Artisan Archive

Here's a recap of my experiences with harvesters:

First, I had extremely little information to go on. The manual is pretty much worthless when describing how to use harvesters. I had about 30K credits and thought I'd try my luck with a coupleof harvesters. So, I ran around Tatooine with my scanners and started sampling minerals, chemicals, and gas deposits. I spent several days doing this, trying to find the highest quantity of the resources. Then I went looking for harvesters. I spent hours running around from city to city trying to find a vendor that sold harvesters. I finally found one and store the waypoint to him, so I could return later. The harvesters weren't very expensive. I think I spent 1500 for a mineral harvester and 1500 for a chemical harvester. But I noticed he sold wind generators too. They cost 500 credits. So, I decided to purchase two of them, just to be safe. I didn't know if I needed them or not.

I ran to the spot where I had the highest quantity of chemicals. I choose fiberplast to be my first mining resource. However, I wasn't able to place the harvester. It was on a mountain. So, Iran around for another hour trying to find a place where I could place the harvester. There wasn't. Either, it was on a mountain, or in city limits, or it was in a yellow zone. I have no ideawhat the yellow zones are. Red and Green are described in the manual, but not yellow. So, I spent several more hours running around trying to find another good candidate for my chemical harvester. I found one and placed it. However, my harvester didn't work. It needed power. But I had a feeling this might happen. That's why I bought the wind generators. So, I spent a couple more hours trying to find a spot to place the wind generators. I found more red zones and more yellow zones. But I was finally able to find a spot to place my wind generators. I powered them upand they shut down. I had a message about paying for maintenance. So, I dropped 600 credits ineach for maintenance. I believe it said it cost 60cr/hr to operate. I then waited for several hours and returned to see how much power I had accumulated. It had a couple hundred units of power and retrieved it from the hopper. I rushed to my chemical harvester and deposited the power.The harvester powered up. As I sped away in my X34, I received a message about the harvester having a critical error. I turned around and it said it needed me to pay maintenance. So, paid it,but I don't remember how much. The harvester seemed happy, so I ran off to place me mineral harvester, which resulted in more running around since the spot I had originally scanned for were either red or yellow zones and I had to find a whole new place.

The next day I checked on the progress of my harvesters. I knew I would need more power, so I check on my wind generators. They were shut down. Apparently, the area that had 65% resources now had 0% resources. I thought I had extracted all of the resources from this spot and decided to move one of my wind generators. So, I re-deeded it and moved it, only to learn this area was at 0%. So, I re-deeded both wind generators and ran around the countryside looking for another good spot for them. I place them. Bottom line, I spent 9K on re-deeding. And then deposited an additional 3K into each wind generator to keep it operating for a while. This was now becoming expensive. Over the course of two days, I had spent nearly 20K and had nothing to show for it.

My next stop was my chemical harvester. It had extracted around 2K of fiberplast. I retrieved itand ran to the market to sell it. I got 4cr per unit. So, I made 8K. Then next day, I had another 3K and sold it for 4cr per unit and made another 12K. So, at this point, I've broken even with maybe a small profit. I decided to extract copper with my mineral harvester and couldn't sell any of it. My guess is, I'm charging too much. I plan to lower my price and see if it sells.

Yesterday, when I logged into the game, I had several messages about my wind generators being at 47% efficiency. So, I rushed to them. The maintenance was at 0cr. So, I deposited another 3K in each. And took off. I returned later to collect my power and they were shut down. The still showed 55% resource available, so I check the maintenance. It was at 0cr. So, I deposited and 3K and it was still at 0cr. So, I deposited another 3K and it went up to 1800cr or so. I did the same with my other harvester. So, far, I've spent in the neighborhood of 30K on just keeping the wind generators operating and I've earned around 20K. I ran to check on my copper, since I found a potential buyer. The harvester was shutdown and on fire. I deposited 3K, the fire went out, but it still showed 0cr in maintenance. So, I deposited another 3K. I've spent close to 40K totalin maintenance and purchasing the equipment. Also, I've started keeping a spreadsheet showing what my costs versus profits are. I'm negative around 20K. I heard one person buys harvesters, sets them up and doesn't pay maintenance. He just let's them explode and then replaces them. He says it's cheaper. If this is true (which I am starting to believe it is), this game is nerfed!

I think the harvesters still charge maintenance even if they are shut down. This does not make since to me.

I am not trying to get rich from the game. I hear people have millions and I'm lucky to have more than 40K (from running missions) at any given time. My goal in the game is to have fun. I like exploring the planets. I found an Oasis on Tatooine and place a small house up on top of the mountain next to it. Sort of my mountain get away. I've visited all of the POIs and was startingto explore Corellia. Managing the harvesters has been very frustrating and is becoming quite a nightmare. I earn more by killing womp rats and selling the hides than I do trying to manage harvesters.

Someone needs to publish a "Harvesting for Dummies" book.

I am new to the whole harvesting thing as well.

Gotta love how you pay everything up for 2 or 3 days, log in the next day to see that you need to pay more.

There is definately an issue with harvesters and eating up maintenance.

The game has been out long enough that this should've been addressed by now. Same with a million other problems. We should be seeing fix patches all the time; instead they hardly ever happen.

I believe that this is just a display problem. You harvestor should keep going even after it says that it is out of power with this bug. If you go in and change what you are harvesting for a second and then check again, the power should be normal again. Hope that helps.

(But yes, I agree that it is ridiculous that this bug still exists at this point in the game. It did not used to happen until about 2 patches ago. They really need to fix it.)

Welcome to artisan! We've all been there, done that.

Here's some advice if you are interested...

As you found out, harvesters burn cash (and power). So, find good ones. I've seen personal mineral extractors with BER 5 and made personal wind gens with BER 8 (although I've heard they go to 9). They all cost the same to operate, so compare that with the results of a BER 1 or 2 unit and you'll see why it's worth more for the better quality harvesters.

Now, if you DO have crap harvesters and you go to pick it up DONT put more money into it so you can keep from destroying it when you redeed. Just get another one. If you're using a BER 1 or 2 unit you probalby are only paying 200 to 500 credits for it anyway. Since the top of the line ones are 3000 to 5000 you'll want to save those.

While we're on this topic, you'll want to upgrade to the larger harvesters when you can. They'll run you 30,000 credits and cost more power. Maintenance is the same I think.

As for resource shifts. Yep. They suck. Two things you can do to ease the pain. Form a cooperative group and share waypoints. You look for steel, Bob looks for ore, and Sally looks for gas. Then share waypoints.

OR get on your vehicle, turn on the global map (Ctl M), zoom it all the way out (Ctl mousewheel) and drive around looking for clusters of green dots. Check them out. If they are a 'farm' of harvesting equipment then DING! get off the bike, and sample until you find out what the fuss is all about. If its something you need then you've just found it the easy way.

O-Jen

A couple things to keep in mind when using harvesters...

1) Before you depress yourself, bring up both the Operate Structure and Status windows... don't look at the Status window until you turn off and then turn on the harvester. Then click the Refresh button in the Status window, this will give you accurate information on both Maintenance and Power.

2) ALWAYS perform the above before you re-deed a harvester, otherwise you will lose all the Power you had in it (the Power meter is bugged and the display counts down power twice as fast as it is supposed to).

3) IMHO only re-deed BER 4 Personals, since you can normally find BER 3s all over the bazaars at cheap prices and you can consider them 'throw aways'

4) The current limit on Personalsis BER 4... some have claimed BER 5 but I have yet to see proof of one, a screenshot will shut me up on that point if someone objects. I can easily make a BER 5 MEDIUM, but not a Personal.

5) The current limits on sizes is Personals (BER 4), Mediums (BER 10), Heavies (BER 13, except Fusions which can be made at BER 14). Plus Wind Generators can be made at BER 9, Solars are useless IMHO.

6)There doexist high BER Fusions in the range of BER 20 - 27, but they are post nerf and are going for around 1.5 million on my server.

7) The problem with Personals is that most Artisans create them to grind through Artisan, and they don't care what BER they are, and don't bother experimenting on them. This is what I did to get to Master Artisan, but I actually cared about quality and used HQ resources to make BER 4s and BER 9 Winds.

8) Due to #7, most Artisans don't continue to make them, because they can focus on better things, since most Artisans pick up one of the higher professions (Weaponsmith, ArmorSmith, Architect, etc). As an Architect, I continue to make them and sell them on the bazaar, because it gives me direct access to a client base that can't affordthe Medium harvestersright away.... "Hey, when you feel like upgrading or getting more of those fine BER 4s, come to my vendor." I also offer to buy all Metal and Ore resources @ 2cpu to give them cash flow and the means to upgrade to Mediums and even Heavy ones.

9) If you want to make some money by reselling resources, do the following: Find yourself a BER 9 Wind Generator and pay whatever for it (run survey missions to make the money (find a 70% spot1024m away from a mission terminal, and only get the resource type missions for the 70% spot, rinse and repeat)). Go place the Generator and run some more survey missions while it collects power. If you are having trouble finding a BER 9 Wind, look on the bazaar and find a BER 4 and write the maker an email, politely asking them if they can make you a BER 9 Wind (he/she will need better resources to make a BER 9 Wind, they must average over 850+ for three stats HR/SH/UT, but they may have the resources to make you one, and make it worth their while, I charge 9k for a BER 9 Wind, basically 1k per BER)

10) After a day or two, you should have wind power and some credits to buy a bunch of BER 4s, maybe from that same kind Artisan who made you the BER 9 Wind Go place your BER 4s on a high concentration spot, add maintenance and power, go enjoy some other aspect of your life Everyday log into SWG and check your Survey tool and make sure the resource is still available. If the resource disappears, or you think you are running low on power or maintenance visit the harvesters and either add power/maintenance or re-deed it if the resource has dried up.

11) KEY POINT: Start off harvesting Steel / Aluminum / or ORE, you will be able to sell these more easily. Please have at least 10k of resource before you try and sell them, it makes it that much easier to sell. Run Survey missions to pay for the maintenance in the mean time (you will learn to hate them )

12) Every time you can afford to, purchase another BER 4, until you are running two BER 9 Winds, and eight BER4s (unless you have a house... and why do you have a house, you should have bought more harvesters).

13) Rinse and repeat, and upgrade to Mediums when you get thechance. Enjoy.

Start simpler - buy 2 of the best wind generators you can find and do wind only. Sell half of what you harvest on the bazaar and stockpile half. Wind is fairly profitable and easy to move.