Weaponsmith Archive

Efficiency is very important for PvPers, as if their enemy sees a significant drain in a certain part of the HAM pool, they will exploit that weakness, your customer will die and you may lose their custom. The astute marksman will look at all aspects when purchasing a weapon INCLUDING the efficiency. Granted, the damage is the most important aspect in experimentation and high damage DOES sell weapons. But efficiency should not be completely overlooked. If you load all your points on damage, the weapon will fire faster but will also drain HAM faster.

As you say, many characters are virtually immune to this through buffs and food, but with the developers creating increasingly more difficult quests and theme parks efficiency will become even more important. But buffs and food will run out and your customer will still be holding the weapon you made. That's when it counts most.

This is just my opinion, and I would never tell another Wepsmith how to do his/her job. But I almost always save a couple of points for experimentation.

How do you know when you have reached the maximum damage and not keep experimenting and the damage doesnt rise?

You will get to know through experience with certain schematics. Watch the increases as you experiment; if you use, say, two points and the value doesnt change, remember the limit you reached, or jot it down. Next time you make the same weapon you'll know to not waste experimentation points as you near the limit and those points that would have been wasted can be better used.

Okay thanks for the answer, another question would be is it better to use one point at a time and run an experiment or just put in say 8 out of 10 into damage then run the experiment.

I run one experiance point at a time. It takes a bit longer, but if you dump all your points at once and get a bad result.. you've just lost the worth of the weapon.

Beside you never know when you'll get an amazing success

Working on efficency is just a real waste atleast in final assembly. You can trash the damage and knock off ten ham. Though nobody will buy that gun. You can use two points on efficency, but it really dosent help. In the end it will not buy the player another shot special unless they are buffed, and then they really do not care about ham. I personally dump the points where they will actually get used by the player, and they will notice them. In the durability get them another days use out of a weapon. Atleast you are sure they will get the benefits.

Experiment one at a time you will always get better result. A full blown run even with a great will net you a couple less points.

I usually experiment in 2 or 3 points. I heard in a Wepsmith guide it was best to use as many points per experiment as possible but I found this to be untrue in practice. Using, for example 4 points, then 3 yielded better results than using 7 in one go. If you have many experiment points to use, I would advise against experimenting point by point.Remember each time you experiment you risk a critical failure. As a Master Wepsmith I have access to 10 points so I usually do 3 damage, 3 damage, then do the last four as two twos. If you are a lower level smith with access to fewer points, then spending point-by-point is fine.

I'd also recommend spending any leftover points in durability; putting them in efficiency is a waste, as your customer will never even notice. Durability will give your condition a slight but noticeable improvement, so that you're selling, say, a 1003 condition weapon instead of a 929.

I guess what I'm getting at is that there needs to be a tangable benefit for efficiency experimentation. One point per experimentation hardly appears to be worth it.

The primary problem as I see it are buffs. Yes some people will hunt without them but we all know that our big money is in making PVP gear and I've seldom run into these folks without buffs. I'm not suggesting boosting HAM costs or eliminating buffs but somethings got to give here. Making an efficient weapon should be just as important as making a powerful weapon but it's not.

Are they woking on combat rebalance on test? How will this work with the new "fatigue" system?

If I was able to get the HAM doen say 10-15 points on a T21 or DXR-6B with 4 experiment points then I would experiment in it more, but the fact that with 4 points the most I can take down is Hardly worth it, when I can increast the condition of the weapon 350-400 points with the same number of experiment points. If you PvP then to compete you should be buffed, an Unbuffed PvPer is onl asking for trouble, same with Fighting on something like the COrvette, going there unbuffed is again asking for trouble.


For Ranged Weapons I normally Experiment Damage to full then Condition. On Melee weapons I experiment in Damage then Range if the weapon is over 900 condition.


Now I have made special orders of Vibro Kunucklers where the people dont care about damage at all, they wanted 100% efficiency experimentation. I was able to knock down the HAM of a VK 10 points using 8 of my experiment points in the final assembly, and the final 4 I was able to put in damage.