Slicing Profitability & You!

[Helishron]

OK so everyone is saying that slicing is broke and I have seen countless charts showing how each mission pans out to an average credits per minute. What I have not seen is a real world example of slicing during a game session. As I had some homework today and was curious about it I decided to answer this question.

 

Methodology:

 

1. for 7 hours 19 minutes I did nothing but lock box missions with three companions. (Remember I’m doing homework at the moment so it’s not as lame as it sounds)
   
2. I did only Rich and Bountiful mission’s level 33-40 and level 41-48
   
3. If there were two rich or two bountiful missions I took the more expensive of the two missions
   
4. I always chose a bountiful or rich mission of the highest level available and always chose bountiful first.
   
5. I did no questing or any other activity that would earn me or cost me money for the entire time period.
   
6. Missions were being constantly done for the entire length of time with no more than a 3 minute pause between some missions
   
7. as I was more concerned about profit I did not write down how much all the missions cost…I seem to remember I was around 170k when I was done with the 50 missions.
   
8. I sold the 11 mission/schematic (M/S) drops on the GTN for 2x the networks base asking price. I.E. when you go to sell an item it will populate the buyout price spot with a number, I simply doubled this number.
   

Stats:

Start 11:00:00 AM

End 6:19:00 PM

Time in mins 439

Start Money 251,984

 

Lock box count 50

M/S drops 11

 

Profit from lock boxes 17,248

Credits per minute 39.29

Credits per hour 2357.36

Average profit per mission 344.96

 

Profit from M/S drops 53,872

Credits per minute 122.72

Credits per hour 7362.92

Average profit per mission 1077.44

 

 

Profit M/S drops + Lock boxes 71,120

Total credits per minuet 162.00

Total credits per hour 9720.27

Average profit per mission 1422.4

 

Ok so these are just the number I have after doing this and I will allow you to make your own judgments about what it all means to you. I also realize that selling things in the GTN is chaotic, can take hours or days, and one could probably make a lot more money off some of the stuff I sold than I did.

 

The burning question is if slicing is profitable over time. It seems by looking at the above information one can make approximately $2,357 credits per hour without selling items or 7,362 credits per hour if you do.

[Nahela]

That's honestly a pretty terrible return. I'm pretty sure you could make more than 2k credits an hour nearly any other profession.

[Bale]

I have read the sheet and I have been doing abundant level 6 and bountiful level 4 and the return is pretty bad.

 

Am I doing something wrong?

 

for level 5 rich, i often get back less money than i put in.

 

That is why I ask for help. I have studied the spreadsheet in details as well.

 

Please help.

 

Making money isn't really that complicated in SWTOR, but it does take avoiding some easy pitfalls. The first point I'll make pertains specifically to slicing, but there are several others I'll add in about making money in general.

 

For slicing, it won't be terribly profitable until you hit 400 unless you slow your rate of progression by dedicating one companion to skilling up and one to profit. In essence, the money makers, even after nerfs, when it seems like they broke it, are rich yield missions from the tier below you. Sometimes you'll see green or gray in the same tier, and those work well too, but you almost never fail the gray ones below your current skill tier and they have consistently good returns. Doing one of those and one abundant or moderate from your current tier to skill up is a nice balance, but slows your arrival at 400 where you can dedicate all your time to rich yield missions. I prefer to power through and make money on the back end, but it's a personal preference choice.

 

As for general money making tips, I think it comes down to not missing opportunities to make money and avoiding spending it unnecessarily more so than finding easy or quick ways to earn it.

 

First, upgrading gear through the GTN is almost always a bad idea. Items are typically overpriced and those that aren't, aren't going to be better than what you should be getting through missions anyway. This is only true while you're leveling up toward end game, as top end gear is more worth the price since you won't be out leveling it in a few days anyway, but even then PvP gear (through commendations) and heroic and flashpoint drops are the way to keep yourself in good gear. More often than not, the stuff you can afford for your level at the GTN won't be as good as what drops from heroics and flashpoints, and if you enjoy PvP at all, the stuff you can get from commendations seems to be the best available for your given level at any point in the game. So stay away from the GTN for gear.

 

Second, be careful about skilling up your crew skills. Push too hard and you'll go broke, don't push hard enough and you won't make anything useful for your level. You have to strike a balance. I'd err on the side of caution and risk being a slight step behind rather than try to get a step ahead. You won't make steady money from your crafting on the GTN for most professions anyway, so just try to keep your crafting high enough to keep yourself comfortably stocked or geared. If you're armortech or synthweaving, keep yourself in mostly blue gear with the occasional mission drop mixed in. If you're going cybertech, keep your ship in stuff comparable to what you can buy on the republic fleet and your droids in mostly blue but don't push beyond that. Another option for avoiding blowing you money on crafting is to not craft until you get closer to end game. I have one toon who took Slicing and Scavenging only. He slices for credits and scavenges for mats to sell. I never send out scavenging missions, since there are always things to scavenge while running around and focus only on making money with slicing, as was described above. He'll take a profession later on, but for now he's keeping his pockets comfortably full.

 

And this brings up another point about the GTN. Don't rely on it for mats. If you're taking a crafting skill, take the supplemental skills that go with it to keep yourself from having to buy expensive mats on the GTN to skill up. There's no reason to spend money on them when you can get them through missions much cheaper.

 

As for pulling in credits, do missions. Lots and lots of missions. On characters that I don't skip quests with, I never have money issues. Doing mostly class quests, space missions and PvP, you can skip the world specific content if you want, but if you're looking to be comfortable financially then I wouldn't advise that. My current favorite toon is a smuggler who just finished Nar Shadda. At level 26, after skipping all of the non-class stuff on Taris but doing all the missions available on Ord Mantell, Coruscant and Nar Shadda, and making sure to do all the heroics and flashpoints available to me, I'm sitting on 67k in credits after leveling up my abilities fully, buying a speeder and skilling biochem up well past the point I need to be. I do some PvP, plenty of space missions and never skip heroics or flashpoints. In fact, one way to grind out some credits is to go back and do heroics over again a few times. They're available as daily missions, so take advantage if you're strapped. You're gonna be on each planet for a few days or even a week of play... take advantage of the fact that those missions can be run repeatedly before you outlevel them and the returns drop off.

 

Another way to earn credits is to farm mats (materials) and sell them on the GTN. Stuff is overpriced there, so pick up a skill like scavenging and some mission skills like treasure hunting and sell the stuff you bring back. I typically look at what that item is going for and put it up for 80% of the lowest price (excluding extreme outliers). People snatch up cheap stuff quickly. And you still make a profit when you factor in the cost of the mission. Treasure hunting is nice in that it allows you to bring back companion gifts if you want, but also provides nice schematics and mission documents sometimes, as does slicing. Selling those 340 purple drops can turn a pretty penny very quickly.

 

These are just some general tips for making a buck in SWTOR, and they're not hard and fast rules. They're more like guidelines. You won't get rich doing any of the above, but you will be comfortable.

[pdxmarcos]

OK so everyone is saying that slicing is broke and I have seen countless charts showing how each mission pans out to an average credits per minute. What I have not seen is a real world example of slicing during a game session. As I had some homework today and was curious about it I decided to answer this question.

 

 

Stats:

Start 11:00:00 AM

End 6:19:00 PM

Time in mins 439

Start Money 251,984

 

 

Very nice work here. What was your end money amount?

[Helishron]

Very nice work here. What was your end money amount?

 

Thanks!

 

End total for just lock boxes was 269,232

End total for lock boxes and M/S was 323,104

[Ashirae]

Profit from lock boxes 17,248.

 

That is ridiculously awful. I used to make around 50k or so if I played for a significant amount of time (probably around 8 hours, like you, Helishron) on my days off. That was with only two people slicing at a time!

 

When the servers came up I tested it and 5/6 times I had no profit, and the one time I did profit, it was a lousy 100c. It's not worth micromanaging my crew members for 17k every 7 hours.

 

Slicing needs a major overhaul! I don't want to abandon a lv400 crew skill (especially now that my income is greatly lessened!), but I don't want to handicap myself for months waiting for a true fix.

[Mostrarskegg]

If they are going to keep flocking with it, then let me roll an alt, and transfer my 400 slicing to an alt while they decide what they are doing with it. I'd like to get a decent profession on my main. Edited January 20, 2012 by Mostrarskegg

[pdxmarcos]

That is ridiculously awful. I used to make around 50k or so if I played for a significant amount of time (probably around 8 hours, like you, Helishron) on my days off. That was with only two people slicing at a time!

 

When the servers came up I tested it and 5/6 times I had no profit, and the one time I did profit, it was a lousy 100c. It's not worth micromanaging my crew members for 17k every 7 hours.

 

Slicing needs a major overhaul! I don't want to abandon a lv400 crew skill (especially now that my income is greatly lessened!), but I don't want to handicap myself for months waiting for a true fix.

 

I concur with this sentiment. Slicing is useless at the current credit acquisition rate compared to the credit generation of other crew skills that actually produce marketable goods.

 

Regardless though, there are other threads that have been set up to discuss the nerfs to slicing.

[Ghoulen]

If they are going to keep flocking with it, then let me roll an alt, and transfer my 400 slicing to an alt while they decide what they are doing with it. I'd like to get a decent profession on my main.

 

i takes maximum 2 days to level slicing to 400.

[ryancwn]

17k after 7 hours of sending companion which equal to at most 2 quest at level 50 which you can do them in less than 30 min...... Edited January 20, 2012 by ryancwn

[rukks]

If something needed a buff in slicing, it's the 340 epic missions. They give so little. Anyone gotten decent results from these?

[Helishron]

17k after 7 hours of sending companion which equal to at most 2 quest at level 50 which you can do them in less than 30 min......

 

Yeh, you could farm mobs and get more 2-3 times the exp per hour than slicing gives you

[Golarz]

If something needed a buff in slicing, it's the 340 epic missions. They give so little. Anyone gotten decent results from these?

 

Sure. Purple auguments lvl 49 sell for 30k on my server.

Makeing money out of sliceing now is not about lockboxes. Yes, You send comapnions for those but don't be to optimistic aout it. What you cout for is critical that gives Mission Schematics. Those sell preaty well on AH. TH, UT or Diplomacy goes for 20-30k per mission schematic 340. Even archeology goes for 20k on my server.

[Nikkal]

Sure. Purple auguments lvl 49 sell for 30k on my server.

Makeing money out of sliceing now is not about lockboxes. Yes, You send comapnions for those but don't be to optimistic aout it. What you cout for is critical that gives Mission Schematics. Those sell preaty well on AH. TH, UT or Diplomacy goes for 20-30k per mission schematic 340. Even archeology goes for 20k on my server.

 

Not on my server. There's always a ton of the dropped missions sitting on the AH for peanuts. Like 1-2k per 340 mission peanuts. It's always so low I've been pondering just vendoring the missions I don't use myself. I cry inside at the idea so haven't yet, but ... they're just sitting taking up bank space. No one wants them. The exception is UT missions, but even those are pretty low. I can generally find UT missions on the AH for 5-10k.

[dajboc]

At what point was the current data for the Automated Saboteur gathered? I've been running it almost all morning (>15 times) and haven't got over 200 profit once.

Just bad luck, or are we still using data from after the recent buff but before the recent nerf?

[frdrake]

As for profitability I've actually found that with the exception of crits the most profitable missions are now the very last two in the 49/50 bracket. Data Race and Plug the Leak. I'll still occassionally lose some credits but most of the time I'll make 300-400 profit with the chance at good crits. If you're feeling lucky you can do the rich yield ones from the previous tier, but I've found you either lose/win big on those. If you lose which usually happens you lose about 300-600, if you win though and crit then you make around 4k or so. I've never been big on that kind of risk though so I stick with my normal gains.

 

At lvl 33 though I find lockboxes all over the planets worth around 500 a piece with some even having up to 1-2k. I've probably made around 10-15 times more money picking up the nodes than I have from missions lately. But the crit rate on lockboxes is way worse than doing the missions so it's a balance.

[Kemmer]

Yeah, ditto. My crew members are usually busy with other gathering skills while I manually gather Slicing nodes for credits. Much more profitable that way.

[Isxossk]

How do the slicing missions you get as part of mission rewards rank in credits per minute? Should we always do them? I don't currently have any so I don't have anything to reference on your list. Thanks!

[Zaphron]

How do the slicing missions you get as part of mission rewards rank in credits per minute? Should we always do them? I don't currently have any so I don't have anything to reference on your list. Thanks!

 

Those missions are one-time use and offer both a lock box and augment reward.

 

I see a lot of people complaining about augments...

1) buyers can't find the augments they want

2) sellers can't find buyers for the augments they have

 

lose-lose

 

If you're running slicing missions, stick with credits!

[Inatho]

I'd like to be able to queue up missions for a single companion to do. I should not have to baby sit them. Let me line up 5 like I can crafting and send them off.

 

How about putting gambling in the game in cantinas. Let slicers be able to "slice" them to get a win or higher rewards.

 

Slice the jukeboxes so we don't have to pay lol.

 

Oh and I usually slice nodes in the field and do crew missions for credits at the same time. Make more money that way IMO.

Edited January 26, 2012 by Inatho

[scootle]

I had slicing at 400 until recently. I personally tracked my results from about 320 skill to 400 and then for maybe a week beyond that when I ran missions. This was all post-nerf. While my data isn't nearly as detailed as some of the various spreadsheets out there, I showed my personal return on investment to be approximately +20% from lock box missions alone. Proceeds from sale of any crit discoveries (schematics, missions, etc.) are not included. Also not included are proceeds from manually looting slicing nodes (aka "money plants") out in the world.

 

So, in the long term, I believe slicing still is profitable, as intended, but it's just a tedious way to make credits compared to other professions right now. Net profits during my couple weeks of study were maybe 120k credits, tops.

 

After realizing that I wasn't helping myself much with Slicing anymore, I dropped it in favor of Underworld Trading to better support my Cybertech profession.

 

PS If my raw data can be of use to any of the other people building databases for Slicing analysis/spreadsheets, please send me a PM and I can give you access to my Google Docs spreadsheet.

[pdxmarcos]

I have actually dropped slicing in favor of cybertech, so I will no longer be actively maintaining the spreadsheet. Thank you all for the feedback you've provided.

[Deathmvp]

Thank you for all the work that you have put into this over time though.

[Stankeye]

After browsing this thread with all the complaints about slicing I decided to do my own research.

 

My slicing is at 400. I have 3 companions. 2 are rank 0 affection, one is rank 5.

 

I did only Bountiful and Rich missions at whatever the highest level was available.

 

After 60 missions.

 

Rate of Return:

Bountiful 23.94% Spent 37,310 Earned 46,242 34 missions

Rich 34.44% Spent 48,460 Earned 65,148 26 missions

 

10 "crits" Where I got a schematic.

Edited February 2, 2012 by Stankeye

[Khardoss]

And J-boots got nerfed.

 

Epic blast from the past . . .