Gathering is pretty awesome.

[chimunga]

I posted a while back about never really having money, rarely enough to get all my new abilities every level. I wasn't spending bunches of money on the GTN or the specialty vendor. So where was the money going? Fricken crafting.

 

I dropped artifice and the gatherers that go with it, picked up Bioanlysis, UWT, and Slicing.

 

And I must say, leveling it up to my level, I made money quick. And all the while I wasn't selling the bioanlysis stuff I was getting, I was just sending it to my alt to level her Biochem. So I was making my money purely off of UWT and slicing.

 

So I must say. I've realized that crafting is a credits sink, and unless it's something where you can't buy the stuff off the GTN, like Biochem or Cybertech, there's really no point. Rarely is stuff BoP, until you get to the higher levels.

 

I made 500K creds, right off the bat, after maybe 2 or 3 hours of farming, which might not seem like much to most, but I had usually had like 10% of that up till then as a level 33. Now I just buy color crystals off the GTN, and all my armor upgrades from the commendations vendors. It's really pretty simple. I'm not telling people to drop their crafting, I'm just putting my experience out there.

 

Disclaimer: I am on a well-populated server, so it's easy to sell stuff on the GTN.

[kaboro]

You describe the problem very well.

Crew skills are fine for making gtn profit, the problem is they are hardly useful for anything else and that is a serious problem.

[Gazzaho]

I must be doing something wrong, somewhere. Any time I use the GTN there is nothing to buy or worth spending money on, all I ever see is a few low level greens and blues and the odd piece of high level gear. I have alts on three servers and the only way I can keep them outfitted is by working them together and sending upgrades and gear among them.

 

I believe crafting is broken because of either low server numbers, or in my opinion, supply and demand. There's no real demand because people can get better gear through levelling, vendors or if they're lucky the GTN. No demand, no supply, no supply so there's no money to be made through crafting. It's my opinion that RE'ing and criting gear is so hit and miss or costly that people will tend to keep the really good gear they make or send it to an alt.

[Saeria]

You describe the problem very well.

Crew skills are fine for making gtn profit, the problem is they are hardly useful for anything else and that is a serious problem.

 

Why is this a serious problem?

[chimunga]

Why is this a serious problem?

 

Because he's saying that crew skills aren't really useful for anything other than making money. When I was crafting, I was constantly poor.

[chimunga]

I must be doing something wrong, somewhere. Any time I use the GTN there is nothing to buy or worth spending money on, all I ever see is a few low level greens and blues and the odd piece of high level gear. I have alts on three servers and the only way I can keep them outfitted is by working them together and sending upgrades and gear among them.

 

I believe crafting is broken because of either low server numbers, or in my opinion, supply and demand. There's no real demand because people can get better gear through levelling, vendors or if they're lucky the GTN. No demand, no supply, no supply so there's no money to be made through crafting. It's my opinion that RE'ing and criting gear is so hit and miss or costly that people will tend to keep the really good gear they make or send it to an alt.

 

I'm on a well-populated server. I wouldn't dream of trying to make money if I was on a dead one. It would be near impossible.

[pokota]

It's pretty much true, crafting is an unnecessary credit sink for the most part. Even if you make credits in the long run, it's unlikely that it will be more than you could have made selling materials. This is especially true now that you can buy raid-quality mods and gear.

[Klyvanix]

I do agree that it is tough on the credits having to craft everything, but if you are into levelling alts and want to outfit them as best as possible going with the crafting abilities is the best thing to do. in the end it comes down to what you would rather do. Have a ton of money, or mad twinked out characters. right now I have a lvl 29 Shadow, and I am the Bane of many peoples existance because I have sunk tons of money and time into crafting purple quality gear for him. I have a reputation on the server for being probably the most twinked out character, and I have just utilized all the crafting skills I have.

 

untill I unlock all purple quality gear I won't be making money, but when I get random gear that no one really see's, I can sell it for a hefty profit on the server. I think the market is high for twink characters, people just need to start cashing in on it.

[Drewhat]

For me, it comes down to profit per listing slot. I've done enough research to know a wide variety of things that I can sell right now. My main descriminating factor is 'what is the profit per listing spot'. If I have to waste 10 spots to make 5,000 credits then its going to take a lot of work to maintain that listing. So if people aren't buying stacks of 99 Desh I'm not really interested.

[GnatB]

You describe the problem very well.

Crew skills are fine for making gtn profit, the problem is they are hardly useful for anything else and that is a serious problem.

 

Except, you know, the whole POINT of crew skills (or crafting skills in general) is making money. They aren't SUPPOSED to be useful for anything else. So if you aren't doing them to make money, then you are doing them wrong. If you're doing them simply to supply yourself, you're making a mistake. You should just buy what you want/need from the GTN.

 

('Course, due to certain issues, (50 item GTN limit, inability to queue missions, and short duration/yield of lower grade missions) It can often be difficult to find what you're looking for on the GTN. 'Course, you could always try checking he tags on higher level stuff, seeing the "crafted by" tag, and sending the person a mail asking if they could make you something lower level, and how much it would cost)

[MidichIorian]

I switched to archaeology and slicing a week ago and I've made millions on selling mats since. Not to mention that I always have free mats for my synthweaving alt that makes a ton on selling augments. I have bio chem on my main and I don't want to drop that but I'm never wasting time and money on crafting bio chem items for others, never have.

[chimunga]

Except, you know, the whole POINT of crew skills (or crafting skills in general) is making money. They aren't SUPPOSED to be useful for anything else. So if you aren't doing them to make money, then you are doing them wrong. If you're doing them simply to supply yourself, you're making a mistake. You should just buy what you want/need from the GTN.

 

('Course, due to certain issues, (50 item GTN limit, inability to queue missions, and short duration/yield of lower grade missions) It can often be difficult to find what you're looking for on the GTN. 'Course, you could always try checking he tags on higher level stuff, seeing the "crafted by" tag, and sending the person a mail asking if they could make you something lower level, and how much it would cost)

 

I just think it kinda sucks that crafting skills were such a bust. I'll probably pick them up at a higher level, when I have a better money-base, but it's just not really feasible to level with it. Most of the time I didn't even have money to train skills. It was ridiculous.

[Spoletta]

This is intended, in the first month of the game the devs told us "If you try to skill up your crafting skills while leveling you will be broken in no time" or something like that.

The crew skill system is the best feature this game has, and is the reason why i still resub.