Artisan Archive

I've had this experience with no other harvesters around. I had made sure that I'm paid out two days so that if this happens, I am able to come back the following day after the spawn changed.

heheh - This morning i was running around surveying, looking for low grade orre and metals and, well everything really. Seemed every time i started to get results that were heading into the high 70's a bunch of maulers or shaupauts or something similar would pop out of the trees right where the best veein was running!! Gah!

Whew, I'm glad it isn't just me. I though it may have just been a coincidence. I can't get to any of my harvesters (different locations) at the moment.

POIs spawn in numbers and difficulty based on the players in the area. If 30 people put harvesters in the same spot, and they all arrive at the same time, the game looks and sees 30 players in the area, and WHAM up goes the difficulty level of the spawns in the area to handle the number of people present.

POIs don't go away for ages if at all after they spawn depending on if they roam or have lairs. So in an area of massive player population you will slowly get more and more critters and harder and harder lairs. On a bright note, they are good places for hunters to hunt and perhaps that is as it should be.

Otherwise off peak times or putting your harvesters away from everyone else's helps, but yah sometimes you will be in a big clump and there will be a lot of people there and it will be dangerous.

that system is so stupid. why cant there be natural habitats of creatures instead of just going "oh look theres John the master marksman, lets spawn eighteen lairs filled with aggro mobs!"

I set up a steel extractor and a wind generator on opposite ends of my area (Talus), which turns out were near other extractors of the same variety. In fact, there were a HUGE number of similar extractors in that region. So, I set them up, then I logged off and went to work. When I came back home and got back on the server, I went to collect my harvestings, and couldn't! Why? Those &*#$!%^ hostiles! There were TONS of them, all surrounding every angle that I could possibly walk to get to my extractor. I mean, I'm not just talking about one group of six yellow-con level hostiles, there were at least seven groups I counted, and ranged anywhere from white to red in con levels for difficulty. After one group knocked me out, I tried once again to get back to it, and thisanother groupknocked me out finished me off.

Does the server do this on purpose? I mean, does it detecthigh concentrations of extractors in one area and automatically put BILLIONS of hostile mobs there to prevent people from getting their goods? Or was this the dev's deciding there's far too many in that area, and they needed to encourage people to build them elsewhere?

At least they weren't that populated today. I was able to collect my harvests without incident, but I'm worried that this will continue as it has in the future, thus preventing me from getting a good concentration of high-quality resources.

I find myself making this big flower-shaped looping pattern trying to get to mine. I often end up prone and crawling to within a few meter of my harvester. One thing you can do if you're feeling adventurous, is to try to pull the aggros away with a burst run. If they get too far, they wander (or warp) back anyway though.

You could pay a n00b toon to run point, and then deal with his spawns. I don't know how far back you'd have to be though...

Indeed. Head back to town, and let everyone know that there are great hunting grounds around your harvesters. Spam people in the cantina and med center with waypoints, describing the beasts and NPCs to be found there.

If that doesn't work, try offering to hire an escort. Interdependency works both ways.

This morning I was sampling near where one of my harvesters is on Tarquinas. All of a sudden, these four aggro NPCs show up and start walking all around my area. I almost always get my butt kicked in these situations, so I just tried to ignore them and keep a low profile for a while. Eventually, one of them attacked me. I fought back and--surprise, surprise--I actually killed him. After that, his buddies kept their distance until I was finished in the area.

I don't know if this was coincidence or if they "got scared," but it worked.

At least you can PLACE your harvesters. Exactly how freakin far from town do you have to be to place those pieces of $#!@? I found 3 good viens all quite far from town. Almost got killed finding them. Yet I couldnt place my Extractors because I was told I couldnt build there. What a load of crock.

AgeOld, you have to be at least 1 km from any populated area to place an extractor. But even then, there are just places they designate on the terrain where you can and can't build extractors. Personally, I think that's a crock, since most of the areas with high concentrations are either a.) populated by a bajillion hostiles, or b.) somewhat "unlevel" terrain that your extractors, for some reason, can't be placed on.

I think this forces you to find sparse areas to put your extractors down, but without vehicles, who in their right mind wants to trek for 6 hours a night just gathering resources? Not to mention trying to avoid fighting.

And I've found myself crawling towards extractors to avoid hostiles. In fact, last night I was about 10 m from a berzerk kahmura (I think they're called), and since I was on my stomach he didn't see me. I was able to get to my goods without incident, but just over the ridge I saw a hostile roba kick a perelope to the dirt. Kind of fun to watch. Still, the hostiles were almost as thick the day I posted this message, and it's getting out of hand.

1Km? Whats 1Km? How do i translate that to the map? That coordinate system theyre using is whacked.

Also, how much Energy per hour do Mineral and Flora Extractors need?

I like a challenge, but this is pretty pointless. It's not a challenge at all because an artisan doesn't stand a chance against the powerful creatures that camp harvesters. You try to hire an escort in town - no body cares, I can't hire people to run out to the middle of nowhere and kill a couple critters - they're looking to run missions and gain faction points. When I *can* get someone to come out and clear the beasties away from my sites, it costs me so much that I'm barely making a profit anymore, and next time I come back the bloody things are right back at it camping my equipment. This is when I DO find a place to set up my mines in the first place, all high concentrations of minerals are already camped (maybe from people manual sampling?), and many are in no-build zones. So at the end of the day, pretty much every harvester run I make ends up on my belly, creeping up to the bloody thing, praying that the ravenous tortons don't see me because if they do I won't even have time to run. I've made it standard practice now not to even bring anything with me on harvester runs - armor and a weapon are just crap that I have to insure (even MORE overhead), so I spend most of my time running around in a pair of work pants, getting killed, running back out, getting my stuff, running *back* to the bank to pick up my equipment, and remembering to drop it off every single time before I go do something or I'll lose it when I inevitably die trying to maintain my gear - I'm a disposable errand boy, I spend so little time crafting out of my whole play time it's stupid.

Artisans already have to put up with long hours of boring surveying, running out into the middle of nowhere to pay a harvester upkeep money that should be depositable from a bank, trying to compete against the PLers to sell stuff and make ends meet because the PLers have ruined the market with grinding and dumping it all, etcetera ad tedium. It sucks. So what, now you have to be primarily combat spec to even run a decent resource extraction operation? How are we supposed to pretend that this makes the game more fun?