I had never thought of the pilot gear for treek. That's such a great idea. I'm definately going to setup those sets. Keep in mind as well that this post is designed for new players who don't have the bank roll to overgear or might lack the knowledge/presence to quest under levelled. Please keep the posts coming as there has been a lot of useful stuff added.

I have recently started leveling toons on the Imp side as I now have all 8 toons maxed on the Pub side. I am writing this guide to help new players have a more enjoyable and easy leveling experience. I have played this game since launch. When I level a toon all I do are missions. No PvP, no flashpoints. I do every mission on the planets including the heroic missions and bonus series. As a result I over level. This makes the leveling grind much easier as I am 3-5 levels above the mobs that I am fighting. If you do not like running over leveled simply finish your class quests on your current planet and move onto the next planet. Always logout in a cantina, your ship or the fleet so that you will build your rested experience while you are logged off. Make sure that you are visiting your trainer every time that you level up, every two levels at most. You get a skill point every time you gain a new level from level 10+. Spend these points as soon as you level. Which talents you take will depend on which class you are and which role you want to perform. Generally speaking though when you are leveling you want to spend these points in abilities that do more damage/healing and abilities that cause you to take less damage. I do highly recommend leveling as the spec that you plan on being once you reach endgame level. This will help you to know your talents and abilities so that you will not be learning them when you are doing endgame content. Leveling as a tank is this game is not as bad as other MMO's as you have a companion in this game. Leveling as a healer in this game is also very easy for the same reason. I actually believe that the easiest leveling pair is leveling a healer with a tanking companion. This combo will allow you to solo heroic 2 missions with ease. Guilds Join a guild that has the %10 experience boost. This will help you level faster. Try and join a leveling guild so that you will be with people of like minds and you might even be able to partner up with them to tackle the heroic 2 and heroic 4 missions planetary missions. GTN The GTN is where you will buy anything that your toon or your companion needs as well as sell your items that you do not need for credits. Crew Skills Cybertech Scavenging Underworld Trading This combo of crew skills will allow you to make your own armorings, earpieces and mods. Plus scavenging materials and underworld trading metals have a high sale value on the GTN. Just craft earpieces and armorings to level up your cyber tech. If you have a surplus of materials or need to craft more to advance craft mods. If you plan on leveling other toons make sure that you are crafting armorings and earpieces that have that class's main stat on them. Only reverse engineer till you have learned the blue schematic. If you want the purple version schematics feel free but this will use a lot more materials. Reverse engineering a green will eventually unlock the blue version, and then reverse engineering the blue will eventually unlock the purple version. Have the companions that are sitting on your ship run underworld trading metal missions, only run these missions in underworld trading. With this set of crew skills you will only need to buy your implants, relics, enhancements, barrels and hilts. Sell your blue quality armoring, mods and earpieces on the GTN for credits. Gear Get you and your main companion a full set of customizable gear. Off hands can be purchased from the Nar Shadaa equipment vendor. Main hands from your Capital city equipment vendor. For the armor you can get a cheap set from the GTN, it might not look nice but it will get the job done. Look under armor - adaptive armor - then search slot by slot. For your first toon I would not worry about getting these sets till after you have completed your faction capital planet. For every toon after that however I would recommend getting these sets as soon as you get to the fleet. All planet commendation vendors can be found on the fleet in the supply section. When you are completing quests always choose the planetary commendation as the reward. You then use these to buy the item modifications that your customizable gear needs. I replace my item modifications every 10 levels. 9 - 19 - 29 - 39 - 50. Use your cybertech skill to make the armorings this will save you a ton of planet comms. You can also craft your own earpieces this will save you credits. Do not worry about your gear being any high then blue quality. Remember you will be gearing both you and your companion at these level intervals. Watch your planet commendation count. You can only have 100 so if you are getting close to that go spend some. If you are leveling multiple toons or plan on leveling another toon you can spend these extra comms on getting their item modifications. These do not bind on pickup, the gear from the vendors is bind on pickup however, so do not buy it for another toon. Companions Choosing the right companion for your character will also make your leveling experience much easier. If you are leveling a commando/mercenary or scoundrel/operative or sage/sorcerer go with a tanking companion. Even if you are not leveling as a healer you will still have a few healing abilities to keep your companion alive. For all other classes choose a healer companion. This companion will keep you alive. With a tank companion you send them in first, let them get aggro and then begin your attack. With a healer companion you attack first and let you companion heal you. Make sure that your companions are in the correct stance for their role. If you are leveling a class that does not get their healing companion till late game just use your ship droid. As passive as he is he will still heal you. General If you follow these tips you will find yourself never short on credits. You will be well geared, able to take on any non heroic mission solo. You will also be setup for assisting your next toon. Something else you can try is to have multiple toons leveling at the same time. This will allow you to make use of rested experience, as well as other crafting professions. Only to this though if you are not rushing to get to endgame. Other useful crew skill combos for your second, third and fourth toon. Artiface Archeology Treasure hunting This combo will allow you to craft your own enhancements and hilts Biochem Bio analysis Diplomacy This combo will allow you to craft your own implants, Stims, adrenals and medpacks. Armstech Scavenging Investigation This will allow you to craft your own barrels Synthweaving and Armormech are really only useful for crafting augments. The customizable gear that they can craft does not sell well as there are much cheaper adaptive options on the GTN. With your other toons having these setups you will be able to craft yourself everything that you need. If you can only have two toons as you are F2P then go with the either of the non arms tech options.

You will be given enough tionese comms once you hit 50 to get a full set of tionese gear so you wont need any lvl 49 mods for your self. After that I would recommend reading up on the story mode guides for eternity vault and karagga's palace and use group finder to run those. Do the gree event as well, the world bosses there drop black hole gear.

I leveled my sage as a healer and it made the leveling grind so easy. You get your tanking companion on tython so you are set from that point on. It might be a little boring for some people to spend more time healing your companion more then dpsing the mobs down but it will allow you to solo heroic 2's and down any elite mob that you would encounter in your quests. Also as someone else said you will know your role better for when you want to head into endgame content. You will also have quicker wait times in group finder as a healer.

Everyone needs to think of 2.0 as a reset. You can not compare the market of a game nearing the end of a cycle to the game of a new cycle. Think back to when ths game first came out, you couldn't craft high end endgame items that weren't BoP. Also if the 63 mods took a different exotic crafting material from the 61 mods this discussion wouldn't even exist. A someone stated the grade 7 exotic materials are worthless now. The best market at the start of 2.0 will be augments and augment kits, of that there is no doubt. Once the first major content patch comes out and we get a new OP that's when the mods market will make a come back, however it will not be what it is right now. That being said, there is still a market for the 61 mods even though the 63 mods are better. Mods will be used more as a fill in the gaps and to replace the ones on gear that was not properly itemized. You won't be able to sell the 2nd best mod for 5x-10x profit but you will still be able to get at least 2x-3x profit from it. Which is still enough to make it highly profitable. I can understand why the current crafters are annoyed. However you can not rely on one source of income and then be surprised when the market changes. Right now in game I have 81M credits, and I do not craft any 61-63 mods (I greatly under estimated this market). I have every profession in this game maxedout so I do craft. There are lots of markets in this game to help players make credits. People just need to look for more then one source of income.

While the changes to crafting are huge they will not kill crafting. When SWTOR first came out you couldn't craft end games mods. At the time I was a Guardian Tank and this sucked as my Rakata set was poorly itemized. I relied on rare enhancements drops from HM EV/KP to get me into BiS gear. To me this system was broken. This is why I liked the changes to crafting in 1.2. However if you remember Molecular Stabilizers were very expensive when they first came out and most guilds kept them for themselves as they were hard to come accross. The availability of BiS mods only became a problem when the exotic materials became too easy to get. So in 2.0 we can't craft BiS mods, big deal. Under the current 2.0 system you would be able to run TFB in crafted EC gear, which is what you need to run it. This is nice as it will allow new players/returning players/alts to run new content without having to be carried through. So crafted items in 2.0 will still be useful, they just won't sell for 5x-10x the cost of the mats. For example how many people have purple 21 augments instead of purple 22 augments? from what I've seen a lot. They are cheaper and still provide a big boost. This is what crafting will be like in 2.0. The items will be a big boost just not the final boost. Remember this game has terrible diminishing returns. Right now in game the stat jump from 61's to 63's isn't huge because of them (short of weapon). If the DR's don't get scaled back in 2.0 not being able to craft BiS won't be a huge deal as most people who are raiding will use crafted items to min/max and fill in holes while they wait to get their drops. Most people who are raiding right now are looking for items with power as crit/surge/alacrity have hit the point were they aren't worth stacking anymore.