Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: For you old guys, are you still having fun?
Or has smithing just become a chore to you? I started smithing the first week of release. Made Master Weaponsmith within the first month and started up my shop. I do get to talk to a lot of people but other than my close friends in the PA, most spend 1 minute tops talking to you. I figured up the other day how much time i was having to put in between surveying, moving harvs, and baby sitting factories and it was coming out to around 30 hours a week.
Sunday night I spent 5 hours searching out irolunn gas, first time its ever been on starsider. I searched all around my home on naboo, 7 veins, none over 50 percent except for one under keren where i couldn't build. So I went to Endor, and after 3 more hours and two deaths I found a good spot. We all know how important getting stuff like irolunn is, so you can't settle for that 50 percent spot if you expect to stay in business and compete on your server.
So here lately its been, get up every morning and try to get in game after the server resets so i can get my vendor back on the map. Then get home in the evenings and log in, delete all the junk emails from auction unsuccessful, the redundent factory messages, and then spend 30 minutes redoing stuff on the vendors. I run 4 vendors now. Two of which are other pa members but they don't have merchant. So you deal with relisting everything, then you go check to see if anything new has spawned, either messaging around to all your contacts if they are on, or manually travelling yourself. With stuff shifting in at least every other day, if you don't spend the 2 hours and 40k travelling you get shafted.
So after doing all this i can finally start working on orders for stuff that people want, like when people want 10 of some item that we don't normally sell a lot of, ie most melee weapons. Or they want a special kryat weapon etc.
My friends all bug me about, lets go do this, lets go do that, but to stay on top of the market you just don't have time.
Anyway, its been a long three days over on Starsider totally retooling all my ranged inventory since irolunn gas came out, and now we find out that they want to increase item decay even more? Which means that i will have to increase production more to keep up. And most likely prices will have to come down some when this happens because weapons won't have the value they once did.
So if we have to produce more weapons to meet the demand, yet charge less, if the proposed plan goes in or anything similar to it, people will use up a gun or two a day, or people will stop hunting like they do and doing pvp like they do now.
Seems the crafting professions were some of the most well thought out of any of the professions in the game, yet the time consumption involved and after being a master for this long there just isn't much to see or do that makes it more interesting. I have already seen several masters quit on Starsider from burnout, just wondering if this is happening everywhere.
Congratulations Nador, i think you found yourself a second job. One that pays really bad. 
I sympathize. I'm not anywhere near master, and setting up and running a vendor is just not something that seems appealing to me. The idea of making weapons is pretty fun. Selling them is not. Part of the problem is I think i decided that I don't like people, or dealing with people. Or letting them inside my house
Nador wrote:
Seems the crafting professions were some of the most well thought out of any of the professions in the game, yet the time consumption involved and after being a master for this long there just isn't much to see or do that makes it more interesting. I have already seen several masters quit on Starsider from burnout, just wondering if this is happening everywhere.
I think some improvements (mainly interface) to harvesters, factories, and vendors would help out, at least a little. I don't know exactly what those changes would be, but I think some are in order.
well other than the original grind, it was fun for 3 months, but here lately its just gotten to be more and more time consuming. The changes they are considering just look like they will make it more time consuming. I have thought seriously of scaling back to only do PA orders but the simple fact is that i still have to scour the galaxy for the resources. I still have to deal with the harvesters and the factories so if you have to do all that anyway just to sell to the pa then you may as well keep selling to the public. It is almost like a trap, had 2 others start into weaponsmithing that i helped fund and get going and then when they started realizing the time I was putting in, they dropped out, unwilling to do the same.
Like I said, this profession is great, but the amount of time spent keeping up has pretty much made this into a second job as you say.
Nador, hire some miners, for crying out loud!
There are people on every server that specialize in mining, seek them out and pay them 3c/unit or 4c/unit for the stuff you need. If you are as well known as you say you are, it shouldn't be a problem. Tell them exactly which resource and what quantity you want and let them on their merry way. As for resource sampling, www.swgcraft.com does wonders for your time. Use your lots for factories and soon you won't have to move from your crafting station
ok, i use miners, but as good as some of them are, you can't depend on them to know when stuff shifts, you'll be two days late to the party most of the time and most miners don't like moving their harvesters. So if they got a crappy spot of it, you get what they can harvest from a crappy spot, so you have to end up ordering more from other people or still going out and moving your harvesters to get it yourself.
Never inferred how well known I am, so no idea where you got that line from.
3rd, if your depending on swgcraft for your resource information, your missing half the good spawns.
No clue how long you have been in the weaponsmithing business on your server, maybe give us a little background. But don't be nieve thinking that I don't do the things you mention. My operation runs 7 factoires total already and I use every source you mention.
I know how you feel. I have a few good miners, that help a lot, but I sitll have to tell them what, when, and what planets. I was master about 2-3 weeks into the game, went thru tell hell, joined a pa (which by the way all of you, does NOT mean I get infinite resources, I still do all that myself), set up a shop, and have gone thru cycles of selling a lot/little.
Right now, because of grad school, I don't play as much. Every few days I go scour for resources, and put up a few harvestors. I don't use my miners too much anymore because I'm not selling the volume to afford it. I'm doing more custom work, or repeat work for old clients. My goal, to stay in the top 4-5 smiths on our server, and be hidden. Newb's don't hear my name, people that have played for 2 months don't hear my name. Makes life a bit nicer for me.
The bad thing for me is when I don't play for 4-5 days, I have soo much catching up to do, that I don't really look forward to getting back into the game. Thats when I go over to my wookie commando and start blowing things up. Then I'm good to go back to some crafting. I love the crafting profession because of my desire to make great stuff, keep an eye out for recourses, but right now, I don't really care that much to sell what I make to others.
Theros Ironfist BK
Master Weaponsmith, Master Typist
Nador,
I know how you feel, and I have never even tryed to mass produce weapon's, I just make them for my other character and a fewfriends when they need them. Just the otherday a friend wanted a few VK's made and it simply seemed like a chore to open the crafting tool. I have been thinking about pulling up my harvesters and dropping 250k of credits in my house and just taking a break until creature mounts and vehicles come out.
While I'm on a semi rant here and I hope SoE reads this, it would be nice if you lowered the refresh timer on burst run by half since you released this game before creature mounts and vehicles were implemented. Here we are making elaborate structures, hightech weapons and armor yet were still running around the country side like jack-asses....kinda stupid if you think about it. Lowering the burst-run timer would be the least you could do so this game seems a little less like a goddamn part-time job....../end rant
I have to say that as a Weaponsmith the mineing is a breaze i mine maybe the 3 items a week that are better than the stuff i have beuilt up and let the rest pass. I started as a Architect mastered that and had fun for a while but let me tell you to be competitive as a Architect you need to run a minimum of 30 mines on several differant things ALL the time. Id blow through 200k of various material easily in a day. Now as a MWS 100k of a resource will most likely never run out before something better comes along. Even Ilronium gas of which i only had 30k by luck left over from architect has lasted me a month now and i still have enough to save some for Krayt guns and make one more run of 500 handlers. I just use regular ones for T21s and other big stuff. All in all im enjoying not haveing to constantly beg friends to place and pickup harvester and just mining a few items per shift.
Nador wrote:
ok, i use miners, but as good as some of them are, you can't depend on them to know when stuff shifts, you'll be two days late to the party most of the time and most miners don't like moving their harvesters. So if they got a crappy spot of it, you get what they can harvest from a crappy spot, so you have to end up ordering more from other people or still going out and moving your harvesters to get it yourself.
Never inferred how well known I am, so no idea where you got that line from.
3rd, if your depending on swgcraft for your resource information, your missing half the good spawns.
I agree. Don't ever hire a miner for anything you can't afford to lose. I'll hire miners for stuff like high OQ gems and chemicals that I'm too lazy to harvest myself, or back-up on rare metals so I have some extra padding, but never anything really, really nice. Anything like high quality Doonium, Irolunn, etc, I get myself.
And yeah, seconded on SWGCraft. I check SWGCraft fairly often, but I still check every single planet myself. I notice 90% of the stuff on other remote planets isn't even reported on SWGCraft. And most of the stuff on the starter planets is reported like, 3-4 days after it spawns. It's really unreliable and I wouldn't recommend any dedicated smith to use SWGCraft alone for resource tracking.
To your original post, I started on release day, was one of the first Weaponsmiths on the server and am still at it today. I don't remember a time that I ever needed to relist an item because it didn't sell, and frankly, if that time came, I would probably retire. But fortunately for me, I guess I'm still in my prime. I still enjoy it and can't see myself doing anything else in the game.
I've found that MWS has become somewhat of a drag. My commando / uber combat class friends are off doing cool things while i'm stuck planet hopping for ores.. YIPPEEE!!
I LOVE crafting weapons but the whole mineral idea is like being chained down. Harvester relocation and maintenance, factory maintenance, vendor maintenance, surveying every day, dealing with bad customers, resource shifts, collecting power, always looking for a list of 40 different named ores, blah blah blah. It's truly a time cosuming job, not what i would call a "fun game" experience. I've tried several miners but it's always the same thing. Average materials at high prices. Better off doing it yourself.
Just doesn't do it for me anymore i guess. I'm thinking of dropping MWS but I just can't get myself to do it. I'll more then likely leave SWG before i drop it.
But yeah, it's not as much fun as it used to be. Now that there are uber weapon drops, why go through the trouble of busting your balls for resources.
my 2 cents
Nador, I wasn't trying to lecture you man. From your post it just seemed like you do all your mining yourself.
I guess I am not as hardcore as you guys. So what if I miss a resource or two on the remote planets? Most likely, the same resource spawns on 4-5 planets including the starting planets every shift. SWGcraft for my server is pretty well updated, maybe there is a 1 day lag, that I can live with.
I can see what you are saying, though. Whenever the game starts feeling like a job, I will take a break.
I was in a situation very similar to yoursuntil I retired 2 weeks ago. Ibecame a master weaponsmith 3 to 4 weeks after release and had always mined my own resources. In order to stay just moderately behind demand instead of hopelessly behind, I needed to play 3 to 5 hours a day, 7 days a week.
I had no desire to quit mining because it got me awayfrom the shop and out exploring. Besides after spending an hour or twoexchanging tells and emails with customers who wants to spend another hour exchanging tells and emails with miners and resource brokers.
Being a weaponsmith was great fun but as mycustomer base grew it took more and moretime to support well. The addition of weapon enhancements just made things worse because of all the requests for custom weapons. I wanted to do a good job and doing a good job to memeant trying to keep my customers satisfied.
If you have a shop you really can't control the size of your customer base because anyone can access your vendors. You can raise your prices which will drive some customers away but I refused to raise my prices to the point where I felt I wasn't providing a good value. You can limit your production of weapons but then your vendors are poorly stocked - you gets lots of tells informing you of that fact,and you feel like your doing a bad job.
I eventually came to the conclusion that if I couldn't afford the time to play a weaponsmith the way I wanted then I wouldn't play at all. I am sure there are less severe ways to deal with the demands besides retiring but it's simple. If I ever decide to start craftingagainI'll have a much smaller customer base to support - at least for a while.
Good Luck,
Isis