Artisan Archive

So you want to be an Artisan…I wrote a song about it…Here it goes…

OK, I did it. I created and am currently using my own macro for thesampling function in SWG. Do you wanna here it? Here it goes.

Well, first off I’m gonna let you in on a few things of my own. I started the game SWG at the beginning January/04 and have been playing ever since. I know I have not been playing for months like most of you but I still think I have a little to offer the noob’s that are newer than I.

My first character was a Twi’lek, Master Artisan, Novice Droid Engineer, Novice Architect, Novice Weaponsmith, Novice Creature Handler, Novice Pistoleer, etc… He was a good character on the Bloodfin server and his name was Germ. Germ is now dead, he past away Wednesday afternoon quietly in his sleep. May he rest in pieces in the Star Wars Galaxies Graveyard of Dead Characters. His protégé Bugeye has taken his place and is well on his way to fulfilling his own dreams within the Galaxy. I will let him (Bugeye) speak for himself now, he’s fairly smart and I think he is quite capable of giving you the rest of whateva we were going to inform you about.

Hello, my name is Bugeye and I am a struggling artisan. But with a little help from past experience, persistence, my God (that would be the guy actually typing this) and macro’s I don’t think I will be struggling for long.

First off, what you want to do right off the bat is get trained in Marksman, Medic and Scout.So you will have Novice skills in four areas (Artisan, Marksman, Medic, and Scout). To gather enough credits to do so ask a friend for a loan or do a couple easy missions to earn yourself a few extra bucks. It will cost you 100cr for each new novice skill you would like to learn. Here is why you want to learn these skills to go along with your already pre-trained Artisan Novice Skill you learned when you created your character.

Marksman: You need to know how to fight and you need to know how to fight. This is very simple. Get yourself either a pistol, carbine or rifle and keep this type of weapon always so know what you want to use before killing anything. I chose pistol just because it is given to you when you start. You will learn that the more fighting you do the better you get at it and in turn the more skill options you get that will hurt your opponent(s) more. Don’t be afraid to get trained in the skill of your favorite weapon of choice once enough skill is learned as you can always surrender these skills later if needed and I have always found that climbing up the latter to Novice Pistoleer helped me fight with confidence. Also, you don’t want to forget that when going out and surveying you may run into someone or something that wants to hurt or even kill you so you want to be ready to fight back and if fighting back doesn’t work there is always burst run.

Medic: Healing yourself. Simple as that. When your out hunting by yourself or with a group killing for XP and/or materials such as Meat, Hide or Bone you may get hit a few times and healing yourself always helps get you out of a jam also help heal the people your with if you can afford it as they will remember and heal you if needed if you run out of Stimpacks.

Scout: You want to learn scout for a couple of reasons. First you can craft a campsite where you can generate your vehicle, heal or just sit around the fire and tell ghost stories with your friends. You can also loot nests this way and harvest materials mentioned in the above Marksman skill. After obtaining skills in the Scout, discipline you will notice you can run faster through the rough terrain and over hill and mountain that slow you down if such skills are not met.

Believe me these skills definitely help they do not hurt.

Ok, so by now you should have four skills before doing anything else in the game unless you needed to get some quick start off cash and had to do a few quick missions.

Now for Artisan. Just to go back a bit you do not want to start in a starting location where there aren’t any other characters around, You need people to buy your resources or wares that you craft with your own blood sweat and tears. You need people and people need you. So if possible start in a place like Coronet on Corellia or Bestine on Tattooine or even Theed on Naboo. This way any resource you sample or any item you craft you can sell to somebody who needs it or sell it on the Bazaar. I find these places good as a lot of people frequent the Bazaar’s here and most people will not travel a long distance if they can find something they need for a little more money then your selling because they don't have to travel to get it. So you have to remember the lazy factor, it is relevant in both real life and virtual life.

The first thing you want to do is survey for resources. Minerals or chemicals are your best options to start out with. I’ll be using the Mineral resources as an example here because I think going with minerals first is your best choice. Try if you can to survey Steel, Iron, or Aluminum. Go just outside the city you are in and survey, go down the list and choose a mineral resource that is at least 85%. Find the waypoint for the most concentrated area then begin sampling. I have a macro I used and I am going to share it with you now.

Go into your commands and abilities window and choose edit macro. Then type in:

/sample;/pause 6;/sit;/pause 19;/stand;/ui action toolbarSlotXX;

Yup, That is it. It is as simple as that. Now just to explain. I find that the Survey string in the Artisan tree is the most boring and takes the longest time to get. What I did was when I went to bed or when I went to eat supper or something anything that took me away from SWG I just hit the macro button and let it do it’s thing. This is a looping macro.

/sample = this is the command to sample your resource.

/pause = this is the command to pause your character. If this command is not used there will be just to many things going on all at once and the macro will not work effectively.

The pause command is easy to edit if you think your character needs more time in between actions. All you have to do is edit the same macro and change the pause times. The best way to do this is to test the macro out for a few minutes to see how your character performs and if more or less, time is needed between actions you just go in and change them till they suit your ability.

The /sit and /stand commands are self-explanatory they mean and do just that sit and stand. They give your guy a little bit of a break between actions to regenerate the action and mind bar in your HAM.

/ui action toolbarSlot = this is your toolbar at the top of your screen there will either be 1 row or in most cases 2 rows as one row just isn’t enough. The XX stands for the toolbarSlot in which the macro was placed. As you must drag and drop the macro, you created in here for it to work properly. The first slot on most will be the Stand command also the F1 key or toolbarSlot00 then so on the kneel command or F2 would be toolbarSlot01. So to make it easy I know my character won’t be laying prone anytime soon so I replaced the prone command with the macro so toolbarSlot03 is what I put in place of XX in the macro.

Don’t forget to make sure you capitalize the S in toolbarSlot.

Now once you have the macro fine tuned to your liking just leave him/her be for awhile go take a bath or get some sustenance into you before your next long hall on SWG.

Once you obtain enough resource you can either sell it (which you probably will not have enough to sell unless it is a rare resource you happened to stumble upon.) So, start crafting anything you can. Best thing to do is find yourself a friend and get resources off of them. Join a guild or something because guilds usually want you to join them to make there, cities bigger unless you already got yourself a reputation of being a nerf herder they will give you whatever you need. Best thing is you can craft while sampling. Remember that! You can craft while sampling, while waiting for your shuttle or just about anywhere you want. Now that you got a handle on the basic idea of becoming master artisan I’m gonna leave you for now. But I will come back with an advanced guide soon, I just don’t feel like typing anymore that’s all. Good luck and remember in SWG you have a name. My name is Bugeye and I’m on the Bloodfin server. Keep one foot in the grave and on fist in the sky and you should come out of this damn war ok.

Thanks again,

Fromme

In game name Bugeye