Artisan Archive

This post couldve gone on any of the crafter forums, but I chose Artisan because I figured every crafters starts here.

As everyone knows, before you place any type of harvester type machinery, you sample the area for the resources you want. That way you can place your machine on the best spot possible. When you place your harvester, you have to pick the resource to mine. When you go to the screen, it shows you ALL the resources and %s in the square.

What if you dont have Surveying skill, but you see a bunch of harvesters in a small area? You dont need Surveying skill to know there are good resources there. Otherwise, there wouldnt be so many harvesters there. Duh!

Can you place your harvester blindly and then see the resources available when you access the harvester interface? You then simply choose the resource you want.

Can this be done?

This would be great for someone who wants extra $$, but doesnt have Surveying skill. When they see an area saturated with harvesters, they slam one of there own, access the harvester interface, and pick a resource to mine.

Yes, it is possible, we do it often, as some of our guild are not crafters and have lots to spare. We just tell them where to place it, and give admin access, and its out of their hands.

However, there are two problems with your theory. First, people do not always just build on high concentrations. I often see little groups of differant harvesters obviously all owned by the same person, who just didnt want to have to do a lot of walking. So this person grouped them all together, reguardless of how good the concentration is.

Also, just because you see a lot of harvesters in one spot, does not nessesarily mean that it is a material that you want to collect.

Oh it doesnt matter. As long as I get decent #s of material, its all good. The idea is to sell the material for whatever. That way I can make extra coin on the side.

I can usually tell when its the same person placing a bunch of resources together. When there are good amounts of resources you usually see a ton of harvesters in an area. So many that its urban blight. I know cus I survey these areas with my crafter and 90% of the time theres a good amount of one resource or another.

Thing is that Im going to make another toon on another server and he wont be having Surveying skill. Well, I will have it at first, but when skill points get tight, ill have to drop it and rely on blind placement.

Another problem with this is that sometimes more than one resource can be in the same area. Without surveying first, you won't know what the concentrations are for each resource. You could end up picking a resource with only 11% concentration while everyone else there is harvesting a different resource with 80% concentration.

Slim Vargo, Corbantis, Mos Eisley

If you have 100 credits laying around and 15 skill points left over . . . buy novice artisan.

While you're at it, buy novice medic too. Share the power of healing!

Right Right. If Id place the harvester blindly, Id mine the 80% resource because id see it in the harvesters Choose Resource Screen. Im assuming of course, that the harvesters Choose Resource screen will show me the concentrations.

I already have surveying. Im simply planning ahead. Eventually I will have to drop Novice Artisan for those precious 15 points. When I do, Ill be ready with my placing blindly strategy. The beauty of it is that it really doesnt matter because all I need is a good concentration of ANY resource. As long as someone will BUY IT, its all good.

Hi,

even if you put it in a highly crowded area where other peeps have installed their harvesters means not that you will get something useful. I know a spot where I put my Wind Collector and it was nice for over a week. Other peeps made theirs there as well.

Now every day I go there and check, all Wind Generators are standing still because the resource is gone away. Good thing that yesterday some new wind resources shifted into the area and at least the "daily-visited" wind generators are working again

But of course, its better to survey first. If the game had some serious inter-player actions you could choose to give another player that job (secured by game mechanics), but sadly the game hasn't.

Blind harvester placement seems to work best with minerals, chemicals, and flora. All of these have many choices, meaning that you will be unlucky if you get concentrations on *something* below 50%. Usually you will get 70%+ of something.

Gas works as well, though less well (usually fewer choices).

Water and wind don't work (at least on Corellia) due to a single resource choice. You have to chase these resources.

The upsides to blind harvesting? You don't need surveying. Very little walking.

Downsides? You will never get the very best concentrations (though 75% vs 90% isn't *that* big of a deal - it's a 20% difference in unit cost), but more importantly, you won't get the really great resources. You may have to settle for the quality 700 metal concentration at 70% rather than the quality 950 metal concentration at 90% located elsewhere. If you're simply selling the resource or using it for personal crafting, this is probably fine. If you are looking to make the absolute best weapons/armor/whatever for resale, you really need the top-notch resources which you only get by chasing or letting someone else chase for you. Plus, you needa source of energy.

Personally, I run 2 wind harvesters which I move around, and 6 other mixed harvesters which stay put. This means I only have 2 locations to travel to each day (I obviously try to keep the wind near the rest) for total maintenance time of 30 minutes or so a day. If you can work out a deal with another casual harvester, one of you could simply produce energy (which would require some movement) while the other handles the static harvester farm to reduce overall maintenance time more. Alternatively, if you have the capitalization, you could run an energy only operation for a while, stockpile energy, than after an energy resource shift abandon the energy and run a static non-energy operation.

I placed my harvesters based not on concentration, but on convienence. I placed 2 wind2 min 1 chem 1 flora and 1 water harvester in my back yard. I figured that since resources shift I was bound to get something useable eventually......

I guess I got lucky. The lowest concentration of any resource (ones that I can use anyway) is in the low 30's somewhere. I know this will change (already has a couple times)

Point is...I did it and its working out fine....