Greetings and Well met!

I just recently returned to TOR after about a 2 year hiatus and need some help with my crew skills. I am playing a SW as my main character and rolled fresh because I really did not have any high levels to support my account anyways. I will be taking Cybertech and Scavenging as my crew skills, because Mods for adaptive Armor, Droid and Ship upgrades sounds like a perfect line up to support other alts I decided to make. My question is which crew skill do I choose for my 3rd slot? I have weighing the pros and cons between Underworld Trading and Slicing, but can not decided even scouring through these forums. So I have decided to post a thread to aid in my endeavor instead of searching through archives of forums. In your opinion would Slicing or Underworld Trading be more beneficial?

Greetings and Well met!

 

I just recently returned to TOR after about a 2 year hiatus and need some help with my crew skills. I am playing a SW as my main character and rolled fresh because I really did not have any high levels to support my account anyways. I will be taking Cybertech and Scavenging as my crew skills, because Mods for adaptive Armor, Droid and Ship upgrades sounds like a perfect line up to support other alts I decided to make. My question is which crew skill do I choose for my 3rd slot? I have weighing the pros and cons between Underworld Trading and Slicing, but can not decided even scouring through these forums. So I have decided to post a thread to aid in my endeavor instead of searching through archives of forums. In your opinion would Slicing or Underworld Trading be more beneficial?

If you are set into taking Cybertech (CT) as a crafting skill, you want Underworld Trading (UT), because it is the mission skill that feeds CT (among others) materials for blue and purple quality crafted stuff.

That being said, there are some issues you need to be aware of:

1) all crafting skills are credit sinks. If you try to maintain a crafting skill level to provide the character with gear while leveling you will lose money because you will have to run missions to get materials to craft gear that is not already obsolete.

2) since two years ago, when you last played, there was a fundamental change in the planet commendations system: instead of each planet having its own commendation currency, they all now fall under one currency called "planetary commendations". This means that commendation acquired on DK or Coruscant can be used on Balmorra and Taris, etc. This makes it a lot easier to gear up characters' adaptive gear using vendor purchased item modifications. So, CT is not nearly as beneficial as it once was. Does CT offer better stat distribution? Probably. Does it matter while leveling? Not a whole lot.

My advise, for a player who for all intents and purposes is starting over...level your "new main" with two of the three gathering skills (scavenging, bioanalysis, archaeology), and slicing. Save or sell the materials you get, and then when you hit the level cap change one or more to a crafting skill and its supporting mission skill.

i.e. level with scav, BA, and slicing. save all the Scav materials you get, sell all the BA materials, and run nothing but lockbox missions with slicing. Then when you hit the level cap, drop BA for CT, and slicing for UT. Re-leveling crew skills with five companions running missions and crafting is a concentrated two day affair.

I hate to ever contradict psandak, but I'd like to offer an alternative view (if you're willing to spend just a little bit of real money).

If you pick up a few Gatekeeper packs right now from the Cartel Market, you are highly likely to get a few decorations. Depending on what server you're on (I'm on Ebon Hawk), you can easily make 100-300k credits per decoration from the pack. That's enough to get you started on your Cybertech skills (including Underworld Trading).

If you keep things rolling and focus on making the stuff which costs more than 2 or 3 planetary commendations (for Cybertech that means focusing on armor mods), then I found I was able to keep my characters equipped with blue item mods pretty much all the way through leveling to 55.

Don't go "crazy". Only buy the schematics you're really going to use.

Whenever I went to the next tier of material needs, I would sell whatever excess stuff I had from the previous tier as well. That helped keep me solvent.

I've started work on a guide for how I geared my main (and now my alts) to try to keep costs down.

psandak's advice is perfect if you want to focus on being fully self-sufficient in-game without using the Cartel Market trick. In fact it is probably a better way in the end to finish the run to level 55 and have a healthy credit balance.

I just like the feeling of wearing the armor and such that I make myself; so I figured out a way.

Another point of view:

Armoring is the most expensive mod. I gear every 4 levels based on the levels my gear (ie. reflex for aim dps) is sold at the commendation vendor. Every 4 levels, I make 8 pieces of armoring on my cybertech, buy a barrel/hilt on the GTN and use 32 comms for 9 mods and 7 enhancements.

On money, farming mats is a good way go fast. You can still have a million in 3 days on this server if you worked it. I started with farming Laminoid from the silver droids on the patio area of DK. Imp Balmorra is best if you set your char up as a gatherer, archaeology and scavenging. Then farm away, rake in the credits and level your cyber up by buying mats. One stack of laminoid was 80-100k last time I looked, you can sell one of those a day with a little attention to the market.

Cheers.

Fairly new to the game, but I like crafting.

I also have CT as a skill, took scavenging and underworld trading.

Now I'm lvl 38ish and hit 400 in CT. My experience: I've got little from the normal stuff I can craft on the market, but decoration related items seem to bring in good money.

On the week end I weeded out my inventory, selling excess materials and companion gifts that accumulated over the time and they netted me like 400 k in credits. Of course I sold to GTN.

CT is easily levelled, all you need is the mats. Only craft basic stuff to level. Blue items take some time to make and kitting out yourself and a companion takes really long. All it does is helping to reduce the expenses for planetary comms. If you have a steady income in those, you might want to skip crafting altogether.

CT is good for earpieces andyou can play at the market by finding out stuff in demand. It's not needed for playing, but I don't mind having levelled it - for me it adds flavour.

If you take slicing as you level you can easily buy any mods or armorings from the GTN while you level. I was a bit bummed on Saturday and not well pleased with my alternate crew skill on my Sage (Biotech and Bio analysis), so I took up slicing. Going back, running around Coruscant and forward as I ran my class mission and got all my datacrons (I had only done up to Coruscant) I went from 30k credits to 375,000 in one day. I made it up to the end of Voss while also doing the world arc for Voss. Slicing will make you a bit of money while running missions and a lot of money if you are lucky with finding nodes.

I have a 450 cybertech on my Trooper and...I don't make anything really. The odd earring.

My advice is to go Biotech, you can use reusable stims, health packs and adrenals.

They do make droid parts but you will hit a big wall with that at 50, and as far as I can tell will need to farm ops and such to make the best gear and you are in the hand of rng when breaking down mods from a piece of dread gear.