The Fanatical Swordsman

Well, today is Tax Day in the United States, so I figured what better way is there to celebrate the government taking our money than to tell everyone on the internet how I make money in SWTOR. Now that I don’t play SWTOR anymore hardcore (even though I am tempted to go back for Season 2 Ranked PvP), I feel like it is safe to risk killing the market that I used to use to make money in SWTOR. People may hate me for this. Some of you, those of you who aren’t in the know, will love me.

I will say that I am not the first to figure this method out, nor am I the only one using it. It is a very popular method of making money in any game. You see, I don’t sell crafted items, and I don’t sell gathered materials. I sell intermediate materials.

Specifically, I sell MK-9 Augmentation Slot Components. These suckers are a gold mine. Why? Because they have an insanely high profit margin.

First, let me prove why these are really good deals.

Making them

To make these guys, you need to reverse engineer items from the crafting skills in the game. All crafting skills have access to recipes that can produce the MK-9 Components on an RE.

Some examples of these are Armormech’s Powered Nano-Tech Gauntlets, Cybertech’s Advanced Closed Circuit Energy Chip, and Biochem’s Experimental Awareness Monitor. Basically, it has to be level 54, use the tier 9 mats, be green-quality (for your bottom line’s sake, blues and purples work too), and be equippable. That last one is very important. You can’t RE mods or stims and get these components. They have to be able to be equipped in one of the 14 gear slots on your character.

Here is a summary chart of the mats required for each of these skills’ variations. The first column tells you what level 54 item to make, the second column gives you an idea of what components you need, the third column gives you the gathering skill (in case you forgot), and the fourth column gives you the rough price per unit of making the item (an average of my adventures in the GTN and gathering missions).

* not sufficient data to get a very good number
** Thanks to Tom in the comments for this!

Now what do they sell for?

Selling them

I get between 6,000 and 7,600 credits for each MK-9 Component. To get on the high end of this scale, there are a few conditions that I try to meet.

Always post on the GTN on Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning, USA time. This is for two reasons.

First, all of the auctions that were placed during the weekend expire around this time. The weekend is flooded with auctions, driving the price downwards. Once all of those auctions expire, the price returns to higher levels. You can help this process along, if you see the time-remaining on all of the other auctions is low. Just go ahead and post a single stack at your normally expected high number. Even if that stack doesn’t sell, when the other auctions expire, other people trying to undercut your auction will post close to it, making you the standard of what that item will go for. Then you can undercut them with several stacks and profit.

Second, because Wednesday and Tuesday are right after patch night (Monday night), people are usually getting on to try new things, maybe buy new armor off of the Cartel Market. They need augment slots, they are out of components. Your stacks are purchased off the GTN.

Run Rich-quality Scavenging, Archaeology, and Bioanalysis missions if you can. They are the best return on your money, and they return the most materials anyway. Unless you need to make a boatload of cash fast, don’t ever run anything below Bountiful. Abundant missions are almost as much to run as Bountiful, and they return half as many materials.

Max out your companion crit chance. Nothing helps your bottom line and your profit margin like extra materials. For more information on this, check this section of my old crafting guide.

Sell in stacks of 10. Just 10. No more, no less. Why? Because that is exactly how many MK-9 Components are needed to make MK-9 Augmentation Kits. This makes it convenient for people to get exactly what they want, because they usually want to make just the one kit. Sell too many, even at a better price per unit, and they may pass it over because they are short-sighted and think they only need one stack of 10 for the kit they are needing. Sell too few, and they might skip over you to get the convenience of not clicking more than once (lazy jerks).

Profit margin is king

A stack of 10 MK-9 Components costs me about 30k to make on my Armormech/Cybertech characters, and then I turn around and sell them for about 70k. That is a 40k profit margin. That is really, really good for this game. Most items you are lucky to break even.

Now you might ask, why not make and sell the MK-9 Augmentation Kits themselves. Well, because of supply and demand, that’s why. Most people are actually doing this, so the prices on them have dropped. They only sell for about 50k. Given that you are spending anywhere from 30k-40k on the MK-9 Components (probably buying them from savvy people like us), and then another ~12500 on the other materials, you are only just breaking even, if that.

I would ask you if you had any great money-making tips, but frankly, keep them to yourself and profit. I wouldn’t be blowing this info if I planned on seriously playing this game again. I will be back for story updates, but my hardcore SWTOR days are over for a while…and the markets are fickle anyway!

Good luck and many profits to you!