I travelled around to all the planets I could as soon as I got my ship. Balmorra has some Rank 2 social gear that is wearable by males. Lots of other planets also have armor at later levels. As near as I could tell, Balmorra used to be level 16-20 and Taris was higher level, but they shifted the planet level ranges around and forgot to change the ranks on the social gear. Seeing as Taris social armor is Rank IV on a level 16-20 planet, and Balmorra social armor is Rank II on a 40s(?) planet. I do find it extremely frustrating that they have so few options. Currently, republic males have no rank 1 social armor, and empire females have no rank 1 social armor (except the expensive, Security Key vendor, female-only stripper outfit).

Just ran into this issue also. Can find an orange weapon for just about anyone else, but not Fess. :/

I would love an answer to this question myself. All I've been able to find is female gear on the Republic side. Seems like if you want early moddable gear, you have to roll male empire or female republic. It's incredibly lame.

I sent these in as feedback, but was asked by the CSR droid to post them on the forums. Page that I update found here. List as of today in this post. Critical Issues The GTN (auction house) interface is terrible. Keyword search first, THEN optional qualifiers and categories. [*]Major Issues Guilds They provide nearly no benefit aside from a list and a chatroom (expecting: leveling, perks, granular rank permissions, bank -- I know the bank is OTW) The interface is buggy. E.g. It often does not show everyone who is actually online. [*]Mod Interface Can't preview stat changes to items when hovering over mods Trying to compare mods between two orange items is a terrible/frustrating experience. Have to remember stats between opening different windows. [*]Companion Items Can't preview stat changes to companion when hovering over companion-only items in inventory If it says Requires Kaliyo, then it should show the stat changes for Kaliyo, not my character! [*]Armor Kit quest rewards can't be previewed (e.g. Qyzen Fess's first kit). You must choose his new look blindly. [*][MISSING FEATURE] Quest Item icon in Quest Tracker - Have to dig through your inventory/Quest Items tab to use it. [*][MISSING FEATURE] Sell All Greys button on Vendor UI - It's stupid to send your companion to do this when you are already at a vendor. [*][MISSING FEATURE] Buying stacks or multiples at a time from vendors using Ctrl- or Shift-Right-Click. [*][MISSING FEATURE] Load/Save UI Settings/Layouts/Keybindings [*][MISSING FEATURE] Macros (preferably fall-through style) [*][MISSING FEATURE] Respec to other Advanced Classes -- No way I'm playing 200 hrs of the SAME storyline twice. [*]Minor Issues Right-click moving items from inventory to bank doesn't auto-stack like items. Crew Skill window still bugs sometimes and shows 0 craftable quantity even if you have enough ingredients Getting Stuck (usually fixable with Character Stuck button) Easy to get stuck behind rocks Sometimes get stuck in a mild sloping hillside [*]Sell-back at full price feature within a certain time limit for accidental purchases [*]My Preferences [WANTED FEATURE] Port to Ship [WANTED FEATURE] Mailbox on Ship [WANTED FEATURE] Shared Bank (workaround is to mail items to your alts) Characters on the same server/account/faction should have access to shared banking space As seen in EverQuest 2 [*]Travel - It's too slow for too long. Sprint is received too late (should be received before leaving starting planet - sub-10) Ground mounts are received too late (should be available when ship is received at 20ish, cost adjusted appropriately) [*]Crew Skill aggravations Currently 6 characters are required to have all crafting skills. This is mainly due to: Limit of 1 crafing skill per character Limit of 3 total crew skills per character NOTE: If both of these limits were increased by 1, then it would be possible to have all crew skills across 4 characters. [*] Reasoning: I want to be able to equip my own characters if I choose to do so. But I have no desire to make characters that are just crafing mules. These artificial limits aren't going to discourage self-sufficient people from making all the crafters, but instead just make them frustrated with the process. [*]Crafted BoPs should be BoA and mailable to alts. I mean if my Twilek and Cyborg can share a last name through Legacy, then can't they share crafting creations.

The GTN is just terrible. Search by Name is drastically needed.

That's cool. Hopefully there are multiple paths to the same recipe. Seems like perhaps I should bother with getting crafting to the end-game then. I didn't really like the way that some games have done it before. E.g. For a crafted armor set, some of the set is gotten from grinding tradeskill dailies for tokens, and some of the set is from raid or instance drops. For instance, Rift does this, and some of the dropped recipes are (or were) even BoP, which makes them extra unlikely to ever get.

I appreciate honesty, even if it's critical. (That's how people learn.) Just so long as it's not an insult. (e.g. "childish suggestion") The "I WANT EVERYTHING" mentality is exactly the customer that MMO companies want. (Umm, but contrast to the "I want everything now" mentality.) People who focus on one aspect of a game leave when that aspect gets boring. There's nothing wrong with wanting everything, but one just has to be willing to put in the time to do everything. As to whether it's worth it. Getting gear by FP/Ops is much easier and quicker. But to a DIYer (the people who are pondering this thread's question), easy and quick are not the overriding considerations. However, complaints do arise when DIY is impossible or gimps your other capabilities.

Actually, blue (and possibly green) just says you can't be Dark I. Since you can simultaneously raise your light and dark levels (i.e. Be Dark I and Light I), you can potentially find yourself in a position where you can never again equip certain color crystals. Not sure about purple specifically.

Yes, you must reverse engineer blue crystals if you want a chance at the better blue crystal recipes.

How are end-game purple recipes obtained in SWTOR? In some games, they are drops, others are purchased with tokens from grinding dailies. Or both. How does SWTOR do it? I would like to have the correct expectations on end-game crafting.

Yeah, even though my pre-order crystal has better stats at lower levels, I don't use it because I don't like the color. Mind you, it looks cool with the black base color and yellow glow. But I much prefer blue.

If you plan on getting a bunch of characters to 50, then it's not so much of a problem since you have access to all the companions. Myself, I probably won't level more than 2 characters to cap because that's about all I can take. So I'll have level 10 crafting alts filling in the gaps. I was also going to do this (get all crafters) in Rift, and I made a good beginning at it. However, when I got to skill cap, it turned out that there was a dailies grind to get the purple recipes. No way was I going to spend all my play time grinding out crafting dailies. So, I managed to get only about 2 crafters in pretty good shape, recipe-wise. Does anyone know how the epic recipes are obtained in end-game crafting in SWTOR? If it's too much of a grind, I'll probably just skip crafting altogether and run FPs and Ops for gear. I may actually just post another question on this.

Agreed. I think the reasoning is because they are light/dark neutral so that anyone can use them.

It seems that BW has gone to great lengths to discourage players from trying to do what you are proposing. However, I have been trying to formulate ways to do this. Check my sig for my first stab at it. (Edit: Linking here too in case I change my sig.) To answer your logistics questions, yes a low level character can skill up past their adventure level bracket. However, you have to at least finish your class quest on the starter planet to get your first companion. Not sure if there is a level requirement on when you can learn crew skills, but they are pretty useless without a companion.

Whenever you complete the class questline on the starting planet and go to the fleet. Around 9 or 10.