Artisan Archive

Could anyone tell me how to get started harvesting metal's.... i have about 500k so i can get reall good harvestors', any input is appreiated.... What would be great is a mini guide, or a link to one

You'll need a mineral survey tool to locate a good spot to place your harvester (or you can use the survey tool to sample if you dont need alot of resource) - however you wont be able to use the survey tool unless you have Novice Artisan

You can buy personal harvesters on the bazaar, but if you wanted anything bigger you'll need to go an find an architect or an architect shop.

One other thing: before you place your havester, make sure that you have some energy (like wind or solar) to supply the harvester with. If you don't, you won't be able to run the harvester. The harvesters require periodic infusions of cash for maintenance and energy to run.

Have fun!

if you find a huge field filled with harvestors, thats probably a good place to start looking.

If money isn't an object then Fusion Generators whack out the most/best energy. Heavy Mineral Harvesters are the best for Minerals. I forget what the BER (base extraction rate) is for these, but don't be afriad to shop around. These things don't come cheap, but don't they are worth it, if you want lots of high quality metal/ore to sell.

You will need novice Artisan to locate these things, and if you have all the surveyor tree, then so much the better.

You could hire an Artisan/Surveyor to find the sites for you, but as resources shift, it's probably a good idea to invest in novice Artisan and work up the surveyor tree (it's free so you can't buy your way up there quickly).

Don't blow all 500 credits on machinery straight away, as they will need an influx of cash to start them running before you can sell anything.

Also, set the Generators down the day before the Harvesters. That way you won't be paying a day's maintenence on them before you have any power to get them working.

Hope this helps, maybe someone with up to date information can tell you what BER you should be looking for on them.

Do harvesters give you surveying exp, or is it only from sampling?

only sampeling give's xp

but you want to sample befor you start tracking a mineral to check it's OQ

So far I have only used the personal extractors that are made at Engineering 4. With these, they are cheap enough to just destroy when a resource shift comes in. It is cheaper to buy a new one than to pay the fee to redeed them.

How does this work with the larger harvesters? Do you guys mostly destroy them, or pay for the redeed?

Thanks.

Meds and heavies are way to expensive to destroy every time, unlike the personal ones. Don't know about other servers but on kettemoor heavies go for anything from 75k-125k and fusions in the same range.

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Graeme wrote:

How does this work with the larger harvesters? Do you guys mostly destroy them, or pay for the redeed?

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The question boils down to: Which is cheaper, buying a new harvester, or re-deeding this one?

It costs 50 hours worth of maintenance to re-deed a harvester (the status window will tell you the maintenance rate- just multiply by 50 to determine the cost to-re-deed). It should always be possible to buy small harvies for less than a re-deed fee, but you'll want to re-deed the mediums and heavys.

If you are serious about mining do this:

- Make sure you have surveying tool and novice artisan. (duh!)

- Buy a fusion generator (100k-150k with BER of 13-16)

- Locate a radioactive deposit above 75%, plant the fusion and feed it like 30k maintenance and turn it on. (This will give you the power you will need later.)

- Find out what people want, while the fusion collects your seed power.

- Buy 2 or 3 medium mineral miners with BER of 10.

- Locate the resource you want to mine in a high enough concentration (at least 70% for anything except ore. Ore rarely comes in percentages over 65%, and only the really high quality ore is worth anything substantial.)

- Drop your miners, feed them money and power, and turn on.

-Wait a couple of days. Collect the resources and go off to sell them somewhere.

Your first sale should pay for the mineral harvesters at least, unless you get lucky =). Two more days should easily cover the fusion.

Reinvest profits into more mediums or start getting heavies if you like. The single fusion should be able to feed a bunch of mediums (7-9 I don't remember anymore, probably even more).

The catch with fusion power is that if the potential energy of the radioactive you are collecting is higher than 500, each unit counts more when feeding harvesters! So if you have 1K units with PE of 900 it counts as 1,9k (more or less).

You may want to simply buy nothing but fusions though, and sell off power to established crafters. Very easy, steady money. Alternatively, don't buy the fusion generator. Buy a nice chunk of power somewhere. This makes you more dependant on external power suppliers, but some people find it worthwhile.

Forgot one thing. Visit swgcraft.com and visit and help keep up to date the current resources page. This will help you manage resource shifts, which can be the devil.