SWTOR Crew Skills Guide

In this SWTOR Crew Skills guide, you will find an overview of the three types of crew skills, how they work, the mechanics behind Crew Skills, and which combos are the best to choose for your class.

SWTOR Crew Skills Guides

There are three types of crew skills: crafting, gathering, and missions. Crafting and Gathering skills are what most players are familiar with from other MMORPGs – Crafting skills can be used to create items with materials you find via Gathering skills in the game world. Missions on the other hand are various tasks you can send your companions to complete with a wide range of awards.

If you want to jump right into guides for each specific we will be adding specific guides for each crew skill below (includes individual crew skill of that type, what it is best for, and tips for getting the most out of them):

• SWTOR Crafting Guide
• SWTOR Crew Missions Guide
• SWTOR Gathering Guide

Below, we will continue our Star Wars The Old Republic Crew Skills guide giving you an overview of each type of Crew Skill, discussing the possible rewards and pros and cons of each type of crew skill.

SWTOR Crew Skills Guide – Crafting

Crafting in SWTOR is fairly straight-forward – you create items for your character using materials either gathered yourself or purchased from other players.

In SWTOR, your crew members craft for you. You can bring up the Crew Skills window by pressing the “n” key, click the craft icon, and then select whatever recipe you want to craft.

If you do decide to craft, you should understand that in SWTOR, crafting is quite demanding. In order to gather most of the materials you need to craft, you will need to pick two other skills (typically 1 gathering and one mission based, or 2 gathering) in order to supply the bulk of the materials you will need.

Additionally, earning new recipes to craft with can be expensive and difficult. They are typically purchased from other players (expensive), earned through Splicing or Missions (time consuming), or learned by reverse engineering (both time consuming and expensive).

As a result, if you just want easy credits, then avoid crafting. If you want to be able to craft your own powerful weapon and weapon enhancements, then crafting is a good choice.

Note that crafts do not come with any missions for your companions to undertake and you are only allowed to accept one craft. Additionally, most crafts require 1 gathering profession to supply most of their resources for normal crafts and 1 mission-based profession for high-quality crafts.

List of Crafting SWTOR Crew Skills

There are six crafting crew skills in SWTOR (recommended pairings included):

• Armormech – pairs well with Scavenging (metals) & Underworld Trading (rare metals)
• Armstech – pairs will with Scavenging (metals) & Investigation (researched compounds)
• Artifice – pairs well with Archaeology (crystals and artifacts) and Treasure Hunting (gems)
• Biochem – pairs well with Bioanalysis (biochemical compounds) and Diplomacy (medical supplies)
• Cybertech – pairs well with Scavenging (metals) and Underworld Trading (rare metals)
• Synthweaving – pairs well with Archaelogy (artifacts) and Underworld Trading (luxury fabrics & underworld metals)

Learn more about each craft in our SWTOR Crafting Guide.

Star Wars The Old Republic Crew Skills Guide – Missions

Missions are a type of crew skill unlike anything seen in an MMORPG before. Missions essentially allow your companions to undertake various quests around the world which take a certain amount of time (3 minutes for low-level quests, and this increases significantly as you level up) and provide various rewards.

For example, you may send your companion on a 3-minute Treasure Hunting mission. If they succeed, they will bring back a few uncommon (green quality) gemstones which you can use for crafting lightsabers and making weapon augments. Occasionally your companion might do really well at this quest and provide precious (blue) gemstones which can be used for prototype-level gear.

There are various types of missions you can learn – everything from diplomacy to underworld dealings. Each of these mission types offers differing rewards.

The downside to the mission system is that each mission costs credits. If you undertake missions in order to improve your level, you tend to not get good enough rewards to justify the expense, but as you get to be a higher level, you can undertake low-level missions to get big yields and actually make some money.

SWTOR Crew Skills List – Missions

There are four mission-based Crew Skills you can learn in SWTOR:

• Diplomacy
• Investigation
• Treasure Hunting
• Underworld Trading

To learn more about the different types of missions and the rewards they provide, read our SWTOR Crew Missions Guide.

SWTOR Crew Skills Guide  – Gathering

Gathering in SWTOR is much like gathering in other MMORPGs, but with a twist. In SWTOR, you do gather materials, but there are multiple ways to do it:

• Through resource nodes which spawn around the map;
• Through harvesting the corpses of fallen enemies (i.e. Scavenging to harvest from droids and or harvesting from certain enemy creatures via Biochemical Analysis);
• Through quests much like the mission system.

Everyone should pick up 1 gathering skill so that you can harvest things that spawn around the map. Simply right clicking on a visible resource node will send your companion off to gather it – you can continue doing whatever it is that you were doing while your companion runs off to harvest it.

SWTOR Crew Skills List – Gathering

There are four types of gathering Crew Skills that you can learn in SWTOR:

• Archaeology
• Bioanalysis
• Scavenging
• Slicing

Learn more about the various types of gathering skills in SWTOR in our SWTOR Gathering Guide.

SWTOR Crew Skills Guide Conclusion

Every player should at least learn a few crew skills if they want to make some extra money for practically no extra effort. Even if you have absolutely no interest in crafting, you can always pick up Diplomacy to earn extra Dark Side or Light Side points, Slicing to get credits from lock boxes around the world map, and Investigation to find valuable recipes!

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