Posted by Zlatto | 9 Comments

Zlatto’s Bazaar: Juggling 3 Gathering Skills – The Good, The Bad And The 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 you run past a resource node that you are unable to harvest because your skill is not high enough, do your teeth clench just a bit? When you run past a resource node that you do not even have the correct crew skill to harvest in the first place, do you still get that itch? If you answered yes to either of these questions you might be a candidate for a full gathering crew skills selection.

The Good

Have you thought about what it would be like to be take only gathering skills in Star Wars: The Old Republic? I not only thought about it… I am enjoying it, and I figured I would share some thoughts about it. I selected Archaeology, Slicing and Scavenging for my three options.  My reason was all about the utilization by my possible customers and … well, Slicing to help fund my other characters.

There are 3 Crew Skills that use Scavenging materials and 2 Crew Skills that use Archaeology, so the number of prospective buyers is greatly increased. Now this is just a theory of mine, and to be honest I am as unsure as a ferglutzing shop keeper.  Volume of prospects does not always lead to direct profit. Another theory would be  Scavenging and Bioanalysis.  Why, you ask? Well they are both skinning supported gathering skills. In my leveling efforts there are countless Strong enemies of both Bio and Droid origin.  The only thing more profitable than finding a node on a map is creating your own and getting XP for doing it!

 

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Posted by Lord Paladin | 7 Comments

Breakdown: Crew Skills 102 – Synergy!

Breakdown is designed to to fill that stressful void while Star Wars: The Old Republic is down for maintenance. Each Tuesday morning, we’ll look at a topic and try to break it down to the basics. In the end, we hope to educate, entertain, and prevent you from having your own Breakdown!

For this edition of Breakdown, we’re going to dive a little deeper into the crafting system, otherwise known as Crew Skills! The crafting system in TOR can be a bit different from other MMOs, and so here in part 2, we’re going to help you get started! If you haven’t read part 1, please go back do so here. If you are looking for more advanced crafting subject matter, please check out Zlatto’s Bazaar.

This edition of Breakdown will be formatted in a slightly different way in order to be used as more of a handy reference sheet should you wish to print it out or bookmark it for your crafting needs. If you bookmark it, I have thoroughly linked it for your ease of use.

Also please note: Armormech and Synthweaving can make fully modable gear, but the armoring mods (which give them rating) come from Cybertech.

Armormech

Produces: Medium and Heavy armor for Non-force users: head, chest, wrist, body, waist, legs, and foot slot

Gathering Skill: Scavenging   Mission Skill: Underworld Trading 

Armstech

Produces: Assault Cannons, Blaster Barrel mods, Blaster Pistols, Blaster Rifles, Misc (melee weapons that aren’t lightsabers, but does include vibroswords, et al.), and sniper rifles

Gathering Skill: Scavenging  Mission Skill: Investigation 

Artifice

Produces: Color Crystals (for all weapons), Enhancement mods, Lightsaber hilt mods, Modification mods, and Wieldable: shield generators, offhand focuses, relics, and lightsabers (at skill level 400)

Gathering Skill: Archaeology  Mission Skill: Treasure Hunting 

Biochem

Produces: Adrenals (which boost things like power, and surge), Implants, Medical, and Stimulants (which boost things like strength, and endurance)

Gathering Skill: Bioanalysis  Mission Skill: Diplomacy 

Cybertech

Produces: Armoring mods, Droid parts, Earpieces, Grenades (useable), Modification mods, Ship parts, Speeders, and a group member summoning tool Transport Beacon

Gathering Skill: Scavenging  Mission Skill: Underworld Trading 

Synthweaving

Produces: Light, Medium, and Heavy armor for Force Users: head, chest, wrist, body, waist, legs, and foot slot

Gathering Skill: Archaeology  Mission Skill: Underworld Trading 

So which crafting skills do you want for your character? He’s a quick and simple breakdown!

All Characters: Cybertech, Biochem

Jedi (all)/Sith (all): Artifice, Synthweaving

Bounty Hunter/Trooper/Smugger/Agent: Armstech, Armormech

And if you are just looking to make a buck by selling resources on the Galactic Trade Network, check out these great skills: Treasure Hunting, Scavenging, Slicing, and Underworld Trade. They provide some of the best bang for the buck you can get out of a non-craft skill.

That’s all for this latest issue of Breakdown! I hope this simple guide gets you started for all your crafting needs. Do you know of any other great Crew Skill synergy? Give us your input in the comments below! As always, I hope I’ve helped educate you on more of the basics, and I hope you’ll join me next week when the servers are down for another Ask A Jedi: Breakdown!

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Posted by Zlatto | 5 Comments

Zlatto’s Bazaar: Level Your Crew Skills Remotely

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…

Hi there. My name is Zlatto, and I have a problem. My addiction is Crew Skills, and its been …. well, only 3 minutes since my last fix because lets be honest: I have SWTOR up in another window as I write this and I am sending my crew out on missions whenever they become available.

What I wanted to share with the community today is the ability to level up your Crew Skills via your smartphone or tablet. 

Oh yes, it is possible with a little bit of planning and effort. I can tell you that my last ‘all staff’ meeting was far more entertaining as I sent out my crew on slicing missions while listening to the monthly speaker tell me about the need for us to me more focused on ….. hmmm I missed what the topic of our focus was.  WHO CARES?! I can level my Crew Skills up remotely.

To accomplish this feat of nerdvana there are a few requirements:

1. A smartphone or tablet that can access the internet
2. A program from the store of your device that enables remote control desktop
3. A lot of patience

To better dissect the effort I will share my process. I am an iPhone user, so I happen to already own an app called iTeleport that I use for work. I can not tell you how cool it is to walk around during a presentation with only your iPhone in your hand and control your presentation remotely. Now, iTeleport work with both the Mac and PC for remote desktop control.  Since TOR requires a PC (or lets say Windows) you must download the Windows version. The process leverages your Gmail credentials and an internal VNC server to enable the connection from handheld to PC.  Below is what the screen looks like on my phone, you can see the full desktop including the Windows taskbar at the bottom of the screen:

Now comes the tricky part. I use the security key, so I must have that with me if I am going to login to TOR while on the go.  The screen is small, but I can stretch it using the reverse pinch command.  The app has a keyboard command to allow me to login. It takes some getting used to, navigating only a portion of your screen at a time, but its just a matter of patience to move between the screens, selecting the right menu items for choosing your missions and clicking ‘Send Companion’.  The image below shows a crafting screen.  It is more difficult to Craft then to send your crew on Missions remotely (imho) due to the smaller click-able area that you have to select the item to craft.  You can zoom in pretty close but its still a challenge to mouse over the specific hot spot on the screen.  As you can see below I run a dual screen environment, this is great for my home game play but an issue for when you are working remotely on your phone. You need to give yourself as much space and screen room as possible to make the selection of the steps you want to accomplish as easily as possible.

Sure it feels a little like a Wile E. Coyote setup, but hey I was able to skill up 10 points in slicing and was able to ‘net’ a few thousand in credits. (Editor’s Note: Here’s a video of AKAMikeB giving a demo of how he does the same thing!)

So now you have the way… do you have the will? It’s all about the credits! Let us know how it goes!

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Posted by Lord Paladin | 13 Comments

Breakdown: Crew Skills 101 – Gettin’ Your Craft On!

Breakdown is designed to to fill that stressful void while Star Wars: The Old Republic is down for maintenance. Each Tuesday morning, we’ll look at a topic and try to break it down to the basics. In the end, we hope to educate, entertain, and prevent you from having your own Breakdown!

This is the first edition of Breakdown since Star Wars: The Old Republic officially launched. So while many of you now have hands-on experience with some of the game systems and how they work, we still get many questions. In particular, the Crew Skills system seems to solicit the most, possibly because it’s one of the more innovative features in the game. So, In this edition of Breakdown, we thought we’d take the opportunity to cover the crafting system! This article is actually part 1 of this 2 part Breakdown, there’s just so much to cover! Oh, and if you’re already a crafting guru, you might want to spend some time over at Zlatto’s Bazaar – that Toydarian will show you what it really means to be a merchant!

Basic Training!

First off let’s start with defining some terms. Some of these may be familiar to you or similar to other games, and some are unique to TOR.

Resource Node: A resource node is an object in the game world (which varies by the type of gathering skill you have) that you or your companion can interact with to get extract materials used in the crafting process.

Schematics: This is the general term for the instructions on how to craft a specific item. You buy schematics from your chosen crafting skill trainer. There are also other ways to obtain schematics, such as rewards for missions, purchased on the GTN or through reverse engineering, explained below. Once you know a schematic, you never need to buy it again.

Crew Skills

In TOR, this is what the crafting system is called. Why? Because you won’t be the one doing the work! Your companions create all of your items back in the workshop on your starship (even before you have it, somehow!) By default when you right click on a resource node in the world, your companion will mine it. You can shift-right click and you will harvest it yourself. You can have up to 3 Crew Skills on a single character, only one of which can be a crafting skill. You can access your Crew Skills interface by pressing the ‘N’ key, or clicking the icon that looks like a diamond in the upper center menu.

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Posted by Cormeister | 3 Comments

Wild Space: Security, Crew Skills, And Datacrons

It’s a big galaxy our there, and Wild Space can be a dangerous place. Worry not, explorer – each week we’ll navigate you safely through the lost hyperspace routes of the Deep Core and track down the great articles and entertainment from around the SW:TOR fan community, all in less than 12 parsecs, of course!

In this shortened holiday edition of Wild Space, I would like to join with Darth Hater for a public service announcement about account security. Security breeches are a real problem for online games nowadays so it is advisable that  you take advantage of as many extra security features as you can to secure your account.

BioWare has already instituted policies to secure your account, including having every user create five security questions and has offered a security authentication token for two-factor authentication into your account. This means that to log into the game or website (and access your account information) you would need to use your password as well as the security key to access it. This makes your account more protected from the possibility of someone getting unauthorized access to your account.

To order a physical security key from BioWare ($4.00 + shipping) or download the mobile security key to your iOS or Android device, visit this website.

One of the innovative features of TOR is the Crew Skills system that allows your companions to craft and gather materials while you are out “playing the game”. For those of us (like me) who have never been able to get into crafting because of the time investment, or just didn’t find it interesting in other games, the Crew Skills system offers a fresh take on an MMO favorite.

If you are looking for ways to maximize all of your Crew Skills effectiveness, then this video by SWTORFace is for you. Also be sure to check out their diagram for which Crew Skill best supports another.

Are you a big explorer? Want to uncloak every map and view every mountain top? Well, if you are the Magellan type, then I would encourage you to read this write-up about the Datacron system from Corellian Run Radio. They will convince you why you will enjoy figuring out the puzzles required to get every Datacron.

If you would rather just get on with it and find all of those Datacrons because of the stat bonus that they provide, check out this article from SWTOR-Spy that lists all of the locations for every Datacron in the game as well as walk-throughs on how to get them all. (Warning! Spoilers on Datacon locations are contained within).

 

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