Artisan Archive

As a Master Artisan I'm collecting resources for vehicles (who isn't?). I've never put up havesters before until now. I am finding that they are just not worth the time and money. In order to keep 1 mineral harvester running long enough where you dont have to keep checking it every 4 hours, you need alot of power. To get enough power you need more than one power generator. The maintenance fees to keep them running are also high. The amount of minerals that come out of one havester with all power harvesters supplying power ends up being more expensive than going to the bazaar or a resource vendor and buying the mineral. Not to mention that maintaining havesters takes up alot of time.

So I ask you, which is better, harvesting or city crafting?

-Netherbeast

Depends on the amount of resources you go through. I personally with my artisan / droid engineer could strip the bazzar of **edit** near every piece of metal to keep my shop running. For me, I personally buy about 200-250k of power a month and have about 8 mineral harvesters, 8 chemical harvesters and 2 gas harvesters (all large) that are always stripping away at something. I make alot of "side" money selling my excess. Pair that with the money that I get from my "normal" sales, I make more than enough to keep my heavies running...

I had 38K power from when I was selling it on the bazzar, so that has helped me out a lot. Last thursday I build 5 harvestors with some metal I had laying around. They came out at 3 base rate. I sat all 5 of them down, put in 5K energy and 5K credits. This was last thursday. As of this morning I have over 50K ferrous metal and 15K nonferrous. And I still have 2.5 days left in maintence and power. when all is said and done I will have paid about .5 cpu (estimated: off credits alone for maint it was .3 then figure what I had spent in the past for the power harvestors I'll venture a guess of .5) All of my harvestors are sitting on 75-77% concentration (amazingly just 200m from my house!!!!!). Figuring that I could easily sell this stuff on the bazzar for 3 cpu (65000 x 3 you do the math!), I think harvestors are well worth it! and these are just rate 3 personals that I can build, get a base 10 medium from an architect and maint is only 2x as much with 3x the return.

Also this week is a special case, vehicles will net you on the order of 10+cpu on patch day and the following days! So overall harvestors are worth it! The only advantage to buying your resources is it gives you more lots to set up shops on, and helps support other players.

I'm not sure it is worth it to strictly get the resources YOU require... that would be based on what you are producing, your time investment, etc; What they are worthwhile for is making a very steady cash stream. I was one of those crazy guys who wanted to be a Miner before they killed our profession off. I spent the first 3 months of this game playing the Resources market. I burned out on it, but I also made millions of spare credits. And I do mean millions. Recently my outflow was far exceeding my meager inflow (darn holocrons) so I started back in the business. I used some of my fund to buy 18 BER14 Fusion Generators whichI placed with a partner who is a merchant. Even splitting the proceeds with him 60/40 (he finds the sites to place them, collects the resources, and manages our vendor) I am easily clearing a million+ credits a week selling the power. So my answer would be to team up, find out what is a needed commodity, and specialize in it. Then use your cash to fund your own artisan skills. It's not hard to get started, and it really can pay off.

If you want to build something large, like a vehicle...and you don't want to buy your own resources...then yeah, harvestors are worth it

Harvesters are definitely worth it. You drop a few BER13 heavies on a 95% concentration of something, and you'll be rolling in resources.

However, I recommend using Fusion Generators if you want power. Or find someone who specializes in power. There are quite a few players on our server who do nothing but mine power all the time. They usually charge around 1 cpu for it, and can easily stock you with several 100k power at the drop of a hat.

I had 1heavy chem harvestor extract 90k of a resource with great stats, not sure how much it cost me to in maint and power but the harvestor cost 120k. I sold that 90k for 1million I deffinatly came out on top. Its just about knowing what resources to harvest, worst case scenario you get some crappy ginding materials and put them on the bazaar for 2.5cpu you will still come out ahead.

But thats just my opinion on harvestors.

As a master artisan you should be able to craft BER4 personal harvesters and BER8 wind generators (I've heard some can get to BER9). With these stats two wind gens on a 33% or greater concentration will supply more than enough power for eight personals. On 75% or higher concentrations those eight personals cen pull in 35K of resources a day at 0.2-0.3 cpu. Considering people sell crap materials for 3cpu, I'd say it's worth it, even with personals and wind gens.

Ok I just started a character onkettemoor with the intention of becoming a chef. After a week, I found it extremely difficult to obtain resources with no combat skills and no friends to give me credits. So after surveying a lot for *free* resources I decided to go for master artisan. My plan was to collect a bunch of resources and sell them or even try for master so maybe I can strike it big selling a vehicle on launch day to a wealthy individual who will want one *right now*. So after getting artisan 4/4/0/4 I surveyed for some nice resources and made myself a 9 BER personal wind power generator and a 4 BER personal mineral extractor. I placed my wind power generator on a 40% spot. Paying 60 cr/hr, the power I collect costs me .277... cpu. I then placed my mineral extractor on a 72% spot this costs me 30 cr/hr plus 25 power/hr. at these rates, the minerals I collect cost me .21 cpu. This figure include the power I collect myself at .277 cpu. So far this is far better than any rate I've seen sold and since as an artisan you have the ability to make your own harvestors (although small) you shouldn't have to factor that into your final costs.

-Akiko' Saito... Chef in training: kettemoor

Harvesters are way worth it. You just need a fair amount of capital to get yourself started - I always load up my harvesters with about a week's worth of maintenance and power so I don't have to check on them constantly, which is the whole point of having harvesters instead of doing the surveying yourself. If you have to refill the things every four hours, you won't even be able to have them running while you're logged off!

Also of note... at my current extraction rates I will be able to construct a swoop bike for 1680 creds. I do realize that I could just sell the raw resources for 24k though. It will be interesting to see how low artisans will go in order to get a sale, and how much some will be willing to pay to be the first on thier block to have a swoop bike.

-Akiko' Saito... Chef in training: kettemoor

couple of points:

1) make your harvesters with good materials, at a good crafting station, and experiment on efficiency as much as possible. If you don't to that, your harvesters are going to have an exraction rate of 1 or 2. If you do do that, the extraction rate will be 3 or 4 (4 if your experimentation goes reasonably well). The efficientcy rating make a HUGE difference.

2) In my experience, running two efficient (base extraction rate= 4)wind generators for 24 hours, at a spot with 50% concentration gave me enough wind power to keep my personal mineral harvesters running for most of the week. I haven't graduated to better harvesters just yet. One could theoretically do a lot better than that, but in my experience, that is more than enough power to keep them running.

3) details: the actual extraction rate of the harvester is going to be:

(base extraction rate)*(% concentration of the resource you are extracting)

The thing I've found most tricky is keeping the mainenance paid. But as a general rule: 1440cr will pay the mainenance on a personal mineral harvester for 2 days. With 8 harvesters, you just need about 12000cr to keep them running for two days. Which is what I generally do: pay the mainentance and power to keep it up for two days and then come back to it 48 hours later.

If you've got some basic combat XP (at least to the novice level of one elite combat profession) you should be able to collect 12000cr in about 2 hours of soloing missions if you avoid the "creature lair" missions.

Until I had a large enough base to sell some of the excess resources, that is how I kept the maintanence paid. But I've discovered that now I can sell at a 3cr - 7cr per unit rate to easily make 6000cr a day average (which is all I need to sustain the harvesters indefinitely).

The next annoyance is you sometimes have to move them around because the resource you are extracting dries up, and THAT is somewhat costly.

As a budding resource miner, if your finding it difficult atm, start with some BER4 personal miners. Should be able to Produce a BER9 wind farm as well to keep em going, If placed on 85% spots should get over 5k resources per day from each. If your low on cash atm, spend a few days doing some missions to generate some cash to keep em going whilst your busy, surveying, mining and maintaining the harvesters. After the money from sales starts to come in you can begin to upgrade those personals to medium then heavies.