Posted by Lord Paladin in Breakdown | 7 Comments
Breakdown: Crew Skills 102 – Synergy!
Breakdown is designed to to fill that stressful void while Star Wars: The Old Republic is down for maintenance. Each Tuesday morning, we’ll look at a topic and try to break it down to the basics. In the end, we hope to educate, entertain, and prevent you from having your own Breakdown!
For this edition of Breakdown, we’re going to dive a little deeper into the crafting system, otherwise known as Crew Skills! The crafting system in TOR can be a bit different from other MMOs, and so here in part 2, we’re going to help you get started! If you haven’t read part 1, please go back do so here. If you are looking for more advanced crafting subject matter, please check out Zlatto’s Bazaar.
This edition of Breakdown will be formatted in a slightly different way in order to be used as more of a handy reference sheet should you wish to print it out or bookmark it for your crafting needs. If you bookmark it, I have thoroughly linked it for your ease of use.
Also please note: Armormech and Synthweaving can make fully modable gear, but the armoring mods (which give them rating) come from Cybertech.
Armormech
Produces: Medium and Heavy armor for Non-force users: head, chest, wrist, body, waist, legs, and foot slot
Gathering Skill: Scavenging 
Mission Skill: Underworld Trading 
Armstech
Produces: Assault Cannons, Blaster Barrel mods, Blaster Pistols, Blaster Rifles, Misc (melee weapons that aren’t lightsabers, but does include vibroswords, et al.), and sniper rifles
Gathering Skill: Scavenging Mission Skill: Investigation 
Artifice
Produces: Color Crystals (for all weapons), Enhancement mods, Lightsaber hilt mods, Modification mods, and Wieldable: shield generators, offhand focuses, relics, and lightsabers (at skill level 400)
Gathering Skill: Archaeology 
Mission Skill: Treasure Hunting 
Biochem
Produces: Adrenals (which boost things like power, and surge), Implants, Medical, and Stimulants (which boost things like strength, and endurance)
Gathering Skill: Bioanalysis 
Mission Skill: Diplomacy 
Cybertech
Produces: Armoring mods, Droid parts, Earpieces, Grenades (useable), Modification mods, Ship parts, Speeders, and a group member summoning tool Transport Beacon
Gathering Skill: Scavenging Mission Skill: Underworld Trading
Synthweaving
Produces: Light, Medium, and Heavy armor for Force Users: head, chest, wrist, body, waist, legs, and foot slot
Gathering Skill: Archaeology Mission Skill: Underworld Trading
So which crafting skills do you want for your character? He’s a quick and simple breakdown!
All Characters: Cybertech, Biochem
Jedi (all)/Sith (all): Artifice, Synthweaving
Bounty Hunter/Trooper/Smugger/Agent: Armstech, Armormech
And if you are just looking to make a buck by selling resources on the Galactic Trade Network, check out these great skills: Treasure Hunting, Scavenging, Slicing, and Underworld Trade. They provide some of the best bang for the buck you can get out of a non-craft skill.
That’s all for this latest issue of Breakdown! I hope this simple guide gets you started for all your crafting needs. Do you know of any other great Crew Skill synergy? Give us your input in the comments below! As always, I hope I’ve helped educate you on more of the basics, and I hope you’ll join me next week when the servers are down for another Ask A Jedi: Breakdown!
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Of course it’s a %, but uptill today I haven’t found a scematic for Armstech through investigation…
I only find scematics for synthweaving … :(
Thru UT all I find is armormech schematics…tho I have synthweaving….ugh
Armstech does seem a bit…. underwhelming, at least for levelling and keeping companions in gear. It’ll be a quite small subset of what you can make, that will be even usable by yourself or your buddies, whereas something like Armormech at least covers multiple slots for all your non-force using compatriots. In terms of ease of access and saving credits/commendations it doesn’t really stack up to the others.
The only real plus I see is you get to pick Investigation for your advanced mats, giving you access to a wider range of potential schematics, where I think UWT only gives Synthweaving and Armormech schematics.
On the topic of Synergy, even post-nerf slicing still goes quite well with Cybertech. Spaceship parts and blue earpieces can fetch decent prices, since outside random drops most only have access to green stuff, and the schematics from those come from slicing. It is essentially the benefit that, as Cybertech with Slicing, you are all but assured you can use whatever schematics you find. Missions can also fetch a decent price, in addition to the credits you just find out in the world. This more than off-sets the occasional need to buy blue metals in my experience.
This listing is a lot more in sync than those on other sites and the official pages.
I’ve dropped and reconfigured my skills on two chars because the stuff on SWTOR.com led me to have skills that didn’t help each other at all!
I actually had to revise this a few times because of changes they slipped in. This is accurate as of last week. :-)
Yeah. I don’t know why they had it wrong themselves. Each mission/gathering provides two types of materials (I think). Each material is only used for one crafting so it’s very easy to determine “If I have Synthweaving, I need Archaeology and Underworld Trading”