SWTOR Crafting Guide

SWTOR Crafting Guide by ShaddamV

As the name Crew Skills implies, the crafting and gathering in SWTOR are performed (primarily) by your companions rather than by your character itself. As you obtain more companions throughout the leveling process, you can send multiple companions out to craft or run crew skill missions at once. When crafting, a single companion can queue up to 5 different crafting jobs at once. All crafting and crew skill mission timers continue after you have logged out, as well. Characters can have at most 3 Crew Skills with a maximum of one crafting skill.


Gathering Skills

Archaeology

• Archaelogy gathers color crystals, artifact fragments, and power crystals from nodes scattered around planets. Right clicking a node will send your active companion to gather it or you can shift-right click to gather yourself.
• Missions : You can send your companion on missions to get any of color crystals, artifact fragments, power crystals, or NPC goods. As with most gathering professions, these missions are likely to not be cost effective unless you are trying to level the skill without doing actual gathering.
• Suggested Crafting Skills : Artiface (all three goods) and Synthweaving (power crystals and artifact fragments only)

Bioanalysis

• Harvests biochemical compounds and biochemical samples from plants (nodes in the world) and defeated beasts. Interestingly, dead mobs that can be “skinned” by bioanalysis are tracked on the minimap.
• Missions : You can send your companion on missions to get compounds, samples, or NPC goods. As with most gathering professions, these missions are likely to not be cost effective unless you are trying to level the skill without doing actual gathering.
• Suggested Crafting Skills : Biochem

Scavenging

• Harvests scavenged compounds and metals from both nodes and strong or higher difficulty droids.
• Missions : You can send your companion on missions to get compounds, metals, or NPC goods. As with most gathering professions, these missions are likely to not be cost effective unless you are trying to level the skill without doing actual gathering.
• Suggested Crafting Skills : Armormech, Armstech, Cybertech

Slicing

• Unlocks lockboxes scattered around the world. These contain credit boxes and possibly BoE gear drops.
• Missions : Mainly lockbox missions – not usually profitable. You can also find “Mission Discovery” items. These are one-time use items that unlock a special mission for one of the gathering or mission skills.
• Suggested Crafting Skills : None.

Mission Skills


Mission skills are only performed by companions. There are no nodes or mobs that you harvest. All of the skills can be used to obtain companion gifts which can be used to raise your affection with your companions and most also allow you to do missions for lockboxes. The main goal of them, however, is to find the rare materials you need to craft prototype (blue) and artifact (purple) quality goods.

Diplomacy – Medical Supplies (Biochem). Missions also award light side / dark side pointsTreasure Hunting – Gemstones (artiface)
Investigation – researched compounds (armstech) and rare prototype (blue) schematics for all crafters
Underworld Trading – Luxury fabrics (synthweaving) and underworld metals (Armorsmith, Cybertech and synthweaving)

Crafting Skills


Armormech :

• Heavy armor with aim (Bounty Hunter / Trooper)
• Medium armor with cunning (Imperial Agent / Smuggler)

Armstech :

• Barrel mods (for modifiable blasters)
• Assault cannons
• Blaster Pistols
• Blaster Rifle
• Sniper Rifle
• Electrostaff
• Techstaff
• Vibrosword
• Vibroknife
• Techblade

Artiface :

• Color crystals for blasters and lightsabers
• Enhancement mods
• Off-hand items (shield generators, power generators, and force focus)
• Hilt mods for lightsabers

Biochem :

• Stat adrenals (like potions in wow) that give a 15s stat boost
• Implants (gear item)
• Medpac (health potions)
• Stimulant (like flasks/elixers)

Cybertech :

• Armor mods
• Droid parts for droid companions
• Earpiece (gear item)
• Grenade consumables (think saronite bomb)
• Modification modifications (yes that’s what they are called)
• Starship parts (schematic from slicing)
• Vehicles (schematic from slicing)

Synthweaving :

• Light Armor with willpower (Inquisitor/Consular)
• Medium Armor with strength (warriors/knights)
• Heavy armor with strength (warriors/knights)

Learning new recipes:
There are several ways to learn new recipes. Primarily, there’s the trusty trainer. The vast majority of these recipes are green quality (though the green quality gear *is* good for leveling in SWTOR). At lvl 50 there are some artifact (purple) quality recipes on the vendor as well. The rarest schematics are from slicing and investigation (I have yet to see these, but some rumors are that these are sellable). The easiest way to get blue and purple recipes is a mechanic called “reverse engineering” (think disenchanting). Whenever you obtain an item in the class you can craft (so say light armor if you are a synthweaver) or craft an item, you have the option to break this item back down into some of its components (very similar to salvage if you played RIFT). Each time you do this, you have a chance to learn a rarer version of that recipe. So if I RE a green robe, I have a chance to learn the pattern for the blue version with has the same stats as the green plus a bonus stat or modification slot. Similarly, if I RE a blue version that I craft, I have a chance to get the purple version. These blue and purple versions of the gear are very good for their level. Best thing is if you have a stack of 5 items you would like to RE, you can do so in a single click

Modifications :
I’ve mentioned modifications a few times so far, so that’s worth noting. In addition to crafting gear, you can craft modifications that go into specific slots in some gear to change the stats of the gear. You can think of these similar to gem slots, but on the best items, it’s not that you are adding stats to the item, but you are completely creating the stats on the item from the modification. For example, the lightsaber you start off with is a fully mod-able item (not all items have mod slots) – if you take all the mods off, you have pretty much a metal case in your hand that is worthless. For a lightsaber, you can craft hilts, color crystals, focus lenses, emitter matrix, and power crystals which each change the stats of the item. Modifications are removable (at a cost that scales with level), but currently removed mods are Bound to you (though you can still use them on a companion if you would like). One interesting thing for modifications is that since *every* stat of the item is tied to the modifications, say you have some ugly heavy armor as a bounty hunter and get a really cool robe you want to wear. Since the robe is light armor, you would rarely want to use that as a tank, but you could remove all the modifications out of your current heavy armor piece and slide them into the light armor and now you are a bounty hunter in a robe. No promises this will make it to release, but it does imply that high-quality mods will be important to the game similar to how enchants/gems are in WoW.

I like Credits, but I don’t want miss any personal bonuses!
This is one part of the professions I’m basing very heavily on datamined data, so forgive anything that turns out different at launch. Itdoes appear that each of the crafting professions (and some others) give specific bonuses beyond just crafting to your character. It’s unclear to me current if any of these are really long lasting bonuses to the class or more quality of life bonuses, but I’ll give a run down of any I know of.

Armormech – At 50, there are purple quality items that are BoP to the crafter. It’s unclear how these compare to heroic/raid drops.
Slicing – In previous builds, slicing was the “if you take slicing you’re rich, if you don’t you’re poor” profession. The lockboxes you gather from nodes often contain large sums of credits with minimal effort (while leveling). That said, it seems like that latest build lowered the spawn rate of these, so it’s unclear how amazing this will be at launch.
Armstech – ??? – I didn’t play this much and the datamined information shows no obvious endgame BoP items.
Artiface – Level 50 relics (think trinkets) which are 1 slot modable.
Biochem – BoP Craftable implants which are 1 slot modable at lvl 50. Also most medpacks, stims, etc, have an epic craftable version that are only useable to Biochems. These give the same effects as the green quality version, but are not consumed (so think alchemist potion from Wrath).
Cybertech – Similar to biochem, but they have unconsumed grenades/bombs. As well as BoP epic earpieces. Also, they can craft ship upgrades and mounts. In the current datamined data, the mount is BoP
Synthweaving – *Lots* of BoP crafted epics at 50. It seems like nearly every slot.

Suggested Pairings :
This is my list of suggested pairings in order of Crafting/Gathering/Mission. Note that if you are completely uninterested in blue/purple crafting while leveling, you can always drop the Mission skill for Slicing or take 3 gathering professions for maximum profit.

Synthweaving / Archeology / Underworld Trading
Armormech / Scavenging / Underworld Trading
Artiface / Archeology / Treasure Hunting
Biochem / Bioanalysis / Diplomacy
Armstech / Scavenging / Investigation
Cybertech / Scavenging / Underworld Trading

Speculation :
This is complete speculation on my part on where to make credits on launch. I could be completely wrong. In the current build, they allowed your companions to do low-level gathering / mission skills for you as needed. This will probably mean, especially combined with the obvious combination of gathering skills needed, that low-level gathering items will probably not be the biggest sellers at launch. Personally this is driving me away from the 3 gathering professions (this will likely be a good route after the game has been out and the market isn’t flooded with materials). If you want to go to 3 non-crafting professions, I would suggest slicing + 2 mission skills (probably Underworld and Treasure Hunting). Whenever you are in town and not questing or once you get your ship around lvl 15-18, chain your companions on the mission skills as the rare drops from those can be used and wont be flooded on the market. Slicing should give a steady source of income throughout the leveling process as well.

If you want to get started on your crafting professions and level them as you level, my gut feeling is that Color Crystals will sell well after the Official launch (probably not so much during early access since many people will have the color crystal that comes from preordering). Those, combined with the assortment of mods that Artiface can make suggest to me that Artiface will do well both at launch and at end game. For reference, at level 20 in the last weekend, I was up to 200k credits (not huge at lvl 50, but very rich in terms of lvl 20) from selling mods and crystals on the AH. If you’re not a force user, the mods from cybertech will likely be similarly important, but without the color cystals.

At endgame, Biochem will likely be a long term source of credits as the stims/medpacks (especially the blue versions) will be very important for operations and nightmare flashpoints.