Firstly, high level schematics are not from slicing. Secondly, Cybertech is a very useful skill for end game. It's mainly people unwilling or unable to take advantage of the 1.3 changes. If you from the 26 armorings in Denova, this can be reversed engineered for the chance of a schematic which is not tied to a slot and therefore amongst the highest items in demand for belts and bracers. Of course, you need to be part of a guild doing Denova and willing to let you take the armorings rather than give them to raiders. You can also reverse engineer black hole mod upgrades and earpieces. I've been successful with a mod and been selling them for 600k each on my server. Common argument for Biochem is that you can buy whatever else you need from the market, well who is making that stuff....?

I began my adventure as any average human being, trying to earn a crust. Some ‘authorities’ might have frowned on occasion at a few of the items I would obtain and transport to the more colourful characters around the galaxy, and it was on one such delivery to Ord Mantell that things really got interesting. My career took many twists and turns, including dangerous missions on behalf of the Republic to places such as Hammer Station and Taral V. It was in one such place I found a new hat, it was much like a pilot’s cap, close fitting and included a strange face mask, hiding most of my face. This hat was really good, making me feel strong and I think even improving my skills with my blasters. However, in one of my frequent visits to Carrick Station, I’d observed one of the merchants, who for some reason would never speak to me (something about not being special enough I have been told), who had a wide brimmed hat that I greatly liked the look of. ‘How do I get one of those?’ I asked myself, and through my continuing adventures, I obtained such a hat from the corpse of one of the many creatures I have ended the existence of, I could even fit my special modifications to it, I was happy. In those days, I was only one of a few people in the Republic to own such a hat, often other ‘traders’, apparently following a suspiciously similar career to myself, asked where they could also obtain such a hat, even the occasional Jedi Knight would declare an intention to get a similar hat, to these I would laugh, for some reason, Jedi Knights' heads would never fit my hat. Eventually, I saved the Republic, killed a very ugly bald guy by throwing him off a ledge on his ship (not impressed with the Empire’s health and safety protocols) and generally felt as if I finished what I had started. It was then that I discovered that some of the people I’d killed previously had returned from the dead and were that much more dangerous. On my many revisits to these places, I found another really good wide brimmed hat, less impressively, my previous suit had been replaced by one with a long flappy cloak. About this time, I looked at my fellow Republics, all of whom are apparently planning are next attack on the Empire (although we haven’t done anything about the Empire for a while now), wide brimmed hats were commonplace, no one asked where I got my hat any more. Over the latter stage of my ongoing battles with various nefarious characters who refuse to stay dead, I had found myself frequently with the same people. One day they said to me ‘you shoot stuff really good, we’d like you to join our club’. I liked these people and agreed, they also seemed very determined to get their own really good hats, although they weren’t wide brimmed like mine. There were other people in their club, all wanting really nice hats, after a while, we took several people with us to places called Karragga’s Palace and the Eternity Vault. Evidently, I was also able to refuse to stay dead, and eventually I got a very good hat, made by a species called Rakata, they look strange and don’t seem to suit wearing my hat, but they do make really good wide brimmed hats. Many other people were envious of my new hat. However, my hat no longer made me happy. Many people had the same hats and they looked like me, I looked like them. Then came some news over the galactic channels, some hats which you could buy from the cantinas in planets around the galaxy would now fit my head. I could make it as good as my wide brimmed hat. The choice was somewhat limited by how much I liked to talk to other people, I had talked to other people somewhat but not a great deal, but this suited me, I wanted to look different again and travelled to Tatooine. This hat looked really different and it even changed my voice. I bought it and the other pieces of the ensemble. I am now a Sand Person, I have not seen any other Sand People offworld from Tatooine, I am happy. Being happy costs money, I continue with ‘my shooting things until they are dead’ career and after many dead things, bought myself an even better wide brimmed hat, this new hat will make it easier to kill the Kephess person again, I have refused to stay dead more often than he has so our club wants to redress the scorecard. I don’t want to wear that wide brimmed hat any more though so I need to make my new Sand Person hat even better, some voice from the ether asks me for 90,000 credits to transfer the nice things in the wide brimmed hat to my Sand Person hat, that’s a lot of money to a small tribal nation in the Outer Rim. My good friend, although I’ve never seen him, the Jedi Consular, ran away from the Jedi order when they tried to make him wear some very strange looking things, he decided to join the Republic Fleet and looks very nice in his Pilot’s outfit, but he tells me the same voice also demands mountains of credits when he gets his new hats…..

I'm very time constrained with two other level 50s but my plan for him was to equip him with left over group daily armorings, mods and enhancements. As I'm a commando I may have to rely on my shadow doing the Ilum group for a tank enhancement. Cybertechs can make custom droid parts so you don't have to rely on vendors or drops just to get upgradable slots for him. Armoring is the major issue for a droid companion, from what I understand, hands, feet, head don't map to the droid slots so unless you do operations, and hope no one else wants any aim 25 armorings that drop, you're stuck with 22 amor. Other than that, you can rip any mod or enhancement out, including black hole and upgrade him that way. I've never analysed the cybertech droid parts to a great extent but I would assume even tier 2 droid parts are only equivalent to tionese level.

I had a similar thought. People could really rack up the mules for gathering with free additional accounts.

To answer the original question. The trigger for end game content is reaching 50 not completing your class quest (although some of the final class quests give you daily commendations which are useful to new 50s). We have a trooper in the guild who has all rakata gear but hasn't completed his class quests

I like the Ciridium War Body armour that drops from completing the Black Hole HC4, judging from torhead it looks as though other pieces drop from the normal Corellia HCs, doesn't anyone have a screenie of more of the set? Also it's very random way to try to get pieces but I occassionally spam treasure hunting lockboxes to get orange gear - commendation lockboxes is a similar way to try.

Will the Flashpoints such as Hammer Station and Athiss be coded to have a hard mode to give end game more variety? With the number of very well geared 50s doing Flashpoints for black hole dailies are there any plans to have a 'nightmare mode' to make it more of a challenge?

Will the diversity of craftable custom gear be increased in the future? There are many dropped sets that I like the look of but know it is virtually impossible to gather a matching set.

A 2nd tier of purple applies to items only, item upgrades always follow the linear, green blue purple.

Won't a 26 hilt be an artificer extracting and getting successful RE on a BH sabre?

Another thread telling people to charge more just because they could? These items don't even require rare materials so I guess not every crafter is out to charge high prices.

It does pretty much run in cycles, my guild had a shortage of healers a couple of months back, a few of us levelled healers, now we have a shortage of tanks although that has eased with some recruitment. From what I've seen, class in secondary to knowing the fight mechanics, player skill and gear.

Hi, Below Cunning and Endurance it depends whether you specialise into DPS or healing, DPS tend to favour crit and power, healers crit and alacrity (although most end game healers I know don't rate alacrity as it just burns out their energy/ammo/force quicker). Gunslingers can only DPS but Scoundrels can do either. Any crafting skill is of some benefit to any class, personally I think cybertech, armstech or armormech suit gunslingers although most players believe armstech is the worst of the crafting skills for end game. You'll find you'll drop gear through your missions for any slot, so it's unlikely you'll have much more powerful weapons than your armor. If you have credits or commendations to spend then upgrade your weakest equipment whatever it is. There are no other ways to get planet commendations but there are different type of commendations, daily and Black Hole commendations for end game level 50s and you can find other threads on them. You can also earn fleet commendations which you can use to upgrade your ship or unusual items from the other vendor at fleet. Other hints: the game is relatively simple and easy while levelling, keep your companion geared as much as possible by handing down your cast offs as you improve your gear (although not all will use cunning as you do). Most people prefer customisable gear (orange border) as it can be upgraded relatively easily with planet commendations - keep an eye out for the rarer slots that can be filled such as wrists, belts, hands and feet. I'm also on Red Eclipse so you can drop me a whisper on the character Zeerse, I'm on most evenings (UK time)

So just looking at the update on the artifice offhands, if I take the answer is yes, then they aren't shells and are similar to earpieces and implants.

Good advice, my suggestion and question Add a line in about Armstechs, Synthweavers and Armormechs being able to RE items but they only get the empty shell. Can an artificer learn the schematics for BH/campaign offhand wieldables? focus, shields and the like

Treasure hunting is the worst way to gather gifts in my view, it takes 3-4 missions to get enough fragments for one gift and even then you might get one mission return blue fragments and another returning purple if you crit, then you have to get to the fleet just to trade them in.

Crafting is like other parts of the game you get out of it what you're willing to put into it. If you sink some credits, time and thought into it, you should be getting out items you can use while levelling regardles of what skill you've chosen. I'm levelling a synthweaver alt and he even the green boots he could make at my new level were better than I had. I might quickly replace them but they took about 6 minutes to gather mats and make all while I was moving around the environment.

If you were doing it in a strict order, heres what you should do: Stage 1 - Do the 2+ missions on Belsavis and Ilum. They provide a purple (50) armoring, mod and enhancement which you can slot into orange gear and as many of the solo dailies as you have time for (preferably at least black hole once a week to get the weekly reward). With 8 daily commendations you can buy a purple (50) barrel to improve your blaster(s). Stage 2 - Hard Mode Flashpoints/Story mode operations to try to drop Columi level gear - each FP drops a specific slot so you can start to target which ones to do to improve your chances of better gear (final boss will drop a random class piece and you hope it's your class). Using Group finder is good as it provides more Black hole comms. Stage 3 - Go on Hard Mode (and eventually nightmare mode) Eternity vault or Karagga's Palace operations to get rakata gear - you can also try Denova story mode but it is much more difficult. Final stage - Black hole via the various rewards from the above steps. You do need to look at the stats the Black hole gear gives, some decrease your primary attribute. I've started to mix and match Black hole upgrades with rakata to maintain my highest primary stat (e.g. I took the armoring and enhancement out of Black hole boots and kept my rakata mod). When you've got the gear you actually want to end up in (be it social gear or black hole or some orange stuff you just like the look of), you can augment these - nothing stopping you augmenting a columi piece and then binning it to augment rakata but you're burning credits with extraction/adding augment slots. All crafting skills other than cybertech can also craft themselves rakata level gear, you get the materials from HM FPs (or from other players) so theres nothing stopping you crafting those bits as soon as you have the mats. If you're not in a guild the only way to regularly get on HM operations is to join one.

So choose the skill that might interest you or benefit your character, this might not be slicing as it means you cannot be a self sufficient crafter. Example - a cybertech crafter needs underworld trading and scavenging to get raw materials, you can decide to replace underworld trading or scavenging with slicing but you are now dependant on finding some materials from elsewhere (guild bank or the market). I've seen players totally ignore crew skills so you should consider it an add on and not essential to understand. There are some good guides on crew skills - your class and which companions you have is a factor you should think about first before spending too many credits on crew missions.

Just a hide option rather than delete I think as everyone resurrected green crafting to get augment kit parts

You can't RE any Rakata gear, it's only the new Black Hole stuff. Some people do dailies and as implants are BoE they pick them up and sell them, this is what you bought.

I guess the previous response should have said if you're sure the name is correct, just using mailboxes to mail should work so it sounds like a bug,

I have one of each. Tank's probably have the most responsibility in fights, EV final boss for example, it's not rocket science but it's more to think about then just shooting at mind trap then shoot at boss. I don't play my healer that much in comparison but the group finder has been fun when I haven't inspected and see a DPS drop half their HP in seconds. 'You know that blue gear you have? you should really be doing dailies you know!' Bad DPS are only really found out by rage timers, with a good tank and healer they can hide by looking busy in the fight. Gunslingers who have to pop their recharge mid fight is something I pick up on as I have one myself. Current bottle necks are tanks

Going for Endurance heavy item upgrades is a bad suggestion if you're not a tank. You just need to generally improve your gear and it may help if you post what you have. Generally the running order is as the last poster, if you do the group daily missions on Belsavis and Ilum this will give you purple 22 mods you can upgrade any purple gear with. Running HM FP will get you Columi gear which is better again, keep going with Black hole weekly/daily (the group finder) to get that gear. If you're guilded, they be running story mode ops (columi) or hm Ops (rakata) to avoid being a liability, get full columi with whatever rakata you can self craft before making yourself available to hm Ops.

Good post KylleDK. So on the planet comms, you are correct but this is a postive yes? We can craft better than you an easily get from PvE - artifact level gear while levelling is a rare drop. We can complete with Black Hole as we can reverse engineer them (although it's painful to grind BH to then fail on RE). Vehicles I agree with, the materials required should be reduced too. Droid parts, I'm not sure there is really the demand, custom parts can be made and fitted with upgrades. e.g. any trooper can grind some dailies and upgrade their droid to level 50 gear on their own. Our disadvantage is that an amormech or synth only needs 2 successful REs to get to tier 3, we need 4 between armouring and mods to get to the similar level. We are the only skill that cannot self craft a rakata item, namely why can't we do BoP rakata earpieces? The only grenade useful in Ops is the firestorm as an extra DoT and even then, usable at most twice a fight. Augments I think should have been cyber and artifice, we are the skills that can make other item modifications, the item crafters have kept their crit crafting reward for a slot so how much more buffing did they need?