Artisan Archive

Okay, so I've been at Survey IV for ... well, forever. I hit the 20k xp beyond IV about 2 days after I began playing. Yet, when I sample by hand, I still get xp. Not that it adds up anywhere, but I do wonder if it just goes poof, or if (/beginConspiracyTheory) it gets toted up somewhere behind the scenes. Anyone know?

If it goes poof, then they need to make a Miner elite profession, since it seems silly to allow the xp to go to waste. Miners could have a tree that lets them enhance the speed of harvesters, another tree that gives a bonus to the effective density (i.e. it looks like 76% to you and me, but 86% to them), and maybe even a "planetary survey" ability - that would *rock*. Lastly, maybe give them droids that could go out and sample?

Since so many people just seem to be in the business of selling resources, might as well make it a real profession. Probably a stupid idea, but who knows.

There has been a lot of speculation about a Miner elite profession branching from the survey line. I think it would be a great idea to implement this, if it was done right.

I don't think a planetary survey ability would be a good idea though. It would take away the challenge of the game. However, an advanced survey line would be great to expand survey range to 500, 1000, 1500 meters, etc as well increasing sampling efficiency.

Another good ability would be to allow Miners to have a couple of bonus lots, which could only be used for harvestors. This would have to be fairly high up the miner skill tree, maybe even Master level, to keep every artisan from going Miner just to get a couple of extra landlots.

Perhaps an efficiency line that not only allows Miners to use harvestors more productively, but reduces maintenance costs for harvestors, similar to what Merchants have in Efficiency IV.

Along the lines of your droid idea, maybe somekind of survey droid similar to the bounty hunting seeking droid. Just program it with the type of resource you're looking for, and send it out. Maybe it could auto sample too, so you know whether a particular resource has worthwhile stats. This of course is subject to the Miner's one droid pet limit, so he can't have the Probot and the survey droid out at the same time (this keeps every miner from having 50 survey droids running around every planet). This would further allow Miners to survey more efficiently, and thus gather resources more efficiently than other crafting professions.

Well, just my 2-creds worth. I do hope they implement a Miner profession.

Slim Vargo, Corbantis, Mos Eisley