Fastest Way to Gear Up at Level 80 in SWTOR

Getting the very best gear in Star Wars: The Old Republic is no easy feat – but I’ve done the math and research to find a bunch of ways to save time and give you options when it comes to getting the best gear in the game as of Update 7.5.1, 344 Rakata. 

This guide covers all the steps and options you have for gearing up quickly in SWTOR.

How does gear work?

If you’d prefer to learn how gearing works in my a general way, and what all the different currencies, tiers and types are, visit the Gearing Up at Level 80 in SWTOR Guide. This guide below will go over how to gear efficiently and quickly, but may skip over some of the basic concepts.

SWTOR Level 80 Gearing Guide

Solo

If you are a pure solo player, and only like to play alone, you can still get the best gear in the game, it will just take longer! I’ve got a whole different guide called Fastest Level 80 Solo Gearing in SWTOR that will lead you step-by-step on how to gear up efficiently as a solo players, and what options you have!

Fastest Level 80 Solo Gearing in SWTOR

Goals

Your goal will be to get an almost full set of item-rating 340 gear, which once you are done will be a mix of blues and purples. To do this is quite easy, because you will only need to earn ONE item level 340 blue piece, and ONE item-rating 340 purple piece to turn into a special quest giver – you do not need to earn a full set which saves you a ton of time! This method is called the Hyde and Zeek method, and is a really great goal for all players who enjoy playing at Level 80. Once you do this, you’ll actually be able to get unlimited copies for credits for your other characters on your server!

If you play really often and enjoy chasing down gear, or are doing the hardest content in the game, your goal will be to earn a full set of item-rating 344 Purple Rakata gear. Unlike the Hyde and Zeek method, you will need to manually earn and upgrade each Rakata purple-bordered piece in your equipment up to 344, which can be a long process, but is accessible even to casual players over time. Players looking for full Rakata gear often do the Hyde and Zeek method first, so that they have some decent gear for all their characters available as they chase down their longer-term Rakata set.

1. Get a Basic Set of Level 80 Gear

Legendary Implants Quest

As soon as you hit level 80, the very first thing you should do is head to the Supplies section of the Fleet and speak to the big Blue Twi’lek quest giver twice, which will give you the Technological Advancements quest. This will eventually allow you to buy some of the best Implants for your character in the game. Right now though, we’re just picking up the quest. Legendary Implants Guide. Your Legendary Implants are part of a different gearing path altogether, which I don’t cover directly in this guide. Ideally you’d want to simultaneously buy and upgrade your Legendary Implants overtime using the Tech Fragments currency, while equipping the green implants mentioned in this guide to help you more easily get your other pieces of gear.

Starter Set

Your next step is to complete a Conquest while at Level 80. Conquest is a weekly set of rotating objectives, and your goal is to earn 100,000 points within the week. You can see the Conquest panel by opening your Missions windows and pressing the Conquest tab. Completing a Conquest at level 80 will give you enough endgame currency to buy your first basic level 80 gear set.  Conquest Guide

Once you’ve completed a single conquest, Go to the Supplies section of the Fleet and find the Conquest Gear Vendor.

Buy one of each armor piece, a main hand, and an offhand, two yellow implants, a yellow earpiece, and two different red relics. This will give you a full set of basic “324 green” gear starter set.

2. Get 338 Earpiece, Relics and Implants

You’ll be using the Hyde and Zeek method to get most of your gear, except for your earpiece, your two relics, and your two implants.

To speed up gearing, we’re going to use some great tricks built into the gearing system., and we’ll need to upgrade a few of our specific pieces to save time in the long run. Luckily, the currency we’ll be using is Conquest Commendations, which are the easiest to get in the game. Our goal will be to upgrade our green-bordered Noble Decurion Earpiece, two Noble Decurion relics, and two Noble Decurion Implants at the Conquest Upgrade Vendor all the way to item-rating 338.

It will take about 400 Conquest Commendations from start to finish for each piece, which is incredibly easy and cheap compared to some of the other upgrade costs. Collecting enough currency for these five pieces, or about 2,000 Conquest Commendations, will take a little while, but it will make the later harder steps much faster and much less random. The fastest way to get this much currency, by far, would be to complete Conquest on one or more characters per week . You can speed this up event more by running Heroic Mission Weeklies which grant you 40 Commendations for 4 heroic quests each, or Daily Area Weeklies which grant you 50 for a batch of quests, and each daily or heroic also gives you more comms. These will also give you other additional currencies that will be useful later on.

3. Get a 340 Blue Piece

Your first real step to gearing up is getting a single blue item-rating 340 piece to turn in to Hyde & Zeek.

Flashpoints

Flashpoints are by far the fastest way to grab your blue gear piece for Hyde & Zeek.

Flashpoint Weeklies: The Flashpoint weeklies, which you can pick up in the Supplies section of the Fleet from a blue terminal quest box or will be granted to you automatically when you join a Flashpoint through the groupfinder, will give you an additional reward for playing 3 randomized Veteran Mode Flashpoints or 2 randomized Master Mode Flashpoints through the groupfinder, so make sure to pick those up before you queue up! Flashpoint Weekly missions can be completed up 4 times per week per character, so make sure to pick up the quest again when you’ve completed it. Groupfinder Flashpoints Guide The very fastest way to do this is to grab a group of four friends including yourself who can all stealth, queue up for the Groupfinder together, and then run the flashpoints in stealth together, avoiding enemies as much as you can and skipping cutscenes.

➤ lucky drop ➤

Lucky Drop: If you equipped those 338 implants, relics or implants, even if they just have a green-border, if any boss randomly chooses to reward you with an accessory, which would be an earpiece, implant or relic… you’ll get an easy 338 blue piece with no extra work! Then you only have to use the currency you got from Flashpoints to upgrade it one more step to 340! You’ll have a solid 5 out of 14 chance of getting one any time you fight a Veteran Mode Flashpoint boss. If you dislike the groupfinder, this applies even to whatever Veteran Mode Flashpoint you or your group wants to run – or you could technically even solo something like Red Reaper or Hammer Station Veteran Mode in stealth with some practice. Master Mode flashpoints always drop blue pieces, but it would cost a lot to upgrade our full set to green 340, so if you run Master Mode Flashpoints instead, it’s economical to cross your fingers for an accessory as you work on your weekly.

 ➤

Running Flashpoints: If you don’t get a lucky drop, it will take you about 6 Veteran Groupfinder Flashpoint weeklies (18 randomized Groupfinder Veteran Flashpoints, accepting the currency and disintegrating extra pieces with the earpiece trick, up to 4 times a week per character). If you run that many Flashpoints though, you’d be really, really unlucky if you didn’t get a lucky random drop, but, you’d need to get about a total of 1,470 FP-1 Stabilizers to upgrade a blue piece to 340 the long way. If you’re getting frustrated waiting for the randomized drop, feel free to mix running Flashpoints with other activities, like Conquest, Dailies, or Heroic Quests, as all of them will contribute towards your currency pool.

Operations

Veteran Mode Operations: Veteran Mode Operations drop blue gear automatically, however, it is unlikely most groups will take you along for Veteran Mode Operations if you aren’t already somewhat geared up and have at least some experience raiding. However, if you can find a friendly accommodating group to jump in with, it could be very beneficial to you. In Veteran Mode Operations, accessories including your relics and earpiece, when dropped randomly from a boss, will give you a higher quality than other pieces. This means you might actually get super lucky and get a purple 338 accessory! You can technically turn in this purple version to Hyde and Zeek in place of a blue one instead. I’d recommend saving it though, if you don’t get to run Veteran Mode operations often, as you might prefer to use it later than destroy it for Hyde and Zeek’s quest. If you complete the whole operation, choose the UPGRADE BOX instead of the currency, and DO NOT OPEN IT, as it’ll become super useful in a later step.

Story Mode Operations:  Unfortunately, Story Mode operations do not reward blue or purple rewards at all. They do give you useful rewards though, so they’re worth running, they just won’t help with this specific step – but you can use the rewards later on so you might as well have fun running them if you get the chance. While there’s no way to directly get blue or purple gear from Story Mode operations, there is a fun trick you can take advantage of if you play Story Mode operations! When you complete a Story Mode weekly, which you can pick up from the blue terminal in the Supplies section of the Fleet, and you can complete up to 4 times per week per Operation per character, you will have the choice of choosing either choosing some currency or an upgrade box as a reward. The upgrade box by itself is not very useful by itself, because it will only give you green gear, but if you plan on running at least 3 operations weeklies, choose the UPGRADE BOX instead of the currency, and DO NOT OPEN IT, as it’ll become super useful in a later step. If you take the currency, the OP-1 Catalysts just hold on to it for now.

4. Turn in Blue 340 Piece to Hyde & Zeek

Once you have a 340 blue piece, you can turn it in to Hyde and Zeek and put together a full set of 340 blue armor! The Hyde and Zeek Guide will walk you through what pieces to buy and how to put together a set. This will put you in a really good spot, and you’ll be quite well geared!

Hyde and Zeek Guide

5. Get a Purple 340 Piece

When you finally get a single blue item-rating 340 piece, and have unlocked Hyde and Zeek and equipped a mostly 340 set, your next goal is to get a single item-rating 340 purple piece.

There’s a couple different ways to do this, and we can use some fun tricks now that we have 340 gear.

Master Mode Operations

If you play Master Mode operations, or even just “Nightmare Mode Nefra”, you should have all your main gear at this point up to 340 blues. Gear that drops from Nightmare bosses will match the item-rating of a random one of your pieces, and will always be a purple-bordered Rakata piece. It will randomly pick one of your pieces to match when you defeat a boss, and you’ll wind up with an easy 338 or 340 purple piece of some kind!

You’d get the same reward in Veteran Mode operations with the Upgrade box trick, so you don’t need to worry too much about specifically running Nightmare Mode. It can sometimes be easier to find groups running Nightmare Mode Nefra though, a single boss, than groups running Veteran Mode Operations, so this might be an option to get your purple piece as well. This is by far the fastest method, if you are capable and can find a group for it, as it requires only a single boss.

Veteran Mode Operations

➤ lucky drop or   ➤

Running a single Veteran Mode operation successfully is likely the fastest way to get a purple piece if you are already in mostly 340 gear from Hyde and Zeek. If you happen to find a group for Veteran Mode Karagga’s Palace or Veteran Mode Eternity Vault, those are quite easy compared to others – you still need a slightly more experienced group, and everyone needs to be comfortable with their class and role, but they are a lot more accessible than the other Veteran Mode operations in the game.

Accessory Trick Upgrade Cache: The Veteran Mode Operation Weekly quests can be once per character per week, are picked up from the terminal in the supplies Section of the Fleet, and require you to complete the entire Operation including all of its bosses, will reward you with a blue Columi Upgrade Cache. When you open this cache, it looks for your lowest item-rating equipped item, and upgrades it one rung and to the quality of the item that matches the box. In this case, it’s a blue Columi box, and your lowest item-rating item should be one of your green 338 pieces, since you upgraded the rest of your pieces to 340 blue earlier. Accessories, however, are a special case. In Veteran Mode Operations, accessories including your relics and earpiece, when dropped randomly from a boss or more directly from an upgrade box, will give you a higher quality than other pieces, and it completely ignores your implants. So if you are expecting a Columi blue piece, but its an accessory, you’ll actually get a purple Rakata piece, the best in the game. We can use this to our advantage, by “baiting” the Veteran Mode operation drops and upgrade box with our 338 green-bordered accessories. So the fastest way to get a high item-rating purple piece would be to get a lucky 5 in 14 chance drop from any Veteran Mode operation boss, or complete an entire Veteran Mode operation and get a guaranteed purple accessory from the Upgrade Cache!

Story Mode Operations

➤   + + = ➤

While there’s no way to directly get blue or purple gear from Story Mode operations, they are still a great source to get your purple gear some with a little knowledge. When you complete a Story Mode weekly, which you can pick up from the blue terminal in the Supplies section of the Fleet, and you can complete up to 4 times per week per Operation per character, you will have the choice of choosing either choosing some currency or an upgrade box as a reward.  If you choose the UPGRADE BOX instead of the currency, and DO NOT OPEN IT, and then collect 3 green Tionese Upgrade Boxes by running three operation weeklies total, you can trade them in for a blue-bordered Columi Upgrade Box [[where?]]. You can then use the accessory trick to get a 338 purple accessory from the blue-bordered box!

Flashpoints via Groupfinder

➤ lucky drop or  ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤

Don’t run operations, but do run Flashpoints? If you run Flashpoints through the Groupfinder, you can still gear up quite quickly!

7 Veteran Mode Flashpoint Weeklies (21 random Veteran Mode Groupfinder Flashpoints) or 4 Master Mode Flashpoint Weeklies (10 random Master Mode Groupfinder Flashpoints) will earn you enough currency to exchange for OP-1s to get a 340 purple-bordered Rakata piece!

You can also do the exact same “earpiece trick” trick mentioned above in Veteran Mode Flashpoints, and you will at least get a high item-rating blue-bordered Supreme Decurion accessory piece from the upgrade box plus any lucky drops from the bosses which is also great, as deconstructing blues will give you more currency than a green piece would.

If you’re doing it this way, feel free to mix running Flashpoints with other activities, like Conquest, Dailies, or Heroic Quests, as all of them will contribute towards your currency pool. You can also run Flashpoints outside the Groupfinder, it will just take longer as you won’t get the bonus Groupfinder rewards. If you happen to sneak into an operation or two, any currency you earn there will also contribute towards your goal of earning enough currency to upgrade one piece.

6. Turn in Purple 340 to Hyde & Zeek

Once you have a 340 purple piece, you can turn it in to Hyde and Zeek and you can add purple enhancements to your armor! At this point, you’ll be wearing some of the best gear in the game, except for your relics and earpieces, and hopefully you have been slowly upgrading your implants too.

Hyde and Zeek Guide

7. Get Final Relics & Earpiece

Once you have Hyde & Zeek unlocked, there’s some fun tricks to help you get your final relics and earpiece, including the ones you’ll actually wear rather than upgrading to turn in to for the Hyde & Zeek quest.

Any lucky earpieces or relics dropped from bosses will match the item-rating of your current earpiece and relics, which are hopefully 338 greens (or blues) at this point. Our goal will be to get  some more high-item-rating purple-bordered Rakata relics without having to buy them from the vendor and upgrading them all the way, which would cost a ton of OP-1 Catalysts.

We can get them either dropped from bosses, or from Upgrade caches, but unfortunately, either of those methods will reward us with a random type of accessory – for example, as a damage player, you might get a yellow-colored accuracy earpiece, a green-colored alacrity earpiece, or a red-colored crit earpiece, even if you are wearing a different kind and were hoping for something else. For your earpiece, you can always adjust your other stats to match your earpiece, so don’t worry too much about which one you get. Your relics however do matter though – you will want specific ones depending on your class and role, so don’t waste currency upgrading the wrong kind before researching or asking which one you need

Master Mode Operations

Master Mode Operations always drop purple gear. If you’ve got your 338 accessories form earlier and 340 gear, any Master Mode boss has a 1 in 14 chance of giving you an earpiece and a 1 in 7 chance of giving you a relic of some kind. You’ll also be getting plenty of other gear though, which you’ll likely want for the next step.

Veteran Mode Operations

➤ lucky drop or   ➤

Using the accessory trick, any Veteran Mode boss has a 1 in 14 chance of giving you a purple earpiece and a 1 in 7 chance of giving you a purple relic of some kind. If you complete the Veteran Mode operation, you can also choose the blue-bordered Columi Upgrade box, which with the accessory trick will also give you another random purple accessory. The box targets your lowest item-rating item, so if you’ve already successfully replaced your earpiece, make sure to either upgrade it so its higher than your relics, or grab a lower item-rating relic before opening the box so you don’t just get another earpiece by accident. Don’t worry about your green implants when it comes to using the boxes, because all upgrade boxes automatically ignore your implants.

If you don’t like the random aspect of that, you can also just accept the currency and buy and upgrade a Rakata piece of your choice, it will take you a little over three Veteran Mode weeklies to afford to upgrade a Rakata piece from item-rating 324 -> 344 from the vendor, and in return you get to choose the specific piece you get and upgrade.

I think a smart plan would be to go back to the old green-bordered Noble Decurion Conquest Gear Vendor, and upgrade your two green relics to 340 up from 338, leaving only your earpiece at 338. That way, the upgrade box will automatically target your earpiece and grant you a random earpiece you can work around. Then, you can collect currency from any method to purchase and upgrade your relics, unless you happen to get a lucky drop of the correct one from boss.

Story Mode Operations

➤   + + = ➤

Story modes will also get you some great purple accessories. Just like before, 3 green Tionese Upgrade Boxes, which you can trade in for a blue-bordered Columi Upgrade Box, will get you a 338 purple accessory just like if you’d run a Veteran Mode operation.

Otherwise, need to run about 10 Story Mode Operations total and choose the currency as your reward to get enough Op-1 Catalysts to purchase and upgrade a single 344 purple-bordered Rakata piece. You can also do the flashpoint suggestion below or solo suggestions between operations – you can mix and match activities to earn currency.

Just like the Veteran option above, I think I’d recommend getting a blue Columi gear box for your 338 earpiece and upgrade your relics manually with currency over time.

Flashpoints via Groupfinder

➤ lucky drop or  ➤ ➤ ➤ ➤

Flashpoints are one of the slower ways to get your Rakata earpiece and relics, because there’s no way to trick the game into giving you a purple piece, but it is an option as running Flashpoints gives you currency you can use to buy and upgrade a Rakata piece over time.

You can also do the exact same “earpiece trick” trick mentioned above in Veteran Mode Flashpoints. Use the 338 earpiece, relic and implant trick to get extra blue pieces from Veteran Mode flashpoints, as you will be disassembling them for more currency.

It will take you this long per piece by always choosing currency as the reward and not the Upgrade Box…

• Veteran Flashpoints: 8 weeklies, or 24 Groupfinder Veteran Flashpoints for a Rakata piece! (130 FP-1 per weekly, 3 Flashpoints per Weekly, plus 10 FP-1 per boss, 3 bosses per Flashpoint) 5 weeklies, or
• Master Mode Flashpoints: 10 Groupfinder Master Flashpoints for a Rakata piece! (310 FP-1 per weekly, 2 Flashpoints per Weekly, plus 10 FP-1 per boss, 3 bosses per Flashpoint)

If you’re doing it this way, feel free to mix running Flashpoints with other activities, like Conquest, Dailies, or Heroic Quests, as all of them will contribute towards your currency pool. You can also run Flashpoints outside the Groupfinder, it will just take longer as you won’t get the bonus Groupfinder rewards. If you happen to sneak into an operation or two, any currency you earn there will also contribute towards your goal of earning enough currency to upgrade one piece.

Upgrade Rakata Earpiece + Relics to 344

Once you have a high item-rating purple-bordered earpiece or relic you like, head to the Operations Upgrade Vendor in the Supplies section of the Fleet and upgrade it to 344 as you collect currency in whatever way you like, with Operation weekly quests being the fastest way.

• 338 -> 340 = 60 Op-1 Catalysts + Credits
• 340 -> 342 = 60 Op-1 Catalysts + Credits
• 342 -> 344 = 60 Op-1 Catalysts + Credits

8. Full Set of Rakata Gear

Once you’ve gotten both 340 blue and purple mods unlocked from Hyde and Zeek, and 340 relics and earpiece of any kind, you’ve accomplished a lot and will have some of the best gear in the game. I actually recommend stopping here unless you really like the gearing up path. However, you can shoot for full 344 Rakata gear, and if you play any type of Operations frequently, you’ll wind up with lots of OP-1 Catalysts you can spend on upgrading your gear. You’ll need 615 OP-1 Catalysts or more to go from  324 -> 344 per piece, depending on the piece. If you already have your 344 Rakata Relics and Earpiece, in addition to simultaneously working on your Legendary Implants with Tech Fragments, if you wanted to do the full rest of the set Rakata you would need to run roughly…

• Nightmare Mode Operation bosses drop Rakata purpled-bordered gear matching the item-rating of a random piece of your currently equipped gear (Nefra, Dashrude) x9 – super fast, but can be super random, so skilled players often start getting their Rakata set by running “Nightmare Mode Nefra” to get a bunch of random slots filled in and upgrading them to 344, then when they are down to just a few pieces, use currency to buy and upgrade the last Rakata slots from 324 -> 344. If you are just starting your Rakata gearing after getting your Rakata earpiece and relic, you’ll have a 9 in 14 chance of getting a useful Rakata gear piece any time you fight a Mater Mode Operation boss (something that’s not an implant, relic or earpiece). As you successfully get more Rakata pieces for your set, your chances go down by one every time you fill in a slot, until you’re eventually trying to just trying to get a single piece at only a 1 in 14 chance, which is pretty low, and you’re better off spending currency to upgrade it.
• About 4 Veteran Mode Operations per piece, x9
• You could also run about 12 Story Mode Operations, choosing the currency, x9 (choosing the boxes wouldn’t really save you any currency)
• 8 weeklies, or 24 Groupfinder Veteran Flashpoints for a Rakata piece (130 + 30 FP-1 per weekly, 3 Flashpoints per Weekly, plus 10 FP-1 per boss, 3 bosses per Flashpoint) x9
• 5 weeklies, or 10 Groupfinder Master Flashpoints for a Rakata piece (360 FP-1 per weekly, 2 Flashpoints per Weekly, plus 10 FP-1 per boss, 3 bosses per Flashpoint) x9

All of these activities can be mixed and matched, as in the end, you’re just trying to earn the currency to buy and Upgrade your Rakata gear over time, in addition to earning Tech Fragments for your Legendary Implants. How you want to earn that currency is entirely up to you, what types of groups you can easily get in to, who you play with regularly, and what type of content feels fun to you vs feeling like a chore.

Summary

If you want to share this in short with your friends, here’s a quick copy-pastable version for discord!

1. Get a Basic Set of Level 80 Gear + Legendary Implants Quest
2. Get 338 Earpiece, Relics and Implants
3. Get a 340 Blue Piece
- Veteran Flashpoints (fastest) x7 weeklies for currency or lucky drop 5/14 chance per boss
- Operations Veteran Mode lucky drop 5/14 chance per boss
4. Turn in Blue 340 Piece to Hyde & Zeek
5. Get a Purple 340 Piece
- Master Mode Operations x1 boss
- Veteran Mode Operations x1 op for box or lucky drop 5/14 chance per boss
- Story Mode Operations x3 op for upgrade box to trade up
- Flashpoints via Groupfinder x8 weeklies
6. Turn in Purple 340 to Hyde & Zeek
7. Get Relics & Earpiece via Operations or Flashpoint tricks
8. Full Set of Rakata Gear (a lot of work over time)

Full Guide: https://swtorista.com/articles/fastest-way-to-gear-up-at-level-80-in-swtor-guide/