I've been playing this game for awhile, but is there a difference between lockboxes from different crew skills that is noticeable?

I'm going off of memory here, as I haven't run Treasure Hunting lockboxes in a long time.

 

But I believe that the Treasure Hunting lockboxes contain appropriate level gear (blue I think) where the Slicing ones contain only credits.

 

You may already know this (so forgive me if this is old data) another difference is that running Slicing lockbox missions have a chance you'll get a "Mission Discovery" in addition to a slicing lockbox.

 

You can use them or sell them. If you use them (assuming you have trained that crew skill) it unlocks a mission in your crew skills panel that you can send your companion on (once per mission discovery used) that take longer to run, but return more (and sometimes better) materials.

Edited September 2, 2015 by Khevar

I've been playing this game for awhile, but is there a difference between lockboxes from different crew skills that is noticeable?

 

BIG, HUGE, GINORMOUS difference.

 

Slicing lockboxes ALWAYS grant credits

Treasure hunting lockboxes generate credits (not nearly as much), OR items (which are usually not particularly desired and therefore you sell to an NPC vendor for credits)

 

When you critically succeed running a slicing lockbox mission you get a "crafting mission" (AKA a "discovered mission") - a one time use mission unlock that is guaranteed to generate a high quality of every material from that tier in the specified skill (the caveat being that in order to run the mission you have to have the skill; if you get a bioanalysis discovered mission and you don't have Bioanalysis as a skill (on any character) then you cannot use that mission...but you can always sell it to someone who does via the GTN), and with mission skill "crafting missions" you are guaranteed purple quality materials. For example: if you acquired a grade 3 slicing "discovered mission" and you ran it, you would get some blue sliced parts, some purple sliced parts, and a lockbox and if you critically succeeded running that discovered mission you would get more materials and another discovered mission

 

When you critically succeed running a treasure hunting lockbox mission...you just get a better lockbox with potentially better stuff (not guaranteed any better)

Okay, prefect. Thanks for the explanation!

Neither are bad as a 'cheap and fast' way to level the respective crew skill as you get credits or items to sell for credits back to cover a lot of the mission costs while the missions tend to take less time than materials missions.

 

Neither are a big money maker at 500 (though Slicing is far more profitable as some 500 level missions sell for 50K, while I've never seen anything but vendor junk worth a couple of K in a TH 500 lockbox).

Edited September 6, 2015 by DawnAskham

As Dawn alluded to, running a 500 level Rich "Lovely at the Top" slicing mission alongside whatever purple materials you are going after in another Rich mission is a way to offset the entire cost. Rich missions tend to crit somewhere around 20% of the time (My last 100 missions using this method crit 17%) The rest of the time you get essentially junk material that sells for dirt cheap on the GTN at a severe loss. But the fact is, the purple material you gather "carries" the cost of the junk material and you do get a bit back by selling it.

 

All those missions cost 3,890 credits, but the lockbox missions usually return at least 7,000 and often over 10,000 credits, thus paying for both missions and giving you a near break-even amount of credits BEFORE you sell the purple mats or craft them into something that will sell for even higher.