Crew Skills

[Urso]

Hey all!

I need help!

Recently I went back to playing SWTOR and I must say I'm loving the experience.

My question relates to the Crew Skills.

I realize that this area is more or less related to personal choices and that there is no right answer but I still come to you for assistance.

Currently I'm leveling one Juggernaught, and was wondering if it is possible to level artifice with just archeology and slicing'll or if i will miss having Treasure Hunting as another skill.

What combinations of Crew Skills do you have / recommend?

Thank you!

[nyyr]

Currently I'm leveling one Juggernaught, and was wondering if it is possible to level artifice with just archeology and slicing'll or if i will miss having Treasure Hunting as another skill.

You can level artifice with just archeology, though you only can craft green items. For blue/purple/orange items, you need the materials from Treasure Hunting which you can also buy from the GTN. So slicing is certainly fine if you don't like mission crew skills.

[Fhi]

Just leveling, green items (the mats of which come from archaeology) is enough. Treasure hunting only supplies you with mats if you ever want to make the blue+ items.

[quras]

Recently I went back to playing SWTOR and I must say I'm loving the experience.

So many people I see saying this exact thing. SWTOR is not the game it started out to be and is much better now. It's still got a ways to go but it's very enjoyable now.

Just leveling, green items (the mats of which come from archaeology) is enough. Treasure hunting only supplies you with mats if you ever want to make the blue+ items.

If you don't want the blues like the others have said, you are perfectly fine without TH and will level artifice just fine.

On that note, I almost always leveled toons with slicing. It was the best way to make sure I had plenty of credits by the time I reached max level. Sometimes I dropped slicing and picked up the crew mission skill that goes along with my crafting skill and sometimes I kept slicing but slicing was great to have during the leveling process. So many credit boxes around for some free money.

[Urso]

On that note, I almost always leveled toons with slicing. It was the best way to make sure I had plenty of credits by the time I reached max level. Something I dropped slicing and picked up the crew mission skill that goes along with my crafting skill and something I kept slicing but slicing was great to have during the leveling process. So many credit boxes around for some free money.

Great idea! Thank you all for the help.

I will lvl with slicing and then pick up a mission skill!

And I can do that for all the character I plan on lvling!

[Lovestar]

If you want to craft a blurple item just buy the components off the GTN and keep Archae for the actual point-grinding.

When it comes to leveling materials, it's much cheaper to ignore the "mission" skills and just buy the heaps of unwanted blue/purple components they produce if you ever need a handful.

The green materials, on the other hand, become very expensive because you need so many of them.

Also, for Slicing, never run Sliced Tech Parts missions while leveling. Their components are worthless until very high skill levels. Exclusively spam Lockbox missions with Slicing and you will turn a (small) profit, basically being paid to level the skill.

[Fhi]

When it comes to leveling materials, it's much cheaper to ignore the "mission" skills and just buy the heaps of unwanted blue/purple components they produce if you ever need a handful.

I'm curious about this, probably due to my limited experience.

I have Armormech, Underworld and Scavenging. I equip my character with blues from the trainer learnt mats - Terenthium (Grade 1) and Mulliline (Grade 2). The mission skill cost 150 - 350 credits and I get 2-8 pieces, sometimes with a couple of purples. The GTN has those for 2,000 - 4,000 apiece. I have 200,000 credits now at level 18 from selling the purple mats and leftover blue mats from Underworld. , which seems quite a bit to me - I can train all skills and buy speeder at the right level.

Is this short-lived?

[Lovestar]

I'm curious about this, probably due to my limited experience.

I have Armormech, Underworld and Scavenging. I equip my character with blues from the trainer learnt mats - Terenthium (Grade 1) and Mulliline (Grade 2). The mission skill cost 150 - 350 credits and I get 2-8 pieces, sometimes with a couple of purples. The GTN has those for 2,000 - 4,000 apiece. I have 200,000 credits now at level 18 from selling the purple mats and leftover blue mats from Underworld. , which seems quite a bit to me - I can train all skills and buy speeder at the right level.

Is this short-lived?

It may be a server-to-server basis, like many things in MMOs.

On my server you can run Mission skills all day long while leveling and while you'll see pieces listed on GTN, nobody actually buys them (back in your inbox over and over again). So they look profitable on paper if the mats sold, but they don't sell because no one bothers with the low-level crafting and even if they do, no one needs them in the quantities you harvest.

Additionally, the cost of the missions themselves continues climbing as you skill up, while the relative value tends to hold steady or even decline as you go higher in the tiers. So even if they start okay, they become a nuisance/burden by midgame before turning around again when you're maxed out (assuming lucky market conditions).

But if people are actually buying those blue/purple tier 1/2/3 crafting mats on your server, then sure, it's as good a trick as any other. You're lucky, enjoy the market. =)

Underworld is also by far the most valuable Mission skill, so you're already at advantage there. Treasure & Diplomacy are dubious, and Investigation is almost always a waste of time and credits.

And, I was discounting the value of using your own mats to craft things because once you have a single level 50-55 you tend to be able to fund your alts with much better toys than it's worth time crafting. If you are crafting your own stuff (a perfectly fun endeavor!) then yeah, there's a little more value added to Mission Skills once again.

So, I guess my experience with Mission skills is biased by my own particular economy and experiences. IMO avoiding them when you're starting out is safer financially, but like so many things in MMOs, ultimately results vary by server, day, personality, preferences, etc. :p

[Fhi]

I have to wonder why my server is buying purple mats from me then. If I understand the RE process correctly, for each recipe, you RE a bunch of greens to find a blue version. Then you RE a bunch of those to find a purple. Repeat for different blue and purple recipes. Then repeat for each item.

That is a ton of mats for leveling gear.

Twink? I heard there are pvp gear, so you'd want those instead of pve gear. So there's only one reason I can think of: just to say you have the recipes. Millions of credits. Would tens of millions of credits be common at level cap? Who knows.

[Lovestar]

I have to wonder why my server is buying purple mats from me then. If I understand the RE process correctly, for each recipe, you RE a bunch of greens to find a blue version. Then you RE a bunch of those to find a purple. Repeat for different blue and purple recipes. Then repeat for each item.

That's how it goes, yes. But if you know the items you want, you can also find someone who knows the recipe; bored level-capped players tend to have RE'd into their list everything you can imagine. It would be fairly impractical to try to learn every single recipe yourself while leveling (although, don't put it past people in MMOs, haha).

Twink? I heard there are pvp gear, so you'd want those instead of pve gear.

This, yes. Some players take twinking very seriously, either because they invest heavily in the leveling process (storyline) or they love PvP (and do it heavily while leveling). So for those players, it can be worth it to spend stupid amounts of credits to max everything out.

There was leveling PvP gear, but it got deleted in the big 2.0 switchover patch. Now 'PvP' gear while leveling is just PvE gear you can buy with PvP points, and it's only available at arbitrary level jumps (I think 20s and 40s). So even PvP twinkers just want the best PvE gear they can get their hands on.

Also, new players tend to be caught up in the experience or not quite understand the game's practicalities yet and will invest a lot more in dubious things like gearing themselves out via crew skills while leveling. If you have a lot of new players joining your server, the market for leveling crafting mats will go up. Especially the earlier tiers, which the most players participate in (before the gradual leveling burnout population drop-off starts).

Try checking out the tier 3-4+ blue/purple materials at GTN and see what the prices/quantities available look like. That may give you a better idea of the long-term health of that market (but again, it's very fickle, as we're seeing).

Millions of credits. Would tens of millions of credits be common at level cap? Who knows.

That's not just 'common', that's 'standard', haha. People tend to be absolutely drowning in creds at max level, and people who put effort into finding a market niche and/or playing the GTN are like Scrooge McDucks swimming in their giant mountains of credits.

Generally, if something you list doesn't sell, it's not because it's too expensive as much as no one needs/wants it right now. Listing tier 2-3 mats for 2-4k each would sell if established players (funded by mains) wanted it, since it's pocket change. Which seems to be what you're experiencing.

Whereas on my server nobody wants it so they just pile up. Periodically someone buys them all up, then relists them at a higher unit price in a misguided attempt to control the market, hahaha. (Then they sit there not selling for weeks, until someone else does it again)

As evidenced by my experiments dropping the price incrementally; it really didn't matter how cheap I made them, they still ended up in my inbox, haha. It was a matter of zero demand, not a price point. Once I hit vendor value I figured I was done with that approach.

I'd guess if your mats are selling well at X price you can probably increase it to X+Y price and still sell them, since as long as there's demand it's hard to overprice things. (I mean, yeah, within reason: if you list 1 Terenthium for 50,000 creds it's probably coming back to you, haha)

[Fhi]

Thanks for the detailed explanation. You're right, it seems the prices for blue/purple mats drops dramatically after Grade 3. Random low-level schematics sell for 25,000 still. It's funny that 3,000 per blue mat (I easily have 70+ of those lying around) is so much to me, yet pocket change to max levels.

Reminds me of the first time when I played WoW 7 years ago. My friend gave me 4g to start with. It was so much money to me, and I didn't understand how he called it chump change.

If I had tens of millions of credits at cap, I might be tempted to twink an alt just to have an easier time. Right now low level mats seems prohibitively expensive to me - good for selling, not so good for outfitting.

[Lovestar]

Thanks for the detailed explanation. You're right, it seems the prices for blue/purple mats drops dramatically after Grade 3. Random low-level schematics sell for 25,000 still.

Yeah, like in WoW there's a lot of recipes you can't get any other way than pure luck with Missions / random drops. OCD completists pay big for those — even bigger if it makes a Custom / Orange shell, since that one recipe can produce insane profits selling to fashionistas that want that look you can't get on any other item.

(I know this because I am that fashionista. I think I once dumped about 300,000 credits into Synthweaving + a 75k schematic, just to level up, learn the schematic, make the PERFECT gloves for my outfit, then never do anything with Synth ever again, lol)

If I had tens of millions of credits at cap, I might be tempted to twink an alt just to have an easier time. Right now low level mats seems prohibitively expensive to me - good for selling, not so good for outfitting.

You will, trust me. =) You're already demonstrating more GTN-savvy than most players so trust me, if you make it to 50 / 55 you will have so much money that it's just second-nature to let your 'kids' (alts) live as spoiled brats.

I can't even begin to guess how many millions of credits I've frittered away just to make my perfect little RP outfit while leveling, and then keep it filled with blue/purple mods so I don't have to wear anything else, hahaha. By the time I reach max level on that alt, I've already earned back what I spent 5 times over via a little GTN time each day. :p

Don't get me wrong, if you're un-smart with finances in SWTOR you will go broke (buying every single new Cartel toy the day it releases at inflated millions-of-creds prices, etc). It's just much more generous / forgiving / easy to recover from vs. some of the harsher MMO economies.