Droid Engineer Archive

Many have posted tutorials on grinding on most of the SWG boards. However, I see posts here everyday with people asking two common questions.. quite probably the most common questions asked on this, the DE, board. "What is the best item to grind?" .. "what is the best way to grind?"

Well, this tutorial is meant to answer those two questions as best as I can. Hopefully many of you that have your own unique way to grinding (and speed grinding) will post here with tutorials of your own.

Choosing an item to craft

The first step in grinding is, quite obviously, choosing which item you plan to grind to get those valuable, if measly, XP points. This really depends on your current skills, but generaly the three preferred items to craft are bone armour chest plates, crafting tools and woodern staffs. Bone armour chest plates gives the best XP but a very high resource cost .. bone and hide are clearly harder (and more expensive) to come by than fiberplast, woodand metals. Of course if you are already a DE and have blueprints II you can craft chasis which give a very nice rate of XP (though at a high resource cost).

Resources

For this tutorial, we will be grinding crafting tools. Crafting tools are made up with three segments;

1. Assembly Enclosure (requires 16 units of metal)


2. Thermal Shield (requires 8 units of mineral)


3. Control Unit (requires 10 units of chemical)

Therefore, you will need two resource types to craft this item;

1. Fiberplast (chemical)


2. Metal (Mineral)

How you obtain your resources obviously depends on how much money you have and if you have any harvesters. If you can afford it, purchase as much resources from the bazaar as possible .. otherwise go survey yourself some (or use your havester). The more resources the better... and try to keep to one resource per-type .. trying to grind with 10 different kinds of fiberplast becomes a nightmare. When grinding you don't need to worry too much about the quality of the resource. It really doesn't the XP gained.

Your crafting tools

Now that you have your resources, you will need your tools to begin crafting. Since you are clearly atleast a novice Artisan to be reading this post, I will assume you can craft your own generic crafting tool .. so, instead of buying your tools craft them! For this tutorial you will need THREE Generic Crafting tools. The reason for using generic crafting tools is, quite simply, to avoid any hasle of experimentation ... when grinding experimenting slows things down .. extra time with no real extra XP gain. Experimenting is only really worth while when you intend on using the finished product. "Why three?" I hear you shout! The answer to this will become apparent in the"now for the grind"section.

Ok, you've crafted yourself 3 gen. craft tools? Great! Now assign the tree tools to your F1, F2 and F3 keys. The reason for choosing these three keys becomes essential when speed grinding ... its all about the position of your fingers of course, you may find other key placements more comfortable, butyou can cross that bridge when you come to it.

Setting up the crafting windows

Your fingers are itching on those keys, right? Well before you load the first crafting tool, hit the ALT key and go into free-mouse mode. This stops the mouse curser being re-set to the centre of the screen everytime a new crafting window is loaded and thus reducing the amount of mouse movement needed while crafting.

Now you are reaady to start .. go ahead, hit that F1 key! The first crafting window will appear ... but don't get too hastey, you will need to play with the windows a bit in this first crafting session. Position the window so that the bottom-right corner of the crafting window is aligned with the top-right corner of the chat window. Now select any of the crafting tools (I generaly craft the clothing tool because its at the top of my list) and hit the next button.

Now position this window into the same position as before. You'll notice all the resources you are carrying are displayed in the left-hand window ... to make life easier on yourself, only keep the two resource types you are using in your inventory ... put all other resources in your droid or travel pack (or whatever) to keep this window clear. And now for a good tip... instead of dragging the resource into the corresponding component, simply double-click the resource.. it will auto-load into the first slot. If the resource is used in more than one componenet, keep double-clicking until all components are filled. In the case of the crafting tool, you will need to double-click your metal twice, and your fiberplast once. Now hit the "assemble button".

Again, position the window in the same way as before and hit the "next" button.

Finaly,make sure the "practice" box is ticked, and once again position the window as before. Now hit the "practice" button.

I generaly gain around 68 crafting XP per- crafting tool I make. Thats not bad considering the resources used.

Now for the grind

You'll notice your crafting tool in the short-cut-keys window at the top now has a little number next to it ... that displays the amount of time left before you can use that tool again. A point to note: You can only use this tool when it hits 1 or when there is no numbers at all.

You'll need to keep an eye on these numbers since you will not get a message telling you the crafting tool is ready to use again when practising.

Now we get to the reason for having 3 crafting tools and for going through the hasle of positioning those windows!

As soon as you've hit that F1 key and crafting with the first tool, you can instantly hit the F2 key and craft again. Once done, hit the F3 key and craft again .. by the time you've finished crafting with F3, F1 will be ready for use again. This basicaly means you now have a constant stream of crafting ... no more waiting for the tool to be ready to use again.

The position of your hands on those F keys and on the mouse is all-important for speed ... assuming you are right-handed, keep that right-hand on that mouse and the left hand poised over the F keys. You'll notice that now you've positioned the windows each time you hit the button your curser is hovering over the button of the next window ... this means you can simply keep clicking that mouse without having to move the curser at all (except for assigning the resources).

And there you have it. Keep this process going and you'll hit Master DE in no time!

Not bad but you can save your fingers some morebecause most of the windows can be completed by hitting enter instead of using the mouse.

Kemoo Master Aritsan

"Your fingers are itching on those keys, right? Well before you load the first crafting tool, hit the ALT key and go into free-mouse mode. This stops the mouse curser being re-set to the centre of the screen everytime a new crafting window is loaded and thus reducing the amount of mouse movement needed while crafting."

This, by far, is the most useful piece of advice you have given. It should save my poor wrists. Thank you.

-Raystonn

Yep Kemoo ya right. The only problem with that though, is that you have to keep switching your hand between the mouse and the return key.. or switch the other hand between the F keys and the return key ... that makes speed grinding combersome

Still, to each their own

You know that you canmacro all aspects of crafting except for the double-clicking on resources, right?

-Raystonn

For example:

Hit F1. Double-click resources. Hit F2. Double-click resources. Hit F3. Double-click resources. Hit F4. Double-click resources.

You can set up your in-game macro system to allow you to do this with as many crafting tools as you can manage at once, depending on the speed of your clicking. I have gotten up to 7 tools at once all busy making MSE droids.

-Raystonn

is there a way to macro the practice step?

Ramdor.

"is there a way to macro the practice step?"

Once you select the practice box... it stays checked until you un-select it.

"Hit F1. Double-click resources. Hit F2. Double-click resources. Hit F3. Double-click resources. Hit F4. Double-click resources."

Or... if you're really lazy, you can assign your mouse wheel button to 'double-click' and that way you only have to click on each resource.

How are the accept steps after the resources are loaded macroed?

I know how to load the tools and select the schematic, but what about the other steps?

I put the crafting tools on the F9-F12 buttons and just rest my hand over there so i can hit the F key enter double click three times enter enter enter next F key made novice weaponsmith while watching Madonna kiss Britney last night

This is much nicer , but if yah check pratice before hand and use this macro below it will still spit out items dunno why...

/nextCraftingStage;

/nextCraftingStage;

/nextCraftingStage;

/creatPrototype;

/creatPrototype

Like so...if someone knows how to get pratice into that macro do share please.

well suppose to be ,

/createPrototype;

/createPrototype

forgot the "e" somehow =/