Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: Weaponsmithing is a chore
KatLover wrote:
Watch your servers guys...the average life-span ofyour averageMaster Weaponsmith is about a month...I would say this is probably typical of every crafting profession though.
Yup! and I've been saying over and over again (every time there is a thread started about how there are too many weaponsmiths and prices are going to tumble, the world will end, etc) that most WS'sleave. Of the 3 WS's who came to me for free training in during the grind to master, all 3 made master and none were smithing 1 month later. It's too much work for most people and so much work that even some long established weaponsmiths eventually feel the need to give it up - at about the same rate that new ones decide to stick with it.
Hi All you fellow smiths,
I have been a master smith for about 2 months now...whee made past a month. I really enjoy making the "best weapons" but yes...checking harvs is a chore. Fortunately I took up pistol off the get go. Then I decided to go smuggler...got halfway thru brawling and shifted again to rifleman. Anyway, I make far more running missions (make about 1 mil every week and a half) than I have selling any weapons. I treat the smithing as a side job. I let my harvesters run for about 4-5 days at a time. Missions provide more than enough income to keep my 2 factories, medium house, and 5 harvs going just fine. This not only stock piles needed resources, but allows for meeting numerous people and having fun. I have just got my 2nd ATST and found a holocron. In addition, I came across people that will give you a couple free tissues if you make them some weapons (what a deal). Yes the grinding stunk. But..I wouldnt give up Master Weaponsmith for all the holocrons out there. It took too long to get...and all that have made it..you earned it. I am on Bloodfin and have to compete with 2 of the very best smiths out there (names not needed). I have still managed to build a lot of customers that still come to me first. (I thank all of you guys that give me business.) Now I'm babbling.
If all this falls on deaf ears I do have one suggestion for all you new smiths: Do Not Spam! this will get you ignored not business. Trust me. Also, you may not like Tell Hell, but you need to answer every one. Every customer I've talked to despises /telling a smith and getting a message saying send an email or go to my shop. These are sure fire ways to kill any business you might get. I pride myself on answering every tell with at least a " sorry can't make that right now cuz a resource has'nt shifted in yet". People understand that. This not only shows you pay attention to them, but allows for them to explain there custom needs. I do enjoy smithing and look forward to crafting the best weapons for years to come.
Thanks all
Bobb Deameat, Bloodfin -3232 3298
I guess burn out is realitive to how much you want to be a weaponsmith to begin with. I don't know how long I'll stay one, but it'll be a good long while. I figure the stuff I need will show up eventually. If you're really desparate for the good stuff, you can always try stalking another smith, like I'm doing to ciiiry to get some irolunn 
and no, i won't try arch. i won't try any other crafting professions ever again lol.
try to hire out your mines, pick up a riffle, and jump in on a kryatt hunt. Remember, who ever gets the loot will need someone to put it to use for them.
and I'd hope that if I ever need to vent about the grind, or surveying, or anything ws related I could come here and do it like this, as flame free as this thread has been. 
Yeah, if you're business savvy, there's no need to mine for yourself, just work out contracts with other people. You haveenoughprofit margin to work with and the time saved is enormous (thus, in the end, you're probably making more credits per hour). It also frees up extra lots for more factories (heh, I was runningninefor a while. Lets you make a couple thousand power-handlersat a time while having leftover factories for barrels and finished weapons).
I've been really burnt out lately. There were 7 different resources that I HAD to have a couple weeks ago. All at the same time, It took me 12 hours to get 18 harvs down alltogether. And it does require a lot of RL time. /shrug
I guess I've got a rather unique view compared to the other masters on here, but here's my story; I did the grind to MW for the sole purpose of supporting my swordsman primary. Two months of grinding through to master architect and then master weaponsmith, and I found that while I didn't like building firearms (too complicated, and I don't use them myself), there were enough of the simple little rewards from WS that it's provided a nice counterpoint to the swordsman.
When I get burnt on MW, I play SM. When I get burnt of SM, I play MW (or MA, since making buildings is kinda fun as well). And every once in a while something happens to make everything worth it, like this past week, when a seemingly ENDLESS supply of Dolovite Iron spawned on Corbantis - and of a higher Unit Toughness than anything I've seen in four months. I have over 100k of it now, and although I wanted to use all of it myself, for my own swords (NO factory runs, doing everything by hand and naming each sword separately, throwing away or selling everything with less than a "great" result and a 35% damage or speed slice), I still have more than I will likely ever be able to use. It was a very heartening and positive experience after the latest nerf to the swordsman class had me so ticked I wanted to either punch out a dev or cancel my account.
Oh, and for the record... No offense intended, but I can't let two such blatantly obvious mistakes to go uncorrected. Architect has got to be the absolute EASIEST profession to master. Sure, I'll grant thatit requires nearly twice the XP that Weaponsmith does, but your typical structures use anywhere from 10 to 100 times the materials of ANY other crafted item. Typical WS grind item? Projectile Rifle Barrels - 94XP. Typical Arch grind item? Crafting Station (any type) - 945XP.
Also, WS is definitely NOT the hardest to grind to master in. Heck, it's not even remotely close to being the hardest. Try armorsmith or doctor sometime. Our grinding items use steel (and nothing else), which we can harvest out of the ground.You don't need any help from anyone else,and if you think it's taking you too long to grind, that's because you either don't have the harvesters to make it easy, and that's your fault and no one else's. My buddy the armorsmith needs numerous types of hide (which cannot be mined but must be hunted) to grind to master. Me, I took two months and got both MA and MW. Had I bothered to figure out the macros in SWG and had the materials to do so, I could have mastered BOTH in less than a day. Just doing the math and using practical experience and tested values from my grinding,architect takes approximately 70 minutes to grind to master, not counting training. MW requires something like five hours. Neither armorsmith nor doctor would be anywhere near that.
Your estimates for grinding don't include clicking and waiting for the crafting tool screens to load and do their thing and such (assuming your using an in-game macro; third party macros I don't know much about). There's a guy who ground straight to MWS in 60 hours (not 60-hours straight, of course), which is the fastest I've heard of.
You're right though, the grind for weaponsmiths isn't the worst in the game, though I think it's one of the worst. The easiest grind I've encountered so far is slicing and spice crafting for smugglers. Without a macro I could probably grind to spice crafting IV in less than a day. Assuming a sufficient supply of clamps, laser knives and grindable objects (like locked containers, junk weapons, etc.) a person could probably grind to slicing IV in a day as well (and still have some time left to start onspice crafting, lol).
Slim Vargo, Corbantis
yep, smithing is a chore, starsider looses another old time smith every few days it seems
I know for a fact that 7 of the first batch of masters on the server have quit or rerolled now. Very few people are going to tolerate the tediousness involved, especially if they have 8 or 10 or 20 million in the bank.
I have been a master weaponsmith for a month or two. I pretty much ground through the entire thing without Macros and sold what I made on the Bazaar.
I enjoy making good weapons and take great pride in providing good/great weapons at reasonable prices. I don't advertise unless I am running around the starports collecting resources or shopping.
I am one of those weaponsmiths that doesn't like to tell his stats and prices too much. The reason for this (and maybe I do or do not lose business over it) is because, if I spent the time to build the best, I don't feel that I need towaste timewith the comparison shopping of a player who is probably only going to buy one gun from me and then end up going to the most expensive shop he can find for lesser quality because it is close.
Much of my current customer base is from word of mouth now and that is great. I take alot of pride in my work and I try to always be available to build custom jobs for folks when they have some Krayt or what have you. I keep my customer base (and it keeps growing) because I try to maintain high quality weapons on my vendor and personal service. I am probably speaking taboo, but I really don't do alot of factory runs either because today's super-star 10,000credit scatter pistol is tomorrow's 3000credit Bazaar piece.
To me, it is not really a chore. I have base prices for items based on my skill and the skill level to build the weapon, and then vary my prices up and down from there based on demand. This keeps my workload where I want it to be. Travelling from planet to planet can be tough sometimes, but finding the best stuff somewhere on Dathomir or Endor that no one else really knows about is the payoff for that kind of research and work.
Anyway, have a good day and be safe!
Raker Dawnfire
Master Weaponsmith, Wanderhome
"High Quality Weapons for High Quality Peepul!"
Your estimates for grinding don't include clicking and waiting for the crafting tool screens to load and do their thing and such (assuming your using an in-game macro; third party macros I don't know much about). There's a guy who ground straight to MWS in 60 hours (not 60-hours straight, of course), which is the fastest I've heard of.
Hate to contradict you, but yes,they do. I actually did take a stopwatch and counted off a minute at a time at various times to see how quickly I was crafting, via the macros in SWG. Architect grinding via crafting stations generatedan average of over 20,000 XP per MINUTE. Consider what you do with the following:
testmacro: /nextCraftingStage;/nextCraftingStage;/createPrototype practice no item;/createPrototype practice no item;/pause 1;/ui action toolbarSlot12;/selectDraftSchematic 71;/pause 5;/nextCraftingStage;/nextCraftingStage;/createPrototype practice no item;/createPrototype practice no item;/pause 1;/ui action toolbarSlot13;/selectDraftSchematic 71;/pause 3;/nextCraftingStage;/nextCraftingStage;/createPrototype practice no item;/createPrototype practice no item;/pause 1;/ui action toolbarSlot14;/selectDraftSchematic 71;
This isthe short version, obviously (and slightly edited from when I used it during my WS grind), and if I recall correctly is a sample of the one I used to grind weaponsmith. Altering the schematic numberfor theitem in questionand chaining a large number of these together (the one I used crafted 180items in a row prior to stopping) allows one to simply sit back and watch the entire process take place while simply double-clicking where appropriate.
Assuming you have a broadband connection (cable, in my case) and stay out of a high lag area, 20,000 XP per minute is extremely doable. Note that while 20,000 XP might sound like a lot, that's only a touch over 21 crafting stations a minute, or one every three seconds.
Put everything in place and set this up appropriately, and 20k XP/minute in architect or 2k XP/minute in weaponsmith should be completely doable. Of course, I didn't figure any of this out until I was two ranks from master architect and three ranks into weaponsmith, but it doesn't change the fact that architect is obscenely easy to level and that weaponsmith isn'tsignificantly worse.
Would be interesting to delete all the skills in WS and start over, but I'd be quite willing to bet you any some of money you care to put up that I could grind to MWS from novice in eight hours or less, including training time, assuming I had the materials on hand to do so. From beginning player to MWS? That 60 hours sounds like twice as long as would be theoretically possible, and I'd imagine someone who was sufficiently motivated (and appropriately supplied) could do it in 20 hours or less. Granted, you'd have to be insane to want to do it all in one go like that, and the 60 hour period you mention is likely the fastest that anyone has done it in the past, but I'd still be willing to bet someone could do it in 20.
What I wouldn't give for an edit button... If I could, allow me to re-write this paragraph:
Would be interesting to delete all the skills in WS and start over in order to test this theory, but I'd be quite willing to bet you any sum of money you care to put up that I (or anyone else) could grind to MWS from novice weaponsmith in eight hours or less, including training time, assuming I had the materials on hand to do so. From beginning player to MWS? That 60 hours sounds like twice as long as would be theoretically possible, and I'd imagine someone who was sufficiently motivated (and appropriately supplied) could do it in 20 hours or less. Granted, you'd have to be insane to want to do it all in one go like that, and the 60 hour period you mention is likely the fastest that anyone has done it in the past, but I'd still be willing to bet someone could do it in 20.