A somewhat random, short and to-the-point post today. I've had several conversations with guildies about crafting purple and gold augments lately (item rating 286 and 300 respectively), and when it comes to exchanging mats, they always seem to expect to just hand over the rarest parts required, with the crafter taking care of the rest. To be honest, in the past that's how crafting often worked, because basic materials were available aplenty and you didn't need that many of them for special crafts.
However, ever since the 6.0 crafting update, the requirements to craft some of the more high-end items have been pretty ridiculous in terms of materials required. This is due to the tier system that Bioware introduced at the time, which makes you start by crafting green quality components, then craft several of those into blue quality components, then craft several of those into purple quality components, all while introducing a multiplier at every step that can bring the total number of materials required to produce a single high-level item up into the hundreds.
And yet, if you look at all the current guides about augment crafting, they basically say "get these five rare mats... and then there's also some crew skill specific items, don't worry about those". I'm guessing the people who wrote those guides don't actually craft themselves, because I don't know how else you can be so dismissive of such a huge chunk of the process.
Anyway, I decided to do a full write-up of what's required for each augment in terms of base materials (which then need to be "crafted upwards" multiple times towards higher level components). Note that the materials for purple and gold augments are almost identical except that where the purple versions require 5 Legendary Embers, the gold requires a CM-1337 instead, which is the special mat that Cybertechs make out of 5 OEM-37 and 5 RPM-13 plus 5 Legendary Embers.
Mats for one Synthweaving augment (crit or redoubt/defense):
- 60x Artifact Data Spike
- 60x Artifact Lustrous Artifact Fragment
- 60x Artifact Lustrous Bondar Crystal
- 60x Artifact Woven Syntex
- 5x Legendary Ember (OR 1x CM-1337 for gold instead of purple)
- 108x Premium Data Spike
- 180x Premium Lustrous Artifact Fragment
- 180x Premium Lustrous Bondar Crystal
- 192x Premium Veda Cloth
- 108x Premium Woven Syntex
- 5x Processed Isotope Stabilizer
- 54x Prototype Data Spike
- 90x Prototype Lustrous Artifact Fragment
- 90x Prototype Lustrous Bondar Crystal
- 120x Prototype Veda Cloth
- 54x Prototype Woven Syntex
- 5x Solid Resource Matrix
- 384x Standard Veda Cloth
Mats for one Armormech augment (absorb or alacrity):
- 36x Artifact Data Spike
- 36x Artifact Fibrolite
- 60x Artifact Duranium Plating
- 60x Artifact Tempersteel
- 5x Legendary Ember (OR 1x CM-1337 for gold instead of purple)
- 108x Premium Data Spike
- 108x Premium Fibrolite
- 192x Premium Flerovium Flux
- 180x Premium Duranium Plating
- 180x Premium Tempersteel
- 5x Processed Isotope Stabilizer
- 54x Prototype Data Spike
- 90x Prototype Duranium Plating
- 54x Prototype Fibrolite
- 96x Prototype Flerovium Flux
- 90x Prototype Tempersteel
- 5x Solid Resource Matrix
- 384x Standard Flerovium Flux
Mats for one Armstech augment (accuracy, shield or versatile; versatile only exists in gold):
- 36x Artifact Dallorian
- 36x Artifact Data Spike
- 60x Artifact Tempersteel
- 60x Artifact Duranium Plating
- 5x Legendary Ember (OR 1x CM-1337 for gold instead of purple)
- 108x Premium Dallorian Scraps
- 108x Premium Data Spike
- 180x Premium Duranium Plating
- 192x Premium Flerovium Flux
- 180x Premium Tempersteel
- 5x Processed Isotope Stabilizer
- 54x Prototype Data Spike
- 54x Prototype Dallorian Scraps
- 90x Prototype Duranium Plating
- 96x Prototype Flerovium Flux
- 90x Prototype Tempersteel
- 5x Solid Resource Matrix
- 384x Standard Flerovium Flux
As you can see, it adds up to a lot. I crafted an augment for a guildie today after he'd handed me the mats for a CM-1337, the Isotope Stabilizers and the Resource Matrices, and when I did the maths for the "rest" that I had contributed, it added up to 60 million credits in value. Now, that's not worth as much as it used to be, but it's still a lot to spend on essentially doing someone else a favour. So crafters, don't let yourselves be ripped off! And if you're looking to get someone else to craft augments for you, be mindful of all the materials required - their amount and cost is not as trivial as many people seem to think.
That really starkly shows just how involved those purple and gold augments are. As a casual I've mainly stuck with blues on alts with a few purples on my main character. It makes the high price of the augments on the GTN a bit more understandable. (Yeah, inflation is rampant on the GTN, but this at least gives the high price of augments context.)
ReplyDeleteI hope when they add a new tier of crafting or do a revamp they move away from this style of crafting. Making A to make B to make C just drives more casual players out of crafting due to the costs.