The same is usually true of gear tiers, though (And we know they like to keep a lid on crafting early in expansion cycles - the T10 mats still aren't on the Jawa vendors.) Note that I'm not suggesting that this will actually happen, just that people thinking it might could easily cause them to dump their current stash of exotics.

I'd add a a fourth possibility: people speculating (either pure WAG or based on leaked information) that 5.2, along with a new tier of dropped gear, will include a new tier of crafted gear that will require a new exotic to craft, renderiing VMCs (semi)-obsolete.

You'd probably end up spending a lot more money on slicing mats than on blue Investigation mats (check the GTN), since there's more competition - only Armstech uses Investigation mats, but everybody uses Slicing mats. In the long run your best bet is probably "roll up an alt with both Investigation and Slicing" (and maybe Scavenging for a third, to keep you in raw materials and vendor mats). Even if you're out of character slots, check GTN prices for slot unlocks (if you're a sub, they're probably priced out of your escrow limit if you're not, but you might get lucky and hit the "somebody forgot a zero or two" jackpot.)

Crafting used to be the fastest and easiest way to get orange shells back at launch (with a few exceptions - at launch there were zero craftable orange belt/bracer schematics, so finding those pieces was down to lucky drop or spending a fortune on the GTN), and there used to be a bunch of trainer-taught orange shell schematics (they were mostly added later - originally mission skill drops were the main source of schematics) but things changed over time. A lot (but not all) of the old orange schematics are still available as mission drops, although I suspect that's a bug, since they go into the "Archived" section of your schematic list when learned.

There are still at least a couple of orange schematics for each weapon type still available (a bunch got removed during the crafting revamp). They're not on the trainer, you can get the schematics as drops from lower-level Investigation missions (or just check the GTN for Armstech schematics.)

2/4/6 it is I find the 6 schematics actually worth listing on the GTN (they sell slowly but reasonably high; your server's economy may vary), the 4s can be hit-or-miss, and the 2s usually go straight to the vendor.

Investigation also drops Armormech, Synthweaving, Armstech, and Artifice schematics for non-moddable blue gear (which I don't think can be REed for a purple schematic anymore, since they're all archived schematics). It used to drop blue implant/earpiece schematics too, but I haven't see any since the 4.0 changes. The Artifice (and blue Armstech) schematics are basically junk, but some of the skins on the blue armours aren't bad. Slicing also drops Cybertech schematics at lower tiers, for rail-shooter ship parts and mounts.

The Exotic Isotopes can now be purchased from the prototype/blue Jawa scrap vendor. The easiest way to get the Prototype (tier 2, level 70) ones for a solo player is to run the intro flashpoints - Black Talon or Esseles - on Veteran difficulty (ex-normal mode - the option between "Story/solo" and "Hard"), which is quite doable solo.

Another reason so many sets are missing bracer (and belt) schematics is that craftable orange belts and bracers were a later addition to the game - at launch there were zero craftable orange pieces for those slots, in any set (I think they were introduced around 2.0, but I'm not positive), and the only way to get moddabel belt/bracer shells was from drops (they later added some to the space-rail-battles vendor). Back at launch I used to make bank farming some of the Champions near the Dark Temple on DK and the Jedi Temple on Coruscant for belt and bracer shells, which could go for upwards of 500k (back when 500k was a lot of credits.)

The old low-stat crystals are gone, all craftable crystals are now +41 stat (and require purple mats to craft). As you level Artificing you'll learn new colours instead of getting the basic blue/green/red but with better stats every tier. Crystal fragments are also used to craft dyes, and used in some Prefab and Conquest crafting items.

So don't bother buying schematics you don't need? (Your old ones should - mostly - still be available in a section of your schematics list called "Archived".)

You can also get scrap from the weekly Conquest events (you don't have to reach top-10 on the leaderboard, or even be in a guild to get some), as rare-ish drops from the slot machine, and as drops from Galactic Command crates. I'm sure the grade 10 mats will become available for scrap eventually, but in the past it's taken a month or two for them to appear on the vendors for reasons already explained in this thread.

Mission - I haven't done any node-gathering since 5.0 dropped.

Now you have

I haven't done any node-gathering (been focused on running the new story content, haven't bothered doing laps around the Swamps/Breaktown/Darvannis). They're definitely rarer drops than they used to be, but the ones I've gotten have all come from parts missions, directly or indirectly (I got a couple from a Slicing discovery mission.)

I've gotten Slicing, Investigation, and UT mission drops (I think they're skill 580 or so to run). They certainly seem rarer than they used to be (also gotten half a dozen or so speeder schematics, which meh.)

You can still get discoveries from grade 10 sliced part missions - I've gotten several.

Any Slicing node grade 2 or higher has a chance to drop a discovery mission, the chance is just very low. You're more likely to get them while slice-farming Breaktown just because you probably gather a lot more nodes there than you do, say, Nar Shaddaa.

There are two different things going on here. A recent patch added a feature: a tooltip on all the CM stuff so you'll know right away whether you have something unlocked in collections or not (and if you have it unlocked whether you have an account-wide unlock, an unlock on another character, or an unlock on the character who is looking at the item). It's actually a handy feature, since you can tell at a glance whether you have something unlocked - nice when opening packs or browsing the GTN. The bug is that (at a guess the same patch) changed the drops from the bound DvL packs so they don't unlock in collections properly (since they bind on pickup, they should be added to collections immediately/when you complete an armour set). As a bonus bug, if you mix'n'match - I got the Satele Upper box from a DvL pack, lucked into the boots and legs from Stronghold packs, and bought the belt on the GTN - the armour pieces that came out of DvL boxes aren't counted towards unlocking the whole set.

From what I can tell, if you pulled it out of a bound DvL pack the only way to get it to unlock in collections is to file a CS ticket (sometimes more than one, depending on luck of the draw). They broke something in a recent update.

Items in the (bound) DvL packs are bugged - at a guess they got broken in the recent patch to the pack opening/stash interface, since they used to unlock in collections just fine. At the moment the only way to get things to unlock properly in Collections seems to be to file a ticket and pray you get a CS rep with both a clue and some minimal comprehension skills (my luck has varied from "Got a response within 10 minutes, problem was resolved and item unlocked in Collections within 20" to "Waited a day and a half for a response, was told 'there's no issue, [similar-sounding but different] item shows as unlocked in your Collection, go away" (now waiting to see how many days it takes for my follow-up with the screenshot of the equipped item showing "Locked in Collections" to get a response.)

No need to worry, the "archived" schematics still drop

Slicing missions (either sliced parts or Wealthy yield discoveries) - I'm not sure which grades drop the parts these days, I'd suspect 3 and 5, but might be off by a grade in either direction. Or check the GTN. There's also a vendor on the Fleet who sells the high-level ones for space mission tokens.

Indeed For the record, I've found the best current source to be lower-grade UT (or Investigation/Treasure Hunting if you're looking for weapon shells, but how many Custom Built Lightsaber schematics does one person really need?) Wealthy discovery missions - the gifts are usable/salable, and I generally throw the excess fabric/metal/compounds into storage for the next time the Prefab crafting Conquest week rolls around. The drop rate is a lot lower than it was, but to make up for that GTN prices for "no longer available" schematics (which can still drop) have shot up - I've sold schematics for 400k in hours that once would have sat for days at 10.

They definitely used to have a chance to drop schematics -before the crafting revamp I got the vast majority of my orange shell schematics from UT gift missions, mostly from cheap/fast Moderate yield ones of the appropriate level range. The tier 2-4 Moderate gift missions gave a surprisingly good return on investment, since I could usually sell duplicates of schematics I already had for 20-25k, the missions only cost a few hundred credits to run, and I'd average a schematic every four or five runs.