test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Crafting Guide
ihatepwe735
Member Posts: 337 Arc User
in The Academy
Are there any good crafting guides dealing with end-game crafting?
I mean, this weekend was an Upgrade boost weekend and I intended to craft and upgrade some things, but I didn't because I didn't want to waste my R&D resources making things inefficiently, or which at the end game would be far better sourced from elsewhere such as the Rep or Fleet stores.
So;
* what things can I make using crafting that are better than, or at least competitive with items obtained elsewhere?
* What is the basic process for making and upgrading an item?
* Is it ever advisable to make or use any of the lower level upgrade kits?
* I thought 15 was the max level for crafting, but Ive run the 20h missions on at least one school to 15 and it lets me keep on levelling?
I mean, this weekend was an Upgrade boost weekend and I intended to craft and upgrade some things, but I didn't because I didn't want to waste my R&D resources making things inefficiently, or which at the end game would be far better sourced from elsewhere such as the Rep or Fleet stores.
So;
* what things can I make using crafting that are better than, or at least competitive with items obtained elsewhere?
* What is the basic process for making and upgrading an item?
* Is it ever advisable to make or use any of the lower level upgrade kits?
* I thought 15 was the max level for crafting, but Ive run the 20h missions on at least one school to 15 and it lets me keep on levelling?
0
Comments
The maximum level is in fact 20, level 15 is important because it unlocks traits and all the items, but at that level you can only make them at purple quality (and if you're crafting items, you really want a chance for ultra-rares. )
Check out the exchange to see what sells at what prices to gauge if you want it crafted or bought (or crafted and sold.) Checking out popular builds can also give you ideas. CrtD*alot space weapons, ultra-rare special consoles (like conductive RCS or exotic particle exciter) with right kind of bonus, omnibeams... But since making those (except ordinary weapons) requires a lot of dilithium, more than a day of time (20h for the item and a few more hours for dilithium components) and may result in an item that sells at meagre 100k EC it's quite a bit of a gamble. With ordinary weapons the strategy is usually to make them at MK II, discard all that aren't CrtDx3 (or whatever the current meta) and either upgrade or sell the rest.
If you're in a smallish fleet without built-up lab and spire or if you want your new alts to have deluxe equipment as they level, crafted secondary deflectors and plasma warp cores can (with some luck) be as good as elite fleet stuff, again craft at MKII until you get all the nice stats then upgrade to whatever mark your alt can use (this is one place where non-purple upgrades may be useful, so you won't overshoot your target MK.)
Upgrades are a more dependable path to space riches, - get as many schools as you can to lvl 15+, farm a ton of Z particles (every upgrade uses at least one, sometimes more) and other blue materials, as many purple materials (and optionally Salvaged Tech) as you can and make as many of whatever upgrade is the most expensive right now, preferable during an upgrade weekend, then sell.
There are a couple potential uses for below-purple upgrades, but honestly, apart from that one case above, they're mostly a waste of dilithium.
- you can make items with the mods you want, up to a point. If you want an antiproton critd X 4 dual beam bank, you can make one ... eventually. You cant get stuff like THAT anywhere else for anything like reasonable amounts of funds.
- its account bound. If you have alts, and don't want to spend the next 20 years crafting to get a set of weapons for each character, you can just share one set once you get them!
Weapons are the big one. A few specific consoles ... the RCS consle, the SCI console are really good if you get the right mods. The special torp is sweet. Several ground items are nice. All in all, many items are on par with rep / fleet items.
I make items at mark 2 and upgrade them.
MK2 items use very few components.
they are almost always purple quality.
they have more chances to go to UR early rather than grinding it at XIV
you can make more of them faster to get that critdx4 weapon
I can't recall if lower upgrade kits let you use more quality upgrade tokens for a higher upgrade chance or not. THat would be the only reason, its more dil efficient to make superiors.
I took my uncommon palm phaser Mk2 to epic quality by Mk8 while my Ultra Rare Mk 14 Beam Array took an ungodly amount of upgrades to get to Epic. My Mk14, if it could have, would be a Mk18 with all the upgrades I had to sink into it.
I did buy a Disrupter MKII Compression Pistol and slotted the Omega Token in it just to see what the Upgrade prospect would be. I saw that it completely fills the Upgrade XP bar as well as the Rarity XP bar. Does the excess XP in both bars carry over towards the next level up/rarity up?
Thanks in advance!
The best thing to do before crafting anything is to check prices on the Exchange for whatever it is you want to craft. Sometimes the item you want to craft is relatively cheap so it is it quicker to simply buy the item from the Exchange rather than crafting it on your own and praying to the RND gods that you get what you want, or close enough. For example, I my “ideal” very rare weapon has [CrtD]x2 [CrtH] mods. That is because I do not belong in a fleet so I cannot purchase Vulnerability Locators to increase my critical hit chances. The [CrtH] at least gives me a +2% critical chance on top of the normal 2.5% critical chance a starship would have. While the critical hit chance for Vulnerability Locators stack on top of each other, the [CrtH] mod is specific to the weapon that has the mod.
Over this past weekend I was thinking about putting my Fed Tac Toon in a Guardian Cruiser so I wanted to craft Anti-Proton Beam Array Mk II [CrtD]x2 [CrtH]. Always craft Mk II gear, then upgrade up them; the higher the mark, the more resources it will require to craft. But more importantly, you decrease the number of attempts you have to upgrade the item’s rarity. I searched the Exchange and found these weapons selling between 4k to 10k EC; that is pretty cheap. I bought a dozen of them… just in case when I upgrade them they do not get the mods that I want and/or are not upgraded to epic on the first attempt.
Just for the hell of it I decided to craft 10 Anti-Proton Beam Array Mk II weapons and none of them had the mods I wanted or were not worth much on the Exchange; meaning the weapon was worth less than 50k EC or could not be sold on the Exchange after a few attempts at re-listing them. However, between vendor trash crafted weapons and what was sold on the Exchange, I more or less covered the cost of buying the weapons.
Upgrade Process – Upgrade Kits & Research Accelerators
Never buy or craft anything less than Superior Upgrade Kits. Every time you use an upgrade kit (excluding Omega Upgrade Kits) you will be eating away at your Refined Dilithium and the amount of Dil used is not proportional to the tech points applied by the upgrade kit. For example, a Superior Upgrade Kit will give your item 12.8k tech points and will cost you 1075 Dil. Improved Upgrade Kit will give your item 5k tech points, but it will cost you 950 Dil to use it. Therefore, never use less than Superior Upgrade Kits. Omega Upgrade Kits provides 25.6k tech points and does not cost you any Dil.
When upgrading Mk II gear, I typically drop in a Research 1.5x Accelerator. These things used to be relatively inexpensive, prior to taking a 6 month hiatus after the 2015 Risan Summer Event I was purchasing these things off the Exchange whenever I saw them selling for less than 150k EC; I built up a decent stockpile, but I wish I bought much more of them. Now they generally sell for around 500k EC when I check their prices on the Exchange; I bought a few when I saw them for less than 450k EC, but that was only a few. I have not checked prices within the last 5 days. I think the Research 2.0x Accelerator sells for 2 million EC, but I don’t really look at them.
When Research 1.5x Accelerators were cheap, it was a no brainer to use them. I think when you use a Superior Upgrade Kit on Mk II gear, you get a 5% chance for it to increase in rarity every time you click the “upgrade” button until you run out of tech points, or it reaches as specific mark level where the rarity % automatically decreases. I forget at what mark level the % chance decreases, it might be Mk VI. I think at Mk X or XI the rarity % drops to 0%, or whenever you reach epic quality. The Research Accelerator (1.5x or 2.0x) increases your chances of the item increasing in rarity to either 7.5% (rounded down to 7% when displayed on the screen) or 10%, but you have to weigh in on whether or not the cost is justified.
When upgrading gear using the Omega Upgrade Kits I strongly recommend that you use a Research Accelerator. These kits give you a 20% at Mk II for the gear to increase in rarity (diminishes at specific mark levels) so using a Research Accelerator will increase the chance to either 30% or 40% depending on which one you use. I generally never use more than one Omega Upgrade Kit per gear. If it does not increase to epic, then so be it. I will either keep it as is or sell it on the Exchange. You get the best bang for your buck when using Omega Upgrade Kits on Mk II gear. Especially since the event to create these kits only comes once a year.
Upgrade Process – Upgrade Kits & Technology Accelerators
Once the gear you want to keep is either at epic or ultra rare (and you do not feel like spending a lot of resources to increase to epic), it is most likely not Mk XIV yet. For example, I have several epic phaser beam arrays that are either Mk IX or X (can’t remember). To get the gear to Mk XIV I would have to apply more tech points to level it up. At this point I believe it is better to use Superior Tech Upgrades instead of Omega Upgrade Kits, the primary reason is because of the 20% rarity increase chance when used on Mk II gear. The downside of using Superior Tech Upgrades is that they eat into your Refined Dil. If you do not want the upgrade process to devour your Dil, then you should apply Technology Accelerators (1.5x or 2.0x versions). I think the 1.5x versions cost around 350k EC the last time I check 5 days ago. Keep applying these things either quickly or slowly over time to get to Mk XIV; eventually you will get there.
Upgrade Process – Upgrading Ultra Rare Mk XIV to Epic
Okay first off, I have not done this myself, this is based off of what I have read from various thread. Therefore, take this with a grain of salt. There could be times where you want a piece of gear to get pushed to Epic rarity because it has awesome mods; like a weapon with [CrtD]x4. You have already pushed that weapon to Mk XIV, but you still want that [Acc/Dmg] mod that all epic weapons get. The way to do it is to apply Superior Tech Upgrades and Research Accelerators. The purpose of the Super Tech Upgrades is to allow you to apply the Research Accelerators. For Mk XIV gear, they serve no other purpose. You cannot apply Research Accelerators without them.
When Research Accelerators are applied to Mk XIV it slightly increases the chance for the item to be upgraded to Epic; probably by 1%. These accelerators will begin to stack the more you apply so that eventually you will have a decent chance for the item to be upgraded to Epic. For example, assuming with a 0% of rarity upgrade you pumped 20 Superior Tech Upgrades and 20 Research Accelerators into the item, but still it has not upgraded. The item would currently have a baseline of 20% chance to be upgraded to Epic. The next time to try to upgrade with a kit and accelerator you would have a 21% chance for the item to be upgraded to Epic. Worse case scenario would be dumping kits and accelerators until the bar reaches 100% at which point you cannot fail.
Again, I have no experience yet pushing an Ultra Rare Mk XIV piece of gear to Epic so take what I have written above with a grain of salt.
#1 – You get a trait for the school which you can select for your captain (space or ground depending on the trait) once you reach level 15 in that crafting school.
#2 – At level 15 you have a 100% guarantee to craft a very rare Mk II gear without failure using a common (white) Doff and without the need for a catalyst… or whatever they are called. If you are using higher quality Doffs, then you do not have to be level 15 in that school to be able to craft Very Rare Mk II gear with 100% certainty. You can do so at a lower level. I think you get 3% to 9% bonus (but not over 100%) depending on the quality (green, blue, purple) of the Doff.
#3 – At level 15 you can attempt to craft special gear (like Aegis set pieces, Conductive RCS console, Particle Emission Plasma Torpedo), but you will need to specific Doff (they are white) in order to do so. They can be purchased from the Exchange if you know their names, but they will be very expensive. Or you can random get them by spending around 2k Refined Dil to purchase crafting material packs from your local recruitment officer. These special Doffs are pretty rare drops. When viewing the details of these Doffs they will have a section which will tell you their crafting school specialty.
If you get one and you want to keep the Doff, then I recommend you slot them in either your space or ground Doff slot (whichever that applies to the specific Doff) so that the Doff is then bound to your character and you cannot accidently sell the Doff on the Exchange. I made that mistake once because generally want my Doffs to be of Rare (blue) or Very Rare (purple) quality. The one I had was capable of crafting Wide Arc Cannons. Not a big loss especially since my cannon crafting level was 4 at the time, but it is still a loss.
The special items that require a specific Doff are crafted at Mk XII only, therefore they require a lot of resources. The chances of successfully crafting these special items increases as you level beyond level 15 for that specific crafting school. Due to the amount of resources necessary, I would not bother crafting them until you reach level 20 in that crafting school.
#4 – Beyond level 15 the chances of you getting a “Critical Success” when crafting components increases as you approach level 20. “Critical Success” means you have successfully crafted 3 crafting components (like a focusing lens) instead of just one using the same amount of resources.