Star Wars: The Old Republic

Try using the middle tree (Engineering/Saboteur) when leveling up. It's worthless in the end-game because most of the talents are AoE-related, but it's great on your way to 50 when you're mostly fighting packs of weak enemies with the occasional gold or silver. If nothing else, be sure to put two points in the tier-1 talent that reduces the cooldown of your grenades to 3s. That way you can use an AoE ability (that also stuns weak enemies!) every other GCD.

So I decided to try this out and started downloading it around 1930 CET. It's now almost 2230 and the downloader tells me I'm 1/3 through the install process, downloading at ca 1.2 mb/s. Wilco Tango Foxtrot, over?

MMOs are big, over.

Well, LOTRO was up and running by this time. I realize that it isn't fully voiced though.

Enemy - man - two - o'clock - Three hundred

But it's so weak and uses so much energy! Also the problem with AoE is that the whole pack is up the whole time until they all die together, which means you take a lot more damage than you would otherwise.

Though if I'm being honestly mostly I just like exploding things in two or three GCDs and that's why I've stuck with Marksman so far.

Damn. I am just loving the storytelling so far in this game. My Sith Sorcerer actually feels deliciously evil. And the crafting is reasonably well done, which makes me dork out rather shamelessly.

The Legacy system is rather interesting too, though it appears to take quite the time investment to make it truly worthwhile.

Lotro/Wow/EQ2 .. all have streaming clients. Swtor does not, thus it is downloading the whole damned thing. I don't know why they didn't do a streaming client but they didn't.


The legacy system is .. hit or miss. You can get most the species unlocks from the GTN cheaper since they can come out of the random Cartel packs. (400+k vs 1.5mil.. or the time to get something to 50)
The unlocks from doing the companion stories are great, they stack and make your companions gods. Add that with the presence buff from leveling a human to 50 and you have very little difficulty til the end of the game.

The xp bonuses are for the most part worthless. You only get so many class missions, space missions.. the xp for the warzone is supposedly ok. All of which can be gotten extremely cheap from the GTN because again, it drops from cartel packs like candy.
The spaceship things are convenience, the rocket booster movement thing is kinda nice. The story connection thing is , a good idea that isn't working out so hot.

That reminds me , wonder if I really want to save 1.5 to unlock cathar.

They've said that the Cathar will be through the store, I think, so I don't know that it is a foregone conclusion that you will be able to unlock them with credits at all. (Granted you will probably be able to buy them from a reseller.)

I tried the 30% boost to class xp from legacy on my BH and it doesn't seem to be making a detectable difference for me at all. The space mission thing I think would probably be OK if you really liked space missions. Warzone everyone says is good, as Ryslin says, and you can double up on that with the store boost for even more.

On the store-bought boosts, I have been buying cheap social boosts to use when we're in our 4 person leveling group; I'm closing in on Social V and we're like level 24. Obviously of no use when not grouping, though.

It's sort of incredible to see what people attempt in "progression" raiding. Okay, cool, you want to clear the hardest content in the game.

PROTIP: put all your players on a parser so you can gauge performance and see what needs to be improved.
PROTIP: if you usually wipe a minute into the fight, the correct response is not "that again but better," it is to discuss and identify what the fuck is killing people
PROTIP: tank, if your healer drops a ground effect AoE such that both you and the dps can stand in it without the dps being cleaved, you should, you know, stand in it. Especially when you have less than 30% health and are steadily dropping.
PROTIP: when you tank swap you should actually taunt the boss you swap to, not let the other tank eat all the damage until he dies and we wipe.
PROTIP: tank, you have an aoe taunt and single target attacks. When you are standing in the middle of three adds who are waling on the healer, you might consider activating that taunt and then attacking those adds.
PROTIP: if you are seeing enrage timers in the second-hardest content in the game, you are not ready to clear the hardest content in the game. No exceptions.
PROTIP: healer, you have force speed. There is no reason you should not be able to reach the safe zone before the fire turns on and you die
PROTIP: don't kill the add with the bomb debuff. It will, you know, explode.

I was filling in for a buddy. He advised me not to. When I asked what they wiped to, he said everything. I didn't believe him and went anyway.

I really need to stop hurting myself.

The Space Mission boosts are useful for leveling up alts. Do all available non-gray space missions, then log off immediately -- XP buffs pause when you log off. Depending on number of missions, one boost can last up to 4 days. If you purchase all the Legacy Space XP character upgrades, that really adds up.

So I started playing this as a Preferred player and I'm kinda liking the experience. A short question - am I not supposed to get any headgear (helmets, hoods etc) until beyond Coruscant or so? I'm (mainly) playing a Jedi Sage (and I like that storyline fine) with Synthweaving and I've not seen any recipes (or whatever they're called) for this, nor does any shop carry it. I'm lvl 13 and in the middle of the Justicar missions and I do see lots of other players running around with hoods.

I got my first "headgear" from the Black Talon shuttle mission as a Sith. It's not actually headgear, just the chestpiece gives the appearance of hooded awesomeness.

Hoods are different from the actual headgear. I believe you get a customizable brown hooded robe after doing all the Gree droid quests (there's also a heroic 2 that gives a customizable blue hooded robe one Coruscant but I can't remember which one).

If your sage is a twi'lek, get used to no hood, though, theirs are always down.

Headgear in genral starts around level 20

There are a few rare drops I've run into that are a bit lower ( I ran into a pair of "Sun goggle" looking headgear around 15 once republic side) and Sith-Side there's a level 15ish mission you can pick up in Kaas city. It's kicked off at the city square from a mission terminal.

Which is a compelling argument for only creating Twi'lek Jedi. Unless you're going to snag some other class's orange gear or spend a few hundred grand on the auction house to pick up some cartel gear, anyway.

At least consulars can rock the hoodless vestments, I guess. Pity the poor knights, though.

I'm beginning to think I'm the only person who prefers the "hood up" look on Jedi characters.

I vastly prefer hoods to the tiara-like thing my burly male Sorcerer is currently wearing.

I like the hood fine, but I eagerly await the day when it becomes a toggle. Kind of funny that the last game to allow that (afaik) came out in 2001.

Yes, I got a piece of headgear (a metal headband because SPACE) and a hooded robe next time I logged on. And then I subbed and then I got A SPACESHIP AND SQEEE! I'm not too fond of the time it takes to craft stuff though but I'll probably get used to that too. Can you queue stuff?

You can queue five or six (don't quote me) items per companion.

You can queue five items per companion at a time. Crafting becomes much easier when you have multiple companions available; use one as your questing follower and the rest for crafting.

I'm sitting here giggling at the starting adventures of my Sith Inquisitor. This is wonderful.

THIS. So much this. The /hood command should be obligatory to MMOs with cloaks/hooded robes.

I don't mind the hood being up, I just don't want it up ALL the time. I don't like how it partially obscures my face during conversations, basically.

So yeah, seriously. Hood command, plz.

(I do love the dude twi'leks, though, I have three of them now. <cough> The stupid ear nubs on the ladies fill me with irrational rage, though, and I have zero of those.)

Maybe it's because I have a special kind of headgear but I have a switch for "show headgear" on my character which basically switches hood on/off. Or am I missing something here?

Some of the headgear will force the hood down if you turn it on (one of my JKs has a Geordi La Forge-esque visor that puts her hood down for example, but most of the Old People Sunglasses visors do not), I assume to prevent clipping or whatever.

Yes, that was the case here as well. I had some kind of weird metal contraption tiara ... thing which made it possible to switch the hood on/off. Doesn't work with other headgear though.

What is the deal with that, by the way? Near as I can tell, it's just a holdover from the movies not being consistent with costuming and then later someone fumbled around to make it canon.

The hood is part of the chest armor, not the headgear, so yeah it was whether or not your particular hat was displayed that controlled the hood.

Weird moment. I'm doing the main quest and need to get some people out from a blast door. Run into a gang Rakghouls, which are normal monsters AFAIK and look normal/strong when I preview. I'm dead in 20 seconds. Twice. Huh. I probably need to develop some kind of tactic all of a sudden, haven't bothered much with that before. My Jedi Sage is on-level and has decent on-level PvE gear. Either I'm doing something wrong or I've ended up in a Heroic area. Heh.

I remember a group of rakghouls that the sage had to deal with , that killed me. After thinking about it, the ghouls had a new debuff they were applying and I was fine as long as they didn't touch me. A bit of reworking and turning on Qyzen's threat aura it was handled.
Easy no, doable ..yes.

Terribly sorry. Somehow I managed to miss that one of them was an Elite with ca 6500 hp. Got it sorted out now, thanks.

I think that's pretty much it, which is annoying. I hate the nubs. Hate them!

I'm so happy to know that I am not alone in my nub-hatred.

I think I done went and broke Kira Carsen. Way back when I was level 31 or so, probably right after finishing chapter one of the JK story there was a Kira-splosion where she wanted to talk like five times in a row. The last of those was a mission to go to Nar Shadda and do some stuff. The quest was level 35 so I finished up on Balmorra then did her quest. If I remember right, she was at about 5000 affection when she gave me the quest which was a simple Fed Ex. She hasn't wanted to talk since then. Now I'm on Hoth, just about to hit 39 and Kira is at 8900 affection. So, did I break her or am I in for another Convo-Con when I wrap up chapter two? To be clear I don't much care if I missed out romancing her, but not being able to complete her conversations and thus miss out on the Legacy thing would make me ever so pissed.

You're going to have another convo-splosion.

Basically, a lot of the companions have gates on their conversations, because sometimes they'll reference something that happened during a chapter or whatever. It can make the pacing a little odd (like you said, she'll talk your ear off then ignore you, then talk your ear off again), but that's how they roll.

Awesome. I forgot to mention that I used Doc on Quesh but I don't know if the game was made for that because he didn't participate in the conversations, nor did the missions offer rewards for him. So I was convinced I had screwed something royally with no remedy but to re-roll. I like the game, but no way in hell am I gonna slog through levels 1-40 just to get these folks talking.