Category Archives: PvE

Sixth screenshot meme (contains slight Jedi Knight spoiler)

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Psynister left his tags open for the Sixth Meme which has been floating around the WoW blogosphere (and now is somewhat making inroads into the SWTOR blogosphere). That’s good enough for me – I fall into “everyone who hasn’t been tagged yet.”

The basic premise is easy…

  • Go into your image folder
  • Open the sixth sub-folder and choose the sixth image.
  • Publish the image! (and a few words wouldn’t hurt, though I dare say I couln’t stop a blogger from adding a few words of their own).
  • Challenge six new bloggers.
  • Link to them.

The problem lies in the fact that I apparently have the most disorganized approach to screenshots ever: one big folder, ordered by timestamps and game (which happens automatically thanks to Fraps). However, my Fraps folder is the sixth one in my general images folder, so I guess it kinda counts! So, let’s see what we get:

Dinging in space. Well, that was boring. Let’s try sixth from the bottom.

Lord Scourge, talking about… well, who IS he talking about? Spoilers! Okay, let’s try something else – I enlarged my Fraps folder until the icons are in rows of six, and picked the sixth screenshot of the sixth row.

One of the walkers on Hoth, seemingly wearing sunglasses – this one’s stationed outside Aurek Base.

Well, that could’ve gone better. Ah well. I’ll redo Psynister’s tagging: if you haven’t been tagged yet, consider yourself tagged now.

Focus, Padawan

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Form I: Shii-Cho Form(Disclaimer: All of the article below is based on my experience leveling a Sentinel. YMMV, as always.)

The Jedi Sentinel can be an interesting class to level, especially when it comes to picking a skill spec. The three skill trees all say “Damage,” which doesn’t tell you a whole lot, but after reviewing the talents, you can get the gist of them:

  • Watchman does its work in Juyo Form, lights things on fire, has Force Leap with a shorter cooldown and minimum range of 0, and is capped off with a 5(!) Focus ability that hits like a train. It also has some minor self-heals from its talents and from Zen. Watchman seems to be the “traditional” leveling tree, mostly because of these self-heals and ease of play (at least until 40, when you’re trying to figure out how to shoehorn Merciless Slash into your priority list, but that’s another topic entirely).
  • Combat focuses on hitting more often thanks to Ataru Form (both in the sense of bonus accuracy, and in terms of Ataru Form hits), contains an attack that lets you momentarily pierce all armor and is capped off with a Slash replacement that… causes you to do more Ataru Form hits. Really, the entire thing’s built around maximizing Ataru Form. Even its Zen ability is based around Blade Rushing more (or Slashing more, prior to 40). Combat also, notably, has exactly zero survival tools outside of a way to avoid some AOE damage – it is the “glass cannon” spec. Unless you’re towing around Doc or using one of the tanks, or wearing some extremely good armor, it can be a mite tricky to level as Combat.
  • And then there’s Focus, the shared tree – although there are minor differences between the Guardian and Sentinel version of these. Focus seems like a real oddball at first – its work is done in Shii-Cho Form, which (thanks to talents) lowers a number of cooldowns, it has multiple talent boosts to Master Strike and Force Stasis, and it picks up some bizarre talents in the form of Zealous Leap (basically Slash on steroids with a 10-meter range) and Force Exhaustion (a DoT + progressive slow that ends with a big hit). When in Shii-Cho Form, Zen is similar to Combat’s Ataru Form Zen, but with a slight difference: Slash is completely free, and also cleaves a nearby enemy. Its survivability comes from the inherent damage reduction of Shii-Cho Form (which increases from 3% to 7% when talented) as well as reducing the cooldown of Guarded By the Force to 1 minute.

Focus is easily one of the odder trees – it discards some abilities you gain from being a Sentinel (like Juyo Form) and focuses on things present for JKs from early levels, while also adding strange new abilities like a second leap and a DoT. So what’s the big deal? You might want to think about leveling as a Focus Sentinel. Why? More after the jump.

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Shard-hunting on Belsavis

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What you see above is someone taking a circuitous route through Belsavis to get Rakata Energy Cubes. You’ll need 4 of these (among your group, that is, or 4 by yourself if you’re solo) to hunt down the Green Matrix Shard on Belsavis. I didn’t particularly need them on my Jedi Shadow, but my Jedi Knight needed it… and now he has all three green shards for his level 50 Matrix Cube, at level 35.

Why yes, I do believe in preparedness.

Anyway, to get a general idea of the process afterwards, check out SWTOR Spy’s article on the Belsavis datacrons - and use the above video to take a route. It took me about two hours, all told, spread across two attempts (the second was much shorter than the first, and was the route I was taking AFTER watching that vid).

(Bonus points: if you have slicing 250+, there are usually tons of slicing nodes around here – varying, of course, by server population – but especially around the wrecked spaceship along the route. You’ll know it because it’s the only part with droids.)

Welcome to Hoth, it’s cold

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Deal with it.

Hoth: it’s cold. It’s once again full of pirates. Jentra’s level 43. And it’s cold. It’ll probably be another week or two before 50 is a realistic possibility due to circumstances, but there it is. Even then I might wait until my JK hits 50 as well before committing to any kind of single character for endgame (Fortress is, in fact, level 32 – on the last few quest chains of Alderaan – proving that no matter the class, I evidently level at exactly the same pace every time when solo).

Oh, and Jentra is also nearly Social IV. Too bad there’s… not really any social gear I want at Social IV.

The guild did a couple test run operations and the results were good, as you can see from the operation progress tracker on the side of the guild website. Grats all! We haven’t tried Karagga’s Palace yet, apparently; I’m kind of hoping to eventually get to see that, as I am way more excited about “Hutt mounted on a giant robot” than “powerful imprisoned guy with glitchy platforms.”

A leveling tip, courtesy of @Asros

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PRO TIP - If you dont do heroics or flashpoints or pvp while leveling, do all bonus objectives and bonus series while leveling. #SWTOR
January 12, 2012 4:37 pm via EchofonReplyRetweetFavorite
@Asros
Asros
Its not a tip so much as a rule, because leveling is modular, if you skip grouping, you have to do all solo content.
January 12, 2012 4:37 pm via EchofonReplyRetweetFavorite
@Asros
Asros

Or as I told someone earlier – don’t be Blender. Our guildmate ended up at 49 with half a level to go, with absolutely no source of XP outside of space missions, flashpoints, PVP, or dailies – all because he chose to skip almost all bonus series and probably a lot of bonus quests, as well.

There and back again

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The hills are alive, with the sound of--no, no, stop that, NO SINGING

The hills are alive, with the sound of--no, no, stop that, NO SINGING

Over on the Inquisitor’s Roadhouse, Anexxia asks: “why the rush to 50?” Well, let me tell you who’s not rushing. There’s a story here.

Oh, how I love looking at Alderaan. I’m pretty well ready to go, though. It starts with Kyzur, a rotund miraluka Jedi Sage with a problem where his head clips through hoods. It took me 30-odd levels to realize I’d made a huge mistake. (Pardon the pun.) I just wasn’t having fun with the Sage playstyle at all. I loved the story, but evidently I am still primarily a melee player. Yet I still wanted to get my legacy. (Silly things are important to me.) So between levels 30 and 32, I tackled the first three quest hubs on Alderaan, then said “oh screw this” and did my story quest there, my end of act 1, picked my legacy out, and left Kyzur Epsilon Barsen’thor to take a well-earned rest on the Republic fleet.

Enter Jentra. Rolling out the door from day 1 as the action-oriented Shadow to Kyzur’s “let’s talk it out” Sage, I remembered why the Shadow/Assassin playstyle was the first one I played in beta. Fluid, fast, stealthy, loved it. I blew through Tython and Coruscant, slogged through Taris – which I am happy to say takes nowhere near as long the second time, mostly because you know where everything is – and was rolling through Nar Shaddaa’s first quest set when friend and NSTK guildmate Xindrola caught up to me. Somehow. Despite spending way too long on Taris. (Xin’s argument is that he was saving for a speeder because he’d blown a bunch of cash on investigation and armstech; upon being told that Nar Shaddaa was not the spread-out hot mess that is Taris, he hopped planet immediately.) I helped him catch up to me in the Kintan Kings quarter, then we duo’d the rest of Nar Shaddaa. All of it. To give you an idea how grossly overleveled we were at this point, we were able to immediately accept the Nar Shaddaa Bonus Series. (Level 28, I believe, is the minimum for that.)

We actually tried it at first, but it was slow going. “C’mon,” I said, “let’s just go to Tatooine.” And so we did. Everything fell before the combined might of a Shadow, a Commando, M1-4X, and Tharan Cedrax. Alderaan as well, which is where we left off last night – we still have the Glarus Valley quests, but he’s now completed his end of Act 1 and I’m doing mine tonight (again). But it was slow going at times. Xin’s still a bit new to MMOs (he played a little WoW, and I think someone talked him into FFXI because they were sadistic), so keeping him oriented in the right direction can be a challenge – I’m eager to kill Sand People for their rifles, while he’s busy trolling the wildlife by punting it into canyons with Concussion Charge, for instance. He still lives with family, so he (understandably) gets called away from the computer for minutes at a time – pretty frequently sometimes. Getting lost also happens occasionally. I want a leash sometimes.

We’re also still grossly overleveled. When we got to Alderaan, I was one level ahead, and every quest outside of my story content was grey. All of them. 5 XP apiece. Woohoo? (Even now, still at the last quest hub of Alderaan, I’m level 36. I’m pretty sure I’m at the high end of the level range for Balmorra.)

But on the upside, it’s a lot less boring than doing the same content again would be by myself. I get to see two stories for the price of one – 90% of the trooper stuff is available to me in Spectator Mode, and likewise for consular stuff for him. We have two crafters’ worth of crew skills available to us (granted, Armstech is really only useful for Tharan, but he is our healer). We can usually roll Heroic 4s with a combination of smart CC and, in one case, me kiting a boss around LIKE A BOSS.

And Social points? I am rolling in Social points. I’m 200 or so away from Social III. My Social points abruptly jumped during Tatooine; I was barely in Social I when I got there, but was at Social II and then some by the time we left – even before the bonus series.

Still, I wouldn’t characterize myself as being in a rush to 50. Pretty much the exact opposite. I am, however, in a rush to see something I haven’t seen before – I’ve been here before, and now I’m back again. Luckily, I’m on the verge of doing just that: every quest left on Alderaan is one I haven’t seen, as is every planet after Act I.

Jentra gets Space Cadet-ized; plus, a lesson on lizards

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Shiny New Art

On Twitter, DiscoPriest - artist of the Disciplinary Action and new Space Cadets comics – announced an art giveaway, in which she’d redo your SWTOR character in the style of a Space Cadets character. Sadly I did not get in on the contest (don’t ask me why!) but I still wanted one, mostly after seeing Asros and Fynralyl sporting theirs on Twitter and the guild forums, so I did it the old-fashioned way – I commissioned one. It was well, well worth it! I opted to get one done of my new Jedi Shadow (more on that in a sec), Jentra. Here’s the before… (click any of the pics below to enlarge)

And here she is after becoming a total Space Cadet:

So cool! Thanks again, DP – love ‘em. If you’d like to get one of your very own, here’s the easiest way to do so – the cost is $20.

  • Take a screenshot of your character at the SWTOR login screen. (You can use the same screenshot button that works in-game – for me, that’s Print Screen.)
  • Optional: take a full-body screenshot in-game. I apologize to Disco for the shoddy quality of my in-game pic (controlling the camera over a remote connection is nigh impossible!) but she did extremely well all the same.
  • Send the pics, along with a short email requesting a Space Cadet-style avatar, to the artist.
  • She’ll take care of you from there!

Shiny New Character

As you can guess from the fact that I didn’t get Kyzur cadet-ized, I’ve switched away from playing him. The Sage playstyle is okay, but it just wasn’t clicking with me. Unfortunately, it took me about 20 levels to figure that out. At that point, I was so close to unlocking my Legacy that I figured I may as well just go ahead and do it – and that’s what I did.

(A side note here about my Legacy. For no apparent reason, my original choice of Legacy names (Cygma, as in Sigma, as in Kaiser Sigma) was not allowed by the Legacy system for no apparent reason – and neither was any other spelling of it. I wonder if it can’t be five characters long? Seems kind of arbitrarily short. So I went with a backup – Epsilon. It took a little bit to grow on me, but I got used to it. About 75% of the way to Legacy Level 2, to boot.)

Jentra, my shiny new Shadow, just got to Taris. Yes, that means I’m now one of those people with multiples of the same class – but the Shadow and Sage play so differently they may as well be different classes. Just to ensure it’s not a total repeat, Jentra’s making different choices than Kyzur did in many places, even if it’s just seemingly inconsequential dialogue. As a result, she’s developed a definite anti-Imperial leaning, and is less likely to be your staunch, stuffy, upright Jedi. If Kyzur represents the Jedi Order’s guiding voice, Jentra is its striking arm.

FOR GREAT JUSTICE.

A Lesson on Lizard-men

So I’d complained on Twitter that, starting at around Tatooine but definitely noticeable on Alderaan, Qyzen Fess seemed a lot… squishier. I also had a much easier time pulling threat from him if I was spec’d for DPS. Getting some upgrades on Tatooine seemed to help his survival and threat somewhat, but I still had to bubble the green dude every time I got a chance. When I got Jentra, I was happy to have Qyzen again at a low level, where he’s very, very tanky.

Then I noticed something: a little green icon in his buff bar, for Trandoshan Regeneration, his “tank stance.” And then I realized that I hadn’t seen that icon when I was playing as Kyzur since, oh, sometime on Taris. Later on, after several groups, I resummoned Qyzen – sure enough, Trandoshan Regeneration had turned itself off for no apparent reason.

Learn from my mistakes: always make sure your tank is actually in tank stance!

TOR by numbers: a (very quick) stat primer

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New game, new stats, new numbers to stack – isn’t that how the story always goes?SWTOR’s no different, fundamentally, from many other MMOs. Plus, to make things a little simple for the new player, each class basically has its own stat, so you won’t spend a lot of time fighting with people who share your armor type – just people who share your class.

SWTOR actually does a lot better of a job recently as far as getting you used to seeing a certain stat on your gear. Early on in beta, quest rewards would sometimes offer you one stat or another, and unless you really enjoyed reading tooltips, it was kind of hard to tell what each stat actually did - so as a fledgling adventurer, you’re left wondering, what stat do I want? I’m wielding a dual-bladed lightsaber – do I want Willpower or Strength? Troopers and Smugglers both use guns – but do I want Cunning or Aim? Or both? Those kind of questions naturally arose early on, but a lot of the gear from quests now passively points you in the right direction.

Here’s a short rundown of what each of the stats you’ll see means – most of them should look pretty familiar if you’ve got any MMO experience (and if you don’t… welcome!).

(Reminder: this is beta, this is technically still subject to change, yadda yadda. Also my familiarity with the tank stats is pretty low; it’s been my least-played role in the beta.)
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What’s in it for me?

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Perhaps you think this is about the “loot bag” announcement from this week. Afraid not. My feelings on that (I’m for it!) hardly justify an entire post to themselves. No, this is something else entirely – gaming personality types, and their relationship to SWTOR.

Have you heard of the Bartle Test? In 1996, a professor by the name of Richard Bartle wrote a paper – specifically mentioning MUDs, but still highly applicable today – called “Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs.” It’s available to read online, if you wish. Bartle’s personality categorization was converted into an online test in the late 90s by Erwin Andreasen and Brandon Downey, and later – due to popularity and infeasibility of scaling  the database side – moved to gamerDNA, where it resides today.

The four card suits mentioned in Bartle’s title align with four “gaming personality” types. See if they sound like you or anyone you know:

 

  • Diamonds are Achievers. They love concrete signs of advancement. Scores, money, points, achievements, gear – if it can be collected and/or improved upon, a Diamond will do it. Diamonds are notable for pursuing in-game challenges or rewards that are of no actual use to them simply for the notability of having done so. MMO creators love Achievers, for obvious reasons. Someone who levels characters for the love of leveling, or your typical achievement hounds (guilty as charged) are, to some extent, Diamonds.
  • Spades are Explorers. They got their suit due to their tendency to “dig around.” Seen someone post a vid where they were exploring in a closed-off region of a game just because it was there to be explored? You’ve seen someone with some Spade leanings in action. Spades delight in new areas, Easter eggs, and sometimes new glitches. Explorers are the most likely to dig into a game, but are the most likely to leave when a game transitions from fun to chore. Once again, yours truly is a prime example.
  • Hearts are Socializers. Hearts are there for the people. Maybe they never advance above level 20 because they’re roleplaying. Maybe they’re those people who genuinely do raid for the people – not the boss-killing, or the loot, but the people. Hearts are usually the most helpful to other players, and are usually that person that everyone gets along with because that’s just how a Heart rolls. Most people who play online games are, to some extent, Hearts – even if it’s just a little bit – and their relationships don’t necessarily have to be with people! A Warlock who’s attached to her minions, or those people asking about relationships with companions in SWTOR, are to some extent a little Heart-y.
  • Clubs are Killers. (There’s an obvious joke here about clubbing people.) The “Killer” archetype often seems to have a lot of negative aspects associated with it, but at the heart of it, Clubs are just extremely competitive. A lot of Killers are focused on PvP, true to their name, but sometimes Killers can be found in other aspects of the game – controlling markets on the Auction House, for instance, or guiding their guild to World First Boss Kills. Don’t take the name to mean they’re griefers or trolls – many Killers are very nice people who just happen to thrive in a competitive environment. Bored Killers are usually bad news, though; ‘bad’ Killers will turn into trolls, while ‘good’ Killers will often seek environments that give them the competition they can’t find in their current environment. Cynwise is a Club who competes with players directly, Basil Berntsen does it in the auction house, and anyone leading a bleeding-edge progression raid guild is more than a little bit Clubby.

 

So now that you’ve read that summary – and perhaps you’ve taken the test yourself, so you know what your gaming personality looks like (yours truly comes in as 73% Explorer, 60% Socializer, 53% Achiever, 13% Killer) – you might be wondering what TOR has to offer for each aspect.

 

  • Diamonds may have been a little disappointed to discover that there wasn’t an actual Achievement system in the game, but there’s still all those hallmarks of MMOs that you’ve come to love – leveling, stats, cash, skills, et cetera. You may not have actual capital-A Achievements, but there’s still plenty of things for an Achiever to point at and say, “I did this.”
  • Spades will have intricate stories to play through and enormous frickin’ planets to traverse, and lots of lore to delve into – including the Bioware Codex. Plus, for the first time in a long time (outside of Rift’s placement of artifacts and cairns far off the beaten path), SWTOR is set to reward Spades with an actual, tangible reward for exploring – Holocrons, which give nice permanent stat bonuses to a character, fill in a spot in the Codex, and most are said to be solely findable by dedicated and crafty Explorers.
  • Hearts will find all the usual tools they’re used to in order to foster kinship – guilds, et cetera. In fact, Bioware’s gotten a head start with its guilds with their Guild HQ site. Go ahead and form your guild now! (We certainly did, and you’re welcome to join us!) Declare other guilds as friends or enemies, and Bioware will do their level best to get you onto the same server and everything. In addition, SWTOR should help Socializers with relationships with non-player characters, too – each class gets its own, unique set of Companion Characters who travel with you, respond to your conversations, and (in some cases) can grow into an actual relationship with your character. (However, for Jedi, that’s more than likely the road to some Dark Side points. Choose carefully!)
  • Clubs will likewise find the aspects they’ve always been used to competing in. Raids, aka Operations? Check. PvP, aka Warzones? Check. Auction house, aka Galactic Market? Check. Whether you’re killing threats to the galaxy or just beating up those pesky Imperials/Republicans, you too can flex your inner Killer. World PvP is available on PvP realms for those who enjoy that aspect of the game, as well.

 

I, for one, will be hunting Holocrons til the cows come home – after I dive into the storyline Bioware’s put before us, probably several times over. What’s your “gaming personality” like – and what aspect of the game are you most looking forward to? Do those fit with one another?