Tag Archives: crew skills

4 Tips to Keep From Crafting Your Way to the SWTOR Poorhouse

09 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by in crew skills, poll, screenshots

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Hardly a day goes by that I don’t hear someone in the SWTOR community say with the utmost conviction: “Crafting is broken. It’s just a huge money sink.”

And while I can certainly understand that the individual making this statement has apparently bankrupted their virtual selves through their pursuit of crafting, I know from my personal experience that statement isn’t a universal truth.

Those of you who listen to me on the TOR Reporter podcast already know that I’ve been able to finance my characters across 4 servers solely through my crafting. While most of them have yet to attain the dizzying heights of Galactic Trade Nexxi, who is so rich Chuck Norris comes to her for loans (thanks Silent!), they have all helped keep me from resorting to grinding dailies or bonus series quests to keep fiscally afloat.

Not surprisingly, I’m often asked what my secret is to having profitable crafting. And thus, I’ve compiled these 4 tips to help you attain a positive crafting cash flow.

Crafting Tip #1: Learn Complimentary Gathering and Mission Skills

I’ve frequently heard people say things to the effect of not wanting to take a gathering skill other than slicing so they can make lots of credits, or not wanting to level underworld trading as a mission skill yet taking synthweaving as their crafting profession. Unless you have landed on a busy server where supply for your crafting materials far outstrips the demand, it is unlikely you will be able to purchase your crafting materials from the GTN more cheaply than running missions on your companions for them.

Further, with an appropriate gathering skill, you will readily pick up a good amount of the base materials for your your profession as you go about your daily activities. Before you snatch up 6 rubat crystals in the GTN thinking you’ve gotten a great deal, remember that you could have gotten 2-3 crystals from a 95c mission, or better yet just from walking around. Not sure which professions go together? Check out this crew skills overview which explains them all in detail, and includes pairings at the end of the post.

Crafting Tip #2: Craft as You Go

I know many folks like to wait and slam through all their crafting en masse, after they hit 50. And these are most often the same people I hear complaining that they are broke and it’s all crafting’s fault. But here’s the thing: crafting didn’t smack you over the head and steal your wallet.

You can train up your crew skills on your first trip to the Fleet, in the level 7-10 range. You can start your gathering profession immediately thereafter.  And as soon as you obtain your first companion, they can be sent to craft for you, or to execute crew skills missions.

If you keep a sharp eye out on your mini map, you can make sure to travel from quest area to quest area via gathering nodes. Or if you are lucky enough to be able to recover materials from your slain foes, you can make sure to always kill an extra few silver mobs instead of sneaky past them to ensure you are keeping up your materials base.

Crafting Tip #3: Give Yourself a Set Crafting Budget per Day

It can be tempting to start sending your companion out immediately to level up your crew skills, but you are honestly better off in taking a look after an hour or two of play at what you’ve gathered, then filling in some missing crafting materials and sending your companions off to craft overnight while you’re safely logged off.

Alternatively, if you want to be sending your companions out on missions to obtain specialty crafting materials as you play, be sure to give yourself a set budget then do not exceed it. Once you get up into missions costing 1500c+, times 4 or 5 companions, you can easily blow through your savings if you are not disciplined about your budget.

Crafting Tip #4: As You Level Your Profession Make Either Cheap Items to R/E or Items That are Hard to Come by

And as you level your skills up, try to strike a balance between crafting inexpensive items you can R/E for mats while obtaining skill points, and the occasional leveling item to sell. I’ve previously covered my strategy for inexpensively leveling synthweaving, so be sure to check that out for ideas.

To identify the leveling items you should craft and sell, go to the GTN and do some searches for the crafted items you could, in theory, make. I bet if you make armor, you’re seeing a ton of items, frequently those for level 43+, in the under 5k range. Maybe even up for the cost of the mats or less. Put these items on the list of things you do not want to be making. Being in a price war on the GTN with someone who prices like Walmart is a great way to go broke fast.

Instead, look for gear that you can make, that players are asking for in general chat or on the forums, or that you don’t see up for sale very often. Now, if you make consumables of some sort, you’ll need to modify this strategy a bit, to be looking for items you see for sale pretty regularly but that sell out quickly.

Each server’s economy is different, and there will be many nights when you have all of your GTN sales returned to you in the mail. That is to be expected. So don’t give up! Learn over time what your personal best sellers are, and focus on making those items. You don’t need to have a discount superstore’s level of selection up for sale to be successful in your crafting!

Share Your Experience with Crafting in SWTOR — Take My Poll:

And please share your favorite crew skills tips, or ask your crafting Qs in the comments!

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Getting Down on the SWTOR Patch 1.2 PTR

05 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by in companions, crew skills, legacy system, PTR, video

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I have been on vacation, in a land without Internet or cellphone service, known as the NorCal coast. As such I have only just now gotten a chance to hop on the SWTOR PTR and check out all the changes that await us.

But first and foremost, I  have to tell you about the above screenshot. That isn’t a hack — that is me getting to dance with Khem Val!! That’s right, you too can unlock the companion dance ability (which you will find in your abilities window, under the legacy tab, so you can pull it out to your action bars to use it.) This totally awesome ability is available for the low low cost of only attaining social level II, or purchasable with Legacy level 3.

I didn’t realize just how much fun I would have with this one. But dancing with Khemmy totally made my day.

Ahem.

There are a number of other equally awesome and amazing changes now available to us on the PTR.

Family Tree

When you open your legacy window for the first time, you’ll get to start building your family tree. That means right now is the time to start thinking about how you plan to populate it. Whom will be your family matriarch/patriarch?

I made Anexxia my family matriarch then set about thinking about where all my other characters would fit in. AS of this writing, the options available to you for each successive character are:

  • rival
  • ally
  • spouse
  • child
  • adopted child
  • sibling

As you drag each character into the family tree, over the matriarch/patriarch, you will have the opportunity to decide where they fit in. And don’t stress — you can move them around if you don’t get it quite right on first click-and-drag.

Enhanced Character Screen

The biggest addition here is the Unify Colors button. You may toggle on or off which visible clothing pieces you would like to have color coordinated to match your chestpiece. That means no more putting off equipping that new piece of gear because you don’t want to look like a clown college’s wardrobe mistress.

Additionally, your character screen now has a few character customization options available at your fingertips that used to require some poking around in the preferences menu:

  • Show Dark Side Corruption
  • Hide Head Slot

Legacy Unlocks

AS you can see, my flitting around from character to character, on different servers, means I haven’t unlocked too many of the available legacy unlocks. But as seen at the top of the post, I did unlock the all important Companion Dance. Other easily attainable unlocks are the Tech Emotes, which allow you to /datapad, /holocom, and /map whenever the feeling suits you.

Crafting Improvements

The Crafting changes we’re seeing on the PTR are going to make those crafters among us very happy, starting with the individual profession windows. You can now sort by custom. That means no more clicking on every blue recipe in your window to try to find your moddable gear! And, those custom pieces now show as orange, which gives a visual queue and makes so much more sense.

To check out the critical success of moddable pieces, I crafted 25 synthweaving items, across all 3 armor proficiencies. Of those, 5 pieces critted, resulted in an augment slot being added. For ease of ID’ing these exceptional pieces, their names have [augmented] following their name.

Other nice changes to the items is showing you if an item is not able to be researched to find a new schematic, as in this example:

Or if an item *does* have the ability to be researched for finding a new schematic, it lists its % chance, as in this example:

User Interface (UI) Changes

Last and definitely not least, players will now be able to significantly customize their user interface, using in-game functionality. To say that I’m impressed with the level of customization is an understatement. but don’t just take my word for it– take a look at this UI overview window. I consider it to be required viewing for showing you how to make the most of the UI customization options available to you in Patch 1.2.

Synthweaving Leveling Guide

01 Wednesday Feb 2012

Posted by in crew skills, synthweaving

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In that other MMO, I have several tailors, including my shadow priest. Thus, it was an obvious choice to make my first SWTOR character, my sorcerer, a Synthweaver. I like to make myself gear, and have found it to be a reasonably lucrative profession choice from an auction house resale standpoint.

Complimentary Professions

As a Synthweaver, you will want to have Archaeology as your gathering profession so you can pick up crystals and artifacts as you explore the world on your missions. For your mission skill, if you want to be able to have easy access to the materials for making blue quality or better gear, which I always do, you will want to level Underworld Trading. Note that many folks wait to level Underworld Trading until they hit max level then parcel out their 5 companions on a never ending marathon of missions until they hit 400. This is perfectly acceptable though not the route I choose. If you have a ton of cheap Underworld Trading goods in your Galactic Trade Network, you may decide to pursue Slicing or Diplomacy as your Mission skill instead, depending upon your game goals.

Re-Engineering

Re-Engineering allows you to recoup a few of the materials you used to make synthweaving items to level your skill. Typically, at lower levels, you are only getting back a crystal, occasionally a crystal and an artifact. But every little bit helps. And as a bonus, every so often, you’ll learn a blue/rare quality version of an item that adds an additional stat upon it. Those items are denoted as follows:

  • Critical versions of a green item have +Crit as a third stat.
  • Overkill versions of a green item have +Power as a third stat.
  • Redoubt  versions of a green item have +Defense as a third stat.

I’ve found that re-engineering is your best return on investment for your leveling synthweaving green items. I haven’t found that green gear, regardless of level, has been successful in GTN sales. Now, once you start having the materials to craft rare quality leveling gear, that’s a different story. You have two options with your blue gear crafting: sell the pieces occasionally on the GTN to help offset your Underworld Trading leveling costs, or re-engineer those pieces in the hopes of learning a purple quality version of the pattern. I personally did not start re-engineering blue quality items much until I started making level 40+ gear, but see plenty of the lower level purple pieces in the GTN.

Leveling Basics

The long and the short of it is: you want to make whichever pattern will net you the most skill for the lowest cost. Yes, make yourself some pieces to wear as well, but to efficiently get your Synthweaving up to 400, you will want to be selecting your recipes carefully. On the left side of your recipe name, you will see a number that denotes how many of an item you can make with the supplies you have in your inventory and in your cargo hold. If you look more closely, you will notice that number has a color: Orange, yellow, green or gray.

  • Orange recipes will give you 2 skill points upon completion
  • Yellow recipes will give you 1 point
  • Green recipes will sometimes give you 1 point
  • Gray recipes do not provide any skill points.

I find this small detail is what most folks miss when starting out with professions in SWTOR, and thus end up crafting recipes that have gone gray, peeved that they are no longer receiving skill points. Also note that every 20 skill points you can go back to your trainer and learn some new patterns. Make sure you do this every time you hit a multiple of 20 to ensure you have orange quality recipes available to you.

Getting Started: Leveling Your Synthweaving to 120

That’s right, I’m not going to take you all the way up to 400 with this guide because I’ve found that even when leveling two characters’ synthweaving simultaneously, 140-160 is where their paths diverge. This is due to the difference in availability of materials from server-to-server, and the difference in RNG as to what blue quality recipes they’ve learned, and what orange moddable gear recipes they’ve managed to scrape up.

1-20: Savant Sash. 2 Rubat Crystals.

21-40: Savant Gloves. 4 Rubat Crystals.

41-80: Acolyte Bracers. 2 Rubat Crystals. Keep making these until the pattern goes green After 60, will only result in 1 point each but since the other patterns require additional materials, it’s still your cheapest bet.

81-100: Rugged War Waistcord or Reinforced Fiber Belt. 2 Lost Archaeology Fragments, 2 Fibrous Nylite Solution, 2 Eralam Crystals.

101-120: Rugged War Gloves or Reinforced Fiber Handgear. 2 Sacred Artifact Fragments, 2 Fibrous Nylite Solution, 4 Eralam Crystals.

121-140: Reinforced Fiber Boots or Rugged War Boots. 2 Thermoionic Gel Suspension, 4 Nextor Crystals, 2 Sacred Artifact Fragments.

141-160: You’ll choose Acolyte Lower Robe or Acolyte Vestments if you have bountiful artifact fragments and fewer crystals, or Reinforced Fiber Chestguard or either legging recipe you’ve just learned if you have more crystals.

161 onward: Make whichever of the recipes you’ve just learned that you want to focus on RE’ing into a blue for you or your companion to wear.

Note that throughout this process, for maximum efficiency and lowest cost, you’ll want to be picking up materials as you complete missions, and occasionally send your companions out on an archaeology mission to grab a hard to obtain/expensive item, such as those pesky Sacred Archaeology Fragments. Although RE’ing your greens will yield a few materials, it will have to be augmented with a flow of materials from your gathering or the GTN.

Happy Synthweaving!

Anexxia’s Rare or Better Synthweaving Patterns (level 50)

01 Sunday Jan 2012

Posted by in crew skills, gear, synthweaving

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I’ll be listing all the rare or better level 50 synthweaving patterns I can make here. See also my post of items up to level 49. BOE items available to Coconut Monkeys with your mats.

Light Armor

Bracers 

Chest

Head

Legs

Medium Armor

Chest

Legs

Heavy Armor

Head

Legs

I’m Synthweaving my Way to the Poorhouse!

16 Friday Dec 2011

Posted by in crew skills, synthweaving

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Anexxia and a holodancer

Perhaps I can take up Cantina dancing to pay for my speeder?

I ended my SWTOR adventures today at level 20, and no closer than 1/3 of the way towards the speeder I’ll want to purchase at level 25. This vexes me because in that other MMO I play, I’ve never had a character be unable to purchase their transportation at level, even with keeping my professions leveled up with my character.

/cry

This is a symptom of my crafting affliction. I absolutely *HATE* to have my crafting not keep pace with my character’s leveling. Why? Because it sucks to not be able to make items I might actually want to use, that’s why! I’ve made a solid dent in my crafting thus far, and can actually make a few items my guildies might want to wear (see my crafting rare patterns list for details on what I can make.)

But as of now, I am going to have to hoard my credits until 25 to see if I can make it to being able to purchase my speeder training and my speeder. Most unfortunately I think I will just be fast walking my way around, getting the smackdown handed to me.

This really should not be the case. But I have had to spend cash on archaeology missions due to the sheer volume of bugged archaeology nodes I’ve seen in my travels. I get excited about a node on my map ,clear my way too it, then find it’s not able to be collected. Rinse and repeat for about 60-70% of the nodes I saw today on Balmorra.

I do have an evil plan for how to address this gap. I plan to make some sacrificial alts this weekend, and funnel all of their earnings to my main. It’s cruel, but I am going for maximum dark side points, now aren’t I? Which reminds me I shall have to track down that silly woman who was responsible for those 50 light side points. Truly unacceptable…

For those of you crazy enough to follow in my synthweaving leveling footsteps, I do have a few tips:

1) Skip out on the Underworld Trading missions unless you are dead set on making yourself one of the low level fully moddable clothing items and need the special materials.

2) Stock up on the fibrous nylite solution when you visit your first crew skills vendor. You are going to go through this stuff like mad, so buy 20-30 the first go round so you have it on hand.

3) Go out of your way in search of archaeology nodes whenever one pops up on your mini map. Yes, many of them are bugged, but you will need every mat you can scrounge up, so worst case scenario, you’ve gotten a few more credits and a smidge of XP.

4) If you get stuck, use your archaeology missions judiciously. I suggest saving them up for when you need the artifact fragments, or when you are in the transition phase between level 1 and level 2 crystals.

5) Free up your bag space by storing your crafting materials in your cargo hold. Your companions can easily access them for crafting but they won’t keep you from picking up all the grey trash you can find to finance this little venture.

I have to also note that companions are supposed to be able to go and sell your greys for you, but it has been my experience that more often than not, my companion will not, in fact, toddle off on this task. The request seems most likely to fail when underground or in a special quest area. I believe that is a known issue so cross your fingers our little minions are back on taking out our trash soon.

And now for a poll…

Reflections on a SWTOR BETA Weekend, Pt. 2: Professions

12 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by in BETA, companions, crew skills, screenshots

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spaceshipI had 2 big goals for my BETA time, in addition to just getting a feel for caster game play and gaining familiarity with companions as party members: 1) to see how far I could get with leveling my professions, and 2) to earn my spaceship. Happily, despite having to work for half the BETA weekend, I was able to make great progress against these goals.

As soon as you complete the first portion of your class quest, and get sent off to the Fleet, at level 10 or so, you are able to start training your professions. Special note: if you go ahead and talk to all the trainers as soon as you arrive at the fleet (only accepting those skills you actually want to train, mind you), you can earn a nice chunk of experience. There is a great visual that shows the best skills to pair with each other to maximize your leveling ability. You may only train a total of 3 crew skills per character, which may be any combination of gathering skills, a maximum of 1 crafting skill, and mission skills. I went with Synthweaving, Archaeology, and Underworld Trading.

Crafting Skill: Synthweaving

In other games, I’ve often taken up tailoring, so it was no surprise that I chose to go with Synthweaving for my cloth wearing caster. I like having the ability to craft gear upgrades for myself, and have typically found the rare or better crafted gear to sell pretty well, especially in the early days of a game/expansion.

I ended my BETA time with a skill of 160 or so in Synthweaving (I had an annoying keyboard not recognized problem as I was wrapping up my BETA time and neglected to write down my final #.) I was able to easily finance this leveling, at level 16, through selling a few world drop items, and making 6 blue quality belts and gloves, which I put on the auction house for 1200-1500 credits. Despite buying a few rare quality cloths from the auction house in order to do this crafting, I ended up with 8500 credits at the end of my professions leveling spree.

My primary tip is to reverse engineer every green quality item you make that you do not need for yourself or your companion. I found that I usually got 1-2 power crystals back for every item reverse engineered at the lower levels, which came in handy. I always made the most inexpensive item that was available to craft, but that had not yet been greyed out (once a pattern is in grey text in your skill window, it will no longer give you a skill point for crafting it.)

I also suggest making a blue quality item that will give you skill points whenever you have the special materials on hand that are required. You can obtain those special materials from some of your more expensive Archaeology and Underworld Trading missions, however, you will soon run into Fibrous Nylite Solution, which is an item you can purchase from any Crew Skill Trade Vendor, as is Thermoionic Gel Suspension.

Gathering Skill: Archaeology

One of the nice things about Archaeology, is once you get out into the world after level 10, you should be seeing crystal nodes as you go about your everyday questing. Although I did spend a good chunk of time sending my companions out on Archaeology missions to get up to 100 or so in skill, I also raked in a ton of power crystals as I walked around completing quests.

You are able to send your companion out to complete archaeology missions whenever you’d like. I personally kept my companion at my side for questing, so I could more effectively handle large packs and heroic quests by myself. But whenever I was zooming back to a capital city, I sent him off on an errand. Who knew bossing around my minions would be so much fun? Ahem. I mean, it was a very rewarding bonding experience to allow my companion to do my bidding. Oh nevermind– I think you are already seeing why I am going Sith.

There are two key factors that will help you decide which missions to send your companion out on — the cost and the potential end result. The cost to send my companion out on the mission started at 95 credits, and topped out at 295 credits. You receive new missions to send your companion on as you increase your character’s level, starting with 4 missions available to you at level 10. I found that I eventually had an archaeology skill level above the level of items available to me for completing the missions, but that was only due to some serious focus on profession leveling.

The third factor to influence what mission you send your companion on is what the potential reward will be. A few examples of how entry level quest yields are described:

  • Moderate Yield: Grade 1 Color Crystals
  • Moderate Yield: Grade 1 Power Crystals
  • Bountiful Yield: Grade 1 Artifact Fragments

Moderate yield missions can result in a return of 1 or 2 items upon completion. Bountiful yield quests were often 3-4 items in total. But it is important to note that on occasion, my companion would come back empty handed, especially when sent out on a bountiful yield (and more expensive I might add) quest.

Mission Skill: Underworld Trading

Underworld Trading was the more vexing of all the crew skills for me. Mission times started out being relatively short (3 minutes) and increased to 6 minutes over my small leveling journey. Now before you say “Aw, Anexxia, you are just too impatient!” let me remind you that these quests can fail. And somehow, it seemed it was always the 275 credit 6 minute quest that would fail.

In the BETA stress test weekend, quests would note that they could result in either Underworld Metals  or Grade 1 Luxury Fabrics. Under that design, I found I most often ended up with metals, and had to buy my cloth from the auction house. I believe the last minute professions fine tuning has broken the rewards down to separate them out, which will be helpful for maximizing your mission time and credits to enable you to obtain the raw materials you want for crafting your preferred items.

Due to the longer amount of time and greater credit cost per mission (starting at 95 but quickly headed into the 200s), this was the skill I got the least far (only mid 40s.) I have a feeling I’ll end up falling a little behind on this one as I level, but the upside is I think there will be a good auction house market for the cloth and metals if I don’t need to put them to use in my synthweaving.

Final Impressions on Professions

Overall, I found the professions to be easy enough to level, and without breaking the bank. I didn’t make my 10k credit goal (I wanted to buy a sandcrawler vanity pet from the lightside vendor), but I made a serious dent in my synthweaving leveling and made myself and my companion a few nice pieces. I think a lot of folks will be tempted to skip over the professions leveling in a mad rush to get to max level, but I would caution against that. You will not want to be sitting around in a capital city just sending your crew on missions, as a huge money sink, making items you can’t use at max level. In the long run, it’s a lot more efficient — and personally rewarding– to add the crew skills missions into your daily pace. And if you happen to be working from home and on a conference call, which prohibits you from actually being out and about completing quests with your character, crew skills leveling is a great multitasking activity. but don’t tell your boss I said so…

See you in the game soon!

dancing fools

Reflections on a SWTOR BETA Weekend, Pt. 1: Leveling

02 Friday Dec 2011

Posted by in BETA, crew skills, screenshots, space combat, spaceship

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SWTOR BETA weekend screenshot

Like many of the gamer folks I know through twitter and the blogosphere, I participated in Bioware’s Star Wars: the Old Republic BETA weekend stress test over the long Thanksgiving weekend. The TL&DR Version? I absolutely loved it and only had a few, minor hiccups.

Choosing a Class to Test

I wanted to get a feel for what it would be like playing my Sith Inquisitor to be, but didn’t want to spoil the story for myself on a character I’d have to give up. Thus, I chose a Jedi Consular (Sage talents once she could specialize), who you can see in the above screenshot. Although I did my first level or two by myself, I was soon joined by my SO on a Jedi Knight, so we could check out the effects of grouping on leveling.

I’d decided pre-BETA that I wanted to focus my time on just 1 character, versus trying out a number of them, since you don’t get a true feel for the class characteristics until you hit level 10. I hoped to be able to make a significant dent in a profession or two, and to get to experience space travel. I was able to accomplish those goals pretty easily, despite working for 2 of the 4 days of testing.

Leveling Together as an Advantage

My SO and I have leveled together in World of Warcraft a number of times over the years, and more recently, leveling from the starting areas onward in Aion, Rift, and LoTRO. Inevitably, leveling together would end up feeling a little frustrating, with our having to kill twice as many mobs for quests in order to get the required number of quest items, one or the other of us running off to complete a class specific quest or a non-shareable quest we thought the other of us had also grabbed, etc.

It was thus a pleasant surprise to see that leveling together in SWTOR was actually an ADVANTAGE. Having an omnipresent second party member meant we were able to easily tackle the heroic quests/bosses we came upon in our questing travels. Once we both had our companions and got to Coruscant, we decided to 2-man the Esseles flashpoint. In retrospect, this was probably the smartest thing to have done at level 10, as it allowed me to really spend some time thinking about how to maximize use of my companion, and my crowd control skills. Other than my falling through the floor at one point, and dying on our first attempt on the first boss due to a lack of a healer (I later filled in on that role) it went pretty smoothly.

Other leveling pluses included being able to Holocron in for NPC conversations when one of us found a quest giver, versus having to wait for a slow runner to catch up, and getting to peek in on another class’ class storyline events as a guest.

How Can 3 Hours Have Gone Past?

I think my biggest surprise as we went through the leveling was how engrossing the story was. Hours would pass as I went through my class storyline and other starting quests, without feeling like it was taking a long time to progress.

This was due in large part to the participatory dialogues with the quest givers, but also with the way the questing itself was organized. For instance, when I would be out in the world on a specific quest, I would inevitably kill a mob or three on my way there. Often, these collateral kills would result in a “bonus objective” of killing X number of said creatures. If I was feeling particularly like smacking them around, I would complete that side quest before returning to my objective. But if I was especially intent on what I came out there to do, I just continued upon my original path, and once I completed the quest I came out there to do, the side quest would come off my quest list. Not having to manually go in and clean up quests in areas I was done exploring was a nice touch.

Once we hit level 10, my SO and I split up on our testing objectives (he went on to level up a total of 3 characters past level 10, to test out PvP on all of them.) I continued on in the hopes of getting a good feel for crafting leveling and with the goal of getting my spaceship, which you can see from the below screenshot, I accomplished.

Bug Report

As a Mac user who has to use Bootcamp in order to play SWTOR, I was crossing my fingers that there wouldn’t be too many glitches to report. And overall, until the end of testing, there were relatively few issues I encountered, and most of them minor. Those included:

  • All my screenshots were black. I put in a ticket on this but did not get a suggested fix. Once I thought to ask twitter, however, I was able to resolve that issue by unchecking the Exclusive Full Screen mode in the graphics options.
  • Unfortunately, unchecking Exclusive Full Screen mode in the graphics options meant I could no longer minimize the game. It also coincided with the game deciding to no longer recognize my Mac bluetooth keyboard. Having my keyboard flit in and out of usefulness is actually what put a stop to my BETA testing on Monday. After a lond day at work the last thing I wanted to do at home was fight with the computer over recognizing my keyboard.
  • When crafting, the list of required materials for a recipe would sometimes…blank itself out.
  • Mail in the mailbox seemed to often take 15-30 seconds and a number of clicks to open.

I had one crash to desktop, one server restart but no queues for login over the 4-day period. Not bad for a BETA test.

It's my ship and I'll fly if I want to...

It's my ship and I'll fly if I want to...

Next up: an overview of my crafting experience, space combat, and my search for vanity pets.

SWTOR Professions: What to Choose for My First Character?

24 Thursday Nov 2011

Posted by in crew skills

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Crafting is always one of my key motivators when leveling a character. I get excited about finding or training new recipes, and improving my character as a result of my crafting profession. And over my years of playing World of Warcraft, with my and my SO’s army of alts, I’ve gotten really used to having all my crafting needs covered in-house. But, since you can only pick a total of 3 skills (across Gathering, Crafting and Mission Skills) for your crew to take on, it will be quite a while before that’s the case for me in the Old Republic. Which means deciding what profession to pick up first takes on some significant weight.

The Crafting choices:

  • Armormech, working with hard metals and electronic shielding to construct all types of personal armor (for non Force users)
  • Armstech, constructing blasters, blaster rifles and upgrades.
  • Artifice, constructing Jedi and Sith artifacts, including crystals to change your lightsaber’s color, and item enhancements.
  • Biochem, engineering of performance-enhancing chemical serums and biological implants.
  • Cybertech, constructing gadgets and components for Droids and high-tech armors, including earpieces and armor upgrades.
  • Synthweaving, creating lighter outfits and armors that are imbued with supernatural qualities, for Force users.

The Gathering choices:

  • Archaeology, the ability to seek out imbued items like Lightsaber crystals and ancient artifacts
  • Bioanalysis, the practice of collecting genetic material from creatures and plants
  • Scavenging, the art of recovering useful materials and parts from old or damaged technology
  • Slicing, a skill in accessing secured computer systems and lockboxes to acquire valuable data and rare schematics

The Mission Skills choices:

  • Diplomacy, conducting and managing negotiations
  • Investigation, examining evidence and following clues to discover valuable secrets
  • Treasure Hunting, recovering valuable items by investigating a series of clues
  • Underworld Trading, trading in illegal goods and services

You are limited to a total of 3 Crew Skills, with only 1 allowed to be a crafting skill. For this reason, I am thinking I’ll go with Aracheology, Synthweaving and Diplomacy Underworld Trading on my Inquisitor. I always like being able to make myself (and my friends) good quality gear at max level. Both of my max level shadow priests in World of Warcraft are tailors, so I am used to the cloth grind and the money sink. Thankfully, through reverse engineering of my completed goods, anything I don’t end up wearing can be ripped apart to recover at least some of the materials it took to make it.

My SO is thinking of going with Artifice for his first crafting skill, which makes me happy. I hope to see a purple lightsaber crystal in my near future…

I’ll be participating in the BETA testing this weekend, and hope to actually have a stable enough server to get a character up to the 8-10 range so I’ll make it to a town with profession trainers to get my first hands-on look at the professions.