In the old system, before the schematics update, you could find a schematic above the next highest one you needed to actually apply it to a garment. If I got shirt bullet-resistant 1 & 2, but didnt have 3. I could find 4, but wouldnt be able to apply it to a shirt until I found 3 and applied that to the level 2 shirt, just as I couldnt apply level 2 until I applied level 1.
Now, after the schematics update, things seem to be different to accommodate the change. Now that schematics are linear based progression, you buy the next available level using apparel schematics points.
Thus, if you currently have shirt bullet-resistance level 1, if you have the points to spend, then you can only buy level 2, not level 3,4,5. Once you buy level 2, the next available level to buy is 3, and so on.
However, I’m not sure how they handled for those who have previously unlocked a higher schematic level without first finding a middle-schematic level, as you guys are discussing. But whatever level it shows in the schematics tree should be the highest level unlocked as it appears they have simply credited higher schematic level as the next available level where missing intermediate levels had previously not been found.
I believe they did this because I know I had several higher-level plans with missing middle-level plans before the update, but now all my schematics are linearly progressive from 1 to whatever max level I can see in the apparel crafting table.
However, and despite this, I too am having an issue where I cannot buy any 5/5 apparel schematics, even when I have the points and mats in storage.
One thing I will be testing today is to pull the mats out of storage and into my inventory to see if it unlocks the grayed out buy-button for 5/5 schematics. I think this may be a solution because there are certain schematics that cannot be crafted in the items category, like Adrenaline shots, until you have certain mats on your person.
That bug makes it so the Adrenaline shot cannot be crafted out of storage for the gasoline, but does for the tungsten. So to craft Adrenaline, I have to pull gasoline out of storage and into my personal inventory and then I can craft them.
So once I get enough apparel points (i spent mine trying to see if I max out other schematics if it would unlock 5/5, which it didnt), I will go ahead and test this if I can unlock 5/5 with the mats in my personal inventory instead of directly out of storage. I’ll let you know.
However, and this is strange, that after the initial schematics update, I was able to buy one 5/5 schematic, I forget which one it was. But only some days ago I first noticed not being able to buy any more. So it appears this issue is somewhat finnicky, and not even applying consistently, which is always the worst kind of bug.
