Weaponsmith Archive

Please for the love of the force contribute or bump this until we can get DarkCipher to sticky this for us.
Also, post corrections so that we can work to fix them in later drafts.

Note: This is version .2 of the FAQ. I have shamelessly plagarized from other FAQs that have existed here so
that I don't have to repeat too much work.

Weaponsmith FAQ v0.2

Original by ReverendReasons and the Weaponsmith Profession community.

Last edited: 10/13/03 (GameBOFH aka Ysal)

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About the FAQ:
This document is very early in it's development. I'll try to keep it up on the boards, and maybe a moderator can have it floated.
Also, we should look for an offsite location that can store it so we can link to the most recent version with a URL.
Ideally, the Weaponsmith Correspondent should be the de facto maintainer of this document.

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How to use this document:
You best resources are fellow weaponsmiths. The knowledge contained in this FAQ is culled directly from this
message board. If this FAQ doesn't answer your questions, search the weaponsmith forum and see if someone has
already addressed your issue. Chances are we have, and it may be buried deep in the pile of posts. If there's something
that needs to be addressed in the FAQ (no doubt many things), respond to this post, and we'll try to add it into the next revision.

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Sections:

* 1) Weaponsmith skills and abilities
Info on the tools and talents of weaponsmiths

* 2) Crafting, Resourcing, and Experimentation (General)
Some general information about the art of smithing, and in particular, weaponsmithing

* 3) How the Heck does the Novice Smith make a living?
Some helpful information for the young smith

* 4) Common Questions and Current Issues
Canonical List of Community-submitted issues, and developer responses

* 5) What non-Weaponsmiths need to know about our profession
Or, a small attempt at avoiding tell-hell

* 6) Special Thanks and Version History
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SECTION 1 - WEAPONSMITH SKILLS AND ABILITIES

1.0 - Intro

This section is a complete breakdown of each skill category. For a listing of the schematics and skills visit a
good character builder on the web. (For schematics use www.swgcraft.com)

1.1 Novice Weaponsmith - Your first step into a larger world...
This give you the basics: +10 to assembly and experimentation, and some basic schematics. Note: Your general crafting
abilities will not help you here. You're probably used to 8 or 10 points of experimentation on your CDEF weapons.
Now you need to gather Weapon Crafting XP, not General Crafting XP to excel. The slate is clean for your adventures
in crafting real weapons.

1.2 The four trees in weaponsmith are divided thusly:

1.2.1 Melee Weapons Crafting Tree
Grants schematics for melee weapons and their components. No bonuses to assembly or experimentation.

1.2.2 Firearms Crafting Tree
Grants schematics for firearms and their components. No bonuses to assembly or experimentation.

1.2.3 Munitions Crafting Tree
Grants schematics for munitions (grenades, thermal detonators, minefield components, etc.). No bonuses
to assembly or experimentation.

1.2.4 Weapon Crafting Techniques Tree
This is where you get all bonuses to Assembly and Experimenation.

1.3 Master Weaponsmith
Grants additional schematics, and the last 25 points to Assembly and Experimentation. Here, you can build everything,
and build it well.


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SECTION 2 - CRAFTING, RESOURCING, AND EXPERIMENTATION (GENERAL)

2.0 - Intro
By the time you've hit novice weaponsmith, you should know how to go about getting resources and using your crafting tools.
These are some things that you might *not* know.

2.1 - Crafting Stations
Any draft schematic that you've been granted access to by your new skills that has a complexity of over
20 must be crafted near a *crafting station*. Your Weapon, Droid, and General Item crafting tool isn't
enough to handle the construction of these complex devices.

2.1.1 What use is effectiveness on Crafting Stations and Crafting tools.
The summary is, right now, none. I've seen a pretty detailed analysis (including real statistical analysis,
not this crummy average stuff) that has shown that for complexity items up to about 15, the difference
between a -8 and a 40+ crafting station is on the order of 1%. Probably not enough to worry about for the long haul.

2.2 - Experimentation
As you progress from novice weaponsmith through the Weapon Crafting Techniques Tree, you'll be granted
bonuses to the weapon assembly and weapon experimentation skills. These, together with the quality of the
resources you use as determined by the draft schematic, determine your success at building (weapon assembly)
and experimenting (weapon experimentation) weapons. For each 10 points you have in weapon experimentation,
you get an additional "experimentation point" to spend while experimenting on each weapon. It should also be
noted, however, that each point spent has a greater chance and degree of success, as your weapon experimenation
skill goes up. So that +15 to weapon sxperimentation may only grant you 1 addition point to spend, but that
point has a better chance of succeeding, and succeeding well.

2.3 Materials
Pay attention to what qualities you'll need according to the draft schematic you're using. This will determine
not only the "starting point" for the stats on your soon-to-be built weapon, but also will modify your ability
to successfully experiment. Materials that are poorly suited for the construction of a weapon are also poorly
suited for experimentation, and you will not be as successful.

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SECTION 3 - HOW THE HECK DOES A NOVICE SMITH MAKE A LIVING

3.0 Intro
This is probably the most repeated question on this message board. Please search through the postings for various ideas,
but the general consensus is along the lines of the following...

3.1 "No One Wants to Buy my D-18 pistols"
This is true. Most Mark get certified very early for weapons better than this, and the market is flooded with D-18's
from young smiths who didn't have the sense to read this FAQ. :-) So how *does* a young smith make money or get XP?

3.1.1 Artisan Mission Terminals
Take missions that ask for surveys of resources that you already know the locations of. If you have harvestors up
in certain locations, then as you make your resource runs from harv to harv, just hit the survey button for that particular
resource. Viola! Instant cash. This helps the cash flow, but does nothing for Weapon Crafting XP.

3.1.2 Weapon Upgrade Kits
Crafting these by hand will get you decent levels of XP from the very start, and will also make you the best friend of any
local smugglers. Smugglers need these to slice weapons, and will pay decent money for them.

3.1.3 Sell lower quality weapons
As you move up the tree, sell the weapons that are popular (scout blaster) on the bazaar cheaply. Make the best you can,
but recocognize you can't compete witha master, so don't price it that way. This also serves to get your name out there to new players.

3.2 What is the fastest way to become a Master?

3.2.1 The Projectile Pistol/Rifle Barrel - Grind, Grind, Grind.

First you need to grind (ie just make a bunch with no hope of using them) blaster pistol barrels until you get
enough XP to get firearms 1. Then, from there, grind projectile rifle barrels. These are going to take a lot of steel.
Expect to use roughly 450k of steel! So start stockpiling.If you can harvest enough steel, and you've progressed
far enough up the firearms crafting tree, you can get almost 2 xp per unit of resource off these two items.
Only two double-clicks to build!

3.2.2 Can I use the ingame macros to help this out?

Yes. Use the search mechansim on this board (or google) and you'll find plenty of places with the detailed instructions.
Version .3 of this FAQ may embed them.

3.2.3 How can I avoid having to double click (ie Can I AFK grind?)

You can't, within the game. People have reported doing it using out of game macro systems. This is exlicitly against
the use agreement, so if you're caughtyou can get banned.

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SECTION 4 - CURRENT ISSUES AND WORD FROM THE DEVELOPERS

4.0 Intro
This section alone should keep us updating the fact at least once a month. Each profession's message board
has a "correspondent". This person is a player, just like you, and will submit the week's most pressing issues
for his professional community to the developers for consideration. This person will also, hopefully, maintain
and update this FAQ. Below is the canonical list of the developers responses to these issues, listed most recent, first.

4.1 - Most recent information.

4.1.1 There are several schematics that are borked. We have no idea when they will be fixed. They include chemical
dispersion mechanisms, projectile feed mechanisms and a few others that should be added to this section.

4.1.2 A few certs are borked as well. The Republic Blaster cert exists, but doesn't work properly, as well as
the Heavy Acid Beam Rifle (I think)

4.2 How much do you price your weapons for?

Whatever they sell for. The game is more about supply and demand than about what a weapon should cost.
Now, there are people who will tell you thatthey sell at a certain amount per resource, and anything else is
just a ripoff. They will also promise to undercut you. Great. If that works for them, let it.You need to make
enough credits to enjoy what you do for the reward.

4.3 What are the stats on weapon X?

Really, it depends on the resources, and resources are different on the different servers. Although this is good
for getting an idea of ranges, if you can't make one that good (or yours are better) it is probably a resource issue.

4.4 What are the rare materials?

Weaponsmiths, more than any other profession I know, require a lot of very specific materials, so in a sense,
there are a lot of rare things. However ,some high demand resources seem to be more rare than others.
The list I know off the top of my head is:

• Ostirine carbonate ore (ABPH)
  
• Irolunn reactive gas (ABPH)
  
• Alantium carbonate ore (T21)
  
• Class 3 solid petro fuel (ABVU)
  
• Doonium iron (Bowcaster, something else)
  

Yes there are others, visit www.swgcraft.com for specific issues.

4.5 What are the weapon enhancements, and what drops them?

There is a thread that documents this in detail, here are the ones I know.

Ranged weapons

Blaster Power Handler

• Krayt Dragon Tissues - Krayt Dragons (Tatooine)
  


Projectile Feed Mechanisms

• Feeder Mechanism - Nyms (Lok)
  


Melee Weapons

Vibro Units

• Vibroenhancers - Nyms (Lok)
  


Reinforcement Cores

• Rancor Teeth - Currently broken!
  




Munitions

Munitions Enhancement

• Klanick Glands - Klanick
  

4.6 What are the different weapons, their damage type, and their AP rating?

Carbines

• DH17, energy
  
• DXR6, acid AR1
  
• E11, heat AR1
  
• EE3, heat
  
• elite, energy AR1
  
• laser, energy AR2
  

Pistols

• D18, energy
  
• DH17, energy
  
• DL44, energy
  
• DX2, acid
  
• FWG5, heat
  
• Power5, energy
  
• Scout, energy
  
• SR combat, energy AR1
  
• Striker, kinetic
  
• Tangle, stun
  

Rifles

• Bowcaster, energy
  
• DLT20, energy
  
• E11, energy AR2
  
• Jawa ion, stun AR1
  
• Laser, energy AR2
  
• SG82, cold
  
• Spraystick, energy
  
• T21, energy AR3
  
• Tusken, kinetic AR1
  

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SECTION 5 - WHAT NON-WEAPONSMITHS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT OUR PROFESSION

5.0 Intro
This section is intended to provide information that educates the novice smith, as well as non-smiths, about
issues that are of concern to us.

5.1 Tell-Hell
If you are a customer, looking to have a weapon made, please send e-mail instead of a tell. When we are crafting,
our chat window is full of information regarding the curernt process, and we may miss your tell completely.
It is a polite consideration to have any inquiries regarding business handled through e-mail. This goes for all
the crafting professions, not just weaponsmiths.

5.2 Resources
Many of our best weapons require specialized resources that aren't available, or not available in sufficiently
high qualities to make them worth building. Develop a close relationship with the weaponsmith of your choice,
and help him/her learn what works best for you. Most of us use our own products, so we may be able to offer
insight. Also note that as of this writing, almost every firearm has stats that rely on the conductivity of the materials
used to build them. This, we weaponsmiths believe, is a bug, as many of our weapons require materials that have
low or no conductivity, making an otherwise useful weapon, useless.

5.3 Can you make me weapon X if I bring you the resources?

Yes, but we probably won't. This is because as an average customer you have not spent the time in resource
selection that we have, which means we have better resources than you do, and the weapon would be worse.

5.4 I need weapon X, and it has to be your best, please let me know when it's available!

A vast majority of weaponsmiths make the best weapons they can, and put them on their vendors. If the weapon
you want isn't on that vendor, it's probably because there is a resource constraint. You'll have to check back.

5.5 I'm looking for a WS on server Y!

You should go to your server board for server specific posts. Your post here will probably be ignored.

5.6 My current weapon is great, why can't you make one this good? (Also, why are weapons better on one server than another)

Resources vary by availability and quality, and different servers have different resources. As a result,
the weapons will turn out differently. New weaponsmiths typically have not been able to stockpile
as long, and as a result have fewer weapons they can make.

5.7 What resources does weapon X take?

Check out the schematics at www.swgcraft.com. Really, when we're not online, it's the place that
most of us look.

5.8 I just looted X off of a corpse, can you make me a weapon with it?

Depends. Sometimes the dropped loot is a components, and a general rule, these are worse than we can make,
so although we could we won't. Some NPCs drop enahancements, and these we can use, and they can make the
weapons much better. See the thread in the forums on the full list, or look in the WS section of this FAQ.

5.9 How come the E11 (or other high tier weapons) you are selling is worse than the Laser Carbine (or other
lower tier weapon) you are selling?

9 times out of 10 this is due to resource restrictions. Higher level schematics call for more specific resources.
More often than not conductivity and overall quality determine how good a weapon can be. Many of these high
end schematics call for the use of iron and steel which rarely have good onductivity and overall quality. I stressed
can before because even at master, if I had 1000 experiment points I could not make an E11 made with 55 conductivity
Iron any good. The quality of the resources sets up a hard cap for the weapon stats, after which experimenation
gets you nothing.

5.10 What is the best weapon?

The one that you don't have. Ok, just kidding. The real answer, is that it depends. It depends on what you are fighting/hunting ,
whether or not it is armoured and what it's resists and vulnerabilities are. For instance, robas have a resist to energy, but none to heat.
Thus, an fwg5 is better vs a roba than a scout blaster. The same is not true for other creatures or even characters for PVP.

5.11 Can you make me a Rantok sword, scythe, or ranged weapon that does poison damage over time?

No. These are loot only or quest items.

- - -
SECTION 6 - SPECIAL THANKS and VERSION HISTORY

Thanks to the weaponsmith community for providing these questions and answers. Thanks to Jaegen88, pistoleer
correspondent, for providing the inspiration and format to build this.

Portions of this FAQ were taken from posts by: Witoubo, DToxWeaponsInc , LLJK_Griz

Keep track of who edited this here:

8/27/03 | v0.0 | ReverendReasons
8/28/03 | v0.1 | ReverendReasons
10/15/03|v0.2|GameBOFH aka Ysal| Added material, fixed typos, removed sections no longer relevant

Link to old resource list:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=weaponsmith&message.id=5005

bump

feedback?

5.9 How come the E11 (or other high tier weapons) you are selling is worse than the Laser Carbine (or other
lower tier weapon) you are selling?

I would stress that just because a weapon's certification is higher in the skill tree, does not necessarily make it better. I'll take a Laser Carbine over an Elite Carbine any day. Its a question of the right tool for the job.

--Tyriel Lupar

bump

I'm going to keep bumping this. I can not be stopped!

Are all of the damamge types and armor penetrating values correct still on these? It seems really crazy to have 3 rifles that do energy damamge with AR0 or have 2 rifles that does energy damamge with AR1! You only 3 rifles out of 9 that do not do energy damamge. Jawa Ion Rifle, SG82 and Tusken rifle.

You have a similar situation with pistols! At least carbines only have 1/2 of their weapons using energy. *sarcasim*

I also dable as a pistoleer... DL44, DH17, D18 and Scout are weapons that basically replace each other as you move up the list. No reason to ever use those low levle weapons again once you get a better one. I haven't used a Power5 yet... So no clue if it really is better than a Scout...

The least the developers could have done is had more variety in the damamge type so that it is more useful to use different weapons in different circumstances.

Very nice FAQ.

I would suggest seperating it in the next version to a FAQ for WSs, and a seperate FAQ for non-WSs. That way non-WS visiting our board would be more likely to read it.

check your weapon again because your tusken is mis-categorized as energy

I have seen reports on this board that the crafting station quality does matter after the patch. Your FAQ says it stilll doesn't matter. You might want to look into it. Otherwise, very nice!

Thanks for the FAQ!

Thank you for the updates! I'll fix this and repost in the next few days.

I stuck with 1 FAQ because we have a hard enough time getting people to
read one page, much less two.

The experimentation results I read on the crafting station effectiveness
were after this latest big patch.

I work on a 40+ station with 12+ tools, and I don't notice a significant
difference.

5 Stars all the way, thanks