ArmorSmith Guide

 

Armor Layers Previously, layering was a virtual necessity, as layers added to base protections, special protections, condition, and encumberance.  With the new system, layers are very optional, and very expensive. Layers now add to a resist but reduce the resist of its "opposite," so there is a bit of a yin/yang effect.  An armorsmith can now add up to 12 layers for a piece of advanced armor, so the effect can be major (up to +1200/-1200).  Kinetic layers will reduce energy resists, energy layers will reduce kinetic.  Acid and electricity are opposed, as are heat and cold.  Advanced layers increase two otherwise opposed resists at the expense of the other four. Because elemental damage is so minor and irrelevant at this point, the primary layer types one might expect to find are kinetic (for creature hunters), energy (for bounty hunters), and primus (adds to both kinetic and energy, useful for anyone). I expect that most mass-produced armor will be unlayered.  Because the resource requirements and factory time commitments for layered armor are so high, I would also expect that layered armor will largely be a specialty item, and command a price much higher than unlayered armor (double or even triple).   Armor Slicing Because encumberance is gone and hindrances are affected solely by general protection, slicing now only affects resists.  Slicing affects both standard and special protection equally.  Slicing is also entirely predictive -- knowing the stats of the armor and how it was constructed, you can accurately predict what the post-slice results will be. Ignore whatever the system message tells you the armor's general effectiveness was increased by -- the number means nothing as far as I can tell.  For armor made with advanced cores, all resists will increase by a number generated by the following expression, where GP is the "general protection" of the armor as determined by the crafting of the core. DELTA = 1892 - 0.25 * GP For unlayered armor, GP will always be the special protection resists (acid, cold, electric, heat).  For layered armor, particularly primus-layered, GP is a bit more difficult to ascertain on first glance. As mentioned previously, hindrances are affected by general protection.  It is possible (and indeed likely) that sliced armor will have hindrances high enough that combat masters will still have some minor hindrance.     Armor Examples Just a sampling of what you might expect to find with newly-crafted armor on Bloodfin in the coming weeks and months.  All pieces are unlayered.  Note that these are all better than what 90% Composite converted to. With full primus layering, I would anticipate the kinetic and energy resists to rise about 420 points each.  Assault Kinetic:     6862 Energy:     4862 ACEH:      5862   Battle Kinetic:     5982 Energy:    5982 ACEH:      5982   Reconaissance Kinetic:     4760 Energy:    6760 ACEH:      5760

 

Armor Pricing   The cost of armor has gone up fairly significantly, yet the overall utility of armor has gone down.  How much has supply shifted?  How much has demand shifted?  Only time will tell, and as such, the equilibrium price is up in the air. What I can tell you, though, is that the resource requirements to make a suit of armor have shifted significantly.  Hides are now much more prevalent in our crafting, and as such, prices will rise.  Specific mineral and chemical resources that we've never really had cause to use or even look for in the past are now key components.  Layer resources have increased dramatically and changed radically.  Furthermore, the factory time required to produce a suit of armor has increased significantly as well.  This increase is seriously amplified if layers are used. Before the CURB, I was selling suits of high-base Composite Armor for 300-350K. Post-CURB, I anticipate that stock suits of unlayered armor will go for 450K, though I'm not married to that price yet.  It could go up, it could go down.  Again, only the market will determine that. Don't believe the hype that most suits will cost millions -- that was largely predicated on layers being required. Factional armor will carry a premium, however, since it requires a significant faction point investment on the armorsmith's part and must be hand crafted.  Also please note that the buyer must spend faction points to "bio-link" the armor, meaning that only he can wear that piece in perpetuity.  I would estimate that factional armor will cost 200-300K over non-factional armor. Layered suits will require an even larger premium than factional armor simply due to the opportunity costs of resources and factory time.  Consider that under the new system, a single suit of unlayered advanced armor will use up around 4400 resource units, while a layered suit will require an additional 7500 resource units and an additional 12 hours of factory time.  Depending on the actual layering, I would anticipate that a layered suit of advanced armor will cost in the realm of 850K - 1M credits. To summarize, I estimate the following costs: Unlayered, stock suit:  450K Layered, stock suit:     900K Factional Premium:    +250K One would also anticipate that custom colorization and enhancer orders would carry an additional fee as well.

 

 

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Setting up Your Business

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   There is a lot of settup involved in becoming any type of succesful crafter in SWG. There is a lot of infrastructure you will need. Storage space, a shop to sell goods, factories to produce goods, and the more of each you have the better off you'll be. Then you need resources to make everything, and you will need lots of resources, Mines, and preferably some hunters as well.

   This may be a very daunting task if your character is relativly new and you haven't quired much starting capitol yet. This is why I suggest you try to find a good guild that will be willing to help you out and get you on your feet. Having a good guild to support you can make or break you during your infancy in the profession. You're going to need resources, some rare and expensive ones, and you're also going to need a lot of buildings. Try to make friends with an architect while you start up, you're going to need some specific buildings from him. At the very minimum, you'll need a house, 2-3 factories, and several mines, mostly minerals, a few chemicals, a handful of flora farms, and one gas should get you covered. Sounds like a lot of mines, but most of the time you will probably only use one or two at once.

   Once you get your infrastructure organized and set up, I might suggest setting up an organization method for your resources. You're going to get lots of resources, tons of 'em. And all sorts of different kinds. Being able to keep them organized and sorted will save you tons of time and headaches down the road. There are a couple different methods people use for organizing. Some pile everything on the floor and keep similar stuff near each other. Others use backpacks or architect made containers (chests/dressers/ect.) for storage. I like to use the latter option as it is much much more easier to keep things organized for me. I have a tool chest labeled for each type of material I use: Petro, Fiberplast, Hides, Ores, Gemstones, Iron, Aluminum, Copper, and Steel. I then took my organization a step further and inside each type of container, I put in a satchel (a looted container that can be put inside another container) that is labeled for specific resources I use. Mainly I use these for keeping my layer and core resources seperate from my non specific resources. You can also switch this around and have containers marked for use rather then resource, and lump all your resources for each component together. Use whichever works for you, but keeping yourself organized is an absolute must.

 

 

 

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Resources!

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I hope you like collecting resources, because you're going to need lots of them. Resources are the primary determination of your armor, so getting prime resources is an absolute must. As has been, and still is, Overall Quality and Shock Resistance is your primary concern. There is a small bit of Decay Resistance to look at also, but this only pertains to appearance schematics, and is not as much of a concern. You have a daunting task ahead of you, collecting the vast multitudes of resources to make three distinctly different types of armor, battle, recon, and assault.

Let's be honest with ourselves here, there is very little to no demand for basic armor. 99% of the players out there want the best they can get, which is advanced. Most will put up with encumberances just to have the best protection. This means you will need to aquire a lot of very specific types of materials to produce your armor. Let's break it down for you:

Every suit of Advanced Battle Armor will require (not including appearance materials):

11 Advanced Battle Cores:

-495 units of Naboo Bristley Hide
-495 units of Corellia Fiberplast
-495 units of Extrusive Ore
-440 units of Phrik Aluminum
-440 units of Beyrllius Copper
-385 units of Amorphous Gemstone

-3 Battle Segments (3 x [11 + 1] = 36 total battle segments)
--360 units of Steel
--180 units of Aluminum
--540 units of Polymer
--180 units of Wooly Hide

Every suit of Advanced Assault Armor will require (not including appearance materials):

11 Advanced Assault Cores:

-495 units of Dantooine Wooly Hide
-495 units of Dathomir Fiberplast
-495 units of Intrusive Ore
-440 units of Kammris Iron
-440 units of Mythra Copper
-385 units of Amorphous Gemstone

-3 Assault Segments (3 x [11 + 1] = 36 total battle segments)
--360 units of Steel
--180 units of Iron
--540 units of Polymer
--180 units of Scaley Hide

Every suit of Recon Battle Armor will require (not including appearance materials):

11 Advanced Recon Cores:

-495 units of Lokian Leathery Hide
-495 units of Naboo Fiberplast
-495 units of Polymer
-440 units of Carbonite Steel
-440 units of Link-Steel Aluminum
-385 units of Crystalline Gemstone

-3 Recon Segments (3 x [11 + 1] = 36 total battle segments)
--360 units of Steel
--180 units of Copper
--540 units of Fiberplast
--180 units of Leathery Hide

As you can see, that's a LOT of resources that you need to get. Your complete shopping (listed by amount of use) is:

-Polymer
-Steel
-Amorph Gemstone
-Fiberplast
-Naboo Bristley Hide
-Corellia Fiberplast
-Extrusive Ore
-Dant Wooly Hide
-Dath Fiberplast
-Intrusive Ore
-Lok Leathery Hide
-Naboo Fiberplast
-Phrik Aluminum
-Beyrllius Copper
-Kammris Iron
-Mytra Copper
-Carbonite Steel
-Link-Steel Aluminum
-Crystalline Gemstone
-Wooly Hide
-Aluminum
-Scaley Hide
-Iron
-Leathery Hide
-Copper

   That is quite a shopping list! And we haven't even included layers (we'll cover that a lil later) This is why I make this suggestion to you: Concentrate on one specific type to begin with. Armor is NOT split up evenly amongst the professions. In fact Battle armor is the most common, and will be the most popular choice. It also has three rather good looking Appearances, Padded, Marauder, and the coveted RIS armor. This makes it a great choice to start out in, and get you off the ground. If you haven't gotten discouraged yet, and managed to collect enough resources to make armor, I congratulate you, and now prepare for the good part.

 

 

 

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Making Armor

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This is a pretty strait forward process really. Make you armor segments, once you've made them, make your armor cores, then make your armor appearances that you sell to your customers. The hard part along this, is making the right types of armor to stock a vendor. I manage to have the luxery of having a well known name, and can make profit soely off of custom orders. If you have enough friends (or are working for a guild) I may suggest you making a large portion of your buisness, if possibly not all, custom order. The reason? Because armorsmith has kinda become a lot like a glorified tailor because of the CU. Now you might be asking, why would he compare us to tailors? Surely there is more to armor then making a few bits of cloth and putting it over my body to look good. Well yeah there are, but stocking a vendor is pretty much as hard as keeping a tailor vendor well stocked. There's a million different color and appearance combinations with armor, but unlike in the past where each appearance was different, they're all pretty much the same now. While this is good from an asthetic perspective, it makes it a pain to keep a well rounded vendor stocked with a wide variety of armor. You can, of course, mass produce a handful of very popular colors (black, red, blue, white, and green, roughly in that order of popularity) or you can make it all by hand for a mixture of colorful combinations. The decision is up to you, and either way you are going to be making a lot of armor. And unless you have a huge infrastructure, you're going to be making them all by hand.


I have another suggestion you can try, setting up a mobile crafting set. A backpack laoded with materials and components, and a crafting droid, and you can go to popular areas and announce you're making armor by hand. If you make it reasonably prices, you are likely to have some good buisness, and help get name recognition started, especially if you label each piece of armor with something marking your identity. I have, just for organization reasons, a backpack that holds all the materials and components I need to craft literally any type of appearance in the game (including RIS and faction). It comes up to around 40 items all together, mostly a wide variety of resources. This is a very handy pack, and something I might suggest you make just to keep something readily accesable to grab when you're crafting. Luckily with inventory sizes at 80, it only sucks up half your inventory space (or if you equip it, then it sucks up none!) Throw in crafting kits and you're at an even 50.

One thing you will need to do, is get your factories chugging. There's a lot of components to be made. I suggest as you get started to make small runs of armor, because hopefilly you will be getting better resources over time, and you will throw away bad components when you replace them with better components. I usually go for 33 suits at a time. This is made by making one run of 1000 segments. And then using those segments to make 330 Advanced Armor Cores. Those 330 armor cores will make you 33 suits of armor, and can make you a good chunk of money. Expect your factories to take a while to make the components. It usually takes a few days to make a full run of components, so be patient, and keep your factories well fed.

 

 

 

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Armor Made, Now Sell It

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This is one of the hardest steps to do. Sure collecting resources was a huge and costly pain, and, getting that infrastructure built with no starting captiol was also next to impossible, but selling armor, and more importantly, getting people to come to you for armor regularly, is a monumental task. Most servers have at least a small handful of armorsmiths for people to go to, and it is very hard to find ways for them to come to you instead, especially ways that don't involve slashing prices so lose your shirt in the process. As I said earlier, selling your armor out in a public place is a good way to get the ball rolling. Also I can't stress enough how important your vendor is. A clean, presentable shop is very important. You don't need anything super fancy, but nobody wants to have to search through piles of junk all over the palce to find a vendor. And even more important is keeping the vendor well stocked. It is a nightmare to some people to find a well stocked, reliable armor vendor. If you have the resoruces, and the willpower, to keep your vendor constantly stocked, people will recognize it, and start to keep coming back. It also helps to have a good location, preferably near a shuttle port in a player city, or near an NPC city, without too many other armorsmiths around.

Now also should be noted, the global vendor search is a great tool to help get people to see your stock. Make sure you get a vendor with your pieces listed on the global market if you can. Also this is a great tool to check out other people's merchandise and prices (hopefully the stats bug will be fixed eventually, to make window shopping a bit easier). Price your armor acording to the global market, take into acount your quality compared to others, if you have lower quality armor, price it according. Do not be ashamed you can't produce as good as someone else, just produce what you can, and sell to the lower market. Some players have 'wisened up' regarding armor and know a difference of a few hundred points isn't as huge of a deal as you'd think.

 

 

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Now That Your Off the Ground

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Hopefully by now you have finally got yourself moving, and being able to get your armor moving. There are many things you will need to work on to keep up with demand, and to keep your buisness rolling. First and foremost is to try and continue to increase your quality. As your capitol increases, try buying up older resource spawns that are better then your own resources, or start grabbing 30k resource kits. While they are expensive, they can really help get your armor up a notch above the rest. Also continue to keep an eye out for new resource spawns. If something better then your stock spawns, jump on it as hard as you can! One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was thinking I had enough of something. Collect resources like you plan to be an armorsmith for years. Don't settle for 50k, not even 100k. If something really awesome spawns, get every last drop you can. Also, try to put aside a good fund for hides, whenever there is a good spawn. Unless you have an alt, you're going to end up having to pay people to hunt hide for you, and it can be very costly.

Also, while we're on money, keep an eye on how fast or slow your stock is moving. And at the same time keep an eye on the market. Try to adjust your prices as you need to, in order to both keep up with the market, and keep your sanity. If your armor is flying off the shelves faster then you can keep up with, it's either time to expand your infrastructure, or raise prices (or a lil bit of both). Raising prices is tricky buisness, and often times you may get more complaints then you'd like, but trust me, a few complaints are better then going insane because you can never keep your vendor stocked.

Also, as you begin to establish yourself, and get the money flowing, you may look to start doing 'projects' to help get your name better known. This could include auctioning off a few health enhanced suits (which hopefully gets fixed soon), or trying to get the resources to put together layered armor. If you thought unlayered armor was bad! Boy do you have a suprise waiting for you with layered armor. Not only do the new layers require very expensive rare resources, but they are used in BULK! This is why most people generally don't make layered armor, and layered armor is considered something for those with lots of money, layered armor can easily sell in the millions on the smallest and 'poorest' servers.

If you've managed to survive all that, and gotten your buisness off the ground, I congratulate you and welcome you to the ranks of those who have truely Mastered Master Armorsmith

Appendix E: Armorsmith Trainers

Corellia Bela Vistal 6872, -5429
Tatooine Bestine -1245, -3505
Corellia Doaba Guerfel 3127, 5291
Talus Dearic 351, -2867
Talus Dearic 599, -3070
Naboo Kaadara 5139, 6813
Naboo Keren 1801, 2565
Naboo Keren 1890, 2767
Corellia Kor Vella -3164, 2791
Corellia Kor Vella -3701, 3071
Naboo Moenia 4792, -5000
Tatooine Mos Eisley 3349, -4691
Tatooine Mos Entha 1247, 3248
Tatooine Mos Entha 1302, 3394
Tatooine Mos Espa -3073, 2057
Rori Narmle -5025, -2417
Rori Narmle -5248, -2358
Talus Nashal 4275, 5102
Rori Restuss 5370, 5608
Naboo Theed -5465, 3996
Corellia Tyrena -5118, -2337
Corellia Tyrena -5521, -2666
Corellia Coronet City 37, -4455
Rori Rori Rebel Military Outpost 3676, -6419 0
Naboo Dee'ja Peak 4770, -1274
Dantooine Abandoned Rebel Base -6947, 5614