The black market is in Nar Shadaa, Lower or Upper Promentary gets you there. Oops edited to add that's for the Republic side. I don't know where you access it on the other side.

You can drop whatever skill you want to easily (I think you click the X next to the skill) and then go visit the appropriate trainer for the skill you want to learn. HOWEVER, what you've already learned goes away - it doesn't transfer to your new skill and if you ever wanted to go back to the original skill you would need to start over.

I do them quite often and I still manage to get back to Light V, Dark 0 without even thinking about it. I just don't see it as a deterrent if you use Diplomacy on a regular basis.

Torhead.com, search the database for which item you're looking for. Missions that return it are listed as well as usually in the comments people will say where they harvested.

Torhead.com is a useful resource as well as the sticky that has the planets/grades listed.

Why would you care about the epic missions being from the other side?

Bioanalysis missions give you purple items? Thought they were only in Diplomacy.. I'm pretty sure I've never had one from Bio.

No mastercrafts? Seems really unlikely. They probably just sell before you see them. In implants all Mastercraft means is it's the highest purple (either 1 tier or 2 depending on what color it started as) plus it has a slot for an augment. If it doesn't have the slot it says "Superior" instead of mastercraft. Don't know if that rule applies to all professions though.

Torhead.com

I don't have this issue all that often but when I do it's the exact opposite problem (no light-side missions available, only dark-side). My assumption, and I think I'm correct in this, is that it's because you're "using up" (so to speak) the missions that you want, leaving the ones that you don't want sitting there. When it happened to me prior to Light V I would do a mission from another level that I needed or just wait a bit. Now it doesn't matter so I do all sorts of dark side missions (scandalous!).

You COULD buy the resources you need on the market but they do tend to be quite pricey, especially the purple ones. Not that they shouldn't be pricey.. the purples are quite difficult to get. I can't imagine trying to actually craft for selling without it but if you were just doing it for yourself or guildies it might work. The light/dark points definitely just seemed like a bonus (or a detriment before you get to level V if you don't want one or the other).

It's definitely possible and I'm sure not all that unusual... I was right around 25 when I hit Biochem 400, not much higher with Diplomacy. Could have done it sooner if I had applied myself. No issues with it that I noticed and slicing should be the easiest one to do this with. You can do the harvesting skills like bioanalysis without just using missions - just find spots on the high level planets where you can harvest without getting killed by npcs (you'll probably still get killed by pvpers but they probably feel a little silly if they notice your level).

You seem so surprised. If you had made any other reuseables this should have been obvious. If you perused the forums this should also have been obvious. You made it to level 400 pretty quickly and had the materials so I'm assuming you weren't completely oblivious to all the information out there.

Yeah, it's kind of an annoying abbreviation. I'm not a big fan of "AH" either though. Every time someone asks where the AH is I want to say "On Tatooine, obviously".

Logging out and back in seems to refresh it, at least partially.

Yes, I've seen that. I believe it went away after logging out...

On the other hand... If you reverse engineer a stack of 20 then it took you 20 chances to get it to work. If you split it up into 20 you MIGHT hit it on the 1st, 2nd or 15th try. I realize that's stating the obvious but it's something to think about. If you're RE'ing something cheap/easy then a stack might be best but otherwise I wouldn't think so.