DoctorSass
New Member
Hello, I hope everyone is doing great! I am a miner in game tiptoeing into crafting and I have run into a bit of an issue with Toulan: Technician BPs. Personally, I think the items on Toulan are cool to look at, have great stats, but are nearly impossible to craft. With a planet that so clearly understands the need to be anti-uber as the best framework to make this game fun for both noobs and ubers, this is out of order.
Crafting is itself not a beginner friendly profession, but there are several things to consider. 1) Toulan and Monria have the best crafting daily for noobs. 2) Toulan has arguably the best hunter and mining dailies (mokhat and thana) for noobs 3) UL BPs that make efficient (L) like Toulan is a strategy that mindark has adopted for ArMatrix and Hyperion Aurora.
To set a few ascertions:
TOULAN'S CURRENT BPs
I'm mostly going to focus on "hard" items: weapons and tools
There are a few meta-structures here that don't make sense: cost/level, running costs, number of ingredients, calypso resources,and nawa vials. It would cost $1000s of USD to max a BP yourself. Obviously it's best to buy if that's the goal, but it makes passive grinding BPs non feasable.
The first thing that should jump out at you is both how cheap the level 2 guns are and how expensive the level 1 finder/excavator are. Don't get me wrong, the Toulan guns are great gun BP grinders technically (not in practice, I'll get into it), but it doesn't make sense to have level 2 BPs cost 1/5 or 1/20th of the price to run as a level 1 BP. Any new player would need to immediately have 300 USD of materials to make the level one tool. They would have to grind spaceship repair to get blueprint comprehension and then get to level 7.5 laser weapon engineer to get into ~30 USD crafting runs.
The finder is expensive but the low level excavator and medical tool seem almost pointless: why level those inefficient bps when the tt versions are just easier for someone of the appropriate level to use? At that cost, you can't even BP farm.
There are lots of ingredients for the BPs. The mix of ore and enmatter and mix of Calypso and Toulan resources makes the resources harder to source. This many resources means either buying from different sources or more dynamic mining and resource allocation. This isn't noob friendly at all. Knowing how to isolate resources by region and depth takes time and finding sellers who have done that is also not easy. It makes the progression of miner -> gun maker that is everywhere else in the game not viable on Toulan. There is a reason everyone just makes EPs. I get using Caly resources to some degree but caldorite, belkar, and iron don't have the universality that lysterium does. Lyst is the schrapnel of mining, it is available, the other ores are competing with an already saturated mining loot pool if you're getting it here. Or you are worried about pirates if you are importing from caly where you can actually get those resources in any meanful amount.
And then there is the Nawa Vials. I love the sci-fantasy magitek stuff so much but Nawa is a nightmare to get any signifigant amount of. 38 nawa vials in a level 1 BP, you have to be joking.
OTHER PLANETS BPs:
I'm not going to harp too much, especially cuz I'm tired of looking up MU for things. It is fairly obviously once you look at other planet's default, technician BPs that they are on average signifigantly cheaper and simpler. Most BPs are 2 - 3 ingredients and are ~1ped per run. Very different than the Toulan 4-5 ingredients at 6peds to run (averaging inconsistent ranges is weird).
PROPOSED FUTURE BPs
I like the idea of having UL BPs for low level (L) items and having to craft grind to get (L) BPs of higher level items. I think that does help keep crafting somewhat robust. The default crafted (L) guns on toulan are good for punies and the higher level (L) would be useful. A common meta is crafting Jester D-1 -> ArMatrix BP grinding for guns higher level players want. This cycles lots of caly material and drives in-game costs from players. This is financially good for calypso because they earn on the crafting loss and spend nothing on other players trading BPs. They may even profit on AH/Mall fees and they profit everytime the (L) gives fails or partial successes. Encouraging crafting of cheap low level items on toulan would bring revenue to Toulan and add slightly new, aesthetically and mechanically new items to the game. Refactoring new BPs would make this process much more feasable. I have some ideas.
Technician Remix BP Books/Pages
Adopting the Rocktropia BP remix forumla. On Rocktropia there are lockpicks which are used for instances. The original BP uses a monster item Dream that is itself found in higher level instances. They added a lootable remix for lockpicks that removes the monster loot and increases the ore, enmatter, and planet component item. The costs are the same, but now you don't need a rare drop item from an instance you wouldn't have the skills to enter. This could be the same exact item outputs but with different ingredients at the same TT cost. This is still prohibitively expensive for Toulan but also I think the least friction MindArk would have. I'll give examples with the Sabad Finder:
Sabad Finder M2 Reforged (L) BP UL- 27x Aqeeq Ingot and 25x Zircon Ingot - 5.37 PEDs TT value
Sabad Finder M2 Reforged (L) BP UL- 25x Aqeeq Ingot, 25x Zircon Ingot, 15x Mokhat Jelly - 5.37 PEDs TT value (more hunter money, nawa esque)
Sabad Finder M2 Reforged (L) BP UL- 25x Aqeeq Ingot, 25x Zircon Ingot, 6x Nawa Vials - 5.37 PEDs TT value (please chill with the nawa)
Thana's BPs or QUWA BPs or DSEC BPs
The Thana daily mining quest is super great, love it, do it all the time. You could do either a new quest or add on into the current daily a way to get new remixed blueprints. A new quest idea might just be a fetch/turn in quest for resources. Turn in 10p of aqeeq and 10p of nawa and 10p of whatever. Once you've turned in the resources you get new BPs + shrapnel. An alternative is a crafting mission where you run the current crafting BPs a certain number of times and then get alternative BPs.
I think something like this where you get BPs after essentially giving up toulan resources would make more sense for "cheaper" BPs that create the same or very similar item. To continue to previous section:
"Thana's" Sabad Finder M2 (L) BP UL- 9x Aqeeq Ingot and 9x Zircon Ingot - 1.89 PEDs TT value (current aqeeq and zircon count in bp)
QUWA Member Finder M2 (L) BP UL - 10x Aqeeq Ingot, 5x Zircon Ingot, 5x Nawa Vials - 1.45 PEDs TT value (again chill with the nawa)
"Thana's" Fanoos Medical V2 (L) BP UL - 50x Aqeeq Ingot, 50x Youd Bottle, 50x Sham Sand - 7.5 PEDs TT value (i think this TT is more in line with level 3 medical tools)
Mirsal and Elder Tokens
Adding CUHOF loot as a crafting utility is a great idea for Mirsal Token BPs. A lot of people come to Toulan for the CUHOF stuff and many local power players run it all the time. Maybe have level 1/2 BPs for items so that poor babies like me can contribute. I would love to spend mirsal on cheap baby gun, attackment, finder, excavator crafting. I think everything in the Mirsal and Elder Token store should be newish (if caly can reskin stuff and call it something else, why not you).
I do think reformatting the old BPs would be a wiser "fix" to current crafting/mining/hunting/trading woes, but I think adding low level (L) blueprints to the planetary daily token systems would useful for those of us who just aren't going to deposit anything over $100/month. I'd love a one off gun to hunt tabtabs or mokhats.
Crafting is itself not a beginner friendly profession, but there are several things to consider. 1) Toulan and Monria have the best crafting daily for noobs. 2) Toulan has arguably the best hunter and mining dailies (mokhat and thana) for noobs 3) UL BPs that make efficient (L) like Toulan is a strategy that mindark has adopted for ArMatrix and Hyperion Aurora.
To set a few ascertions:
- It takes around 500 runs for the variability in the entropian system start to even out
- it's more but I'm using a more attainable number, I prefer 1000+
- Crafting at Max SIB
- Crafting at Full Quantity
- ~5000 runs to max a QR
- 38% true success on Maxed QR
TOULAN'S CURRENT BPs
I'm mostly going to focus on "hard" items: weapons and tools
| Name | Level | Ingredient 1 | Ingredient 2 | Ingredient 3 | Ingredient 4 | Ingredient 5 | TT Cost | MU Cost | Full Run |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sabad Finder M2 (L) | 1 | 4 Caldorite Ingot | 9 Aqeeq Ingot | 9 Mamnoon Mist | 9 Zircon Ingot | 5.37 | ~5.98 | 2991.45 | |
| ARD Excavator M2 (L) | 1 | 32 Belkar Ingot | 30 Aqeeq Ingot | 38 Nawa Vial | 12 Ghali Powder | 5 Caldorite Ingot | 10.87 | ~12.10 | 6050.05 |
| Sahra MK2 (L) | 2 | 4 Lysterium Ingot | 6 Aqeeq Ingot | 16 Nawa Vial | 2 Zircon Ingot | 1.10 | ~1.53 | 766.70 | |
| Hojoom G2 (L) | 2 | 4 Melchi Crystal | 1 Aqeeq Ingot | 11 Nawa Vial | 3 Sham Sand | 0.43 | ~0.67 | 333.25 | |
| Fanoos Medical V2 (L) | 3 | 30 Iron Ingot | 50 Aqeeq Ingot | 40 Youd Bottle | 30 Sham Sand | 18.20 | ~18.74 | 9370.50 |
There are a few meta-structures here that don't make sense: cost/level, running costs, number of ingredients, calypso resources,and nawa vials. It would cost $1000s of USD to max a BP yourself. Obviously it's best to buy if that's the goal, but it makes passive grinding BPs non feasable.
The first thing that should jump out at you is both how cheap the level 2 guns are and how expensive the level 1 finder/excavator are. Don't get me wrong, the Toulan guns are great gun BP grinders technically (not in practice, I'll get into it), but it doesn't make sense to have level 2 BPs cost 1/5 or 1/20th of the price to run as a level 1 BP. Any new player would need to immediately have 300 USD of materials to make the level one tool. They would have to grind spaceship repair to get blueprint comprehension and then get to level 7.5 laser weapon engineer to get into ~30 USD crafting runs.
The finder is expensive but the low level excavator and medical tool seem almost pointless: why level those inefficient bps when the tt versions are just easier for someone of the appropriate level to use? At that cost, you can't even BP farm.
There are lots of ingredients for the BPs. The mix of ore and enmatter and mix of Calypso and Toulan resources makes the resources harder to source. This many resources means either buying from different sources or more dynamic mining and resource allocation. This isn't noob friendly at all. Knowing how to isolate resources by region and depth takes time and finding sellers who have done that is also not easy. It makes the progression of miner -> gun maker that is everywhere else in the game not viable on Toulan. There is a reason everyone just makes EPs. I get using Caly resources to some degree but caldorite, belkar, and iron don't have the universality that lysterium does. Lyst is the schrapnel of mining, it is available, the other ores are competing with an already saturated mining loot pool if you're getting it here. Or you are worried about pirates if you are importing from caly where you can actually get those resources in any meanful amount.
And then there is the Nawa Vials. I love the sci-fantasy magitek stuff so much but Nawa is a nightmare to get any signifigant amount of. 38 nawa vials in a level 1 BP, you have to be joking.
OTHER PLANETS BPs:
| Name | Level | Ingredient 1 | Ingredient 2 | Ingredient 3 | Ingredient 4 | Ingredient 5 | TT Cost | MU Cost | Full Run |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finder F-101 | 1 | 3 Cumbriz | 3 Lysterium Ingot | 3 Melchi Crystal | 1.11 | ~1.14 | 571.05 | ||
| TerraMaster 1 (L) | 1 | 1 Star Dust | 4 Fuel Cells | 14 Hydrogen Gas | 19 Ospra Ingot | 2.06 | ~2.24 | 1120.70 | |
| GYRO FAP-2 (L) | 1 | 8 Animal Thyroid | 9 Lysterium Ingot | 13 Oil | 1.33 | ~1.36 | 677.65 | ||
| Demonic Excavator MK-1 (L) | 2 | 25 Alternative Ingot | 8 Lysterium Ingot | 0.99 | ~1.06 | 532.35 | |||
| Demonic Refiner MK-1 (L) | 2 | 4 Belkar Ingot | 6 Alternative Ingot | 0.42 | ~0.46 | 228.90 | |||
| Mann MPH | 1 | 4 Lysterium Ingot | 2 Narcanisum Ingot | 1 Garcen Lubricant | 0.8 | ~0.85 | 423.80 | ||
| Jester D-1 | 1 | 2 Iron Ingot | 2 Belkar Ingot | 1 Melchi Crystal | 0.94 | ~0.97 | 483.60 | ||
| Enkidd Dire S1 (L) | 1 | 10 Kaisenite Ingot | 5 Jagged Tooth | 0.7 | ~0.77 | 385 |
I'm not going to harp too much, especially cuz I'm tired of looking up MU for things. It is fairly obviously once you look at other planet's default, technician BPs that they are on average signifigantly cheaper and simpler. Most BPs are 2 - 3 ingredients and are ~1ped per run. Very different than the Toulan 4-5 ingredients at 6peds to run (averaging inconsistent ranges is weird).
PROPOSED FUTURE BPs
I like the idea of having UL BPs for low level (L) items and having to craft grind to get (L) BPs of higher level items. I think that does help keep crafting somewhat robust. The default crafted (L) guns on toulan are good for punies and the higher level (L) would be useful. A common meta is crafting Jester D-1 -> ArMatrix BP grinding for guns higher level players want. This cycles lots of caly material and drives in-game costs from players. This is financially good for calypso because they earn on the crafting loss and spend nothing on other players trading BPs. They may even profit on AH/Mall fees and they profit everytime the (L) gives fails or partial successes. Encouraging crafting of cheap low level items on toulan would bring revenue to Toulan and add slightly new, aesthetically and mechanically new items to the game. Refactoring new BPs would make this process much more feasable. I have some ideas.
Technician Remix BP Books/Pages
Adopting the Rocktropia BP remix forumla. On Rocktropia there are lockpicks which are used for instances. The original BP uses a monster item Dream that is itself found in higher level instances. They added a lootable remix for lockpicks that removes the monster loot and increases the ore, enmatter, and planet component item. The costs are the same, but now you don't need a rare drop item from an instance you wouldn't have the skills to enter. This could be the same exact item outputs but with different ingredients at the same TT cost. This is still prohibitively expensive for Toulan but also I think the least friction MindArk would have. I'll give examples with the Sabad Finder:
Sabad Finder M2 Reforged (L) BP UL- 27x Aqeeq Ingot and 25x Zircon Ingot - 5.37 PEDs TT value
Sabad Finder M2 Reforged (L) BP UL- 25x Aqeeq Ingot, 25x Zircon Ingot, 15x Mokhat Jelly - 5.37 PEDs TT value (more hunter money, nawa esque)
Sabad Finder M2 Reforged (L) BP UL- 25x Aqeeq Ingot, 25x Zircon Ingot, 6x Nawa Vials - 5.37 PEDs TT value (please chill with the nawa)
Thana's BPs or QUWA BPs or DSEC BPs
The Thana daily mining quest is super great, love it, do it all the time. You could do either a new quest or add on into the current daily a way to get new remixed blueprints. A new quest idea might just be a fetch/turn in quest for resources. Turn in 10p of aqeeq and 10p of nawa and 10p of whatever. Once you've turned in the resources you get new BPs + shrapnel. An alternative is a crafting mission where you run the current crafting BPs a certain number of times and then get alternative BPs.
I think something like this where you get BPs after essentially giving up toulan resources would make more sense for "cheaper" BPs that create the same or very similar item. To continue to previous section:
"Thana's" Sabad Finder M2 (L) BP UL- 9x Aqeeq Ingot and 9x Zircon Ingot - 1.89 PEDs TT value (current aqeeq and zircon count in bp)
QUWA Member Finder M2 (L) BP UL - 10x Aqeeq Ingot, 5x Zircon Ingot, 5x Nawa Vials - 1.45 PEDs TT value (again chill with the nawa)
"Thana's" Fanoos Medical V2 (L) BP UL - 50x Aqeeq Ingot, 50x Youd Bottle, 50x Sham Sand - 7.5 PEDs TT value (i think this TT is more in line with level 3 medical tools)
Mirsal and Elder Tokens
Adding CUHOF loot as a crafting utility is a great idea for Mirsal Token BPs. A lot of people come to Toulan for the CUHOF stuff and many local power players run it all the time. Maybe have level 1/2 BPs for items so that poor babies like me can contribute. I would love to spend mirsal on cheap baby gun, attackment, finder, excavator crafting. I think everything in the Mirsal and Elder Token store should be newish (if caly can reskin stuff and call it something else, why not you).
I do think reformatting the old BPs would be a wiser "fix" to current crafting/mining/hunting/trading woes, but I think adding low level (L) blueprints to the planetary daily token systems would useful for those of us who just aren't going to deposit anything over $100/month. I'd love a one off gun to hunt tabtabs or mokhats.