SWTOR: Crafting and Crew Skills Guide (2024)

Electronic Arts via HGG / Noelle Roberts

Human Made

Since first playing Halo 2 at the ripe age of 6, Noelle Roberts has nursed a healthy love of video games. Throughout her childhood she would become... Read more

Reviewed by Benjamin Barr

Crafting systems are pretty commonplace in the MMORPG genre. They allow players to put some time into making their own equipment, rather than relying on loot drop rolls in high-level dungeons. Star Wars: The Old Republic features and in-depth crafting system allowing players to forge a wide variety of items. Some of these items are even exclusively found through crafting! In this SWTOR crafting guide, we’ll cover all the bases.

SWTOR’s crafting (or Crew Skills) system is one of the best ways to get credits, as well as limitless, refillable healing items. Additionally, roleplayers and cosmetic hunters will be very interested. Crew Skills are among the only way to procure unique lightsaber color crystals. Needless to say, it’s a great boon to any player willing to put in the time and effort. However, it can be quite difficult to even know where to begin for players who are new to Crew Skills. With this in mind, we’ve created this article to serve as a guide for those interested in making the most out of the galaxy’s resources. Read on to discover all the Crew Skills system has to offer.

What are the Crew Skills?

*Electronic Arts via HGG / Noelle Roberts*

We have an article ranking each of the Crew Skills. For a more in-depth discussion on each skill, refer to our information given there. We’ll still cover the skills a bit here, however. To start, there are 3 types of Crew Skills. These types are: Gathering, Mission, and Crafting. There are 4 Gathering and Mission skills, as well as 6 Crafting skills. Each individual skill has at least 1 skill in the other categories which it synergizes with. For example, the Bioanalysis Gathering skill provides players with resources for making healing items with the Biochem Crafting skill. We’ll go over each of these synergies in a bit. For now, though, let’s start by simply describing the categories and listing which skills fit into them.

Gathering Skills

Gathering skills are all about collecting resources. You’ll need these resources for the Crafting skills, where you actually make items. Mission skills often also give you crafting resources. Where Gathering differs, however, is in who retrieves the materials. With Mission skills, your companions collect materials. Meanwhile, Gathering skills task you, the player, with acquiring materials yourself. For example, if you have the Archaeology skill, you may extract crystals from deposits found in the overworld. You may refine these into useable lightsaber color crystals if you also have the Artifice skill.

List of Gathering Skills

Icon	Skill	Use
	Archaeology	Allows you to collect crystals from deposits. These deposits can be found all over most planets. Additionally, allows you to recover archaeological artifacts which can be sold for a high amount of credits.
	Bionanalysis	Allows you to collect organic materials which can be refined into healing items. These materials can be found around plants or animals.
	Scavenging	Gives you the ability to extract scrap materials from junk piles. These materials can be salvaged to create more useful items. This skill has quite a few synergies.
	Slicing	Lets you pick electronic locks. This allows you to open strongboxes found around most planets. These strongboxes can contain a plethora of valuable items. Additionally, you can find a good amount of credits in the boxes, though this is far from the best money-making skill. The skill has one more notable use in that you can access unique shortcuts in activities such as flashpoints. In many flashpoints, there will be locked doors which can only be opened by players trained in Slicing.

Mission Skills

Mission skills, as one could easily assume, allow you to send your companions on timed missions. These missions are automatically completed over a set amount of IRL time. The timers count down even when you’re not playing the game, so no need to worry about that. You receive a list of missions which is constantly updated as you complete them, meaning you’ll never run out. Each mission has a neat little description of what your companion is actually doing, which adds a roleplaying element to these skills.

When selecting which mission to send your companions on, you’ll be shown the rewards that can be gained from each one. These rewards depend on both the Mission skill you’ve chosen and the specific type of mission you’re looking at. You can acquire a lot of very valuable rewards from these skills. One of the best opportunities for acquiring credits is found here. As well, you can even get Dark or Light Side points from Crew Skill missions. As a final note, it should be stated that you may select multiple mission skills. This means you aren’t limited to just one at a time, like the other categories, so you can maximize mission rewards if you wish.

List of Mission Skills

Icon	Skill	Use
	Underworld Trading	These missions entail black market deals and illicit goods trading. You’ll be getting a lot of useful metals, fabrics, and etc. here. With these, you can create a lot of equipment items if you utilize other skills. As well, companion gifts can be dropped from Underworld Trading missions. Gifts allow you to raise your companion’s influence, increasing the overall efficacy of Crew Skills.
	Diplomacy	Here, you’ll be sending your companions to do (what else) diplomatic work. Rewards from Diplomacy missions include medical supplies which can be refined into healing items. Additionally, you can get alignment points and companion gifts from this skill. Alignment points are extremely rare and beneficial rewards. They pretty much only drop from Diplomacy and story quests. Companion gifts can also drop from Diplomacy, allowing you to increase companion influence.
	Investigation	Essentially, Investigation is the art of detective work. It’s unfortunate that you don’t get to partake in any pulpy noir escapades yourself, but hopefully your companions enjoy their time with such adventures. Investigation missions primarily yield materials for weapon and armor mods, as well as crafting schematics for other skills. As usual, companion gifts can additionally be found from Investigation missions, leading to increased companion influence.
	Treasure Hunting	The aforementioned best way to acquire credits in the game. While Investigation involved detective work, Treasure Hunting is more in the vein of Indiana Jones or the adventure serials which inspired him. Not only do melee weapon mod crafting materials drop here, but so do materials for making color crystals. Color crystals, as well as the materials to craft them, fetch high prices on player trading networks. Additionally, you can get lockboxes from Treasure Hunting missions which contain high amounts of credits. Utilizing both these aspects of Treasure Hunting leads to gaining a lot of credits relatively fast (especially compared to other methods). As with all other Mission skills, companion gifts to raise influence drop from Treasure Hunting missions.

Crafting Skills

This where the actual crafting takes place. Similar to Mission skills, you won’t actively do much here. Your companions craft for you. All you do as the player is tell them what to craft. After giving them this direction, they will be put on a timer, the length of which depends on what you’re wanting to craft. Again, much like Mission skills, these timers are counted in real-world time and keep going even while you’re logged out. You’ll need a variety of materials to create different items, which is why you need to make sure you’re synergizing your skills.

When you have the necessary materials, simply walk up to a crafting station and you should see a list of available items. The items on this list will depend on which schematics you have. Think of schematics like blueprints or recipes. You can acquire these plans from a variety of sources, most notably from Mission skills such as Investigation.

List of Crafting Skills

Icon	Skill	Use
	Biochem	Allows for the crafting of medical supplies, such as healing items. In our ranking of the best class skills, we put Biochem as the absolute best. This skill is the game’s only method of creating infinite, refillable healing items. Items such as these are a substantial benefit to any player, especially those who engage in high-level activities such as flashpoints.
	Synthweaving	The first of the armor crafting skills. This skill is all about force armor. Force armor, of course, refers to armor which Force-user classes can equip. Most often, this means robes. That said, you can also use this skill to forge stat-augmenting gear.
	Armstech	Armstech is all about weapon crafting. It mostly focuses on blasters and blaster mods, however melee weapons can be garnered from it as well. Not much else to say.
	Artifice	Gives you the ability to craft various lightsaber-related items. These include lightsabers themselves, color crystals, and various mods, as well as shield generators. Artifice is the final piece of the “best way to acquire credits” puzzle, as this is where you’ll actually be creating the high-value crystals.
	Cybertech	The main benefit of Cybertech is the ability to craft mods and earpieces. These won’t need to be much of a focus for most players, they’re mainly used for high-level content. That said, it’s still a nice skill which lends itself to maximizing the effectiveness of certain builds.
	Armormech	The mirror of Synthweaving. This is the second armor crafting skill, focusing on non-Force armors. Typically, these include what you’d normally expect of armor and require materials such as metal alloys. Obviously, non-Force classes will get the most mileage out of this skill.

Synergies

Each Crew Skill synergizes with other Crew Skills in other categories. For example, Bioanalysis provides resources which are useful for crafting Biochem items. Below is a list of all the skill synergies, organized by category.

You don’t necessarily *have* to synchronize all your crew skills based on synergy. It’s wise to at least sync up your Gathering and Crafting skills, as those tend to have the most direct benefits with each other. However, if (for example) you pick Bioanalysis and Biochem for Gathering and Crafting, you could pick Treasure Hunting in Mission for extra credits and be just fine. In fact, some skills can synergize well with any other Skills, leading to increased freedom and less decision pressure on your part. Synergies are more a guide on how to get the most out of your efforts in optimizing Crew Skills. Think of them more as guidelines, not necessarily rules.