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Tag Archives: maximizing your crew skills

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

09 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by anexxia in crew skills, poll, screenshots

≈ 27 Comments

Tags

crafting, crew skills, maximizing your crew skills, poll, Star Wars: The Old Republic, SWTOR

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

12 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by anexxia in BETA, companions, crew skills, screenshots

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

archaeology, crew skills, leveling your SWTOR professions, maximizing your crew skills, Star Wars: The Old Republic, SWTOR, synthweaving, underworld trading

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

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