Jan 5, 2012

Posted by in Zlatto's Bazaar | 9 Comments

Zlatto’s Bazaar: Juggling 3 Gathering Skills – The Good, The Bad And The Profitable

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…

When you run past a resource node that you are unable to harvest because your skill is not high enough, do your teeth clench just a bit? When you run past a resource node that you do not even have the correct crew skill to harvest in the first place, do you still get that itch? If you answered yes to either of these questions you might be a candidate for a full gathering crew skills selection.

The Good

Have you thought about what it would be like to be take only gathering skills in Star Wars: The Old Republic? I not only thought about it… I am enjoying it, and I figured I would share some thoughts about it. I selected Archaeology, Slicing and Scavenging for my three options.  My reason was all about the utilization by my possible customers and … well, Slicing to help fund my other characters.

There are 3 Crew Skills that use Scavenging materials and 2 Crew Skills that use Archaeology, so the number of prospective buyers is greatly increased. Now this is just a theory of mine, and to be honest I am as unsure as a ferglutzing shop keeper.  Volume of prospects does not always lead to direct profit. Another theory would be  Scavenging and Bioanalysis.  Why, you ask? Well they are both skinning supported gathering skills. In my leveling efforts there are countless Strong enemies of both Bio and Droid origin.  The only thing more profitable than finding a node on a map is creating your own and getting XP for doing it!

What 3 would you take? Have you thought about why you would choose what you would choose?

 

The Bad

Can you imagine the volume of raw materials I have to carry around by selecting Archaeology and Scavenging? It is daunting, but if you happen to add Bioanalysis instead of Slicing you are going to face some space issues. Lets look at Dromund Kaas for an example.  While questing you can expect to see Artifact pieces, Color crystals, and Power crystals of differing levels.  If your Archaeology skill is 40, you could be gathering 6 different items just related to Archaeology. Now we add in Scavenging where you are accumulating both Metals and Compounds. If your skill is at level 40 you are collecting 4 different items related to Scavenging.  Can you see the issue?

Damion Schubert’s gang gave us stacks of 99 in our inventory but …. with just 2 Gathering skills you could be losing 33% of your inventory space in just a basic starter area.  If you add Bioanalysis, you are facing even more baggage issues, and if you select Slicing like I did you need to be clicking those lockboxes as soon as they are in your inventory to keep your space well managed.

The Profitable

A few suggestions to help you overcome some of the challenges I have faced:

  • Buy an extra row (5,000 credits) as soon as its feasible. Having 40 slots is surprisingly more impactful than you can imagine.
  • Be diligent in sending a companion off to sell trash items when ever you see or expect downtime.
  • Never leave a cargo hold terminal unused.  If you see the key spend the time to empty your bags.
  • Know what level of nodes you will see in the area you are moving too.  As a gatherer you are the one that should know.
  • Be careful to balance the skill level of your gathering professions. If you are too far out of whack you will miss nodes or be in an area where another gathering skill will not get a skill up.
During your efforts  in marketing and selling your swag I recommend reading the Blasters, Beggars & Credits discussion about the Galactic Trade Network.

Share your efforts, let me know what other stumbling blocks you are seeing.


  1. you may want to remove the Jedi knight form bio-cem takes forever to get to alest crew skill 100. and only thing good is the reuseable stuff

  2. I put all of my mats in the cargo hold. I wanted to see if I could still craft with it being in you ships cargo hold, it worked for me.

  3. For my first char, I ran Bioanalysis, Scavenging and Slicing. By the time I reached lvl 50, I had over 2m credits after paying for some of life’s luxuries like max spaceship upgrades, max speeder ranks and the best crafted equipment money can buy. And most of the money did not come from slicing missions – it came from selling raw mats at high prices.

    Going tri-gathering is a risk-free but time-consuming way of making credits. It’s my chosen path when the economy is still so young and hence in great uncertainty and flux.

    With the slicing nerf, I am going bioanalysis, scavenging and archaeology for my 2nd char. Income still looks pretty good once you exit the Grade 1 mat market.

  4. Well – ive earned a lot on grade 1 crystals – on my server it is selling for abourt 3.5k-4k for 25 . Ive decie to go with arch, scav, bio as 3 gathering skills and i have to say that its money making skills . I do not have to send my comp for missions as i can gather mats by myself and its pure profit =]

  5. Dirtyshadow says:

    If your at a mailbox and are running out of bag space due to greens and gathered mats… mail the stuff to an Alt.

    10 credits mails 8 items, and your alt can hit the Return to Sender button… that way next time your at a Cargo Hold Terminal you can loot the mail and sort the stuff out.

  6. That graphic made sense once upon a time when there were many combinations, but now each craft skill has only one gathering and one mission skill that go with it. That graphic, though updated, is still wrong. It lists Cybertech as only being useful for the non-Force classes, which is incorrect; Cybertech Mods and Armoring are good for all classes.

    • great catch, I meant it to be used as an example of what professions use which gathering resources but always hate to share info that is out of date.

  7. Out of Curiosity, wouldn’t artifice connect to all classes sense you can put color crystals in guns too? Also, wouldn’t armormech be able to connect to Jedi Knight and Sith Warrior since it can make medium armors too?

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