A week or so ago, Grumpy’s gf/business partner was crafting weapons in her workshop and becoming more annoyed and angry with each passing click. Grumpy really didn’t want to ask what was wrong for two reasons. One, she could just be annoyed in general and want to “vent”, in which case the proper responses would be “hmm”, “really?”, and “that sounds terrible”. Or, two, she could have a problem that required Grumpy’s assistance, and while it is Grumpy’s natural male instinct to solve problems, even those that seem to require no solution, this problem might involve hours of hunting for valuable resource fields or WORSE, spending millions of credits.
It soon became obvious that he would have to make inquiries because the cursing was getting LOUD. His gf was upset because her weapon experimentation wasn’t all she had hoped with the new resources. And that’s not all! She was blaming the poor results on the crafting station Grumpy had made for her!!! (months ago, back when he was a punk architect..hehe).
Grumpy explained to her that functional ratings were a bunch of BS and were only superstition — why Grumpy himself crafted many fine, highly-experimented deeds and furniture with his crap crafting station. Except Grumpy shouldn’t have used the word “crap” to describe his own station as she immediately used that poor choice of adjective against him.
Grumpy told her to take a pile of credits and buy one of those uber 40 stations from that Aeko guy on Naboo, because if a voodoo-crafting station would make her happy, it would make him happy. Then he added one of his winning “Mr. Sensitive to Your Needs” guy smiles. She told Grumpy, in no uncertain terms, that GRUMPY was to make an uber crafting station himself because “if her own P A R T N E R couldn’t provide her with the best that SWG architecture had to offer, he might as well drop Architect and become something useful, like a Doctor or a Creature Handler.” !!! For crissakes.
Grumpy agreed to get her a voodoo crafting station. If he was a role-player, he would have used the /calm animation to her toon, several times. Grumpy was just going to starport over to Aeko’s himself and buy one, but she was waaaaay ahead of him. “And I want to see your name as the creator on the station.” (d*mn)
Grumpy searched the message boards, and after wading through several mis-hits like “I enjoy SWG crafting while I’m at work on the Space Station” and “If they had computers at gas stations, I’d stop off to do some crafting”, he finally found some tips on how to make a voodoo crafting station.
First, he starported all over Eclipse to stockpile some of that copper with conductivity so high, static electricity would kill you. (mental note to the future: next time Grumpy should just pay the guy at the starport the 10cpu he demanded instead of spending an hour in a starship to “get a deal”) Next, he needed Master Artisan stuff experimented to high h*ll…he hauled out his Master Artisan alt and threw a batch in the factories. And the final step, some droid something or other, again, experimented to high h*ll.
Grumpy hunted around his neighborhood and asked at the starports in search of these droid things. At this point, he was annoyed and anxious to be done with this project, so he did what comes naturally to him. He took a shortcut and used the first few droid storage parts he could find.
His first experimentation attempts were “moderate successes”, which is just another way of saying “the game is going to screw you here, but it could be worse”. Then he hit the big one…the one that all crafters wait for…THE AMAZING SUCCESS. WTH, only mid-20s on the rating. Presumably he shouldn’t be tainting his crafting stations with droid storage parts of questionable heritage.
Grumpy was in the soup now. He was out of voodoo copper and all he had to show for it was a handful of mid-20s and dozens of lower-ratings for his vendors. He explained the situation to his gf/business partner, that while Grumpy had access to virtually every flavor of Master crafter, those droid people were a rare breed and would take him a few days to hunt one down (like a dog!). She was happy with her new station tho /shrug, claimed it made a big difference — and Grumpy knows not to mess with a winning streak, so kept his opinion to himself.
Grumpy’s quest continues, for how much longer, he does not know….he seeks the 90 ore field, an in-game CSR and now, the ever-elusive droid engineer.
The Grumpy Master Architect ©