Crafting

Blueprints

NPCs sometimes drop Blueprints after being defeated. The part type you get depends on the enemy you killed: each NPC family only drops certain ship parts.

Every blueprint rolls its own rarity, from Normal up to Legendary. Rarer blueprints are much less frequent, but they produce better items and grant more experience.

Some things improve your blueprint hunting:

• While your Battling level is 30 or lower, blueprints drop five times more often. New pilots get their first blueprints fast.
• Global drop events raise the drop chance, and an equipped Drone pet adds its level as a percentage on top.
• An equipped Quadruped pet raises the chance of rolling a better rarity, by 3% per pet level.
• Blueprints stop dropping once you are holding 300 of them, so keep your list clean.

Each blueprint holds 1 to 3 charges. One charge is spent per craft, and the blueprint is destroyed when the last one is used.

Requirements

With a blueprint you can craft one item, specified on the blueprint, after paying its requirements:

• A common resource
• A drop material
• Metal scraps

The exact amounts are rolled when the blueprint drops, and they scale with your level in the matching skill and with the blueprint rarity. A Legendary blueprint dropped at a high level costs far more than a Normal one dropped early. Keep that in mind: those amounts also decide how much experience the craft will give you.

You also need a free inventory slot. Crafting is blocked when your inventory is full (200 items).

Managing blueprints

• Lock a blueprint you want to keep, so it is never scrapped by accident.
• Scrap a blueprint you do not want and get metal scraps back. The amount is (50 + metal scraps required) x rarity multiplier x charges, with a multiplier of 1.5 for Normal up to 5 for Legendary. A Legendary blueprint with 3 charges is a very solid scrap source.
• Auto scrap can be enabled in your settings with a rarity threshold. Any blueprint dropped below that rarity is converted into metal scraps automatically, without ever reaching your list.

Modifications

You can add up to two modifications for an extra boost. They must be two different ones, and they must match the item type.

Damage types exist to exploit enemy weaknesses, so pick them based on what you are farming.

You can check the potential output before accepting.

Item values

The crafted item level is your current level in the matching skill, so a weapon comes out at your Battling level, a laser at your Gathering level, and an engine at your Exploring level.

Each item gets a value range from -30% to 30%. You can pay rare currencies to raise the minimum and avoid the negative range. The final value is rolled randomly between the minimum and the maximum:

MIN = 10 x (1 + slider% + Cat pet level% + Crafting level / 2 % + Dungeon bonus%) x rarity x item level
					MAX = 10 x (1 + 30% + Crafting level% + Dungeon bonus%) x rarity x item level
					

What moves each end of the range:

• Crafting level adds 1% to the maximum and 0.5% to the minimum.
• An equipped Cat pet adds its level as a percentage, but only to the minimum. It narrows the gap instead of raising the ceiling.
• The Crafting dungeon bonus of your squadron, based on your highest Crafting dungeon run, adds to both ends.

Paying to raise the minimum

Moving the slider up costs rare gathering currency. You can pay with any of them:

COST = |(30 + slider) x 50 x Crafting level x rarity multiplier|
					

Left at -30 the craft is free of rare currency. The cost grows as you push the slider towards 0, and it grows with your Crafting level and with the blueprint rarity, so the same slider position becomes progressively more expensive as you advance.

Crafting experience

This is where the metal scraps matter most. The base experience of a craft is:

BASE XP = (50 x (1 + Crafting base XP boost%)) + metal scraps required by the blueprint
					

The metal scrap requirement is added directly to the experience, and it is the part that grows without limit. A blueprint asking for 400 scraps gives roughly eight times the experience of one asking for 50. Since scrap requirements scale with your level and the blueprint rarity, rare blueprints crafted at a high level are by far the best experience per craft. Do not scrap an expensive Legendary blueprint expecting to level faster with the scraps, crafting it is usually worth more.

The Crafting base XP boost technology skill only multiplies the flat part of the formula, not the scraps.

On top of the base value:

Each Crafting level raises the experience needed for the next one by 10%.

Multi crafting

The Multi-crafting button lets you craft up to 20 blueprints in one go. It is the fastest way to burn through a pile of low value blueprints.

• All selected blueprints must be of the same category.
• The same modifications are applied to every item.
• The value slider is fixed at the minimum, so multi crafting never costs rare currency, and every item rolls on the full -30% to 30% range.
• The list is already filtered to the blueprints you can actually pay for.
• The process stops as soon as you run out of resources, materials, metal scraps or inventory space. Anything crafted before that point is kept.

The dialog shows the total cost and the total experience before you confirm.

Enhanced blueprints

Enhanced blueprints are bought at the Battlefield vendor for 5000 PvP badges. They are the reward path for squadron PvP, and they behave differently from dropped blueprints:

• They are always Legendary and have a single charge. You choose the part type when buying.
• Their resource, material and metal scrap costs are much higher than a dropped blueprint, which also means a much larger experience gain.
• They cost no rare currency, and the value slider is locked.
• The item always rolls the maximum value, never a random one.
• The value is calculated with the highest Crafting level in the game, not with yours. The item you get is the same one the best crafter in the galaxy would produce.
• The result is announced in the main chat for everyone to see.

Enhanced items are bound to your account and cannot be sold on the Market or donated to a squadron.

Changing modifications later

Anomalous lasers, probes, engines and sensors can have their modifications rewritten after being crafted, for 500,000 cosmic dust. Premium subscribers do it for free. Anomalous weapons and shields cannot be changed.

The rest of the workbench

The crafting section holds three more benches besides ship parts:

• Pet food, which works for every pet type. See Pets for the cost per unit and how food affects pet experience.
• Dungeon powerups, used to strengthen a dungeon run. Each unit costs 1,000 argoflux and 10,000 of any NPC material drop. Pick the material you have most of.
• Catalysts, where you merge five catalysts of the same rarity into a higher one, or create new ones from Catalyst Parts. Your Crafting level improves both the merge success chance and the resulting quality. See Catalysts.

TL;DR:

• Check which equipment you need most before selecting what to craft.
• Match the modification to what you want to improve: battling, gathering or exploring.
• Experience comes mostly from the metal scraps a blueprint requires, so expensive blueprints are the ones worth crafting.
• Leave the slider at -30 when you only want experience, and pay to raise it when you want a guaranteed good item.
• Enable auto scrap to keep low rarity blueprints from cluttering your list.
• If you aren't happy with the results, you can always go Trade at the Market.