Star Wars: The Old Republic has 6 different crafting skills you can choose from: Armstech, Artifice, Armstech, Synthweaving, Cybertech and Biochem. In this video, we’ll be going over how to start Armstech crafting, how to level up your Armstech crew skill and unlock more crafting schematics, and lastly, we’ll be going over some of the cool things you can craft with Armstech at higher levels.
This Armstech materials guide is paired with this crafting guide.
Contents
Basics of Armstech Crafting
You can start crafting after you’ve completed your first planet, at around level 10 or higher. There’s no penalty to starting late though, so if you want to save crafting for later, carry on following your purple quests and enjoying your class story.
How to Start Armstech
To choose a crafting skill, you’ll want to go to the Strongholds & Crew Skills section of the Fleet. If you’ve forgotten how to get to the Fleet, press P on your keyboard. In the General tab of your abilities there’s a useful ability called Emergency Fleet Pass. Once you are on the Fleet, open the map with the M key and look for the Strongholds & Crew Skills section. To pick up Armstech as your crafting skill, speak to the Armstech trainer in the rooms on the outer edge of the station. The room with crafting trainers in it is marked with a holographic sign with the shape of a gear or cog hanging over the room.
Matching Crew Skills
The two gathering crew skills that go with Armstech crafting are Investigation and Scavenging, which allow you to gather the materials to craft Armstech items, so go speak to the Investigation and Scavenging trainers in the next room, which is marked by the symbol of a hologram star.
Free-to-play and Preferred Accounts: If you are on a free-to-play account, you can only choose one crew skill per character, so you might instead take Armstech on one character, and Scavenging on another and have them work together, for a total of four character per server. If you’re a former subscriber or preferred player, you’ll have two crew skill slots available rather than the full three. If you really wanted to have all three on one character there is a Cartel Market item called Crew Skill Assignment Slot or Crew Skill Assignment Slot (Account) that you can get, so you can take all three complementary crew skills, Scavenging, Investigation and Armstech all on one character. The other major difference if you are not a subscriber is you will only be able to queue one crafted item up at a time – as a subscriber, you can set your companion to craft five items in a row.
How to Start Crafting with Armstech
Once you’ve picked your crafting and gathering skills, press the B key on your keyboard to open the crew skills window. You can also find crafting in the main menu labelled as Crew Skills, under a symbol of a triangle.
You start out at crafting level 0, and you’ll unlock more crafting recipes, known as schematics, from the Armstech trainer as you level up your crafting level.
You can click the Armstech icon from the crafting panel to open the crafting schematics window which shows everything you have available to craft – when you chose Armstech as a crew skill, you also received some basic schematics to help get you started, including some basic weapons, and most importantly, something called an Assembly Component.
Armstech icon
Your goal as an Armstechnician will be to craft basic items to level up your Armstech skill level, which will then unlock more schematics.
The most basic part of Armstech crafting will be crafting different types of Assembly Components.
Components
We’ll start by crafting a Desh Arms Assembly Component, one of the default schematics you got when you chose Armstech, which once you click it will tell you it requires 2 x Silica, 2 x Desh, and 2 x Conductive Flux to craft. So where do you get those crafting materials?
Since this is Armstech, the materials will likely come from either Scavenging or Investigation, Armstech’s two complementary skills. To figure out which gathering skill the materials you will need come from, hover over the listed material. When you look at the tooltip by hovering over them, The Silica is listed as Grade 1 Scavenged Component and the Desh is Grade 1 Scavenged Metal – both of which come from Scavenging.
The simplest way to get materials for your first item is to open up your Scavenging missions, and send your companions out to get the materials listed in the mission descriptions.
White-bordered materials are a bit different – you can either send your companions to gather them if you have a mission available for them, or buy them directly from a vendor called the Crew Skills Trade Vendor in the Strongholds & Crew Skills section of the fleet who sells them pretty cheap.
Once you have all the materials you need, go back to your Assembly Component schematic for Armstech, and click craft on the bottom right, and your companion will start crafting. Once your companion is finished crafting your schematic, the item will show up in your inventory and your crafting level will go up.
Assembly Components are the building blocks of Armstech crafting – while they’re pretty useless on their own, you can combine them with other materials to craft actual items. The first weapon you can craft when you start Armstech is a basic Vibroknife or Shotgun, which requires 4 pieces of Carbo-plas which is a Grade 1 Research Compound from Investigation, combined with two of the Desh Arms Assembly Components we crafted earlier. Crafting Assembly Components, then combining them with other materials, is how you craft almost every Armstech item in the game.
Where to Get Armstech Materials
There’s a lot of different ways to get materials for Armstech, including Scavenged Metal and Scavenged Compounds from Scavenging, and Researched Compounds from Investigation.
Armstech Leveling Guide
Now that you understand the basics of Armstech crafting, let’s cover how to level up your Armstech crew skill.
Crafting low-level schematics won’t help you level up your crafting skill after the first few items you craft – you must craft more difficult items over time, and the easiest way to see if a crafting a schematic will raise your crafting level is by looking at the colors of the dot beside the schematic in the schematics window – if it’s grey, you won’t gain any crafting levels by crafting it, and crafting orange items will give you the biggest boost your crafting level, so whenever possible craft an orange dot item, followed by a yellow dot item if you don’t have one, then a green dot, and don’t even bother crafting any gray dot items for levelling. The exact number of points you get from each color is a bit weird, with orange giving around 3-4, yellow 2-3, green 1, and gray 0. Gathering missions work the exact same way.
The number on the left of the schematic name is supposed to represent how may of that item you can craft, but it doesn’t always update, so just close the window and re-open it if you need an updated count.
Fun Tip – if you open your crafting window, you can drag and drop your crafting skill icon at the very top down on to your quickbars, and then you can open it from there if you need it!
Assembly Components
When most players are levelling up, they focus on crafting Assembly Components whenever possible, even if the Assembly Component schematic has turned from orange to yellow to green. You can get a new Assembly Component schematic from the Armstech trainer roughly every 50 Armstech levels, and a sign that it’s time to go get a new Assembly Component schematic from the trainer is that your last Assembly Component has turned green (or gray) in your schematics panel. Here’s the list of levels where you can check back at the trainer for a new schematic:
| Icon | Material Name | Skill | Grade | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Desh Arms Assembly Component | Armstech | Grade 1 | Component |
|
| Bronzium Arms Assembly Component | Armstech | Grade 2 | Component |
|
| Phobium Arms Assembly Component | Armstech | Grade 3 | Component |
|
| Bondite Arms Assembly Component | Armstech | Grade 4 | Component |
|
| Electrum Arms Assembly Component | Armstech | Grade 5 | Component |
|
| Durasteel Arms Assembly Component | Armstech | Grade 6 | Component |
|
| Mythra Arms Assembly Component | Armstech | Grade 7 | Component |
|
| Farium Arms Assembly Component | Armstech | Grade 8 | Component |
|
| Polished Aluminium Arms Assembly Component | Armstech | Grade 9 | Component |
|
| Polished Plasteel Arms Assembly Component | Armstech | Grade 10 | Component |
|
| Infused Plasteel Arms Assembly Component | Armstech | Grade 10 | Component |
|
| Premium Dallorian Researched Component | Armstech | Grade 11 | Component |
|
| Premium Duranium Arms Assembly Component | Armstech | Grade 11 | Component |
|
| Prototype Dallorian Researched Component | Armstech | Grade 11 | Component |
|
| Prototype Duranium Arms Assembly Component | Armstech | Grade 11 | Component |
|
| Artifact Dallorian Researched Component | Armstech | Grade 11 | Component |
|
| Artifact Duranium Arms Assembly Component | Armstech | Grade 11 | Component |
|
If you’d like an easy to follow list of items to craft to level up Armstech efficiently, please visit TORCommunity’s Armstech Leveling Guide 1-700! I love this guide for leveling up fast.
What to do with crafted items while leveling crafting?
Apart from using them to craft finished items, there are two other things you can do with the Assembly Components you craft. The first is to Deconstruct it – this will break it down in to its parts, and you’ll receive back some of the materials you put in to crafting it. This is useful to recoup materials if you are trying to quickly level up your crew skills and don’t have lots of materials on hand.
The final thing you can do with it is sell it – Assembly Components usually sell for decent prices, as crafters can buy them to save time crafting specific items they want, and many types of Assembly Components are also used in high-stakes Conquest crafting. To sell crafted items to other players, you can go to the Fleet, and go to the Galactic Trade Market section of the map. Once there, right click the big green terminal, and then click in the search box.
SHIFT+LEFT CLICK on the item from your inventory that you want to sell, and then click the search button and sort by price with lowest to highest. This will give you an idea of what the item is selling for – if you want to keep things easy, you’ll price your item slightly lower than the lowest listed price per item. Once you are ready to sell your item to other players, right click it from your inventory with the GTN, the Galactic Trade Network open, and it will bring up the sell panel where you can set the price – don’t forget that if you have two to sell, you’ll want to double your listing price. Some items, like Assembly Components, are easy to sell, while other items, like finished lightsabers, may not have much demand. What sells well and what doesn’t fluctuates with the game’s updates and your server’s economy, and finding a niche to make credits in requires some research. For lower level Armstech crafting, players can look in to crafting and selling mainly Assembly Components or any weapons you can find a niche in.
What can Armstech Craft?
Now let’s cover some of the cool stuff you’ll be able to craft as you level up Armstech.
Armstechs primarily craft weapons for Bounty Hunter, Smuggler, Imperial Agents and Troopers including Blaster Pistols, Blaster Rifles, Sniper Rifles and Blaster Cannons, as well as the Vibroknife and Shotgun offhands. They can also craft barrels, which are an upgrade modification for modifiable blaster weapons.
You can get crafting schematics three different ways – straight from the Armstech crew skill trainer once you reach the correct level, from the GTN and some gathering skills like Investigation, and from reverse engineering items you have crafted.
Schematics from the Trainer
We’ll start with the easiest schematics, which come straight from the Armstech trainer as you level up your Armstech crew skill. If you want to see what’s coming up for schematics from the Armstech trainer, you can open the window where you buy new schematics, then choose “All” from the dropdown on the top right of the panel. By default, it will only show you ones that you can actually buy right now based on your Armstech level.
An important thing to know is that al weapon schematics that come from the trainer are not moddable. This means that you will not be able to upgrade them over time – so if you find one you like the look of, use it in the Outfit Designer!
Weapons from Schematics
There are also a few schematics available that aren’t from the trainer that allow you to craft moddable weapons. These Armstech schematics can be found as random rewards dropped from enemies, from gathering skills, and bought on the GTN from other players. The most common way to obtain these schematics is from the Underworld Trading crew skill, and players often sell them on the GTN.
Armstech Crafting
Armstech Schematics from Reverse Engineer
When you deconstruct an item you have crafted yourself, you may have a chance of learning an upgraded version of that schematic. You can see if an item has an upgraded version when you roll over it in your inventory with the deconstruct tool.
For some crafting skills, like Synthweavers and Armormechs, deconstructing an item can give you a different version of the item with a different look, and there are some cool hidden armors you can craft using reverse engineering.
Armstechs instead will simply receive upgraded versions of their hilts, weapons and augments. You can unlock these schematics if you want, but there’s not much reason to except for high-level equipment.
Decorations
All crew skills can also craft decorations. Armstechs, Armstechs, and Cybertechs can craft Industrial Decorations, including things like furniture, crates, and computer terminals. There are four different types of Industrial prefabs, and they become available at Armstech level 150, 300, 450, and 500.
There are also Universal Prefabs, which are a combination of an Industrial prefab, a Synthetic prefab which is created by Artificers, Synthweavers and Biochemists, a Fabricator Crystal and a Fabricator Design, the last two any crafting profession can craft. Universal Prefab decorations include all kinds of cool decorations like fountains, statues, walls, furniture, and useful items like cargo holds.
On top of that, there are also War Supply decorations, which are also a combination from multiple crafting professions, of which Armstech can contribute to. These include giant crystal formations, statues, and lots of other strange decos.
Lastly, all crafting professions can craft the expensive Dark Project decorations, which include ship decorations.
If you want to craft your own decorations, please visit my How to Craft Decorations guide.
| Icon | Material Name | Skill | Grade | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Dark Project MK-1 | Strongholds | Decorations |
| |
 | Fabricator Crystal MK-1 | Strongholds | Grade 1 | Decorations |
|
 | Fabricator Design MK-1 | Strongholds | Grade 1 | Decorations |
|
 | Industrial Prefab MK-1 | Strongholds | Grade 1 | Decorations |
|
 | Synthetic Prefab MK-1 | Strongholds | Grade 1 | Decorations |
|
 | Universal Prefab MK-1 | Strongholds | Grade 1 | Decorations |
|
| Fabricator Crystal MK-2 | Strongholds | Grade 2 | Decorations |
|
| Fabricator Design MK-2 | Strongholds | Grade 2 | Decorations |
|
| Industrial Prefab MK-2 | Strongholds | Grade 2 | Decorations |
|
| Synthetic Prefab MK-2 | Strongholds | Grade 2 | Decorations |
|
| Universal Prefab MK-2 | Strongholds | Grade 2 | Decorations |
|
| Fabricator Crystal MK-3 | Strongholds | Grade 3 | Decorations |
|
| Fabricator Design MK-3 | Strongholds | Grade 3 | Decorations |
|
| Industrial Prefab MK-3 | Strongholds | Grade 3 | Decorations |
|
| Synthetic Prefab MK-3 | Strongholds | Grade 3 | Decorations |
|
| Universal Prefab MK-3 | Strongholds | Grade 3 | Decorations |
|
| Fabricator Crystal MK-4 | Strongholds | Grade 4 | Decorations |
|
| Fabricator Design MK-4 | Strongholds | Grade 4 | Decorations |
|
| Industrial Prefab MK-4 | Strongholds | Grade 4 | Decorations |
|
| Synthetic Prefab MK-4 | Strongholds | Grade 4 | Decorations |
|
| Universal Prefab MK-4 | Strongholds | Grade 4 | Decorations |
|
High-Level Equipment
Unfortunately, at the current max-level of 80, there’s no way to craft level 80 gear. You will see a lot of level 75 gear available to craft from the previous expansion, but there’s not much reason to craft it.
Augments
Armstechs craft Augment Kits, Versatile Augments, Shield Augments, and Accuracy Augments or click here for the ridiculously expensive Superior 77 augments.
Questions or comments? Feel free to send me a message on Twitter 
Twitter @swtorista
Reddit /u/swtorista
Discord Swtorista#0153
Email swtorista@gmail.com
Twitch Swtorista
Patreon
