THE BASIN |
A Marksman's Guide To Weapons, by DescartesGetting Started So you've just come out of the Tutorial and you're armed and ready to start hunting. It probably doesn't take long for you to realize that the critters right outside of town are really hard to kill. You see other people slaughtering those critters, but you seem to barely be able to hurt them. You take a look at your newbie CDEF Pistol and wonder what the problem is. Worked great against the bandit in the tutorial, but it's not cutting it so good out here. You just learned an important fact of life for Marksmen. Your weapon matters A LOT. Good ones will make life a whole lot easier. Lousy ones will make life very hard indeed. The good news is that there are people out there who are dying to make you a better one. Newbie Artisans can make CDEF Pistols, Carbines, and Rifles that are much better than the one you started with. They get experience for making these weapons, and they get even more experience when you use them, so they are often given away for free or sold for a very small amount of credits, which is good since you didn't start with much in terms of credits. One of the first things you should try to do is track down an Artisan (more on how to do that later) and see if you can get a crafted CDEF Pistol, Carbine, and Rifle. Try em all out and see what you like! Power-Ups Power-ups are awesome. These are easy to make one use upgrades to your weapons that make your weapon more powerful for your next 100 shots. Power-ups are also made by Artisans, who can use experimentation to make them quite good. You can get power-ups that increase minimum or maximum damage, decrease weapon speed, lower HAM costs, increase accuracy, etc. Really good ones will have two or in some cases even three of these effects. A good way to find them is to look for crafters near a weaponcrafting station, and ask if they can make you some. They only require 10 resources to make (a tiny amount) and it only takes a minute or two to make up several. Just keep in mind that the effect on the final power-up is random, so the Artisan has no way to know what effects will be on it until it's made. To use them just drop them onto your weapon, and you'll get a message when they wear off. Upgrading your Weapons If you've looked closely at the Marksman skill tree, you've undoubtedly noticed that as your skills increase you gain the ability to use weapons other than the CDEF weapons you started with. Even as a Novice Marksman you might have noticed that you have certifications for D18 Pistol, DH17 Carbine, and DLT20 Rifle. These are better weapons that will do more damage, fire faster, and generally are a big improvement. As your skills improve you'll get more and more certifications to use different weapons, many of which will help you do more damage faster and with less cost to your Health, Action, and Mind. Weapon Stats - What do they all mean? Before getting too far into what all the different weapons are, it's a good idea to understand what all those numbers mean. Click on your weapon and select Examine from the radial menu. This will show you the stats for the weapon you selected. Weapon damage is fairly self explanatory. Different weapons have different ranges for damage, but basically more is better when it comes to damage. Some people like weapons with a smaller range, like Scout Blasters, so they do damage more consistently. Others like weapons with a big range, like FWG5 Pistols, cause it's fun to see those really big hits, even though sometimes you'll get littler hits too. If you want to optimize, add the lower and higher numbers and divide by two to get the average damage. This is the number I use to determine which weapon is 'best' for damage. The Damage stat only tells half the story though. Attack speed is also very important. All else being equal, lower is obviously better, as you'll fire faster. If you really want to optimize damage when comparing weapons, take the average damage and divide by the speed. This number, which I'll call DPAS for Damage per Attack Speed, will tell you which weapon will on average do the most damage during a set period of time. Many people call this DPS, for Damage per Second, but since Attack speed doesn't really translate well into seconds (you fire faster as your skills improve) I prefer DPAS, but call it whatever you like! Every weapon will also list the cost for special attacks. These are attacks like Overcharge Shot, Body Shot, Threaten Shot, etc. These costs are VERY important, as they determine how much using the weapon will drain your Health, Action, and Mind bars when you use your special attacks. In this area lower is better, but unfortunately you won't know exactly how much your HAM bar will be drained until you actually try it out in combat. This is because your stats also determine exactly what the cost is. To quote from the manual...
A skilled Weaponsmith will use Experimentation (more on this later) to make the cost of specials as low as possible, but this is one to really look out for. If you're half dead in one bar or another after killing a light blue creature, and it hardly touched you, you've likely got a weapon with real high stat costs, or you've made your Strength, Quickness, or Focus too low. You'll have to find the balance that works best for you, but beware of weapons that look nice but have real high specials costs or you'll create a lot of unnecessary downtime for yourself. Another stat you'll see on weapons is the wound chance. Higher is better in theory, but it's still unclear to me exactly what this does. Does wound chance increase the chance of inflicting normal wounds like players take? If that's the case, it's pretty worthless except for PVP to inflict larger amounts of irritating wounds on your foes. Or does the wound chance somehow affect the Damage over Time bleeding effect from Health Shot, Mind Shot, Action Shot, etc? This would obviously be very useful in some circumstances. Or does the wound chance somehow have some other effect that we just haven't sorted out yet? I'd love for somebody to test a couple of weapons and see what they could learn. Another stat you'll see on your weapon is range bonuses/penalties. It has been my experience is that this is essentially outdated. Sometime ago special attacks were modified to have a large bonus to hit, and my suspicion is that the to-hit bonus of specials is so large it's essentially making the range bonuses/penalties irrelevant for special attacks, which is pretty much all anyone uses. If someone wants to test a couple of weapons with different range bonuses let me know and we can try to dig into this one more. Details, Details, Details Obviously it's important when you are looking at acquiring a weapon to understand ALL the aspects of the weapon to see what will work well for you. It's quite frustrating to spend a lot of credits on a weapon only to find out the specials costs are crippling you or the speed it too high for you to be effective. One last thing to keep in the back of your mind is the attack type. You won't find this listed when you examine the weapon (it should be IMO) but if you pay close attention you will notice that different creatures are more or less susceptible to different attack types. I'm not talking about melee vs. ranged here, but projectile, blaster, acid, lightning, etc. To take advantage of this it might be a good idea to carry several good weapons, such as a Scout Blaster and an FWG5 Pistol (to use a pistol example) so you can do both Blaster and Projectile damage. How to look for a new Weapon There are basically two places weapons come from, other than the CDEF Pistol you started with. They are either dropped by an NPC or crafted by an Artisan or Weaponsmith. An Artisan can only make CDEF weapons, so if you are looking for something more than that, it's either gonna be a dropped weapon or one crafted by a Weaponsmith. Being a Weaponsmith I don't know too much about dropped weapons other than they are intentionally inferior to those that can be made by a Weaponsmith. I suspect that in time rare, high quality dropped weapons will make their way into the game if they aren't already, but in most cases you are much better off looking for a weapon made by a skilled Weaponsmith. So where to look? Despite the fact that there's a lot of junk there, the Bazaar is a good place to start. When you bring up the Bazaar terminal, double click on Weapons and you'll open up a subtree that lists different weapon types. Select Ranged Weapons and see what's there. Be sure to look at the details for each and every weapon you are interested in, as prices and quality will vary widely. Also, keep in mind that unscrupulous crafters can name items anything they want, so just because it says Laser Rifle that doesn't mean it IS a Laser Rifle. If you can't find anything you like in the Bazaar on your home world, you might want to try the non-starter planets. Marksmen with higher skills tend to hunt in those places, so sometimes more skilled Weaponsmiths put their weapons for sale there too. Remember that you can also select to search the Entire Planet or the Entire Galaxy instead of just your local area. You'll get a much longer list, but that might be the best way to try to find something rare or unusual. It would be great if there were a way to filter out all the junk that you aren't interested in, but if you're looking for higher end weapons, try sorting by price so the higher end/higher priced weapons appear together. And don't forget that if the list is more than will fit on one screen you can hit the Next button to see more. The maximum price for any item listed at a Bazaar terminal is 3000 credits, and many higher end weapons sell for substantially more than that, so often you'll see an item for sale at someplace you might not have heard of. Those items have been placed up for sale on somebody's vendor in a house. Don't worry, if you purchase one of these, you'll get a waypoint to the vendor so you can go and pick it up. Do keep in mind, however, that it's possible for the merchant to offer an item at a low price, then charge a very high price to allow you to enter the house to pick it up, so you will want to be wary of this. If you can't find anything in the Bazaar, it's time to track down a Weaponcrafter. If you don't know a good Weaponcrafter, ask other Marksmen if they know one. Or ask them who made their weapon, if it's a good one. Every crafted weapon will list the name of the crafter who made it when you examine it. Another thing you can try is to bring up the Community menu (CTRL-P). On the Community menu is a tab for Search. Select Weaponsmith on the Profession tab and it will list any Weaponsmiths in the nearby area. The title that a Novice Weaponsmith will have is...Novice Weaponsmith. Once the Firearms tree is mastered they can choose the Gunsmith title. A Weaponsmith who has mastered the Experimentation branch can use the title Expert Weaponsmigh. And a Master Weaponsmith can use the title of...well...Master Weaponsmith. If you see some folks on the Search list, don't assume that because their title is Novice Weaponsmith they can't make you a wonderful weapon. They may very well have nearly maxed the Experimentation branch but haven't quite gotten all the way to the top of the Firearms branch. Or they just might not want to list their 'highest' title, for whatever reason. Simlarly, don't assume that just because someone is a Gunsmith they CAN make you a wonderful weapon. They get that title when they max the Firearms branch, but unless they also have made good progress on the Experimentation branch it's likely they can't make the very best weapons. Obviously a Master Weaponsmith will have maxed all of the branches, and only a Master can make the most difficult weapons. Most Weaponcrafters like making weapons for people, which is why we picked that skill. If you want to commission a weapon from somebody you don't know, my advice is to just talk to them. We're usually happy to make one for you. Try to keep a few things in mind though. We have to be close to a Weapon Crafting Station to experiment on weapons, so we can't make them just anywhere. And just about everything requires at least three subcomponents plus the final combine, so it takes time to make a quality weapon. Please be patient. It's also hard to chat much when you have a crafting window open all the time, so we might not talk much, but we're clicking away. What goes into making a weapon? If your main concern is to find a good weapon you can stop reading now. You should have plenty of information to find a good weapon or find a Weaponsmith to make one for you. Just remember that just because the certification is higher, that does not mean the weapon is better. If you're curious to know why that is and what else goes into making a weapon, keep reading... Weaponsmith Skill One of the first things that is important about making good weapons is the skill of the Weaponsmith. There are two branches relevant to making ranged weapons, the Firearms branch, and the Experimentation branch. As a Weaponsmith advances up the Firearms branch, they gain the ability to make more complex guns and components. You can easily look at the Skill tree and see what weapons can be made at each skill box. Even more important to making really good weapons is the Experimentation branch. When a weapon is made, experimentation points can be spent to increase the damage or decrease the specials costs of each component and the final weapon assembly. To do this a weaponsmith has to be near a crafting station, so if you ever wondered why we don't make weapons just anywhere, that's why. Advanced Droids can also function as crafting stations, so if your Weaponsmith has a Droid with a crafting module they can make you a nice weapon just about anywhere. Each +10 in Weapon Experimentation grants another experimentation point. So a Novice Weaponsmith has 1 point, and a Master has 9. The difference is really much larger than that though, since each component can be experimented on, and each weapon has 2-4 components, the total difference between a Novice and a Master might be as much as 5 points vs. 45 points (4 components plus final assembly for example). Thats one of the biggest reasons a more advanced Weaponsmith will make much better weapons, even from the same materials. Even a Novice Weaponsmith can make a really nice weapon if they have a committment to making good quality components. They won't have the consistency of a Master Weaponsmith, but they can be quite nice. The key here is a committment to quality. When working up through the Weaponsmith ranks, a good Weaponsmith will make many duplicates of each component, and destroy the worst of them. That way only the best components will be used in the final weapon. With enough attention to detail and committment to quality, even a Novice Weaponsmith can make a DLT20 Rifle that's just as good as a Master. Components Every weapon other that CDEF weapons requires multiple components to be made. Blaster Power Handlers, Projectile Pistol Barrels, etc. etc. There's a bunch of em. Some components are required, some are optional. For example, Scopes are always optional components. They add to the wound chance and range bonuses of a weapon, but also increase the special moves costs (those can be reduced back down later through experimentation). Better components will give the final weapon higher damage, faster speed, higher wound chance, better range bonuses, etc. A lesser skilled weaponsmith can also make very fine components, but they have to be lucky on experimentation, since they will have less points to spend there. The exception to this is that on many assemblies it doesn't take 9 experimentation points to reach the maximum that assembly is capable of reaching. Once the maximum is reached, extra experimentation points are wasted. Each component has a maximum value that it can be experimented to. This value is determined by the quality of the materials used. A Blaster Pistol Barrel, for example, uses 27 Metal and 1 Gemstone. The maximum value that Barrel can be experimented to will depend on the Conductivity and the Shock-Resistance of the materials used. Every component uses different materials, and has different values to determine the quality of the final result. A Blaster Power Handler, for example, uses 5 Metal, 3 Copper, 3 Low-grade Ore, 5 Inert Petrochemical, and 10 Reactive Gas, and the final quality is determined by the Conductivity and Overall Quality of the Materials used. One thing to keep in mind is that many higher end weapons require very specific resources, such as Plumbum Iron or Link-steel Aluminum. These specific resources are not available all the time. Resources are replenished and depleted often, so old ones will eventually go away, and new ones appear. In time all of the various weapons will be makeable, but it may take some time. Don't panic if your Weaponcrafter tells you they can't make you an SR Combat Pistol or Laser Rifle because the necessary metals don't exist. This isn't a bug, it's how things are intended to work. There are 43 different specific resources needed to make every weapon in the game, and over time all of these resources will eventually appear. The good news is that for the simpler components the resource requirements are easy to meet. Any old metal will do for Blaster Pistol Barrels, so all we need to do is find one that has good Conductivity and Shock Resistance values, and the final result will be excellent. As we get to more complicated weapons though, the material requirements become more strict. Instead of just any old metal, Copper or Steel or Aluminum might be required. And for the most advanced weapons and components, you can't use just any old Copper - it must be a specific type of copper, like Codoan Copper or Diatium Copper. So in order for the more advanced weapons to really come out good, not only do we need to find specific types of resources, but they must also have the right set of attributes. To make matters even more complicated, pretty much all of the more advanced weapons require at least one of the components used to come from a factory. A Laser Rifle, for example, requires 4 Identical Blaster Power Handlers from a Factory Crate. This means an advanced Weaponsmith also needs to acquire and maintain a factory, or at least have access to one. Sound complicated yet? Well, it's not really all THAT bad, but it does take a lot of time to keep up with it all. I think most good Weaponsmiths will end up being resource packrats, just because there are so many different types of resources that we have to manage. I know that I have so many I can barely keep them all straight. When it all comes together the result is a superb weapon. It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to make these fine weapons, and a Weaponsmith spends a lot of effort you don't see in order to make the weapon that you do see. I hope this guide offers a little glimpse into the process. Safe Travels! Descartes Chilastra |
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