Below you’ll find an index of all of our Friday Features over the years. There is a wealth of great information, so be sure to take a look!
Tag Archives: Crafting
Friday Feature: Housing on EiF
Welcome to the Friday Feature edition of Better Homes and Galaxies, here on Empire in Flames. This edition will review all the latest and greatest prefabricated residential and commercial units available throughout the galaxy, where they can be built, and more.
(Important Note: For now, we focus on unique housing that is available via one-time schematics. Housing native to the Architect skill will be added soon)
Friday Feature! Powerups: Cornerstone of an Empire
In today’s Friday Feature, Demiurge once again provides insight into another important aspect of crafting – powerups! So without further ado…
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Powerups: Cornerstone of an Empire
Last week, I wrote about Armorsmithing on EiF. This week I wanted to write another article to address questions, opinions, and concerns about crafting in general in SWG. Crafting comes in many forms in this game. More and more often, I hear people commenting on how it’s impossible to gain a foothold into it or compete with established players. This article is intended to specifically address that misconception.
Most people who have played on EiF for any length of time know who I am. I am primarily associated with the crafting of armor, even though I also make weapons, artisan wares, some architect items, and every now and then clothing, BE, and medical items too. But here’s one of my biggest secrets: I make a large chunk of my credits crafting an item that a new player can make within a day or two of character creation… Powerups.
So just like with last week’s write-up, I will break down what it takes to craft them. As you might suspect, Powerups are one of the easiest items to craft in the game. There are no subcomponents and each craft takes a combined 10 resources: 6 minerals and 4 chemicals.
Here are the essential factors that will determine your success or failure:
- Your resources – This is the single most important factor in determining a Powerup’s statistics.
- The crafter – Are you a Master Artisan? That’s all you need. No need for any extra tapes. No need to be anything other than a 10 point crafter.
- Your crafting tool – The stats of your crafting tool matter (again, the crafting station does not). You will want a Weapon, Droid, and General Item crafting tool.
- Where are you performing the craft – Crafting in a player city is always the most desirable way to make something. As with other types of crafting, Research Centers are the best location to craft a powerup (as each individual craft will use a ton of single-point experimentation rolls).
- PATIENCE – I mention this one last, but it is really just as important as the resources you use. This is because it takes a tremendous amount of patience to craft, scrap a craft that isn’t exactly what you want, and try again. I have been known to scrap over a thousand attempts for a single one I like enough to turn into a factory schematic.
Food and Drink are irrelevant for crafting powerups, as are Skill Enhancing Attachments. They are not needed, and even without them, you will still be able to craft server-capped powerups. Please note: while it is not important to have more than 10 experimentation points for powerup crafting, having +25s to both assembly and especially experimentation will still be beneficial in the sense of improving each experimentation roll to help with its quality… but it is not mandatory. Before I get into the discussion on how to make a powerup, I would like to share an old website that has a lot of valuable information pertaining to the crafting of powerups. I will fill in the blanks as they apply to EiF, since the website’s data is not 100% accurate for us. Nevertheless, Agock wrote an excellent guide for its time, and I still reference it on occasion to remind myself what stat combinations are possible.
https://www.swgemu.com/archive/scrapbookv51/data/20070205033706/index.html
What Exactly is a Powerup?
A powerup is a simple crafted item that is added to any normal weapon you might want to use (heavy Commando weapons such as a flame thrower or acid rifle and a Bounty Hunter’s Light Lightning Cannon are examples of weapons that can not be augmented with a powerup). A powerup consists of a primary stat modification, and any number of smaller, secondary stat modifications (anywhere from zero to five, depending on the type of powerup crafted). The primary stat modification is the major upgrade. For purposes of example, please see the picture below:
This is a basic, 4-stat melee powerup. The primary modification is the first stat listed (Attack Speed). The other stats listed below are secondary modifications. EiF has modified the “uses left” stat for our server. On any other server I’ve seen (including live), powerups each have 100 uses. Here, they last 10 times as long (1000 uses). This is a major quality of life improvement for players because, for some end-game content (or PvP), it would be extremely easy to blow through those 100 uses and have to worry about placing another PuP (short for Powerup) on your weapon, mid-battle. As someone who has crafted them for years, I will also tell you that they still sell daily.. so it is not a market killer (as you simply sell them for more than elsewhere).
EiF Armor Crafting 101
In today’s feature, we bring you a very in-depth write-up on armorsmithing by the illustrious armor crafter Demiurge. In this article, Demi outlines what it takes to be a successful armorsmith on Empire in Flames as well as give insight into the changed systems you’ll find, some best practices, and tools of the trade to help any aspiring crafters become the best they can be and in his words, “knock him off of his pedestal”. Thank you, Demiurge!
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EiF Armor Crafting 101
Introduction
The purpose of this guide is to explain how armor crafting works on EiF and demonstrate how it is different from any other server you might have played on. I intend to explain every important aspect and consideration in order to teach you how to craft armor with the exact same stats that I am able to currently make. I have been making armor continuously on our server for the last three years. In that time, due to the among of sheer work I’ve put into it, I believe I have become the dominant armor crafter here. I hope to teach and inspire you to be able to match what I am capable of, and ultimately to surpass me.
For those of you who have experience crafting armor on any other SWG server, a good bit of this will be familiar or previously understood the content. But what makes armor different on EiF is the usage of armor cores. The purpose of an armor core is to allow all types of armor to be of similar or equal stats. A core consists of up to three armor segments, with each segment containing zero to nine armor layers. Armor on EiF requires one to five armor cores, depending on the armor type. This means that, unlike other servers where specific segment types are required for its corresponding armor type (composite or advanced composite segments to go into any piece of composite), the same armor core can be used in ANY armor type. This modification to the system allows basically all armor types to be craftable within a very tight range of stats between one another (I will explain further below) and opens the door to a wide array of looks, styles, and viable options. You won’t just see people running around in RIS or Composite.
Before I break down layers, segments, and cores further, it is important for you to understand how a piece of armor gets its stats. On EIF, 95% of the stats provided to a final, crafted piece of armor comes from the armor core itself. The remaining 5% are derived from the final assembly resources that are specific to a type of armor. For example, crafting a piece of RIS would require (among other things), a specific resource like Platinite Copper, while a piece of Bone armor would require a generic resource such as “metal”. This fact alone allows Bone armor to have a much wider array of possible resources to satisfy that requirement. This is critical because all resources have min and max possible stats in several key areas that are very important to armor. Plantinite has a less advantageous range of stats than many other types of metal, such as steel, iron, or even other types of copper. This deviation in final assembly resource requirements is what allows a range of 1-5% variance between what you might see on the final crafted product (speaking specifically on the final types of damage resistances). The maximum craftable resist per damage type is a theoretical 55%. If perfectly sliced by a Smuggler, this value can reach 60%.
Halyn, and sometimes in conjunction with various staff members, has made numerous design decisions that set EiF apart from how things are done elsewhere. In an attempt to completely eliminate spawn camping, the team has removed the ability to use looted components from various mobs as augments to crafted armor pieces. Items like Janta Hides, Rancor Hides, etc, are not used in armor crafting here. Therefore, the essential factors that determine your final product are:
- Your resources – This is the single most important factor in determining armor’s final quality.
- The crafter – Are you a 12 point smith, fully taped for assembly and experimentation?
- Your crafting tool – The stats of your crafting tool matter (while the stats on the crafting station itself does not). The maximum stat of a crafting tool is a 15.0
- Food/Drink – Foods such as Pyollian Cake will offer a decent assembly bonus to your crafting roll, helping your chances of crafting an amazing assembly. Drinks such as Bespin Port will do the exact same thing for each of your experimentation rolls. Experimentation is the more desired buff of the two (though both can be utilized at the same time).
- Where you perform the craft – Crafting in a player city is always the most desirable way to make something. A level 5 player city gains the ability to set a “city bonus”. Two of these (Manufacturing Center = Assembly bonus, and Research Center = Experimentation bonus) grants bonuses to every craft that occurs within its city limits.
These are the five factors to keep in mind when you craft something. Other factors, such as a crafter’s current battle fatigue or wounds do not factor into the crafting equation! With this in mind, let’s look at the single most important factor in your crafting process: the resources used.
Friday Feature: Last Six Months! Whew!
I took a little hiatus and returned recently to so many updates and additions to an Empire in Flames. I started to compile the list and realized I likely wasn’t the only one who would like to know what EiF has been up to! It was a lot of fun turning the devs loose on the list I started. I was able to see which areas were important to each staff member. EiF is blessed to have gathered a diverse group of people who give so much to the community. Contributing to this article was Halyn, Anishor, Jeil, Kelta, Phoenix, and Abi.
Enjoy! If you haven’t visited EiF in awhile, this is the time! The Easter event is coming and Anniversary Week is around the corner!
Content
- Planets
- Coruscant
- Moncal
- Screenplay added
- Kuat
- Screenplay added
- Chandrila
- Hoth
- Instances
- Sith Shrine
- Nym’s Auction coming soon!
- Loot
- Tatooine, Dantooine, and Dathomir have receive major loot overhauls
- 650+ new paintings added
- Corvette SBD Loot Tables Fixed
- Faction Recruiters
- More items
- GCW
- Warfame
- New planetary control system
- Planetary Control Bonuses
- Painting Vendor
- AOJ’s Original Artwork
- Annual Events
- Anniversary Riddles
- Boonta Eve
- Galactic Egg Hunt
- Sponsored by A.M.A.
- EiF Events
- Jato RP Campaigns
- The Exchange – Black Market (Get sponsor 😛 )
Crafting
- Architect
- New wall appearance added
- Some furniture has color choices added
- New craftable houses
- Armorsmith
- New craftable armor types
- Artisan
- Flooring appearances – 100+
- Bio-Engineer
- Backpacks can now be crafted with BE tissues.
- Droid Engineer
- C1 Droids
- Wearable Dark Trooper Exoskeleton
- BB Droids coming soon!
- Tailor
- Backpacks can now be crafted with BE tissues.
- Armored dusters
- Weaponsmith
- Updated Proton Carbine with original fire & sound effects.
Quality of Life
- Newsnet Terminals in Starports
- Patch notes
- GCW updates
- Galactic Politics Results (Imperial Council/NR Senators)
- Planetary Control
- Current events
- Player Sponsored
- Weekly Game Night
- New Zeltros Lottery
- Galactic Racing Circuit
- EiF Sponsored
- Player Sponsored
- Around the Galaxy
- Player City banks also have a Bazaar terminal
- /Rattle can be used to make your pets/droids “Talk”
- NPC droids now come in variety of colors.
- New armor encumbrance calculations – minisuits now equivalent to full suits
- Player buildings can now have additional lots added to increase storage – assign as many of your 10 lots as you’d like to a building you own
- Locked briefcases can now be sliced
- HIgh-speed airspeeders – T-16 Skyhoppers, T-47 Airspeeders, Twin Pod Cloud Cars
Combat Professions and Skills
Smuggler
- Last Ditch has been updated – use it as a last ditch.
- Added Shoot First – used to initiate combat
- Added Lucky Strike – roll the dice and be rewarded with a high damage special
Doctor
- Revive Player now revives player with more than 1 health.
Melee Damage SEAs turned on, gives up to 5% extra damage
Sandarie, Community Manager