Dec 15, 2011

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Zlatto’s Bazaar: Doing Nothing Is Profitable

Zlatto’s Bazaar is the one-third Wall Street, one-third criminal empire and one-half gossip rag. You need to keep up on the Bazaar if for no other reason than to keep an eye on your competitors. Don’t be a Ho-tah and visit often. Your comments are encouraged, especially if they make me credits…

When it comes to playing a merchant class style character, you face some grind like any average player. A player’s skill progression in most MMOs depends on the money, effort, time and skill. In most games, these dependencies have always created a feeling of toil and effort over being a hero. I was fortunate to be able to spend a lot of time testing out crafting mechanics in Star Wars: The Old Republic during beta. The numbers can always be adjusted but the concepts behind them should still be in play now that the game has launched.

Doing Nothing Is Profitable?

Ok, so I cannot state with certainty that the economics in the game will make all crafting professions profitable. Heck, the only guarantees right now might be Slicing and maybe certain Treasure Hunting selections. The mechanism of a truly profitable MMORPG economy are high-brow topics covered by Momus and all his crazy spreadsheets over at Blasters, Beggers & Credits. But there is more to profit than just credits my impatient  scrag-enders. Remember the famous Toydarian saying, “Time is Money.” In this regard I can clearly state that crafting, in its current iteration in TOR, is profitable.

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Dec 1, 2011

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Zlatto’s Bazaar: Reverse Engineering Theorycrafting

Zlatto’s Bazaar is the one-third Wall Street, one-third criminal empire and one-half gossip rag. You need to keep up on the Bazaar if for no other reason than to keep an eye on your competitors. Don’t be a Ho-tah and visit often.  Your comments are encouraged, especially if they make me credits…

Hello, all you GTN moguls-in-training! I’m glad you decided to stop by so we can talk about the exciting math of Reverse Engineering! With the NDA gone, I wanted to get into some of the exciting non-combat mechanics of the game. No spoilers to worry about here, it’s all about crafting and Reverse Engineering in mass quantities to enable us to look a bit behind the curtain of ‘random’ as defined by BioWare.

You can toggle Reverse Engineering on in your Inventory panel, which will allow you to select certain items to... Reverse Engineer and perhaps learn to make a better version of that item!

I am not a statistics guru, but because I am skilled in short-changing purchases in any monetary unit of the known galaxy, I figured it would be best for me to share my accumulated numbers with you, and then together we could decide what they mean. I expect there is a closeted math geek or two that might read the column, so lets hope they decide to chime in and give us some deeper analysis.

This article will assume that you are all up to speed on the process, risk, and rewards of Reverse Engineering. If you are not yet a guru on the topic, take a quick moment and read Momus’ informative article on the subject found over here in Blasters, Beggars and Credits. For now, I’ve decided not to dive into the itemization gain seen at each level of Premium (green), Prototype (blue) and Artifact (purple.) That discussion could barely be covered with a 12-part series and would require more time than I can spend at the moment.

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Dec 1, 2011

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Patch Notes: December 1, 2011

Anytime there’s a patch to Star Wars: The Old Republic, we have you covered – all the notes, nicely formatted, with Torhead tooltips for dessert! Check here first to find out if you need to rage on the forums about a nerf to your class. 

Since this is considered to be the “release build” as indicated by BioWare, we thought it would be a great time to start posting them here for quick, easy access! Note that we’ll soon be adding all abilities and items via Torhead links, so you can see tooltips for everything while you’re browsing the page.

Enjoy!

Build Date: 2011.12.01
Patch: 0.742.27

General

  • Experience gains on Origin Worlds have been adjusted to help solo players reach level 10 more easily.
  • Improved the overall performance of vanity pets.
  • Using the /stuck command will no longer kill the player unless a safe location cannot be determined. Players can now only use /stuck every 120 seconds.
  • Moving to a new planet instance no longer uses the player’s Quick Travel cooldown.

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Nov 21, 2011

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Zlatto’s Bazaar Special Edition: Gathering To 75 Before Level 10…It Is Possible

Zlatto’s Bazaar is the one-third Wall Street, one-third criminal empire and one-half gossip rag. You need to keep up on the Bazaar if for no other reason than to keep an eye on your competitors. Don’t be a Ho-tah and visit often. Your comments are encouraged, especially if they make me credits…

Zlatto here, with a special message from the other side. You can get your gathering to 75 before you can craft a level 1 item. Remember you cannot craft without a companion but gathering can be done solo.

“Tell us how Zlatto!” is what you must be saying at this point. First, raise your right hand and state the following oath.

I solemnly swear to use this knowledge for personal gain, to wreak havoc on the economy of my server, and to at least over charge players by 3%.

Beware – Spoilers Abound

The info below talks about specific locations and mobs at those locations,  it does not impact story but I will use specific examples.

Now, Zlatto’s gathering loophole. As I think about it is not really a loophole, just that it is assumed that gathering begins after your starter world. After all, the first trainers you run across are on your space station, before you hit your capital world. So the logical process is to move along your story line until you are led to the crew skills.

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Nov 6, 2011

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Zlatto’s Bazaar: Looking For 1M DPS… with Crew Skill X!

Zlatto’s Bazaar is the one-third Wall Street, one-third criminal empire and one-half gossip rag. You need to keep up on the Bazaar if for no other reason than to keep an eye on your competitors. Don’t be a Ho-tah and visit often.  Your comments are encouraged, especially if they make me credits…

I swear the info coming out about the game has me spinning around like a Stim-pickled SW:TOR kid.  As I sort through all the of the press articles and wait impatiently upon the Fan Site Summit to happen, I figured I would circle back to an item I read recently that really caught my eye.

From a recent article on MMORPG’s Michael Bitton (potential spoilers – beware!)

The Hammer is one of the new Flashpoints that appears to be more focused on gameplay and puzzles than the cinematic flair present in the previously revealed Black Talon and Esseles. Some bits of group dialogue precede the actual Flashpoint, but once you arrive, it plays more like a typical dungeon run. However, what really stood out about the Hammer was the way Crew Skills were used throughout the experience. Players proficient enough in certain Crew Skills could, for example, re-activate a mining drill in order to break through a wall, circumventing a good deal of the Flashpoint’s trash mobs and allowing the group to beeline for the first boss. Later on, an elevator could be sliced, though no one in the group had high enough Slicing to figure out what that would have entailed.

What I get out of that is, that in some cases, players could be leveraging their Crew Skills within the Operations or Flashpoints for value beyond just gathering resources. 

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