kaberf Posted February 22, 2012 Share Posted February 22, 2012 I'm plugging along doing slicing assuming out of complete naivety that I'm going to make gains doing credit lockboxes. I start to wonder why my profits are not soaring like they should be at 400 skill level in slicing and I look at this; I do a rich mission for 2050 creds. After almost an hour I get a return of 2144 creds. At my level I can kill a silver-level mob for more credits than that. Pathetic crafting system from the very top to the very bottom. It would be nice if it weren't totally useless and a time/money sink. There is no economy in the game. Poor management. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnSixteen Posted February 22, 2012 Share Posted February 22, 2012 (edited) You are right, there isn't much profit to be found from the credit boxes that are returned (even though overall yes it is still a profit). The serious profit comes from the crafting missions and the augments. Many epic 340 crafting missions can be sold in the 15-25k or higher range. Many epic 22 augments can be sold in the 75-100k range (some reportedly 150-250k depending on the server). Maybe your server is dead, but I make quite a bit of credits either directly from or resulting from the missions from slicing and then selling the augments since they are "best in slot" for any crafted gear that needs augments. Of all of the "gathering professions", it may potentially be the biggest credit gainer depending on your luck. Sure, it's not slow or steady but when you get some lucky crits you make out like a bandit. Edited February 22, 2012 by JohnSixteen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kansaskyle Posted February 22, 2012 Share Posted February 22, 2012 Ditto what John said on my server. In addition, slicing is good from a world node harvesting standpoint. Nothing like running around picking up free money; however, at 50 I find very little I need to actually spend credits to buy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerid Posted February 22, 2012 Share Posted February 22, 2012 Ditto what John said on my server. In addition, slicing is good from a world node harvesting standpoint. Nothing like running around picking up free money; however, at 50 I find very little I need to actually spend credits to buy. Slicing is a gathering skill, not a mission skill. You shouldn't be making any signifigant profit from running mission skills alone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jellison Posted February 22, 2012 Share Posted February 22, 2012 No it's not. Gathering nodes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grubfist Posted February 22, 2012 Share Posted February 22, 2012 I'm plugging along doing slicing assuming out of complete naivety that I'm going to make gains doing credit lockboxes. I start to wonder why my profits are not soaring like they should be at 400 skill level in slicing and I look at this; I do a rich mission for 2050 creds. After almost an hour I get a return of 2144 creds. At my level I can kill a silver-level mob for more credits than that. Pathetic crafting system from the very top to the very bottom. It would be nice if it weren't totally useless and a time/money sink. There is no economy in the game. Poor management. You act as if Slicing is credit cases and nothing more. You're lucky to break even with those cases. Slicing is about: Augments - Only way of obtaining them Mission Discoveries - they sell pretty damn well Cybertech Recipes - they ALSO sell really well Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnSixteen Posted February 22, 2012 Share Posted February 22, 2012 (edited) Slicing is a gathering skill, not a mission skill. You shouldn't be making any signifigant profit from running mission skills alone. You can still make quite a bit of profit just running missions (similar to other gathering professions). It is just hit or miss relying on crits to generate profit as opposed to a steady supply of crafting materials like the others. Also like other gathering professions, you can do even better by actually going out and gathering at the same time. From the grand scheme of things, and I'm sure not everyone will agree with me, but it does seem to be closely balanced to the other gathering professions. It's not the best, but its comparable. The "best" will fluctuate from server to server pending the current market... for instance currently on my server grade 5 bioanalysis (red goo in particular) is selling extremely well, in the 4-5k credit range per so I may consider that one the most profitable at the very moment to farm/mission for. Next week/patch it could be something else entirely. Cybertech Recipes - they ALSO sell really well I wish that was true on my server. I have almost an entire bank slot full of them because they are consistently available at dirt cheap prices on the GTN and I can't bring myself to just vendoring them (yet). Unless I am in a dire need for more space I'll just sit on them and see if the market changes. I cringe every time I crit for one of these (especially the speeder recipes) instead of a crafting mission one. Edited February 22, 2012 by JohnSixteen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battilea Posted February 22, 2012 Share Posted February 22, 2012 From the grand scheme of things, and I'm sure not everyone will agree with me, but it does seem to be closely balanced to the other gathering professions. It's not the best, but its comparable. The "best" will fluctuate from server to server pending the current market... for instance currently on my server grade 5 bioanalysis (red goo in particular) is selling extremely well, in the 4-5k credit range per so I may consider that one the most profitable at the very moment to farm/mission for. Next week/patch it could be something else entirely. I don't find that to be the case, personally, at least on my server. I can send a companion out on a mission and he'll typically bring back a lockbox that is worth maybe 3-400 more than what I paid to send him, on average. For a comparable cost and time, I can send another companion out on a scavenging compound mission, abundant, and that companion will return with probably a conservative average of 5-6 Zal Alloy. Zal Alloy typically sells for 1k a pop on my server. So say I only get 4, that's 4k value, or a lot more value than Cybertech. Now, if I crit on cybertech, and I get a good mission (UT, Scavenging, Slicing), I get some good value. Even Diplomacy isn't too bad. Of course, far too many are Investigation. Grrr! But even if you factor that in, probably make more money on average per mission with Scavenging. But there is one catch. With Slicing, I can always run 2-4 missions, depending on how many Rich T5s I get. With Scavenging, there's that one abundant compound mission. So I generally have more guys running slicing missions than scavenging. Doubly so because I want UT missions. Admittedly, I could buy more of those than I do, but the more I buy, the more prices on those go up. So better off getting as many as I can myself. I wish that was true on my server. I have almost an entire bank slot full of them because they are consistently available at dirt cheap prices on the GTN and I can't bring myself to just vendoring them (yet). Unless I am in a dire need for more space I'll just sit on them and see if the market changes. I cringe every time I crit for one of these (especially the speeder recipes) instead of a crafting mission one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pokota Posted February 23, 2012 Share Posted February 23, 2012 Slicing is excellent for building profit. I generally have three or four companions out on Slicing missions at all times. It makes me a lot of credits, especially when it returns an unlocked mission item that I can use myself. Cybertech schematics, however, I generally feed to a vendor. People usually have them up on the GTN in herds, and at BELOW what a vendor pays. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth_Gao_Gao Posted February 23, 2012 Share Posted February 23, 2012 the simple fact is this: you are bad at pushing N, then selecting a mission for your companion. that's really hilarious when you think about it. another simple fact: lockbox returns are not your source of profit. the profit comes from the crafting missions. you heard it here first! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ironcleaver Posted February 23, 2012 Share Posted February 23, 2012 Yup, Missions and Augments - insane credits to be had. I wouldn't even bother with lockboxes unless their out in the open world. Missions run for roughly 10k~50k each. Augments went from 1k~10k each a month ago to 50k~125K each currently. Different per server I guess but thats some serious up front coin. I almost want to chance over. Sure I need to crit a mission to get a purple mission or augment but it sure is less of a hassle then buying someone else's missions (and running them for resources) and crafting. I currently have to invest 30k in resources to sell the product for 40K (75k on a crit). The margins are just better for pure-slicing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eager Posted February 23, 2012 Share Posted February 23, 2012 (edited) The lockboxes from missions are actually quite profitable if you max out affection. I get a blue box with 4-8k credits every 10-15 missions and I believe I get more green than white ones which give me 2-3k each. Considering that the price to send one on a mission is 1135-2025 I think that's over 100% profit overall if you take your time to do the math. On top of that you have what the other people mentioned. At first I didn't bother running my 300 and 340 Slicing missions and instead GTN them for 40k until I found out that with max affection I will always get 1-2 purple lvl49 Augs, a blue credit box and sometimes another 340 mission. The Augs sell from 10k for Presence/Accuracy to 150-250k for Aim/Willpower, with the rest falling somewhere in between. Then you have the missions. UT and TH sell for about 30k a piece, rest for 10-15k if you bother to do it and the only thing no one wants is Investigation really. I used to sell UT/TH and send the rest to my guild as I had too much money anyway, but now even stopped selling those as Augs/boxes make me plenty of cash. If you want to be more involved you can get UT 400 on an alt and get about 5 Mando Iron with each mission, which sells for 10k a piece. On top of that you get Ciridium which is also expensive (or you give it to a Cybertech to get pyro grenades which are great for HM Ops adds). Prices of course may vary per server but unless it is completely abandoned you will be at a profit as they will be scaled accordingly. And on top of that you have the open world lockboxes which are free money. The only thing to remember is to get affection to 10k and run the missions in order 2025 -> 1930 -> 1485 -> 1415 -> 1135 -> everything else if you want. Tbh after so many complaints about Slicing I thought I might be just extremely lucky but a couple of guildies picked it up and they are getting the same results. You just have to be bothered to press N all the time, as someone suggested Edited February 23, 2012 by Eager Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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