Cartel Market Crystals Guide in SWTOR

Cartel Market crystals refers to color crystals originally obtained from the in-game Cartel Market in Star Wars: The Old Republic, either through direct purchase or from random drops in Cartel Packs. You can easily identify Cartel Market crystals as they have a tiny Cartel Market symbol in the bottom left corner of the icon. Crystals in generally, are mostly cosmetic, so pick whichever color you like! All color crystals only require at least level 10 to equip, and some (not all) require Artifact Authorization.

What Cartel Market crystals are there?

There is somewhere around over 70 different Cartel Market crystals. You can mix and match these with any armor pieces or weapons you want to make a unique look.

I have a full list of Cartel Market crystals on the crystals site!

Ways to Obtain Cartel Market crystals

There are three primary ways to obtain Cartel Market crystals:

1. Buy from the GTN: Players can sell Cartel Market crystals on the Galactic Trade Network. Start here!
2. Purchase directly from the Cartel Market: Some crystals are available for Cartel Coins. But only sometimes.
3. Cartel Packs: These are random packs purchased with Cartel Coins that may contain Cartel Market crystals.

Buying crystals on the GTN

The GTN is a player-run market, where players can buy and sell un-bound items, including Cartel Market crystals that have not been equipped yet. You can access it starting at level 10 by heading to the Galactic Trade Network section on either the Republic or Imperial Fleet.

If you try and search for just “crystal” or “blue crystal” on the GTN, you’ll unfortunately also get a whole bunch of crafting materials that have the word crystal in the name. Whoops! Instead, you can filter your search by choosing Item Modification and then Color Crystal to show all the crystals in the game.

In addition to the GTN, players can buy or sell Cartel Market crystals via the trade window or by mail, but it’s more common to just use the GTN.

Cartel Market

The Cartel Marker is the in-game “cash shop” for Star Wars: the Old Republic, where you can spend Cartel Coins. The stock of the Cartel Market is very random – you never know which items will be available or not from day to day, and sometimes items go on sale. There’s no schedule or calendar of what will be available on the Cartel Market or a schedule of what will be on sale, so you kinda just have to check in-game to see what’s there.

The crystals can be found in the Item Modification category.

What if neither the GTN nor Cartel Market have the crystals I’m looking for?

Because the GTN relies on other players to list their items, and the Cartel Market does not sell every item all the time, you may run into a situation where you simply can’t find a way to get a specific crystal. All you can do is either find another crystal you like that is available, or bide you time and keep checking the GTN! I recommend checking about once per week as players can list their items up to 7 days.

Cartel Packs

Players who sell Cartel Market items on the GTN usually have gotten them either directly from the Cartel Market, but commonly also get them from Cartel Packs.

Cartel Packs, including Ultimate Packs, are purchasable from the Cartel Market and contain a random selection of items, including crystals. Each pack can drop one of many possible items, making the process luck-based.

Free Cartel Packs

You can also earn free Ultimate Cartel Packs through Galactic Seasons. These packs are non-tradeable, but any items you get from them can be sold or traded after the timer runs out.

Can you unlock Cartel crystals across your account / characters? Yes!

The Collections System allows you to unlock infinite copies of Cartel Market crystals for your character(s), and crystals are one of the best deals in the entire Collections system:

• For your current character: Once you’ve collected a Cartel Market crystal and equipped it, the crystal will be available in your Collections. From there, you can claim free copies of that crystal at any time, meaning you can safely destroy the original crystal to free up inventory space. This is great, because every time you get a new weapon, you can just redeem another copy for free. This is also useful when you have two weapons – you don’t need to buy two copies of the crystal.
• For all characters on your account: You can pay Cartel Coins in the Collections window to unlock the crystals for all characters on your account across all servers. This means you can generate copies of the crystal for each character, no matter where they are. This costs anywhere between 60 to 400 Cartel Coins and depends on the crystal and its rarity.
• Crystals in Legacy-bound weapons: If you put a crystal in a legacy-bound weapon, you will not be able to transfer the weapon between characters unless you also have the crystal unlocked in collections.

More info in the Collections Guide!

SWTOR Collections Guide

Are Cartel Market crystals the only cool crystals in the game?

No!

I will say, while a majority of crystals are Cartel Market items, there’s a whole bunch of other collectable crystals, including all the crafted ones or Eternal Championship ones. Don’t forget though that you can often buy crystals  with Credits or Cartel Coins you get for “free” for being a subscriber, so you do not need to purchase them with real money.

There is also a LOT of really cool non-Cartel crystals. It’s one of the reasons I built the crystal site! Check out all the categories there that are not Cartel Market – my favorite is probably the PvP category and Artifice categories.