SW:TOR

I managed to raid

Phew, an exciting week!
I was lucky and a spot opened up in my new guild’s newbie raid, so I got to do Story Mode Terror From Beyond and then Veteran Eternity Vault yesterday. So January 22th 2012 to November 12th 2018 that’s… nearly 6 years and 10 months. Also apparently we really did Nightmare mode back then, according to my achievements – it’s just puzzling that I didn’t have the Veteran 8 man clear achievements (only Normal), but those “Archived” ones show “Master mode”, i.e. old Nightmare mode. It’s weird.
Got some nice drops, so I’m at Item Rating 246 now – the first pieces not from Command Chests. It also was really fun, raiding for the first time since 4.5 years? I guess I stopped with WoW raids in early 2014. Wasn’t particularly challenging, though – the whole team being quite well equipped, everyone except me kinda knowing what to do, and then it was only SM and VM, not really hard – I mean we 7 manned Veteran EV, and one DPS was in tanking gear, that’s why needed 2 tries on the first 2 bosses. I died more than most others, but I wasn’t always in last place (from 3/4 DPS), so I’m really happy with the result. I’m not hooked again and want to RAID RAID RAID again soon, but I’d love to see all the Operations and I guess Veteran would be doable, even if I was capable I’m absolutely not keen on regular Master mode raiding 😛
I just need to read up on my rotations, on stationary fights I was overheating all the time and thus DPS suffered.
Also managed to finish the Conquest on three chars again, for a total contribution of roughly 60k.
All in all the “be in a guild again” is a really cool experience – having people to chat, and it’s low key right now without mandatory attendance and I can do a little to contribute (helping to conquer a planet, just helped someone with a fight in a Veteran chapter) and I’m getting rewards (for the planet conquest) and the opportunity to go on a raid. I guess that sounded a bit exploitative, but I don’t see taking something from anyone – I didn’t join for phat loots, so I see it as a win-win.
PS: I totally went through this post again and replaced “Heroic” with “Veteran” – I hate this change.

  • Normal Mode – Story Mode
  • Heroic Mode – Veteran Mode
  • Nightmare Mode – Master Mode

PPS: Cheers to Archarius of Tulak Hord who wanted to get the “50 people in the Stronghold achievement” and asked in General while promising 5m – and actually handed it out to a long queue of people 🙂

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A busy week in SWTOR

Due to having a few days off I actually got some stuff done, which was really nice – I love goals and milestones 🙂
Both my Sage and Juggernaut finally got to Archaeology 600 – apparently the easiest way is to harvest on Iokath until 580 and then just do 5-6 missions. All the guides I found online said you’d be able to harvest until 600, but at least I didn’t manage to do that. Anyway, 6 Level 10 missions isn’t too much money – so I got all Crew Skills at 600 now – that’s a big goal ticked off the list.
I also managed to finally hit 100% “companion completion” on Smuggler and Consular, after dragging Guss Tuno and Felix Iresso through some content for 1000 kills. Iresso was especially hard as I had already started KotFE on my Sage, so I had to actually use my Shadow for that. So she’s 60 now and is in the Manaan story arc.
The Rakghoul Conquest is kinda nice, especially if you’re not strictly soloing anymore, so I have finished the Conquest goal three times and I guess in total I am at like 65k.
As I joined a guild I’m now focusing a bit more on my Empire toons, that means I’ve diverted all Bonus CXP packs to my Juggernaut (who is at 194) and making that my #1 active character right now, and demoted the Scoundrel (who is 195). Juggernaut is more fun to play anyway. The aforementioned third conquest character is my Operative, who I don’t really enjoy playing (but also not less than the Scoundrel) is my only Empire character at 70 capable of healing – so I’m gonna invest a little time now and respec healing to try that out.
I also motivated myself to work on Datacron completion, finishing Imperial Balmorra, Makeb, Quest, and Ord Mantell. That leaves me missing Corellia, Fleet, Rishi, and all but one on Taris (both sides) – so 60 found and 18 missing. I remember trying Corellia already and giving up. Some of those jumping puzzles are really horrible (like that one on Makeb, where I think I needed 1h for one).
I wasn’t as happy with the Rishi Stronghold as I had originally thought, so I ripped everything (well, wasn’t so much yet to be fair) out and migrated my army of alts to my Nar Shaddaa stronghold and started remodeling parts of it.
And I cleaned out some bank space, selling off all those duplicate identically looking pieces of armor and weapons…
Finally I started on the Macrobinoculars quest chain, but only got Dromund Kaas done so far.

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Some progress

First of all: yes, I did it. While I had finished most weekly quests on Thursday already I somehow managed to get Iokath and a few other things done and got my 2nd Command 300 on Saturday. Taking advantage of that sweet +25% XP boost I could finally start the weekly quest run on my Juggernaut and Scoundrel, they’re at 158/164 now.
I’m also mostly done with my weekly Conquest, though I do have to finish it tomorrow. Part of that was Kuat Drive Yards, which I did solo. Wasn’t too hard but I was kinda glad Mako is Level 36 and not 20 anymore, like a few weeks ago. My DPS is high enough to get rid of everything but the last boss kinda quickly, that one took quite a while…
I kinda ran out of podcasts right now, so I’ve used Netflix in the first time in months. Not sure it was a good idea, I caught up on quite some “I wanted to see them, but I wasn’t really excited in the first place” movies.

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I joined a guild

So the three day WoW trial is up, I logged in maybe 4 times but didn’t do anything worth mentioning besides what I already wrote. Let’s see if 8.1 pulls me back in.
On to more exciting news. I’ve made the conscious decision to stay in SWTOR for the moment (and why wouldn’t I? I’m having fun.) and I’m a lot more excited about 5.10 (without a release date more exact than “probably December”) than BfA which is out now. So I looked around on my server and have now joined an Empire guild, my first foray into socializing since 2014 I guess. We’ll see how that works out. Maybe I get to do some Operations again.
Anyway, right now I’m desperately trying to get my Sage to 300 to get the 25% Command XP bonus, but right now I’m stuck at 286 and already did most of the weeklies, only Iokath (planned for tomorrow) and Makeb (ugh, nope) left. I really want to get it done this week, not next week, so maybe some more planet daily sets…

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Not so much stuff happened

Although I was kinda busy and afk this weekend I somehow still managed to play a lot this week. Maybe too much, as I’m a bit bummed out and done with it right now – but maybe it’s something different. It’s double XP week and so I spent every minute of my available gaming time pushing for Command XP – I think I did the Ziost weekly 5x, Black Hole 5x, Yavin 4 4x, Section X and Oricon once… and CZ-198 dailies for like 8-9 times (because of the Conquest), including 5 weeklies. As I’m trying to get my Sage to 300 I also did several Planet Daily Heroic quests several times – usually Coruscant, Corellia, and Nar Shaddaa (because I’m already a bit sick of Voss :P). But the problem is… I kind of ran out of “easy XP” things to do already. No more weeklies, not many fun dailies. I know, it’s kinda normal to have some daily/weekly cap and I’m pretty glad I managed to get to 237 from last week’s ~173 – but I would have played the other alts a lot less and this toon more if the game had let me (while still keeping the sense of progressing). So yeah, first world problems, running with a Command boost in double XP week, gaining 70 Command levels in a week and still complaining. Just that I also managed 30ish levels on the Scoundrel, 20 each on Juggernaut and Commando and still had enough time to get roughly 10 chests on my 300 Bounty Hunter and also finish the traitor story line. And I don’t think I really played a lot this week…
I’m glad I finally finished the traitor story arc, so now the only stuff I haven’t ever seen ingame are some of the flash points in solo mode. I can live with that, but I might still try to catch up on a few of them. Mad props for Bioware how they managed to completely not spoil any of the story in Nathema when you run it as a group. Been in there twice already and had ZERO clue what would happen in story mode, I was properly surprised. Well done. On the other hand the Nathema FP was kinda “wtf is this” before. Get in, kill stuff, done 😛
I still haven’t tried to contact any guild this week because a) none of them stood out in any way and b) I think I made up my mind about WoW now. I’ll definitely get it, I’m just not sure when. Last week I postponed it because of uncertainty. This week I postponed it because of Double XP. Let’s see next week.

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More crafting, so much crafting…

As I had to buy some mats on the GTN anyway, I also made the push for 600 Artificer with those Arch mats. This frees up a HUGE chunk of inventory space, although again I failed to properly inventorize and had 2 dupes. This is the Juggernaut.

Then I went ahead and pushed Armstech on my Sith Assassin to 550 (not pictured) and then went on to complete everything on my Smuggler. That’s 3 more Crew Skills at 600, but not so much bank space reclaimed this time via Command Crate Cybertech schematics (no dupes this time, yay):

So that’s nice, a 2nd character with 3x 600 – the Sage needs 20 points in Archaeology which I should be able to gather while leveling in KotET.

Which means there’s only 3 left: Armormech, Armstech (both 550), and Archaeology (580). Phew.
Nothing else exciting happened, except that I’m also trying to get this week’s Conquest done on the Smuggler (at 9k after 2 days) and get some Conquest levels on Sage (now at 200) and Smuggler (now 140). Having concrete goals helps me a great ton.
Oh and this ingame mail was hilarious:

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Some progress with crafting and KotET

I finally managed to get to 600 Synthweaving today. Hey, it’s only been nearly 7 years, ok?

Yes, I might have been collecting patterns from Command Crates on all toons… There’s even one missing and apparently I suck at bookkeeping because 2 of those were indeed dupes. Ah well, not too bad.
I also managed to finish the first 3 chapters of KotET on my Sage and will try to progress slowly but steadily, one or two at a time, mostly to get it done and to get Iresso back, supposedly after Chapter 9. We’ll see how I like it, those 3 were mixed so far, but this time I’ll keep short notes and post a summary afterwards. Also did Crisis on Umbara for the first time (Solo Story Mode) – cool FP.

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Kind of back on track

I’m back and didn’t have a lot of plans this weekend so some gaming was achieved!
Did a few weeklies, working on getting more toons towards Command Level 300. The Sage is now 173, the Scoundrel 111, and the Juggernaut 77. The Scoundrel still feels very weak. Even Black Hole takes a while and I usually get help for Section X. Maybe the class just doesn’t suit me very well, or I should try another spec, it’s probably not the gear (230 Item Rating). I also finished my Conquest for the week, Rakghoul Resurgence on Alderaan, done by the Juggernaut. All in all not bad for a few days with a lot of breaks.
I’m still pondering if I should get WoW’s BfA expansion. Before I went away I was 100% hyped on SWTOR and 75% hyped on WoW, and now I’m kinda.. I don’t know? SWTOR is fun, but I don’t feel the urge to play 12h per day right now – and I’m torn on WoW. My SWTOR sub expires on the 15th, so until I need a decision. I just know I won’t really play 2 MMOs at the same time, so unsubbing makes sense, and if WoW is not soo awesome I can just resub. Or I’ll focus on one character in SWTOR and keep the sub… Decisions, decisions!

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Conquest fails and the end of an experiment

So, today is day 59 of daily posting and tomorrow’s might be the last one for a while, as I’m leaving for a 2 week trip tomorrow where I don’t know if time, energy and wifi will be readily available. No high hopes, but we’ll see.
This time I only prepared one post for tomorrow and only because at least it makes it 60 days, damn those love of round numbers, it was actually planned for today 😛
Just had an oddity in Conquests. I wrote I finished twice on my BH this week, but maybe I was wrong and only planned to do it. I looked at the counter today and it sat at 27.xxx of 30.000. So I quickly hopped over to Yavin 4 to do some RAMPAGE. Apparently I had done the dailies on a non-conquest character (getting complicated yet?) so my counter for Rampage III was at 94/150. So I killed a few mobs and it showed me the popup for Rampage I (yes, I, not II, sadly was too confused to screenshot) and at some point I got the popup for Rampage II, but the chat said +300 CXP which again matches Rampage III. I also didn’t get the Conquest rewards again, but apparently I just failed to read swtorista’s guide correctly. It says “You can complete your personal goal on as many characters as you want!” and not “as many times as you want”. Ah well, it’s not as if I went out of my way to get to 30.000 instead of 15.000, wouldn’t even say “bummer”. * shrug* I blame the multitude of days with strong headache in the last two weeks, no wonder you make these mistakes if you can’t really concentrate.

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Observation: Mission success

What I started less than a week ago came to a conclusion today.

HK-51 <Your Companion>

I have a HK-51 companion, which is pretty awesome. What’s not so awesome is that two of the associated Achievements seem to be bugged, “General Crew” (Treek and HK-51) and “The Gang’s All Here” (all companions for all 8 classes, plus those 2) under Starfighter -> Crew. Wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t set my eye on that “Wing Commander” title. Ah well, didn’t find a lot on the web, so I made a ticket. No high hopes I’ll get an answer soon, but we’ll see.
So the list of missing companions is getting shorter, but maybe this already was the end of the line for the companion achievements. I can’t get Nico Okarr, I can’t play the HK-55 bonus chapter afaik, and the “Continuing Comfort” weekly seems horrible, doing it 10 times sounds completely nuts (Update: see comments, it doesn’t seem to be so bad if you have a few gathering crew skills at 500+ available). I’m not counting the creature and droid companions bought ingame or via the cartel market.
I also tuned the spec of my Ruffian Scoundrel (with this guide) because she felt kinda weak, for a DPS spec with 230 gear. Surely a L2P issue, but I guess some stuff in the spec/rotation are easier fixes than suddenly becoming good. Did an hour’s worth of dailies (Ziost, CZ-198, Black Hole, Yavin 4) and it seemed to go a little smoother. CL 94 is also nice.

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