On my main (lvl 55), I have Artifice, Archaeology and Slicing. My Slicing is nearing 400, while my Archaeology and Artifice are around 180. To lvl Archeology, I have to see what I need for Might/Resolve Hilt X. So then I have to look up the missions that give the materials, send them on the missions, wait while I speed around the fleet, then finally get SOME of the materials. Then I have to craft some things, and in the end my Artifice has barely lvled up.

This is a pain with a lot of hard work, while my Slicing is just "lockboxes and GTN sales". Very easy to lvl and minimal credit loss.

My alt (lvl 25 and counting rather fast) has Armormech, Scavenging and Underworld Trading. Armormech is less than 70, Scavenging 125, and Underworld Trading is barely anywhere.

Scavenging is actually a gathering skill I can easily gather. Two runs of Hammer Station and it was up 70. Now my Armormech is behind. A lot of stuff to craft, some of which is useful, needing materials that mean nothing to me. Underworld trading was a skill I eventually decided to get, quite a bit after the other two. The missions are boring and give me useless stuff.

Gathering I just don't think to do, and because of my laziness I'm usually behind the planet gathering lvl (Section X is lvling up my Slicing ATM). Crafting I've mentioned, it's so much work and missions for something I'm gonna sell to a vendor for ten times as less as the mats.

I always know this will pay off, when I'm crafting Purple-Black Eviscerating crystals for under 10k, getting MK 9 kits without noticing a dip in credits, and gathering materials worth 5k each, but right now this isn't doing anything for me.

Now I expect to find a dupe thread and my 10 mins writing this wasted. Oh well.

EDIT: Oh, and TL;DR, it's too much effort to gather all materials to craft something useless to me and it's not feeling worth it at such a low crew skill lvl.

Leveling a crafting skill (as opposed to a gathering or mission skill) a particularly annoying as you have to hang out at the crew skill vendor to keep buying schematics.

Rather than doing it piecemeal, try doing it all at once.

1. Get a list of all mats you'll need to level from the bottom to the top. e.g. Artifice mats

2. Gather and/or purchase all of the mats beforehand.

3. Park the toon by the vendor.

4. Queue up 10 missions (2 for each companion) of an orange-level schematic.

5. Start a stopwatch or something.

6. Go do something else (switch to an alt, watch TV, etc.)

7. Come back to the toon when done, you will have leveled 20 points and the next orange schematic will be available.

8. Rinse and repeat.

Crafting skills are an investment. If you work whatever crafting skill you have (in your case artifice) properly you will eventually recoup your investment.

Your character is level 55 but your crew skill are not capped. My advice is to get your archeology to max by running missions. Save what you get from those missions. Then start crafting. My advice is to reverse engineer everything you craft to recoup materials that can be used to continue your crew skill leveling process. Even so, be aware that there may be times when you do not have sufficient materials to level up your crafting skill. At which point you have two options: run missions to get them or go to the GTN and buy them; spend time or credits the choice is yours.

As to the usefulness of items you craft: you will not get anything useful for a level 55 character until the crafting skill is capped at 450. That is just how the system works; crew skill level and character level are completely independent.

Another bit of advice, artifice gets nothing from slicing. The mission crew skill that feeds artifice is treasure hunting.

Another bit of advice, artifice gets nothing from slicing. The mission crew skill that feeds artifice is treasure hunting.

Yeah, I got Slicing after I became a sub and knew it would do nothing. However, collecting 1k lockboxes every 30m is very profitable. At 450 Slicing I should be making a ton.

Slicing only makes money if you're on a planet leveling or selling Thermal Regulators which don't come frequently. Since I don't waste nights farming I never pass slicing nodes anymore. And all the thermal regs I get go into my own augments.

In my experience once you hit 55 slicing isn't lucrative. Killing mobs on illum pays out about the same as tracking down a node to hack.

As for leveling crafting and other material skills. Crafting was pretty easy, just craft the orange difficulty items and it levels pretty fast, just get new schematics at the end of every night. But material collecting is a major pain if you're don't keep up on it as you level. Playing catch up with that is the worst but good once you have it up.

I've been leveling my alt a lot recently, and been having a bunch of fun with Armormech and Scavenging. Stuff I actually can use, cool looking armor, finding materials all over the place, getting other materials from Underworld Trading...

Basically, my lvl 36's main crew skills are higher than my 55's.