The video provides first impressions of Star Citizen’s upcoming crafting system, highlighting how resource gathering and mineral quality directly affect the performance of crafted weapons and armor, making mining a more meaningful and strategic gameplay element. The creator is enthusiastic about the system’s potential to deepen industrial gameplay and player interaction, despite some incomplete features, and anticipates it will significantly impact the game’s future.
In this video, the creator shares their first impressions of the upcoming crafting system in Star Citizen, based on extensive testing by a dedicated Evocati tester named Elapo. Elapo mined and refined all materials personally without purchasing any minerals, highlighting the significance of resource gathering in the new crafting mechanics. The tester managed to collect most materials required to craft FPS weapons, armor, and ship weapons, revealing how mineral quality directly impacts the performance of crafted items. Higher-quality minerals result in weapons with faster fire rates, less recoil, and greater damage, as well as armor with improved damage and thermal protection, outperforming store-bought equivalents.
The importance of mining is emphasized, especially the need to find minerals of the highest quality, which can reach up to a value of 1,000 but are extremely rare. Common minerals like aluminum, tungsten, titanium, and iron are essential for crafting many items, while rare minerals such as janelyite, stellaron, riceite, savverillium, and quantanium add further value. Some rare minerals, specifically Aselorite and Ouratite, were not yet refinable in the tested build, preventing the crafting of certain advanced items. The creator expects these issues to be resolved in future PTU releases.
Crafting is described as a game-changing feature that will significantly impact gameplay loops, making mining more meaningful and rewarding. The crafting system allows for up to four items to be crafted simultaneously, with options to select materials based on quality. Crafted items can be sent directly to the player’s inventory or freight manager, and dismantling crafted items returns 50% of the materials at their original quality. The crafting process takes time, around a minute and a half per item, and includes a queue limit, adding a strategic element to production and trade.
The crafting user interface (UI) is functional but could benefit from improvements such as search refinement and filtering to show only craftable items based on available materials. The cost of crafting is relatively low, with materials measured in SCUs, allowing high-quality materials to be used efficiently. Blueprints, which are necessary for crafting, will likely be scarce and valuable, requiring players to find or purchase them either from NPCs or other players. This scarcity will help maintain balance in the game by preventing everyone from easily obtaining the best gear.
Overall, the creator expresses strong enthusiasm for the crafting system, predicting it will fundamentally change how they play Star Citizen. They anticipate crafting will add depth to industrial gameplay and create new opportunities for player interaction through mining, crafting, and secure trading. While some features are still incomplete or pending, the current state of crafting already shows great promise, making it one of the most exciting upcoming additions to the game. The creator invites viewers to share their thoughts and excitement about crafting in the comments.