Artisan Archive

I am a Master Artisan and I also play a Master Chemist character. Up till recently I've been using private crafting stations of around 15-16 Utility Rating, with very good first assembly and experimentation results.Rarely did I notice repeated critical failures in all of my crafting, both on the Weapons/General station and the Food/Chems station.

After I harvested some really nice CD copper, I made new crafting stations, and was all excited when they came out with 41.55 Utility Ratings. I replaced the old stations with these new ones, and started crafting using these. Well, it's been a week of heavy crafting and experimentation now, and I've come to the conclusion that I'm getting MORE CRITICAL FAILURES, both on first assemblies and on experimentation, with the supposedly better stations than my old ones. And NO, I have not been able to see any increase in the experimentation effectiveness I get out of equivalent resources. Simple items such as Fishing Poles would crit fail repeatedly, as well as foods, chems, and anything else I would work on. I really did not see this frequency with the old stations.

I seem to recall posts a while back talking about this bug(?). Does anyone else see the same results? What's the latest fact/fiction on the merits - or detriments - for using better crafting stations?

I'd like to get an accurate assessment of this observation, so that I can decide whether I should go back to using my old, lower rating stations.

TIA for all advice and information!

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Davy wrote:

Does anyone else see the same results?

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Yes. I'm master in Artisan, Tailor and Architect, my partner is master BE. We both have concluded, without a doubt, that we crit with much greater frequency with higher quality crafting tools and stations. I've no numbers as this is a game and I can't be bothered (if the devs want to pay me to do their job, I'll consider their offer). Our experience is that it is exponential, the higher quality the station/tool, the more frequently we crit. I so rarely crit with my droids that I have removed the crafting stations from my shop and only use myherd ofR2s.

I got the same confirmation from others since I observed this phenomenon, thank you.

Has there been any acknowledgement from the Devs about this bug? It certainly would be helpful to know. For now, I too have stopped using the +40 stations and am reverting to my older +15 stations or the droids I purchased equiped with crafting stations.

I don't believe its the station itself.

The main question is, do you carry your crafting tools around with all the time? And if you do, how many times have you died and cloned with crafting toolsin your inventory?

I have discovered it seems that crafting tools have a invisable condition to them. A quick way to check is to insure, and have someone kill you. Then when you clone you will see the current condition of the crafting tool in a percentage. So it seems that once this percentage reaches a certain point more and more critical failures creep in.

But a Test I done, with some 14.94 effective Crafting Tools I have (including some in factory creates from a production run). I used two Furniture and Structure Crafting Tools, Tool 1 was one I was carrying around and it had been with me on a few deaths and clonings. Tool 2 is a brand new from a Factory Create and never used. I got the following results:

Item Created Personal Mineral Harvester

Materials Used All with 900+ in the proper stats:

Copper, Aluminum, Steel and Ore

Tool 1 First assembly was a critical failure, So it went thru on the second time, but got two failures in experimentation. Result 2 BER Personal Mineral Harvester.

Tool 2 - Assembly was Amazing Sucess, All 11 exerimentation points used, most were Great Sucess with one Amazing Success. Result 4 BER Personal Mineral Harvester with 35k Hopper.

So the moral of the story, leave your good crafting tools at home. The "Death Decay" is affecting crafting tools to the point where they are not effective.

Well let me try this again, I had typed up a nice responce, but the forums logged me out and it was even that long.

Ok, The problem may not be in the Station, but the crafting tools your are using. I have noticed and confirmed this with another crafter on Eclipse. He was all of a sudden getting critical failures on composite armor using materials he had been using before and getting amazing successes. And I had run into the same problem a couple of days before that. I was starting to get critical failures building personal harvesters on grinding. And I'm using 14.94 effective tools (I havesome good 998 Conductivity Copper). But I started crafting one day and was gettinghigher than normalcritical failureson both assembly and experimentation using the exact same materials thatI had been using to make 4 BER Personals and 9BER Wind Generators.

So I started experimenting with different crafting tools (luckily I made several crates of each prior to this).

Tool 1 is one I have been carrying around and it was on me during a PvP battle the night before which I think contributed to this. Tool 2 is one fresh out of Factory Crate that was in storage. So I set out to build two Personal Mineral Extracters here are the results of that test.

Tool 1 - First assembly was a Critical Failure, second assembly was a moderate success, had two critical failures on experimentation result 2 BER harvester with base hopper size.

Tool 2 - Amazing Sucess on assembly, all 11 experimentation points used, most were great success with one Amazing Success. Result 4 BER Harvester with 35k hopper size.

So the moral is leave your good crafting tools at home, or not carry them into areas where there is a chance of death. The Death Decay is affecting them over a short period of time.

Michael, I know it's not my crafting tools.

I have 2 characters, each with multiple sets of tools - weapon/gen items, food/chem - and all the tools being around rating 15. My doctor, for example, has 6 food/chem tools, to help her power craft multiple meds without having to wait for any to complete its crafting cycle. She's never died, not being a combat type. My main character has, by the same token, 6 weapon/gen items tools and 3 food/chem tools. He hasn't died for months either.

The crit failures happened to both characters, using *all* their tools, on multiple occasions, while experimenting at the new crafting stations. The stations are private, inside my house. Now even after all this happened, I wanted to make sure it was not just observer error. So I went to another house I own, and did crafting/experimenting using only crafting droids - which both characters owned as well. The critical failures diminished drastically. One character is master artisan and the other master chemist, so both had the max number of experimentation skill points for their respective profession.

There's no doubt in my mind. I did get crit fails using the old stations, but they never got to the point I'd NOTICE their frequency. After having compared the new stations to the old ones, and also to the crafting droids, I can't avoid concluding that the +40 rating stations indeed are buggy.

When I have to work with rare resources and often with factory produced subcomponents that come from those rare resources, I can't afford multiple failures on my first assemblies and/or effectiveness experimentation. For now, therefore, the lower rating stations will have to go on serving my needs, until someone can prove to me it's better otherwise.

I feel certain it is not my crafting tools. Myartisan character has not died in months (though she did have a close call with a diseased vrelt last night in front of one of our shops). I have a second account on which the character is ranger/pistoleer. Shemanages the harvestersand takes out my agressions on the poor beasties so my artisan character can keep her wimpy self at home, make pretty things and manage the shop and no one has to witness how slowly she runs up hills.

I've even considered the possibility that the tools might have some invisible degradation with time/use. Making new tools/crafting stations hasn't seemed to make any difference at all. As an example of the problem: After quite a few weeks of very few crits, I was making harvesters for a fellow PA member last Friday night. At his suggestion, I put away my bot and stood by the high end crafting station at the PA hall. Three crits later, I was outside with Lloyd the Droid (named after Frank, of course), successfully making harvesters like there was no tomorrow.

As it seems some players experience this and others don't, I suspect some of us are just bugged. (If you ever played AC..it was 3 years before the devsfound there reallywas a Wi flag.) I would suggest that if you are experiencing only an acceptable number of crits, don't change a thing. But if you feel you'reabout ready to pull your hair out..get some low end crafting stations.

Ouch,

This is a worry. I'm gearing up for vehicles, and have told my PA members to come use this great +43 station near our vendor.

Vehicles., due to resource usage, is going to hurt with critical fails. I might need to do some quick experimentation myself and see whaty results I get.