Medic Archive

OK, I'm taking Novice Medic so that I can heal myself and others out in the wild and while I'm in town. I plan on having First Aid 4 and Organic Chemistry 4. My question is, what materials are you using that you would recommend to make the various healing items? Also, I've heard alot about experinentation. Is this a random thing that the game does when you craft or can you adjust the properties when you craft? Any help is appreciated.

Firstly, you should be aware that If you arent taking any pharmacology boxes, Stim B's are going to be the best stimpack you will be able to use. You will be able to craft StimPack C's, but not use them. Apologies if you knew that already.

With respect to your question, the properties you should be looking for on your resources are Overall Quality and Potential Energy, in that order of importance. Experimentation is quite hard to describe briefly, but basically by using experimentation you can increase the healing power, number of uses, and ease of use of your medicines. There is also inherent risk, whereby if your experimentation goes wrong, you can actually reduce the effectiveness of your medicines, or make them useless altogether (critical failure). Quality of your resources is an important factor in the success of your experimentation.

Almost alwaysexperimentation is worth it however.

Hope that helps.

Thanks Highroller3k. I was unaware that I wouldn't be able to make the Stim-C's. Thank you for pointing this out to me. As for the info as to what qualities are most important, THANK YOU!!!! This was one of the best responces that I've heard. At least I can now look at what I have and get a good idea of what's crap and what will work good. I understand how experimentation works in the sence of what it will do, I just don't know how! Is there a step in crafting that I'm missing or am I just not high enough to do it. Also, would I be able to experiment with the Stim-C's enough so that I could use them? Thanks.

Just some more clarification and addings...

-The best resources to get for organics are meats and flora stuff such as wheat, corn, etc. These have PE stats, while hides and bone do not. This counts as a 0 for PE qhen crafting with hide and bone. A hide with an OQ of 900 will bethe same asa meat with 600 OQ and 600 PE. Similarily, only use inorganics that have OQ and UT (Unit Toughness), although I don't think I've come across an inorganic that didn't have UT.

-You will be able to make stim c's, but you won't be able to use them, as your "med use" will be too low (you get this with the pharm. boxes). You can get away with two of them if you experiment to lower it, but 3 will allow you to experiment on the other attributes.

-Also, when making your crafting tool find some copper or aluminum that has a very high conductivity (these seem to be the best for that, copper being the best usually). Experiment until you get a great success, or have a good artisan make you one.

You do realize that a doctor will have twice as many experimentation points as you can have, so their meds will be twice as good as anything you will possibly be able to make.

You might think it's cheaper to make your own meds, but it's work to collect resources, work to craft them right (and if you aren't willing to take the time to craft until you get good results, you will suffer the consequences in battle), and they won't be all that spectacular. Your stim B will probably heal for 160 or so (assuming that all the componants and the final experiment work well), and without Pharm III, you won't be able to use a stim C, even if you can craft it.

I think you will be better off learning Pharm IV instead of O-Chem IV. Then you can buy stim D's from doctors, and gets loads of healing.

But if you really want to craft...

If you really want good stimpacks, you have to experiment. Stand next to a public chemical and food crafting station, (it's about 8 feet high with large green panels) and get a food and chemical crafting tool. As a medic, you will have the schematic to make it, all you will need is a general or generic crafter to make the chemical crafter, and resources. (You want high conductivity in the metal, and high malleability in the chemical). You could also buy one off the bazaar. The quality of the crafter doesn't appear to have a huge impact on the outcome, but you are going to use it quite often, so there is something to be said for making it as good as you can, just in case.

Like other people said, OQ is the most important, PE contributes a third to the healing effectiveness. Toughness contributes a third to the number of charges. You can see this when you start to craft; look in the bottom right corner for how much each stat affects the quality of the finished product. No material has both PE and Toughness.

The other thing to consider is Malleability, because you will find it very hard to experiment on compontants if neither resource has any malleability. Skimping on malleability might give you a slightly better initial craft, but once you get more than a couple experimental points, you are much better off using resources with malleability, even if they are inferior, and experimenting.

If you do get O-Chem 4, you gain the ability to put advanced componants into your meds. These require some wacky ingrediants (check out www.swgcraft.com for details), but the consensus seems to be that your meds will be improved, even if you can't get top quality resources.

Thanks guys! As for buying my own medical supplies, I still don't think that I will. My whole point with my charcter is to make him as independent as possible. I do have some skill points that aren't going anywhere and I think that I might just sink those into Pharmacology. Thanks for all the input!! Later.