As shown in the first plot, the average earnings of all missions have reverted to their pre-1.2 levels. Premium (green) lockboxes now properly earn more than their white counterparts:
Note: this doesn't mean that every single time a lockbox comes back, it'll have a profit. Most of the grade 5 rich missions I run are losses - they're only profitable because crits return blue boxes which are extremely lucrative, and more than make up the loss. In general, any particular slicing mission can be a loss: several missions in a row can lose credits. Its only in the long run that slicing earns credits.
[EDIT: realized that some folks are curious about 340 mission discoveries post 1-2. I haven't seen much, if anything, in the way of differences from my earlier post on the topic.]
Now hopefully they leave slicing missions alone for a while...
I've been selling augments on the GTN as fast as I can make them, and the profits are absurd. An augment that costs less than 20k credits to craft will easily sell for 60-100k on my server. I'm considering buying the legacy-unlocked neutral GTN...
With 1.2 augments are no longer obtained via slicing missions. Instead, they are crafted by the following professions:
Armormechs: Aim, Cunning, Shield, and Absorb Augments.
Armstechs: Endurance, Surge, Critical, Accuracy, and Power Augments.
Synthweavers: Strength, Willpower, Defense, Alacrity, and Presence Augments.
Getting the Patterns
These patterns are only found with crits of 'Sliced Tech Parts' missions. 95% of the time, these will give to 1-2 schematics, though there is a 5% chance of no pattern on a crit (ht to GnatB on the forums for observing this first).
The patterns teach a premium (green) quality schematic. RE'ing the premium items gives a 20% chance to research a prototype (blue) schematic; the blues have a 20% chance on RE to research a purple (artifact) schematic.
Gathering the Materials
In what follows, I'm going to focus on the top tier of augments (the 22s). While 25s are listed on Torhead, these do not appear to be in game.
In addition to some base components from the appropriate gathering profession (arch for synthweavers or scavenging for armor/armstechs), the blue augments require 4 Subelectronic Data Module and the purple augments require 4 Advanced Neural Augmentors.
The bottleneck for crafting the top-tier augments is the Augmentors. At the moment, these can only be obtained via the 340 mission discovery 'A Test of Intelligence' or crits on the Grade 6 abundant missions Mysterious Funds / Devoted to Duty. I've listed the returns from each mission in the table below:
Blue (reg)
Epic (reg)
Blue (crit)
Epic (crit)
A Test of Intelligence
8
4
10
5
Devoted to Duty
4
0
6
3
Mysterious Funds
4
0
6
3
After running just over 200 of these missions on companions with 10k affection, I'm getting a 20% crit rate.
Since the missions cost 1,780 credits to run, at a 20% crit rate and 3 purples per crit, that is about 1068 credits per purple material, or 4272 credits in slicing materials per purple augment made. Adding the cost of the vendor mats (1600 credits from vendor, 600 credits if gathered via a crewskill) and the AH price of the gathered components (around 500 -1500 per component), that puts each augment at around 9-17k credits to craft.
Given the prices on my server right now (60-100k), that is a phenomenal profit.
What is the catch?
There are two downsides to crafting augments.
The first is time. Each slicing mission takes just over an hour to run. That makes for 7 hours of slicing missions per augment. With only 2 tech parts missions available at any given time (3 with the discovery), this works best with several characters with slicing (or, selling in low volume).
The second downside is that players can recycle their augments, removing them from their gear for 22k credits. Eventually, this may serve to limit the demand for augments.
One more upside
In the near future, the market for augments is likely to grow. Right now, using custom gear with augment slots means losing set bonuses on Columi and Rakatta gear. As more characters acquire Campaign and Black Hole gear, there is no downside to picking up an augment slot for better stats, widening the market.
Happy credit hunting.
NOTE: Take a look at the cost of the [Augmented] custom gear on the GTN - made via crit-crafting an orange item. At least on my server, even the lvl 11 oranges are going for 50-100k if they have an augment slot. (Another remarkable profit - since the items cost ~3-5k to craft each).
I've RE'd a campaign relic. It lists a 20% chance to research a schematic. No luck with the pattern yet, but the RE gave a Synthetic Energy Matrix. The crafted version is rumored to be BOE, but I've yet to see an image of it. Now to go gather another 200 Daily Commendations. #yeahright
Birthright and Inheritance kits (legacy armor) can be found on crits of 340 mission discoveries! So far, I've seen them with Diplomacy, Slicing, and Treasure Hunting... but that is only because I haven't run any Investigation or Underworld Trading missions since the patch.
UPDATE: Oh wow, I just got a Birthright item on a crit of a Grade 6 abundant mission. (My first after running 300 of them.) Woah.
[EDIT 5/7/2012: Patch 1.2.2 corrected this error. See the analysis here.]
Yup, it is time for another slicing post.
It looks like 1.2 had a few undocumented (maybe even unintended) changes to slicing. Over on the forums, a few posters have been noticing some pretty dramatic losses and changes to the grade 5 and 6 missions - particularly the rich missions.
So I returned to my army of slicing alts, and collected data on 400 Grade 5 and 6 slicing lockbox missions with companions at 10k affection, and then compared those results to the data I'd collected before.
From the data, its fairly clear that patch 1.2 didn't change the earnings from Moderate missions. They were profitable before the patch, and remain an excellent source of credits post-patch. Abundant missions had their returns reduced slightly. The most striking change comes from the Rich Grade 5 missions - while still profitable overall, this is because a few high-earnings missions offset the losses from the majority of missions.
These curious results come from the double-RNG nature of slicing returns.
Each lockbox has two attributes that determine its average yield: its level and color. Grade 5 missions can return level 42, 44, 46, and 48 lockboxes. Grade 6 missions always return level 50 lockboxes.
Before 1.2, green lockboxes returned an average of 160% of the credits of their white counterparts. Since 1.2, green lockboxes are worth less than white ones - earning 80% of a white box on average.
Each yield of mission has a different color profile:
*Moderate missions return White lockboxes.
*Abundant missions return Green lockboxes on crits, and White otherwise.
*Rich missions return Blue lockboxes on crits, and Green otherwise.
This helps make sense of the original results. Because White lockboxes were unchanged, Moderate missions were unchanged. Abundant missions were only slightly affected because they only return green lockboxes on crits (15-20% of the time). Meanwhile, Rich missions return green lockboxes on noncrits - now a generally a 1000 credit loss compared to the cost of the mission. They only remain profitable because blue boxes (average 6250 credit return) can offset those losses on a crit.
Overall: all slicing lockbox missions remain profitable in 1.2 (I'd definitely make and sell augments instead... but more on that later). Moderate and abundant missions now have higher earnings than rich-yield missions.
I do find it odd that they'd choose to deliberately target green lockboxes to nerf. Without understanding the reasoning, it feels more like a bug than an intentional change.
[EDIT: caught math error and updated returns for green 42-48 lockboxes.]
More than a few threads on the SWTOR forums express confusion over how common each mission discovery can be.
To clean up a bit of confusion, I collected data on 300 mission discoveries via slicing. These discoveries are exclusively from the Rank 6 Abundant/Moderate lockbox missions and the Rank 5 Rich lockbox missions. These missions were predominantly run with companions at 10k affection, though I did put the ship droid to work on a few.
Before gathering the data, I'd have sworn that the purple cybertech patterns or the investigation missions were the most common.
I couldn't be more wrong.
One pattern is immediately clear: the gathering mission discoveries (green) are much less common than the pure 'mission' discoveries' (blue).
The gathering crewskill discoveries are about half as likely as the mission crewskill discoveries. Since the pure mission crew skills each have two possible level 340 discoveries, while the gathering skills only have one, this makes some intuitive sense, and would imply that any particular 340 mission has a 7% chance of occurring on a crit.
So is Treasure Hunting the most common discovery (and biochem the least)? Nope - thats just the curse of RNG. Assuming that any gathering mission discovery is equally likely, I'd expect to see that kind of difference or larger about a third of the time. (And about two-thirds of the time within the Mission discoveries.)*
I'm actually struck by how infrequently the Cybertech patterns drop. I'd have sworn that I was swarmed by them (ditto with investigation), but constantly in need of more Treasure Hunting missions. I'm also struck by the frequency of slicing discoveries - another mission I'm always running. Go figure.
*Stats-nerds: Pearson chi-squared test within each group.
Over on the official forums, Georg Zoeller confirmed that we won't be getting a new tier of augments with 1.2. This leaves the current top-tier augments with +28 to a stat as the best in game.
Fantastic news. I can run the 340 slicing missions to stockpile enough augments to cover the slots I know I can crit-craft (helm / chest / legs / weapon) and those I'm hopeful a mechanism will open up for (gloves / boots / belt / wrist). And I can do this without worrying that 1.2 will make them obsolete.
If any item comes up short, this is the current list of which profession crafts each augment:
Armormechs: Aim, Cunning, Shield, and Absorb Augments.
Armstechs: Endurance, Surge, Critical, Accuracy, and Power Augments.
Synthweavers: Strength, Willpower, Defense, Alacrity, and Presence Augments.
For a bonus of between +112 and 224 to a stat of my choosing, on equipment with a wide range of looks, I say that gear is getting nicely buffed next patch.
I was curious about the use of slicing as a source of extra income.
Printing money. What could possibly go wrong?
So I leveled slicing to max on 6 alts, running just over 1400 missions in the process. All these missions were run after the Great Slicing Apocalypse. Because I love data, I kept track of the results and plotted the earnings (reward from box - cost of mission) against the skill level of the character running the mission.
Aside from making a beautiful plot, with data like this peopleget really curious to know which missions earn the 'best' reward.
So between the Class (1-6) and Type (Moderate, Abundant, Bountiful, Rich) of mission, which is best?
[Note: for presentation, I excluded mission failures and truncated results with profits > 2000]
The problem with those kinds of questions is immediately apparent: whatever small differences exist across types, those differences are dwarfed by the huge range in earnings from each box.
For example, while the class 6 'Abundant' missions earn an average of 60 credits more than their 'Moderate' counterparts, this difference is entirely due to the increased chance for high-yield green boxes on Abundant missions. Those higher credit returns more than offset the additional cost for the abundant missions.
But because the returns from green boxes are so variable, even after running ~400 rank 6 missions, that difference isn't statistically significant. (For the stats nerds: two-sample t-test, p=.19).
So while I feel that abundant missions are good returns, I don't have enough data to justify that claim. And I can say even less about the categories where I've run a total of 70 missions.
But what about mission discoveries?
Every slicing mission has a chance to return a discovery on a crit - either a cybertech crafting pattern or a blue/epic mission for another profession. Those discoveries are exceptionally lucrative - the blue Treasure Hunting 340s go for at least 20k on my server's GTN. Thing is, not much increases discovery chance. As far as I can tell, the chance for discoveries is equal across all yields of slicing missions: about 12-17%. (More on this later in a followup post.)
So what to do?
I view crafting systems as a game in themselves, so I typically have between 5-15 companions out on slicing missions. I use them to find mission discoveries, which I send to other companions to run to for materials to finance my little crafting empire (evil laugh here).
But even as a pure moneymaking system, slicing excels. I made an alt on another server, and continually send companions out on slicing missions, selling the discoveries on the AH. At lvl 22, my alt has 30k from missions lockbox profits, and about 200k from selling mission discoveries.
