It's been about eight months since I last played, friends dragged me back and it seems there's been a whole bunch of changes. Since my friends were all on a different server than my old characters I figured I would start fresh on their server, it's not like I remember what I was doing with any of my old characters anyway.

 

I'm starting with a Powertech tank, I figure having a solid solo character as well as a character able to drag my friends lower level characters (since I always seem to out level them even when they play twice as much as I do) through the lower instances. The problem, as the title suggests, is my crew skills.

 

Since I'm starting fresh on a new server I've been tempted to go with Scavenge/Archaeology/Slicing, basically start building up a stockpile of crafting supplies for the army of alts that I will no doubt end up creating. On the other hand I like to actually do some crafting. On the other other hand (yes, I have three hands) since this is a fresh server I have no lineage, no credits, no real foundation to start crafting from. Crafting is expensive, and the slicing would help alleviate that later on.

 

Is the S/A/S I currently have planned most likely my best course right now or can I do better? Thanks in advance.

Back to the front page with you >.>

Since it's your first character you'll always struggle with money and resources, so everything you choose now is a trade off.

 

If I were you, I would be having trouble picking up professions as well, lol

 

But most certainly, I would dropped Arqueology for Bioanalysis. Then at 50, you'll have to decide if you keep your toon as a gatherer, or you make it a crafter.

If it's going to be a crafter, It's worth noting that BH has +2 crit for Bioanalysis, +2 crit Biochem and there's the legacy droid part that adds +2 crit for Diplomacy. So your BH being a Biochem looks real good. You don't even need to drop Sicling from your BH, you can just quickly level an alt to a point where you get the ship, and use that ship droid for diplomacy

 

or

 

Drop Bioanalysis and take Armomech to craft augments. With all the scavenging mats you should have at 50, you'll level to 400 in one afternoon by just crafting green barrels from the trainer. You'll be able to craft cunning, aiming, shield and absortion augments. Those sell, not for millions but still. And you may save some money when you augment your tank.

For cheap crafting ten armormech with scav and slicing is a good option I've found, theres more interest in orange armor sets rather than RE'd purple items nowadays and you can produce augment kits and several useful augments (aim primary stat, plus 2 tanking ones).

 

If you're not crafting towards purple armor you really don't need UWT, the only gap you have is companion gifts.

 

If you want the least effort approach to gathering then I go for treasure hunting, slicing and diplomacy - TH lockboxes give either cash, items you can use or relics, slicing gives lockboxes for cash or missions to sell and diplomacy for gifts and if you slice a diplomacy mission you could run it and sell the mats.

 

Crafting is expensive only if you take a grinding approach, if you craft to quality i.e. to obtain a few reserve engineered tier 2 schematics and then sell as you level the craft. It pays for itself.

You can't really make money while leveling, as you will spend lots of money sending out companions to haul back materials to craft blue and purple items (I think purple is a waste of time and resources).

 

Overall though I would say cybertech is very strong 1-50. You can make blue armorings as you level and insert them into orange gear. Armorings are the hardest things to find through questing and the most important. You can also sell them with little trouble on the GTN, though you will be hard pressed for materials to make it profitable. Cybertech also gets ship parts if you like space missions.

Take all gathering skills until you're higher level ,sell what you want for quick cash.

Once you hit 50 you'll have quite a bit of credits, and you will more than likely quickly outlevel any gear that you craft for yourself.

Once you hit 50, take a crafting skill, and use the mats you've gathered from 10-50 to level up fast with 5 companions.

The one that is the most solo-friendly is Biochem.. having a steady supply of medpacks,stims, and implants is extremely helpful.

Three gathering skills is probably the ideal choice for a brand new solo toon. I might go with Bioanalysis over Slicing for the first one, since you'll probably want a biochem alt early on. I'd take the three basic skills on the first one and then just add slicing on any alt that doesn't really need to have a mission skill. The gathering skills level up for free if you just scan every node you run across in the world while leveling, and you can sell the mats for a nice profit along the way, considering it costs you no credits and little time to get them. When you get to 50, you will also have a nice fleetside farm toon for gathering mats, which will help a lot grinding up the crafting skills on your alts (or which you can just use to grind out credits by farming and selling mats). Edited December 7, 2012 by Heezdedjim