Armorsmith Archive

A 12 point armorsmith has at least +20 in armor experimentation tapes to get him two extra points while experimenting. It isn't as big a deal now as it used to be as experimentation has been dumbed down, but it's still nice to have in case you need to recover from a critical failure.

Thanks so much Lizzy. When You say +20 experimentation tapes, how do I get that? I am real new and sorry if the question is dumb. But, I am eager to learn as much as I can. I am determined to become an AS . Thanks for your help.

A Master Armorsmith, or any master of a crafting profession, gets a total of 10 experimentation points (even if they have nothing on which to experiment *cough**cough**tailor**cough*).

Out in the SWG world it is possible to loot Clothing Attachments (CAs, one type of Skill Enhancing Attachment or SEA) with skill modifiers on them. Two of critical importance to armorsmiths are the Armor Experimentation and Armor Assembly mods.

Experimentation skills cap at +125. As a MAS, you hit +100 (10 points) with no mods. If you can assemble at least +20 points of Armor Experimentation CAs, then when wearing the suit you put them into you will have +120 to experimentation -- divide by ten and there's your 12 points.

Other things you might want to consider.

1) You should make yourself at least 1 crafting suit. There are 8 articles of clothing that an AS can wear that accept CAs: hat, bandolier, jacket, shirt, gloves, pants, belt, footwear. All of these should have 4 sockets (clothing sockets are where CA skill mods "go"), in case you get a CA with more than 1 skill mod on it (eg. a CA with +5 armor experimentation and +8 general ranged defense). The number of sockets that clothing (or armor) have is random on the creation of the item. If you are not a tailor and can't make your own stuff, then find a tailor you can trust who won't soak you for making a full suit of 4 socket clothing.

2) Why more than 1 suit? You may not be able to afford CAs with high bonuses if you're just starting off. If you start buying up +1 experimentation CAs, soon you'll have a worthless +8 suit. You can get away with 6 +1's and 2 +2's for an "11pt" suit -- total of +10 bonus will put you at +110 or 11pts. To get a +20 suit, one way is to get 6 +2's and 2 +4's ... lots of other combinations, and if you can manage to find something like a +11 experimentation CA then it makes your life a lot easier wrt reaching tha +20 goal. Bottom line: Save your high value CAs for a high end suit.

3) Of course, point 2 is more important for the fashion conscious. Keeping a coordinated look. Others will say "who cares what it looks like" and just replace a low end item (say, a +2 experimentation shirt) with a high end item (dropping that +11 into a new shirt and selling/shelving the +2).

4) Don't forget about assembly. Assembly doesn't cap, and you'll see people declaring in their sigs that they're +140-something to assembly.

5) Currently, even if your skill-modded clothing reaches a condition of 0 the skill mods still work. This is probably not "working as intended" and everyone is dreading the "update" that will nerf, er, fix this featur-, er, bug. You may want to protect your investment, then. Anti-decay kits can be expensive, tho, so a much more reasonably priced option is to have a storage droid. If you have to head out into the wilds to survey, for instance, make sure you put your crafting clothes into the storage bin of a droid. Should you get corpsed, anything in the droid will be immune from item decay. Storage capacity of such droids is typically 10 items. Of course, the cheapest option is to never wear your crafting suit outside your crafting house.

6) You want to know more about SEAs? Look here and here for starters.

One other thing ... it's the player skill of experimentation that caps at +125. For anyone one item, any skill mod caps at +25 (to find out about the dangers of dropping two tapes with the same skill mod on them, read one of the guides clicky'd above).

That being said, there's nothing to stop you (other than common sense and the size of your bank account) from assembling a +200 (8 times +25) suit of clothing.

The reason I bring this up is because bonuses greater than +25 can aid people who aren't masters. Sure, most people who go armorsmith are going to master it, but if you don't the extra points can help (once we get something worth experimenting on again).

My friends have a lightsaber crafting suit that is +40 to experimentation. No extra help to the MLS out there, but for those that are only LS---4 (+75 to lightsaber experimentation) the +40 suit makes them 11pt lightsaber crafters (total of +115 experimentation).

Another thing you can do, down the line, is get the force sensitive crafter skills. They will give you some more bonuses that will help reduce the number of critical failures (loss in stats)in your experimentation among other things. It's a long, boring, expensive process, and you can be successful without it, but doing so is a very nice addition also.

Thanks great info.