(WORK IN PROGRESS)
Crafting 101
In most MMORPG's, crafting more or less an afterthought. It is slapped on because people are desiring it and the items crafted are nice-to-have, yet not mandatory. Weapons and armor are generally granted through quest rewards and/or group activities, with the best items coming from the raiding instances.
Crafting in SWG is the basis of the game. Items like armor and weapons are crafted and a necessity in the game. Even items that are available outside of crafting, can generally be improved by deconstructing them and putting them back together again. Almost every other profession in the game is in some way or form dependent on crafting, making SWG build around crafting.
General overview of the crafting system
The crafting system itself is a complex system. Items are created by following a certain schematic. Each schematic determines what and how many resources are needed. There are schematics that require one resource type and there are those that require multiple resource types. The more resource types needed, the more complex the schematic is.
Resources for a schematic can be raw materials like metals, chemicals or organics, but also components that need to be crafted or looted first. The majority of resources are actual raw materials that can be found all over the game world(s).
These resources have characteristics like Overal Quality, Unit Toughness and Decay Resistance. There are ten characteristics available, but not all resources make use of all of them. A resource like steel makes use of all ten, where a gas will only make use of two.
Resources are structured like a tree-structure:
They are devided by categories, sub-categories, types, sub-types, classes, sub-classes and eventually the name of the resource. This done for all resource categories: Energy, Inorganic, Organic and
Space Resources.
The item schematic dictates what resource to use and which one(s). A schematic can make use of just a high level resource like Mineral, like a survey tool, or it can even call for a very specific resource based on the subclass, like a 4th gen lightsaber.
It also determines what characteristics the schematic desires. These characteristics can also be found on the resources. There are ten characteristics in total. The schematic doesn't require all ten and not all resources have all ten characteristics. Some resources have all ten characteristics, like steel, yet some only have two, like gas. The characteristic shows a number of its quality. The higher this number is, the more it contributes to the quality of the eventual item.
It is up to the crafter to get the resources. The crafter first needs to find the resource. This is done by usingg a survey device. Once the resource is found, it needs to be retrieved. The crafter can retrieve the resource themselves, sample it, or place down a harvester to retrieve it, mine it. Placing down harvesters is more effective, as these allow the crafter to go about their business while retrieving the resource. All the harvester requires is maintenance and power.
Once the resources for the desired schematic have been retrieved, the crafter can start the process of creation. A crafting tool is needed to follow the instructions of the schematic and crafting process. For the more complex schematics, a crafting station is needed. There are also schematics that require a private crafting station. These schematics cannot be accessed by using a crafting station in the major cities.
Once the crafter start the crafting process, the needed resources are added to the schematic. The schematic is then put together and depending on the resource characteristics and their quality value, the success rate of the assembly is determined. When using a crafting station, after the assembly, a choice needs to be made to either experiment (if available), to create a prototype or to create a factory schematic. Usually the crafter selects to experiment on the assembly in order to improve the quality of the item. After experimentation, the choice is then between creating a prototype item (single item) or a factorry schematic. The latter allows the crafter to make up to a 1000 of the items with the exact characteristics as shown when the choice is made.
The assembly and experimentation phase can be influenced by
Entertainer buffs, foods, drinks, Skill Enhancement Attachments, Powerups and player city specialization for most crafters. Jewellery sets can also influence resource quality while in the crafting process.
As shown above, the crafting system in SWG is no simple thing of just throwing together some resources and creating an item. It is a complex process in which the quality of the characteristics influence the final product. This makes it that a very well put together small pistol could potentially outdamage a badly crafted heavy weapon.
Resources and their characteristics
There are way to many resources to list them all here, yet they all have up to 11 characteristics (a.k.a. stats):
- (CR) Cold Resistance
- (CD) Conductivity
- (DR) Decay Resistance
- (ER) Entangle Resistance
- (FL) Flavor
- (HR) Heat Resistance
- (MA) Malleability
- (OQ) Overall Quality
- (PE) Potential Energy
- (SR) Shock Resistance
- (UT) Unit Toughness
The resources in the game are not using all 11 characteristics; gas, as an example, uses only two: Decary Resistance and Overall Quality. Steel, on the other hand, utilizes eight characteristics: Cold Resistance, Conductivity, Decay Resistance, Heat Resistance, Mallability, Overall Quality, Shock Resistance and Unit Toughtness. One characteristic all resources share, is Overall Quality. This characteristic is also, and most likely because of it, the first characteristic crafters check if the resource is worth obtaining. If the Overall Quality is of sufficient level, it is to be determined by the crafter if the resource is to be obtained or not; an
Architect will search for different chracteristics then an
Armorsmith when looking at steel.
On many of the characteristics there are caps. This means that a certain characteristic cannot go above a certain number. This is also dependant on the resource and its name. Copper will have a higher conductivity then steel and aluminum will have a higher conductivity then iron. Duralloy steel will always have a high unit toughness and polysteel copper will always have high conductivity. Staying with the example of conductivity, Desh copper's conductivity will not go above 570, where Polysteel copper's conductivity will go up to 1000.
Besides the standard resources, there is a group of resources that don't have upper or lower caps on them. This group is referred to as the JTL (Jump To Lightspeed) resources. These resources, when good, are highly coveted by any and all crafters. The group consists of these resources:
- Crystalized Bicorbantium Steel
- Hardened Arveshium Steel
- Perovskitic Aluminum
- Conductive Borcarbitic Copper
- Gravitonic Fiberplast
- Unstable Organometallic Reactive Gas
- Fermionic Siliclastic Ore,
- High Grade Polymetric Radioactive
They generally stay up far longer then the standard resources, 21 days as opposed to the 6 to 10 days, but also tend to be very bad for prolonged periods of time. These resources also spawn on one specific planet, where the standard resources can spawn om multiple planets. This leads to people putting down a multitude of harvesters when these resources are good.
The only planets where no harvesters can be placed, are Kashyyyk and Mustafar. Only hand sampling is allowed on these planets. Especially the Mustafarian resources tend be better then on other planets (they are also standard resources, not JTL). The handsampling on Mustafar has an increased rate and this can be further augmented by using a mining droid.
