Random Revelations

My random PvE pursuits continue.

I actually got all the datacrons except the two Makeb ones on my main now. Yes, even the Green Matrix Shard on Belsavis. I got lucky in so far as it "only" took me about an hour to find the four Rakata Energy Cubes I needed. Pet Tank advised me that I should make the most of my work by parking some alts at the datacron location to see if I could quickly relog to get the Matrix Shard on all of them while the datacron was still active and without having to collect more cubes. Despite of Belsavis' long loading screen, I managed to click on it with a total of three characters, and I probably could have squeezed a fourth one in if I had been optimistic enough to bring a fourth one along in the first place.

Oddly enough, the endurance datacron on Quesh was probably the next hardest one. You used to be able to access it on your own (the SWTOR Spy guide hasn't been updated since those days), but I already knew that wasn't possible anymore. However, until fairly recently, Pet Tank and I were always able to get it with the two of us when we were levelling on Quesh, with one person clicking the outside panel and the other activating the two inside the cave in quick succession. Except the last time we got there, we found that the latter was suddenly impossible to do, even with a speed boost. I got lucky in that when I went to get it on Shin, there was already another guy there looking to group up for it, so I just had to coax Pet Tank into logging in to be our third.

All in all, it wasn't too bad an exercise as I had already made significant progress before this latest hunting session, but I don't think I could run another alt through all of it again right away. I look at the status of the datacron codex category on some of my alts, see things like "2 out of 69" and it just makes me want to weep.

On Imperial side, I've continued running flashpoints on my Operative and my Marauder. In this post-automated-group-finder world, most groups are fairly quiet, but I've noticed that everyone still says hello at the start and goodbye/thank you at the end. People also remain fairly easygoing for the most part. I was surprised to find that not all pugs hate listening to cut scenes or doing bonus bosses, even at endgame. One time I zoned into False Emperor HM and the tank dropped group the instant he saw which instance it was. We ended up three-manning it with Kaliyo tanking and never got a replacement tank despite of having requeued.

My favourite pug was probably the Core Meltdown hardmode run where upon zoning in I noticed that our tank had only about 23k health. I wondered whether I should say anything, but decided to see how things went first and leave it up to the healer to complain if he wanted to. Surprisingly, the healer managed to keep our paper tank upright throughout the whole thing, except on the sandstorm boss, where the other Marauder (who was way overgeared) simply dps-tanked the rest of the fight. It was just a little comical.

In other news, my guild has run EC NiM a lot in the past few weeks, to get tanks for people and to finish up achievements. I still don't have a tank, but at least EC is now the third operation for which I have 100% achievement completion. Every time we loot a chest with Molecular Stabilizers in there, someone makes a joke about how they are so excited about the loot, to mock its supposed worthlessness now compared to how much we all used to crave those "stabs" back before 2.0. Imagine my surprise then, when I checked the GTN to see whether anyone was still buying them, just to find that they were actually selling for more than Exotic Element Equalizers, the current blue crafting materials. I always knew that there was a segment of the population that lingered at 50 - basically anyone who hasn't bought Rise of the Hutt Cartel or subscribed for at least a month since they made it a free addition to the sub. But to see people actually care enough to craft old endgame level gear, to buy old crafting materials at higher prices than current crafting materials... that just boggles the mind.

Last night we undermanned an EV story mode on Imperial alts, and meant to take a guildie with us who was only level 48. He bounced off the door with an error message about needing to be level 50 to enter operations. We all scratched our heads in confusion, since we could distinctly remember taking sub-50 players into ops with us before. I asked on the forums and someone pointed out to me that this was a change made in patch 2.1 - over a year ago. I felt like such a noob... also a bit sad though. Did it really hurt anyone to be able to take along people who were a couple of levels lower?