Artisan Archive

I was going to become an architect, simply to make my own house, but now I'm reconsidering. I've got about 25 thousand crafting experience, so I'm almost there. I'm a "casual" player, in that I play about 1 to 2 hours a day, ~7-10 hours a week. What do you think the most fun profession in? By fun I mean not too frustrating, not too time intensive, and rewarding. I don't really care about the most profit. I mostly make stuff to personally use myself, selling only excess materials and surveying tools. Here are my thoughts on each skill tree, tell me if I have the right idea about them:

Architect: Sounds fun and rewarding to build a house, but I heard it takes a ton of resources, time, and sanity. Not the best choice for a casual gamer like myself?

Droid Engineer: I like this one, but I heard it's "broken" and not worth investing in.

Armorsmith: I don't use armor myself, so I'm not interested.

Weaponsmith: I like the idea of making my own coolgun, but it seems like everyone is doing it. I don't want to be a "me too" player.

Tailor / Chef: Not really interested, they don't seem very rewarding, but if someone can make a case foreither onego for it.

What are your thoughts?

I started with weaponsmithing and was so excited once I got up a couple of tiers in Melee weapons. I'd burned 60k steel in grinding just to get there and I was totally burned out. Then I realized there are quite a few masters on my server and there is virtually zero market for any novice made weapons.

Alas, I moved into tailoring. A month ago I would have laughed at this idea. Now it's pretty fun. I'm up to field gear III almost and can make some pretty cool duds to have my friends wear. I'm going to stick with this. I can totally see mastering it. I know a few things need to be fixed but what profession doesn't have issues?

So, Tailoring for me, it just kinda happened.

Last choice for me would be chef I think, I just don't know enough about it.

I have had the same question in my mind, now that I am engineering IV working toward an elite profession.

I plan on going Droid Engineer and then later adding Architect. Here's how I hope it works out: I have also heard that Droid Engineer is not that great right now because they nerfed probots and there are quite a few bugs with droids, additionally, how necessary are droids in the game?

But I am still going that route for a few reasons: 1) I think the devs will balance droid engineers with other elite professions (read Creature Handler for one), and droids will become increasingly more functional, useful, and fun for people. The then has the benefit that if you become a droid engineer now, once they balance it out, you will be in a good place because most artisans go the *smith route. 2) As I just mentioned, being a *smith is more popular with people because everyone needs weapons, many people use armor, and most of the people who play the game are fighter types. I want to do something *somewhat* unique at least, like you said you wanted to do.

Then, since there is so much overlap between Droid Engineer and Architect (both require Artisan skills), eventually you could add that (or even *smith if so inclined).

Good luck!

Cyprian Carthage (Naritus, Corellia, Coronet City)

I went and got chef, it is nice to know that you are one of the rarer classes, but it suffers from the same amount of grind as all the other classes do. So I have recently decided to become a merchant miner, still keep up the chef just no full on grinding. I am really liking being a miner, you search for resources put a few harvestors down, come back and lounge at the cantina knowing that without doing any grinding at all you are making more money then any of the crafting of the crafting professions. You can go do some destroy missions, go hunting on strange planets while searching for the best resourcesand a lesuirly pace you can persue one of the advanced crafting professions. Also all your merchant xp is totally passive as well, just have the vendor running and you get xp, it's great!

Its a tough call. I went weapon and enjoy it so far (except for the resource management at times). You may want to jump to the individual forums (weaponcrafting, armorcrafting) and read through some fo the posts and maybe post a question there. There are some unique advantages and some "broken" aspects of each. Know them well before spending the pool of hard earned general crafting experience on one or the other. That way you'll minimize the chance for frustration.

For example, I spent my first round on armorsmith not realizing that at the time the personal shield generators were broken and that I would need factory crated synthetic cloth (need Tailor to get this) which was completely unavailable on the server I am on. So I made the jump to weapon. It was disappointing.