Hi everyone

 

Sorry for the noob question (Still figuring this game out)

 

I am a smuggler with gunslinger as my advanced class. After reading around people had suggested on other posts that armortech was a good way to go to provide gear for my class. I also picked Scavenging with Underworld Trading since my codex said those two went well for armortech. My question is

 

As long as I gather every spot of scavenging through the different zones as I quest, will I be able to afford sending my companion on the missions and keep up my armortech without draining my toon of credits. This is my only toon so far so I don't have any other toons to get credits from.

 

I read that slicing was a good way to build up cash but it said on the codex scavenging and underworld trading were needed so I decided to go that route I just hope I don't get drained at a certain level. I want to get my different medium armor pieces that I learned as I level it upgraded as high as possible before working on the next one. Don't know if this is possible to keep up but I hope so.

 

Any advice or thoughts on the question would be greatly appreciated.

 

Have a great day

If you gather the farmable materials from planets to craft items with, then you won't lose any credits doing so, unless you are making prototype and artifact level items, in which case you will need to gather the respective item from underworld trading, which costs credits. The higher the level of the item, the more credits it will cost to do the mission.

 

The trick here is that you will have to do underworld trading missions consistently to keep up the material levels with your schematics, which can drain your credits quite easily. I recommend playing PVP warzones while doing the underworld trading missions, as the credits you gain from the warzone will always be more than what you spend, giving you a profit essentially.

 

If you don't like PVP that much, then you might want to wait until 50 when you can grind daily missions for large amounts of credits.

Hmm I never thought about the pvp thing before (I think that is because I was unaware it gave credits lol), I'll give that a shot. I'm not a huge pvper but if it helps cover costs I don't mind doing it then.

 

I have a lot of patience and don't rush through zones so I usually gather as much materials I see on the map as possible. And yes I do want to get all the gear upgraded as possible just in case I need to make something for someone at a low level if the time ever comes..I'm a helpful person..it might be my downfall in credits but oh well I guess.

 

Thanks for the comments CondemnedMarine

to fuel your armormech skill with components you need:

- scavenging for the basic materials (green quality)

- underworld trading provides you with "underworld metals" that are used for blue and purple quality gear (you can ignore underworld cloth as they are used by synthweaving)

 

if you only want to increase your crew skill, it is completely viable to craft only "green" quality items so you only need the "scavenging" skill.

 

The good news is that "scavenging" will increase "for free" as you scrap droids that you destroy and nodes you find in your travels.

 

On the other hand, the only way to increase your underworld trading skill is to send your companion on a mission. It costs money and time, two things you don't have when your first character is level 13 (you only have one companion at this point and most of the time you need him with you during combat).

 

Wisdom for a first character would be to wait until you get at least a second companion to start leveling underworld trading.

 

As a personal piece of advice, if you want, you can craft blue quality gear for your companion or yourself, but don't try to learn purple quality schematics (by retro engineering blue gear you craft). The low percentage to learn them combined with the cost of running underworld mission for purple materials is really too high for a first character.

 

The blue schematics will come as a natural byproducts of you "retro engineering" your green quality craft, since it gives back material.

 

Last but not least, you can also consider space missions to bring in credits and experience (once you get your own ship).

Edited November 25, 2012 by Oggthebase

I haven't leveled much of my Underworld Trading. I think I have made 1 blue piece since it was an upgrade. I send my companion out when I'm walking around in the city but as you said I do need him during combat for the most part.

 

When I get the ability to do space missions I'll try them and see how they are. I wonder who gives more credits, pvp or space missions. I'll have to test both and see.

 

I might end up waiting till I get to level 50..whenever that is... to finish the making schematics for all pieces of available gear acquired from the trainer. I will still have to buy my flyer at some point and I'm sure that's not cheap if it's compared to other games.

 

Thanks for the comment Oggthebase

You can wait with the Underworld trading for now and take on an extra gathering skill for some levels. Gathering makes you money

Interesting thinking, maybe I'll give slicing a shot then. Decisions decisions lol

 

Thanks Wispel

For a first toon, you're actually better off just wearing what you get through quests, and taking the three basic gathering skills (Archaeology, Scavenging, and Bioanalysis). These skills level 100% for free if you just scan every node you run across in the world, and you can sell all the mats you gather for a steady credit flow.

 

Just check the unit prices on the GTN and price a bit below whatever is the lowest per unit, and crafters will snap them up. The profit on low level mats is stupidly high as well, because (thanks to the awful mission dispatch UI), it's kind of a hassle and a big time sink for dedicated crafters to run lots of the short-duration low level gathering missions to get what they need.

 

Also, the yield is very unbalanced on missions between the types of materials, so you wind up with tons of useless stuff like Silica and take lots of time to farm up useful quantities of items like Lamnoid. The world nodes have higher yield and a better distribution of mats than the missions, but it's a time sink to go out and farm unless you're already out there.

 

The result is that as you level up on your gathering toon, you can farm things that cost you very little in time and nothing in credits to obtain, and sell them off for nice profits. And when you reach 50 and have five companions maxed out, you will have a great fleetside farm bot that you can use to generate tons of the basic mats you will need to grind up crafting skills on your future alts.

Edited November 26, 2012 by Heezdedjim

Interesting thinking, maybe I'll give slicing a shot then. Decisions decisions lol

 

Thanks Wispel

 

I would go with Slicing over UT. The slicing mats sell really well at 50 and lockbox missions make you good money until then. Also at 50, you won't make much money off of selling armors. The big money maker is augments and for that you will need slicing (and not need UT at all).

 

At this point in time though, I'd recommend just switching to ditching Amormech and sticking with Scavaging/Slicing/UT. You can sell the stuff you get from that for more than you can sell the crafted armor for (in many cases). And you can use that money to buy blue crafted armor at cutthroat prices and still have extra money left over for dancers and the casino.

Sure, slicing mats sell well at 50 but this guy is leveling a toon.

 

As you level up, keep an eye out for concentrations of scavenging nodes and/or droids. People get away with selling even Grade 1 crafting mats for ridiculous prices on the GTN, so not only can scavenging allow you to level up your craft on just the green schematics, if you find a good place to harvest you can easily get full stacks of usually 2 types of metals and 2 types of compounds within 15 minutes, once you know the path for hitting the nodes. For a Republic player:

1. The Works: nodes and droids in the areas closest to the Justicar Territory elevator. If you hit the quest giver for the heroic Enemies of the Republic, you're going further than you need to. Yields mostly aluminum/laminoid, with some desh/silica and bronzium/plastoid.
   
2. Taris: starting near Aurek base on the path to the wreck of the Endar Spire, stay north of the wreck, circle back to the pirate camp near the west end of the wreck and somewhat north of it. Nodes only. Yields mostly bronzium/plastoid with a fair amount of aluminum/laminoid and even some chanlon/plasteel.
   
3. Nar Shaddaa: Shadow Town, starting with the strong droid right before the ramp down to where the pool of water is and running deeper into the zone to where the ramp is for Shaking Down Shadow Town, then go straight back to the droid you started with. Nodes and Droids. Yields almost exclusively chanlon/plasteel with some bronzium/plastoid.
   
4. Alderaan: Big loop basically circling House Teral, the "fort" that is east of Outpost Duvaal. Nodes only. Yields lots of bondite/fibermesh and a good deal of chanlon/plasteel and bondite/resinite. This area is a Republic questing area, but accessible to Imperials.
   

Those are just a few places to look. If you keep your minimap zoomed all the way out, you'll see the nodes there before you can see them visually. Personally, I prefer to stay away from droids because it takes more time to kill then harvest them with an average yield of about 1.5 items (1 or 2 of a metal or a compound, not both from the same droid) compared to just harvesting nodes with an average yield of about 6 items (3 metals, 3 compounds).

 

Also keep in mind that if you are looking for a specific material, look at the schematics that require it and the combat level of the item made by it. If you are wondering where to find that material, look at your galaxy map and check the combat levels for each planet. Scavenging nodes spawn materials appropriate to the combat level rating for the planet.

Thanks everyone for the great ideas, I decided to get Slicing, Underworld Trading, and Archaeology based on what I saw on the GTN and so far the mats I get at level 1 I have been able to sell very well (I think the credits coming in are good anyway lol). I haven't started selling my level 2 ones yet. The level 1 sold for anywhere from 3k for stack of 10, 6k for stack of 20 and some stacks of 20 as high as 10k. So through level 20 I have made around 135k which so far is plenty for me to work with for anything I need. Hopefully I can continue selling like this, if so when I send my companions on missions I shouldn't have a credit problem.

for leveling I decided to go with mission skills only, took UWT, diplomacy and treasure hunting, made some good money out of selling the lower tier mats. Last tier is not so good because people only run these missions at 50 to get the purple mats, and try to sell the rest on GTN in packs of 100 sometimes (I usually and up ditching a couple hundred of these useless mats to the guild bank because can't sell them on GTN). So I switched to crafting afterwards.