When I started the game on release day, I had a vision:

I wanted to create several toons and master all the crafting-/gathering skills. I wanted to be able to make any needed item by myself rather than buying it from GTN or elsewhere.

During my "first period" in the game until about June 2012 this was ok. Then I took a break and returned in April of this year. Meanwhile the game was a hybrid of subscribing and FtP. I subsribed again to get all my crewskills back. But I guess, many things have changed.

1) Complete items like e.g. a blaster canon or a chestpiece of any armour are hard to sell. When I use the inspect-feature on players, I notice that a vast majority wears / uses orange items, which are for a great part cartel-items. Would you agree, when I say that these cartel items are a reason, why our crafted items are mostly inferior?

2) Every crafter knows, that it is somewhat tedious, expensive and time consuming to make the "best" (artifact / purple) items. Shouldn't we be rewarded by having finally better items? This seems not to be the case. As example: I can craft a "general's jacket" for lvl 52 smugglers for which I managed to get the purple quality. My scoundrel was equipped with purple lvl 50 modifications (armouring, mod and enhancement). The purple lvl 52 item was only as good in armouring (140), ways worse in endurance and some other important stats. Only the crit-stat was a bit better.

Now I ask about the sense of this. How can a purple item be so lousy compared to "orange" stuff with modifications of two levels lower? I am tempted to see a massive discouragement in this, telling us "...don't craft".

3) Over all I spent hundreds of thousands if not even millions credits to get my crewskills up. Although I have some toons over level 50 I am far from being "rich". Thus, I can't afford the insane prices which I had to pay to buy the rare mats from GTN. I must rely on crafting missions and that my companions crit here and there. The drop rate of rare mats (e.g. berylius) are soooo ridiculously small, that it really seems to be wasted time and money (I play for myself and don't do flash points etc.).

On the other hand low level "rare" mats sell for unbelievably high amounts, e.g. mullinine and other low-/ mid tier underworld metals. Who buys this stuff? Is it really better to do only gathering, sell for ridiculous prices and then simply buy the desired items from GTN?

4) The "culture" of the community seems to be a bit ....ambivalent.

As example: The crew skills vendor is just a minute away from GTN and sells unlimited amounts of the necessary mats, like brazing flux etc. Some missions yield good amounts of these mats. Nevertheless, on GTN (many) players offer the same items for reasonably higher prices. What is the idea? Do we really have so many, who enjoy to pull other (not so experienced) players over the barrel?

5) Crew skill missions should yield - amongst other items - schematics for the crafters. Is this broken? I don't know, how many "elegant double bladed light sabers", "dread scout gloves" etc. I simply sold at the vendor, because GTN has these over many pages (some people try to sell even these schematics for five-digit amounts of cash - lol - ). Is there an idea behind this, that we get spammed with rather useless stuff, while other schematics are either not existent or ultra rare?

As I see things currently, crafting is at most a hobby but not a serious feature. In many other threads people say just about the same under different aspects.

Some say, that EA / BW want us to buy cartel stuff and thus, making it hard to get "exotic" and high tier mats.

Is it really the case, that "FtP" and serious crafting can't coexist?

1. I played before the cartel market was introduced but after you could augment any gear, thus get easy moddable armours with a skin of choice. I've never (honestly) seen anyone wear crafted gear at level 50. People always had either the Tioneese/Columi/Rakata/Campaign/Dread Guard basic skins or transferred the Campaign to moddable armour with a skin of choice, the cartel market simply supplied us with a lot more choice.

2. You must realise because we spend so much time at level 50, we have more gear introduced than the 'basic' level of (22) which was assigned to level 49. At level 50 we could go up to (27) which is a lot higher than the actual level intended, but needed for gear progression when level 50 was the max level. This obviously gives issues when you introduce a new levelcap. Rest assured, level 54 craftables (28) are still better than Dread Guard (27) whether people actually bother with them is a second (I meet people who do, I meet people who don't, I never really meet people that use anything but the armourings/enhancements/mods how-ever)

3. Yes, in a lot of cases it can be cheaper to sell raw materials, but not every case. To make crafting profitable you need to know what people want and what is 'cheap' to craft compared to their sellprice. MK-9 augment kits work amazingly well on my server, if I gather the materials myself it costs me an average of 15k (and time, loads of time) to craft 1 kit, if I'd buy the materials it would cost me around 60k to craft 1 kit and I sell them between 70-80k most of the time. I also 'only' actively send companions on gathering missions and the Rich slicing missions, they return 4 purples if it crits which sell between 60-100k on my server and the augments (require 4 to craft) sell around 80-100k. All in all way more profitable than any other mission crewskill, such as UWT, I ended up just buying those materials if I need them. (Note: I do have them at 450, just never log on those characters)

4. Yes, yes we do. Loads of people only see profit and you need only 1 buyer to make profit.

5. Schematics obtained with mission-crewskills are generally cheap because their demand is very low (non-excistend maybe) and supply is huge, due to many people running them for materials rather than the schematics. The schematics that are well-desired, such as 31 mods and certain colourcrystals are so rare and so expensive because they're difficult to obtain. As they should be, if anyone could easily get their hands on a 31 schematic, everyone would craft their gear and no-one would do Operations, not something a game wants.

As for your last comment. Crafting is not a hobby of mine, but it wields between 300-1000k a day for me depending whether I focus on it or just send my companions out whilst doing other things, so I do find it quite an important feature of the game because everyone (except since level 10 full-time PvP'ers who will not have any companions) a way to make money whilst doing what they enjoy doing.

And to actually be of help. Look into:

- Augments, anything augment related is incredibly well-desired, like former mentioned. MK-9 Augmentation kits are so profitable right now. (Cybertech droid parts are the best to get the components)

- Low-level stuff. Yes, people spend tons of money on their new toons. I find Armourings/Barrels/Hilts/Augments a pretty good bet due to the Enhancements and Mods only costing 2 planentary commendations. Crafted gear, didn't look into it, like you said, it's a pain to get the right blue and then the right purple.

- Armourings/Mods/Enhancements/Hilts/Barrels of 28 grade, not as good as the things mentioned above.

I know where you are coming from. I've got all crew skills at 450, but I find that for things like synthweaving, armormech, armstech, I mainly just use them occasionally for gear. They're great for making augment and kits, but most of the other stuff I rarely craft for the reasons you listed.

I would like it if maybe for those skills maybe like the old artifice...they had an item for each category that you could craft that was BoP, with superior stats than anything else without raiding. Like say a 156(maybe a tad higher) rated chestpiece for an armormech, but with more aim and endurance stat etc than a similarly outfitted piece of orange gear with all 66 purple mods in it.

I think the people who post the crew skill vendor mats for higher prices, are just expecting others to pay for the convenience of not having to go to the crew skill vendor. If you do a lot of crafting on your ship, you might have a GTN terminal, and a mailbox, but no place to buy the mats if you run out. Also, like I posted in another post, you could make some profit just running the crew skill mat missions for the grade 9 stuff. An entire stack of tri-copper flux for example is just shy of 60k. Sending out M1-4X on that mission for about 2-3k yields me 12-14 regularly, and 32 or so when he crits. So even if I just sold those at vendor price, I could easily double my credit investment even without crits. Granted, its not a way to get SUPER RICH, but for people struggling with credits, it could be another minor income source.

I've found in most MMO that the lower level gathered mats do generally sell for high prices. It just caters to the people who have lots of money, but little interest in doing work for their skills. If they have 50 million credits, and make a new alt, and want to get their cybertech to 450 in a hurry...the majority will just spend a million or more on buying all the mats, and begin queuing up all the craftings to begin levelling the skills. It's just a time saver.

1. They are also newer looks so would be more ppular no matter how they are aquired. But true, the Cartel has significanly changed many crew skills and not for the better.

2. This is much the same as it was in 1.x versions. The game released with what I thought was an obvious quirk that at level 10 I could get a Black Talon jacket that would hold me for the rest of the game. Upgrade as needed. Artefact gear has always been harder to find, more costly and usable for a limited time. 11 commendations later my Black Talon jacket is top of the line again while the artefact drop is vendor trash.

3. If you have characters with all crew skills, why are you buying mats from the GTN? Some of this is also just needing to know the market now. For starters, the 400+ missions don't work like the others. You only get critical scusses with Bountiful and Rich (and Wealthy from mission discovery) missions. If Thermal Regulators are selling well on your server -- the market is getting saturated on mine -- run Slicing missions. Look at what is costing you the most to aquire and start gathering those resources for your use or for sell.

4. With Legacy rewards, you can get a vendor driod, a mailbox and a GTN terminal on your ship. Everything you need to run missions and craft with except for a supply of First Aid kits and the like. Those vendor bought crafting components up in the GTN are not targeted at the unknowing newbie as much as the veteran recluse crafter. When you are running missions and having to relog to get the right missions, it goes much faster when you do it all right there on your ship.

5. Schematics from mission rewards will get you enough to have something to level up your skills with. Getting beyond this takes some serious effort.

And BTW, thanks for the post. I can tell you are frustrated with the state of crew skills but giving us details is sooooo much better than just the old "krew skilz sux" posts that we usually get.

Is it really the case, that "FtP" and serious crafting can't coexist?

FTP = Larger player base = Larger market = Higher demand

Find your niche in the market, and exploit it Despite the prevalence of orange gear, there is still money to be made. I hope you don't give up.

Best wishes

1.

 

3. If you have characters with all crew skills, why are you buying mats from the GTN? Some of this is also just needing to know the market now. For starters, the 400+ missions don't work like the others. You only get critical scusses with Bountiful and Rich (and Wealthy from mission discovery) missions. If Thermal Regulators are selling well on your server -- the market is getting saturated on mine -- run Slicing missions. Look at what is costing you the most to aquire and start gathering those resources for your use or for sell.

 

Oh, I almost never buy mats from GTN, except those, which are really cheap, while cheap = lower costs than running some missions plus the saved time. And for the stuff like brazing flux etc. I always run missions for these and avoid buying them in huge stacks from the vendor.

@ all

Nevertheless, there is still the question, how a level 52 purple item can be worse than a level 50 orange with level 50 purple modifications. Can we consider this as "bug" respectively badly done work of the devs?

Oh, I almost never buy mats from GTN, except those, which are really cheap, while cheap = lower costs than running some missions plus the saved time. And for the stuff like brazing flux etc. I always run missions for these and avoid buying them in huge stacks from the vendor.

 

@ all

 

Nevertheless, there is still the question, how a level 52 purple item can be worse than a level 50 orange with level 50 purple modifications. Can we consider this as "bug" respectively badly done work of the devs?

Its not a bug, its an intentional lack of proper preparation by the designers, Its happened in every MMO I have ever played. When a game hits a Max level, the designers start to tier end game stuff so they keep people playing, however, the next expansion that ups the level cap then causes them to have new gear that is equal or better than the non/low tier end game gear.

For some reason the designers do not seem to take this issue into account when they set up the game so they don't leave proper gear skips and try things like 5 level cap increases. specifically for TOR they should have gone for 10 levels and then made all the MAKEB planetary gear start at level 54, it still would not have been perfect but it would make more of the old 49/40 gear stay relevant for another 2-3 levels. Perhaps they will learn not to do this for the next expansion.

Nevertheless, there is still the question, how a level 52 purple item can be worse than a level 50 orange with level 50 purple modifications. Can we consider this as "bug" respectively badly done work of the devs?

This is a more or less direct result of having endgame gear with item level higher than required character level and then adding an expansion with more levels on top. If your "level 50" purple modifications have a rating of 140, they're most likely about Rakata level, which is actually item level 58. The top end gear goes beyond item level 70 these days. Here's a handy chart for mods (some numbers pulled from memory and may be slightly wrong):

Tionese: grade 23, rating 128, item level 51 (no longer available)

Columi: grade 24, rating 136, item level 56 (no longer available)

Rakata: grade 25, rating 140, item level 58 (can be obtained from Makeb planetary comms vendor)

Campaign: grade 26, rating 146, item level 61 (can be obtained with classic commendations)

Dread Guard: grade 27, rating 152, item level 63 (no longer available, highest grade for non-expansion characters)

Basic: grade 28, rating 156, item level 66 (highest grade that can be obtained from crafting trainer, can also be obtained with basic commendations)

Arkanian: grade 30, rating 162, item level 69 (can be obtained with elite commendations)

Underworld: grade 31, rating 168, item level 72 (can be obtained with ultimate commendations)

Shadowed: grade 33, rating 174, item level 75 (can be obtained from nightmare TfB and S&V operations)

If you hover over your modded item, you will see a tooltip with lines like Armoring (58) and Mod (58). These tell the item level of the installed modifications. There's no way to see the same information for non-moddable items, but the rating serves as a rough guideline. The level requirement of an item is not useful, unless you want to compare equipment available for specific level characters (usually 50 or 55).

You mentioned that you got a "General's" item. This one gives +defense and +presence, both of which are kind of useless for a smuggler. Presence only boosts your companion and is not considered useful for any class. You'd want a "Fervor" or "Hawkeye" item for a dps or a "Supremacy" or "Vehemence" item for a healer. These give +power, +critical, +accuracy and +alacrity, which are much more useful stats.

The difficulty of obtaining the schematic for the correct non-moddable item is one reason why many people, myself included, prefer custom armors. In the worst case you'll need to get all three blue quality schematics and then all five purple quality schematics from the correct blue one. This may involve more than a hundred items crafted. And you need to repeat the process for a total of seven pieces of armor. Each green schematic also has some base stats which can't be changed, even if you'd like something different. Compare this with modifications, where you can pick the one with correct stats to begin with and usually obtain a purple variant in less than 20 crafts. Granted, you'll need four or five different modification items for a balanced setup, but it's still vastly easier, and you get more freedom in picking the stats.

You mentioned that you got a "General's" item. This one gives +defense and +presence, both of which are kind of useless for a smuggler. Presence only boosts your companion and is not considered useful for any class.

I disagree. I'm currently doing Belsavis a lot, and I need to have my Companions as "tanks", sort of.

They keep the damage away from me so that I can damage their opponents. Meanwhile they add to the overall damage, too.

From this perspective, I find it indeed useful, personally.

In PvP, however, it wouldn't make any sense, because there just aren't any Companions participating.

You mentioned that you got a "General's" item. This one gives +defense and +presence, both of which are kind of useless for a smuggler. Presence only boosts your companion and is not considered useful for any class. You'd want a "Fervor" or "Hawkeye" item for a dps or a "Supremacy" or "Vehemence" item for a healer. These give +power, +critical, +accuracy and +alacrity, which are much more useful stats.

 

The difficulty of obtaining the schematic for the correct non-moddable item is one reason why many people, myself included, prefer custom armors. In the worst case you'll need to get all three blue quality schematics and then all five purple quality schematics from the correct blue one. This may involve more than a hundred items crafted. And you need to repeat the process for a total of seven pieces of armor. Each green schematic also has some base stats which can't be changed, even if you'd like something different. Compare this with modifications, where you can pick the one with correct stats to begin with and usually obtain a purple variant in less than 20 crafts. Granted, you'll need four or five different modification items for a balanced setup, but it's still vastly easier, and you get more freedom in picking the stats.

Thanks for the very useful chart.

About my "General's item":

The name of the item - which is a lvl 52 medium armour chestpiece - is "General's Jacket". From the basic schematic I did exactly what you described. Please remember, that I have all crafting skills at 450 except armstech. When I left the game last year all my crafters had 400. Thus, I am familiar with the processes.

Back to the "General's Jacket":

From the basic schematic I got all types of purple: Leaderschip, verfor, supremacy etc. Indeed I crafted a lot of greens and blues <g>. The armour I mentioned above is a "Critical...." and has crit, accuracy, surge and endurance as stats.

In my opionion this far from being "useless" for a smuggler / scrapper or a gunslinger.

But as you and the other posters mentioned, it is currently either not properly implemented, poor design or intentional omission, that these items are rather useless because they are inferior to items which are levels lower.

I just can hope, that this will change in future, because crafting in SWTOR is one of my main reasons to stay here.

1) Complete items like e.g. a blaster canon or a chestpiece of any armour are hard to sell. When I use the inspect-feature on players, I notice that a vast majority wears / uses orange items, which are for a great part cartel-items. Would you agree, when I say that these cartel items are a reason, why our crafted items are mostly inferior?

Yes I agree, but that does not mean that the crafting skill is not worth utilizing. My armormech and synthweaver have not crafted top end gear since last summer, but they do make augments and more augment and more augments and even the blue quality augments sell well. Furthermore, crafting lower than capped gear for alts' companions is a big part of what my synth and armor characters do.

2) Every crafter knows, that it is somewhat tedious, expensive and time consuming to make the "best" (artifact / purple) items. Shouldn't we be rewarded by having finally better items? This seems not to be the case. As example: I can craft a "general's jacket" for lvl 52 smugglers for which I managed to get the purple quality. My scoundrel was equipped with purple lvl 50 modifications (armouring, mod and enhancement). The purple lvl 52 item was only as good in armouring (140), ways worse in endurance and some other important stats. Only the crit-stat was a bit better.

Now I ask about the sense of this. How can a purple item be so lousy compared to "orange" stuff with modifications of two levels lower? I am tempted to see a massive discouragement in this, telling us "...don't craft".

I disagree at least while leveling. If you have the purple item waiting for you when you hit the required level, chances are that the purple item will be superior to an orange. That being said, that superiority does not last long. It also depends on your playstyle. If you do a lot of group content (planet heroics and flashpoints) then chances are the loot and rewards from that group content will be better. But if you solo more then crafted anything is better than the quest rewards you will get.

3) Over all I spent hundreds of thousands if not even millions credits to get my crewskills up. Although I have some toons over level 50 I am far from being "rich". Thus, I can't afford the insane prices which I had to pay to buy the rare mats from GTN. I must rely on crafting missions and that my companions crit here and there. The drop rate of rare mats (e.g. berylius) are soooo ridiculously small, that it really seems to be wasted time and money (I play for myself and don't do flash points etc.).

On the other hand low level "rare" mats sell for unbelievably high amounts, e.g. mullinine and other low-/ mid tier underworld metals. Who buys this stuff? Is it really better to do only gathering, sell for ridiculous prices and then simply buy the desired items from GTN?

Like all other MMOs, in SWTOR time and credits are interchangeable resources. If you want to save credits then you need to spend more time. In the long term, running missions for all your materials will save you credits. If you want to save time, then you basically have to pay someone else for their time.

In some cases, yes it is better to gather materials and sell them. This boils down to careful market watching. One also must take into account critical success from crafting. Item modification items (stuff you drop into orange gear) generate extras when you crit. Some crafters take that into account when pricing their stuff on the GTM.

4) The "culture" of the community seems to be a bit ....ambivalent.

As example: The crew skills vendor is just a minute away from GTN and sells unlimited amounts of the necessary mats, like brazing flux etc. Some missions yield good amounts of these mats. Nevertheless, on GTN (many) players offer the same items for reasonably higher prices. What is the idea? Do we really have so many, who enjoy to pull other (not so experienced) players over the barrel?

Honestly, yes. I am not one of them (I do not even buy those materials from the vendor...I run missions)

5) Crew skill missions should yield - amongst other items - schematics for the crafters. Is this broken? I don't know, how many "elegant double bladed light sabers", "dread scout gloves" etc. I simply sold at the vendor, because GTN has these over many pages (some people try to sell even these schematics for five-digit amounts of cash - lol - ). Is there an idea behind this, that we get spammed with rather useless stuff, while other schematics are either not existent or ultra rare?

Short answer: yes it's broken.

Long answer: this was realized very quickly with the expansion and it has yet to be addressed. With this in mind, it is the way it is, I have simply accepted it. For me, those ultra-common schematics are simply a way to get part of my mission investment back.

As I see things currently, crafting is at most a hobby but not a serious feature. In many other threads people say just about the same under different aspects.

Some say, that EA / BW want us to buy cartel stuff and thus, making it hard to get "exotic" and high tier mats.

Is it really the case, that "FtP" and serious crafting can't coexist?

Like most MMOs, SWTOR crafting is an optional aspect of the game - one does not HAVE to participate in crafting to get good quality gear and credits. However, for those who are more dedicated to crafting it is useful and lucrative. Is it time consuming? Yes. Is it a potential waste of that time? Yes. But, for someone like me, who dislikes other aspects of the game for generating credits (looks squarely at daily quests), it is a VERY lucrative alternative.

The name of the item - which is a lvl 52 medium armour chestpiece - is "General's Jacket". From the basic schematic I did exactly what you described. Please remember, that I have all crafting skills at 450 except armstech. When I left the game last year all my crafters had 400. Thus, I am familiar with the processes.

Back to the "General's Jacket":

From the basic schematic I got all types of purple: Leaderschip, verfor, supremacy etc. Indeed I crafted a lot of greens and blues <g>. The armour I mentioned above is a "Critical...." and has crit, accuracy, surge and endurance as stats.

In my opionion this far from being "useless" for a smuggler / scrapper or a gunslinger.

My mistake. Since "General's" is also one of the possible tier 2 prefixes, I got confused. There is indeed a blue schematic on the armormech trainer with the name "General's Jacket". I suppose this means it's possible to obtain a schematic for "General's General's Jacket"

Your above post contains a contradiction though. If the item is indeed "Critical General's Jacket", it would only be a tier 1 item and wouldn't have surge rating. With the stats you mentioned it should be an "Endowment General's Jacket", which is a tier 2 item.

But as you and the other posters mentioned, it is currently either not properly implemented, poor design or intentional omission, that these items are rather useless because they are inferior to items which are levels lower.

 

I just can hope, that this will change in future, because crafting in SWTOR is one of my main reasons to stay here.

I'm afraid it's more likely to be intentional than not. Bioware didn't touch the level requirements of old endgame items, which means that items with a level 50 requirement exist all the way up to item level 63, though only up to 61 can be obtained ingame at the moment.

The stats on premade items are often poorly allocated, having more of some stats (often endurance) and less of others than most players would consider optimal. This applies even to moddable items from endgame vendors, but with those, it's possible to discard the bad modifications and take better ones from other items to get closer to the optimum. Without seeing the exact stats on the items you compared I can't really say whether this is the case.

However, here's some real-life examples:

A good set of modifications from Makeb commendations vendor (similar rating as your item, level requirement 50):

Advanced Skill Armoring 25 (+58 cun, +47 end, rating 140)

Advanced Keen Mod 25 (+44 cun, +32 end, +36 crit)

Advanced Acute Enhancement 25 (+28 end, +32 crit, +51 acc)

Total +102 cun, +107 end, +68 crit, +51 acc

One of the best items for a level 50 smuggler, from classic commendations vendor:

Advanced Skill Armoring 26 (+68 cun, +49 end, rating 146)

Advanced Keen Mod 26A (+68 cun, +41 end, +12 crit)

Advanced Acute Enhancement 26 (+27 end, +41 crit, +57 acc)

Total +136 cun, +117 end, +53 crit, +57 acc

Most other items from the set are either endurance-heavy or have sub-optimal secondary stats. You'd have to buy some extras to get the good mods and enhancements.

A custom piece of armor worn by my main character (crafted the modifications myself, level requirement 53):

Advanced Skill Armoring 28 (+74 cun, +61 end, rating 156)

Advanced Keen Mod 28A (+70 cun, +48 end, +26 crit)

Advanced Acute Enhancement 28 (+37 end, +43 crit, +66 acc)

Total +144 cun, +146 end, +69 crit, +66 acc

Similar pre-made pieces are available from the basic commendations vendor, but there's exactly zero items with both critical and accuracy on them, at least for smugglers. I imagine wearing a full set of out-of-the-box basic gear would leave your accuracy somewhere around 95%. Several pieces are needlessly endurance-heavy.

In conclusion: Yes, the game, and especially the endgame, is very much designed for players willing and able to customize their endgame gear. The gear progression, crafting included, is designed to continue directly from Corellia to Makeb, so anyone who has any significant amount of endgame gear from pre-RotHC will likely find the Makeb gear useless.

In terms of crafting endgame "items" now, for Synthweaving, Armormech and Armstech it's a waste of time; focus should be on crafting augments and augmentation kits. Margins on these are relatively low on my server, but you can still make money from crits (e.g. my Synthweaver is a Jedi Sentinel, so has two companions with a +5% crit chance).

With Armstech, you can also make reasonable money on the 66 barrels; the sell price is low but the mats are also relatively cheap (as low demand) so the margins are okay.

However the real money-makers for me are Cybertech and Artifice and crafting the 66 armorings, mods and enhancements. Particularly with the enhancements as the low-endurance 66 enhancements are often better than the ones that you can buy with comms. For tanks, they are mainly even better than the ones you get in gear purchased with tokens (e..g Studiness enhancement).

On my cybertech I buy the Beryllius off the GTN and my profit margin is still 25-30%, excluding the fact that I have a relatively high crit chance.

To avoid further confusion, I wrote down the stats of my "General's Jacket":

"General's Jacket" available at trainer; blue schematic

84 END

77 CUN

49 ACC

45 CRIT

Armour rating 132; level 52 requ.

From this I got two puple schematics:

"Critical General's Jacket"

84 END

77 CUN

45 ACC

106 CRIT

"Overkill General's Jacket"

END, CUN and ACC identical

45 CRIT

61 POWER

Both armour rating 140

When I came to Makeb I did exactly that, what you recommended: I purchased all the "purple" modifications and therefore equipped "orange" armour. Meanwhile I craft up to lvl 53 all the purple armouring, mod and enhancement myself.

You can see, that the item itself has only one really good stat - "CRIT". All others are worse than the orange chest with the level 50 purple modifications.

From this I got two puple schematics:

 

"Critical General's Jacket"

84 END

77 CUN

45 ACC

106 CRIT

 

"Overkill General's Jacket"

END, CUN and ACC identical

45 CRIT

61 POWER

 

Both armour rating 140

These are indeed tier 1 schematics. There's a tier 2 available by crafting and reverse engineering these, but since they're already purple, it's going to be really expensive. "Fervor General's Jacket" is based on the Critical version but with more accuracy; I imagine it would have slightly over 100 of it. So this seems to be a case of trading primary stats for secondaries.

However, since mods go up to much higher grades, this doesn't change the fact that crafted gear with fixed stats is only viable for story content.

i dislike the crafting system currently. i think its set up to suck all our money away and get not much in return. They need to introduce item decay and a different gathering system. Currently it all doesnt sell too well.

Then you are doing it wrong...

Sorry, but I (and MANY others) have made millions of credits off of crew skills. The most common mistake made is the expectation of making millions overnight. With only VERY rare exceptions, that simply does not happen. The truth is that, in my (12+ years MMO) experience, the hardest part is getting the ball rolling to making credits. When starting out, one usually has to spend a lot of time and credits that simply "go down the drain." And this is the time that separates the men from the boys. Those who stick it out are usually rolling in credits within six to eight weeks. Those who don't...well...they come to the forums to complain.

And FYI, this is what happens in real life too - start ups succeed or fail based more on getting the ball rolling than anything else; getting their product to market is more important than worrying about the monetary investment. If the product is good the money will eventually be there.

Then you are doing it wrong...

 

Sorry, but I (and MANY others) have made millions of credits off of crew skills.

 

It would be interresting to know, WHEN you or someone else made these "millions".

I exclude the "millions" of those players who spend real money to buy cartel stuff, just to offer the better items for ridiculous amounts of in-game-credits.

Currently, the augments and all the stuff around them seem to be the only "merchandise" which sells quickly enugh to earn the name "income". Some low- and mid-level items - such as barrels, armouring etc. - sell mostly good.

But then there are these cheap guys who seemingly don't know the value of their (and our) work. Suddenly an item which went over the counter for 20 - 30 k is offered en masse for 10 k and less.

Before the game turned FtP, it was always a good bet to craft purple "endproducts", such as armour, weapons, earpieces etc. Armour-business is now destroyed because of the flood of orange stuff (cartel) and - as many posters in this thread confirmed - the high level stuff is either borked or utterly useless.

Thus, the only regular income from crafting comes at the moment from the mentioned augement-stuff. Certainly a safe way to make credits, but a very limited, too. Only rentable with really high level stuff (augment slot 9), all the things below run - if at all - for small money.

It would be interresting to know, WHEN you or someone else made these "millions".

Last night. 300k. In 24 hour sales.

It was a good night, 200k is my norm for each night's sales" batch".

The first million was hard but once I had that cushion it was easy to make money; you just need to know the market. For instance you're complaining about people under cutting your Merch with give away prices.

You're know you can buy this and resell them for higher right?

If somebody offers a steal on the market snatch it up and resell it at the going rate.

Making money isn't about knowing the "magic item" that sells. It's knowing the market, buying low, and selling high. If you know a corner of the market you can quickly flip goods with 10k profit a pop. You may not get the return of 1 100k augment sale but the 10 items you sell a night in a much more fluid market will make up for it.

It would be interresting to know, WHEN you or someone else made these "millions".

 

I exclude the "millions" of those players who spend real money to buy cartel stuff, just to offer the better items for ridiculous amounts of in-game-credits.

 

Currently, the augments and all the stuff around them seem to be the only "merchandise" which sells quickly enugh to earn the name "income". Some low- and mid-level items - such as barrels, armouring etc. - sell mostly good.

 

But then there are these cheap guys who seemingly don't know the value of their (and our) work. Suddenly an item which went over the counter for 20 - 30 k is offered en masse for 10 k and less.

 

Before the game turned FtP, it was always a good bet to craft purple "endproducts", such as armour, weapons, earpieces etc. Armour-business is now destroyed because of the flood of orange stuff (cartel) and - as many posters in this thread confirmed - the high level stuff is either borked or utterly useless.

 

Thus, the only regular income from crafting comes at the moment from the mentioned augement-stuff. Certainly a safe way to make credits, but a very limited, too. Only rentable with really high level stuff (augment slot 9), all the things below run - if at all - for small money.

I have never sold a thing from the CM on the GTM (heck I have only bought one or two of the newest packs when they come out; I currently have almost 1600CCs and have never bought any "extra"; as a sub with a sec key I get 600 a month). In all candor, I have never gotten anything worth selling that I did not want to keep myself. You only have my word on that, but it is the truth.

I started working the GTM using nothing but synthweaving last summer (approx. 6/12) when my first character hit level 50. That was also the point when the augment slot kits came into the game. I made my first million selling purple augments. I bought the purple sliced part materials, got the rest of the materials myself through missions and gathering and posted those augments following the market trend.

Once the market became flooded with purple augments and prices plummeted, I happened to check the listings for blue augments and discovered they have a GREAT ROI. I leveled my next character as an armormech and have been crafting level cap main stat and redoubt blue quality augments ever since. I never actually kept track, but there came a point when I stopped doing daily quests altogether because I realized I did not need to do them for credits anymore and I had everything I could get from them comms and gear wise. I did not even do Section X until RotHC came out and the "basic class gear" quest "required" I do the Section X weekly.

My primary market is still blue quality main stat and redoubt augments, but I have also delved into top-end blue quality armoring, mods, and enhancements since I now have a cybertech and artifice at skill 450.

I do not work the GTM very hard (I post 30-50 item modifications a week), but at my peak I had about ten million credits across four characters (the overwhelming majority of that was from two characters). I recently spent a large amount of credits getting a couple of grade 30 item modifications for my main and I have been pumping credits into leveling crew skills and getting schematics from RE on newer characters. So, I now have about seven million credits to my name.

Granted, that is no where near the half billion credits you hear about. But you know what? My "income" exceeds my "costs" and my credit total continues to grow at a slow and steady pace. I do not feel the need or desire to push my GTM efforts any harder. On my two level 55s I run my three 55HMFPs to get the weekly, I run a SM operation once a week on my main, I have three other characters only one of which I am actively leveling at this time.

As for those who sell well under market value, I give them there paltry credits and re-post at normal pricing; I have the spare credits to do that. I also have the spare credits to wait out a market dip

My overall point is that slow and steady wins the race, and too many falsely believe that the only way to make millions is to sell stuff worth millions. This belief dooms these players from the start.

Just to clarify: I never suspected you to do this reprehensible cartel item / GTM business

Anything else I understand and do it just about the same way. My pause from the game of almost one year hits here.

Seven millions is an amount, which I can imagine to achieve during the next weeks. And "seven millions" sounds somewhat tangible in contrast to "millions", which awakened indeed the imagination of these odd numbers which are on the rumour market (hundreds of millions, billions....etc.).

Dear OP,

I fully empathize with your plight, and I think you have a legitimate grievance. However, there is no chance in hell that BW is going to diminish the appeal of their Cartel Market items. Crafting professions have become nothing more than augment and augment kit factories. Every successive patch has diminished the usefulness of crafting professions, especially when crafting for one's own stable of toons.

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Dear BioWare,

Every successive patch has diminished the usefulness of crafting professions, particularly the gear professions (Armormech and Synthweaving). First, was the introduction of expensive legacy gear, which made all of the reverse engineered armorings that I took from green to purple and made them absolutely useless. Then there was the introduction of augments, which was a double "nerf" because it prevented crit crafted augment slots from housing high end augments. Thus, even after grinding out all the mats and failed crits, when a crafter finally crits an orange shell, he STILL has to pay 30k just to put an augment into the thing. Thus, the crit crafted shell is WORTHLESS. Now, in PvP, you've introduced a bolster system that makes changing out the freshest mods/gear superfluous or irrelevant. The previously EXPENSIVE legacy gear is now less than a quarter of the price through reputation vendors, and EVERYONE who owns the expansion pack has access to the makeb gear because it's VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE NOT TO MAXIMIZE REP WHEN YOU LEVEL 49-55 ON MAKEB!

I realize many of these changes are irreversible. One thing I do think you can do, however, is to make crit crafted augment slots the MAXIMUM rank slot (currently mk-9). You really have taken all of the fun away from crafting gear and made it into a simple, boring means of stockpiling in-game credits. Crafters should not have to PAY to augment gear that they crit crafted in the first place. Also, the only available crafting patterns from underworld trading are gloves. When I crit crafted those gloves, I was shocked to find that the augment slot WASN'T EVEN MK-9. wow. really? Lastly, why shouldn't I be able to reverse engineer the orange gear that I crafted (seems to be an issue with RotHC schematics)? They require the same basic mats as any other similarly tiered schematic. Shouldn't I be able to disassemble them and get some mats back for my loss on the items that do not crit an augment slot? Thank you for not listening to me. I appreciate the ways in which you ignore your user base. I look forward to not being listened to in the future.

Alot of it comes down to the time and effort it requires to gather mats and craft stuff more so than the credits really.

You really need a strong concentrated efforts to keep your gather and crafting skill high to be useful for you or your companion for leveling.You would basically have to stay on the flett at level 10 and soley gather and craft for a good few days solid to get your levels far enough ahead to keep level appropriate gear available. Time will depend on how much cash you get from alts ofcourse, if your doing this on first char it would take ages as you would have to sell some back on GTN To recycle credits back. You level so fast you need to keep the craft levels continuly ahead of your player level. Most players just have not got the will or time to do that. You also need to factor in the low 20% RE chance aswell meaning its hard work getting to a purple version that by the time you do the player level has past the item level so ist no longer of much use to you.

With so much loot about in general solo play and quest rewards let alone flashpoints players will 9 times out of 10 take the easy option and forget about crafting and just upgarde as you go along with the loot you and just craft

ad-hoc here and there as a means to a end just to get to 450. Crafted armours and weapons simply do not have a high enough stat advatage over loot gear to make them worthwhile for the time and credits you have to you into it.

Two of the main factors that have hurt standard arms and armour crafting recently are

1:-The large avaibility of Cartel market based Adapative armour packs and with the chance of adding to a collection to get it free in the furture more players are willing to spend their coins. Especially if they are a sub more and more will get an adpative gear set they like these days from the market. There is therefore less of a need for standard armour gear.

2:- The Un-Binding or planatary comms that used to be tied to each planet means its basically more worthwhile going for comm rewards rather than standard gear and building them up to upgrade your adpative gear than it used to be. Going adpative now makes more sense than going that standrd route, espcially if you have a Cybertech or artifice crafting to craft alongside for your armourings mods or enhancments hilts.

Armourtech and Synchweathing are basically just a drain on resources and of little benefit during leveling until you get to 450 and you finally get some pay back by selling the MK-7,8,9 Kits. The other crafts are only better for leveling beacuse they can craft all the different types of mods or implants and earpeices, which don't drop as often in loot. Most of teh time you will not have enough comms to the near 100 limit gathered per planet starting from 0 to fully upgrade all your kit at the end so need to buy some of them which keeps this trade going.

My Suggestions for helping crafting.

1:- Start all Schematics from the trainer as Blue straight from the off (Or atleast more blues givnen by the trainer) and also have a few custom ones thrown in aswell.

2:- RE experience gain factor. The more you succesfully RE the better you percentage chance in the future, rather than this fixed percentage you get. Lets make it rewarding for the player that does put some effort in. Small increses to your percentage chance over time.

3:- Mission times for the Gathering skills early on in particular need to come down. I reckon repeating the same gather or crew mission with the same companion should bring its time down since the companion has done that before and should know how to improve effiecency next time doing the same thing. Why can't you actively effect the somewhat static efficency and critical rating of the crew member more, not just through doing repeating tasks but by gathering knowelge and skill sets through experience of doing that that task. Maye there should be items you can buy from vendors that will improve a certain gather skills, for exmaple geology field kits for your scavenging or biology equpment for your Biochem craft. Yes I know effection does a improve things a little the effect is so slow and gradual it makes little difference while leveling.

4- As a side issue to make standard gear a bit more in demand and hence help crafters of it.

Only have general non-binding armour and arms drops on a few random elites and champions in Heroic and flashpoint arae's. I find the amount you get simply from silvers in solo arae's silly, I would just have random comms drops for elites in standard solo area's and silvers just give credits.. With the maybe the odd excpetion when you get two golds gaurding a tresasure box for example or teh odd lonesome champion you see in solo area's. Then just improve the different options you have on the BOP quest reward selection.

This will reduce the supply of standard gear and hence increase demand making crafted stuff that little more in demand... Most Players although going full on moddable for themselves will still go standard for their compaions( as you cann never get all those comms in time for both of you) so there will still be some demand for good sandard gear here. May be a Argumentative one but buying adpative armour from cartel markets makes them BOP so cant be sold 2nd hand on GTN after the 36 Hour timer, this will reduce adaptive numbers on GTN.

You could also consider the alternate approach of getting rid of all standard gear and making everything adpative in the game. It would require quiet a few chnaces to all carfting schematic available, changing all the vendors gear incresing comms limits and quest rewards etc... The question is would it help crafting in long run if all they were carfting was adpative shells, not so sure.

It would be interresting to know, WHEN you or someone else made these "millions".

 

...

Thus, the only regular income from crafting comes at the moment from the mentioned augement-stuff. Certainly a safe way to make credits, but a very limited, too. Only rentable with really high level stuff (augment slot 9), all the things below run - if at all - for small money.

Millions literally in 2 weeks (granted the two weeks were during double XP weekends and that helped some). 15 to 20 million. Biochem - the lowest level blue implants (lvl 19 I think). Of course you have to get the schematics, and you have to be willing to farm genetic anomaly (that's a nightmare) because the recipes call for 6 of the darn things. I have 7 schematics for these implants - and sold 40 to 50 blue implants a day at a nice price, but kept it low enough that lower level players could afford them.

I gave it up because it is too much work to farm those genetic anomaly mats.

Find a niche like that one, and you CAN make millions - right now.

Some minutes ago I checked GTM for my artificer. I thought, there might be something to do for her, because the enhancements are so numerous and beside the augments the other - and cheaper - chance to fine-tune every character.

I checked for blue quality. As we all know, GTM shows, too, the qualities above. Thus, I got 181 pages from lowest possible level up to 55, mixed with blue and purple qualities.

On page 54 the first offer was higher than 10k! Surprisingly lots of highest level of both qualities were offered below 10k!

I just wonder, if people who dump their stuff for these ridiculous prices are capable to do basic arithmetic operations.