Tag Archives: synthweaving

On Being a SWTOR Crafting Enthusiast in an Environment Where Everyone Wants Everything to be Free

10 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by in crew skills, PTR, synthweaving

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I’ve been checking out Patch 1.3 on the public test server (PTS), focusing my time on the crew skills changes to synthweaving. And I will get to a post on that topic later in the week. But first, I wanted to share some of my recent experiences regarding interacting with PTS folks around crafting.

My Time is Worthless, Your Money is Precious

So far, I think I’ve crafted about 30 augmentation kits on the PTS for folks to try out. To do so, I’ve stood around on the fleet, chatting with players about the patch, for several hours as I’ve made crafted pieces to reverse engineer, then made augmentation kits. I am keeping 4 of my companions busy on making the crafted items, and sending the 5th out on Underworld Trading missions in the hopes of scoring some of the new synthweaving patterns added to the game.

I logged in to the PTS this time around to find that I had 20k in credits and not very many crafting materials, due to the huge number of custom pieces I made and sold on the cheap during the last patch’s testing phase. Thus, to have enough cash to list anything of value in the GTN, I had to make and sell some custom gear. I was nearing the end of my possible Kit creation when I got a tell from a reader of this blog who gallantly gifted me with 5 stacks each of the crystals and the artifact fragments. And thus, I was able to crank out a ton more augments which I put up on the GTN for 250k a pop, selling them as fast as I could list them.

And at some point, the grumbling started in General chat, along the lines of “You’re a jerk for selling those kits for 250k. You should be selling them for 100k max. You are greedy.” One of my fellow crafters jumped in and noted that we have to spend 4+ minutes crafting each of our 10 items that we have to RE in order to make each kit. And that further, the materials for making those crafted items sell for 1-3k a piece on live servers, making your base cost for materials anywhere from 40-120k depending upon your server economy. To which our heckler replied “Go farm the mats.”

Uh, excuse me? I need to go and farm materials to make items so they can be cheaper for you mister general chat big mouth? Because my play time is worth less than your precious bank balance? Are you serious? You might think that I was being trolled. But I wasn’t. Because this isn’t the only time that I have had folks consider my time, which I’ve spent crafting or improving patterns or spending tons of credits on missions to obtain schematics to be worthless. (NOTE: see also this same issue, years ago, in WoW.)

Why did I “need to make that much cash anyway”, as one person asked with a side of snark? Because almost nothing on the PTS is free in case you hadn’t noticed. In my case specifically, I want to try out the new custom patterns. Which has meant spending over 50k on executing missions so far (plus another 250k on buying mission discoveries). And buying a schematic on the PTS for 50k. And buying a ton of companion gifts to improve my affection to increase the chance of crits. (The copy of me from pre 1.2 didn’t have her toons very far along in that area, unlike current me.) And so on. And so far? I have exactly two of the new crafted schematics to show for all my efforts. T-W-O.

The great thing about MMOs is they provide a variety of things for each player to do that meets their individual definitions of fun. I love to discover and collect new patterns, and feel a sense of accomplishment when a ton of peeps are running around my servers wearing gear with the made by Anexxia label. And I like that I can support my characters through crafting instead of doing dailies because repeating quests for multiple days is not my preferred way to make cash. Not even if a vanity pet is on offer.

Now, I can understand it is annoying to see people buying my augment kits and reselling them for 750k or even 1.25 mil credits on the GTN. But if you make it a practice to harass players such as myself, who are there making items for you to try out and who genuinely love seeing all the new crafting changes on offer on the PTS so we can plan accordingly, then don’t come crying to me when crafters stop selling the items they make– or worse yet– stop even putting in the time on the PTS crafting items for you to try out. You’re welcome.

/end rant.

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Synthweaving Leveling Guide

01 Wednesday Feb 2012

Posted by in crew skills, synthweaving

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In that other MMO, I have several tailors, including my shadow priest. Thus, it was an obvious choice to make my first SWTOR character, my sorcerer, a Synthweaver. I like to make myself gear, and have found it to be a reasonably lucrative profession choice from an auction house resale standpoint.

Complimentary Professions

As a Synthweaver, you will want to have Archaeology as your gathering profession so you can pick up crystals and artifacts as you explore the world on your missions. For your mission skill, if you want to be able to have easy access to the materials for making blue quality or better gear, which I always do, you will want to level Underworld Trading. Note that many folks wait to level Underworld Trading until they hit max level then parcel out their 5 companions on a never ending marathon of missions until they hit 400. This is perfectly acceptable though not the route I choose. If you have a ton of cheap Underworld Trading goods in your Galactic Trade Network, you may decide to pursue Slicing or Diplomacy as your Mission skill instead, depending upon your game goals.

Re-Engineering

Re-Engineering allows you to recoup a few of the materials you used to make synthweaving items to level your skill. Typically, at lower levels, you are only getting back a crystal, occasionally a crystal and an artifact. But every little bit helps. And as a bonus, every so often, you’ll learn a blue/rare quality version of an item that adds an additional stat upon it. Those items are denoted as follows:

  • Critical versions of a green item have +Crit as a third stat.
  • Overkill versions of a green item have +Power as a third stat.
  • Redoubt  versions of a green item have +Defense as a third stat.

I’ve found that re-engineering is your best return on investment for your leveling synthweaving green items. I haven’t found that green gear, regardless of level, has been successful in GTN sales. Now, once you start having the materials to craft rare quality leveling gear, that’s a different story. You have two options with your blue gear crafting: sell the pieces occasionally on the GTN to help offset your Underworld Trading leveling costs, or re-engineer those pieces in the hopes of learning a purple quality version of the pattern. I personally did not start re-engineering blue quality items much until I started making level 40+ gear, but see plenty of the lower level purple pieces in the GTN.

Leveling Basics

The long and the short of it is: you want to make whichever pattern will net you the most skill for the lowest cost. Yes, make yourself some pieces to wear as well, but to efficiently get your Synthweaving up to 400, you will want to be selecting your recipes carefully. On the left side of your recipe name, you will see a number that denotes how many of an item you can make with the supplies you have in your inventory and in your cargo hold. If you look more closely, you will notice that number has a color: Orange, yellow, green or gray.

  • Orange recipes will give you 2 skill points upon completion
  • Yellow recipes will give you 1 point
  • Green recipes will sometimes give you 1 point
  • Gray recipes do not provide any skill points.

I find this small detail is what most folks miss when starting out with professions in SWTOR, and thus end up crafting recipes that have gone gray, peeved that they are no longer receiving skill points. Also note that every 20 skill points you can go back to your trainer and learn some new patterns. Make sure you do this every time you hit a multiple of 20 to ensure you have orange quality recipes available to you.

Getting Started: Leveling Your Synthweaving to 120

That’s right, I’m not going to take you all the way up to 400 with this guide because I’ve found that even when leveling two characters’ synthweaving simultaneously, 140-160 is where their paths diverge. This is due to the difference in availability of materials from server-to-server, and the difference in RNG as to what blue quality recipes they’ve learned, and what orange moddable gear recipes they’ve managed to scrape up.

1-20: Savant Sash. 2 Rubat Crystals.

21-40: Savant Gloves. 4 Rubat Crystals.

41-80: Acolyte Bracers. 2 Rubat Crystals. Keep making these until the pattern goes green After 60, will only result in 1 point each but since the other patterns require additional materials, it’s still your cheapest bet.

81-100: Rugged War Waistcord or Reinforced Fiber Belt. 2 Lost Archaeology Fragments, 2 Fibrous Nylite Solution, 2 Eralam Crystals.

101-120: Rugged War Gloves or Reinforced Fiber Handgear. 2 Sacred Artifact Fragments, 2 Fibrous Nylite Solution, 4 Eralam Crystals.

121-140: Reinforced Fiber Boots or Rugged War Boots. 2 Thermoionic Gel Suspension, 4 Nextor Crystals, 2 Sacred Artifact Fragments.

141-160: You’ll choose Acolyte Lower Robe or Acolyte Vestments if you have bountiful artifact fragments and fewer crystals, or Reinforced Fiber Chestguard or either legging recipe you’ve just learned if you have more crystals.

161 onward: Make whichever of the recipes you’ve just learned that you want to focus on RE’ing into a blue for you or your companion to wear.

Note that throughout this process, for maximum efficiency and lowest cost, you’ll want to be picking up materials as you complete missions, and occasionally send your companions out on an archaeology mission to grab a hard to obtain/expensive item, such as those pesky Sacred Archaeology Fragments. Although RE’ing your greens will yield a few materials, it will have to be augmented with a flow of materials from your gathering or the GTN.

Happy Synthweaving!

Reflections on a SWTOR BETA Weekend, Pt. 2: Professions

12 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by in BETA, companions, crew skills, screenshots

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spaceshipI had 2 big goals for my BETA time, in addition to just getting a feel for caster game play and gaining familiarity with companions as party members: 1) to see how far I could get with leveling my professions, and 2) to earn my spaceship. Happily, despite having to work for half the BETA weekend, I was able to make great progress against these goals.

As soon as you complete the first portion of your class quest, and get sent off to the Fleet, at level 10 or so, you are able to start training your professions. Special note: if you go ahead and talk to all the trainers as soon as you arrive at the fleet (only accepting those skills you actually want to train, mind you), you can earn a nice chunk of experience. There is a great visual that shows the best skills to pair with each other to maximize your leveling ability. You may only train a total of 3 crew skills per character, which may be any combination of gathering skills, a maximum of 1 crafting skill, and mission skills. I went with Synthweaving, Archaeology, and Underworld Trading.

Crafting Skill: Synthweaving

In other games, I’ve often taken up tailoring, so it was no surprise that I chose to go with Synthweaving for my cloth wearing caster. I like having the ability to craft gear upgrades for myself, and have typically found the rare or better crafted gear to sell pretty well, especially in the early days of a game/expansion.

I ended my BETA time with a skill of 160 or so in Synthweaving (I had an annoying keyboard not recognized problem as I was wrapping up my BETA time and neglected to write down my final #.) I was able to easily finance this leveling, at level 16, through selling a few world drop items, and making 6 blue quality belts and gloves, which I put on the auction house for 1200-1500 credits. Despite buying a few rare quality cloths from the auction house in order to do this crafting, I ended up with 8500 credits at the end of my professions leveling spree.

My primary tip is to reverse engineer every green quality item you make that you do not need for yourself or your companion. I found that I usually got 1-2 power crystals back for every item reverse engineered at the lower levels, which came in handy. I always made the most inexpensive item that was available to craft, but that had not yet been greyed out (once a pattern is in grey text in your skill window, it will no longer give you a skill point for crafting it.)

I also suggest making a blue quality item that will give you skill points whenever you have the special materials on hand that are required. You can obtain those special materials from some of your more expensive Archaeology and Underworld Trading missions, however, you will soon run into Fibrous Nylite Solution, which is an item you can purchase from any Crew Skill Trade Vendor, as is Thermoionic Gel Suspension.

Gathering Skill: Archaeology

One of the nice things about Archaeology, is once you get out into the world after level 10, you should be seeing crystal nodes as you go about your everyday questing. Although I did spend a good chunk of time sending my companions out on Archaeology missions to get up to 100 or so in skill, I also raked in a ton of power crystals as I walked around completing quests.

You are able to send your companion out to complete archaeology missions whenever you’d like. I personally kept my companion at my side for questing, so I could more effectively handle large packs and heroic quests by myself. But whenever I was zooming back to a capital city, I sent him off on an errand. Who knew bossing around my minions would be so much fun? Ahem. I mean, it was a very rewarding bonding experience to allow my companion to do my bidding. Oh nevermind– I think you are already seeing why I am going Sith.

There are two key factors that will help you decide which missions to send your companion out on — the cost and the potential end result. The cost to send my companion out on the mission started at 95 credits, and topped out at 295 credits. You receive new missions to send your companion on as you increase your character’s level, starting with 4 missions available to you at level 10. I found that I eventually had an archaeology skill level above the level of items available to me for completing the missions, but that was only due to some serious focus on profession leveling.

The third factor to influence what mission you send your companion on is what the potential reward will be. A few examples of how entry level quest yields are described:

  • Moderate Yield: Grade 1 Color Crystals
  • Moderate Yield: Grade 1 Power Crystals
  • Bountiful Yield: Grade 1 Artifact Fragments

Moderate yield missions can result in a return of 1 or 2 items upon completion. Bountiful yield quests were often 3-4 items in total. But it is important to note that on occasion, my companion would come back empty handed, especially when sent out on a bountiful yield (and more expensive I might add) quest.

Mission Skill: Underworld Trading

Underworld Trading was the more vexing of all the crew skills for me. Mission times started out being relatively short (3 minutes) and increased to 6 minutes over my small leveling journey. Now before you say “Aw, Anexxia, you are just too impatient!” let me remind you that these quests can fail. And somehow, it seemed it was always the 275 credit 6 minute quest that would fail.

In the BETA stress test weekend, quests would note that they could result in either Underworld Metals  or Grade 1 Luxury Fabrics. Under that design, I found I most often ended up with metals, and had to buy my cloth from the auction house. I believe the last minute professions fine tuning has broken the rewards down to separate them out, which will be helpful for maximizing your mission time and credits to enable you to obtain the raw materials you want for crafting your preferred items.

Due to the longer amount of time and greater credit cost per mission (starting at 95 but quickly headed into the 200s), this was the skill I got the least far (only mid 40s.) I have a feeling I’ll end up falling a little behind on this one as I level, but the upside is I think there will be a good auction house market for the cloth and metals if I don’t need to put them to use in my synthweaving.

Final Impressions on Professions

Overall, I found the professions to be easy enough to level, and without breaking the bank. I didn’t make my 10k credit goal (I wanted to buy a sandcrawler vanity pet from the lightside vendor), but I made a serious dent in my synthweaving leveling and made myself and my companion a few nice pieces. I think a lot of folks will be tempted to skip over the professions leveling in a mad rush to get to max level, but I would caution against that. You will not want to be sitting around in a capital city just sending your crew on missions, as a huge money sink, making items you can’t use at max level. In the long run, it’s a lot more efficient — and personally rewarding– to add the crew skills missions into your daily pace. And if you happen to be working from home and on a conference call, which prohibits you from actually being out and about completing quests with your character, crew skills leveling is a great multitasking activity. but don’t tell your boss I said so…

See you in the game soon!

dancing fools