As a soon to be ex-Slicer, I approve of OP message.

I guess the only reason to do Slicing now is if your crafting skill is Cybertech because you can get blue and purple schematics on occasion. But, this nerf makes me a sad Pandaran. Less than two weeks after EGA and one week after official launch and the first major nerf comes down...

It looks like if anyone wants to cover all bases on Companion Skills, they are going to have to tie up one server entirely with one faction. There are 6 crafting skills and I think 8 mission / gathering skills. I've been creating alts and early on, I just take gathering skills. You can move a very low level character to the fleet ship and take the companion skill mission and click all of the trainers for about 1.5 levels of experience. Then, I usually take Scavenging and two other gathering skills until I get off the first planet sometimes on until the second planet. This stock piles early materials which you can store on one alt. You can then get rid of one gathering skill and replace it with Slicing. This is your money maker and is pretty much required early on or you will go broke trying to run missions (or train). Don't concern yourself too much with taking the crafting skill, just get as much money as you can by obsessively running lockbox missions with Slicing. When you have a decent sum of credits, start running some of the gathering missions that can't be done on a planet manually (Underworld Trading for UW metals and silks, etc) and stockpile those, alternating with Slicing to replace the cash spent on missions. Slicing will also give you a handful of Cybertech schematics. UW Trading will give you a selection of Armortech and Synthweaving schematics. So one of those three may be your first choice to tackle when you have enough money and materials to start actually crafting. I did Cybertech because it uses mostly Scavenged Metals and compounds and rarely an Underworld Metal if you get a Blue or Purple critical, so you can scavenge while doing storyline missions to get materials, and do companion gathering missions to keep the stockpiling going during your down time. You may end up with a server full of level 10-20 alts that craft items for the four characters you may chose to play all the way to 50. Right now, I have a level 10 Inquisitor who's never been to the second planet and has Cybertech at level 250. He makes mods, earpieces and ship parts for my main character who still has three gathering/crafting skills (Scavaging at 250, Slicing at 400, Underworld Trading at 220). I also have a level 13 Bounty Hunter who has barely set foot on the second planet that's working Armortech up for the soul reason I found about 4 Orange quality Heavy Armor schems that I wanted to make for my main character (the 3 x gathering guy who is a Sith Warrior). I have AT up to about 160 and only need 20 more points to make the first orange heavy armor piece. I have another Inquisitor warming up in the bull pen with a bank full of materials and a handful of Synthweaving schems. I eventually will start alts working on Artifice, Arms and Bio. I plan on spreading the gathering and mission skills out among the 6 crafters and two others to cover all the bases. Since you don't have to leave the fleet ship, you don't really have to level these crafting alts past 10, but getting your ship so you can send out two companions is probably desirable because you can double your efficiency on Slicing for credits and gathering missions for materials.

I could tell this was a bug due to the fact that my lower level alts were getting the notification and they're level 10 with no ship available. I went to a cantina (on the Fleet ship) and not option to talk to companions.

It looks like there's just one blue and then on a rare occasion, you'll unlock a purple version of the various levels of mods, like Might Armor Mod 3 (green, blue, purple). I haven't seen any modified with the critical modifiers like Armortech etc. I've made so few of the first tier of ship parts, (blue quality) I'm not sure if they can be REed up to purple quality. And, the first available mount at 150 can't be reverse engineered so I'm guessing it also can't have a critical upgraded version. One thing I wasn't aware of (and I can't find the design logic behind the decision) is that all of the Cybertech crafted mounts are Bind on Pickup, therefore you're not able to sell them or share them with friends and alts. That was a major disappointment to me (avid mount collector in that other game that shall not be named). So if your main is a mount collector, you'll have to take Cybertech as your crafting profession.

Register an Aunthenticator, get access to the Security Key Vendor located near bank on the Fleet ship, buy a 1000 credit single use Fleet Pass that's conveniently stackable as a back up to the permanent 20+ hour version.

I never liked the sound of the Legacy system last name feature. It really makes no sense, particularly when chances are, all of your characters will be different races. It'd make more sense to have a Legacy "title" along the lines of being a member of a clan or fraternal organization, something like "of Blah-de-blah" noting that the Human Bounty Hunter and the Twi-Lek Inquisitor belong to a linked organization but aren't related by birth. Just curious, are the names shared across factions, ie: your Jedi and Sith share the same Legacy last name? If this is accurate, that makes even LESS sense.

I've been taking three gathering/mission skills on each character I've been playing. I usually do Scavenging because of all the Droids you kill, you can scavenge those in the field and as early as the second Sith planet, there was a large amount of low level metals to grab. The second, and probably the only "must" skill I'd take as someone above mentioned, is Slicing. This skill will make you a lot of money early on when the credits are kind of tight. 90% of the missions your companion goes on makes at least a few credits profit (like you'll get 105c for a 95c mission). The higher up you get Slicing, the more credits you'll get per mission so you won't even flinch when you see a 400-600c mission being offered. The third is purely optional, so I'd suggest taking a gathering skill that matches whatever crafting skill you plan on taking eventually. Check out the guide stickied at the top of this forum, which has a color coded listing of which gathering skills match with each crafting skills.

Not sure of how much of an advantage the 10k level gives, but even a modest amount makes a noticeable difference. My BH has Mako at about 750/10000 and when she goes out on a Slicing mission that's listed as 4 minutes, the timer starts ticking down from about 3:20 seconds, so 7.5% of the way saves you about 40 seconds a mission.

Blizz. Definitely Blizz.

But, don't forget -- they said they plan on adding stuff to the CE vendor in upcoming patches (crosses fingers).

Solid B. I was set to give them a much lower grade with the days counting down to Early Game Access and the one-two punch of EA/BW seeming cluelessness dealing with shipping the game to EU preorders before the 20th but not budging on US vendor ship days. They apparently changed their mind recently because I received email from Amazon US stating that my delivery date had changed from 22nd to the 16th and my CE had been shipped. I think EA (and BW by first degree of separation) dodged a big bullet by listening to disgruntled US customers who've had the game on preorder since July 21st but were (seemingly) doomed to be locked out for days because they wouldn't cut US vendors any slack on ship dates. And secondly, the recent Dev / Blog post that they've actually implemented a 2 day grace period after weeks and months of total silence. Two days seems all to brief but at least they listened and have given early game access players a bit of breathing room in case some mishap occurs and they don't get their game delivered on the 20th. The actual mechanics of the EGA and launch has been uneventful for me. I've had one bad lag that may have been server side and had to sit through one queue earlier tonight (semi related). Nothing nearing the nightmares that the doomsayers predicted. Prime time US hours may be dicey as the 20th hits and I hope they add a bunch more East/West coast US servers to take up the slack for the people who didn't preorder the game.

Still subbed to World of Warcraft, having trouble ripping the band aid off, but the time is near. Subbed to Star Trek Online, had planned to go Free 2 Play in January. I've had a resurgence of interest in this game since the last major "season" patch. The Duty Officer system which is similar to "crew skills" in TOR is pretty impressive and you can actually level lower characters using it. That, and the goofy Christmas holiday promotion (Q's Winter Wonderland) drew me in with promises of a Jem'Hadar ship. Subbed to Eve Online for 1 month during the build up to Early Game Access and that's running out in about 20 days or so. I'm doubling down on skill queues once a day but not actually playing the game anymore. Free 2 Play in World of Tanks and have an army of Tier 8-9 tanks but I haven't played the game actively in about 3 months.

Here are some SPECIFICS of the companion gifts for a couple of the early companions (I've been looking for a more detailed list and never could find one, so I started compiling one while playing weekend beta): Bounty Hunter ---------------- Mako: *Rank 1 (up to 2k affection) Holoviewer +96 Underworld Rumor Sheet +54 Ammunition Belt +24 Vrbither Skull +24 Small Gemstone +24 Polished Meteorite +24 All others +0 *Rank 2 (up to 4k affection) Hutta Data Lib +106 Imperial Agent ------------------ Kaliyo *Rank 1 (up to 2k affection) Survival Gear +24 Polished Meterorite +0 likes "weapons"

Sticky this, please!