I've been leveling with Biochem as my "crafting" crew skill of choice. I am currently ~280 (out of 400) and I've found the stims, medpacks, and implants to be very useful.
The only drawback I've been observing is that it can be hard to find things you want to craft "at level" when you get there, and you may not be able to find enough materials in the open world to keep yourself fully supplied. Although sending your companions on gathering missions can compensate for the material dropoff (i.e. if you're leveling very fast), it will cost both money and time. Snipers and Imperial Agents in general can be at a slight disadvantage because they don't get their next "real" companion until Alderaan.
Biochem has been a worthy and useful leveling skill thusfar. Even your normal "green" crafted items will be better than most of what you can buy from vendors.
Additional Note: Building your companion's affection means that they'll complete crew skills tasks faster and get better results. It's a fairly noticeable bonus at higher levels (250+/400).
I've been steadily leveling my bio/bio/diplomacy, sending out my brown-nosing ship bot for most missions and Kaliyo when I can. I'm level 26 so far and my crew skills are all right around 200. As a sniper, I've had good use out of the artifact (purple) quality med pacs and med units. I just wish tehre was a HoT component to the artifact quality ones like there is with the prototype quality meds.
ReplyDeleteI haven't tested to see if the excess mats sell very well on the GTN for fun and profit though. I'm certainly not making as much credits as I did with slicing in beta, but I think it's pretty rewarding.
I've been using Biochem too, really like it.
ReplyDeleteI've been using slicing instead of diplomacy so far though, still kinda pondering when I should switch back. Slicing is great for extra cash, the lockboxes in the world pretty much double my money income per quest; and the missions generally yield about 25% more than you pay for them.
But I can't craft any blue/purple quality items until I get diplomacy or buy stuff off GTN.
Nyth, I've been able to sell the medical compounds that I get from Diplomacy on the GTN pretty well, presumably from folks that take up slicing instead (possibly), so that helps make up for the lack of slicing. With slicing, you have the added benefit of the additional income from questing. With diplomacy, I feel like I have better control of how and what I want to level up with my biochem. Just my 2 cents.
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