Scout Archive

Recently, a Scout posted in the Armorsmith forum asking what we, as Armorsmiths, were looking for when purchasing hides for use in armor making. I will be posting this in the Ranger forum as well in hopes of clearing a few things up for the non-crafting Scouts and Rangers that supply us with a neccessary resource.

I am going to use Hides as an example, but Bones follow the same rules. Hides have the following descriptives:

Decay Rate (DR), Malleability (MAL), Overall Quality (OQ), Shock Resistance (SR), Unit Toughness (UT)

As normal, all values are between 1 and 1000 (Though I have yet to see a 1000 anywhere) with 1 being the worst possible. This is the basic stuff that anyone whose gutted a Chuba would know. Now for the fun stuff...

When crafting armor, different aspects of the Resource Values (hereafter, RV) affect different portions of the armor both during the creation process and at the final construction. The example armor I will be using is Chitin, which is one of the more Organic Resource intensive armors, requiring 3 different hides as well as quantities of bone (530 bone, 215 Leathery, 215 Scaley and 95 Wooly per complete suit).

The following is a list of the Armor Creation Variables, a description,and the responding RV's needed:

Health, Action, and Mind Encumberance: Malleability 50% Overall Quality 50%.......This determines the starting values for the HAM cost of wearing a given piece of armor. 50% of the MAL and OQ are used to determine the final value.

Integrity: Overall Quality 50% Unit Toughness 50%........This is the starting value for the useful life of the piece of armor, repair aside. The rate at which this number reduces is governed by...

Decay Rate: Decay Rate 50% Overall Quality 50%........I have not seen a stat for this either during the creation of or on a finished piece, so using deductive reasoning and a hyper-acute brain (heh) I will say it governs the rate at which a piece of armor decays (i.e. loses integrity) in combat, since I've yet to see any time-based decay on armor.

Experimental Quality: Overall Quality 50% Shock Resistance 50%........This is a big one for us. These numbers govern the failure (or success) percentage of our experimentation on a given armor piece. These numbers allow us to improve upon the base of all aspects of the armor piece (i.e. encumberances, integrity, and resistances). The better the numbers in this slot, the better the chance of a successful (and great) experimentation attempt.

Miscellaneous/Special Resistances: Overall Quality 50% Shock Resistance 50%........These numbers set the base of the various attack resistances and are as important as the above Experimental Quality. Good starting numbers here improved by experimentation make an excellent set of armor.

The one constant in the above is the Overall Quality RV, which is responsible for 50% of all of the Values involved in Chitin armor creation. This may not always be the case. In some armors OQ may only cover a small percentage of the RV's needed. When dealing directly with an Armorsmith, they SHOULD let you know what values are important to them and in what order.

Now, we all know that finding a resource with high values in all of the stats is rare. Thankfully, it appears that the CON of a creature is not indicitive of its resource values but that those values are as random as inorganic resource values are. The goal of any Artisan is to find resources where no value is so low as to ruin the rest of them, as in the case of a Hide with Values above 700 in everything but Overall Quality which is a measly 27. For Chitin armor, this hide would be useless.

Integrity (OQ and UT) and Decay Rate (OQ and DR) are obvious of lower importance in this case than the other Armor Stats in the eyes of an Armorsmith (low here means a repeat customer sooner rather than later) and so special allowances would be made for resources with high values elsewhere and low in these. This is where the individual taste (Merciful or Mercenary) of the 'smith comes into play.

Also, planetary origin of a hide does not automatically make it worth a lot of credits. Very often I see Dathomirian hides with abysmal values being sold on the bazaar for 3000 cr per 250 units just because they came from a Hell-Planet. Having hunted there myself, I know how bad it is but I will not pay those credits unless the resource in question is above 700 in all RV's.

In short, the price charged for a given hide should take into account the difficulty to acquire as well as its statistics. For example, Nabooian Wooly Hides come from Peko Peko and Guarlamas (sp), both relatively difficult to solo (for different reasons) and if those hides have good values it is to be expected that the price will be above average.

But also remember that more goes into armor than just the organics. Armor prices are, in my eyes, inflated just as much as any other elite crafted item. I have taken a lot of grief for selling Chitin armor forunder 14k cr a full suit (using the best resources at my disposal in its creation) because I take everthing in to account, from my factory and harvester costs, the time involved in the gathering of the resources and even the cost of training to my current level of skill in determining the final price of a piece of armor. I am trying to fight the artificial inflation on my server (and losing, but at least I'm trying) caused by thearrogant self-worth of some people and the caught-too-late exploits that have the player-economy swirling, but I am a rarity.

Above all, it comes down to what the market will bear. If you can get 15 cr per hide, good on ya mate! Take it if you can. And even those "garbage hides" are worth some money, as we can use them as "grinding resources" if nothing else and those are always needed in quantity.

I have refrained from naming any prices per hide outside of the above example of what I wouldn't pay, personally. This is between the Scout/Ranger and the customer. My only suggestion is finding a dedicated buyer for your goods to facilitate their sale. This allows the 'smith to rest assured of a constant supply of resources and the Scout/Ranger to know he has a ready buyer of his goods. Thank you for your time.

Vaylis Arturin, Starsider, Moenia, Naboo Master Artisan, Master Merchant, Non-grinding Armorsmith (Man, this is gonna take forever) and in another life.......

Vaylis Arturin, Bria, Kadaara, Naboo BETA 3 Master Marksman, Master Scout, and the jokers went live before I made Master Ranger (No, I didn't go BH like every other Master Marksman/Scout....isn't that something?)

Always looking for suppliers, drop me an email and we'll discuss it over a Jawa Beer Light....

Gray,

Thanks for posting this. Now that we've got a better idea of exactly what you guys are looking for, we can be of more assistance to you.

B

Gray:

Great post, you put a lot of work into it. Thanks very much.

Scouts are still recovering from the reduction in harvests of hide, bone and meat that has only recently been corrected. Many have gotten out of the habit of harvesting for sale. Instead, they got into the habit of making money from missions.

In addition, there still appears to be a reduction in harvests for grouped scouts. This hurts the availability of organic resources as well. I, personally, don't see why it should. You should be killing animals fast enough grouped with a pet or other players to more than offset the 40% reduction.

At this point, I think it's the perception among scouts that commercial harvesting still isn't viable that is causing the shortage of these resources on the market. I think that will change over time.

As an artisan, you are probably familiar with the resource database at SWGCraft.com. I recently started contributing there. One thing I noticed is that the lastresource categoriesthat get updated for a planet/server are Hide, Bone and Meat. I'm trying to give them as high priority as any other resource, and almost always include them in my updates to the database for the Kauri server. It can be rather, umm, difficult, however, to find out the specs on Lokian scaley hides Not to mention expensive. And they stand no better chance at having desirable specs that scaley hides off a wortt outside the gate of any city on Tatooine.

Having said that, there is usually some information in the database about which organic resources are available on a specific planet in a given galaxy. Craftsmen of all types would be well advised to keep an eagle eye on the database. That way, they will know what kinds of resources are available, what planet they are found on, and the RV's of each resource. This will allow them to specify types in the orders they place with friendly Scout suppliers.

Just hoping to help out, here

As a Ranger who primarily collects harvests for his income, I appreciate all the hard work and thought you put into your post. Thank you and see you at the bazaar!