SW:TOR

The power of 2

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I’m a bit shocked to be honest, just used a +100% 2h Command XP boost, server-wide it’s also still +100%, so I’m running at triple XP and we did the Republic dailies + weeklies as a duo. Despite some stuttering that cost us like 5 mins we managed to do Ziost, Black Hole, Section X, CZ-198, and Yavin 4 in 1h 40m. That’s 40 Command Levels in 100 minutes. That’s why my Scoundrel is CL 60 now, but sadly still feels a little week. The only max-level character where I think I really need to tune my spec. Also I should really get one companion to 50, that should help as well.
PS: Blaugust has started and this is my eighteenth post.

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Yay, Tier 3

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As we had a public holiday today I had some time to play (unlike yesterday) and I reached one of my latest goals – my Bounty Hunter is now Command Level 192, whereas 181 was the important step, since that level I’m getting Tier 3 Command Crates with 240/242 Item Rating gear. Double XP combined with XP boosts and Daily Zones that include weekly quests is really fun and quick. My Sage is 56, my Commando 39, and my Sith Warrior 26 with just one flashpoint. Only downside is that I’m absolutely overflowing with items.
 
PS: Blaugust has started and this is my fifteenth post.

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What happened?

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Oh boy, double XP is bad for me, where did my weekend go? I played every free minute I was at home and the results are as nice as they are shocking.

  • Bounty Hunter to Command Level 159 (+17 over the weekend, +62 since the patch)
  • Sith Juggernaut to Command Level 24 (+19)
  • Jedi Sage to Command Level 41 (+18)
  • Commando to Command Level 34 (+29?)
  • Scoundrel to Command Level 18 (+6?)

See, I don’t even know exactly where I started, but I finished 2 Conquests this week, did Ziost, Black Hole, and Section X like 4 times, did some PvP and a ton of dailies for the Rampage Part III rewards of the Conquests. Man, does Section X suck on Republic side compared to Empire…
Why did I do this on so many characters? Mostly, gear. All of the “fresh” 70s now have a ton of 230 pieces from the first 20+ Command Chests and I’m pretty happy with the outcome. The Weekly quests reset on Tuesday and Wednesday is a public holiday here, and the Double XP event is supposed to go until the weekend – so I’ll have to make plans how many turbo sessions I can squeeze in after the reset, I really want to reach Tier 3 on the Bounty Hunter, which starts at Level 181.
My banks are overflowing in green gear and other stuff, also tons of orange items from the chests, I think I had nearly 100 items on the Auction House on the weekend.
I made a super cool change to my transmog and here is…

Pink Ranger
Pink Ranger

PS: Blaugust has started and this is my twelfth post.

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Spending time and money

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I really like the housing in SW:TOR – and that’s why I was kinda excited we’d get a new Stronghold, and on Rishi, my favorite piratey planet!
So today I put down the 3m Credits and bought one (you get the first expansion, The Overlook, for just 120k until the next patch, so grab it!). I was a little let down by the entrance layout, something I had missed when watching a test server video. Not sure how much I’ll use this for everyday, probably not so much 🙁 The “housing” part is just too far from the entrance, which sucks. But I also put down some money to expand my third Stronghold, Nar Shaddaa (this one *is* awesome) and I’m now at 75% bonus for Conquests.
This 100% EXP boost is pretty nice though, it catapulted me from Command Level 11x to 142 in just 2-3h, and I have half of a Conquest done already for this week with just 2x Tatooine dailies. Maybe I’ll try to do one more 2h session this week, but I’ll definitely do one after the next reset, where I hope to get another 20 command levels in 3h. I’m really not a fan of gear grinding at max level, and this Command Level thing is basically that. Better gear, and an arbitrary metric of an endgame Level, meh.
PS: Blaugust has started and this is my tenth post.

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SWTOR – Weekly report & new patch

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Before the Blaugust hype started I mostly posted updates on what I was playing, seems I didn’t do that for a week now.
Still had a few Command XP boosts and my eyes set on reaching Command Level 300 this year, so I worked on that for a while. For some reason I switch from easy relaxed playing to clenching my teeth and not even getting up for a drink when I have XP boosts running, bit of an unhealthy attitude. Anyway, the boost is 2h and in 70 minutes I managed to do Ziost, Section X, and Voss including the weeklies, which catapulted me from 97 to 108. Sadly I didn’t think it through properly and did those 3 again yesterday, so no Weekly – and I only got 2 Levels instead of the assumed (((108-97)/7)*5) =7.x 🙁 So this week I’m probably gonna check Black Hole and some other planets so I don’t make that mistake again.
My Imperial Agent hit 60 today and just finished the Legacy of Rakata Flashpoint, so that’s 10 levels missing here and 20 levels on my Sith Assassin for 8x Level 70 (hooray for arbitrary goals). That dungeon really sucks solo. War Chief Rehkta takes ages, Commander Rand takes even longer and the final boss fight also draws out. Bonus points for a buggy companion on Rand (no Heroic Moment) and in general the IA in my spec/gear is maybe good for burst, but not sustained damage.
In more positive news, I’m close to bringing another Profession to 600, although it’s only Investigation, which means logging in every 20 minutes and spending money, but well…
I still have my Level 65 boost and I’m still not sure what class to spend it on.
 
The 5.9.2 update Galactic Legend has gone live today, but either I’m missing some patch notes or the only interesting thing is the Rishi Stronghold that’s too expensive for me right now. I do have ~7m but I still need to buy some wings for my Nar Shaddaa Stronghold. So I’m a little unexcited about this content patch, but at least the servers were up and running when I got home from work. Apparently we have +100% XP though for a few days.
 
PS: Blaugust has started and this is my seventh post.

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A certain kind of completionism

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I have this thing where I want to have one of every class in MMOs I play. This is not too uncommon, but I usually also want to at least have one of every race, and sometimes one of every gender. Basic math says this usually does not work out well without having too many duplicates. And really, who needs 4 max-level rogues? 3 should be enough.
Anyway, I have this problem in SWTOR right now.
I’ve got all the classes at 50+, most at 70 – check.
I’ve got a healthy mix of male(3) and female(5) characters – check.
Now the races are more complicated:

  • Cyborg – female (but Human is really close)
  • Chiss – male
  • Human – male (but Cyborg is really close)
  • Sith Pureblood – female
  • Rattataki – female
  • Twi’lek – female
  • Miraluka – female (still pretty close to Human/Cyborg)
  • Zabrak (light/non-red) – female
  • Mirialan – male and female

So that means these races are completely missing:

  • Cathar
  • Togruta

And because SWTOR has one voice actor each per class and gender, for all the combos of advanced class (e.g. Jedi Knight & Guardian, where the voice actor is the same) I want to have the other gender. The only 2 classes where I already started the second playthrough on the other gender are Jedi Consular and Imperial Agent.
So this means I’m still missing these (yeah I said 5 female earlier, but it’s 7 including the lowbies):

  • Mercenary – male
  • Sith Marauder – female
  • Sith Sorcerer – male
  • Jedi Guardian – male
  • Gunslinger – male
  • Vanguard – male

I also already made one character model in the creator I really like, so the Sith Marauder is basically set to Cyborg, or more likely, Human and female.
Now where to put the male Cathar and Togruta? Clipping is an issue with the Twi’lek Lekku and as far as I’ve seen, also with the Togruta. So maybe not the Mercenary where I’m inclined to have a helmet on from time to time. Also not the Gunslinger, because that would just mirror my Twi’lek Smuggler.
Then there’s the point of having a non-standard class in one of the factions, so maybe a Rattataki Vanguard would be nice (once I have the Sniper at 50 to unlock the race for the legacy).
So maybe this will work out:

  • Sith Marauder – female Human
  • Sith Sorcerer – male Zabrak
  • Jedi Guardian – male Togruta
  • Gunslinger – male Cathar
  • Vanguard – male Rattataki (could be Cathar, but I don’t want a second Aric Jorgan, also Rattataki look more badass)
  • Mercenary – yeah, that’s the only one where I’m still at a total loss, could also be Twi’lek, or Sith Pureblood, or anything

Wouldn’t it be nice if you only had these problems in your life? 🙂 I have the same problem for WoW, but as I’m not actively playing right now I won’t go into detail here. Ragnarok Online was kinda nice where you only had cute humans in male and female and a few hair styles and colors to choose from…
PS: Blaugust has started and this is my sixth post.

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Six down, two to go

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My plans for this sunny Saturday were partially scrapped and partially moved to tomorrow, so something happened.

After Powertech, Juggernaut, Scoundrel, Sentinel, and Sage – a Level 70 Trooper, already on Command Rank 5 and having finished Ziost.
So for level progression that’s zero at Command Level 300, six at Level 70, and two at Level 50.
 
Now let’s look at story progression:

  • 1x finished Knights of the Eternal Throne
  • 1x Chapter 5 of Knights of the Fallen Empire
  • 2x after Ziost, just before KotFE starts
  • 1x between Yavin IV and Ziost
  • 1x between Makeb and Shadows of Revan
  • 2x between the original story and Ilum (the 2 Level 50 characters)

 
I’ve also been busy with Professions (damn you, completionism) and the current state is:

  • 600 Biochem, Bioanalysis, Diplomacy, Treasure Hunting, Underworld Trading
  • 550 Artificer, Synthweaving, Scavenging, Archaeology
  • 530 2x Scavenging, Armormech
  • 500 Cybertech, Armstech, Investigation

Still some stuff to do, but I see everything besides the Command Level 300 being moderately to very fun to tackle and not a chore.

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Come on over have some fun

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So for some reason I really like Shadow of Revan and Rishi is my favorite zone ingame. Maybe it’s because places like Hoth are so dull, KotFE is a little too much railroading for me and I’ve done all the sub-50 zones nearly 9 times now.
I’ve just started my fifth journey through Rishi (all this year, although the expansion was released in December 2014) and I’m looking forward to it, despite having completed 2 or 3 playthroughs just this past month. I somehow love the scenery, the quests, and it’s a relatively nice step between some mandatory instances (boo, despite solo mode) and Ziost, which was awesome the first time and already a little annoying the second time. Maybe it’s also because I can do some quests in the order I like, because the non-story quests are actually close by, I get to pretend to be a pirate.. I don’t know. Anyway, my Trooper is on her way to 70 as well now, at 65.5 now after doing a few Rishi quests

Arrrrrr, I'm a pirate!
Arrrrrr, I’m a pirate!

Not all is positive though, I’m trying to get the Conquest done on my freshly dinged 70 Jedi Sage (did some Hoth dailies yesterday) and I can’t get the Ilum Heroic daily. I did it once on Tuesday after the Conquest reset for the week and it’s been in “You completed this recently, come back later” for the last 46-48 hours. So I’ll probably have to do even more Hoth daily heroics… but at least I’m already at ~7500 of 15000 points.

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Achievement hunt

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I was a very keen achiever in WoW and really tried to get a lot done, in SW:TOR, not so much. Been collecting most of the Datacron and doing “the last 10%” here and there. Oh, and I also switch companions regularly to get the 1000 kills each, but that’s not really effort as just “not deliberately ignoring it”.
But yesterday my Conquest was 60min on cooldown and I didn’t feel like leveling so I wanted to try something new – finish a few of the planet achievements. I picked Alderaan as it was the first in list (how exciting!).
So, exploration: Grabbed all Datacrons, found all bestiary and normal lore objects, unvovered the whole map, and I had already done all the Story and Heroic Missions for both sides. I ignored all the “Kill X” quests as this will either be remedied by leveling more characters, or not in the near future. Not a fan of grinding and I only do it if it suits a purpose, like in a Conquest.
In the end it took more like 2 hours, but choosing a stealthy character (Scoundrel) was a good idea and if I feel in the mood I might do this again some time, probably on Balmorra.
I’m at 12745 points now, fwiw.

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