She's Crafty!

[Lantyssa]

Excellent.  So I wouldn't be missing out on any good looking outfits by going Biochem since I can still beg/borrow/steal them?

I'll be going Artifice / Sythweaving / Cybernetics / Arms  (maybe Armor instead of Arms), probably on both sides.  Plus whatever others are doing, so you'll have lots of options for outfits.

[sam, an eggplant]

It is entirely too easy to make yourself broke because of crafting in the early levels.  I was sending guys on treasure hunting missions (lockbox only) and hitting up every archaeology node I could fine.  I'm level 19 with less than 500 creds to my name.

See that's why I just took gathering skills. You'll need a bunch of money to buy a mount in a couple levels.

[Mazakiel]

I could use a good shield (lvl 20ish), tank stats but my shield is pretty old... Can you make better crystals than the pre-order yellow/black?

So far, I can make green, blue, red, and yellow crystals.  Some purple quality, but only the first teir.  I've not really quested much past getting my ship, so I don't have many raw mats for the next teir of stuff yet.  I may have a shield that will be an upgrade for you.  I'll link you some stuff next time I see you in game. 

[Sand]

A good FAQ and guide here:  http://www.starwarsmmolevelingguide.com/crafting-guide/#crew-skills-introduction

I will probably due this to earn some creds and not start off broke:

If you want to quickly farm companion favor and dark/light side points, get Diplomacy and Treasure Hunting. You could additionally pick Slicing with these two if you’re only interesting in making credits rather than crafting.

[Furiously]

With five companions it seems like you could 400 any skill within six or so hours.

[Fordel]

With five companions it seems like you could 400 any skill within six or so hours.

If you have the cash for it, yea pretty much more or less.

[Threash]

Where do i buy the white crafting components?

[Sky]

Crew Skills Vendor. Filter map by vendors or just look in crew skill trainer areas for one.

[Der Helm]

Took me a while to figure this out so I post it here.

You split stacks by holding shift and dragging with a left click. Interestingly this also triggers item linking (which is just shift-leftclick) in whatever chat channel you have open. Carefull with the enter key after splitting a bunch of stacks or else Sky yells at you. 

[Pezzle]

Spam Spam Spam the souless guildchat? 

[Merusk]

The inner nerd of me was compelled to do some data crunching on Slicing last night.  Keeping my ship's robot running slicing missions while I quested over about 2 hours I had a mission cost of 12,065 credits and a reward of 17,085 and two mission discoveries. (I didn't do any augment runs beyond my first mission as I noticed they fail pretty frequently. )  Total gain 5,020 credits and 2 blue missions. (Bio and I forget the other) 

It doesn't look like a huge money maker, but I was also only running L2 slicing missions for most of it.  Towards the end of the night when I started to get in to L3s the payouts got much larger than the buy-ins.   For example: One mission I kept running had a 780cred buy-in and netted between 1497-1842 each run.  The most consistent-paying L2 was a 425 buy-in with a payout of 396-673. (I had several L2 fails)

[Der Helm]

I was under the impression that the big money was in the gathered lockboxes, not the mission income.

[Merusk]

You mean the lockboxes you get from the missions?  Yeah, that's what I was tracking. 

If you meant the world lockboxes, that's possible. I'm not tracking the lockboxes I find, just the mission ones for payout.  Many lockboxes in the 2nd planet were bugged and I couldn't even open them.  I'm not running in to that problem as much on Nar Shadda.

I will say that having my 2nd companion running these is going to pay for my speeder skill. I'm getting level 4 boxes from missions now. The missions cost 665-1175 and are paying me 880-3300 credits.  Success rate is probably about 95% on making more than the mission cost.  I've got 53,000 credits at level 23 even after I've bought a bunch of mats & spaceship patterns off the market.

Also; if you need Ship upgrades I've got most of the T2 ones, just send me a message in game.

[Mazakiel]

Last night I learned that Treasure Hunting lock boxes can drop schematics, and one mission gave me orange gear as the reward with a model I had yet to see on any gear. 

[UD_Delt]

I don't know if this holds true for the other classes but w/ BioChem reverse engineering works as follows...

Purchased recipes provide green or blue stims. They come in two varieties. One time use, 60 minute small boost stat stims or 15 second large boost stims (ie +90 power, +90 crit).

If you make a stim and reverse engineer a few you will eventually learn a 120 minute version of the stat stim. Or, in the case of the 15 second stims you learn a purple unlimited use 15 second stim (3 min cooldown).

I haven't found out yet if I can learn anything beyond that as I haven't found any purple mats to make anything yet. I need a lot more mats yet to keep playing around. The crew missions for the blue mats can get expensive at 400cr a pop.

[Draegan]

That's essentially it.

Where Biochem really becomes cool is when you can start creating Implants.  I'm not there yet though.

[Sky]

I was really torn over the weekend, thinking of dropping armormech; everyone will pretty much be using orange gear. After getting a couple orange recipes I feel a bit better about it. And it still provides upgrades as you begin each planet and don't have the proper commendations or quest rewards. I'm also outleveling my gear like crazy, so it's nice to fill in those gaps, since I'm crafting armor just ahead of my level. And the RE stuff is just addictive.

I do wish there was an option to take more than one crafting occupation, so I could take maybe cybertech and armstech on a single guy and supply them with stuff from my BH. It's throwing off my normal crafting alt synergy.

[01101010]

Artifice really blows ass. Need a ton of mats to make a crystal and you only really get 1 or 2 per Gemstone run - but need 4-6 to make shit... Next!

[Mazakiel]

I'm not sure if its due to my archaeology skill in comparison to the mission tier or companion affection level, but I am pretty sure I have been getting 4-6 color crystals per mission lately.  Though it's almost never the color I actually want 

While I was regretting artifice for a bit, I'm mostly over it.  I've been focusing more on levelling the skill as opposed to REing everything out, and I think it's starting to pay off more.  So far, selling select items on the AH helps defray the mission costs as well. 

And the crafting mission unlocks seem to be worth tracking down.  The few I've been able to run were pretty critical in getting me a good stock of the rarer mats.

[Ginaz]

FYI anyone on Shien that has a BH, I can make a few orange (modable) pieces of armor, pants and a helmet.  Currently, I can make up to level 25 armor.  If you want something made, let me know.  Some stuff will require you sending me a few of the mats but I should have lots of the underworld metals required.  I can also make a lot of medium armor, primarily intended for IA.

[Sand]

FYI anyone on Shien that has a BH, I can make a few orange (modable) pieces of armor, pants and a helmet.  Currently, I can make up to level 25 armor.  If you want something made, let me know.  Some stuff will require you sending me a few of the mats but I should have lots of the underworld metals required.  I can also make a lot of medium armor, primarily intended for IA.

Would you make so orange moddable stuff for Qywen for me? He's pretty much the only companion I will use until I get to the end and get the female jedi as my Padawan.

Edit: Oh wait. BH is on imperial side. NVM.

[Johny Cee]

Unrelated:

I don't play SWTOR and I have had the Beastie Boys song stuck in my head for a couple weeks now.  Thanks.

[Sky]

You're welcome!  I think her name was Lucy but they all called her loose.

Along with Ginaz, I'm also armormech, though I think I have one orange. We'll have to start keeping track of which slots we have covered, should be all of them shortly enough.

While I still vacillate on bio vs armor, another thought I had about armormech: if an orange recipe crits, does that add an augment slot? If so, that gives the slight edge to crafters over quested/dropped oranges. I believe slicers get the augments.

The medium stuff is also good for Mako, she mostly wears stuff I craft for the cunning stunt stat. Probably not a huge deal, but I like to keep her as kitted out as possible. Usually ends up greens or bought blues, since I grind on heavy armor for the sweet, sweet RE goodness.

[Merusk]

Slicers aren't augments.  Cybertech does Mods and Armoring while Artifice does Enhancements.

I'm up to Rank 9 items for Cybertech, so let me know if anyone needs some.  I haven't been REing for blues for anything other than what I and occasionally Mako needs  but I'm willing to give it a shot if more folks want them.  I figure I could wait until the levels slow down to extend the range of blues I'm creating - particularly since I can't gather the blue mats myself.

[Ingmar]

Slicers are the only source of the "augment" type mod, actually. They don't craft them, they find them on the missions.

[Merusk]

Yeah I just realized that and came back to edit but you responded.  I was thinking of augments as a general thing not the specific piece.  Herpderp.

I can run augment missions up to level 42 if anyone needs some, just speak up.

[luckton]

I don't know if other crafts have this 'issue', but the problem I have with Cybercraft is how damn quickly and trivial the Armor and Mod modifications are obsolete.  So far, I've acquired a few orange pieces through dungeons and questing, but they usually come with mods that are equal or better than what I can craft.  By the time I've RE'ed enough armor/mods to learn blue/purp stuff, I'm skilled enough to make greens of the next tier up.  I'm now at the point where I can make better, but I'm too low in level, and in two levels after that, I can already make the next set.

Seems like it'd be better if they spaced them out a little further apart, creating fewer tiers, but each tier is actually significant.  Just seems silly that I can make a purp Skill Mod 2 when I can also make a green Skill Mod 5 that trumps it.

[Ingmar]

Yeah I just realized that and came back to edit but you responded.  I was thinking of augments as a general thing not the specific piece.  Herpderp.

I can run augment missions up to level 42 if anyone needs some, just speak up.

The terminology is a little fucked, yeah. The one that gets me is there is a type of mod, called a "mod". 

[Mrbloodworth]

Humm, So, how do you get new schematics?

[Ingmar]

Regular ones: buy from merchantstrainers.

Fancy versions of regular ones: randomly get when reverse engineering the regular ones you made. (And purple versions of those from reverse engineering blues.)

Random rare shit: extra bonus stuff from missions. (For example I keep getting fancy synthweaving recipes as extra bonuses when I send my dudes on Underworld Trading missions. Sadly I am not a synthweaver and the recipes have all been sith-specific so far.)

[luckton]

I'll make the prediction here and now that by this time next year, there will either be an item that increases/guarantees a schematic learning from REing stuff, they'll increase the chance that a schematic is learned by default, or they'll cave completely and just give you the schematic the first time you RE. 

This kinda plays off my above post regarding Cybercraft Armor/Mod mods...I have so much useless shit...to turn that useless shit into 'possibly' something better?  The game of chance does not belong here in REing.  I must have made 20 Reflex Armor 3s before I finally 'learned' how to make a blue version of it.  And for what?  I can make fricking Reflex Armor 9s now!

[Ingmar]

Meh with the level-up mods who really cares if you can make a purple version anyway? It isn't like you are going to want to sink a bunch of cash into Underworld missions to get the blue metal you need to make the fancy 3s or 5s or whatever anyway. I'm sure we'll make enough of the top level ones to eventually know all the fancy ones we need.

[CmdrSlack]

Regular ones: buy from merchants.

Fancy versions of regular ones: randomly get when reverse engineering the regular ones you made. (And purple versions of those from reverse engineering blues.)

Random rare shit: extra bonus stuff from missions. (For example I keep getting fancy synthweaving recipes as extra bonuses when I send my dudes on Underworld Trading missions. Sadly I am not a synthweaver and the recipes have all been sith-specific so far.)

I always seem to get non-synthweaving ones. We should trade, as I can use the synthweaving ones. Either that, or I just need to go force lightning more shit to feel better.

[Ingmar]

I think there's a neutral AH in Nar Shaddaa, I should probably try selling that stuff there.

[Mrbloodworth]

Seems to be some skill threshold too. Now, schematics are pouring in.