How did I level up my saber?

[Addictress]

So far I learned how to upgrade my implants and armor at the Conquest Gear upgrades vendor on the fleet with conquest currency, and also about the "true armor upgrades" by, I think, taking lowly adaptive gear and plugging in crafted augments or whatever. But what about my weapon? I have an alt that has two load outs: shadow and guardian. I had been playing the shadow a lot and mysteriously my double-bladed saber kept leveling up and it's around 330 now, but my other loadout's single-bladed saber is still stuck at like 270 and I don't remember how my double-bladed saber kept leveling up (I probably just kept equipping better versions as I played various content).

[ThanderSnB]

By default, you get drops based on your current discipline. If you switch to the other discipline, you should have a chance to get weapons for it. You can also right click your portrait and set the loot discipline to the other combat style/discipline. To start with, you can buy a 324 weapon from the conquest vendor for some Conquest Commendations. If the vendor isn't showing the weapon, just use the drop down at the top of the vendor window to show ALL items and scroll down to whatever weapons you are looking for.

[Addictress]

On 8/12/2023 at 12:23 PM, ThanderSnB said:

By default, you get drops based on your current discipline. If you switch to the other discipline, you should have a chance to get weapons for it. You can also right click your portrait and set the loot discipline to the other combat style/discipline. To start with, you can buy a 324 weapon from the conquest vendor for some Conquest Commendations. If the vendor isn't showing the weapon, just use the drop down at the top of the vendor window to show ALL items and scroll down to whatever weapons you are looking for.

Oohhhh!!

[TonyTricicolo]

There is a option to auto equip new items on pickup. By default, I believe it is set to on. That is how you probably leveled up your lightsaber without even realizing it.

[ronin_chi_lao]

21 hours ago, TonyTricicolo said:

There is a option to auto equip new items on pickup. By default, I believe it is set to on. That is how you probably leveled up your lightsaber without even realizing it.

If you hover over that box in preferences it does say "when the prerequisite box is empty" so yes and no.
Vendors for the 80 gear/weapons require the saber previously held with the lower rating to upgrade to the next higher so yes it will be temporarily empty and thus place the new higher rated saber in the slot but if you pick one up from a boss loot and already have something equipped it will stay in inventory.
Always check your inventory before you do any deconstruction, I say

[Amodin]

3 hours ago, ronin_chi_lao said:

Vendors for the 80 gear/weapons require the saber previously held with the lower rating to upgrade to the next higher so yes it will be temporarily empty and thus place the new higher rated saber in the slot but if you pick one up from a boss loot and already have something equipped it will stay in inventory.

^This right here.  The vendors want your old gear for level 80 gearing at the fleet vendors, so if you just bought an item that was actually an upgrade material item, it will remove it and replace it with the one you bought automatically.

[Qua-Tari]

And if you had augments in the gear piece, before you upgraded it, and did not retrieve the augments from it beforehand, they vanish together with the lower tier gear since it will be replaced by a completely new item of higher tier. Keep that in mind when upgrading gear, otherwise it might be a very expensive loss.