Artisan Archive

For the people how make there living by finding, minning and selling resources how do you go about it? By this I mean how have you used your 10 lots? Do you buy energy or make it? What kind of harvesters do you use (lots of smalls a few mediums or a couple of heavies)? Also just out ov experience do the non-starter planets usually have better resources?

Thanks in advance

It took me a while and a fair amount of dedication to acquire the assets I have and to develop a system of managing the information. As an individual, without a second account a lot of choices have to be made. If you can make enough money to rent other players unused lots, that is a great way to go. Unfortunately, that isn't my way so someone who has done that should discuss it. For the individual it's time consuming.

First, you need to login every day and take a look at your survey tools and available resources. If you operate or intend to keep on top of more than one planet then you need to examine the resources you follow every day or depend on the goodwill of players entering data on www.swgcraft.com As far as lots, I can't afford the expenditure of a house. That reduces my productivity too much, so I operate 10 lots floating, moving from resource to resource and focusing as needed for particular goals.

Since I focus on minerals and plan to stockpile them for future professions or even the space expansion, if there aren't minerals I want, I can shift my lots to other harvesters for cash crop resources. However, the best way for miners to prosper is to develop customers and a understanding of the market they operate in. For now, I've been collecting medic resources for my cash crop, an occasional exceptional resource to stockpile and selling whatever players need. It isn't easy nor is it rewarding until you make a big sale, but, for the resource gatherer on the move, it is never boring. More often than not, I have to dodge aggro mobs and either fight my way out of trouble or die.

The best way to become a miner is to get in on a resource as early as possible, pay all the maintenance and power up front, then come back in 5-8 days or when you need to move the harvester or change it to another resource you want more. This means building up a bankroll, which means either taking plenty of missions or selling in demand resources. Since anyone can use a heavy harvester, crafters can gather resources as well as a professional miner. The only advantage the miner has is that the crafter has other things to do with his time than hunt for resources. If you don't need to run out to your harvesters every day, the amount of time it takes to watch for new resources means a well run mining operation can be done without a major commitment every day.

You only need to commit time when the resources you want appear. If you can wait 24 hrs for the server to permit sampling then you do not need to expend cash and time with personal harvesters. (Tip: While hand sampling is not permitted by the server, harvesters can extract resources during this period - the density is too low to sample) Learn to keep a waypoint on the nearest town to help judge the non-building zone. If you do not have a house or can get a vendor going, the bazaar is your friend. Customers however, should be more valuable than the bazaar so don't piss them off if possible. If you're a miner to make money, you can. It takes a while, but, eventually it can be steady enough that watching your bank account rise is a form of accomplishment. A better one would be to have many customers.

I operate 3 fusions, 6 heavy mineral harvesters, 4 deep crust chem harvesters, 4 heavy duty natural gas extractors, 4 high capacity flora harvesters, and 1 high efficiency vaporator. I just don't operate them all at the same time. My technique is to operate them in pairs to help gather enough resources to stockpile or sell. Water, while desirable to have more, needs to be in demand enough to justify using a pair. Fortunately, water is always available on each planet.

The scarcity and rarity of resources does not appear to be biased toward non-starting worlds. What I find more important is the amount of buildable zones on each world and that starting worlds tend to have less free space than other planets. What matters is following the resources as they appear. It does happen that a given resource type may only exist on a single planet.

Send an in-game e-mail if you want an additional tip. However, to reduce the amount flooding in, it won't be free.

Good Luck