Battle Stance

After like 3 weeks of players raging Bioware finally managed to fix the Casino Event and that was the time for me to join it. Ain’t nobody got time to faff about with buggy events that are not so fun anyway.

Apparently I had taken part already in 2018 and had a few of the easy achievements already. By doing my dailies and weeklies for the last weeks I had amassed something like 12 Emperor chips (those for the bugged machines) and so I spent them, winning I don’t know how many Kingpin tokens and could get to play. I don’t actually like this slot machine stuff, I am like 0% susceptible to this type of gambling, so my goal (besides getting all the achievements) was to be able to spend all those damn chips and get rid of them in my currency tab, winning wasn’t so important as a short-term goal. By the way it works you have like a 50% chance to get your token back as a consolidation prize… But in the end I made it. Spent a few hours this weekend, usually parked between 2 Kingpin machines, reading something on the left monitor and clicking the 2 slot machines on the right screen. Not my kinda fun, really. But I made it and in the end I had like 112 Golden Certificates (you need 98 to buy all the achievement stuff, 1 Rancor, 1 Mercenary Contract, 2 Mounts, and 3 Decoration items) and I had a few spare for some more decoration. Nice. I still have like 200 Kingpin chips on some characters but I only need 1 or 2 Golden Certificates more for the one decoration I couldn’t afford and that would be nice to have. Apparently I’m just missing the Republic story line (might do later) and the secret achievement, bah.

In other news, the Guardian has still not reached 75, but I’m done with my 11 Conquests this week and my gear level is ~290 already despite buying a few of the expensive 3000 tech fragment pieces and only going random with the spares. All in all a successful week and still enjoying most of it, despite the casino grind.

I haven’t exactly kept track, but I think I have 3-4 characters just before Renown rank 20 now, the rest is 3-10. So the next goal is put a little time into the Guardian and I also need to do swoop racing once more this week.

Despite feeling a bit smashed (hope it’s not a cold…) the day off today lifted my spirits and while I didn’t manage to go out and meet some friends for a beer and barbecue at the riverside beach (because headache) I played some SWTOR and had fun again.

Got my 10th ex-70 toon to 75 just now (and the next two are 71 and 65) and as I was told repeatedly now I will probably actually focus on getting the iLevel higher by focusing on one toon (thanks Shintar and Pallais). Just not sure which one. I seem to be having more fun with Juggernaut and Commando than with the PowerTech currently. Also I noticed I missed Kai Zykken the last two weekends, but at least I got one piece today. I also re-examined all the guides I have (all from Vulkk, as Dulfy doesn’t post anymore), speced the last missing Combat Proficiency points (which I always forget), and finally cleaned out the bank a bit. I had to start a new toon (Togruta Sith Sorcerer) to make space, but I wanted to start a Sith Sorcerer and a Togruta anyway at some point… Having enough cartel market coins I also bought the Nautolan unlock (last one missing) and played around in the character creator. The 2 classes I’m still missing are Gunslinger and Vanguard, and both are supposed to be male. I guess I’ll go Nautolan for the Gunslinger and either Rattataki or Chiss for the Vanguard, but as I still have one boost I will hold this off. Maybe I’ll manage to play my Sniper to 50 and unlock Rattataki for the Vanguard so I can play around in the creator.

So many plans, always chasing the next thing, never finishing the important things… like getting gear. But as I don’t plan to raid or do master mode, maybe chasing gear isn’t actually important. After going pretty serious in EVE lately and still having my plan to raid in WoW’s Shadowlands, maybe not stressing out over SW:TOR and just enjoying the ride is the right thing to do anyway.

With the war in EVE having started and me being terrible at retelling such grand stories I’m gonna link to Wilhelm here, despite us being on the opposite sides of the war.

But back to SWTOR, I think I finished the Conquest on all 12 toons (who can keep track of that without a spreadsheet? Madness.) and right now it looks as if my guild will win first place on the planet we’re invading this week. I certainly did my part, although only on 6 chars.

I have 5 Level 75 characters now (Sage, Commando, Powertech, Mercenary, and as of today Juggernaut). Scoundrel is 73, Shadow is 71, Assassin is 71, Operative is 73, Sentinel is 73, Marauder is 66, and Guardian is 64. The latter 2 are doing the Rishi quest line currently, Sage and Powertech have finished Onderon (and the Swoop bike quests), and the 3 others were mostly leveled to 75 and not touched since. I’m alternating between the other toons and putting them through Ziost, CZ-198, Black Hole, sometimes Yavin 4, and to go do 2 missions on a random planet from time to time.

I also did the Star Fortresses for the 2nd time, on the Sage this time, spread over 4 days iirc. Boy do those get boring quickly. Also still missing a lot of the Paladins for the achievement, but I might be talked into a 3rd round soonish.

I’m not really seeing a lot of gear progression currently, got 2 sets of 268 for finishing the Onslaught story, then a few 270s drops and if I mix and match it’s a set of 274s with a few 272, despite wearing all the highest-level items every time I’ve been doing anything on a 75 char. Maybe easier to level the rest first and then think about gear. It’s not that I need it for anything.

Overall it’s been 2 weeks and I’m… content I guess. I’m having fun, I’m trying not to burn out and only play as long as I’m having fun (2 weeks of stay at home vacation, so no problem playing 2-3h each day). I’m not completely sold on “I WANT MORE” but right now I think I’ll at least stay for a 2nd month, let’s see how it looks in 2 weeks.

My actual main problem now is that I want a good transmog for my Republic main. This robe is the best thing I’ve found and I’ve been sporting it since October 2017 when I returned to the game after ~6 years and I didn’t wear my old Level 50 raiding gear anymore. I’m actually not beyond buying any set I like for up to 1500 cartel coins at this point, but I haven’t found the perfect one yet 🙁

When I left SWTOR a bit over a year ago I had 12 chars I was at least semi-actively playing. 6 on the Empire side and 6 on the Republic side. 10 of them were Level 60, 5 per side. Also all of the 4 base classes and one extra per faction, no duplicate extended classes.

The empire guild that I had joined in October 2018 had only kicked my alts but kept my main (which is perfectly fine if you ask me) and on day 2 I politely asked to invite some alts back and that was quickly fixed.

The main focus back then were Conquests and apparently the changes to Conquests did change a lot. We were usually grabbing the Large Yield planet without bigger problems, with group activities accounting for a sizable chunk of the Conquest XP per week, but also people reaching their personal goal on all alts. I do remember it was a bit of work to manage that if you weren’t actively playing that particular toon a lot that week.

So apparently this has changed and while I was really surprised how quick you manage to get your personal goal (30mins? per toon if you don’t know what you’re doing and coming back after a year, and if you spread the planets with quick weekly quests over a few days you can easily do 10 toons = 500-700k XP in 5h in a week I guess) and so another guild that’s bigger seems to be the top dog on our server now. We’re still number 2 – we’ll see how this evolves over the weekend and the coming weeks. But people can apparently solo a lot more and that’s when numbers count more than group content like operations. I don’t exactly remember how the rewards work and if we’ll get something next week if we’re number 2 on this planet and if this is still better than winning a Medium one. Whatever.

I think I finished Onslaught on my Sage today but I’m not sure if the follow-up quest is part of the expansion story line proper. I’m told to do Mek-Sha dailies now and wait, I guess. Also I met one of my missing companions but I’m not sure I have the Alliance Alert to recruit them again, as I read somewhere. I hope I didn’t miss that chance, I mean I didn’t kill them so it might work out in the end. Oh, and he’s 75 already.

I also finished Onderon on my Bounty Hunter and dinged 74 in the progress, so on to Mek-Sha on the weekend. 2 more toons dinged 71 while doing the Conquest, and 5 of the 6 others are close. As I’m not really sure if I should buckle up and do KotFE+KotET on all or even any of them (or do KotET on the Agent) and just jump to Onderon thereby getting the “default story” locked in. Do I really care on some alts? Do I care anyway? Missing companions would be the only thing I guess. I wasn’t such a fan of the linear movie-like experience that I’m keen on doing it a 4th time…

I suppose just getting to max level and then acquiring gear via Renown would still be possible, there is no good reason to do the story just for this set of green 268 gear you get.

Also looking at my old “goals” posts and see which of those are still current, I guess the clear current goals are:

• find out if I finished Onslaught on Sage
• finish Onslaught on Bounty Hunter
• finally find a good outfit for my Sage, seriously…
• get 9 chars to 75
• do the remaining 2-3 Conquests this week
• buy the new Alderaan Stronghold (also Umbara?)
• finish the 1000 kills achievements passively (i.e. have the correct companion out)
• ~7 warzone matches for M1-4X
• level Guardian
• level Juggernaut

Worst change this expansion so far: the small shield icon for Bound-to-Legacy gear is gone and I have no idea how I should keep track of my stuff in my bank tabs now.

I got persuaded to click a link to be referred as a returning player into… SWTOR! (as I’d been planning to)

Here are a few first impressions (I’d written about Onslaught very briefly in October).

My characters are a mess, needed an hour to log in all 12 and get just a quick overview. All but one of the 70s are at exactly 60% XP into Level 71 except for 1. That one was CL 300 and I see no difference. Really weird. the 2 5x are also exactly at 60% XP into the next level. Even weirder.

Edit a few hours later: It seems to reset to 70 + 0% when ingame for a while, so probably just a weird display bug.

As I remembered correctly, my Republic and Empire mains have finished KotFE+KotET, and one alt has finished KotFE. Everyone else has finished most of the story lines up to that part, except for Ilum (half of them), Oricon (a few them), and Iokath (only the 3 I think). I still have the “Use the Group Finder”, “Try Starfighter!” and “Join a Warzone!” quests on most of them.

Half of them are completely swamped with BoE Adaptive Gear, sorted by Slot. One has all Feet+Legs items, one all Headgears, etc.pp.

2 new Astromech pets, 4 decoration items, a title, and 4 useless unlocks times 12.

I had a lot more millions of ingame currency than I’d remembered. Apparently I just collect it and don’t spend it. I also have 3 Gold Cartel packs of Decorations, unopened, must have bought them just before leaving. I also have 5757 Cartel Coins to spend. Yay.

Half of the toons have no spec, half still have one. That’s gonna be fun.

Wanted to start the Onslaught quest line, but I couldn’t find it. Fleet. Ship. Ossus. And then again all of those. I could finish the “Hearts and Minds” quest on Odessen, but then nothing. Then I went to bed.

This morning I did a complete run around Ossus, doing 11 dailies and fulfilling my weekly Conquest goal but the XP bar stopped at 99%. Researched some more.

Apparently I am a “subscriber”, but not a “subscriber”, so until I pay I will not get Onslaught.

Goddammit, Bioware, this (paying for new content) is completely fine if you message this correctly and not let me search for the breadcrumb quest for an hour and then block me from progressing at 99% of the XP. Had I not gotten any XP at 70.0% I would’ve noticed it. I had planned to pay anyway, but because I don’t know if I would waste these 7 days now I’m probably gonna wait – good job! I even got the “You’re a subscriber!” popup when I logged in and on the account management page I also have 6 days left. How poorly can you name this?

Anyway, weekly Conquest resets in 6h, so I’m gonna do something else before starting to go to 70.99 on the army of alts tonight. And maybe I’ll find out if I won’t waste these 6 days so I can subscribe sooner than next week.