1. Swtor Contraband Slot Machine Location
2. Swtor Contraband Slot Machine Prizes
3. Contraband Slot Machine Swtor

One of the most central assumptions in modeling or analyzing any part of the SWTOR economy is the unit cost of acquisition of the crafting materials that are dominant in the current tier of gear and equipment. The unit cost can then be calculated for finished products based on the cost of their components. Neither notion is novel or unique, but I wanted to mention it in case anyone is disappointed that my first real content post isn’t titled “ZOMG SLOT MACHINES!!!!!” or something catchy like that.

Got bored and needed a few Cartel Market Certificates, so I went buck-wild on tokens. 10,000 Contraband Cartel Chips for 7.5m Credits 4 Cartel Market Certificates 11 Purple Jawa Junk 18 Blue Jawa Junk 23 Green Jawa Junk 555 Purple Contraband Resale Corporation Reputation Trophy - 2,500 Credits ea. Screenshots of all the Rare Drop mounts in SWTOR and how to get them. (Contraband Slot Machine) KX-5 Recon WalkerRare Drop (Contraband Slot Machine) News.

One of the most frustrating aspects of discussing the game’s economics on the official forums is that most posters want to jump to their unhappiness with the end result in their small sample size experience. That doesn’t mean their complaints may not be valid, but my goal is to bring more grounded discussion to topics like the balance of the new slot machines within the broader economy.

The current tier of Grade 11 crafting materials has seen massive GTN price fluctuations over the past 5-10 days, but the unit cost to acquire the materials by running companion missions is actually very stable over time unless Bioware adjusts mission costs or yields. In case anyone is unfamiliar with the companion mission system mechanics, the summary is that there is an upfront cost and a time investment which will yield a fairly static material return. Missions come in four yield types: Rich, Bountiful, Abundant, and Moderate and, depending on your crew skill rating and the yield type, which really boils down to Hard (orange font in the menu) and everything else.

The biggest impact of yields and difficulty are on critical result chances, which either provide additional base materials, additional rare materials, crafting schematics, or a combination of these results. Only Bountiful and Rich missions will provide the Artifact quality (purple) materials that are most sought in the game while the base critical chance for Hard (orange) missions is 10% while the lesser difficulties are 15%. If the companion running the mission has maximum affection for you, the mission has an additional 5% critical chance. Companions may also have critical chance boosts, or efficiency boosts, for certain crew skills.

So with all of that preface out of the way, here is my current best estimate of the unit cost of the Grade 11 Artifact (purple) crafting materials based on Rich Yield missions only:

The unit cost is derived without any companion-specific crew skill bonus to critical, but assumes maximum affection for the companion. The other primary assumption is that everything else acquired from the missions is sold to the vendor, including schematics. The first reason for the variance among the materials is that Doonium’s missions yield the Prototype (Blue) material Trimantium, which can be sold to the vendor for 250 credits compared to 165 credits for the similar material for the rest of the list. The other variable is the value of the schematics received which range from zero credits for Autoimmune Regulator (I’ve never seen it yield one) to 630 credits for Adaptive Circuitry’s Augment Schematics to 890 credits for the gear schematics of the rest of them.

It is a big time sacrifice to only run Rich Yield missions though since only one is available at a time for most materials, so the Bountiful Yield missions will almost always be run as well, even though the unit cost is elevated, because time is still the biggest investment in this part of the economy. So how do the unit cost numbers change if we run both Rich and Bountiful missions:

The Bountiful Yield unit cost is 7.8% higher than the Rich Yield for Autoimmune Regulator, giving it the most relative benefit to running Bountiful Yield missions because its unit cost curve is very flat due to no schematics dropping from its Rich Yield missions unlike the rest of the list. Dooniun shows the greatest increase at 33.7% because it is more sensitive to the drop in its blue materials yield for vendor sale since Trimantium vendors for 265 credits compared to the 165 credits a vendor will pay for the other blue materials. Midlithe Crystal, Verpine Fiber, and Ottegan Silk increase by 16% while Adaptive Circuitry increases by 13.5% at the Bountiful Yield compared to Rich Yield.

Running both mission yields simultaneously results in a combined unit cost that is about 10% higher than Rich Yield alone (not uniform), but increases the number of materials obtained by 66% and is therefore well worth the increased unit cost. The reason it is worth it provides our final table for this post, the current GTN prices of the materials on the Jedi Covenant server:

Despite the recent GTN price volatility caused by the Contraband Slot Machine happenings, the GTN price multiples are high enough that I would have no problem listing Adaptive Circuitry or Autoimmune Regulator for sale, but I am still working on a GTN price tracking system to better define “good” and “bad” prices for the materials. There is very little profit to be had in Verpine Fiber or Ottegan Silk, so tread lightly on those missions if you’re solely seeking GTN sale profits.

I hope you’ve enjoyed or found some interesting information in my inaugural analysis post. I would love to hear from all of you with any opinions, constructive criticism, or anything else to make this an appealing SWTOR blog for you to keep an eye on in the future!

*Updated 1/26/2015: The Rich Yield missions are not hard/orange difficulty as with previous tiers of mission skills, which increases the crit chance for Rich Yield missions for all six materials analyzed above. The result was a lower unit cost for Rich Yield and a flatter cost curve relative to Bountiful Yield missions.

– Andrew | SWTOR Economics

It’s been my experience that players are very good at identifying when something in an MMO is too good be true. So when I read Eric Musco’s response to the Contraband Slot Machine, I knew right away I must have one. In a strange turn of events though, it was the player base complaining that it was overpowered and it was BioWare defending it. Here’s a bit of what he had to say about it.

I dumped 3.6 millions credits into the GTN, and was soon pulling the virtual lever and shouting, “winner, winner, orobird dinner!” over and over again. The slot machine was amazing. It was as if I had found a leftover relic from the ancient Rakata empire that was made out of pieces of the Starforge.

The win rate was down right absurd, as it should be. In typical gambling establishments these machines are rigged in favor of the house, and I had put the slot machine in my house. Ergo, I was the house, and therefore should win; and win I did.

So let’s talk about what made (note the past tense here) the slot machine so awesome and apparently game-breaking. Well game damaging anyway. Here are the prizes you could win.

• Cartel Market Certificates – These are used to purchase items from the various cartel market reputation vendors.
• Contraband Resale Corporation Rep. tokens – These are used to raise your reputation with the Contraband Resale Corporation.
• Scavenged Scrap – Used to purchase common quality crafting materials.
• Assorted Droid Parts – Used to purchase rare quality crafting materials.
• Jawa Junk – Used to purchase Artifact quality crafting materials, including grade 11 mats.
• Contraband Cartel Chip – Gives you a free roll.

What you have to keep in mind is that the win rate on all of those items was (again, note the past tense) exorbitant. If you sunk twenty coins into the machine you were bound to win at least one of every item in that list, and likely multiples of everything.

What got most players in a keruffle was the Jawa Junk and easy access to the grade 11 crafting materials. You know, the mats you never get from running Diplomacy, Investigation and similar missions? Jawa Junk is anything but junk. It’s real credits, and the slot machine was dispensing it freely. It also had the side effect of people talking excessively about Jawas and their junk in general chat, but then again when was general chat ever anything but inane chatter.

The Contraband Resale rep. was a nice perk in it’s own right. For players like myself who didn’t have the reputation, it granted access to a cornucopia of items that could have only been acquired if you had a Hutt sized bank account.

Head over to the GTN and get a price check on hover chairs, command thrones and, Revan and Darth Nihilus’ masks. Well done, if you have the credits on hand to buy one of each. With the reputation and a few Cartel Market Certificates you can get these items for a fraction of the credits you could on the open market.

The reputation also grants you access to purchase chest pieces from the Embargoed Items vendor. That’s stuff you can’t find anywhere but here.

Given the rate at which Cartel Market Certificates were dropping, you were pretty much guaranteed to be able to buy any of those items for any toon. Remember too, the certificates are good for any Cartel Market item that you have the reputation. Normally you could only get the certificates from Cartel packs. This was going to change that.

And what if you didn’t need the Contraband rep? No problem, because tokens can be sold for credits. Enough credits in fact, to pay for the Contraband chips you need to play the slot machine, which were only 500 credits (once more I point you to the past tense).

So that’s what the developers gave us, and it’s also what they took away.

On Wednesday a patch was released and maintenance workers from the Star Cluster Casino sliced all of the machines and nerfed them to ground. The cost for the Contraband chips was increased to 750 credits. The drop rate on the scrap items and certificates is next to nothing. Factional walker mounts were added as rewards, but as someone on reddit pointed out, it’s quite possible that drop rate on those is’nt next to nothing, but may very well be nothing.

Swtor Contraband Slot Machine Location

Just a quick aside here, but that’s some serious credits in that screen shot.

Now when I pull the virtual lever I either lose, win a chip, or get a rep. token, but not enough tokens to pay for my chips. I’ve gotten one piece of scrap, and one certificate, and it’ll probably take a few million credits to win a Walker.

Swtor Contraband Slot Machine Prizes

So, was the slot machine overpowered? Did it need to be nerfed? If the goal was to make grade 11 artifacts cheap and readily available, or if the goal was to diminish the need to run crew skill missions for those artifacts, then job well done. The slot machine was indeed working as intended.

If the goal was to create a steady supply of Cartel Market Certificates without needing to buy packs, then mission accomplished.

Alas, that wasn’t the goal for those items, and so yeah, while I had no issues with the slot machine, I understand why it needed to be changed.

I knew going in that purchasing a slot machine in it’s pre-nerf state was a risk. As Gault is fond of telling me, “you win some, you lose some, and you just lost some.”, and it’s now time for me to try and recoup that 3.6 million credits as best I can.

Contraband Slot Machine Swtor

*sigh* Back to work.