Making the Most Money While Leveling
Many players wonder what the best money making Crew Skills are while leveling up, that's exactly the information this guide is here to provide you with! While leveling in Swtor the professions you will want to have for making the absolute most amount of money are Slicing, Treasure Hunting and Underworld Trading. Slicing and Treasure Hunting you will want to run the Lockbox Missions only. Also you will want to start by only running these two Crew Skills until you get more Companions. Always send all available Companions (aside from the ones you are using) out on missions.
I normally start with Treasure Hunting as the Lockboxes it gives can yield green items and before you know it as you level up Treasure Hunting you will start getting level 50 Lockboxes which contain green items that vendor for 1 - 3k credits each! Also you'll get blue level 50 items that you can sell on the Auction House for a pretty penny. By level 30 with primarily running Treasure Hunting missions I was able to amass 800,000 credits! Once I leveled up a bit more to level 40 I was at about 1.5mil from running Treasure Hunting and Slicing missions at that point.
Above level 40 I switched to running a lot of Underworld Trading Missions. I only ran the Companion Gift missions and gave all of the gifts to my current Companions as a higher affection level increases the speed of which they run missions, the chance of them not failing missions and I am fairly certain increases their crit chance. Once your Crew Skills are all maxed I recommend running the 2 Slicing Missions that yield Lockboxes, any Treasure Hunting Missions that yield Lockboxes and any Treasure Hunting Missions that yield Metals. They will be your highest profitable missions.
NOTE: The Good thing about Treasure Hunting and Slicing is they don't rely on the Auction House at all to make Credits as the contents of the Treasure Hunting Lockboxes you'll vendor and the Slicing ones yield credits and an occasional mission which the 300 and 340 ones you WILL want to sell.
Since it would take forever to go over each of the items that each of the Crew Skills can yield I am just going to go over the Grade 6 items. Here is a list of the Underworld Trading and Slicing yields followed by the Treasure Hunting yields down towards the bottom.
Slicing & Underworld Trading
Underworld Trading
This will be your highest grossing item since it is the most common metal and is also used in both Synthweaving and Armormech which are the two main armor making Tradeskills for Heavy armor. Be sure to up the price on Ciridium than what the Auction House originally prices it at, it's worth a helluva lot more than what the base price is. I can usually get 2k per bar for this stuff which is awesome considering how common it can be.
You will only get this metal from unlocked missions or from critting normal yield metal missions. As you could imagine Mandalorian Iron sells for a ton but it depends a lot on your server. If people aren't running that many heroics then this won't sell at all on your server but if there is a lot of high levels Mandalorian Iron will be a better grossing item than Ciridium. Depending on the day I can normally get 3k or 4k credits per Mandalorian Iron.
This is the epic silk used in making a lot of the level 50 gear. This doesn't sell as well as the Mandalorian Iron does nor does it sell for as much as the Mandlalorian Iron... but it does sell, you just have to be patient. The price and frequency of how this item will sell entirely depends on how many Jedi's that use Light Armor are on your server. I can usually get 2k per Denebrillan Star Silk depending on the day.
Nanosilk I have a difficult time trying to sell, I don't know what it is but I can barely sell it for the base price the Auction House recommends you put it up for.
Underworld Trading will be your highest grossing crew skill of the two just because it's money is reliable. The main item netting you money with it at the minute is Ciridium and when you run a mission that rewards metal, you're going to get this item; unless of course you fail. With Slicing in order to see real income you're going to need to get epic crafting missions.
Slicing
Now Slicing will give you your money back with pretty much every mission through the lockboxes but you will see some serious bonus cash from the Mission Discovery Items that you get through Slicing. Below is a list of all the Mission Discovery items that you can expect to get as well as a little bit of information about them such as sell price and frequency
This is an extremely common mission that you get through Slicing and is almost entirely useless since it is only used in Armstech. Not saying Armstech or Investigation are useless but they aren't nearly as popular as other Crew Skills. I have trouble selling these missions for below the listing price. Currently I am just stockpiling them up for something to happen in the future and their prices to skyrocket.
These missions are fairly rare and sell for a good amount when you do get one. I usually can sell an Archaeology mission for 8 - 9k depending on the day.
These missions are much like the Archaeology ones, I can normally grab 8 - 9k each depending on the day.
Some servers are reporting that this doesn't sell that well at all, it may vary depending on your server as do tons of other missions. That is why it is important to always CHECK the Auction House before listing an item.
Mission Discovery: Diplomacy (Dark)
These missions are much like the Investigation ones, you'll be lucky to get your listing price for each one.
Some servers are reporting that these actually do sell well, (or at least the Rank 6 materials they bring in do) so they may be worth using depending on your server. As with everything it is important you always check the Auction House before listing items, prices vary from server to server and from day to day. It's impossible to always be 100% accurate with a guide.
Mission Discovery: Diplomacy (Light)
These missions are much like the Investigation ones, you'll be lucky to get your listing price for each one.
Some servers are reporting that these actually do sell well, (or at least the Rank 6 materials they bring in do) so they may be worth using depending on your server. As with everything it is important you always check the Auction House before listing items, prices vary from server to server and from day to day. It's impossible to always be 100% accurate with a guide.
These are the best selling of the gathering Crew Skill missions usually bringing in at least 12 to 13k per sale.
This is a tough one because sometimes you can get up to 30k for a Slicing Mission Discovery on the Auction House and sometimes learning the mission is better. I personally learn them and use them because I want a better shot at getting Underworld Trading missions to use or Treasure Hunting missions to sell. It's a massive gamble though, one many may not want to take.
This will be the highest selling mission you can get (unless you sell the Underworld Trading missions, which I don't recommend doing). You can get anywhere from 17 to 23k per mission and maybe sometimes even more depending on how much in demand they are on your server.
This will be the highest selling mission you can get (unless you sell the Underworld Trading missions, which I don't recommend doing). You can get anywhere from 17 to 23k per mission and maybe sometimes even more depending on how much in demand they are on your server.
This will be your highest grossing mission with this guide, it gives you every single item you could possibly want to sell from Underworld Trading. I strongly recommend learning this mission and running it because you will get much more from doing it this way than you would from selling it. On the same note, every time you go to the Auction House if you see this mission listed for under 10k (sometimes people put them up for their base price of 4k!!) buy it out and use it immediately.
This will be your highest grossing mission with this guide, it gives you every single item you could possibly want to sell from Underworld Trading. I strongly recommend learning this mission and running it because you will get much more from doing it this way than you would from selling it. On the same note, every time you go to the Auction House if you see this mission listed for under 10k (sometimes people put them up for their base price of 4k!!) buy it out and use it immediately.
Treasure Hunting
You will want to take the Lockboxes that you get via Treasure Hunting and open them up. Grab the credits out of them and a lot of the times you will get a green item. Just vendor the green items that you get but if you happen to get a blue item put that on the Auction House for whatever price the Auction House suggests.
Using this guide and keeping Companions out on missions at all times and also sending all of your Companions out on missions when you're going afk for an extended period of time or going to sleep for the night will make you the most money while leveling.
Best of luck!