Alderaan GSI Missions Guide

The below guide was originally written by FJ Brodie for his website FibroJedi. After he decided to shut the site down, I decided to reproduce this and his other GSI guides on my blog - with his permission of course. I also made a few small amendments to update them for the current level cap and to add some new information. You can still find an archived version of his original guide here.

Welcome to my guide for the Alderaan GSI Missions in SWTOR! I really enjoy the tasks given to you by Galactic Solutions Industries here, especially digging up and testing ancient Killik weapons. But there’s a bit of everything in just five quests on this planet. There is a fair amount of travel involved, so I would urge you to enjoy the scenery of Alderaan while undertaking jobs for GSI. Relax and enjoy.

Note: Reputation gains are stated before taking any Legacy boosts.

Requirements

The only requirements for being able to pick up these Alderaan GSI Missions, and those on other planets are

• Seeker Droid: Available from Level 52 via quests Master Gend’s Mission (Republic) or An Invitation from Darth Acina (Imperial)
• Macrobinoculars: Obtained via The Shroud’s Gambit (Republic) and Shroud of Ruin (Imperial)

The quest-givers are protocol droids – some are on your faction’s fleet and some are on planets such as: Dromund Kaas, Coruscant, Makeb and Ilum. (More info on Swtorista.)

Where to Pick Up the Alderaan GSI Missions

The GSI Terminals can be found just outside
Rhu Caenus Spaceport - Imperial:

 Pallista Spaceport - Republic:

Antiquity Analysis – Find & Test Ancient Killik Weapons

The culture of the Killiks intrigues Galactic Solutions Industries so they send you to find some relics for study.

Where Are Killik Memorials on Alderaan?

To this end you need to visit one of five Killik Memorials. Choices are

• Kaamos Territory (2309,-1440): This is the closest location for Imperial characters but also requires you to make your way up a long, narrow mountain path and through a cave of Killiks.
• King’s Pass (2302,2313): This is also near a scan site for Big Red.
• The Juran Mountains (2144,-135): Overrun Mining Path, east of House Alde - a decent alternative for Imperial characters.
• Alsakan Lowlands (740,1233): Mensaav Laboratory Grounds, just north of Republic Wardpost Duvaal. And near a tower for Weather Forecast. Ignore the actual map marker here – you can’t actually reach that exact point!
• Alsakan Lowlands (1163,1488): House Teral. This is probably the most convenient location for Republic players, as it's very accessible and has three spawn points that are very close to each other.

Once there, you need to dig up 3 × Ancient Killik Weapons. There is no guesswork involved in finding where your Seeker Droid should dig. Simply look for the piled-up blocks and pottery and dig away. You will have to dispatch some Killiks to complete your excavation.

After you've collected some weapons, the fun part begins – testing them! Near to your faction’s spaceport on Alderaan is a shooting range. Simply target a droid and press the mission item icon in your tracked missions (or from Inventory if you prefer).

Antiquity Analysis auto-completes once you have tested three weapons. Sometimes you destroy a test droid and another one takes its place, sometimes they backfire!

Antiquity Analysis Rewards (Assumes Level 80)

• Credits: 18,630
• GSI Reputation: Repair Toolkit (310 Reputation)

Big Red – Where is the Giant Red Thranta on Alderaan?

In an unusal data-gathering step, GSI has attached technology to a rare Giant Red Thranta. Apparently no one on Alderaan is allowed to kill it because of its rarity. But because it is still a wild Thranta it’s not always easy to predict where it will be.

So that’s your job. On your map you are given areas where the Giant Red Thranta may be found. You will need to travel to those areas and scan it with your Macrobinoculars in order to collect the data.

Possible Locations of the Giant Red Thranta

The coordinates below and the map markers indicate roughly where you should stand and use your macrobinoculars. Not where the Thranta itself may have been spotted.

• King’s Pass: (2055,2275)
• Juuran Mountains: (2181,493) – South and a bit East of House Alde
• Juuran Mountains: (2069,-1047) – North of House Alde
• Glarus Valley: (-187,-610) – West of Wardpost Hurne
• Kaamos Territory: (320,-2780) 

Big Red is large and static, and you'll usually already be able to spot it without your Macrobinoculars. Don't get distracted by other, smaller Thrantas flying around the area; that's not what you're looking for.

Occasional Bug with ‘Big Red’

I, along with other players, have come across an occasional bug where it seems the Thranta does not spawn at all. Unfortunately you won't know that this has happened until you've visited all five map markers and found that Big Red isn't at any of them. This is a bug with the instance (not your mission), so all you can do is open your map and swap to a different instance of Alderaan. Cross your fingers that Big Red will be present in that one and revisit each quest marker again.

Enjoy the Journey

Big Red encourages you to travel around a lot – so enjoy the journey as much as the destination. Most of Alderaan’s GSI Missions are slow and relaxing, so take in the views too.

Big Red Rewards (Assumes Level 80)

• Credits: 18,630
• GSI Reputation: Repair Toolkit (310 Reputation)

Retrieve, Restore, Recycle

The legacy of Czerka Corporation rears its ugly head again. Apparently Czerka illegally dumped radioactive waste on the beautiful planet of Alderaan. Your job is to find 3 × Chemical Barrels because GSI believes they could be turned into fuel. No mention of being eco-friendly here!

Locations of Chemical Dumping Grounds

There are two sites where you can unearth chemical barrels with your Seeker Droid:

• Kings Pass: (1635,1715) – East of Republic Wardpost Luurdes
• Kaamos Territory: (144,-2196) – Just South of a scan location for Big Red.

Dig Up Irradiated Plants

Your world map will show you the region to dig in. Again, though, there is no guess-work because you just have to find irradiated plants. Use your seeker droid to dig where these irradiated plants appear and voilà, you have a Chemical Barrel.

Remember that, even if you’re Level 80 you will have to dispatch nearby mobs (mostly Killiks) to get at the Irradiated Plants.

Deposit Chemical Barrels

In order for Galactic Solutions Industries to see if the chemical waste can make a fuel source, you’ll need to deposit the barrels at the place marked on your map. Then your mission will complete.

Retrieve, Restore, Recycle, Rewards (Assumes Level 80)

• Credits: 18,630
• GSI Reputation: Repair Toolkit (310 Reputation)

Weather Forecast

From the mission log:

"GSI is interested in reverse engineering Alderaan’s famous weather towers in order to develop weather controlling technology."

Your mission then is to locate all four towers and scan them with your Macrobinoculars to send data to GSI on how they work. Here's what the towers look like:

Remember: your Macrobinoculars are super-powerful. If you can see the tower in the distance, it can be scanned. No need to wander too far into enemy territory, for example!

Weather Forecast Tower Locations

• Alsakan Lowlands: (45,1680) – West of Wardpost Duvaal.
• The Juran Mountains: (2125,-1030) – right by a scan location for Big Red.
• King’s Pass: (1990,1200) – West of House Trader's Circle.
• The Glarus Valley: (450,-870) – North of Wardpost Hurne.

Weather Forecast Rewards (Assumes Level 80)

• Credits: 18,630
• GSI Reputation: Repair Toolkit (310 Reputation)

[Heroic 2+] Trade Secrets

A saboteur working for The Shroud is known to be on Alderaan, but more importantly GSI data was stolen in the process! (Sarcasm intended!) They believe the saboteur is about to send the data from one of the major “Great House” locations.

Trade Secrets: Possible Locations

•  The Apalis Coast: House Organa Cantina (Republic Ally): 809, -801
•  The Juran Mountains: House Alde (Republic Ally): 1750, -20
•  The Juran Mountains: House Thul (Imperial Ally): 1167, -1081
•  House Rist (Neutral): 589, 650

Great Houses of Alderaan – some Pointers

• House Alde: if you’re Imperial, House Alde is aligned with the Republic. You can however scan the transmitter from outside the walls (see screenshot below). Naturally if the saboteur is transmitting from inside House Alde, then you’ll have to fight your way through.

Close-up of the sort of transmitter you're looking for when scanning 

Taking on the Industrial Spy

Once you have confirmation of the Industrial Spy’s location, you’ll have to neutralise them. The boss is a Champion-grade foe with two normal-strength bodyguards. Take these out first – no more are spawned during the encounter. Then just bash the Spy into dust.

Trade Secrets Rewards (Assumes Level 80)

You have to complete at least one Heroic 2+ mission to fulfil the [Weekly] GSI Valued Partner Initiative. As this is a Heroic, the credit reward is much higher, as is the reputation gain.

• Credits: 29,064
• GSI Reputation: Energy Field Monitor (724 Reputation)

 Alderaan GSI Missions – Relax and Enjoy!

Seriously, if fast credits are your motivation, then you’re not going to do GSI Missions. By choosing to undertake them, you’re putting aside time to relax and smell the roses for a bit. The Alderaan GSI tasks are varied, interesting and enjoyable. I hope this guide has helped you out. Do let me know if anything needs to be changed or updated! Take care! 

Three Things I Miss About Knights of the Fallen Empire

Back in October, Knights of the Fallen Empire turned ten years old - which is wild to me, when I still tend to think of it as a sort of dividing line between old SWTOR and new SWTOR. New stuff isn't supposed to be a decade old! There was an interesting reddit thread on the subject at the time, with many people reminiscing about what they liked and disliked about the expansion.

I briefly considered writing a post on the subject as well, but ultimately decided against it because I was worried that it would just devolve into me rehashing all my gripes about KotFE for the umpteenth time, and god knows I've done enough of that on this blog.

However, I recently started another alt on KotFE for the first time in a couple of years, and it actually made me realise that there are at least a few things that I really liked about that expansion and that I kind of miss now. This doesn't affect me still not being too hot on KotFE and KotET as a whole, but I thought it might make for a fun post to give some credit where credit is due.

1. Our characters getting to look cool, often

What really got me thinking about this one actually wasn't just my newest KotFE playthrough, but also the release of Galactic Threads. One of my immediate reactions to my first playthrough of the latter was that I was pleasantly surprised by how many opportunities the story presented to take screenshots of my character looking cool.

One of the best things about KotFE, if not the best thing, was how dramatically it improved the in-game cut scenes, and it made use of these new tools by giving us a lot of shots of our characters looking badass, whether they were involved in action scenes, looking determined or just brandishing their weapons. If you're someone who takes screenshots at all, you must have at least one of your character pulling out their weapon in chapter five of KotFE while Lana and Senya raise their own lightsabers next to you. Or how about your various confrontations with Arcann? Lots of cool moments there.

Now, that technology never went away, but after thinking about it, it does feel to me like we've gotten fewer cool shots of our characters in the last couple of years, with much of the cut scene energy getting channeled into NPCs like Sa'har or Malgus instead (at least until Galactic Threads). So that's something I didn't even really realise I was missing, until I was delighted to get more of it again.

2. Frequent story updates

Look, I'm not even going to go into the chapter format, its mechanics and the story quality - but it's undeniable that for a while at least, we got a story update close to every month. I don't think it was worth the trade-off of ignoring everything else, but it was something. In hindsight, it seems deeply ironic that this was also a time when the community complained incessantly that there was "no content" and "nothing to do". And yes, I know that a lot of those complaints were about endgame activities in specific, but still. Pure story players at least were eating well for a while.

It's also funny to remember that the whole "one chapter a month" thing was dropped again pretty quickly with the justification that people didn't want to wait a whole month between story updates, because that was too long. *looks at Legacy of the Sith and gesticulates helplessly*

3. The world and community felt alive

Maybe re-reading some of FibroJedi's old posts gave me rose-tinted glasses, or maybe it was simply because there wasn't anything other than story going on at the time, but I seem to remember the community being very engaged with Knights of the Fallen Empire's story, with many people blogging about their thoughts, speculating what might happen next, and so on and so forth.

While I do recall some complaints that chapters ten to fourteen in particular weren't really moving the story forward enough, in general it felt like there was always something happening in the galaxy from a story perspective. Ultimately we ended up speed-running both the rise and fall of the Eternal Empire within less than two years. This is a stark contrast to the current (Legacy of the Sith) era, where it feels like nothing much has happened, narrative-wise, for the last four years. Or as Ted put it the other week: "I feel like time stands still in SWTOR, or at the very least, it moves slowly."

I think that as a side effect of this, the community has become less and less engaged with the current storyline over time. At least in my circle of friends, I don't know many who rush to play the newest story update the moment it comes out anymore. There seems to be a bit of a sense of "nothing's going to happen that's so important that I feel like I need to see it for myself as soon as possible". I also don't see many other fans producing story reviews like I do, though I feel like Galactic Threads has got people at least a bit more curious again after the long enforced break due to the voice actors' strike.

I'm hoping that as we're starting to wrap up Legacy of the Sith and get a new "era" to look forward to, these developments will add a breath of fresh air both to our characters' in-game day-to-day lives and to the community's engagement with what's new in a galaxy far, far away. 

Tatooine GSI Missions Guide

The below guide was originally written by FJ Brodie for his website FibroJedi. After he decided to shut the site down, I decided to reproduce this and his other GSI guides on my blog - with his permission of course. I also made a few small amendments to update them for the current level cap and to add some new information. You can still find an archived version of his original guide here.

One of the ways I have created variation in my gaming has been to mix up story content with other styles of missions. One of these is the Seeker Droid and Macrobinoculars Missions for Galactic Solution Industries (GSI). Often revolving around research, GSI Missions are less about combat and more about exploration and discovery. In this blog post, the first in a new mini-series I will cover the overview of the Tatooine GSI Missions in SWTOR.

Gaining Reputation with GSI

It’s a simple model really: Complete GSI Missions and be awarded a range of reputation points. However, there are bonuses: Complete any Heroic 2+ for a medium amount of reputation. And there is also a weekly GSI Valued Partner Initiative. This requires you to complete 10 GSI Missions for a large amount of Reputation.

At level 80, GSI Missions pay around 18,600 Credits for normal missions and 33,500 Credits for the (Heroic 2+).

For more information about the GSI Reputation, Seeker Droids and Macrobinoculars in general, you can refer to Swtorista's guide here. 

Tatooine GSI Missions

Let’s zero in on the specific missions for Tatooine. They are all identical for Imperial and Republic characters, apart from the first mission.

A Droid Defiant: Heroic 2+

If you’re playing an Imperial character, then A Droid Defiant takes place in Mos Ila. If it’s a Republic character then this mission takes place in Anchorhead. The aim of this GSI Mission is to find and dig up (using your Seeker Droid) – scrambler transmitters around the town.

The map markers show approximate areas and do not indicate the actual positions of the transmitters. Your Macrobinoculars will not pick them up, so you need to use your eyes. The transmitters are located up on walls or on the edges of roofs. The spawn locations do change but not radically and with enough repetition you can speed up the process of finding them. Just direct your Seeker Droid to dig roughly under their location; you don't need to place the dig circle up on whatever building they sit on. Oh, and trust me: jump on your favourite vehicle or creature and use your eyes. It’s more forgiving than using the Seeker Droid and moving a few paces!

Once you have found three transmitters, the rogue droid is triangulated. It’s an Elite Droid, but as it’s H2, you can defeat it with just a companion. The results will be delivered to the GSI Dropbox automatically and you’re well on your way on your Tatooine missions!

Watch out: One of the spawn locations in Mos Ila (around X 880, Y 3190) has been bugged for years, and if a scrambler transmitter is located there, you'll be unable to dig it up (even though you can see that it's there), no matter how precise you try to be while targeting it with your Seeker Droid. Unfortunately all you can do if this happens is change instance to see if it's in a different location there, or else come back another day.

The offending location in Mos Ila 

Tatooine GSI Maps

The next four missions come with clearer maps, so here they all are. Click to enlarge them or feel free to download them later for reference!

Above the Fray

Above the Fray sees you trekking across the Desert Dustball looking for Moisture Vaporators, the back bone of farming on Tatooine. If you’re running this as an Imperial, it’s much easier as one of the vaporators is actually above an Imperial outpost (the most Southern marker). Thankfully your Macrobinoculars are really powerful, so you can get close to the Outpost as a Republic player and still see the Vaporator to catch it.

This mission is called Above the Fray because your targets are above eye level, so you’re looking up the cliff faces.

To show just how powerful the Macrobinoculars are, here’s an example of reaching one of the Moisture Vaporators.

Scanning the Depths

This mission sees you looking down…a lot. You’re looking for Meteorite Fragments in the valleys around The Wound. The map markers are very vague! And you’ll have to fight some Sand People away from the cliff edges to get the angles right. Although you need to look down, the meteorite fragments are not really deep. And you can see them with your eyes – they are a bluey-green hue, which is a stark contrast to the red and brown tinge of the cliffs. Once you know what you're looking for, you may find it easier to search with your eyes first before trying to scan, as scanning down into the ravine often ends up limiting your field of view.

You’ll spend most of this mission traipsing around The Wound. And the exact spawn points of the fragments do change slightly. Once you’ve found a fragment, scan it with your Macrobinoculars, breathe a sigh of relief and move on.

If you’re also doing The Shroud Story Arc, you can couple finding various items from the Tatooine GSI Missions with locating the Shroud’s Encrypted Transmitters. One of them is right next to a Meteorite Fragment for Scanning the Depths!

Buried in Time

Time to head out to the Krayt Dragon Graveyard for a much simpler GSI Mission. This time you will need your Seeker Droid, but you don’t need it for searching – only digging. You’re looking for small Fossilized Eggs near Larvae Clusters. These are bright yellow and are visible to the naked eye. Each Krayt Dragon skeleton tends to have 2-3 clusters spawning near it. So if you find another player digging these up there are plenty to go around! You’ll know if you have found one by hovering your cursor over the clusters before using your Seeker Droid to dig them up.

If you're still having trouble finding these after cruising around for several minutes, your camera settings might have something to do with it! Shintar has a whole post about this particular problem here, which also contains screenshots and exact coordinates for a bunch of different Fossilized Egg spawn locations.

Once you have excavated 3 batches of fossilized eggs, they will automatically be returned to the GSI Dropbox in Mos Ila or Anchorhead.

Looking for Droids

Warning: This is a Random Number Generation Mission. Galactic Solution Industries report some missing droids – probably the thieving Jawas again! You are to scan Jawa Sandcrawlers to find out which one contains the droids. It’s based on random numbers because it may be a different crawler each time.

To remind you again, your Macrobinoculars are really powerful, which matters especially in the Dune Sea! As soon as even the smallest tip of a Sandcrawler is visible on your screen, use your Macrobinoculars to scan them. No point wandering all the desert when your technology can do the trick!

Tip: If you're feeling cheeky and don't fancy moving around too much, the correct Sandcrawler for the mission is re-randomised every time you reset the mission. So you can start by scanning the one near your faction's outpost and if the droids are not there, just reset the quest in your log and try again until the mission completes. Note that Broadsword has added a 2-minute cooldown to the reset button to prevent people from going too crazy with this.

TL;DR The Tatooine GSI Missions

I’m enjoying the Tatooine GSI Missions, not because of the Reputation, but because of its gameplay style. It’s investigative, not based on your killing prowess. Scanning the Depths can be frustrating, but for a gaming session, they are really relaxing!

A Farewell to FibroJedi's Website

If you're very old school, you may remember a SWTOR content creator called FibroJedi. About ten years ago, he was in the official content creator programme and everything! He took his name from the fact that he was suffering from fibromyalgia, a chronic health condition that mostly causes people a lot of pain for no physically apparent reason. (I had not heard about it before meeting him, a good example of how talking to different kinds of people can broaden your horizons.)

FibroJedi's website logo includes a depiction of Yoda wielding a giant spoon, a reference to spoon theory

He really opened my eyes to what life could be like if you approached SWTOR more casually, as he kind of had to do so by necessity. I used to very much be a proponent of how some challenge in MMOs makes everything more fun, but seeing his writings about the ways he sometimes struggled even with supposedly easy story content due to his disability really opened my eyes to a different perspective on that. I still think that challenge can be fun and that not everything needs to necessarily be for everyone, but his insights definitely showed me the value of having an easy story mode, especially in a game with as much focus on the narrative as SWTOR has.

Anyway, around 2020 he stepped down from the content creator programme and also more or less stopped playing SWTOR altogether because he found it too exhausting after the launch of Onslaught. He continued to create content about other MMOs though, primarily Lord of the Rings Online. Except - this week he announced that he's decided to step away from that as well (the content creation part that is) to focus on other things, and that his website will go away soon. He's arranged for this LOTRO and Final Fantasy XIV content to be moved to other platforms, but he noted that "[a]ll other content - that is to say, SWTOR and Fibromyalgia posts, will just disappear. Much of the stuff for SWTOR is out of date anyway."

That immediately made me - as someone who likes hoarding and preserving things, including digitally - go "nooo". I mean, okay, I guess some of his old guides and opinion pieces are probably outdated, but surely there were at least some posts that were still relevant. I immediately recalled his very detailed guides to the GSI daily missions for example.

So I trawled through his SWTOR content archive for a look, and was pleased to find that if nothing else, everything but a few fan fiction pieces had been captured on the Internet Archive (and I was able to capture the missing pages today). Not a place where things are necessarily obvious and easy to find, but they are still accessible if you want to look at them, even if not all the images are present and the formatting can be a bit wonky. I decided to compile a list of all of FJ's SWTOR-related posts on the Wayback Machine for easier finding in the future, after the original site goes down:

General SWTOR category:

• SWTOR: Gaming as Distraction from Fibromyalgia 
• SWTOR: Introducing Cor-Jhan Arcturus
• SWTOR: Connecting To My Characters
• SWTOR Neutral Alignment (Updated for LvD State)
• SWTOR (KotFE) Core World Changes
• SWTOR Level Sync - A Blessing and a Curse? 
• SWTOR: Obtaining the HK-51 Droid
• KOTFE Review - My Initial Thoughts 
• Companions in Knights of the Fallen Empire (KotFE)
• Should PvE Players Be Forced to PvP in SWTOR? 
• KotFE: Star Fortresses - A Division of Opinion?
• SWTOR C2-N2 Quest: Inflicting Comfort Mission on Odessen
• KotFE: Unanswered Questions by Chapter IX
• What Happens If You Kneel to Valkorion in KotFE?
• KotFE: Upcoming Subscriber Rewards
• Religions and Faith Systems in SWTOR
• KotFE Alliance Crates Missions - A Backwards Step?
• Anarchy in Paradise - SWTOR KotFE: Chapter X
• What Should You Do Before Starting KotFE?
• Battle of Ilum (Solo) Flashpoint Walkthrough
• SWTOR Little Boss - Alliance Recruitment Mission for Blizz
• KotFE Chapter 11: Disavowed (with Aric Jorgan)
• SWTOR Bugs and Launch Day Disruption: Give the Developers a Break
• To Find a Findsman - KotFE Alliance Recruitment: Yu'un
• SWTOR: The Death and Rebirth of a Jedi Battlemaster
• Visions in the Dark - KotFE chapter 12
• Profit and Plunder - KotFE Chapter 13 
• 4 Steps to Sharper, Clearer Screenshots in SWTOR (for Free)
• SWTOR Wallpapers for Desktop or Mobile - Free Downloads For All
• Mandalore's Revenge - KotFE Chapter 14: An Alliance of Mistrust 
• Open Letter to Bioware From a Chronic Pain Gamer
• Common Data Crystals - How To Spend Them
• Why Makeb is Swiftly Becoming my Favourite Planet
• The GEMINI Deception - KotFE Chapter 15
• The Battle of Odessen - KotFE Chapter 16
• Slow Levelling in SWTOR: A Gaming and Fibromyalgia Experiment
• KotET Without Playing KotFE - You Can, but Should You?
• Thorough Assessment Achievement in Arma Rasa with HK-55
• Let Arcann and Senya Go or Shoot them Down? - KotFE Chapter 16 - Battle of Odessen
• SWTOR Tatooine GSI Missions
• Altoholism: Is it Bad for Your Credit Balance?
• The Ghiran Legacy on SWTOR
• #SWTORfamily: What Should SWTOR Be About? Community.
• Fibro Jedi YouTube Channel Plan
• 19 Ways to Save Credits in SWTOR - Start Saving Today!
• SWTOR vs LOTRO (Part 1) - What SWTOR Could Learn from LOTRO
• SWTOR vs LotRO (Part 2) - What LotRO Could Learn from SWTOR
• Credit-Selling Mail Spam in SWTOR - What Should Be Done About It?
• How to Take Stunning Aerial Screenshots in SWTOR
• Fibromyalgia: The Reason My SWTOR Content Has Slowed Down
• Crisis on Umbara - What's Theron Shan Really Up to?
• SWTOR Manaan Stronghold Tour - Video and Pictorial Guide!
• 14 Ways to Enjoy SWTOR With Little or No Combat
• Traitor Among the Chiss on Copero - Solo Flashpoint Walkthrough
• SWTOR Artwork Commissions by Fiona Eaton aka Glorfinniell
• SWTOR Companion Influence
• SWTOR Alderaan GSI Missions Guide
• SWTOR Hoth GSI Missions Guide
• SWTOR Jedi Under Siege - How I Chose Who to Support
• SWTOR Gearing: A Beginners Guide
• How To Make Outfits in SWTOR: A Guide for Beginners
• SWTOR Free-to-play (F2P) Review
• Why Do Men Play Female Characters in MMOs? Why Do I and Does it Really Matter?
• SWTOR's New Gear Preview Window
• SWTOR Level Sync 2 - Digging into the Current System for Improvements
• The Black-Clad Warrior - SWTOR Outfit
• SWTOR Play Your Way - My Accessibility Hopes for Spoils of War
• Golden Gun - SWTOR Chiss Bounty Hunter Outfit
• SWTOR Character Combat Stats Guide
• Defender of the Free - SWTOR Jedi Shadow Outfit
• SWTOR Security Key - How to Set It Up With Authy
• SWTOR Imperial and Republic Fleet Maps
• How to Make Mara Jade Skywalker in SWTOR
• Force Alignment in SWTOR: What is it and How Do You Influence it?
• 24 Positive Life Lessons from Gaming in MMOs
• How to Make the Most of the SWTOR Character Panel
• Sage in the Dark - Black and Red Jedi Consular SWTOR Outfit
• Making Sense of Nautolan and Twi'lek Skin Colours in SWTOR
• SWTOR Onslaught Expansion Review - Galactic War Ignites
• SWTOR Gathering Guide - How & Where to Gather Crafting Materials by CelynTheRaven
• The Possession Obsession
• SWTOR Makeb GSI Missions Guide
• How To Make Gaming Emote Animated GIFs for Free
• SWTOR Rakghoul Resurgence Event Guide
• SWTOR Bounty Contract Week Event Guide (Part 1)
• Is End-Game in SWTOR Game Over for the Solo Player?
• Personal Conquest in SWTOR: Get Rewarded Simply by Playing the Game!
• SWTOR Beginners Guide by FJ
• I Don't Have Three Hands
• SWTOR Jedi Consular Companions
• SWTOR Life Day Event - Your Celebration Guide 

Knights of the Eternal Throne category (if not already included in the above list):

• KotET: What We Know About Knights of the Eternal Throne
• KotET SWTOR Producer Livestream
• Crafting in Knights of the Eternal Throne (KotET)
• Wrath and Ruin - KotET Chapter 1 on Voss
• Run For The Shadows - SWTOR KotET Chapter 2
• Dark Reunions - SWTOR KotET Chapter 3
• Where Dreams Die - SWTOR KotET Chapter 4 on Iokath
• Ascension - SWTOR KotET Chapter 5
• The Dragon's Maw - SWTOR KotET Chapter 6
• Into the Void - KotET Chapter 7: Vayilin - Nature or Nurture?
• End Times - SWTOR KotET Chapter 8 Walk-Through
• The Eternal Throne - SWTOR KotET Chapter 9 - Finally Defeat Valkorion 

SWTOR fan fiction:

• Prelude: Child of the Sacking 
• Prelude: Sjani: Heiress of the Skies
• Chapter 1: Devoted to Destruction 
• Part 2: Sanctuary
• Chapter 1 - Sjani: The Diversion 
• SWTOR: Introducing Sjani Arcturus
• Sjani: The Unplanned Journey
• Introduction: Sith Healer Talitha'koum 
• Sjani Arcturus - The Misinformation
• Prelude: A Light in the Darkness
• Intersecting Vectors
• Survival of the Sithest
• The Cost of Victory 
• A New Dawn for the Jedi 
• Sjani Arcturus: A Family Divided
• A Moment's Respite
• The Art of Deception
• Putting the Shadow back into the Jedi Shadow 
• The Need for Allies
• Introduction: Master Conspirator Pakarius (Imperial Agent)
• The Weapon of the Healer
• Trial by Ice on Ilum 
• You Cannot Hide Your Light Forever
• The Ascendance of the Slave
• Acolyte No More
• The Battle for Survival
• Interlude: Seeking Answers and Searching Feelings
• Testing Times on Tython: Cor-Jhan Arcturus
• Episode 2: The Darth's Downfall. Part 1: City Girl 
• Dark Investigation
• Echoes of the Past - Talitha'koum
• Cor-Jhan Arcturus: Time to Grow Up 
• Killer in the Shadows
• Facing the Madness - Talitha'koum SWTOR Fan Fiction
• To the Heart of Darkness - Talitha'koum SWTOR Fan Fiction
• Finding Herself - SWTOR KotET Fan Fiction
• The Rogue's SithLost and Found - Andronikos Revel and Talitha'koum Fan Fiction
• Running the Gauntlet to the Dark Temple - Talitha'koum Fan Fiction
• SWTOR Andronikos Revel Reunion
• Dark Mind Games - Talitha'koum Fan Fiction
• Blades and Shadows
• Escape to the Unknown
• The Twi'lek Captain - SWTOR Fan Fiction - Talitha'koum
• The Restless Flight
• Space Debris - Sjani - SWTOR Fan Fiction 
• The Heart of the Order - SWTOR Fan Fiction - Talitha'koum
• The Sickness Conundrum

I'm guessing you just scrolled past that huge list of links and you know what? Fair enough. I'm not going to pretend that I just re-read all of them myself today, though I did re-read some and enjoyed the nostalgia trip that came with that. I know from a usability perspective, people always want guides to be up-to-date, but from a historic perspective it can also be interesting to see what a guide on a certain topic said ten years ago. Not that long ago I found myself ruminating about how I actually remembered very little about the way endgame gearing worked back in Knights of the Fallen Empire (before KotET added the dreaded Galactic Command), and what do you know? FJ had a guide for that! His older opinion pieces were also a fond reminder of when the SWTOR blogosphere used to be a lot more lively and people were always exchanging thoughts and opinions on the latest content drops.

While this link list should be good enough for the purposes of someone specifically wanting to go back to find some of FJ's old posts, it won't make them easy to find on Google - which should be fine for the vaguely outdated stuff, but I think I might repost his GSI guides on here in full (with his permission of course), because they are still the most comprehensive content on the subject many years later. Yes, Swtorista has a page about how GSI works in general, but that won't necessarily help you when you're struggling to find Big Red on Alderaan.

Anyway, thank you, FJ, for your contributions to the SWTOR community, and for giving us a heads-up about your intentions with the website!

My Total Galactic War Routine

Last week was Total Galactic War again - my first after successfully conquering the galaxy with my guild last June. I was kind of wondering at the time what that would mean for my interest in future Conquest events, and last week I got my answer: I wasn't any less engaged and it was still as much fun; I was just a little less tense now that the stakes were no longer as high for me personally. We re-conquered Ruhnuk and it took some effort, which made it more enjoyable, but it wasn't as manic and crazy as the last few TGWs have been.

It also occurred to me that maybe the time has finally come to share some more of my accumulated knowledge about Conquest. It may sound a bit paranoid, but I've actually held back a bit on that subject in the past because I didn't want to accidentally help any of our opponents in case they came across this blog. At this point I'm not really that worried about that anymore though, plus as a guildie pointed out, any guild coming across this place in search of more information about how to take on Twin Suns at Conquest should mainly come away with the conclusion that we are all maniacs and they are better off not messing with us.

As a start, I thought I'd share my Conquest routine for Total Galactic War, which always has me generating between five and fifteen million Conquest points across my legacy, depending on how much time I have and just how much effort I'm willing to put in for that particular week.

To begin with, I tend to mentally think of the objectives I decide to tackle as split into roughly three "tiers". Tier one includes the ones with the best payout for the time invested, and the ones I try to do every day, even if I don't have a lot of time after a long day of work. Tier two is how I generate additional points if I have extra time, and tier three is what I do when it's the weekend, we desperately need more points and I'm trying to find just a few more activities to squeeze points out of. 

All number values cited in this post are rounded up or down using a full stronghold bonus as the baseline. Yours might be smaller if you don't have that maxed out, or bigger if your guild also has a Conquest guild perk slotted. The point here isn't to provide exact number values to do maths with, but just to give a general idea of how rewarding an activity is - it obviously makes a difference whether something awards 5k, 30k or 100k Conquest points.

Tier 1:

- My first priority of the day is to do the Galactic Starfighter weekly objective, "Starfighter: Achiever". It requires you to play only two to four matches (depending on whether you win or lose) and grants over 100k points. Make sure to fly all four different types of ships whenever you get the chance and over the course of the week you'll also earn an additional 120k or so for completing the "Starfighter: Bomber/Gunship/Scout/Striker Pilot (Eternal)" objectives (after flying each type in six matches). The only downside to this objective is that GSF queues don't pop at all times of the day even on busy servers, so you've got to make sure to get this done during prime time. Also, you can only repeat it up to three times on the same character. If you want to get credit for more than three days you need to use alts.

- My next priority is to do the weekly warzone objective, "Warzones: Achiever". If you win every single match it will be done after only four games. Now this one carries more risk than the GSF weekly, as the worst case - if you were to lose every single match - would require you to play twelve of them, but realistically you'll get something closer to a 50/50 win rate while queueing solo, which would then complete the quest for you after six matches. You'll also earn additional points from "Warzones: Medalist", "Warzones: Victorious" (which comes in three tiers) and "Activity Finder: Socialite" (which also comes in two tiers). If you win a lot, there's also the infinitely repeatable "Warzones: Infinite Domination" which grants an additional 80k for every tenth win. Like with GSF, you'll need alts after three completions.

- While sitting in queues for the above activities, I do the Iokath weekly. Many people seem to hate Iokath, but it really doesn't take that long once you know what you're doing and awards an insane 50k points for "Iokath: Patrol" plus some extra from "Iokath: Mission Complete" and "Iokath: Defeat Enemies". Last I checked, this can be done twice per week per character, so again, alts are needed to get the most out of it.

- Alternatively, you can also do heroics. I prefer to use a stealther to do a really quick one on each planet, since you get bonus points for one planetary heroic per day, but you can also go for one that requires more mob killing and try to knock out the "Defeat Enemies" objective for that planet at the same time. 

- Alongside all of this, I also do various easy clicky objectives if I have the resources for them, such as "Advancement: Reputation", "Companion: Influencer", "Crafting Invasion Force", "Crafting: Dark Project", "Crafting: Inventor", "Crew Skills: Missions" etc. None of them give huge numbers anymore, but they can add up to an easy 50k or so points that you just earn almost passively/in the background. If you haven't fully expanded all available strongholds yet, opening a new room also earns 30k per day.

Tier 2:

- If I have time to get into tier two territory, the first thing I like to do is to play a low-level alt (below level 70). You gain about 4k points each time you level up, plus 30k every fifth level once per day, plus 25k for completing ten quests of any type once per day. If you do your personal story, that also gives 6k for each quest completed.

- Next it's doing three uprisings for "Uprisings: Veteran Weekly", which is worth over 100k points by itself. You should also get credit for "Uprisings: Tour of Duty" along the way, though that one's buggy and not all uprisings count for some reason. If you do Landing Party, you'll also get credit for the one-time "Chapters: Defeat Skytroopers" for about 20k plus the less profitable daily repeatable version of the same objective. In terms of raw points earned per time investment, this is really a tier one, but to do it efficiently you kind of need to create a pre-made group that knows what it's doing, which takes extra effort. Personally I also find uprisings a bit tedious, so I don't actually want to do this one every single day.

- I have a similar attitude to the arena weekly for "Arenas: Achiever". Everything I've said about the warzone weekly actually applies to this one as well, I'm just personally not as fond of arenas. You objectively also need to do more arenas to complete the quest, even if you win all the time, and pops tend to be less frequent than for warzones, meaning it takes longer. Still, if you enjoy warzones and arenas equally, you can almost double your daily points by doing both of these. I limit myself to doing this one maybe twice over the course of the week.

- Another thing you can do while waiting in queues - if they take long and you've already done Iokath and a heroic on every planet - is work on dynamic encounters (outside the starter planets, since those don't count) for about 4k points per encounter and an extra 80k+ for completing fifteen (up to once per day). This isn't huge but can add up, especially if you choose encounters that don't take too long. You'll also get points for killing mobs for "Defeat Enemies" on that planet, so it might be worth moving around the galaxy a bit. The only risk to doing these while queued is that you might get a pop before you're able to complete the event you're currently working on.

- Finally, there are daily areas other than Iokath that award points for completing their weekly mission (usually once per day): In descending points order: Makeb ~50k, Ossus ~30k, Kessan's Landing, Manaan, Ruhnuk, Yavin 4 ~25k each, Rishi, Onderon, Oricon, Section X ~20k each, Black Hole, CZ-198, Ziost ~10k each. I'd actively avoid Makeb since its missions are way too spread out and take forever to complete, and I very much recommend Ossus as something that gives a lot of points for how quick and easy it is to complete, but beyond that, your mileage may vary. Personally I can't do too many of these without starting to feel burnt out.

Tier 3:

- Star Fortresses were my bread and butter during Total Galactic War at one point, when they awarded about 100k per completion, but the devs realised that this was perhaps too good and nerfed them heavily. Nonetheless, the weekly mission still gives over 60k points, plus 10k+ per heroic or 5k for a normal run. There are also additional objectives for completing specific Star Fortresses. It's not the best way to earn points, but if you've exhausted most of your other avenues or are just looking for a change of pace, there are some valid points to be gained here. Though they do require your character to be past KotFE chapter nine to start doing them. While they are technically soloable, this is another piece of content that greatly benefits from bringing a competent friend along.

- Finally, there's what we tend to call "Rampaging" after the "Galactic Rampage" objective, though that one is no longer part of Total Galactic War and limited to other Conquest events. Its goal is to simply kill mobs of any type. While that particular objective is no longer relevant during TGW, there are still all the other "Kill enemies" objectives on most planets, which net about ~15k points per planet for killing 75 mobs. Now, I mentioned above that these can feel like a nice bonus to get while you're already doing dailies, dynamic encounters or heroics, but just running around killing mobs is pretty dull. Still, if you're out of other things to do, it's an option. It's also worth noting that as an organised guild activity, this can be extremely efficient, because having a whole ops group scouring the landscape makes 75 mob kills go past in a breeze. Still, this post is primarily about what choices to make as an individual player, and from that perspective simply killing mobs is a lot less exciting and profitable. 

Galactic Threads: Things Are Starting to Come Together

With more than 18 months having passed since the last story update, my anticipation for 7.8's Galactic Threads was high, and I'm happy to say that it didn't disappoint.

It's a decently sized piece of story that sets itself apart with what I'd describe as a somewhat more "old-school" vibe, with slightly more running around in the open world and more varied gameplay. As was already revealed during the first previews, it's also structured a bit differently than normal, with three "mini arcs" that can be completed in any order instead of a single, strictly linear narrative. I was a little worried that this might make the shorter arcs feel kind of inconsequential (since by necessity, nothing you do in one of them could influence events in another) but that didn't turn out to be the case.

Let's go through everything one by one, shall we? As usual, there will be full spoilers.

Galactic Threads

The story starts with a cut scene showing us Malgus, Shae and her newly assembled ragtag band from the prison break fighting the Hidden Chain on Tatooine, which includes Malgus reaching out with the Force and downing two small ships by smashing them together in the air. I thought this was a nice callback to the Deceived novel, where Malgus' sheer power is also demonstrated by him stopping a shuttle from taking off by pulling it down with the Force.

That short scene is largely it for "meanwhile, here's what's going on somewhere else" cinematics in this update though, and going forward it's all about our character and their companions. I think it's been a while since I got to take so many good screenshots of my own characters, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Back on Odessen, Jakaiah and Rass Ordo arrive in a shuttle and let you know that they are pissed off about Shae's prison break too, as it meant that she effectively abandoned her position as Mandalore. I wonder if there are any precedents for that kind of thing in Star Wars lore? Either way you agree to pursue the matter together, which leads us to the aforementioned three mini arcs that can be done in any order, taking you either to Tatooine, Hoth or Elom. I've played through them in different orders and can confirm that your choice in that regard makes absolutely no difference. I did wonder at one point, when Rass made a complaint about something that included the line "if we got here sooner, this might've been a whole lot easier", whether there might be slight differences in voice lines depending on the order, but that didn't turn out to be true. He says that line even if you go to Hoth with him first. 

On The Run

In my first playthrough however, I started on Tatooine, so I'll start there in this post as well. With the help of Akaavi Spar, you go there to answer a distress signal from a high-ranking Hidden Chain defector. You eventually find her, though it turns out that she didn't actually signal you, which points towards a mysterious third party interfering. Nevertheless you make a deal to help her and her love interest get rid of a band of mercenaries that have been hired by Heta Kol to hunt them down. In turn they provide you with the intel that Heta's fleet is moving through Sith space, seemingly unbothered by anyone even though she doesn't particularly like the Empire, which again, is somewhat mysterious.

Gameplay-wise, this section is probably the least interesting as it involves a lot of running around to first track down the defector's safe house, and then to hunt down the mercenaries scattered across all four corners of the map. I could see some people not being too thrilled by this, but to me, cruising across Tatooine for a story mission actually felt very nostalgic and I even made a point of not always taking the fastest route via quick travel and instead using taxis and my speeder so I could take in the scenery and pause for the occasional dynamic encounter on the way (at least on my first playthrough). I also liked the mechanic for finding the stealthed mercenaries and how you could tell you were getting close by either your character or Akaavi emitting a small startled sound.

Story-wise, Jemala from clan Ha'rangir and her lover Ora are certainly... memorable for their slightly melodramatic behaviour, and I think people were just happy to see a lesbian NPC couple in game for what I think might be the first time. (Darth Krovos and Zasha Ranken are pretty clearly an item as well, but it was never that obvious and depending on your choices you may be responsible for Ranken's death, so less of a happy story.)

It was also interesting to get more interactions with Akaavi that showed more of her character to players who perhaps never played a smuggler and aren't that familiar with her. The letter she sends you afterwards also ties in nicely with her origin story in the base game.

Hoth Pursuit

On Hoth you're after the slicer from Shae's little band, and you're accompanied by Rass Ordo, who continues to be in a very bad mood about the whole Shae thing, which manifests in a lot of anger and disgust about the slicer and how Shae could throw everything away just to do a heist with a low-life like him.

You visit a place called Shai Tenna's Pleasure Den and I was a bit disappointed that smugglers don't get any comment about their previous adventures with Shai. Also, am I the only one who found the concept of a "unique slicer signature" a bit weird? I always thought the point of slicing was to do things without being traced... but that's just an aside.

After a lot of searching you finally manage to corner Greb Besrik the cyborg Mon Calamari (for some reason I found his name extremely difficult to remember and spell correctly) and he confesses that he doesn't know where Shae and her crew are right now, as he doesn't hang out with them all the time, he just sends them stuff via a broker. He just knows that Shae and Malgus are still sticking together, as they seem to have some sort of plan that involves both of them going after the same target for different reasons.

Gameplay-wise, this section also has a lot of running around, but slightly less than Tatooine I guess. Also, the final chase to catch Greb at the end was actually really funny. Usually I'm not necessarily a fan of these kinds of scenarios where you're running after someone who keeps getting away repeatedly, but this one was really well done. I had to chuckle at the bit when you're almost caught up to him and he lets out a yelp, gains a sudden speed boost and just jumps into the ice water. And they make you climb a ladder! I always thought it was weird that they introduced ladders on Onderon as a terrain mechanic and then promptly seemed to forget about them again, forever. 

I needed Illeva to point out that you can see Greb swimming through this tube above you during the chase sequence.

The Library of Nul 

The Elom bit of the story actually starts on Nar Shaddaa, where you help Talos Drellik procure an ancient droid part to repair a droid that's meant to help you access Darth Nul's library. The game repeatedly hits you over the head with how everything about this replacement droid part is odd and weird, to the point that I thought to myself "if this doesn't go wrong in some way, I'll be very disappointed". I was not disappointed.

The repaired droid seems to work fine at first and does indeed grant you access to Nul's sanctuary, where you find old holos of Nul and three small puzzles. It felt like ages since we last got to do a little puzzle as part of the story, though I guess thinking back, there was a short one as part of the story in the Interpreter's Retreat, back in 7.3. I know I've said in the past that puzzles in SWTOR can be contentious, but I enjoyed this little change of pace.

You learn from Nul's holos that she seemingly didn't fully embrace the Sith code but rather warped her old Jedi teachings into something new that suited her better. She also talks about how she did indeed design the machine that Heta replicated with the goal of expanding on her personal power to awaken the Force in people. Her last recording has her explaining that the Emperor is on to her and that she intends to distract him to keep her secrets hidden. At that point the spare droid part suddenly starts transmitting data to somewhere else, and if you don't interfere yourself, your faction companion smashes it. Here too, you worry about what mysterious third party caused this to happen.

I enjoyed the different pace of this section of the story, with minimal movement and combat but instead featuring those three puzzles. It also adds a taste of faction flavour as you're either accompanied by Arn or Major Anri, both of whom have some great, amusing commentary on Darth Nul's little setup. 

Dark Heart of the Fortress

During the intermission conversations between these three mini arcs, Lana updates you about a survey team sent to Ilum to investigate the old ruins of the Emperor's crashed space station (where we also found XR-53). If you ever wondered why nobody looked at that thing before, the implication seems to be that at least part of the stealth technology actually survived and hid it from view.

As the survey team becomes non-responsive and seems to have run into trouble, Lana asks you to go to Ilum with her to search for them. You follow their tracks and eventually find their bodies in the ruins of the station, though it's not clear what killed them. Soon afterwards some of them get up as zombies though, and I immediately thought "uh oh, just like those Czerka guys who messed with the Rakata mind trap on Tatooine" - good foreshadowing there, as you eventually do find a Rakata mind trap, as well as some Malgus holos that seem to indicate that he talked to someone there. You also pull Darth Nul's holocron out of your back pocket and the mind trap tugs at it, though I was a bit baffled why my character would be just carrying that thing around with her so casually. In general, this whole section was really well done in terms of atmosphere though - I was very immersed in the creepy vibes.

You check in on the mind trap and find Darth Nul herself inside, or at least what's left of her mind. She talks about "he who came before" and you conclude that she must mean Malgus, though she doesn't really confirm this, so I'm not sure that's actually who she meant. What's left of her mind doesn't seem to be entirely there anymore (she also has the equivalent of a legacy title under her name that says "Fragments of Intellect") and she attacks you in an attempt to take over your body. After you successfully fight her off, the sparse scenery inside the mind trap comes crashing down and you awake outside to see the physical mind trap fall over, seemingly lifeless.

Back on Odessen, you're given the option to share everything that's happened with your faction or hold back, and you suddenly find yourself with a mysterious recording that someone seems to have smuggled into your situation room. It reveals Darth Jadus of agent story fame, enlightening you that he's been the one leaving hints for you (such as the distress signal that led you to Jemala). He sees the galaxy changing with the events that are already in motion, and wants you to follow his advice on what to do next (without telling you more about that). He also reveals that Sa'har and Ri'kan are not dead (not the biggest surprise in the world I guess, though I didn't expect it to be revealed so soon) and that Ri'kan appears to have taken Sa'har prisoner, presumably in an attempt to get back into Heta's good graces.

We already knew about the Darth Jadus reveal thanks to the trailer from Star Wars Celebration, but at the time I wasn't sure what the context for it was. I'm pleased to see that he seems to be back "properly", though I was taken aback by how different his voice sounded. I was convinced he had been recast, but according to the credits it's the same voice actor (Stephen Rashbrook); he just sounds quite different to me (and I've seen others comment on this too). I guess it must be hard to hit the exact same pitch you once used for a character you recorded some fifteen years ago and haven't revisited since then.

Conclusion

While this update didn't have a big "whoa" moment - the Darth Jadus reveal would have qualified if the devs hadn't opted to spoil it ahead of time - I thought it was really strong in other ways.

I've generally been positive about all the goings-on with Shae, Sa'har and other important NPCs, but I did note as far back as 7.2 almost three years ago that I was getting a bit concerned that we were perhaps spending too much time watching other characters having adventures that didn't really involve us. And I do think that has kind of held true over the patches that followed. I still enjoyed those story updates, don't get me wrong, but you know how sometimes you don't realise you miss something until it suddenly comes back and you go "oh wow, I forgot how good that was"? That's how this update made me feel by limiting its "meanwhile, somewhere else" segment to that brief shot of Malgus and Shae and then focusing everything else on the player character and their relationships with existing companions. I feel like I haven't had a chance to take so many screenshots of my characters just looking cool in a long time! We also get to interact with half a dozen different companions who often have interesting banter that fleshes out their characters or our relationships with them, or that's just plain fun. What's not to love?

In terms of overall plot progression... eh, I wouldn't say that we made huge strides in this update, but I've got to admit the structure with the three mini arcs actually made me appreciate how frikkin' complex this plot they've been building is in terms of what all the different characters' motivations are, and I think this was the first time the writers really managed to pull it all together a little bit.

The Tatooine arc reminds us that Heta is a threat by herself, regardless of her rivalry with Shae and the details of her goals and motivations, while the trip to Hoth deals with the impact of Shae's betrayal and her alliance with Malgus. The visit to Elom finally provides some clear answers about Darth Nul, which on Ilum then get tied back to Darth Malgus. All of these people are converging towards something, and it feels like whenever they all finally manage to meet up, it could result in massive fireworks due to their different alliances and rivalries: Heta hates Shae, who works with Malgus, who in turn doesn't seem to care about Heta but actually appears to have similar ideas as her (wanting to carry on Nul's work) even as he helps Shae fight her! Just thinking about all that makes my brain hurt!

And now we also know that the Kateen siblings are still alive, and Darth Jadus has been planning something too. Where the heck is this going? At this point I feel like all of this could be heading towards a pretty epic finale.