The video reviews Star Citizen’s first crafting test, highlighting the mechanics of material quality, crafting times, and dismantling while noting limitations like inventory clutter and restricted blueprint availability. The creator enjoyed the system’s potential but cautioned against design choices that could undermine item persistence and fairness, urging developers to preserve crafting as a meaningful gameplay element.
The video covers the first crafting test in Star Citizen, which was delayed from Monday to later in the week due to the initial lack of blueprints for players. The creator shares their experience crafting for the first time alongside others in Twitch chat and highlights that the test focused on crafting mechanics rather than material gathering or planetary changes. Material quality was a notable aspect, with quality values ranging from 400s to 900s, but the quality felt random and difficult to assess during hand mining since there was no clear way to see quality without specialized mining ships. Materials did not stack by quality, leading to inventory clutter, and the best quality found was around 980, with a maximum possible quality of 1000.
The fabricator used in the test was the same model shown at CitizenCon 2024, which was portable and could be used on ships or in stations, pulling materials directly from the player’s inventory. Crafting times were uniformly set to one minute and thirty seconds regardless of the recipe. Players had access to the same blueprints, which covered armor, FPS weapons, and ship weapons, but not components like quantum drives or shields. The crafting interface allowed players to choose the quality of materials used, affecting the stats of the crafted items. However, only certain stats like fire rate and recoil were influenced by material quality, and the crafting system was limited to three-item recipes for most weapons.
Armor crafting was limited due to the absence of required materials in the test, so the focus remained on weapons. Weapon stats included spread, reload speed, fire rate, impact force, recoil, kick, smoothness, and handling, though only fire rate and recoil showed noticeable changes in the test. Ship weapons used materials primarily from the Pyro system, which players were advised not to visit during the test, limiting experimentation. The creator did not test the performance differences of crafted ship weapons in actual combat but noted that crafted items might be lost if the ship was reclaimed, raising concerns about item persistence and insurance.
Dismantling was straightforward, returning 50% of the materials used at the same quality level, which was seen as a positive for progression. However, the system currently returned small partial containers of materials, potentially cluttering inventory and complicating material management. Combining material qualities was only possible when a player lacked sufficient quantity for crafting, which was not an intended feature but a workaround in the test. The crafting and dismantling systems appeared inspired by older games like Star Wars Galaxies, though the creator expressed a preference for a simpler system like that in EVE Online.
Overall, the creator enjoyed the crafting test and found it engaging, expressing hope that miners, salvagers, and crafters will find meaningful roles in the game. However, they expressed caution regarding potential pay-to-win elements tied to insurance and item persistence that could undermine the crafting experience. The video concludes with a plea to the developers not to ruin the promising system with poor design choices, emphasizing that crafting could greatly enhance Star Citizen if handled well.