Dec 23, 2011

Posted by in Zlatto's Bazaar | 9 Comments

Zlatto’s Bazaar: Biochem – The Non-Crafter’s Crew Skill?

Zlatto’s Bazaar is the one-third Wall Street, one-third criminal empire and one-half gossip rag. You need to keep up on the Bazaar if for no other reason than to keep an eye on your competitors. Don’t be a Ho-tah and visit often. Your comments are encouraged, especially if they make me credits…

I know the title is a bit vague, but the concept came to me as I was checking out ways to make credits from my Consular’s Biochem skills. So far, we all know that Slicing will be an easy money maker. From what I have seen, once the skill has been leveled to 150 I was averaging a net gain of 20% just sending my crew out on lock box missions. As of today I have not been able to see what the GTN will be like for profit margins on Augments, but I would guess that there are going to be plenty of players looking to take a short cut to leveling their skills and we all should look to profit from it.

But back to Biochem and my goofy article title.

As you might have been able to tell, I am a bit of an OCD crafter (which might be why they let me spout my crazy here at AAJ). So as soon as I started leveling my character I was gathering on Tython before I could even craft. When I finally got my first companion I was able to craft up Biochem to the mid 20’s with just what I had in my inventory. As a testament to my disorder – I mean really who needs a level 8 purple item when you will craft past it in just hours – I worked up Reusable Compact Medpac to test a theory itch that I needed to scratch. Now look carefully at the image below:

I grabbed the image from Torhead as my screen shots in game are a bit challenging due to the strange Windows 7 64 bit craziness (that’s the last time I buy a gaming laptop from a Jawa). The image above differs from what we see in game as it does not have a “Requires” statement. In game, the Reusable Compact Medpac requires a player to have Biochem level 1 along side the actual character level of 8. “Why do I care about this Zlatto? I could have lost a quick game of Hutball in the time I have wasted reading this article”. Give me a another few paragraphs and a few questions to you and I will make it worth your while.

First Question: What do you not see on the image above?

Well, I see nothing about  Bind on Account or Bind on Equip. So being the type of player I am, I used a Reusable Compac Medpac on my character and then sent it thru the mail to another character that was not on my account. NO PROBLEMS AT ALL. What does that mean for us merchant-types? Well there’s some good and some bad. The bad news is that these items are not truly consumable by their use or by their equipping on a character, so we face volume issues and the more product in the pipeline the worse it is to sell them. BUT… the good news is tied to my article title.

The image I grabbed also is missing the line (Biochem 1 Required) This makes it so non-Biochem crafters can not use these fun trinkets to cause lots of mayhem. But with no effort at all, just by selecting Biochem as their crew skill, a player can now use the item shown above. It can be made by another character and purchased. A player not interested in that particular Crew Skill path has no need to work up their skill to gain the advantage of some really helpful items. In fact, if a ‘non-crafter’ player just selects Biochem as their crew skill they are able to use all of the following non-consumable items with no effort other than spending credits. Biochem should become the default Crew Skill of the non-crafting player.

The benefits for the non-crafters only increase if they decide to buy some mats off the GTN and move up to BioChem skill 10, as that is where the lowest level of adrenals are available. What uber corpse camping fergal of a Sith Warrior would not want to be able to pop a Reusable Battle Critical Adrenal when ever they need a little something extra. No need to work up a crew skill, no need to reverse engineer, no need to send out their crew on specific mission skills to find rare medical supplies. (Its no joke; finding Alien Blood samples are a huge pain.) So does the good out weigh the bad so far? Well, I say it’s about even, but I would never leave my faithful readers and partners in profit at that.

Next Question: What does the item below do?
Are you sure that is all that it does? I am a solo style player, so having a companion tank for me as I level is a must. One thing I found is that the item above is an in-combat battle rez for your companion. I believe it’s an oddity of the companion targeting process. If you are in combat and your companion is alive you can target them to toss them a heal, (if you have one) but once they die they are not targetable until the combat is done when you can use your skill to revive your companion. However, I found that if you use the item above during the battle when your companion is “defeated” they are restored to life and start attacking again. Your companion is now targetable for a quick heal and you are back at it. This can create a huge leveling advantage, and those in a hurry to grind it on up might select Biochem just to enable this little trick and worry about their actual Crew Skill selections once they hit the level cap.
The above item is not even the lowest level reusable med pac that can be made, there is a BioChem skill 40 required called Reusable Tech Surgeon Med Unit that a non-crafter focused player could level to in about 30 minutes with nothing but easy materials from the GTN. Now, this could be quickly changed by the BioWare staff, or maybe its working as intended.

Have you seen any other opportunities in the Crew Skills besides Slicing to make some cash off the community yet? Share your thoughts and schemes with us!

  1. now i can make my crew skill biocem and sell my products for unreasonably high prices on the GTM and then ill be the richest Jedi knight EVER.

  2. how do i get that i got my bio-cem up to lv 11 and i cant figure out how to get the good stuff.

    • the trick is getting the matching Frist Aid drops found in Diplomacy. Make and Reverse Engineer the Green version of the Medpac. Then once you learn the blue version you will need to make those. Its the same materials needed to make the blue except for First Aid materials you get from the GTN or from Diplomacy missions. Make about 10-12 blue versions of the medpac and Reverse Engineer them all, or at least until you learn the purple

  3. The level 32 biochem reusables have a requirement of biochem 220. These are the first ones I bothered with, as levelling was starting to slow down a bit, but they are certainly pretty awesome :)

  4. Yes the higher level one are real impactful, I was just curious about the concept of bang for your buck for those who do not really craft at all

  5. The question even google couldn’t answer is: if I reverse-engineer my blue implants I can craft, do i get epic ones? I haven’t gotten any procs so far an r-ed about 20 of the same sort.

    • I can attest to this thru multiple success Sunthyia, but its a bit random. You seem to be in a RE slump, but it will eventually proc for you. I was seeing 5% to 8% proc on blues to purple but then again on bam on 5 attempts I get it.
      I did log out and on a lot between characters, as I manage slicing on a BH as I craft up my Bio on a different character

  6. My third toon took up Biochem, first two both have slicing, boy did I need it. Rare mats only come from diplomacy crew missions, for the purple recipes you need the purple mat so that means a rare proc to obtain. I spent over 30k on crew skill missions just to get enough purple mats to build my rank 2 items. INSANE. I will never be able to recoup that cost. All crew skills beyond Slicing are broken. What am I going to do with 100 blue level mats that I leveled well passed just to get my purple mats.

    They need to put a mat combine 10blue = 1 purple or something otherwise luck will screw many many many people.

    Stick with slicing and buy other peoples junk, you will still be far richer in the end.

Leave a Reply to Ventu Cancel reply