Armorsmith Archive
Thread: The Post Formerly Known As Holosmiths, Look Here
Thispost originally described how to grind armorsmith to explain to all those people who were following thedirections of the Little Blue (or Red) Box. Now that holocrons no longer have anything to do with becoming aJedi, it isn't really necessary for that purpose. Nevertheless, some people still want to know how to get to Master Armorsmith as fast as possible, so I'm going to leave it up for the time being. Note thatall the information contained herein can also be found in the Complete Guide to Armor and Armorcrafting, a much more comprehensive document.
The Path of the Holocron
or
How to grind
by J. Waals
I. Grinding made simple
If you do choose to grind, there are three items that most armorsmiths mass produce at some point in their careers. Armor Upgrade Kits (Novice Armorsmith), Mabari Chest Plates (Novice Armorsmith), and Ubese Shirts (Personal Armor 3). Mass producing each of these has its own advantages and difficulties (AUK's only give 60xp, but only take 2 resources while Mabari Chest Plates give around 500 xp, but require subcomponents and hides, which can be difficult to come by in sufficient quantities to grind with). Use of a crafting macro is highly recommended; a useful one is listed below.
II. The Grinding Macro you've been looking for:
This is one variation on the grinding macro. This version functions while standing in front of a crafting station, something necessary to make Makeri Chestplates and Ubese Armor shirts. You will need to play with it to adapt it to your own use. You will also need to figure out which draft schematic number to use, because they're all different for each person based on the order you acquired your skills in. The easiest way to figure it out is to go to 'draft schematic' section of your datapad, put it into list mode, and count down, skipping all the schematics your armorcrafting tool can't make.
And here's the macro:
/ui action toolbarSlot01; /selectDraftSchematic 47; /pause 20; /nextC; /nextC; /nextC; /createPrototype practice no item; /createPrototype practice no item; /pause 3; /ui action toolbarSlot02; /selectDraftSchematic 47; /pause 20; /nextC; /nextC; /nextC; /createPrototype practice no item; /createPrototype practice no item; /pause 3; /ui action toolbarSlot03; /selectDraftSchematic 47; /pause 20; /nextC; /nextC; /nextC; /createPrototype practice no item; /createPrototype practice no item; /ui action toolbarSlot00;
Place the macro in the first toolbar slot and three armor crafting tools in the next three slots. This macro opens each of the tools in turn, selects the schematic for, say, a Mabari chest plate, gives you 20 seconds to select the resources, and then makes the item in practice mode. So you get the 5% experience bonus, and no Mabari chest plate.
After the third tool, the macro calls itself, thereby starting again at the first tool. If you make something less complicated (You need 14 double-clicks for the resources of the Mabari chest plate), you can make the pause for adding the resources shorter, but then you might need to add a 4th tool and macro part for it.
III. How long am I going to be doing this for?
Short answer: It will definitely feel like a long time. Even grinding straight up the tree takes a considerable amount of time. The analysis below is provided for informational purposes only and should not be attempted by anyone who wishes to retain their sanity (unless you are following the holocron path).
In order to complete all four Armorsmith skill lines using the easiest possible method (Armor Upgrade Kits until Personal Armor 3, then Ubese Armor Shirts*), you will need to use a total of 358,400 resources. Assuming you are making all of these items in practice mode, you will need to make 1,450 AUK's and 4,941 Ubese Armor Shirts.
If you use a high powered macro on an average computer and are good with a mouse, you can make do about eight combines a minute with a low error rate. Given one critical failure per eight combines, this works out to roughly seven combines per minute. This means that it will take you 913 minutes, or fifteen hours and thirteen minutes of solid crafting.
In making these items you will need 14,500 units of chemical, 28,900 units of metal, 49,410 units of fiberplast, 98,820 units of iron and 148,230 units of steel.
You can substitute Mabari Chest Pieces for the UAK's, but these require a larger variety of resources including a significant amount of hides and synthetic cloth from a factory crate. You will also need Mabari Segments, which can be made at Novice Armorsmith. Each piece of Mabari Armor, no matter the type, takes one segment. Ifyou are going to be grindingusing Mabari Chest plates, it is highly recommended that you also make your segments in a factory, because the measly bit of experience that you get from making the segmentis time that could be better spent makinga full Chest Piece.To make enough Mabari to make master you will need:
1822 chest pieces, which are made from roughly:
150,000 metal
119,000 fiberplast
73,000 hides
46,000 inert petrochem
5466 synthetic cloth, which is made from:
88,000 fiberplast and 22,000 inert petrochem.
Theoretically this can be done in about seven hours once you've assembled the resources and components.
Have fun!
Message Edited by JaatoWaals on 06-11-2004 09:27 AM
Message Edited by JaatoWaals on 09-01-2004 11:34 AM
I just finished armorsmith for my second holo. 1 word of advice to all you holosmiths, mabari chest pieces are the way to go. period. Your going to have to buy yourself a new mouse with all that clicking doing AUK's or ubese shirts. Its just too much clicking.
As far as sub components go, its not that hard if you plan a little. Buy a wearables factory, get it started making armorweeve segments right away. Go make friends with a novice tailor. I bought a batch of 1000 syn cloth from a novice tailor to get it started, but eventually, I had a friend make 4 schematics for me and started running 4 wearables factories making synthetic cloth. With that crafting macro, I was getting about 20k xp every 10 min, so 120k xp an hour. Absolutely amazing 
This is an expensive way to do it, hides I think is where it hit my pocketbook the most, but this is the only way I could stay sane. 393xp each is alot better than the 120xp for Ubese Shirts.
If you're grinding out points by making armor pieces like chestplates, you have to remember that you need to build segments to go into the chestplates. The Mabari segments, I THINK, are 39 XP. Therefore, add in the XP's for the segment along with the finished product. If you're looking at that route, maybe makin Chitin would be better....each breastplate of Chitin takes FOUR segments! Chitin needs wooly, leathery, and scaley hide too, en masse. While this means you can make more pieces of armor using smaller amounts of all three, you actually NEED all three to make a set. I've found that the easiest way to grind has been to build Tantel segments, in practice mode. Usually a player gets jipped out of XP for these pieces because they are made schematics (which actually made me LOSE XP!) and loaded into a factory, since Tantel can only be made with Tantel segments from a factory crate. These segments cost 10 aluminum, 10 aluminum OR copper, your choice, and 5 inert petrochemical (which you can actually use lubricating oil for!) Each segment is worth 49 XP. At the moment on Shadowfire, too, Copper and Aluminum are in decent if not abundant quantities, and some form of inert petrochem is always readily available. So far I've only been able to go up to Padded Segments, but they only give 10 more XP and need a boatload more stuff.
Elecsi- Novice Armorsmith Shadowfire
Camelot-on-Dantooine &
North of AMD TWP Corellia
Mabari Advanced Mabari
Chitin Tantel available
Yeah, I wouldn't suggest doing that if you're going for speed/holosmithing... The 34ish xp from the Segs isn't worth the time I think. If you made 1000 Chest Plates, that's 34k xp from segs but 1000 extra combines! Instead of that you can just make another 87 Mabari Chest pieces. Less than 10% of the combines which are one of the two reasons that gate people from becoming Master almost instantly (the other is gathering the resources).
Elecsi wrote:
The Mabari segments, I THINK, are 39 XP. Therefore, add in the XP's for the segment along with the finished product.