it rather than people that only play the forums.
Whatever style of Trader you choose, be it Munitions (Armoursmith/Weaponsmith), Domestic (Chef/Tailor), Engineer (Droid Engineer/Cybernetics) or Structures (Architect/Shipwright) the items you craft will be as good as your resources.
The way that resources are collected is still the same, with some improvements in the way of Elite Harvesters and you will have to build up a large collection of all types of high quality resources to be able to compete in your servers markets.
There are items that each profession can craft that are the high end stuff which will make you the most profit, but they all also have cheaper mass produced items that will be your bread and butter. Chef items for instance are very much in demand, as are all high end consumables.
One big change is a vastly improved Bazaar/Player Vendor search which makes it really easy to find the best crafted items for sale on your server. You'll typically only see very high priced items going on Trade Forums as most of the in game business is done via vendors.
Traders also now have all new GCW content in the way of building defensive structures, supplying troops and building heavy weapon vehicles for use in city invasions and this is proving very popular.
Here's a good Beginners Guide for Traders and this guide is good for getting to grips with the invasion: GU15: GCW Crafting Guide.
The Trading Card Game is a seperate entity to crafting in SWG, you can't get a suit of armour, uber weapon, crate of chef buffs, tailor made outfit, customised droids, made to measure cybernetics, affordable housing, custom furniture and everything you need to excel in space from the TCG. For all this and more you need a crafter.
I hope this helps.
This. Crafting is still very much alive and things do sell a lot. While TCG does have some nice items it does not have the basics needed for everyone as pointed out. Weapons sell a lot. Everyone is looking to craft a weapon and as a crafter you can charge for these to be made, 1-4m is about average.
(mod edit)
That there is no item decay in SWG, no one can deny.
That the paid TCG loot cards is the mechanism for the vast majority of the newest/best items going into the game, no one can deny. Ships, structures, vehicles, decorative items, pets, clothing, armor appearances, and many unique items ALL go into the game, at the direct expense of crafters thru the TCG. And at added RL cost to players.
And how would it be for a new crafter to start competing? Virtually impossible without buying credits for a 3rd party site or through the "TCG loophole". Crafting, such as it is, is dominated by the few remaining old time crafters that can cap everything, and who are usually wealthy enough to underprice new crafters out of the market.
Yes, crafting is still there in SWG, and, it is a better system than exists in many other games. But make no mistake, crafting is in the worst shape it has ever been in SWG, and the number of crafters, as well as the number of players in general, continues to decline.
Consumable items are the new decay, for repeat business you can't get better than the item being totally destroyed when used.
I speak to many new aspiring crafters and once they are able to collect enough resources via harvesting they tend to find their own niche markets and do well. Anyone that tells you that they needed to buy credits is doing it wrong.
After the recent round of game updates dedicated to crafting, this area of the game is doing great and is still very close to the original Pre-CU design.
LOL, you kidding me?
Those kinda posts are there because peeps want custom stuff made. Those kinda posts have always been their for that reason. I for one know that any toon with credits can get fully equipped with uber stuff in a short period of time. The rest is heroics and loot collections that cannot be bought.
Now if you show me posts where a level 2 pilot is looking for a ship and cannot find one, that is another story. Ture that most veteran crafters only cater to lvl 90s and master pilots. I will be leveling another pilot soon and have never had issues where I could not find what was needed or make it myself.
The only issue with crafting in SWG atm is that with no decay, it is harder to enter the market competitively. The most desired items take uber resources that take many weeks to collect, or many millions of credits to buy. No decay means that most players do not buy more than one or two suits of armor, or more than say 4 guns, for example. Durable goods in SWG last forever. So if you can make 10,000 suits of uber armor, your kinda set and just watch how prices fluctuate on your server.
That's when the custom orders come into play for armor, weapons, clothes, food, droids, ships, pets, etc.
Consumbables are the place to craft as a new crafter. Savy players are doing fine in this area while they collect the uber resources that always, eventually spawn.