SWTOR Cybertech Crew Skill Guide

SWTOR Cybertech Crew Skill Guide by Craftamancer

Here’s a guide to Cybertech based on my experience in-game to date. All information is current as of 29 Jan 2012.

What is Cybertech?

Cybertech is a Crafting Crew Skill that allows you to create Armoring, Mods, Earpieces, Droid Parts, Ship Upgrades, Personal Vehicles (Only usuable by the person who creates them), and Grenades.

Cybertechs can create 5 unique, artifact quality grenades that are more powerful than ordinary grenades and are not expended when used. They share a 5 minute cooldown and, in my experience, find their best use in PVP. That said, additional damage without a resource cost is always welcome in any setting, and there are numerous effects that these grenades can generate that are useful in an Operation setting, particularly when there are groups of non-boss enemies involved.

Which Advanced Classes benefit from Cybertech?

All Advanced Classes benefit from Cybertech.

What other Crew Skills should I take?

For the serious crafter, Scavenging and Underworld Trading are absolutely required. Unless you have an exceedingly rich main character, and don’t mind waiting for materials to become available on the GTN, these two crew skills are vital.

Scavenging will allow you to gather all the materials required to create Green items, including missions for the materials that you can buy from the Crew Skill Vendor. These materials are FAR cheaper to attain using the missions than the crew skill vendor, particularly at higher levels.

Underworld Trading allows you to gather additional components that are required to create blue and purple items. These materials cannot be gathered in the open world, they must be acquired by running missions. This causes them to sell for a significant sum on the GTN.

What else should I know about SWTOR crafting and equipment before learning more about Cybertech?

Crafting in SWTOR, to the best of my knowledge, only allows crafters to create Green (Premium), Blue (Prototype), Orange (Prototype but modable) and Purple (Artifact) gear. This may change as Operation level schematics are introduced. In some cases these colours MAY appear different, as I’ll demonstrate later on, but the exceptions will most likely be altered to reflect this color scheme in future patches.

Orange modable gear is very important to crafters, as all the stats on the equipment are determined by equipment modifiers, such as the armoring and mods made by Cybertechs. Orange armor takes both the armoring and mods, while weapons take only the mods. The remaining slots in armor and weapons are enhancements, color crystals, weapon hilts and weapon barrels, which are created by Artificers and Armstechs.

The total stats on an Orange item are added together above all the item equipment slots. This can confuse people who are new to the game. Don’t make the mistake of adding all the individual stats from the mods to the total listed above them.

Artifact gear often has item enhancement slots, though in armor the Armoring is usually built into the item and thus not replaceable. Similarly, some artifact weapons have no item enhancement slots at all, while others are partially modable with only the weapon barrel built in and irreplaceable.

Light Armor wearers gain a benefit over other classes at level 14, as they can acquire a great deal of Orange modable light armor via the Social Vendor on early planets or the CE vendor. My companion Mako is still dressed in her Nar Shadaa steel bikini, despite being able to wear medium armor, and I’ve never had any issues with her dying early while soloing. There are various outfits, ranging from skimpy to a full on imperial soldier look, but all of them are light armor.

Reverse Engineering is a small hammer-like icon above your inventory. Many of the items you create (or find) can be broken down by clicking on the “hammer” and then right clicking the item you wish to break down. Breaking down an item returns a portion of the materials used to create it and offers a chance to learn a new schematic of higher quality. New schematics have the same level requirement for the item, but are superior in quality.

I highly recommend reading the “Reverse Engineering Guide“. There is a lot of excellent information including charts that explain in detail all the nuances of Reverse Engineering.

I do not believe that crafters can learn any higher than artifact quality schematics at this time, but will gladly accept proof to the contrary. I highly recommend breaking down most of what you create while leveling your Cybertech in order to gain new schematics and more materials. This will allow you to level up your crafting skill faster.

That said, crafting skills are expensive to level. Don’t be afraid to see if some of your creations can be sold on the GTN (Galactic Trade Network). You will recover your relatively expensive deposit if the item does not sell, and if it does sell, most of that deposit is returned to you. Removing an item from the GTN early loses your deposit.

SWTOR Primary Stats:

Bounty Hunter/Trooper – Aim

Imperial Agent/Smuggler – Cunning

Inquisitor/Consulor – Willpower

Warrior/Knight – Strength

Augment Slots: Augment slots are created on crafted items when the crafter crits. Only weapons, armor, impants and earpieces may have an augment slot. An augment comes from slicing missions, and may include up to 28 of a primary or secondary stat at this time. That number is from a 50 rating artifact quality augment.

Leveling Crew Skills:

The difficulty of crafting an item is directly proportionate to the likelihood of you gaining a skill point.

The Difficulty Levels range from Grey -> Green -> Yellow -> Orange

Grey = 0 pt gain per item crafted
Green = 0 – 1 pt gain per item crafted
Yellow = 1 pt gain per item crafted
Orange = 2 pt gain per item crafted

Cybertech Crafting:

Armoring:

Cybertechs can create Item Modifiers called Armoring. These are placed into modable equipment. Armoring is the sole component that determines the actual value of your armor, and thus is the most important item enhancement that can be placed in armor, particularly for those who wish to tank in Operations.

Armoring include an armor rating, a primary stat and endurance. Armor rating determines the armor on an item, which is modified according to the item’s property of light, medium or heavy. Heavy armor will gain more armor than medium armor will from Armoring with the same armor rating.

At early levels, the primary stat on Armoring will always be higher than the endurance. Once you can create armoring that requires level 33 or higher to use, you will gain access to four new schematics for armoring that grant more endurance and less of your primary stat. These are useful for tanks, or possibly for PVP, though I personally would still use the higher primary stat for PVP gear unless survival was more important than damage or healing (such as in Huttball).

At end game, armoring can be found in weapons and armor and from daily commendation vendors that exceeds anything that a Cybertech can create. I wouldn’t bother spending too much time researching these schematics to artifact level until you have no other use for the Ciridium (blue grade 6 Underworld Trading material) that is required for researching Cybertech high level schematics.

Droid Components:

Cybertechs can create a variety of droid parts. Although all the end game droid parts are for tanking (ie, for the companion droid tanks in the game), there are a number of schematics that can be created early on that are fully modable. These droid components are green, despite being fully modable.

These droid components can be sold, and are particularly useful if you are playing a class that doesn’t receive any other healer companions early on in the game, since all ship droids can be used to heal.

Droid Components are the only artifact quality item for Cybertechs that uses a Tier 1 Prefix. Tier 1 Prefixes are Redoubt, Overkill and Critical. See Earpieces for a list of all the Tier 2 Prefixes.

What this means is that there is an additional stage to Reverse Engineering for droid components. When you Reverse Engineer Prototype (blue) droid components, they will give you Artifact (purple) schematics but with a Tier 1 prefix. You may then create and RE the artifact quality Tier 1 components to learn new schematics with the Tier 2 prefixes that are listed below. The Tier 1 prefix is used to determine which of the Tier 2 prefixes can be learned.

I have yet to see any droid components that are superior to the Tier 2 crafted droid parts. Whether or not you can make a profit will be determined by the amount of people who are willing to spend a LOT of money on gearing up their tank droid companion. Since the RE process to learn these schematics is EXTREMELY expensive, you should probably not spend time trying to learn the Tier 2 schematics until you are very comfortable financially. I expect that it will cost me several million credits to RE the four max level artifact Tier 2 quality droid parts, given that the materials for each RE’d component costs me 30k or more on the GTN.

*Updated – The Veracity Tier 2 Prefix for Droid Components only adds 27 Shield rating to the value of the Tier 1 schematic.

Thus, for example, the Hawkeye Tier 2 prefix, which is derived from an Overkill Tier 1 prefix, will add a total of +24 Power and +27 Accuracy to the base prototype (blue) droid component. With artifact earpieces, the value of the Tier 2 prefix is +40 to each stat.

Earpieces:

This is where I have made my credits in the game. Earpieces are relatively rare drops throughout the game, and thus a good way to make credits virtually every step of the way. The highest trainer taught earpieces are equipable at level 49, and the artifact versions are easily comparable if not superior to any Operation earpiece, particuarly if you receive a crafting crit (thus creating an augment slot).

When an earpiece is reverse engineered, a new schematic may be learned that has a new pre-fix. This prefix adds additional stats. Here are my findings to date:

Prototype (Blue) Schematics have three Tier 1 prefixes available:

Redoubt: +35 Defense

Overkill: +35 Power

Critical: +35 Critical

Artifact (Purple) Schematics replace the blue items prefix, removes the blue item’s bonus stats and and adds another 40 to the Tier 1 stat and one other stat. There are a LOT of purple schematics, and it’s important to understand how stats affect you in game in order to create earpieces that people will actually buy. Reverse engineering is fairly random, so you will likely receive just as many if not more “bad” prefixes as good.

Artifact (Purple) Earpieces have numerous schematics available… these are the ones you can learn:

Prototype (Blue) Redoubt (+35 Defense) – Reverse Engineers into:

Tier 2 Prefixes
– Anti-Armor (+40 Defense, +40 Surge)
– Exactitude (+40 Defense, +40 Accuracy)
– General’s (+40 Defense, +40 Presence)
– Veracity (+40 Defense, +40 Shield)
– ?????? (+40 Defense, +40 Alacrity) (This is the missing Tier 2 Prefix)

Prototype (Blue) Critical (+35 Critical) – Reverse Engineers into:

Tier 2 Prefixes
– Endowment (+40 Critical, +40 Surge)
– Fervor (+40 Critical, +40 Accuracy)
– Leadership (+40 Critical, +40 Presence)
– Supremacy (+40 Critical, +40 Alacrity)
– Tempest (+40 Critical, +40 Shield)

Prototype (Blue) Overkill (+35 Power) – Reverse Engineers into:

Tier 2 Prefixes
– Commander (+40 Power, +40 Presence)
– Expert (+40 Power, +40 Surge)
– Hawkeye (+40 Power, +40 Accuracy)
– Rampart (+40 Power, +40 Shield)
– Vehemence (+40 Power, +40 Alacrity)

*Note that the bonuses from Redoubt, Critical and Overkill are added to rather than replaced by the new Prefixes. The stat additions listed are for the earpieces you can make that require level 49 to use.

If you want to create a good tanking earpiece for a Bounty Hunter, for example, then you would reverse engineer the green Galactic Combat Module earpiece until you received the schematic for Redoubt Galactic Combat Module. You would then reverse that blue earpiece until you received the schematic for Veracity Galactic Combat Module.

It is important to keep in mind the stats that you feel a class would like. Since the primary purchasers of your earpiece are likely going to be those who want them for Hard Mode flash points and Operations, Presence is a useless stat. It only affects your companion’s damage, and they cannot be used in either of those locations. Therefore, refrain from trying to create and sell any of the earpieces with presence on them. You would likely just be wasting your time.

The 10 Earpieces that I sell on a regular basis are:

Endowment Ion-Charged Power Device – Cunning DPS

Endowment Reflex Enhancement Adaptor – Aim DPS

Expert Hyperaccelerated Rejuvenation Module – Aim Healer

Fervor Entropic Energy Chip – Strength DPS

Supremacy Hyperaccelerated Awareness Chip – Willpower DPS

Supremecy Serenity Relay – Cunning Healer

Vehemence Immortality Relay – Willpower Healer

Veracity Galactic Combat Module – Aim Tank

Veracity Hyperaccelerated Resistance Module – Willpower Tank

Veracity Immunity Module – Strength Tank

You will also see a suffix denoting whether or not the item received a crit during the crafting process. [Superior] means that it is the normal version of that item, while [Mastercraft] means that it has an augment slot.

Altogether, I have 23 epic schematics for earpieces, and only 11 of those schematics are sellable at this time. Once logs are introduced into the game you will likely see some classes highly favoring one stat over another, which may cause you to then curse or praise the gods of RNG.

Since I was the first Cybertech on my server to research most of these schematics, I have been able to recover the significant expenditure of time and credits spent getting my Cybertech to this point. You may or may not find this aspect of Cybertech as lucrative as I have, but it is definitely worth investigating. Check the GTN to see which classes or roles are lacking for earpieces, and then try to fill that gap.

Gadgets (aka personal vehicles):

There are three schematics for gadgets at this time. All of them are personal vehicles and all of them are bind on pickup, meaning that you can’t trade or sell them. They also don’t save you much in terms of credits, since the cost of the materials is similar to the cost of a new speeder, with the possible exception of the level 40 speeder.

The level 25 speeder is a tan reskin of the boxy looking speeder available on Tatooine. UGLY. Not worth it.

The level 40 speeder is actually nice looking. I recommend making this one for personal use.

The level 50 speeder is a red reskin of the level 40 version. Not a bad bike, but I prefer the Gurian Shadow, so I rarely use this one.

You cannot Reverse Engineer speeders.

Grenades:

Grenades are consumeables that only have a level requirement. There are various types of grenades, and I suspect that serious PVPers and Ops teams may purchase these for that extra edge. However, I have not tried to sell any and couldn’t say whether or not they are worth the cost of the materials.

As a Cybertech, you also purchase schematics from the trainer for bind on pickup artifact quality grenades that are superior in damage and effect durations, and not consumed on use. I now have all 5 grenades created, and I love them. They are great for slowing down or outright stopping a group of enemies, such as the opposing huttball team that is closing in on your ball carrier.

You will need a special component to create these, Biometric Crystal Alloy, that only drops off of Hard Mode Flashpoint bosses and Operation Bosses.

You cannot Reverse Engineer grenades.

Mods:

Mods are very similar to Armoring, except that they can also be placed in weapons, and do not affect the armor rating of armor.

Cybertechs cannot create tank specific Mods. In addition, the highest mods created are equal to those found in certain daily heroic quests at level 50, and inferior to those found in PVP and Operations gear.

For Mods that require greater than level 22 to use, Cybertechs can only create ones that end with the suffix A (as opposed to no suffix, or the B suffix).

For example…
Cybertech can create Aptitude Mod 22A.
Cybertech cannot create Aptitude Mod 22 or 22B.

Space:

Cybertech is the only crew skill that can create components for spacecraft. These components are superior to anything that can be bought from the starship vendor. The schematics for these prototype and artifact components can easily be found on the GTN or from slicing. The crew skill trainer does not provide you with schematics for space. The schematics are quite common, so don’t spend your life savings purchasing them.

Since the “space game” isn’t much more than a mini-game, you probably won’t be able to sell these components for outrageous prices, though they will likely still sell well since Cybertechs are the sole source.

You cannot Reverse Engineer spaceship components.

Here’s a quick breakdown of my Cybertech Background:

My Cybertech crew skill has 23 maximum level artifact quality Earpiece schematics, all max level artifact quality Armoring schematics, all max level artifact quality Mod schematics, all Tier 1 prefix max level artifact droid components, all spaceship schematics and all gadget schematics.

I have made sufficient funds with Cybertech to research/purchase all of the above, to purchase all of my storage space for both my inventory and cargo bays, and to purchase all the training required for my Advanced Class, my Crew Skills and Speeder Training. I also have over 7 million credits in currency and about 6 million credits worth of product sitting in the bank waiting to be sold.

That said, I have farmed and bought a ridiculous amount of materials for crafting, and have had FAR more time than most players to get myself to this point. My /played time is sitting at 20+ days as of this post, and that doesn’t include the time spent on alts. The above “statistics” are not intended as boasting or a benchmark… they are merely to give an indication as to the amount of experience and success I’ve had with this crew skill.

For those wondering… yes, Bio-Chem is still the best end-game profession. However, I’ve sunk enough time and effort into Cybertech to stick with it and hope that they bump up both cybertech and the other crafting crew skills to match the utility and benefit of Bio-Chem.

Here’s a Spreadsheet with good information on Cybertech schematics and material requirements, as provided by JoeDShadow.

I hope this helps,

Enjoy being a Cybertech!