Artisan Archive
Thread: App. Experience There should be another way!
I have to agree on this one.
One of my characters is MCH and Master Marksman....apprentice points cam to me almost by accident.
But my newer character is Master Artisan and 4444 Architect. I can't Master because....you guessed it...there is NO ONE to train. It is a ridiculous excercise to stand in front of the Coronet Starport and advertise/compete with three or four others in my position. What a waste of my entertainment time that is!
My only work around has been to become a novice marksman....then climb that tree so I could train enough to then drop all that and get back to the artisan stuff I want to be doing.
Figure out another way. Like, cut the apprentice points needed for crafting professions in half. Or, create an option to purchase them. Or, have us earn them when we buy resources from a vendor. Or, generate a list of novice artisans that we can access via /who. Or, remove the option for artisan professions to train the tree skillsfrom the npc trainers.
Some of these ideas have merit, some less so. But then, I am not a game developer. I am a customer. I am not supposed to think this stuff up.
Thanks!
Liani Ivy for Stormy Night, Master Artisan, 4-4-4-4 Architect with 370 app points, and, suddenly, 1-2-1-1 Marksman!
btw...drop this in the new patch coming in the next few days and receive unflinching praise from tens of thousands of tailors, chefs, armorsmiths, archtitects, and droid engineers. 
It only costs them 300 combat xp to train it, and they can drop it immediately.
"Find someone who doesn't have Ranged WEapon Support, but has a ton of excess combat xp, and teach them over and over."
Actually most of the people I know prefer to do this with level 1 artisen skills. Two people purchase the materials and each get level 1 in a diffrent skill then just grind out experiance teaching that one skill to the other one over and over again.
Another one I've heard that done with is some of the entertainment or scout skills as a few of the skills have very easy to get experiance methods.
Oh, please. You can't tell me the Apprentice XP requirement was a surprise! It's right there in your skill tree!
Get a grip. Apprentice XP is pitifully easy to get. I'm maxxed out, and have never had to pay someone to train them. Just respond to training requests whenever you get them, and you'll be set.
Your problem was A) Ignorance, followed by B) needing a ton of apprentice XP at the last munute. An ounce of planning would have saved you the grief.
Alacrity, as im not as blessed with knowledge as you seem to be, not ANYWHERE in the manual or in any FAQ i've read does it state where to get Apprentice XP. So yes maybe i was ignorant of the fact that i had to find others to teach to gain XP.
The fact is there are so many people trying to get Apprentice XP, that the number of people needing to be taught is very small. Its like PvP in a way, competeing with other players, which i detest.... I'm not so lucky to have lots of cash to pay people to teach them, i don't have any friends at the moment since i started 4 days ago, i don't know everything there is to know about SWG like you seem too.
Anyway its not my problem anymore, so theres one less person to compete with for Apprentice XP.
You should try doing your grinding in a public place and teaching people as they need it.
Ive mastered 2 crafting classes and both times had the ap available when I needed it and I didnt pay anyone anything.
Especially with artisan skills, alot of the time youll find someone jsut starting to grind and theyll go through engineering, business and domestic arts really fast. I got 150 ap from one person alone one day.
Hmmm, thats funny I've not had a bit of problem getting appretiship xp. In fact I've mastered 4 Professions and have hit the cap on appren. xp 3 times now. And if it wasn't for the cap I would have had more than I needed.
Basically, just put on your Master Tag and most people will search you out for training.
Ok, i maxxed all my Artisan skills today and just found out you have to spam the chat channels offering to teach people to get XP or spam the chat channels and PAY for XP! This is pathetic!!!
There i was competeing with 5 other people to teach people to get App. XP, one was offering 3k to everyone who wanted teaching. FFS this is down right stupid! There aren't that many f'ing players to teach, let alone enough for the countless others trying to get App. XP.
As of this moment my account is cancelled. Another f'ing grind like EQ, and the future grind EQ2.
The problem with people trying to gain App exp is a direct result of Power Gaming. Too many people rushing there way to Master Artisan in order to be able to build Vechs so they dont have to buy them, or wait in line to receive them.
If the game was played at a more realistic pace you find that by the time you reach the need for App exp you have plenty having helped your fellow gamer on the way, providing your not one of the people that ignore peoples crys for training cos it takes up to much of your time ;P
Let me start by saying that I usually play during the wee hours of the morning in the U.S., so there are typically very very few people running around that actually need to learn anything. Sometimes I would get lucky, and train a few people here and there. Sometimes I would go for two weeks and the apprentice xp would drag on forever. My artisan character was at 4 4 4 4 for more than a week, so every time I entered a town I would shout once or twice that I was available to train people, and I would list all of the skills that I knew. My combat character has made it through both master scout and master marksman, and that was a bit of a grind as well; however, he had many many more skills (low-level medic, entertainer, artisan) available to teach compared to my artisan, who focused almost solely on crafting skills. This problem is actually pretty complex, because there are several variables involved.
First of all, you need to have skills that somebody needs to learn. Obviously, the most popular skills are going to be the most commonly taught by players; typically low-level marksman skills, scout skills, medic skills and some artisan skills seem to be on every character with free skill points to learn them. For people who focus almost exclusively on crafting, it can be very hard to gather that apprentice experience because you don't really learn many combat skills, and the ones you do know are overshadowed by the combat people who are also in search of apprentice experience.It's typically very easy to learn all of the skills in the artisan trees, even when you start from scratch with no help at all, so you end up racing through the skills and don't really have the time for that apprentice experience to trickle in, which leaves you sitting at 4 4 4 4 trying to get a huge lump sum at the last minute.
Another main factor is the number of people who are looking for training in the skills that you are able to teach, and this is greatly affected by the time of day. Like I said earlier, I usually play during the night hours in the U.S., so I typically don't see throngs of people running through a city. This makes for very slim pickings for someone who is desperate for apprentice experience.
The buddy system is probably one of the best ways to supplement your apprentice experience, without sitting outside of a major startport shouting at everyone in a 200 meter radius. When my combat character finally earned enough combat experience to train in novice bounty hunter, he had already gained enough pistol experience and carbine experience to train in both of the level 1 bounty hunter weapon skills. Since I had dabbled a bit early on, and was fine-tuning my character's focus, I had skill points spread out all over the place, and went for a pretty long stretch with 0 free skill points. In order to learn novice bounty hunter, as well as the bounty hunter weapon skills, I needed to free up several skill points, so I started dropping my low level artisan skills. This is where that dabbling comes in handy, because even though I only had engineering 1, domestic arts 1, and survey 3, I had quite a bit of crafting experience earned, as well as survey experience. So, while I was surrending the skills, I would check to see if I had enough experience saved up to learn them again, and I let my architect friend train me in those skills after I had surrendered them. My friend ended up training me in engineering 1 to use up the crafting experience I had, and then trained me in survey 1 three times in a row to use up the survey experience I had saved up. I was surrendering those skills anyway, and I wasn't going to be using that saved experience any time soon, so I put it to good use and let my friend train me for the apprentice experience.
I've also done this with my crafter character. He has so much survey experience now, that he's reached the cap for saved experience (20,000 for survey experience). Since it only takes 10,000 survey experience to train in survey 4, he could drop the skill twice and let someone train him for the apprentice experience. He did it once before to help out a weaponsmith that had trained him. If you can find people who have experience saved up in skills that they really don't plan to use, you can see if they'll let you train them just for the apprentice experience, and then they can surrender the skill afterwards. It was mentioned elsewhere in this thread that combat characters typically have lots of combat experience saved up, but they're not using it for any skills. So if you have something like ranged support 1, you can train them over and over to earn the apprentice experience, and they can just drop the skill, since they don't use it anyway.
Overall, I like the concept of the apprentice experience being necessary to become a master in a skill. After all, what is a master who cannot teach? Unfortunately, sometimes it's just a huge pain in the butt to find people to train. I think it works okay as it is, but they may be able to tweak it a little bit so that it's not so terribly restrictive.
There is no problem acquiring Apprentice Points.
And it is listed in the manual under Apprenticeship. So no, it isn't a surprise.
Like it was said above, it's only the power grinders that don't even get involved in the game that can't get apprentice points. What do you expect when you get a master title and immediately drop it to go grind another skill?