Ranger Archive
Thread: Crafting 101 for Rangers
With the introduction of the camo kits, crafting with good tools and good resources has become important for all rangers. It seemsmany rangers have no Idea how deep the crafting system is or how it works at all. So I thought I would write a guide to help all my fellow rangers make the elusive 100% 10 charge kit.
Lesson 1 - Crafting Tools
As a Ranger there is only one type of crafting tool you'll ever need, the Weapon, Droid and General Item Crafting Tool. You might ask, "but I'm crafting traps and camps, what does that have to do with weapons and droids?" The answer is Traps, Camps and the new Camo Kits are General Items.
While theGeneric CraftingTool does allow you to create general items,it is less effective and does not allow for experimentation. Experimenting is a very important part of crafting we will discuss later in the lesson. As a Ranger we are an elite profession, we should be using elite tools.
Not all crafting tools are created equal! All crafting tools have an Tool Effectiveness rating. This number can range from -15.00 to 15.00 and all places in between. The rating is found by examining the tool. It is also shown in the trade window when you select the item. The higherthis number, the better the tool. If you are still using the tool you crafted when you had engineering 3, throw it away! Look on the Bazaar or ask around the artisan community and find someone who can create a quality crafting tool for you. I would suggest finding a tool with at least a 10+ rating.
These tools can be used anytime,a crafting station is not required to create any of the schematicsin the ranger profession. Yet crafting stations still play an important role in crafting certain items. Why? Well, that takes us to the next lesson.
Lesson2 - Crafting Stations
Now that we have our Weapon, Droid and General Item Crafting Tool, we need to find a Weapon, Droid and General Item Crafting Station. There arefour types of crafting stations available to a ranger. Public crafting stations, Private crafting stations, Droid crafting stations andthe HTFB Public crafting station. Each of these types have there advantages and disadvantages.
Like your crafting tool, all player created private/droid crafting stations have a Station Effectiveness rating when examined ranging from -45.00 to 45.00.Unfortunatlypublic crafting stations found in cities and a HTFB have no effectiveness rating on the examine screen. While the effectiveness of these stations has been debated since beta, most believe those found in the city run somewhere between 10-15 and those found in NTFB are a little bit better, ranging from 15-25. Why is this rating important? Two reasons, critical failures and experimentation. The higher the rating of the crafting tool and crafting station, the less chance of a critical failure eating all your hard earned resources or an experiment going horribly wrong and ruining your item.
This rating also effects how successful experiments are. Every item crafted, whether at a crafting station, or with just a tool out in the field has one experiment run on it. This is the message box yousee when you create any item. It might say the item was OK, moderate success, good success, great success, amazing success,this determines its initial quality. Each successful experiment adds to this initial quality. So the higher the rating the better the chances of getting an amazing success, and the better the final product.
So how does this whole experimenting work? Well, I guess its time to move on to the next lesson.
Lesson3 - Experimenting
Ever collected 80 units of resources to create a camo kit and wonder why it only gave you 2 charges? Well, the answer is Experimentation. When standing next to a Weapon, Droid and General Item Crafting Station bootthe Weapon, Droid and General Crafting Tool in your inventory. Assign your resources to each slot and click assemble. An experimentationis run and its results give you your base stats for the item. It may range from 2% to 22% or even higher depending on the resources used (next lesson). You may then apply your experiment points to the experimental quantity or effectiveness of an item. Most rangers have 6 to 12 points to spend depending upon their skill boxes filled. I have no idea how this works so don't ask. It is unknown if artisan skill boxes effect this or if it effected only by your ranger skills alone. Spend your points wisely, don't fill up every box and go, this will leave you with less points later if an experiment goes wrong. I usually spend 4 on the first and fill in on subsequent experiments. Critical failures will reduce your charges quite a bit and it is nice to have a few extra points if your first or second attempt fails.
As of the writing of this guide, only Camo kits need any experiments run. Camps and Traps will give you a 0% experimental effectiveness no matter how successful the initial experiment, or the resources used. Any experiments run on camps and traps will not raise this number, so untill that changes, don't waste yourprecious time trying. Many believe the new camp and trapping system currently in-development will add experimentation but it is just speculation.
Now, Camo kits on the other hand are a different story. If you don't experiment you are wasting your time and resources! In the last lesson we discussed how the effectiveness rating effects the quality of the item. There is another very important factor, Overall Quality of the resource or OQ for short. The OQ of the resources you use have a direct connection to the success of your experimentation. By using high quality resources in your camo kit experiments can greatly improve the effectiveness and number of chargesin the kit.
OQ of 000-300 = 3 to 4 charges OQ of 301-600 = 5 to 6 charges OQ of 601-899 = 6 to 8 charges OQ of 900+ = 9 to 10 charges.
These numbers assume you have the same OQ in each slot, your results may vary with different quality resources. I have crafted about 50 camo kits so far and these seem to hold true. Take an average of the OQ being used and if all your experiments are successful you should get the same results. This leads me to the last part of this lesson, critical failures WILL happen, there is nothing you can do about it. I craft at a 41+ station with a 14+ tool and I still get critical failures, just less of them.
I hope you have enjoyed this as much as I have enjoyed writing it. Next lesson....Resources....watch for it!
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"Most rangers have 6 to 12 points to spend depending upon their skill boxes filled"
- I believe it is based on your camo skill. You receive one experiment point for each 10 skill you have (meaning Bothans have the advantage here 
)
"I would suggest finding a tool with at least a 10+ rating."
- Well darn, I'm going to need some new crafting tools myself I guess.
"but rangers don't get experimentation points unless they're an engineer as well"
- Yes another issue with scout crafting that will be fixed along with the others, I'm sure.
- Most likely they will associate the experimentation points with the camping and trapping skill as they did with the camo skill for camo kits.
Xytroncore wrote:
but rangers don't get experimentation points unless they're an engineer as well, in that case they'd have 7 I believe....but if you're not an artisan you'll have a whole 1 experimentation point.
With the introduction of the camo kit rangers do get experimentation points. Those experiment points are only available when crafting camo kits. A ranger with Wayfaring 4 recieves 8 points. As N'Raas posted it is believed to be related to your camo skill. When crafting camps and traps only one experiment point is granted, this is not based of of artisan either, because I still have engineering 3, not for long though
. I get only one point and even if I spend that and get an amazing success, nothing is changed but the complexity.
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Just a few observations of my own. I was using a -11.xx crafting tool and rarely received any critical errors. I switched to a +14.xx tool and immediately started receiving tons of critical errors.
Also, while crafting with the supposed "inferior" tool, I was always getting a minimum of 10% base stats. When I switched to the "superior" tool, my base stats went anywhere from 0-8%!! Both of these were tested in front of a +38.xx Crafting Station using the same resources with each.
I don't know what is going on, but it sure isn't in line with what I thought would happen!
Some other notes:
- As a Master Ranger with no artisan skills I get 10 experimental points. The max I have been able to use is 9.
- The base stats will determine the maximumnumber ofcharges you get regardless of how well your experimentation goes. For example: I would start with a 10% base which gave 5 charges. During experimenting, sometimes I would startusing all the slots (I think 5 or 6 points at atime) or sometimes I would use 1 point at a time. It didn't matter how many failures or successes, the final percentage would always max out at 48% (I think that was it) and I got no more than the original 5 charges.
When I started with 12% stats, I could get the maximum % to 50 something and gained an extra charge.
Obviously the OQ of the resources determine your starting stats, I'm just giving you an example of how it worked - or didn't work, when I was testing this out.