SWTOR Synthweaving Crafting Guide

Star Wars: The Old Republic has 6 different crafting skills you can choose from: Armormech, Artifice, Armstech, Synthweaving, Cybertech and Biochem. In this video, we’ll be going over how to start Synthweaving crafting, how to level up your Synthweaving crew skill and unlock more crafting schematics, and lastly, we’ll be going over some of the cool things you can craft with Synthweaving at higher levels.

Synthweaving Crafting Materials Guide

This Synthweaving materials guide is paired with this crafting guide.

Basics of Synthweaving 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 Synthweaving

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 Synthweaving as your crafting skill, speak to the Synthweaving 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 Synthweaving crafting are Underworld Trading and Archaeology, which allow you to gather the materials to craft Synthweaving items, so go speak to the Underworld Trading and Archaeology 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 Synthweaving on one character, and Archaeology on another and have them work together, for a total of four character per server. If you’re a former subscriber, you’ll have two crew skill slots available, and if you’re a subscriber you naturally have 3 crew skill slots unlocked per character, so you can take all three complementary crew skills, Archaeology, Underworld Trading and Synthweaving all on one character. The other major difference if you are not a subscriber  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 Synthweaving

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 Synthweaving trainer as you level up your crafting level.

You can click the Synthweaving icon from the crafting panel to open the crafting schematics window which shows everything you have available to craft – when you chose Synthweaving as a crew skill, you also received some basic schematics to help get you started, including some color crystals for your lightsaber, some low-level craftable equipment, and most importantly, something called a Bonded Attachment.

 Synthweaving icon

Your goal as an Synthweaver will be to craft basic items to level up your Synthweaving skill level, which will then unlock more schematics including color crystals, lightsabers, dyes for your armor, and equipment.

The most basic part of Synthweaving crafting will be crafting different types of Bonded Attachments.

Components
Rubat Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch Nextor Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch Opila Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch Firkrann Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch Damind Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch Upari Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch Carbonic Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch Ruusan Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch Gleaming Phond Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch Iridescent Bondar Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch Radiant Bondar Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch Premium Lustrous Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch Premium Syntex Synth Bonded Cloth material, from Patch Prototype Lustrous Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch Prototype Syntex Synth Bonded Cloth material, from Patch Artifact Lustrous Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch Artifact Syntex Synth Bonded Cloth material, from Patch

We’ll start by crafting a Rubat Synth Bonded Attachment, one of the default schematics you got when you chose Synthweaving, which once you click it will tell you it requires 2 Lost Artifact Fragments, 2 Fibrous Nylite Solutions and 2 Rubat Crystals to craft. So where do you get those crafting materials?

Since this is Synthweaving, the materials will likely come from either Archaeology or Underworld Trading, Synthweaving’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 Lost Artifacts fragments are listed as Grade 1 Artifact Fragments and the Rubat Crystals are Grade 1 Power Crystals.

The simplest way to get materials for your first item is to open up your Archaeology 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 bonded attachment schematic for Synthweaving, 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.

Bonded Attachments are the building blocks of Synthweaving crafting – while they’re pretty useless on their own, you can combine them with other materials to craft actual items. The most fun item to craft when you start Synthweaving is pieces of Shadowsilk armor, which requires two pieces of Shadowsilk from Underworld Trading, combined with two of the Rubat Synth Bonded Attachments we crafted earlier. You can craft your first piece of armor at Synthweaving level 1, and your first chestpiece at Synthweaving level 30. Crafting bonded attachments, then combining them with other materials, is how you craft almost every Synthweaving item in the game.

Where to Get Synthweaving Materials

There’s a lot of different ways to get materials for Synthweaving, including Color Crystals, Power Crystals and Artifact Fragments from Archaeology, and Luxury Fabrics from Underworld Trading.

Synthweaving Crafting Materials Guide


Synthweaving Leveling Guide

Now that you understand the basics of Synthweaving crafting, let’s cover how to level up your Synthweaving 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!

Bonded Attachments

When most players are levelling up, they focus on crafting Bonded Attachments whenever possible, even if the Bonded Attachment schematic has turned from orange to yellow to green. You can get a new Bonded Attachment schematic from the Synthweaving trainer roughly every 50 Synthweaving levels, and a sign that it’s time to go get a new bonded attachment schematic from the trainer is that your last bonded attachment 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:

IconMaterial NameSkillGradeTypeNotes
Rubat Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch 4.0.0Rubat Synth Bonded AttachmentSynthweavingGrade 1Component
  • Info: Synthweaving lvl 1
Nextor Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch 4.0.0Nextor Synth Bonded AttachmentSynthweavingGrade 2Component
  • Info: Synthweaving lvl 80
Opila Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch 4.0.0Opila Synth Bonded AttachmentSynthweavingGrade 3Component
  • Info: Synthweaving lvl 160
Firkrann Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch 4.0.0Firkrann Synth Bonded AttachmentSynthweavingGrade 4Component
  • Info: Synthweaving lvl 240
Damind Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch 4.0.0Damind Synth Bonded AttachmentSynthweavingGrade 5Component
  • Info: Synthweaving lvl 300
Upari Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch 4.0.0Upari Synth Bonded AttachmentSynthweavingGrade 6Component
  • Info: Synthweaving lvl 350
Carbonic Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch 4.0.0Carbonic Synth Bonded AttachmentSynthweavingGrade 7Component
  • Info: Synthweaving lvl 400
Ruusan Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch 4.0.0Ruusan Synth Bonded AttachmentSynthweavingGrade 8Component
  • Info: Synthweaving lvl 450
Gleaming Phond Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch 4.1.0Gleaming Phond Synth Bonded AttachmentSynthweavingGrade 9Component
  • Info: Synthweaving lvl 500
Iridescent Bondar Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch 5.0.0Iridescent Bondar Synth Bonded AttachmentSynthweavingGrade 10Component
  • Info: Synthweaving lvl 550
Radiant Bondar Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch 5.2.0Radiant Bondar Synth Bonded AttachmentSynthweavingGrade 10Component
  • Info: Synthweaving lvl 600
Premium Lustrous Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch 6.0.0Premium Lustrous Synth Bonded AttachmentSynthweavingGrade 11Component
  • Info: Synthweaving lvl 600
Premium Syntex Synth Bonded Cloth material, from Patch 6.0.0Premium Syntex Synth Bonded ClothSynthweavingGrade 11Component
  • Info: Synthweaving lvl 600
Prototype Lustrous Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch 6.0.0Prototype Lustrous Synth Bonded AttachmentSynthweavingGrade 11Component
  • Info: Synthweaving lvl 620
Prototype Syntex Synth Bonded Cloth material, from Patch 6.0.0Prototype Syntex Synth Bonded ClothSynthweavingGrade 11Component
  • Info: Synthweaving lvl 620
Artifact Lustrous Synth Bonded Attachment material, from Patch 6.0.0Artifact Lustrous Synth Bonded AttachmentSynthweavingGrade 11Component
  • Info: Synthweaving lvl 640
Artifact Syntex Synth Bonded Cloth material, from Patch 6.0.0Artifact Syntex Synth Bonded ClothSynthweavingGrade 11Component
  • Info: Synthweaving lvl 640

If you’d like an easy to follow list of items to craft to level up Synthweaving efficiently, please visit TORCommunity’s Synthweaving 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 Bonded Attachments 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 – Bonded Attachments usually sell for decent prices, as crafters can buy them to save time crafting specific items they want, and many types of Bonded Attachments 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 Bonded Attachments, 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 Synthweaving crafting, players can look in to crafting and selling mainly Bonded Attachments or visually appealing cosmetic armor sets.

What can Synthweaving Craft?

Now let’s cover some of the cool stuff you’ll be able to craft as you level up Synthweaving.

Synthweavers primarily craft armor sets for Jedi and for Sith. The main reason to craft them is for cosmetic reasons, as you can wear them in your Outfit Designer even if they’re technically meant for low-level characters, if you like the look. Some players also like to craft themselves armor to use as they level, with a new set waiting for them in their bank every few levels – this isn’t necessary, but can be fun to do.

You can get crafting schematics three different ways – straight from the Synthweaving crew skill trainer once you reach the correct level, from the GTN and some gathering skills like Underworld Trading, and from reverse engineering items you have crafted.

Armors from the Trainer

We’ll start with the easiest schematics, which come straight from the Synthweaving trainer as you level up your Synthweaving crew skill. If you want to see what’s coming up for schematics from the Synthweaving 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 Synthweaving level.


Armors from Schematics

There are also many schematics available that aren’t from the trainer. These Armormech 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.


Armors 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.


Decorations

All crew skills can also craft decorations. Synthweavers, Artificers and Biochemists can craft Synthetic Decorations, including things like temple lights and flowers, by crafting Synthetic Prefabs. There are four different types of Synthetic prefabs, and they become available at Synthweaving level 150, 300, 450, and 500.

There are also Universal Prefabs, which are a combination of a Synthetic prefab, an Industrial prefab which is created by Armtechs, Armormechs and Cybertechs, 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 Synthweaving 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.

IconMaterial NameSkillGradeTypeNotes
Dark Project MK-1 material, from Patch 2.9.0Dark Project MK-1StrongholdsDecorations
  • Used for: Dark Projects can be turned in for decorations crafting
  • Info: All crafting skills level 150
Fabricator Crystal MK-1 material, from Patch 2.9.0Fabricator Crystal MK-1StrongholdsGrade 1Decorations
  • Used for: Fabricator Crystals are only used to craft Universal Prefabs crafting
  • Info: All crafting skills level 150
Fabricator Design MK-1 material, from Patch 2.9.0Fabricator Design MK-1StrongholdsGrade 1Decorations
  • Used for: Fabricator Designs are only used to craft Universal Prefabs crafting
  • Info: All crafting skills level 150
Industrial Prefab MK-1 material, from Patch 2.9.0Industrial Prefab MK-1StrongholdsGrade 1Decorations
  • Used for: Industrial Prefabs can be turned in for decorations or used to craft Universal Prefabs crafting
  • Info: Armormech, Armstech and Cybertech level 150
Synthetic Prefab MK-1 material, from Patch 2.9.0Synthetic Prefab MK-1StrongholdsGrade 1Decorations
  • Used for: Synthetic Prefabs can be turned in for decorations or used to craft Universal Prefabs crafting
  • Info: Synthweavering, Artifice and Biochem level 150
Universal Prefab MK-1 material, from Patch 2.9.0Universal Prefab MK-1StrongholdsGrade 1Decorations
  • Used for: Universal Prefabs can be turned in for decorations crafting
  • Info: All crafting skills level 150
Fabricator Crystal MK-2 material, from Patch 2.9.0Fabricator Crystal MK-2StrongholdsGrade 2Decorations
  • Used for: Fabricator Crystals are only used to craft Universal Prefabs crafting
  • Info: All crafting skills level 300
Fabricator Design MK-2 material, from Patch 2.9.0Fabricator Design MK-2StrongholdsGrade 2Decorations
  • Used for: Fabricator Designs are only used to craft Universal Prefabs crafting
  • Info: All crafting skills level 300
Industrial Prefab MK-2 material, from Patch 2.9.0Industrial Prefab MK-2StrongholdsGrade 2Decorations
  • Used for: Industrial Prefabs can be turned in for decorations or used to craft Universal Prefabs crafting
  • Info: Armormech, Armstech and Cybertech level 300
Synthetic Prefab MK-2 material, from Patch 2.9.0Synthetic Prefab MK-2StrongholdsGrade 2Decorations
  • Used for: Synthetic Prefabs can be turned in for decorations or used to craft Universal Prefabs crafting
  • Info: Synthweavering, Artifice and Biochem level 300
Universal Prefab MK-2 material, from Patch 2.9.0Universal Prefab MK-2StrongholdsGrade 2Decorations
  • Used for: Universal Prefabs can be turned in for decorations crafting
  • Info: All crafting skills level 300
Fabricator Crystal MK-3 material, from Patch 2.9.0Fabricator Crystal MK-3StrongholdsGrade 3Decorations
  • Used for: Fabricator Crystals are only used to craft Universal Prefabs crafting
  • Info: All crafting skills level 450
Fabricator Design MK-3 material, from Patch 2.9.0Fabricator Design MK-3StrongholdsGrade 3Decorations
  • Used for: Fabricator Designs are only used to craft Universal Prefabs crafting
  • Info: All crafting skills level 450
Industrial Prefab MK-3 material, from Patch 2.9.0Industrial Prefab MK-3StrongholdsGrade 3Decorations
  • Used for: Industrial Prefabs can be turned in for decorations or used to craft Universal Prefabs crafting
  • Info: Armormech, Armstech and Cybertech level 450
Synthetic Prefab MK-3 material, from Patch 2.9.0Synthetic Prefab MK-3StrongholdsGrade 3Decorations
  • Used for: Synthetic Prefabs can be turned in for decorations or used to craft Universal Prefabs crafting
  • Info: Synthweavering, Artifice and Biochem level 450
Universal Prefab MK-3 material, from Patch 2.9.0Universal Prefab MK-3StrongholdsGrade 3Decorations
  • Used for: Universal Prefabs can be turned in for decorations crafting
  • Info: All crafting skills level 450
Fabricator Crystal MK-4 material, from Patch 5.9.2Fabricator Crystal MK-4StrongholdsGrade 4Decorations
  • Used for: Fabricator Crystals are only used to craft Universal Prefabs crafting
  • Info: All crafting skills level 500
Fabricator Design MK-4 material, from Patch 5.9.2Fabricator Design MK-4StrongholdsGrade 4Decorations
  • Used for: Fabricator Designs are only used to craft Universal Prefabs crafting
  • Info: All crafting skills level 500
Industrial Prefab MK-4 material, from Patch 5.9.2Industrial Prefab MK-4StrongholdsGrade 4Decorations
  • Used for: Industrial Prefabs MK-4 can only be used to craft Universal Prefabs crafting
  • Info: Armormech, Armstech and Cybertech level 500
Synthetic Prefab MK-4 material, from Patch 5.9.2Synthetic Prefab MK-4StrongholdsGrade 4Decorations
  • Used for: Synthetic Prefabs MK-4 can only be used to craft Universal Prefabs crafting
  • Info: Synthweavering, Artifice and Biochem level 500
Universal Prefab MK-4 material, from Patch 5.9.2Universal Prefab MK-4StrongholdsGrade 4Decorations
  • Used for: Universal Prefabs can be turned in for decorations crafting
  • Info: All crafting skills level 500

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

Synthweavers craft Augment Kits, Critical Augments, and Redoubt Augments or click here for the ridiculously expensive Superior 77 augments.

SWTOR Augments Guide