Lexiw Posted December 9, 2016 Share Posted December 9, 2016 I have been playing this game on and off for some time but i have never picked up a crew skill and leveled it to max and now i am into Synthweaving and im wondering if it is possible to make decent amounts of credits of it or am i better off just picking gathering proffs and sell the mats? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DawnAskham Posted December 9, 2016 Share Posted December 9, 2016 Crafting and selling Crit and Alacrity augments is like printing free credits, especially if you have rank 50 comps for slicing and rank 50 comps for synthweaving. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psandak Posted December 9, 2016 Share Posted December 9, 2016 Synthweaving is the second most profitable crafting skill in the game (Artifice is #1). BUT, it is not the most diverse catalogue of items...there are two: alacrity and critical augments. Synthweaving definitely falls under the "Make credits not stuff" category in my money making guide; you make what sells not what you think should sell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ackire Posted December 10, 2016 Share Posted December 10, 2016 Synthweaving is the second most profitable crafting skill in the game (Artifice is #1). BUT, it is not the most diverse catalogue of items...there are two: alacrity and critical augments. Synthweaving definitely falls under the "Make credits not stuff" category in my money making guide; you make what sells not what you think should sell. While you are right in most cases, I have been able to find niche markets on my server for other items that some synths can create. Things like war hero and battle master gear, chanlon gear, and even some of the phobium sets. Now granted this isnt on most servers, but thankfully my server isnt most. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Khevar Posted December 10, 2016 Share Posted December 10, 2016 (edited) Synthweaving is the second most profitable crafting skill in the game (Artifice is #1). For me, it's Cybertech. In 4.0 Artifice was my big moneymaker. But for 5.0, the stuff I make and list from my Cybertech sells so quickly, I've not been able to keep it in stock. This may change once the big rush for players to get their 228 gear settles down. Edited December 10, 2016 by Khevar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psandak Posted December 10, 2016 Share Posted December 10, 2016 While you are right in most cases, I have been able to find niche markets on my server for other items that some synths can create. Things like war hero and battle master gear, chanlon gear, and even some of the phobium sets. Now granted this isnt on most servers, but thankfully my server isnt most. The question I have is, how fast do you sell these items? During 4.x, when I was working crew skills at my "normal" pace (cycling through my characters 10 times a week; once every morning and three nights a week) I would sell close to 100 alacrity and critical augments a week. I have always championed quantity over quality; I would rather KNOW I will sell 100 items at 40k a piece than try to sell 10 items at 400k each. For me, it's Cybertech. In 4.0 Artifice was my big moneymaker. But for 5.0, the stuff I make and list from my Cybertech sells so quickly, I've not been able to keep it in stock. This may change once the big rush for players to get their 228 gear settles down. Your last statement is key - one cannot judge a crafting skill's profitability early in an expansion's life cycle. Lastly, one distinct advantage that artifice has over all the other crafting skills is its cosmetic items (color crystals and dye modules). Late in the 4.x cycle while all my other crafters were struggling to sell and/or profit (because demand waned for everything), my artificer continued to crank out and profit from cosmetic items. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ackire Posted December 10, 2016 Share Posted December 10, 2016 Pasandk, I was unable to qoute your question to me, so I will have to just do it the normal way. My synth weaver averaged prior to the new patch, right around 12 to 14 mil a week. That is all clothing as all my of my augs are moved to another toon to sell stuff. Now part of clothing, I include armor mods as well. So if I am to break that down even more, than I would say roughly 6 mil a week of that 12 to 14 mil is straight clothing such as battle master, war hero or other such sets that can be made. Now, as I said before, my server might be a slight more unique in that people try on outifts or change outfits daily so that helps my sales some. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psandak Posted December 11, 2016 Share Posted December 11, 2016 Well looking at The Harbinger's pricing on Battle Master and War Hero armor, I see the potential value (low end is 200k). And IIRC these schematics are no longer available, so if you have them now you can craft them, but new players are SOL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ackire Posted December 11, 2016 Share Posted December 11, 2016 Well looking at The Harbinger's pricing on Battle Master and War Hero armor, I see the potential value (low end is 200k). And IIRC these schematics are no longer available, so if you have them now you can craft them, but new players are SOL. Not exactly true. As i said, I do alot of other armors such as brocart armors, demicot armors, phobium and reinforced chanlon sets as well. The demicot and brocart gear looks like some of the cartel stuff that sells for decent amts. So I sell those sets as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wainot-keel Posted December 11, 2016 Share Posted December 11, 2016 The question I have is, how fast do you sell these items? During 4.x, when I was working crew skills at my "normal" pace (cycling through my characters 10 times a week; once every morning and three nights a week) I would sell close to 100 alacrity and critical augments a week. I have always championed quantity over quality; I would rather KNOW I will sell 100 items at 40k a piece than try to sell 10 items at 400k each. Your last statement is key - one cannot judge a crafting skill's profitability early in an expansion's life cycle. Lastly, one distinct advantage that artifice has over all the other crafting skills is its cosmetic items (color crystals and dye modules). Late in the 4.x cycle while all my other crafters were struggling to sell and/or profit (because demand waned for everything), my artificer continued to crank out and profit from cosmetic items. Artifice was your star crafter ? Damn. Aside from a few dyes and crystals here and there, I pretty much let it to rot. For me, problem was the hassle of all those colors, many different mats, the popular dyes selling for 20k, more "rare" colors at higher but selling less reliabily, lots of work involved. But my synthweaver, with alacrity and critical augments, well.... there were times I wasnt able to keep up. The only toon I bought all the gtn slot expansions for. Everything sold the same night I listed that stuff. Of course, no way of grinding the purple mats on my own, so I started buying in bulk, I remember having around 5k of those. Of course, the demand wanst always that hight but it never actually faded. For real, I was selling those 208 augments with ease the week prior to 5.0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psandak Posted December 11, 2016 Share Posted December 11, 2016 Artifice was your star crafter ? Damn. Aside from a few dyes and crystals here and there, I pretty much let it to rot. For me, problem was the hassle of all those colors, many different mats, the popular dyes selling for 20k, more "rare" colors at higher but selling less reliabily, lots of work involved. What you say is very true. What allows me to maintain proper supply lines is four fold, but mostly (like 98%) the first two: #1 - I am something of a hoarder when it comes to crafting materials; I always keep a stock of every level of material just in case someday I want/need them. So when the changes to color crystals happened, I had a good seed stock to start with. And with my artifice, I always keep a small stock (about 10) of each of the bonded attachments; when I get down to 4 of a given attachment I craft five or ten more. #2 - stronghold gathering nodes decorations, specifically color crystals. I did some quick research, learned which color crystals I would need the most, and then put those decos into my strongholds. Grade 1: blueGrade 2: redGrade 3: green and redGrade 4: greenGrade 5: redGrade 6: red and blue And with the changes to the nodes - generating the color crystals AND the power crystals and artifact fragments of that grade (e.g. the blue amorphous color crystal decoration will generate blue amorphous color crystals and rubat crystals and lost artifact fragments, just like a blue amorphous color crystal node on Dromund Kaas or Coruscant) - all I really have to do is use my characters to gather from those decorations on a regular basis (the way I am going I will never run out of power crystals and artifact fragments of any grade; it is only the color crystals I "worry" about) #3 every so often, while playing a character that happens to have archaeology, I will cycle through the grades 1 through 6 color crystals missions - six missions six companions . I have not done this is a while. and #4 worst case scenario, I will acquire color crystals from the GTN (if they are cheap) or jawa parts vendor (if they are not cheap on the GTN). My primary issue now is maintaining good supplies of TH purple materials. each crafted color crystal require two, and so I have had to break my standing "you need 1.5 gatherers for each crafter", " I have three TH characters and I finally have a healthy supply line. What I will say though is that none of them have companions higher that rank 25. If I invested in higher rank companions I am sure I could get away with two TH characters. As to the "work involved", I will say that artifice crafting is my most time consuming crafter (followed closely by my biochem because I sell stims in stacks of 1), but I only craft what in fact sells: I craft specific color crystals one at a time, I post them to the GTN and do not craft another until the existing one sells. But my synthweaver, with alacrity and critical augments, well.... there were times I wasnt able to keep up. The only toon I bought all the gtn slot expansions for. Everything sold the same night I listed that stuff. Of course, no way of grinding the purple mats on my own, so I started buying in bulk, I remember having around 5k of those. Of course, the demand wanst always that hight but it never actually faded. For real, I was selling those 208 augments with ease the week prior to 5.0 I agree that synthweaving augments is an easier and more consistent crafting and selling process, but when I compare the two in raw profitability - who makes more credits over the same time frame - artifice usually wins out. Not always but usually. Heck every so often my AT BC or CT win the week (the only way my AM competes is the fact that it crafts and sells most of the augment slot kits), but Art is most consistently my best with SW coming in a close second. Something to remember though, during this time (early in the expansion cycle) when values are skewed higher and more players are willing to spend more credits to acquire stuff quickly certain crafting skills will jump to the top of the heap. SW and AT are WAY up there right now because people are gobbling up augments left and right. That will settle down eventually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eartharioch Posted December 12, 2016 Share Posted December 12, 2016 (edited) What you say is very true. What allows me to maintain proper supply lines is four fold, but mostly (like 98%) the first two: #1 - I am something of a hoarder when it comes to crafting materials; I always keep a stock of every level of material just in case someday I want/need them. So when the changes to color crystals happened, I had a good seed stock to start with. And with my artifice, I always keep a small stock (about 10) of each of the bonded attachments; when I get down to 4 of a given attachment I craft five or ten more. I go through so many I've actually found it useful to have a second Artificer just to keep the supply lines open. #2 - stronghold gathering nodes decorations, specifically color crystals. I did some quick research, learned which color crystals I would need the most, and then put those decos into my strongholds. Due to how easy/cheap they were to acquire, I think I have a set of three for all of available grade levels (1-7), and I just swap them out as needed, since I often have to remove/add a deco anyway to reset it. If I'm low, I just cycle all my alts on the server through those levels. #3 every so often, while playing a character that happens to have archaeology, I will cycle through the grades 1 through 6 color crystals missions - six missions six companions . I have not done this is a while. Due to the original crafting bonus distributions, my Artificers tend to be Sith Inquisitors with Archaeology and Slicing, so now with 8 comps each, it's pretty easy to do 2x Rich Slicing, 4x Arch (Rich Fragments, Rich Power Crystals, Rich Colour Crystals, Rich White Mat) and have room for 2x5=10 refills of any sold items. and #4 worst case scenario, I will acquire color crystals from the GTN (if they are cheap) or jawa parts vendor (if they are not cheap on the GTN). Yep, and since they are gathered mats, there are often cheap stacks from people leveling just wanting to cash out (since they didn't pay for a mission). And if the GTN price is super expensive, I often buy 4 or so extra to sell on the GTN as well. Well timed usages of Green Jawa scraps can make bank (like during certain Conquest weeks). My primary issue now is maintaining good supplies of TH purple materials. each crafted color crystal require two, and so I have had to break my standing "you need 1.5 gatherers for each crafter", " I have three TH characters and I finally have a healthy supply line. What I will say though is that none of them have companions higher that rank 25. If I invested in higher rank companions I am sure I could get away with two TH characters. I run a lot as well, although back in the day (when dyes used purples) it was worse. Back when the CSM debacle occurred, I actually used a 'PPM' standard -- Price Per Midlithe -- when deciding which Artifice products to make. IIRC (and this was before the 4.0 inflation), at 3.0 launch I was getting upwards of 200-400K PPM, so I never understood why people were whining at GTN prices of 50K each. Now, my I use PPM as Price-Per-[purple]-Mat, but, it is amusing to note that at one point in time, Midlithe, not credits, was my base currency. When guildies wanted things from me (usually augments), I had them pay me in Midlithe -- we almost always placed in the top 10 for conquest, so would get the purple jawa scrap, and I'd charge them about 2 Midlithe per augment (thus, they got 5 augments for 10 midlithe instead of 2 augments for 3.33 Adaptive Circuitry, since it was 1:3). Things aren't that bad now, but illustrates exactly how poorly the devs understood the economy. As to the "work involved", I will say that artifice crafting is my most time consuming crafter (followed closely by my biochem because I sell stims in stacks of 1), but I only craft what in fact sells: I craft specific color crystals one at a time, I post them to the GTN and do not craft another until the existing one sells. This is what I have been doing for *all* artifice items since 3.0 -- admittedly, when I was more active, I double-buffered -- I'd keep two copies of each item, one on the GTN, and one in my hold, so that I could easily replace the one on the GTN when it sold and then craft a replacement. And this breadth v, depth strategy is what has always (since 3.0) made Artifice my undisputed champion. I started crafting in early 2.0 (when I got all crafters to 450), and like many others, I focused on augments and kits, but I quickly saw how the little variation in salable high end items cause people to pump and dump, and then undercut in multiples of 5, driving the price down to where you had to crit to profit. That's when I started branching out and keeping only one of any item (in almost any craft) on the GTN at a time -- any given one of my products could (and often was) easily undercut, but since I wasn't dependent upon any particular item or craft, I could afford to relist at my desired selling price and hold out against the undercutters (who tended to move from product to product in a continual undercutting war). I agree that synthweaving augments is an easier and more consistent crafting and selling process, but when I compare the two in raw profitability - who makes more credits over the same time frame - artifice usually wins out. Not always but usually. Heck every so often my AT BC or CT win the week (the only way my AM competes is the fact that it crafts and sells most of the augment slot kits), but Art is most consistently my best with SW coming in a close second. Over time (which if you don't want to spend too much time micromanaging is the appropriate metric), Artifice has been #1 with no serious competition since well before 3.0, although the readjusting in 4.0 altered the balance of power between non-artifice crafts and reduced the gap between artifice and the rest of the pack. However, the optimal strategy is (IMO) to keep a small number of copies of a large number of products on the GTN instead of trying to sell lots of copies of a few products, and having the ability to sell all high-end items will give the widest coverage. And I mean regular mat vendor schematics, IMO (profit-wise), the Conquest/Ops stuff isn't worth pursuing. Something to remember though, during this time (early in the expansion cycle) when values are skewed higher and more players are willing to spend more credits to acquire stuff quickly certain crafting skills will jump to the top of the heap. SW and AT are WAY up there right now because people are gobbling up augments left and right. That will settle down eventually. It all depends on how much you want to work and how much you want to make. I'm still seeing higher margins in Artifice, and I cba to sell much of that much less anything else at the moment. Edited December 12, 2016 by eartharioch Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DawnAskham Posted December 12, 2016 Share Posted December 12, 2016 (edited) I thought I was the only one with gathering decos everywhere - but yeah I have a floor in my Tat stronghold with every possible material node set out, and duplicates in collections so I can always swap one for one if needed to reset the internal cooldown. I also am a serial alt-o-holic, have way too many characters (not all max level) on my main server (I recently consolidated all my old alts to one server), and every single one has maxed crew skills (I have at least two of every crafting skill, way more than two of gathering / mission skills), many with 5+ companions at 50 (only because of the stupid exploit last year which resulted in stacks of G6 gifts selling on the Harbinger GTN for less than what 1 costs today). So pretty much any time I feel like crafting, I have no problems getting whatever materials are needed in a very short amount of time, though I've done little in 5.0 other than synthweaving as that is what my main played character has as their crafting skill, and anything I post usually sells in minutes. Edited December 12, 2016 by DawnAskham Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eartharioch Posted December 12, 2016 Share Posted December 12, 2016 I thought I was the only one with gathering decos everywhere - but yeah I have a floor in my Tat stronghold with every possible material node set out, and duplicates in collections so I can always swap one for one if needed to reset the internal cooldown. You don't need duplicates, just go into edit mode, pick up, and then [re]place the inactive deco. I actually used tat to place my entire deco farm originally, but I found it was more convenient to just use my Nar Shadda entrance to house all necessary decos (vendors, GTN, Holds, mail) and leave room for the five-or-so most recently used ones. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrTwentyGauge Posted December 13, 2016 Share Posted December 13, 2016 I have been playing this game on and off for some time but i have never picked up a crew skill and leveled it to max and now i am into Synthweaving and im wondering if it is possible to make decent amounts of credits of it or am i better off just picking gathering proffs and sell the mats? I saw a video on youtube of a guy who went around Yavin 4 collecting plant samples with biochem. Once you rank it up, you can make over a million in an hour; but you've got to sell the stuff on the gtn. It sells pretty fast though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psandak Posted December 13, 2016 Share Posted December 13, 2016 I saw a video on youtube of a guy who went around Yavin 4 collecting plant samples with biochem. Once you rank it up, you can make over a million in an hour; but you've got to sell the stuff on the gtn. It sells pretty fast though. That is probably an older video. Yavin 4 has grade 8 materials, we are into grade 10. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lobstah_rofls Posted December 14, 2016 Share Posted December 14, 2016 If you like gathering, do gathering. Crafting is expensive, and it takes more time to list things on the GTN. Gathering is unbeatable for the time you put in, but it just gets too dull for most people. If you like crafting, you can do whichever and make credits if you put time in and don't spend too much on mats. They are all pretty balanced right now. They all have good niches. It's not like it used to be where cybertech ruled making all the armorings, mods, and enhancements. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psandak Posted December 14, 2016 Share Posted December 14, 2016 Gathering is unbeatable for the time you put in... Cannot disagree more. Yes crafting is a significant up front investment. BUT once you have your skill to where you want it and you have the schematics you feel will be good profit, crafting is far and away more efficient as a function of time. I have said it numerous times on these forums: I can spend 3 to 4 hours a week (10 sessions going through 13 characters for ~20 minutes each session) going through my characters sending them on missions for materials and crafting and make 10 million credits profit without real effort. That's roughly 45k credits per minute spent. Can you say the same regarding gathering; can you gather enough materials in one minute to sell for 45k? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Khevar Posted December 15, 2016 Share Posted December 15, 2016 Yes crafting is a significant up front investment. BUT once you have your skill to where you want it and you have the schematics you feel will be good profit, crafting is far and away more efficient as a function of time. I'm 100% with you on this one. Sometimes I don't have enough time to play, but I still feel like pushing the old credit counter up higher. So a few minutes kicking off crew missions on alts before going to work, and once again right before going to bed. Craft things when I have enough mats. List things that were crafted. Collect money from mailbox the following morning. Very very very little time invested for a really good return. This perfectly suits my playstyle, because the act of doing gathering super boring. So a few minutes of crafting gets me all the credits I need, while I go play a warzone or flashpoint or something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psandak Posted December 15, 2016 Share Posted December 15, 2016 I'm 100% with you on this one. Sometimes I don't have enough time to play, but I still feel like pushing the old credit counter up higher. So a few minutes kicking off crew missions on alts before going to work, and once again right before going to bed. Craft things when I have enough mats. List things that were crafted. Collect money from mailbox the following morning. Very very very little time invested for a really good return. This perfectly suits my playstyle, because the act of doing gathering super boring. So a few minutes of crafting gets me all the credits I need, while I go play a warzone or flashpoint or something. That is EXACTLY what I do. I take meds in the morning that I have to wait to eat. So in the 20 minutes I am waiting, I go through all my (13) characters: Logincollect resultscollect mail (sales and expired postings)drop stuff into storagepost stuff on GTNsend out companionslogout My pure gatherers (those without a crafting skill), take less than a minute I only have one of each crafter. My most time consuming crafters are Artifice and Biochem (the former because of the diversity of what I craft (I have to see what sold and craft more), and the latter because I separate stims into "stacks" of 1, and adrenals and medpaks into stacks of 10 (separating them and posting the stacks one at a time takes time)). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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