Architect Archive
Thread: Make Money Fast! :)
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ZenDragonMLS
Wed Jun 30, 2004 9:05 pm
#1
I made this post on the Amazon Basin boards in early Feb, just after Dvnce became our Coorespondent. Some things have changed since then (e.g., the little helper droids can get you some extra cash early on) and some things will change a bit in the future (e.g., the bottom dropping out of the resource market in 1-2 months). But I think that this is still relevant and might give people some ideas about getting started.
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Made you look! And somehow got past your spam filter (ah for the good old days when this subject line was the one seen the most. 
)
)Seriously, I made a starting character on Gorath about a week ago. The new Architect coorespondent on the SOE boards plays there and we were talking about having a live chat there with a bunch of architects. So I wanted to make a character there, and I didn't want to have to ask for "bus fare" anyplace.
So, I conducted a simple 1 week trial run on getting a character going that might prove interesting to other people.
My goals were:
- get some cash
- more importantly, get set up so I would never have to worry about cash again
- spend as little time on this as possible
- get the character set up such that they could easily go in any direction that I wanted to
- get some cash
- more importantly, get set up so I would never have to worry about cash again
- spend as little time on this as possible
- get the character set up such that they could easily go in any direction that I wanted to
So here were the steps (roughly) that I took:
1. Created an *artisan* character and used Moenia as their starting location.
2. Immediately signed up for 2 "artisan crafting missions", each worth 1200+ credits. For those not familiar with these, the missions consist of talking with NPC A who gives you 3 components to assemble. You assemble them and deliver them to NPC B, who pays you. You need to be an artisan and have a crafting tool to run them, which is why I started as an *artisan* character.
3. Those missions always go to Deeja Peak (you can double check it after you do the pickup). So go pay 110 for a shuttle ticket and go to Deeja Peak.
4. Deliver the goods and collect your money.
5. Now get two artisan crafting missions above 1200 again. You guessed it - back to Moenia you go.
6. So now you are back in Moenia. You have made 4 * (1200 to 1400) credits for that round trip and spent 220 credits doing it. Roughly you net about 5K per round trip. Even with shuttle waits and stuff you can easily do a round trip in less than 30 minutes. 7. Well, that was rewarding. A bit boring (ok - a lot boring ) but rewarding. Go ahead and maybe do one more round trip. 10K in credits is a nice round number to prime the pump.
8. Now from Moenia take 2 regular mission terminal "delivery" missions with payouts of 900+. These will be to Theed. (You can check before you accept because the destination will be marked as 12000-14000M NW (I forget exactly). Might was well get the system to pay for your travel. Buy a ticket to a Theed shuttleport.
9. In Theed go to a Bazaar terminal. Look under Deeds-installations. You are looking for some form of "Personal Mineral Extractor", although people sometimes name them differently. These come with different “rates” (the details in the Bazaar will show you the rates) – from 1 to 4. Ideally you want a rate=4 but you can live with rate=3 if you have to. Obviously you want the lowest price on this that you can. Another factor is sometimes used ones have left over maintainance (credits) and power in them, so that can be worth something. I’ve bought these from 500 to 3000 credits on many servers. Buy one.
10. Assuming that your harvester didn’t come with power in it, you’ll need some. These things use 600 units of power a day. You look under “Resource Containers – Radioactive” (first choice) or “Resource Containers – Liquid Energy” (second choice). You want to buy at least 600 units of power. Prices are all over the map on these so just look for a deal if you can and get it.
11. Go find the following trainers: Medic, Scout, Marksman (or Brawler) and spend 100 credits each to get the Novice in each one. Buy a stimpackA on the Bazaar.
12. Go to the Theed starport. Face South or slightly SouthWest. Start walking. Typically about 800M or so from the starport you hit a line of houses – this marks the edge of the “no-build” zone. You can put up your new harvester anyplace beyond where those houses are.
13. Get out your mineral survey device and start surveying for minerals. You are looking for *any* metal – ignore gemstones, ore, solid fuel, and radioactive. You want to find the metal with the highest concentration near you (but away from town). You’d like to find the highest concentration possible, preferably above 60%. If you are standing on a high concentration, that’s great. If you aren’t, pick the highest one you get and follow it. Then survey again. Typically you can find something within a few tries.
14. It’s pretty easy to set up a harvester but you might want to look around for a guide with the details. Basically you want to set up your harvester, make sure it has 1 day of money and 1 day of power in it, set it to pump up the metal that you were surveying for, and turn it on.
15. At this point you have spent maybe 2 hours in the game. You don’t have any skills (other than Novice everything). You probably don’t have a lot of money left. But what you have is a harvester up that will probably pull up at least 2500 units of a metal in the next 24 hours (a rate=3 at 60% - a higher rate and/or concentration will get you more). Since I’ve never seen any metal sell for less than 2 credits per unit, you will have at least 5000 credit’s worth of metal waiting for you 24 hours from now.
16. You can now go and shoot critters or dance in the cantina or whatever you want, subject to the limitations of your funds.
17. I’ve found it useful to run another batch of artisan missions before going back to service that harvester. You want to make sure that 24 hours after you placed that harvester you are back there with at least one day more of credits (720) and one day more of power (600). If you want to really make money fast, you will have run enough artisan missions to buy 1-2 more harvesters. Then visit your harvester, take out the metal, put in more money and power, and if you have them place other harvesters with them.
18. Go back to town and put all of that metal on the Bazaar for 2 credits per unit. (You can adjust this upward if you know what you are doing but remember at this point you are worried about cash flow and not maximizing your profit). So break it into 1000 unit bundles and list each one for 2K on the Bazaar. Take the leftover and put it up for 2 credits per unit too.
1. Created an *artisan* character and used Moenia as their starting location.
2. Immediately signed up for 2 "artisan crafting missions", each worth 1200+ credits. For those not familiar with these, the missions consist of talking with NPC A who gives you 3 components to assemble. You assemble them and deliver them to NPC B, who pays you. You need to be an artisan and have a crafting tool to run them, which is why I started as an *artisan* character.
3. Those missions always go to Deeja Peak (you can double check it after you do the pickup). So go pay 110 for a shuttle ticket and go to Deeja Peak.
4. Deliver the goods and collect your money.
5. Now get two artisan crafting missions above 1200 again. You guessed it - back to Moenia you go.
6. So now you are back in Moenia. You have made 4 * (1200 to 1400) credits for that round trip and spent 220 credits doing it. Roughly you net about 5K per round trip. Even with shuttle waits and stuff you can easily do a round trip in less than 30 minutes. 7. Well, that was rewarding. A bit boring (ok - a lot boring
) but rewarding. Go ahead and maybe do one more round trip. 10K in credits is a nice round number to prime the pump.8. Now from Moenia take 2 regular mission terminal "delivery" missions with payouts of 900+. These will be to Theed. (You can check before you accept because the destination will be marked as 12000-14000M NW (I forget exactly). Might was well get the system to pay for your travel. Buy a ticket to a Theed shuttleport.
9. In Theed go to a Bazaar terminal. Look under Deeds-installations. You are looking for some form of "Personal Mineral Extractor", although people sometimes name them differently. These come with different “rates” (the details in the Bazaar will show you the rates) – from 1 to 4. Ideally you want a rate=4 but you can live with rate=3 if you have to. Obviously you want the lowest price on this that you can. Another factor is sometimes used ones have left over maintainance (credits) and power in them, so that can be worth something. I’ve bought these from 500 to 3000 credits on many servers. Buy one.
10. Assuming that your harvester didn’t come with power in it, you’ll need some. These things use 600 units of power a day. You look under “Resource Containers – Radioactive” (first choice) or “Resource Containers – Liquid Energy” (second choice). You want to buy at least 600 units of power. Prices are all over the map on these so just look for a deal if you can and get it.
11. Go find the following trainers: Medic, Scout, Marksman (or Brawler) and spend 100 credits each to get the Novice in each one. Buy a stimpackA on the Bazaar.
12. Go to the Theed starport. Face South or slightly SouthWest. Start walking. Typically about 800M or so from the starport you hit a line of houses – this marks the edge of the “no-build” zone. You can put up your new harvester anyplace beyond where those houses are.
13. Get out your mineral survey device and start surveying for minerals. You are looking for *any* metal – ignore gemstones, ore, solid fuel, and radioactive. You want to find the metal with the highest concentration near you (but away from town). You’d like to find the highest concentration possible, preferably above 60%. If you are standing on a high concentration, that’s great. If you aren’t, pick the highest one you get and follow it. Then survey again. Typically you can find something within a few tries.
14. It’s pretty easy to set up a harvester but you might want to look around for a guide with the details. Basically you want to set up your harvester, make sure it has 1 day of money and 1 day of power in it, set it to pump up the metal that you were surveying for, and turn it on.
15. At this point you have spent maybe 2 hours in the game. You don’t have any skills (other than Novice everything). You probably don’t have a lot of money left. But what you have is a harvester up that will probably pull up at least 2500 units of a metal in the next 24 hours (a rate=3 at 60% - a higher rate and/or concentration will get you more). Since I’ve never seen any metal sell for less than 2 credits per unit, you will have at least 5000 credit’s worth of metal waiting for you 24 hours from now.
16. You can now go and shoot critters or dance in the cantina or whatever you want, subject to the limitations of your funds.
17. I’ve found it useful to run another batch of artisan missions before going back to service that harvester. You want to make sure that 24 hours after you placed that harvester you are back there with at least one day more of credits (720) and one day more of power (600). If you want to really make money fast, you will have run enough artisan missions to buy 1-2 more harvesters. Then visit your harvester, take out the metal, put in more money and power, and if you have them place other harvesters with them.
18. Go back to town and put all of that metal on the Bazaar for 2 credits per unit. (You can adjust this upward if you know what you are doing but remember at this point you are worried about cash flow and not maximizing your profit). So break it into 1000 unit bundles and list each one for 2K on the Bazaar. Take the leftover and put it up for 2 credits per unit too.
This basically sets the stage for the next 3-5 days. You will run enough artisan missions to, along with your sales on the Bazaar, let you do two things: feed credits and power into the harvesters and to buy new harvesters and place them. Remember that the stuff you put on the Bazaar may sell within minutes of listing – or it could sit there for several days before selling. So you want to make sure your harvesters never run out of maintenance and power. If they aren’t pumping, you aren’t making any money.
So I spent about 12 hours and one week doing essentially this. I could have done itmore aggressively by doing more artisan missions early on to buy more harvesters sooner. I could have played more hours and built the character more. I did do a bit more than just put out the harvesters – I shot things and did some surveying and crafting.
So, by following this approach, here is what I had at the end of this period:
1.Some equipment (2 good pistols, an X34 Landspeeder, a probot)
2.10 rate=4 mineral harvesters with 3 days of money and power on a 72% spot for aluminum
3.75K credits of resources listed on the Bazaar
4.20K credits in my pocket
5.A character that was: Scout 2/2/0/1, Medic 1/0/0/0, Marksman 0/2/0/2, and Artisan 4/0/0/2
1.Some equipment (2 good pistols, an X34 Landspeeder, a probot)
2.10 rate=4 mineral harvesters with 3 days of money and power on a 72% spot for aluminum
3.75K credits of resources listed on the Bazaar
4.20K credits in my pocket
5.A character that was: Scout 2/2/0/1, Medic 1/0/0/0, Marksman 0/2/0/2, and Artisan 4/0/0/2
At this point I can do whatever I want. I can keep those harvesters running to provide an income stream (easily 35K a day with minimal effort), totally independent of my other choices of profession (i.e., be a part-time miner). I could reinvest that money to upgrade harvesters (easily getting to over 120K a day). I could just stop the harvesters whenever I wanted to, sell the resources, and sell the used harvesters. I could start skimming some of the resources harvested to pursue a crafting profession (perhaps changing the mix of them over time).
But basically after that first week I don’t *have* to run missions to get money ever again. I might choose to run missions for the experience points or other reasons, with the money being secondary, but all of the money for guns / armor / vehicles / houses / resources can be accommodated by just that set of harvesters that I put in place in the first week.
Again, this isn't the only way to start out. You could go slower or faster. Many of us didn't start out this way, but now that I've seen how the game works, this is how I'd start any new character, because harvesters are the *only* way in the game to make money while you sleep. It's nice not to have to even have money as a consideration when chosing your travel or professions.
==========================
Postscript: The second week of this character's life I just logged in enough to pull stuff from the hoppers a few times and put it on the Bazaar. She's still there - with 10 BER4 harvesters, pistol, vehicle, bot, and 600K in cash. Duration - 2 weeks. Time investment - less than 20 hours.
royalewitcheez
Wed Jun 30, 2004 9:22 pm
#2
Awesome little guide. Makes me want to start over on a fresh server andget rich all over again. 
Do the crafting missions always go between Deja and Moenia? Or do you have to find the one w/ the right distance? With the new shuttle times, a round trip would be more like 15 minutes or so. (/thank devs.)
ZenDragonMLS
Wed Jun 30, 2004 9:30 pm
#3
The crafting artisan missions in Moenia are all either low payout (within Monenia) or high payout (to Deeja Peak).
There are similar runs on Corellia and on Tat - I'm just not familiar with them.
HalloranElder
Wed Jun 30, 2004 11:51 pm
#4
Nice little post!
A few things I should probably point out though.
Firstly, don't all starting characters now start in Mos Eisley on Tattoine?
Secondly, with the drop of the Hologrind expect the resource market to drop, so people might want to put a little bit of effort into checking on the resources they are gathering so that they're gathering the better quality ones.
Other than that, well done!
jacnz
Thu Jul 01, 2004 4:32 am
#5
I did a similar thing with a character I made on another server, but I spent longer on the first day doing missions and set two harvs up for a week and logged out (sitting next to them), when I logged back in (about 4 days later) I pulled out the resources (note I checked on SWGCraft and picked a 1 day old metal so knew it would run for a while) put them on the bazaar did a few more missions and logged for a couple more days.
When I got back in all resources sold and was underway, did this a couple of times (not as fast as your method) but it got the character good weapons and equipement to start with plus a bike.
With the holo grind going I would be more selective about what I went for but you can usually find one or two resources with good stats people will buy, especially at 2cpu
When I got back in all resources sold and was underway, did this a couple of times (not as fast as your method) but it got the character good weapons and equipement to start with plus a bike.
With the holo grind going I would be more selective about what I went for but you can usually find one or two resources with good stats people will buy, especially at 2cpu
ZenDragonMLS
Thu Jul 01, 2004 12:27 pm
#6
I agree - this was written in Feb and now the starting location has changed and the little helper droid has come along. I should probably find out where the "artisan crafting run" goes on Tar and modify it.
As to the hologrind stopping and resource prices going down, I agree with that. I think that it will still be a safe bet, particularly on the Bazaar, that you can mine just about any metal and make it worth your while. It may very well be the case, though, that it will take you a bit longer to get yourself to the point where you don't have to run missions for money.
ZenDragonMLS
Sun Aug 15, 2004 4:31 pm
#7
With the current discussion about "can new architects compete" I think that this thread may have some ideas to offer.
Fneegan
Mon Aug 16, 2004 6:58 am
#8
For those who don't think you can make money easily - there ya go.
Here's one of the many ways.
Thanks Zen
Pawlin
Mon Aug 16, 2004 9:28 am
#9
Steps 1-8 would be slightly different nowadays.
Everyone starts on Tatooine. Mos Eisley I believe it is.
First thing to do is complete all the artisan missions that the helper droid gives you. That should net you about 2.5k credits and a 5 use speederbike rental deed.
I don't see crafting or delivery missions with those high of pay offs now myself. So either the pay off was nerfed at some point or I'm missing a trick to get those rates. Note I checked with a fresh rolled newbie char within the past couple days. If I recall right the payoffs were in the 500-800 range.
If those delivery and crafting mission payouts have been nerfed then you can make up to 900 credits per mission doing survey missions. Trick is to find 2 cities with high density of metal resources then get the survey missions and bounce between the 2 cities via shuttle.
ZenDragonMLS
Mon Aug 16, 2004 9:38 am
#10
As someone mentioned earlier in this thread, there appears to be one "run" on the starter planets that gives the high payout. On Naboo it is Moenia - Deeja Peak. Those still have the 1200-1400 credit missions as of a couple of weeks ago on the TC, so I suspect it is still true on live.
I should do this experiment again, taking into account the green droid angle, and focusing on the new starting location. (Although someone said on TC last night that they were going back to the "start anywhere" system.)
I should do this experiment again, taking into account the green droid angle, and focusing on the new starting location. (Although someone said on TC last night that they were going back to the "start anywhere" system.)
Pawlin
Mon Aug 16, 2004 9:40 am
#11
Ok. Another thing you get when you do the helper droid missions is a free travel voucher. You could use that to get from Tatooine to Theed and then pick up the high pay off crafting missions from there.
ZenDragonMLS
Mon Aug 16, 2004 9:51 am
#12
There is a high-paying "run" on Tat, I just don't remember it off-hand.
I save the travel voucher for a *round-trip* ticket to an advanced planet.
I save the travel voucher for a *round-trip* ticket to an advanced planet.
Pawlin
Mon Aug 16, 2004 10:09 am
#13
Does the travel voucher work for round trip tickets? I had assumed it wouldn't.
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