KOTOR Adventures: Hunting on Tatooine

Glad to get off Manaan and with enough credits in my pocket to afford any future docking fees, I decided to return to Tatooine, originally meant to be my first destination. I just love that planet in SWTOR, and I'd also read somewhere that this was where you acquire HK-47.

Of course I hadn't even left the spaceport before something went wrong and a confused Czerka employee let a load of Gizka loose inside the Ebon Hawk. But... they are those cute things you can have as mini pets in SWTOR! Who'd have thought that they are apparently vermin? The option to poison them to get rid of them was made quite obvious, but they are too cute! I decided to leave them be for now, even if I hate the thought of how much poop they must be dropping on the ship's floors. I doubt that Bioware would stoop to such an amount of realism anyway.

Anchorhead's two most important buildings (to you) are pretty obvious as soon as you leave the spaceport: the Hunting Lodge and the Czerka office. As for the former, it's quite odd that Tatooine of all places would attract a lot of hunters, but it is what it is. Outside, a poor woman begs you to sell a wraid plate for her that used to belong to her deceased husband and for which she doesn't have a license. Of course I did that for her, being the nice person that I am.

The Czerka office is a funny place because the woman in charge answers most questions about the company by telling you that you should go to their kiosk on Coruscant, business hours only please. However, she does have a job for you too: to kill sand people. Can't go wrong with that. Except that outside, a man accosts you to say that surely there must be some way to come to a peaceful solution with the sand people, if only you bought a protocol droid from the local droid shop that can speak their language.

As you turn a corner, you get ambushed by some Dark Jedi, and one thing I've learned in this game is that I'm very bad at dealing with surprises, turn-based combat or not. I did learn a valuable lesson from this fight however: that it's OK to run away. I'd previously fought to the death almost every time, but this time I thought of all the conversations I'd gone through since the last time I saved and hated the thought of having to redo them all enough that I took my last remaining party member and ran. Turns out that while mobs don't exactly reset in this game, they do stop giving chase quite quickly and aren't necessarily linked to each other either - so with some application of hit-and-run tactics I managed to split the ambushers up and then took them down one by one until it was safe to revive the rest of the party. Success! I would soon get more chances to practice this maneuver when I went out into the Dune Sea, where sand people ambushers loved to jump at me from every corner.

Anyway, I found the droid shop and there he was: HK-47! Sadly he was way too expensive for me, and I didn't want to take the option to intimidate the shop owner by threatening to kill him (though even HK himself suggested to do so), which is why I continued out into the desert to see if there was anything out there that could make me some money.

I quickly ran into some wraids, which had the silliest run animation ever and dropped more wraid plates. Excellent, I thought - the one I had sold for the poor woman had fetched 500 credits - with these I should be able to afford HK in no time! Of course then it turned out that the vendor only paid 24 credits for each plate I brought in - what a bastard.

Still, fortunately I wasn't far off either way, so I was soon able to purchase my very own HK "protocol" droid, and I can already see why he quickly became a fan favourite. His lines are pretty damn funny even now. I've unlocked the back stories of two of his previous owners so far and both were hilarious.

Further out into the desert I ran into a hunter waiting to lure a krayt dragon out of his cave onto some mines, but he needed banthas as a lure and those would only be attracted by bantha fodder, which I could get from the sand people.

It seemed that all roads led to the sand people enclave. Sadly I was never able to figure out a peaceful solution with them and had to kill them all. I'm curious what I missed though. I put on disguises as instructed, but those broke instantly the moment I entered the actual enclave. Also, while it was repeatedly stated that HK should be able to speak the sand people's language, there never seemed to be an option to try to talk them or to bring up the subject with HK himself. I never saw those Jawas that were supposedly kidnapped and enslaved by the sand people either... probably missed a map again somewhere...

Anyway, with gaffi sticks and bantha fodder in my bags I returned to the krayt dragon cave and got that done too. The dragon looked pretty cool, that's definitely one monster they could have used in SWOTR as well! Would have made for a great world boss or something. Oh, and as it happens, the krayt dragon was sleeping on another star map. Mission successful!

After the pains of Manaan I found Tatooine a lot more straightforward and enjoyable to explore, even if I couldn't figure out how to talk to the sand people. I also had fewer issues with the combat encounters here, only suffering a single full party wipe when I unexpectedly walked right into the sand people chieftain's room without realising what I was going up against.

I'll probably go to Kashyyyk next, if for no other reason than that I already have a side quest to fetch something from there for Mission's brother.