New player - make credits for GTN gear?

[Mashugana]

I'd like to get a few specific sets off the GTN so I can unlock them in collectibles for all my alts. However, the ones I like (naturally) are popular, rare, and insanely expensive. Some would take 100M or more to collect.

 

Is there any way to make money that I am not aware of? Selling crafting mats or anything simple that adds up? How in the heck to people have hundreds of millions of credits?

 

Or should I just write these off until way later in the game when I have more money?

 

Thanks. My guess is that I cannot make that kind of cash until much later in the game - but I am hopeful

[Elracor]

Credits were inflating heavily the last couple years because of exploits and 4-manning Heroic missions giving a ton of credits.

 

4-manning heroics at level 70 still pay well

 

Crafting can make some credits but you either have to find a niche market or invest a lot into rank 50 companions etc for it to pay off

 

Buying stuff from Cartel Market and selling on GTN can also earn a lot of credits.

Edited February 24, 2017 by MFollin

[Mashugana]

Thanks - I did not know about the inflation while I was away.

[LordTurin]

Yup, hands down best way to make an insane amount of credits is buy hypercrates from the cartel market, open it up, and sell the individual packs. Faster is just selling the hypercrate themselves and selling that, you'll just have to sell it at a slight discount vs. the individual pack rates.

 

Of course, that assumes you have 100s of real dollars to spend. If you don't, your best bet is running either heroics (as above mentioned in 4-man groups) or gathering mats and selling those. If you can find a nice niche market you can sell stuff too, but that is tough, and you can always have someone muscle in on your turf.

[Anduhar]

As was mentioned, Heroics and gathering crafting mats to sell are both reliable ways to make credits. You can also find a niche on the GTN or craft and sell end game gear. For making hundreds of millions of credits, the main method people use is probably flipping items on the GTN. This isn't something anyone can do though as it requires lots of knowledge on what items are valuable and what you can potentially sell them for. However, if you want a hundred million or more credits easily, then buying items from the cartel market (CM) for cartel coins (CC) and then selling them for credits on the GTN may be the best route to go.

 

If this is what you want to do then character and Legacy rename items, command boosts, Hypercrates (don't open them.. ever), and/or the Distant Worlds Decoration Bundle are good examples of items to buy with CC. Before you buy anything to sell on the GTN, I recommend looking everything up on the GTN to see how much this stuff is going for on your server. Ideally, I'd check a couple times a day for several days before buying anything in order to get a good idea of the average prices of this stuff.

 

Generally, if you can convert 1k CC to about 10 million credits, that's a pretty good deal. Depending on your server, there might be a few things from the market that you can do this with. Again, just be sure to check prices beforehand. Also, whenever you claim something from the CM, there's a day and a half bind timer where the item is temporarily bound to the character you claimed it on. You have to wait for the bind timer to expire before mailing, trading, or selling the item.

 

A couple notes about Hypercrates:

You can always sell Hypercrates for much more than they might be going for now by sitting on them a few months. If you sell them when they are no longer available you can make a decent chunk of credits. This also applies to any items from the market that aren't always available.

 

Hypercrates are also never worth the CC price they go for on the CM. You can always convert CC to credits and then use those credits to buy 99% of the items from any Hypercrates currently being sold for far less CC (usually less than half) than they go for on the CM, even when they're on sale.

 

EDIT:

About Heroics, here's a list of the fastest ones for each faction:

 

Just click the link to the spreadsheet in the first comment.

Edited February 28, 2017 by Anduhar

[psandak]

One thing not mentioned so far is that you HAVE to have patience. If you think you are going to make a hundred million credits overnight with any of the tips presented, you will be VERY disappointed.

 

Yes heroics are a fast way to make credits - you can average about 200k per planet - but even doing EVERY heroic/daily area mission available at that rate you'll make 2.5 to 3 million credits. That's a LOT of heroics to make 100 million credits.

 

So throw in gathering materials. There are no "planetary missions" (heroics and daily areas) where grade 10 materials are located...yet, so you will be gathering lower level materials. This is not a bad thing, just a different paradigm: grade 10 materials are high demand but high supply. As a result, while they sell more consistently their value is also relatively consistent; i.e. sale prices are not fabulous - 800 - 1000 credits per unit of material - but they sell regularly. OTOH, lower level materials have lower demand but also lower supply. As a result, SOME materials may be valued much higher - in the 2k to 3k range - but it may take a while to get a sale. But even if you sell a thousand gathering skill materials at 3k each that is still only 3 million credits. Again that's a LOT of gathering.

 

So throw in crafting. Crafting is an investment. If you go to the crew skills forum, you will see that I am VERY active there. I generally advise that new players stay away from crafting because of the investment (they generally want to craft gear for themselves and I have experience doing that twice (once in 1.x and again in 4.x) and I have learned that it is not worth it). My advice continues that once a player has a few characters at the level cap and a few million credits socked away, only then is the investment to train crafting skills worthwhile. So, are you willing to spend credits to make credits?

 

Any way you slice it, it is going to take significant time to reach your goals.

 

There is a potential alternative: look for cheaper gear and use dye modules. There are a lot of CM sets that are "reskins" with very similar appearance (the basic design is the same, but the details are different). You might be able to find less expensive versions of what you are looking for and then re-color the armor with dye modules.

[Mashugana]

Thanks all - this is incredibly helpful.

[Aeneas_Falco]

Just to add to the above, events can be a good way to supplement income. You're not going to earn 100 million credits doing them, but they're worth devoting some time to if you're in the process of building up your credit bank.

 

The green-black lightsaber crystals from the Rakghoul event routinely list on the GTN from anywhere from 500k to 1,000,000 or more. Completed Bounty contracts were listing for 200k or so on Ebon Hawk the last time that event came around. During Life Day people were selling the snow-covered parcels, though I don't recall the rate. I'm sure the Gree Event must also have its items that can be sold. I'm going to look into that myself, next time that event comes around.

Edited March 2, 2017 by Aeneas_Falco