Pretty much every SWTOR player I talked to is very excited by crew skills. More than often professions are just a needless grind in other games, but BioWare seems to have struck gold here and actually managed to make them fun. Everyone’s going to be picking up their favorite crew skills, and while some are recommended for particular classes, a lot of times players simply want to pick up the most profitable ones. So, if you’re interested in making credits rather than equipping your character with the best equipment, or perhaps even both, hopefully this post will guide to you the right direction.

• Don’t miss: SWTOR Credit Making Tips

First of all, some basics about SWTOR crew skills. You can pick only 1 crafting skill. Along with that, you can choose to learn either two gathering skills, two mission skills, or one of each, for a total of 3 different crew skills (professions, tradeskills; however you want to call them).

My recommendation is that you always pick the crew skills that benefit your class the most, especially crafting ones. The following pic (source) should give you a great idea which crew skills are interconnected and recommended for particular classes:

Now that you know which skills are recommended for your class, consider how many players are their considering the same. Data in the image below will show you which professions are most popular.

Why is this data important? Because if 30% of all players pick up Artifice as their crafting skills, the market will surely get saturated and the prices on the Galactic Trade Network (auction house) will likely be as low as possible, thus making profit from that profession will be hard.

Armormech for example is beneficial to Smugglers, Troopers, Imperial Agents and Bounty Hunters, which consist of almost 45% of all players, yet only 10% of them take this crafting skill. Scavenging and Investigation, the two gathering and mission skills which are related to Armormech aren’t too popular with players as well. By that logic, taking Armormech as your profession would be a good idea because of the following:

1. the demand for crafted armor will surely exist, especially since we’re talking about non-force users, i.e. 45% of all players
2. more demand means higher prices on the GTN
3. you can also create armor for your own character instead of buying it expensively from other players.

This is just one way of looking at it. Of course, the numbers may not be the same for every server, and things may change over time as they often do, so take a special note of that.

During SWTOR’s beta testing, Slicing was by far the most profitable crew skill, however it has been nerfed significantly lately and isn’t nearly as profitable as it used to. Slicing doesn’t even provide any materials for crafting skills, but rather just items and credits, so it’s a good pick up still if you want to make credits, but not if you need to purchase items from the auction house in order to level up your crafting skills.

Scavenging provides components for Armortech, Armstech, and Cybertech crafting skills, making the demand for those materials very high. However, about 26% of players will be taking Scavenging as their gathering skill of choice, which also means there should be a lot of inexpensive materials sold.

Lastly, Bioanalysis provide materials only for Biochem crafting skill, neither of which is overly popular. Whether the demand will be high is yet to be seen: most high-level guilds will probably have their own dedicated potion crafters so it might be hard to turn a profit on the auction house. However, it’s yet to be seen in which way the economy develops.

Conclusion

• Slicing will most likely still be great for making credits without much effort.
• Take crafting skills from which your character can benefit! Even if you don’t sell products like crazy, you’ll craft your own items and won’t have to spend credits on them, basically evening it out.
• It will take probably a few months for the economy and prices to stabilize.

Anyway, this is just my opinion. I only wish I could post one of the dozens of great crew skill tips from SWTOR credit guides I read. You’ll learn a lot more from these guides and I honestly recommend you check at least one out.

This guide will explain to you the basic difference in various professions and give you recommendations on which ones are best suited for what callings.

Contents:

1. Gathering Professions
2. Crafting Professions
3. Choosing Professions
4. Additional Resources

Gathering Professions

There’s a total of three gathering professions in Rift, and they are butchering, foraging and mining. Butchering collects hides and leather from various monsters, foraging is used to collect plants, herbs and wood, and mining for collecting ore.

Each of these three professions gathers materials which are used for crafting professions. Alternatively you can sell these materials on the auction house if you don’t need them and make a decent amount of platinum.

Crafting Professions

Crafting professions for the most part use materials which you gather with gathering professions and turn them into something useful, such as equipment, weapons or consumable potions.

There are six different craft skills: armorsmithing and outfitting is used to create plate and mail, or leather and cloth items respectively. Weaponsmithing creates weapons for Rogue and Warrior callings, and artificing makes staves, wands and totems used by Mages and Clerics, as well as rings and necklaces which can be used by all callings.

Apothecary profession makes different kinds of consumable potions and vials used to temporarily grant health or mana, or other stats. Lastly there’s runecrafting, which doesn’t need any gathering professions but rather destroys existing items in order to gain materials that are used to improve other items.

Choosing Professions

The choice of professions is entirely up to you. Different callings have no use for particular items (for example Warriors don’t need cloth or leather items, nor do they use staves and wands) so make sure you pick professions that go well with your chosen class.

Here’s a basic breakdown of what crafting professions are useful for each classes:

• Warriors: Weaponsmithing, Armorsmithing
• Clerics: Armorsmithing, Artificing, Apothecary
• Mages: Outfitting, Artificing, Apothecary
• Rogues: Outfitting, Weaponsmithing

Runecrafting and apothecary are the only professions useful for all four callings, so make a note of that. If you feel you don’t need any of the aforementioned, those two are good choices.

Also remember that you should definitely get a gathering profession to go with your crafting profession as well, otherwise you will have to spend a lot of platinum on the auction house for purchasing materials.

• Mining: Weaponsmithing, Armorsmithing; also Runebreaking
• Foraging: Artificing, Apothecary; also Weaponsmiting
• Butchery: Outfitting; also useful for apothecaries and armorsmiths