I've Made a Lot of Special Modifications Myself: Selling SWTOR Starship Parts

A Smuggler is only as good as his ship.

If you tried to lend the Republic a hand and run a couple of space ops for them upon finally retrieving your light freighter, you may have been in for a rude awakening. That Mike Tyson-faced thief Skavak stripped your ship! You have no beam generators, no armoring, no missile magazine! You're a sitting duck.

Ed Helms wears it better, you jerk.

At this point, you may have purchased a number of baseline parts from the local vendor. Or maybe you just said "forget it" and moved on to Taris. Or perhaps you checked the black mark--err, the GTN for parts.

For the savvy Smuggler, one thing is clear: there is a definite demand here. Every player gets a ship. Every player needs parts, 10 of them to be exact. Now, how can we take advantage of this?

Crafting, of course! Cybertechs can learn to craft grade 2 ship parts through schematics found via slicing. If you don't have a slicer, no worries. These are some of the first schematics a slicer will find, so you can usually find them on the GTN for a few hundred credits. Look for Grade 2 Beam Generator, Grade 2 Shield Regenerator, and Grade 2 Energy Shield to start.

Let's take a look at these items. They're blue, to start, which makes them appealing. In terms of stats, these are vastly superior to the Grade 1 items available via vendor. They are also comparable and in some cases surpass the green Grade 3 vendor items. For example, the crafted Grade 2 Beam Generator offers a 6 blasters/second firing speed and a boost to shields, while the Grade 3 vendor Beam Generator gives you only the firing rate increase.

So the crafted items are pretty good! And because players won't have to replace them until Grade 4 (also crafted!), they can afford to pay a premium for them. You should have success charging up to, and perhaps beyond, what the vendor charges for Grade 3 upgrades (between 2500 and 4500 credits).

This can be immensely profitable. Let's have a look at the mats for the Grade 2 Beam Generator:

4x Mullinine (roughly 100 credits each to acquire)
6x Plastoid (~25/per)
4x Conductive Flux (10/per)
8x Bronzoid (25/per)

So it generally costs me about 800 credits to craft one of these puppies. You can make thousands of credits on each spaceship upgrade. Try keeping one of each type of upgrade on the GTN at all times.

Because of the seemingly hefty materials cost and the fact that not all Cybertechs have these patterns, you will enjoy reduced competition when selling the finished products. Hope all of you are able to make a few credits this way!

And be sure to craft a set of upgrades for yourself. Stay one step ahead of those darned customs officials.