Artisan Archive

Well, I'm at Survey 2, and so far I have been unable to run myself out of action pool points simply by surveying. The recharge rate on your feeder pools is just incredible. I rarely see a feeder pool drop below 50% when conducting any artisan actions repeatably. I know some folks had asked about this since they couldn't get in, so thought I'd pass the info on.
-Egna Dragonn, wanderer and Droid Engineer

How much you want to bet that we see this change as beta proceeds though

What really, really depresses me about surveying (after admittedly, only a few hours testing the CU) is that without any armour certifications, weapon or combat abilities and with buff effectiveness reduced, it is simply not going to possible for a pure crafter like myself to survey for resources and place harvesters anywhere other than other close by the major cities on Naboo and Tatooine, without a heavily-armed escort. I already get seriously battered surveying on Dathomir even with a pvp-grade buff and 80% base composite armour. With the amount of Krayt dragons running around Tatooine I can no longer safely wander more than 500m from any shuttleport, and they're all in no-build areas. Remove my ability to wear armour and reduce the effect of Doctor buffs and I stand no chance, even with an armed escort.

Of course, the obvious solution is "get a group to escort you". Well that's just about possible for me, maybe, if everyone else isn't doing their own thing, but it's not possible for everyone. The other solution is "get some combat skills". If I wanted combat skills I wouldn't be a crafter, and I'm sure I speak for a large section of the crafter population on that sentiment. Besides which, after Mastering Artisan and Weaponsmith, and Merchant in order to actually sell what I create, I'd have enough spare skillpoints to create a combat template that *might * give a dwarf nuna a hard time.

So are we going to see Miners with Artisan xxx4 and huge spare lot deals for harvesters come to dominate the resource trade, forcing crafters to raise prices across the board to compensate for what we'll have to pay for the resources we can no longer gather ourselves? Please, please tell me I've fundamentally misunderstood the process, because otherwise I'm going to be a very unhappy Crafter on the day of CU release. :/

Kessler
Chimaera-Euro: Master Weaponsmith, Master Artisan, Master Merchant

Message Edited by Lekki on 04-01-2005 04:10 PM

No offence taken, Egna, I appreciate your point, but we can't all afford scout skills in our templates. I'm Master Weaponsmith and halfway to Master Armoursmith. I run a busy Mall so can't afford to lose the vendors and item limits from the Merchant tree. I have to keep Artisan 4x4x to do these jobs, although I'd prefer to keep Master but there aren't the skillpoints available to do it. Now it looks as if I'm going to have to ditch Artisan xxx4 as well, because surveying skills with no armour or combat skills to protect yourself are going to be a waste of time and skill points. Mask Scent at anything less than Scout 4xxx is not effective anywhere other than Naboo or Corellia, and even 4xxx is a waste of time on Dathomir, Yavin, Endor, Tatooine and Lok. I certainly can't afford to use over 20 skillpoints on a skill that won't protect me from Tusken Raiders, Janta, Canyon Corsairs or Nightsisters.

Yes, you're right. I *shouldn't* be able to run around any planet other than a starting planet without a group, or with some combat and survival skills. Yes I understand that this kind of rebalancing is exactly what the CU is all about. What I'm saying is that a very large percentage of crafters do NOT have combat or survival skills, but they DO have the ability to wear armour and get a doctor buff. The CU is taking this away from us. Now we have to either give up some our core businesses to learn extraneous skills purely so we can survey (which is a CORE Artisan skill, not a Scout skill) without getting butchered and remain in business at competitive prices, or raise prices to cover raw material costs imposed on us by miners. Under the CU, a crafter will be able to Master one crafting skill and still collect his own resources. For many of us, this means giving up a craft we love and have built reputations on. This isn't a game breaking problem, but it is a problem.

Edit: Another thing occurred to me, a pure crafter attempting to pursue the crafting mastery section of the Force Sensitive Crafting Tree is going to have serious issues just reaching Aurilia alive, too. And if those Village defences aren't being constructed in phaases II and III because we can't get 200m from the Science Outpost without getting butchered, will this have implications for the challenge faced by everyone who isn't a crafter in Phase IV?

Kessler
Chimeara-Euro

Message Edited by Lekki on 04-01-2005 06:38 PM

So I guess it should still be possible to remain a pure crafter and still survey your own resources with a combination of PSGs for the character mobs and getting a friendly Ranger to apply a camo kit. Well it's still going to be more dangerous than it is currently, but I do of course accept that it *should* be more dangerous to get around places like Dathomir than it currently is. Dangerous I can accept and adapt to, but at least with this information it's not impossible. Thank you.

Heh, I wish I had your luck. On my last surveying exped without armour or buffs I got eaten by one Krayt; ambushed, pulled from my speeder and killed by a bunch of Valarians, then when I finally found a spot that had the copper I wanted in decent quantities without any spawns around, the second I placed my harvesters a gang of desert demons spawned on top of me and chased me off before I could switch the harvies on. Now I've got no lots spare and three harvesters sitting idle wasting maintenance money. All this on a newbie starter planet.

Of course, I can always just get buffed and armoured in future so I stay alive long enough to place and activate my harvesters. Oh, hang on...

I've found it is possible to run out of action surveying with the CU, but only under one circumstance.

Respond to more than one 300 action draw quickly. lol. Aside from that, I've never run out.

I just whip out my tank droid. Very effective in distracting the aggressive mobs, while you do your business.

Misa