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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A review of KotFE

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.

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.

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To guild or not to guild

I’ve come back to SWTOR 3 months ago (insert 3 monther MMO joke here) and my sub is due to renew tomorrow. A week or two ago I pondered whether to keep it, because I was still really pumped for WoW, a feeling which had come up during the BfA pre-launch hype and Blaugust. But now after reading a lot of first month review posts (sorry if I forgot someone) I’m not so sure I’m still hyped. The reviews aren’t at fault, most people seem to be mostly happy with the expansion. I’m still kinda curious, but the hype has died down for now.
This brings me to my original thought though, I’m playing mostly solo right now and I’m wondering if I’d be happier in a guild again. It’s not that I was actively avoiding them, I’m now GM by of two dead SWTOR guilds, just by showing up in 2018…
Can I even say I have a mixed history with guilds? I’ve always been in a clan while I was playing FPS games 15 to 20 years ago, no problems there. In my first MMO, Ragnarok Online, I wasn’t lucky at first, but then found some cool people on IRC and joined their casual guild (as in non “non-organized group content”). I wasn’t in a WoW guild until I hit 60 in vanilla, since then I was in a few guilds. I think it was only ever in 2 clusters of guilds in 8 years, if you count reforming with half of the people.
So either I’ll buy BfA and play WoW in early October, then I will either play Alliance in the guild where I’m the “returns every 2 years” guy, or go back to my Horde mains and probably have to look for a guild. A quick search on the realm forums wasn’t helpful, no recruitment posts except for hardcore raiding, which I don’t plan to do and there’s no use applying before max level anyway. Maybe my friends list will be helpful once I login. Or maybe my guild isn’t as dead as it looks on the armory, but I guess it’s only 3-4 people and 2 of those hardly talk in chat.
Anyway, if I stick to SWTOR either by not buying BfA or by playing both (haha, fat chance)… the Tulak Hord (German server) realm forums also look dead, the Darth Malgus (English server) one has like three times the current posts, maybe even more. Also somehow my fellow Germans (and the minority of people speaking German) seem to piss me off much more than the people on EU servers, I don’t know why. I saw some recruitment posts, but never seen anyone of those guilds ingame. Apparently it’s a lot more common in SWTOR to have a sister guild on the other faction than in WoW. So at least that could help, as I’m pretty much 60/40 Empire/Republic right now.
So the only thing I know is that I guess I’d like to be part of a guild again after a few years of being the lonely ranger. I just don’t know yet in which game and in which faction – and how I’ll find one. Great.

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SWTOR Companions

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)

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Ding 300

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.

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So close and yet so far

Today was a weird day. As most Tuesdays in the last weeks I dutyfully waited until the 1h Conquest timer was gone, then started my dailies. The usual routine: Ziost, Black Hole, CZ-198, Yavin 4, Section X. But this week’s Conquest was the Revan one which seemed oddly easy at first glance. Yavin 4, Voss dailies, Rampage on Yavin and Voss. So I did my stuff and suddenly was already at 11k of 15k. So I started a few daily planets and queues for Warzones. Then the unbelievable happened – I won twice in a row. That was enough to hand in 3 PvP dailies, including the 20 games weekly which I had saved so far. And then I had the Conquest done. No scraping by day by day like with the Gree event – no, 4h and it was done.
So I continued with my usual easy dailies, Corellia, Dromund Kaas, Tatooine. Yeah, and now I’m at Command Level 299 and it’s half past one in the morning and I need to go to bed. But tomorrow I’ll hopefully make it. Still shaking my head over that Conquest though.

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In search of goals

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…

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SWTOR – Titles

I actually wanted to post something completely different, but as it happens I had yet another toon in SWTOR where I didn’t like the current title, so I wanted to adjust it. That sent me down a rabbit hole of finding out what the various character and Legacy titles actually meant or where they were from and most importantly, if they were worth displaying.
As usual, Dulfy has a guide for that, but unfortunately it was last updated on June 30th, 2015 and so it was missing quite a few. So I spent a while clicking through achievements and wrote down some of them that were missing from that list.
Unlike usually, this post could be considered useful, I apologize to my readership.

Title Acquisition Where to find in achievements
The Galaxy’s Finest Complete Flashpoints, Uprisings, Starfighter, Warzones or Operations with the Activity Finder (40x) Legacy -> Feats of Strength
Republic Legend Level all 4 Republic classes to Level 60 Legacy -> Level -> General
Imperial Legend Level all 4 Imperial classes to Level 60 Legacy -> Level -> General
Republic Outlander Level all 4 Republic classes to Level 65 Legacy -> Level -> General
Imperial Outlander Level all 4 Imperial classes to Level 65 Legacy -> Level -> General
Persistent What’s inside? Why is it there? We may never know. Strongholds -> Strongholds
Horrible Person Manage to get Speedy eaten within your Rishi Hideout Stronghold. Strongholds -> Strongholds
Geared for Combat Defeated 1000 enemies each with 2V-R8 and C2-N2 as your active companion Companions -> General -> Miscellaneous
Combat Designation:L3-E7 Defeated 2500 enemies each with 2V-R8 and C2-N2 as your active companion Companions -> General -> Miscellaneous
Comfort Enthusiast Completed the “Continuing Comfort” weekly mission 10 times. Companions -> Shared -> C2-N2
Simulated Meatbag Terminated HK-55 for Educational Purposes Companions -> Shared -> HK-55
The Mysterious Stranger Survived five rounds of Mayhem at the Arena Grand Fallen Empire -> The Eternal Championship -> General
Master of Mayhem Survived all ten rounds of Mayhem at the Arena Grand Fallen Empire -> The Eternal Championship -> General
Eternal Champion Survived all ten rounds of Mayhem at the Arena Grand without the aid of a group. Fallen Empire -> The Eternal Championship -> Story
Eternal Legend Survived all ten rounds of Mayhem at the Arena Grand with each player class and without the aid of a group. Fallen Empire -> The Eternal Championship -> Story
Sprint Champion Survived all ten rounds of Mayhem at the Arena Grand without the aid of a group and under 15 minutes. Fallen Empire -> The Eternal Championship -> Story
Deathless Champion Survived all ten rounds of Mayhem at the Arena Grand without the aid of a group and without dying. Fallen Empire -> The Eternal Championship -> Story
Fully Armed and Operational Defeated an Exarch while under the effects of all 4 Alliance Specialists’ Combat Enhancements Fallen Empire -> Star Fortresses -> Heroic
Follower of the Old Ways Found Devotional Text about all of the Old Gods of Zakuul within the Star Fortresses Fallen Empire -> Star Fortresses -> General
Bunker Buster Destroyed all planetary Shield Bunkers protecting their orbiting Star Fortresses Fallen Empire -> Star Fortresses -> General
Galactic Liberator Destroyed each of the Star Fortresses orbiting an occupiued world. Fallen Empire -> Star Fortresses -> Heroic
Alliance Commander Achieved Influence Rank 20 with all four divisions of your alliance Fallen Empire -> Alliance Growth -> General
Physical Backup Unit Defeated all Star Fortress EPHEMERIS units Fallen Empire -> Star Fortresses -> Story
The One And Only Defeated an Exarch while ungrouped and without any Alliance Combat Enhancements or Equipment Caches. Fallen Empire -> Star Fortresses -> Heroic
Fallen Knight Defeated each of the Star Fortress Paladins aboard all of the Star Fortresses. Fallen Empire -> Star Fortresses -> Paladins
Galactic Peacekeaper* Complete Rishi story mission on Republic and Imperial characters ?
Zakuulan Craftsman Reach 550 on all crew skills Legacy -> Advancement -> Zakuulan Crew Skills

*= haven’t checked this myself
Achievement categories I checked completely at the time of writing, so these should be complete:

  • Galactic Command
  • Legacy
  • Strongholds
  • Dailies
  • Fallen Empire
  • Eternal Throne

Achievement categories I haven’t checked completely, or at all, for this mini guide:

  • Location
  • Operations
  • Companions
  • Flashpoint
  • Player Vs. Player
  • Events
  • Starfighter
  • Space
  • Uprisings

SWTOR – Titles Read More »

Eighth time’s the charm

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

Level 70 Sith Inquisitor Achievement
Level 70 Sith Inquisitor

Not that impressive, but this one is, at least to me:
Galactic Commander Achievement
Galactic Commander – Reached Level 70 with a character from each class

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.

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WildStar is shutting down

You probably read the news, WildStar is shutting down in the near future and the developer, Carbine Studios is in the process of being shut down.
I haven’t played for a while (my last meaningful session was probably 18 months ago) and before that I had been covering it for 3 years with 18 blog posts – which is kind of a lot for me. It was one of the few games where I was absolutely excited before launch – I even played on the stress test weekends, i.e. download client, try to get in, all for 2-3h of getting to play the new game, usually I can’t be bothered. I also preordered and took part in the head start weekend. I never raided and only did a few 5mans. I was part of a guild, but I don’t even remember the name, which is also *very* rare for me. I joined up not directly after hitting max level IIRC and didn’t stay very long either.
WildStar did a lot of things very good – the music, the setting, the quest pacing, the classes. Every time i played I was having fun.
The problem is that they kinda marketed themselves as a home for the people who found WoW’s raids not hardcore enough. This means some of the dungeon runs were already brutal and even the attunement quest chain to be able to start raiding was kinda nuts. Sure, you can say I should’ve just lived up to “git gud” – but I was doing Heroic raids in WoW just earlier and having fun. So yeah, if being in the top 20% (wild guess) of the WoW skill cap in regard to raiding skills is not enough that I can be bothered to do that in a new game, maybe – just maybe – it’s not my fault. I know a lot of people who liked WildStar and even if they had raided in WoW (even before LFR) that seemed a lot more accessible. Maybe also easier, but definitely more “hey, we’ll take our social non-raiders for a spin once in a while” – definitely didn’t happen in WildStar.
To put this in the correct time, Siege of Orgrimmar, the last WoW raid in the Mists of Pandaria expansion went live on September 10th, 2013. WildStar launched at the start of June 2014 and the next WoW raid to be released would be Highmaul in the Warlords of Draenor expansion on December 2nd, 2014 – so it hit in the last months of a WoW expansion when many people had already stopped being excited.
But I’m not really complaining – the game was hard and my personal problem was more that I don’t like small group content. I like soloing, duoing, and raids. I never liked 5mans in WoW, SWTOR, and also not in WildStar. So even when I tried a few dungeons with people of my new (back then) guild there were some (few) shouting at you if you did something wrong (didn’t matter that you were in the dungeon for the first time) and the non-guilded players were even worse. I’m pretty sure I never made that Silver (or even Bronze) Malgrave Trail. I don’t remember if I even tried a second time, so bad was that experience.
Anyway. I surely didn’t do so much to help WildStar survive, although I was subscribed for quite a few months – I had a lot of fun when I played, but it just didn’t keep me as WoW did for so many years. Maybe also because hardly anyone I knew played. I’m sad that it will shut down but I also didn’t plan to come back, and since it had gone F2P I think I didn’t invest any money – but I also only played a few hours or days since then, the majority of my time was spent in 2014-15. Good luck to the people at Carbine getting a new job soon.
By chance I had logged in just a few days ago and made some screenshots of my characters. I’m also pretty sure I made a video showing off my awesome housing plots, maybe last year – but I can’t find it right now. Maybe I will try to redo that video and then post it.

WildStar is shutting down Read More »