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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I almost bought a WoW expansion

The weekend is upon us and after being out last night I thought.. today will be the day I grab Battle for Azeroth! Only had to grab 100 MB of patches, then I got an interesting popup. “Trial for BfA! 3 days of game time included”. This sounded good, I was on the way to buy it anyway.
So I logged in all my toons, cleaned up the bags for the mains, grabbed a quest, did a scenario (Fall of Lordaeron) and then… couldn’t continue. I would’ve expected a breadcrumb quest to lead me to a new zone, as with all the other expansions before, but nope. Went around a bit in Orgrimmar, nothing – so I went to search the web and apparently it only works with a freshly created Trial character. Not so cool. I was still interested so I checked what class/race combo I was missing among my high level characters and decided on a Gnome Warlock. Apparently I had created one to save a name, so I logged in, mailed the Heirlooms to another toon, deleted, and recreated. Then I had to do the scenario again (doh) – but at least from the other perspective now. After that I could indeed go to Kul Tiras and experience roughly half an hour of gameplay. At that point the game decided this was enough and I should now pay up. Including holding that character hostage with a big fat lock on the login screen and a “Trial Completed” message.
But what I saw from Kul Tiras and the new quests was really nice. Except for the jarring mouth animations when the NPCs were talking. I also feel drawn to the Alliance quite a bit, as the scenario wasn’t really more enticing than the preview cinematics. This also sucks, I’d prefer to play my old mains from before Legion.
So yeah, on the one hand it’s my own fault. On the other hand this “free” “trial” has pissed me off enough that I’ve not instantly gone and bought it. Actually I’m quite dissuaded at the moment. Good job, Blizzard, if it hadn’t been for the wording and execution of this trial I would’ve bought it already, incl. a subscription.

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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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I’m back and I failed

As I wrote in my last post I took some Game Boy games on my work trip, but -oh surprise- I neither had a lot of spare time nor was I in the mood to play. Just a bit of idle surfing around before going to bed filled my time quite well – I didn’t even have time to read a lot of feeds. Also the lighting in the hotel room was really bad, so probably the GBA wouldn’t have worked as well anyway. Let’s see if I manage to log in to SWTOR tonight, otherwise I’m looking forward to the weekend, my posting streak is broken anyway, but it was fun while it lasted.

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GameBoy and GameBoy Advanced

As I wrote yesterday I’m going to start a trip later today and I had the plan to bring my trusty old GameBoy Advanced with me. Originally I only had a handful of games, but in the last 16 years I kind of grabbed a few from GameStop (back when they still had used GBA games, but after they were sold new), or retro fairs, or eBay. I also have a few GB games left from people who lent them to me and never wanted them back (Really, I swear I offered to give them back, years later…)
Anyway, many of those I’ve only played for a few minutes or hours, so here’s a selection I might want to at least give a try (again) on this trip.

  • GameBoy Advanced
    • Pokémon Ruby
      • bought not so long ago, started it, wasn’t so bad. My first Pokémon game.
    • Super Monkey Ball Jr.
      • it’s not bad, but doesn’t entertain me for long
    • Golden Sun
      • very good, guess I never finished it though
    • Columns Crown
      • well
    • Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories
      • no clue why I bought it a second time.. started a few times, liked it, never got very far though
    • Final Fantasy IV
      • I faintly remember not liking it, must rety
    • Micro Machines
      • fun, but only in short bursts
    • Pitfall
      • bought recently, didn’t play much
    • Rayman Advance
      • hard!
    • Tomb Raider – The Prophecy
      • bought recently, didn’t play much
    • Crash & Spyro
      • bought recently, didn’t play much
  • GameBoy Classic
    • Kwirk
      • ok, but never got very far
    • Bad’n’Rad
      • don’t remember
    • Fortress of Fear
      • don’t remember
    • Tetris
      • no comment
    • Bubble Bobble
      • fun!
    • Parodius
      • I liked it, but I always found it too hard
    • Super Mario Land
      • good, never finished it
    • Super Mario Land 2
      • good, never finished it
    • Dr. Mario
      • always liked this better than Tetris. This might be a friend’s exact same cartridge I already played in ~1990-92
    • Mario’s Picross
      • finished this twice or more, and many offshoots on PC
    • Xenon 2
      • Megablast! Best soundtrack ever!

Yeah, I hardly finished any of those and I wrote “hard” very often. I am in general not very competitive, or stubborn enough in regards to finishing games.

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