Tailor Archive
Thread: New Novice Tailor Why Ribbed Shirts?
Ok.. stupid new novice tailor question.. Just made it this morning before the server went to sleep.
I see a lot of posts on making tons of ribbed shirts. I understand that this is to gain the XP from grinding them out...
I'm just curious as to why THAT particular item? Why not grind out synthetic cloth or something? At least you'd be able to sell/use the output instead of just destroying it or giving it away.
Ribbed shirts requireonly two ingredients, fiberplast and metal, 30 units of each. Since experience depends on the total number of units and doesn't account at all for the diversity or specificity of the ingredients, the ribbed shirt is the clear choice at low levels for quick and dirty experience.
In my view, a schematic that requires a large number of different specific ingredients should provide more epxerience per unit than one that requires only two general ingredients. Hopefully there will be another balance pass on this in the future.
YukonSam wrote:
Ribbed shirts requireonly two ingredients, fiberplast and metal, 30 units of each. Since experience depends on the total number of units and doesn't account at all for the diversity or specificity of the ingredients, the ribbed shirt is the clear choice at low levels for quick and dirty experience.
In my view, a schematic that requires a large number of different specific ingredients should provide more epxerience per unit than one that requires only two general ingredients. Hopefully there will be another balance pass on this in the future.
Exactly as Sam says. Since XP is 2x(unit of resource), the shirts net you 120xp per shirt. Plus, there's only two ingredients, so it's less clicking. Get three crafting tools going and you can get about 8 of these puppies out a minutes. So that's about 960xp a minute. (Never really works out that way though, unless you're really good at concentrating.) Anyway, since you don't have to make any other items and whatnot, it's much steadier.
Once you hit casual 3, you can do the same with cloaks, which are 60fibre and 50hide (220xp) which are infinitely more saleable, but you also can't harvest hide like metal.
Anyway, it sucks the fun out of it if you grind this way. You'll have more fun seling stuff, but when business is slow, I hate to see all that fibreplast sitting in my pack...
Definately 140xp each, made enough of them to know. And when your talking about making 502 items to reach the 4th level of a branch, there simply isnt enough room in your inventory, bank, and bazaar to save that many syn cloths.
Cloaks are fine if you have 10K hides to burn through, I don't want to use up all my hides leveling then not be able to craft any of the new schematics I get because I'm out of hides.
Let me second what Saeelwenea said, and add a bit more to it.
The real alternative to grinding, which is only barely slower (if at all), is to make stuff that people will actually buy. Even if you end up making more of it than people want right now, eventually, you can store it.
Here's more or less what I did, with some mistakes and sidesteps taken out:
- Start making items that give tailoring XP and that will sell. I did a bit of experimenting, and my three big sellers were (and to some extent still are, even though I'm a little farther up the tree) military travel packs, sleeveless dresses, and smocks. To get the smocks to sell, I have to rename them to "Trenchcoat (Smock)". As a novice tailor, I was selling about half a dozen military packs a day at 500 credits and about half a dozen smocks and sleeveless dresses a day. Don't make the clothes all alike; people want to look different from each other, and it takes very little time to pick two colors.
- Obviously, if you want to advance quickly, you'll want to make more than 18 items per day. But even in the bigger towns, you're going to be hard pressed to sell more than that at first. So make the extra ones - and store them. Stuff up to about 100 of them into your bank. Equip a backpack, and carry about another 50 or 60 of them. When your backlog exceeds that . . .
- Find an architect and buy a small house. For tailors, I recommend the "Small Generic Planet House floorplan 2", because that back room makes an excellent showroom, which you'll want soon enough. I mined my own resources, so mine cost me about 7000 credits and 2 days of resource management. I know of architects that sell them for for cash for around 8k to 10k, not unmanageable - call it a couple of hours' worth of close-to-town level 5 destroy missions.
- Set up that house as close to a city as you can, preferably in a direction that you know that has as many of the following advantages as you can: miners are passing on their way to the mines, combat characters on their way to major spawn points, aggressive spawns are rare, there's enough flat land for other vendors to set up their shops nearby, and/or a major PA hall is already nearby. Now start taking all of your left-overs that aren't going to sell right away, stuff them into backpacks at 50 per, and stick the backpacks in the house. You now have enough storage space for thousands and thousands items in back inventory.
- Once you get to Business 3 in the Artisan tree, rename that house to "yourname, tailor" or something like that, something that makes it obvious from people who mouse over the sign that you're a tailor and there might be a shop inside. Set the access to Public. Create a Vendor terminal, and put it in the entry hallway. In the largest room, drop samples of your best looking clothes and move them around into pleasing displays. (Curse the developers for screwing up internal lighting.) Initialize the vendor terminal, and stuff a good mix of items into it, at least 50 or so, but probably less than 100. Have another source of income at first, like mining, harvesting hides, or running missions, because at first that vendor terminal will eat you out of house and home, but you need it.
- Email yourself a flier with the waypoint (created when you built the house) as an attachment, and whatever advertising text you want to put in it- but keep it short. At theend, include a plea to feel free to forward this email to their friends.Then when you strike up conversations, ask at the end if you can give them your card - and use Forward to email it to them. Add your shop coordinates to the Seller's Descriptions of the stuff you sell on the Bazaar, too.
- As soon as you started selling stuff on the bazaar, you started getting usage XP. Best guess so far is that UXP = 100% of the XP that came from making the item, recouped over the first few hours the item is worn. So as soon as people started wearing your backpacks, you doubled the XP you got from making them - because almost nobody ever takes off their backpack. (And grinders note, backpacks also require no components.) Same for everything else.
- Keep improving your shop displays, honing your taste in colors, flattering potential customers, subtly marketing your shop, making friends with nearby shopkeepers, and in general selling clothes. As stuff sells, and as you can afford the maintenance on the vendor, dump backlog from the backpacks into the vendor terminal. Impress people with your selection of colors and styles, and ready availability of items.
- Put heavy repeat customers on your friends list, or at least keep a paper list handy. When you get new skill boxes, send them short, tasteful spam telling them that you're sure they'd want to know that (items x and y) are now available - especially if you think that they were waiting for a local source for x and y.
My shop* isn't doing much better than breaking even, because vendor maintenance fees are so high - although once I make Merchant skill Efficiency IV that'll come down. But stuff is flying out of it almost as fast as I can make it, which means that I'm getting roughly double the XP I could get from grinding - without throwing resources down the waste disposal unit. After all, grinders don't even break even. Nor do they accumulate Merchant XP, which I guarantee most of them will eventually wish they had. I'm also having a lot more fun than they are, because I have customers and friends.
* Kettemoor server, planet Rori, near Restuss, /waypoint 5915 5195
Good suggestions Brad! You relabel the smocks! That's how you sell them. I can't get a taker. I can't sell wookie smocks either and in black those things make wookies look totally scary mean.
I'd add a few more ideas.
Travel! Look on the bazaar in planetary and galactic mode and see what towns on your planet don't have stuff that you think will sell. Whenever I look, there's someplace that has ZERO backpacks on it's local bazaar terminals. Go there and fill it up! I usually do no more than 3 of each I can make. Don't gouge, but don't discount either. Once I went to Corellia to pick up I think it was my factory, I stopped on the way back to peek at the bazaar -- not a single backpack on the entire planet's bazaars! I maxxed out my bazaar sales before leaving and they all had sold by the end of the night. I popped in at another house near my architects and saw formal 3 level stuff in advanced colors, so I know there's someone with good tailoring skills, but nada on their merchant and the local bazaars were bare of items -- not a surprise that I have people from Corellia flying to Naboo to visit my shop.
Being a board troll doesn't hurt, put your shop location in your sig, but don't spam the boards with advertisements. There are merchants I won't patronize because of their 50 forum posts, 49 of them are nothing but adverts.
Hang out in cantinas. Even if you can't make the latest greatest skimpiests, you'll do a lot of sales there.
Label everything. I add "by Karai" onto everything I make. It is an instant calling card. Plus even if they don't buy it, people see your name on the bazaar listings.
I don't grind now, other than hanging out afk with the factory running on things I need and sell, because after actually selling, I have so much business that I have no time to do anything but fill sales orders.
Yeah, yeah, 140xp. I apologise wholeheartedly for such a heinous comment that two people had to jump on it. /sarcasm
Jeesh. Other than that, my point is valid.
Anyway, as I said originally: You really shouldn't grind. It only sucks the fun out of it. Make stuff that people want and do a little grinding when business is slow.
In my Player to Player sales, I say "It's trenchcoat like". Smock is just suck an unappealing name. "Almost as cool as the Vash jacket" has served me well at moving them. Packs... Yup... I aggree. Make and sell packs. Lots of packs. Have a factory? Save some inventory, make a crate of packs and keep one out of the crate at all times to adjust for the crate 'defficit' (Not really a bug, just a poorly written DB access routine.) 25 pack in 5 inventory. Put the pack crate in a pack. Carry more. (Sorry to linger but those suckas SELL!) The grinding I did to get the tier 1 skills stunk. I didn't get to chat, I had to run 7 harvesters to keep up with the need that grinding caused, and I didn't get any creds. Ya, the UXP road is a slow one. But it's WAY more fun. Plus, if you're a casual gamer like me, you can earn XP while you're not playing. UXP while at work, UXP while sleeping, UXP while drinking guenis with only socks on... (oh that was a bad commercial... ) In any case, the UXP road is less trying. Oh and avoid industrial Synth Cloth and RFP production if you only want to spend a little time playing... Industrial production isn't all that fun. (Got into it and now can't get out... 
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