Crafting 101 v2.0 - Advice for new players and new artisans
Skills
So, you wanna be a crafter, eh? (always wanted to start a guide with that ).
If you didn't start out as artisan, and want to pick up crafting later, go to the local artisan trainer and purchase the skill 'Novice Artisan'. Players cannot teach this skill to others, no novice skill can be tought in fact.
If you start out as artisan, you'll be equipped with a generic crafting tool, I can't remember if you get surveying tools so everyone should follow the next advice.
Tools
Ok, next up.. tools: You'll need your generic crafting tool, as stated, if you start as artisan, you have one, otherwise buy one from a player. And while you're bugging a player for a generic crafting tool, have him make you a mineral surveying tool and a chemical surveying tool while he's at it. With these three, you can build everything else.
Once you have these, you'll need some resources.. depending on what you want to craft you need different kinds. It's a good idea to pickup surveying if you go the artisan way, you wont have to buy all your resources from other players in the start (later on you might want to, and if they ever get around to implementing the miner after all, you might get them easier that way).
Resources
Now that you have all the tools, you can either head out of town and do this the "right way" or plant yourself next to the crafting station of your choice and sample in town (i do, sometimes, generally it's annoying as the graphics and sounds are a bit annoying to fellow players, so i try to go atleast a few hundred meters out of town). Once you're a bit out of town, fire up your (im gonna use gathering minerals as an example, same principle goes for all surveying) mineral survey tool by double clicking on it.
The first time it's going to ask you to set the range, just double click the tool and you'll get a selection window with one choice, select it ( 64m ) and click ok. (You'll have to do this again by pulling up the tools radial menu once you gain further surveying skill to set the device for the larger search radius you can then use). Now, double click the tool and you'll see a blank space on the left side and a list of resources on the right hand side.
Since sometime during late beta, these have been nicely ordered into a tree format (thanks devs) so you can select what you want to survey for, mineral, metal or others, under that are more choices, ferrous/non-ferrous metals, low-grade ores, radioactives and whatnot, dont mind all the details yet.
For now let's say we want to make a CDEF weapon (these seem to go well with most people, since even a beginning artisan can make them better than what mobs drop and what you are given as a starter).
So what do we need for a carbine, check the schematics to find out.
Optimizing the results
Double click your generic crafting tool, select weapons in the top row and select CDEF carbine, rifle or pistol in the list (im going with carbine, just so you know from now on). On the right hand side you'll see what's needed.. some metal, and some chemical (exact amount will vary with what you are trying to make), now let's take a look at the schematics details, in the lower right window there's a list of what qualities in the resources affect what stats on the weapon. it says 50% of the stats come from "conductivity" and 50% come from "overall quality".
Ok, so we want a metal with high conductivity and quality and a chemical with same attributes (well chemicals dont have conductivity so we'll just go with overall quality). Copper usually has nice conductivity, if you want to find out what to sample for, do this: run a 'get sample' for each metal until you get 1 unit and then 'examine' it to see it's stats.. If you find something really nice with most stats 700+ or so, you might want to write it down.
Finding the "sweet spot"
Back to the mineral surveying tool then, select the resource you want to gather, from the right hand side list and click survey. Note: if you get a message: 'resource not found' try another resource, there's no deposits nearby. Some circles will expand, the map will update and you'll get a waypoint to the location with highest concentrations near you, run to this location (mind the critters.. and the gap ..mind you ) and survey again, rinse and repeat until the waypoint stops moving (you're on the "sweet spot" now, highest concentration of the resource you seek, all around you the density goes down).
Now that you've got tons of the resource under your feet, hit the sample shortcut or type /sample and wait while your sampling is done. Once you run out of action points, sit down for a while and continue, or, switch to your chemical surveying device. Find a chemical with good quality (you can stand in one spot and just sample 1 of each to compare them) and do the same running routine to find the sweet spot for that chemical (you might want to save a waypoint to the mineral sweetspot for next time, they stay for a while). Once you've found the chemical sweetspot and sampled enough of it, head back into town.
Making the product
Fire up the crafting tool and select the CDEF you want to make, then select next. Fill the material slots with the resources needed (double clicking on the resource works, so does dragging the items into their slots), select next. You'll be asked for confirmation, select yes (you can turn off confirmations from the options window, i think it's under "UI") Now you get to customize the looks (in some cases) and the name (in all cases).
Marketing your wares
I usually just type in something about the stats after the name, like: "CDEF Carbine 1-100 5.0".. that way it's still an informative name. You can type in long strings if you like but it gets cluttered. NOTE: PLEASE dont put anything in front of the normal name, this messes up sorting in the bazaar and people have a hard time finding your products. Finally, press finish and the crafting tool will pop the item into your inventory 15 seconds later.
You might get a critical failure at some point in the process of making the item, just start over, the materials will be lost but there's a desert full of them out there :P (on tatooine, that is ).
Advancement
You'll start making Crafting XP and slowly you'll be able to expand your repertoire into the hard way of artisans and maybe one day.. ..you'll be a master (remember that this will require you to teach others how to use their skills tho, so teach people who need training, it's good for them and you, also, always offer people to learn from them, i usually ask around or use the community search function (ctrl-p - search) to find a more experienced crafter who could teach me).
Having fun
And a final note: forget grinding. Go out, have fun, craft when you feel like it and use the stuff you make or make it for friends and people in need. That's the most rewarding part. |
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