Weaponsmith Archive

I worked on weaponsmith in the early days. With no other folks to help gather resources either. So I took my small personal harvesters and set them out and tried to keep them maintained best I could. 2 Windmills and 4 Mineral harvesters.

About a month ago, I found 3 of my old harvesters and looked them over. 2 were BER 2's and one was a BER 1. It was amazing I could dig anything at all. Keep in mind this was back before anyone had heavy harvesters yet.

I was a weak pikeman and managed to pay for my maintenance doing 120-150 credit missions out of Theed. I would save up my resources for a few days and then go sit on the beach or in the Theed Cantina and grind away.

I mastered in about 2 months, more or less.

And I enjoyed every minute of it. I was doing something challenging and knew the end goal was what I was after.

Rikk is still a weaponsmith and enjoys his steady cusiness backed by repeat customers. I'm still not a volume crafter. I would rather spend 30 minutes with a single customer making 15 power hammers to get the balance right than run a ton of factory look-alikes. I save the factory runs for subcomponents and powerups.

You should enjoy your professions.. if you truely want to be a weaponsmith, then the grind is part of the journey. I don't want the journey to be any easier. The small number of regular weaponsmiths is sufficient. It's an elite profession. I hope it remains that way.

I see your point, and I agree wholeheartedly. It should take awhile to accomplish Master Weaponsmith, and it will take me awhile because I can't force myself to grind it out. But, I believe the experimentation tree should be more accessible, so a Novice Smith can at least craft a sellable Sword or DL20 rifle. It would even be a little better if crafting CDEF weapons gave Weapons Crafting Experience once you gained Novice Weaponsmith.

Hi CJM,

It's a long and difficult path to advance in WS. I did grind--but only enough to get thatsecond box of weapon crafting techniques. This enabled me to make decent firearms to sell to new people. From that point, more real crafting started happening. Now that I am WS 0204, I would say the ratio of crafting to grinding is 80/20 and I see it going to 90/10 as I am able to make more weapons. I usually do the grinding part while waiting for shuttles. Grind doesn't should be limited to pumping out projectile rifle barrels either. There's a lot of my early guns that went into the "Practice" bin but they served the purpose of teaching me about the craft.

I just hand-crafted 10 guns last night and I ended up with around 3k of XP. At this rate, it will also take me several weeks to gain Master. BUT, with each night of crafting I learn more and more about the guns and what experimentation is worthwhile, what optional components are worthwhile (stocked vs non-stocked, scoped or non-scoped), etc. I also have Marksman skills so I get to "field test" my creations and can better talk about it to customers.

IMHO, the Experimentation tree shouldNOT be more accessible than it is right now. The mechanics to make good weapons are complex and requires a lot of hands-on to really understand what is going on. The true Masters in the end would be those that sweat it out through the trees, know what they're crafting, and can speak from experience. I use the phrase "true Masters" because I've already come across 2 or 3 players that send me a tells on how to make a good gun...when their title is Master Weaponsmith.

Have fun!

-D

RealDarius,

That is exactly how I did so well on Artisan. My CDEF weapons were great because I took the time to craft the weapons and watch the experimentation points. And therein lies the thing I mentioned in my first post about the 1 experimentation point with the 51% fail. I see that I may have to break down and grind the first couple of Experimentation boxes so I can get to that point. I do plan on getting my "hands-on" time in, as that is what makes it so much fun and rewarding. Seeing the 29-59 damage 3.4 attack speed CDEF's I was making and having people compliment them (not to mention pay well for them) was great.

It is good to see that there is hope though. I was beginning to think there was no hope for gratification until Master.

Thanks for the info and encouraging thoughts.

It is hard to sell things at a novice level. But if you get some experimentation, then you should be able to make starter weapons for sale on the bazaar. Try to compare stats and prices while you are there too. It will give you an idea of how you stack up and to also help you set your prices so your weapons sell.

Good luck. I didn't mean to discourage you from doing the grind. Just hang tough.