SW:TOR

Today I finished the second-to-last SWTOR expansion, Knights of the Fallen Empire (KotFE) for the second time. Sadly I didn’t write down when I finished it for the first time, but according to this post, it was probably the first week of January 2018. That said, while I liked it the first time, I have to say I’m not that impressed anymore. Spoilers ahead, but it’s been nearly 3 years.

• Losing all your companions suck, plain and simple
• I don’t like that you can’t meaningfully interrupt your play session during a chapter, but at least they’re reasonably short
• It’s too much on rails. Do this, do that. Sure, the original planet quest lines are also mostly linear, but it’s an open world and I can choose to stop after every non-instanced step
• Somehow I didn’t mind doing Makeb 5 times in a row, but repeating this after just 9 months was already a bit meh.

Also apparently I can’t screenshot during cutscenes anymore, missed ome of the more funny parts. But of course there’s YouTube.

• Can I have your stuff? (YouTube)
• Vette and Spewie (YouTube)
• Did you really just say that? (YouTube)
• Dretcher’s mail (local image)

So all in all, it’s not bad but I like it a lot less than the classic story line, or Makeb, or Yavin 4, or (of course, as it’s my favorite) Rishi. Except Chapter 13 (the heist) – this is hands down the best chapter of all, and one of my favorite moments in the whole game (story-wise, the gameplay isn’t too exciting).
Maybe I’m a bit unfair here though, I definitely had more problems on my first playthrough with a fresh 70 than now with a toon in 230 gear. So maybe it feels less “on rails” and is a bit more challenge than “oh, mob group, 2x force quake, done”. But I deliberately didn’t play on Veteran mode because I mostly wanted to get it done on a second char, and seeing if there are any differences between Empire and Republic (I didn’t see any).
I guess there are more things where I’m a little unfair in general:

• The alliance base on Odessen is actually pretty cool
• I like the “give 10 resources to some NPCs and get legacy-bound armor”
• I like collecting companions

But I think it hasn’t aged well in regards to outleveling it. Sure, you could always just level to 70 and ignore everything after Corellia (assuming you want all of your default companions and do your class story, I surely do). But I think you can even better ignore everything after Ziost, that’s a really handy daily zone to unlock, but KotFE/KotET only bring you new companions, but in turn may take some away. That said, content in older expansions in games like WoW is also meaningless and you’d probably skip it if you hadn’t (until BfA) needed to kinda level there to get to max level anyway unless you only ran dungeons, which I think is more the exception than the norm. Anyway, I don’t hate it but I was a little let down.
But I’m also kind of a completionist (mostly for achievements), so there’s a few TODOs, just not sure if I will do the “refuse” ones now or on a less important toon.

• Play 20 matches to recruit M1-4X
• Complete the 2 Blizz achievements I missed on the first time
• Reject Sgt. Rusk
• Reject Broonmark
• Reject Xalek
• Reject Skadge
• Reject Dr. Lokin

In other news, the current Conquest (Revenge of the Revanites) seems to be a really easy one, as I managed to complete it twice on the BH and once on the Sage. Too bad there’s actually 6 more characters, who all still have their “do a conquest” quest.

I recently saw an interesting topic on r/swtor about ranking your companions, especially the starting companions.
So here’s a list of the eight starting companions:
Khem Val, Vette, Mako, Kira Carsen (T7), Aric Jorgan, Qyzen Fess, Corso Riggs, Kaliyo Djannis.
Which one do I dislike most?
That’s kind of easy (and reddit also seemed to agree mostly), it’s Corso. Whiny, annoying, kind of a redneck. I even had to take him as a romance for lack of options :/
But this brings me a more interesting list. Which companions (overall) do I like or dislike?
Favorite companions (starting with most liked)

• Trooper: Aric Jorgan, Tanno Vik (somehow fun), Elara Dorne, M1-4X (funny lines)
• Smuggler: Risha (awesome), Akaavi Spar (kinda awesome), Bowdaar (kinda ok)
• Jedi Knight: Kira (not sure why), Lord Scourge (ok)
• Jedi Consular: Nadia (fun), Qyzen (earnest, but ok), Holiday (and Tharan)
• Bounty Hunter: Mako (awesome), Gault Rennow (good interaction)
• Sith Warrior: Vette, Dark Side Jaesa Willsaam (weird but good)
• Sith Inquisitor: Khem Val, Andronikos Revel, Talos Drellik (quirky)
• Imperial Agent: Kaliyo (chaotic), SCORPIO (evil)

 
Worst companions (starting with least liked)

• Trooper: Yuun (too weird, but he’s actually mediocre, or ok. not bad)
• Smuggler: Corso, Guss (reminds me of Jar Jar)
• Jedi Knight: Rusk (too bland), T7 (too beepy), Doc (too smarmy)
• Jedi Consular: Felix Iresso (too bland), Zenith (sentences too short, not that that bad tho)
• Bounty Hunter: Skadge (annoying)
• Sith Warrior: Broonmark (annoying), Malavai Quinn (too uptight, not really bad)
• Sith Inquisitor: Xalek (not sure why)
• Imperial Agent: Doctor Lokin (boring), Ensign Temple (unremarkable), Vector (long-winded)

Overall best companions? Consular, Smuggler, BH, Inquisitor (not in order)
Worst overall companions? Jedi Knight (only Kira rocks), Trooper (somehow none of them is awesome)

So I made it and kinda forgot the screenshot, bah. My Bounty Hunter is CL 300 and I could finally buy that sweet +25% Command XP buff for 2m credits. Then I continued by doing all the weeklies and then Oricon (yay, first time there I guess. Or maybe second time, but I couldn’t remember anything… I don’t like it, it reminds me of… Felwood? Eastern Plaguelands? Meh.) on my Sage, which resulted in Command 134. But no, I’m not desperately rushing him towards 300 as well – just trying to finish the Conquest a 2nd time this week. My sub will renew on the 15th and I thought about letting it lapse now, not being there for 2 weeks and planning to buy BfA when I’m back, but I’ve not decided yet. I’ll probably want to play on the weekend after the 15th…
So, how does it look now for the 4 mirror classes and the potential 4x +25% CXP boosts?

• Bounty Hunter/Trooper – BH at 300, Commando is at 49
• Consular/Inquisitor – Sage at 134, Assassin is at 4
• Smuggler/Agent – Scoundrel at 74, Operative at 2
• Warrior/Knight – Juggernaut at 63, Sentinel at 5

So in terms of “wasted” levels, there’s only my Commando – but she’s fun to play. Apparently I made some correct choices, even before I thought about this. More likely it was just pure luck – the Sage is launch day char, the BH was created a week after launch I guess and the Scoundrel might be as old, or at least from 2012.
Silly number games, anyway.

Wow, I guess right now it’s the first time in a few months I sit at the login screen and don’t have a real goal I want to tackle.

That’s what wrote in out Blaugust Discord yesterday and I needed a day to let that sink in. Since I resubbed in June I kinda logged in nearly every day and worked towards my goals (all classes to Level 70, and Command Level 300 on my BH) – and now I’m kinda there (BH is only at 270, but I want to wait until the next weekly reset to power through the last 30 levels).
Doesn’t help I’m still a little sick since 2 weeks and a bit weak, so no fun tours in the sun or anything.
So what was on my list at the end of August?

• Get to Social IV on Juggernaut
  • A duo run of Black Talon yields ~100 and takes ~20mins, so I need 2 more
• Get to Valor 30 on BH
  • DONE
• Finally do the last missing Heroic Missions: Balmorra on both sides
  • Imperial side: DONE, Republic Side: 6 missing, so I’ll knock those out next week I guess.
• Grab some missing Datacrons
  • Wasn’t in the mood for jumping puzzles
• Finish the last “Kill 1000 mobs with this companion” achievements
  • Progressed a little here, but besides the Rampage missions for a Conquest… I’m not going out of my way to grind stuff, nope

Which brings me to the last point:

• Start (and finish? :P) the HK-51 quest line

Yep, I finally started it – years after it was introduced. Here’s the guide and I only need component #6 and #7 now, so 2 FPs and then a fight that might be a little harder than usual.
I had stumbled over Shintar’s blog in the past but only started to follow actively since Blaugust. There was a post about pugging videos lately, which immediately sounded interesting to me because I had religiously followed the adventures of the Pugging Pally back in 2009/10.
I started to sample the mentioned season 2 first (operations) but then decided to start in the beginning and I really like it. Due to the magic of two monitors I’ve “seen” 12 episodes, but I treat it more as a mix of podcast and glancing over to the left, not glued to the screen, while I’m doing dailies or other not-so-engaging content. I’m usually not one of those people watching Netflix or TV during gaming, but sometimes it works. I also watched most of the Daredevil series that way, back when my beloved Marvel Heroes was still running, also during leveling, which was admittedly a bit brainless, doing story mode for the 30th or 40th time…

This has been a while in the making, but last night I finished one of my “big” goals:

Not that impressive, but this one is, at least to me:

I’m still not at Command Level 300 though, but I hit 269. So I’ll do another 2h xp-boosted session with weeklies soon – next Tuesday hopefully. I still need to finish this week’s Gree Conquest, so maybe it’s only 30 missing until then.
I also finally spent a good chunk of those Command Tokens. Sith Warrior, Sith Inquisitor, Scoundrel, Commando, and Jedi Knight are all at Item Rating 230 now and if they gain Command Levels at least until 90 I can grab Unassembled Parts without a guilty conscience of not gearing them enough. Of course I didn’t have enough tokens for all of those, but there were only 1-3 items missing on some, only Knight and Inquisitor got a full set. Now only the unloved Operative still sits at 203.

Concluding what I started to days ago (Part 1, Part 2) these are the last entries in my SWTOR diary-like blog back when it launched.

Jan 15 2012 10:54 am – Endgame

So I reached Level 50 yesterday, basically just before the end of my class quest (and it was quite hard, so glad I had that tiny extra of whatever I got) just shy of 7d /played (that’s with a little bit of afk time for lunch and one or two hour-long crafting sessions – but I’m missing 20 points in Archaeology and 50 points in Underworld Trading, I think 7d is a good figure for max level plus professions).
I’m wrapping up Corellia as I write this (at least I think there’s only a handful of quest before the Bonus Series) and so the leveling game is basically done.
I didn’t play any alt (apart from 20 mins on a Smuggler) and I was very happy with my Jedi Consular, then Sage in the cookie cutter PvE Healing spec. At times a group of mobs died a bit slow, but I really didn’t feel at a disadvantage by not using a DPS spec.
I’ve used Qyzen Fess, my tank companion, exclusively apart from the few missions where one of the others was mandatory. Maybe I could’ve pimped Nadia’s gear to a point where this would have been faster, but with Qyzen it just worked.
The only real weaknesses were:

• multiple Sith mobs with Force abilities, they chewes through his health too quickly
• multiple Strong mobs standing close to each other so CC couldn’t be used
• every time a “hard” fight (class quest, mission) started from a dialogue, I died very quickly because I couldn’t CC. Qyzen’s AoE just woke them up eventually. After dying and disabling those 2 abilities, I usually finished the fight without any problems and very quickly

So, I really have to get to my ship now as several companions want to talk again and then I’ll probably dive into Level 50 Flashpoints and hopefully hard modes. Quest-wise there’s still the Corellia Bonus Series if it exists and Hoth. I think I left out Nar Shaddaa and Alderaan as well and finished all the others. Oh, and many Datacrons to fetch and maybe there’s even some Raiding for me…

That first part sounds interesting, problems doing a solo quest? As a healer with the support of a Tank companion? Just googled a bit and apparently several people had some problems, but the Jedi Knight boss was even harder they wrote. Here’s also one thing I retroactively hate – before they changed the companions so that all of them can take any role… with my Healer spec I had some reasons to use a Tank, so there was Qyzen and Iresso. I preferred Qyzen and there was no reason to mix and match – so when we got the achievements I had like 10 days played and 1 companion with 1000 kills, and then 4 with < 100 kills, yay. Also they were all on influence level 10, whereas now you can easily have one or more at 15-20 when you hit Level 70 – but my old main has less than 5 companions with influence rank 10, and none with a higher one. Great. All others have at least one at 20, just from leveling.

Jan 22 2012 9:42 pm – Raiding

Woot, my guild took me on a healing trip to Eternity Vault today and after a few wipes we managed to clear it. So now I have Legs and a Main Hand Weapon and 1 Alloy to craft a 3rd epic. Very nice.
The handling feels a little clunky compared to WoW and especially the last boss is still quite bug-ridden, but all in all it was much fun.

That last boss in EV is Soa and as I hear the encounter still has some bugs. Probably the falling platforms, but I guess there was more. I think I haven’t set foot into a raid (ok ok, Operation) since either that 22nd of January or a week later. I just remember that shortly after that post so many people in that guild stopped playing that the guild basically imploded. I did level my Bounty Hunter already back then, but iirc I was only Level 27 or even a bit less. I remember logging out on Tatooine and then not touching the game for a few years. I’m pretty sure I came back when Makeb came out, leveled to 55 and again went on hiatus until autumn of 2017 when I started with a fresh character (my Juggernaut) and leveled all the way to 70, but only completed the original content – then hiatus again until a few months ago and since then I’ve been very active.
So, that’s it. I don’t usually repurpose content, but in this case I think it was the correct choice to embed this and reflect on the past. I wish I had written a few more entries back then, but I even derailed the whole blog in the first place, as it was originally intended as the dev log for my up and coming fansite that never left closed alpha stage.