Crafting Changes in Fallen Empire

In Knights of the Fallen Empire, we are making quite a few adjustments to how Crafting will work. In this blog we will cover each of these changes and how they will affect your character in Fallen Empire. Ultimately we had a handful of goals for our crafting changes:

• Balance the Crafting skills, so that the benefits of all Crafting skills are relatively equal.
• Improve the quality of Crafted items, so that Crafting is a valid method to gear yourself.
• Ease the barrier of entry, making Crafting easier to understand for our newer players.

Let's get started.

General Crew Skill Changes
While leveling in STAR WARS: The Old Republic, we want to ensure that Crew Skills are a way to help supplement your experience. We have made a few changes to help streamline your experience with Crew Skills from 1-65, including some quality of life changes:

• The Crew Skill cap will remain at 500, there is no cap increase in 4.0.
• The Crafting skill "groups" have been removed and are no longer needed to improve your Crafting skill.
  • Example: when you hit 400 Crafting skill, you do not need to visit the trainer to move the cap up to 450. 
• All Crafting has been organized into 8 Grades . This is to help clarify the different crafting tiers, allowing crafters the ability to easily determine what crafting materials they need for what items. All existing Items and Missions have been adjusted to fit into these Grades. Here is a detailed breakdown:
  • Grade 1: Level 10-16: 0-80
  • Grade 2: Level 16-24: 80-160
  • Grade 3: Level 24-32: 160-240
  • Grade 4: Level 32-40: 240-300
  • Grade 5: Level 40-56: 300-350
  • Grade 6: Level 46-51: 350-400
  • Grade 7: Level 51-55: 400-450
  • Grade 8: Level 55+: 450-500

Crafting Skill Changes
Every Crafting Skill has received new patterns that will fall into one of the 8 Grades. In most cases, these items are improvements over what you were able to craft previously. With this change, all existing Schematics that are not part of Fallen Empire have been moved to the "Archives" category in your crafting window . These older schematics are still available to craft in case you still have a need for them. Here are some of the other changes affecting Crafting:

• There are no longer any Premium (green) items to craft. All craftable items now start as Prototype (blue) quality.
• Reverse Engineering items no longer gives a random item. Instead, the item reverse engineered will give an improved version of that item.
• The chance to get an improved item from Reverse Engineering has been increased.
• All crafted armor is Adaptive.
• Nearly all schematics require a new Premium (green) crafting material called a Component. This new Component is made by combining two existing crafting materials along with two vendor purchased materials, all of which are of the same Grade as the component. A unique Component exists for each skill and each Grade.
  • Example: An Armormech crafter wants to craft a Grade 6 Chest Piece (Level 46). This is a Prototype (blue) quality armor and requires 4 Ciridium and 4 Durasteel Armor Assembly Components. The player will need 2 Durasteel, 2 Zal Alloy, and 2 Thermoplast Flux to craft each component. Once they have the 4 Components and 4 Ciridum from Underworld Trading, they will be able to craft their chest piece.
  • If a player chose to, they could level up exclusively by crafting Components!
• In most cases, Crafting times have been greatly reduced.  This will enable crafters to craft more items to coincide with the faster leveling.
• To match the above listed changes. Augments have been reduced to 8 tiers. The MK8 Augment Kit is now the highest Augment Kit. Existing MK9 and MK11 Kits will turn into MK8 when Fallen Empire launches.

Along with these general changes which are affecting Crafting, there are some more detailed changes which impact very specific Crafting Skills . These changes are to balance the six different crafting skills with one another, in light of the stat changes in 4.0. Here are those changes:

• Armorings can no longer be crafted by Cybertechs.
• New Resistive Armorings (Endurance) are now exclusive to Armormech.
• New Versatile Armorings (Mastery) are now exclusive to Synthweaving.
• Enhancements can no longer be crafted by Artificers, and are now exclusive to Cybertechs.
  • For these specific examples, these Crafting patterns have been completely removed from their respective Crafting Skill.
• Due to the Primary Stats being converted to the Mastery Stat, the following changes have been made to Augments:
  • Armormechs can now craft Shield, Absorb, and Mastery Augments.
  • Synthweavers can now craft Alacrity, Defense, and Critical Augments.
  • Armstechs can now craft Accuracy, Endurance, and Power Augments.
• All previously reusable Biochem Consumables are no longer reusable. This is to balance the crafting skill with others and to encourage a market of these crafted items.
• All low level Biochem stimulants have been improved! Their duration is increased to 8 hours and they are now made in batches of 6-8 depending on the type.
• Droid Armor has been removed from the game, as all companion armor is now strictly for appearances, and droid appearances are not modified by their armor.
• All previously reusable Cybertech grenades are no longer reusable. They are now more powerful than their Prototype equivalent.  This is to balance the crafting skill with others and to encourage a market of these crafted items.

One of the other considerations for Crafting is how it will affect the Elder Game. We have made quite a few changes to what crafters can do at Elder Game:

Elder Game Crafting:

• All Modifications acquired from Operations can be Reverse Engineered for their Schematics.
• Operation Gear can no longer be Reverse Engineered.
• Crafters can now make gear equivalent to Story and Hard Mode Operations gear:
  • This gear can be acquired from their respective Trainer.
  • This crafted gear, when Reverse Engineered is equivalent to Story Mode Operations gear. 
  • When this Story Mode equivalent gear is Reverse Engineered, a player can acquire the schematic to craft Hard Mode Operations equivalent gear.
  • This new gear has a guaranteed Reverse Engineer chance.
  • This new gear is sellable & tradable.
  • This new gear requires a new Crafting material that can only be acquired by completing your personal Conquest goals.
  • This gear does not have set bonuses.
  • Relics cannot be crafted in this method.

Harvesting and Mission Skill Changes
Similarly to the Crafting Skill changes. We have made adjustments to both Harvesting and Mission Skills, including some quality of life changes:

• All unlocked Crew Skill Missions are now fully visible and no longer randomized.
• Crew Skill Mission unlocks have been aligned with the new Grade system from above.
• Crew Skill Missions will now grant slightly more materials than they did previously.
• Harvesting Nodes can now be harvested regardless of your skill level.
• Harvesting Nodes will now grant Skill Increases regardless of the Node or your skill level.
• Harvesting Nodes grant different amounts of materials based on the player's skill level. Players that are below the skill level of the node will receive fewer materials, and those higher than the node will receive more.
• All Harvesting Nodes now have a chance to grant both sets of materials for their respective Grade.
• Archaeology Crystals now grant Fragments and Crystals in addition to Color Crystals.
• The completion time for Crew Skill Missions has been greatly reduced.

Crafting Material Removal
Along with all of the other changes we are making, we are going to be removing many of the current crafting materials in the game. When Fallen Empire launches, any of these materials that you have will automatically convert to their equivalent counterpart. Example: Plasteel is being removed from the game. If you have 100 Plasteel when Fallen Empire launches it will turn into 100 Plastoid.

The following Materials are being removed from the game:

• Advanced Power Implant Processor
• Alien Artifact Fragment
• Alien Data Cube
• Aluminium
• Amorphous Carbonite
• Augmentation Kit MK-10
• Augmentation Kit MK-9
• Augmentation Slot Component MK-10
• Augmentation Slot Component MK-9
• Bacterial Strain
• Biological Compounding Chemical
• Biometric Crystal Alloy
• Blue Goo
• Bondar Crystal
• Chanlon
• Cosmic Trace Particle
• Diatium
• Double-Pulse Implant Processor
• D-Package Implant Processor
• Enriched Durasteel
• Eralam Crystal
• Exonium
• Exotic Element Equalizer
• Exquisite Yellow Crystal
• Flawless Yellow Crystal
• Immaculate Yellow Crystal
• Impeccable Orange Crystal
• Impeccable Yellow Crystal
• Inert Virus
• Laminoid
• Luminescent Cell Culture
• Mass Manipulation Generator
• Matter Transubstantiator
• Medicinal Fluid
• Molecular Stabilizer
• Neurochemical Extract
• Neutronium
• Obsolete Crafting Material
• Perfect Orange Crystal
• Perfect Upari Crystal
• Perfect Yellow Crystal
• Phond Crystal
• Plasteel
• Precious Yellow Crystal
• Prehistoric Artifact Fragment
• Pristine Yellow Crystal
• Psychoactive Compound
• Quick-Growth Agent
• Rakata Energy Node
• Red Goo
• Resinite
• Rybcoarse Implant Processor
• Self-Perpetuating Power Cell
• Single-Pulse Implant Processor
• Synthetic Energy Matrix
• Synth-net Implant Processor
• Toxic Extract
• Universal Catalyst
• Unknown Microorganism
• Vial of Stabilized Isotope-5
• Viral Residue

We hope that you are looking forward to all of these changes and more, coming in Knights of the Fallen Empire.

Ahmad Zabarah
Senior Designer