Shintar's Galactic Seasons Diary, Week 2

You know, originally I was only going to write about my first week of this Galactic Season, but it's been shaping up to be such an interesting experience that I figured I might as well continue this little diary. Read on to find out all about the adventures I had while completing Seasons objectives in week two.

Day 1:

My new weekly objectives were to play four GSF matches and do three veteran mode flashpoints. I would have been happy with both of those except that word was that the flashpoint objective was still bugged, so I re-rolled it and got the warzone one again, which was just as well from my point of view.

My dailies were to play one GSF match and do some Section X dailies. For the former I took the character whose ships I had started kitting out last week, my boosted Assassin tank, and with more ships it was immediately more fun. I lost again, but at least it was domination instead of a death match for a change and I got to play a bit differently. This also brought me to 1/4 on the weekly, but I decided not to pursue that further for the time being in case I got more GSF dailies over the course of the week.

I took my Powertech tank on what I expected to be a quick tour of Imperial Section X but got a bit bogged down by the heroic, which - while soloable - can still be a bit of a drag. Once done, I quickly travelled out and did some hand-ins, which was enough to already grant me the Seasons objective even though I had two more missions left for the weekly quest. I decided to leave those for now in case I got more Section X objectives in the next couple of days.

Day 2:

My new dailies were to kill bugs and other mobs, this time across outer rim worlds. I immediately re-rolled the bugs and got a PvP match instead. I played this on my Sage healer and got into a Hypergates match where we eked out a win by a hair's breadth.

For the remaining generic mob killing I figured I'd consult my character spreadsheet to find an alt on a class story step on one of the eligible worlds (Tatooine, Hoth, Belsavis, Rishi). Surprisingly there was only one real contender, my DvL Assassin, whom I'd left on Hoth at some point. Returning there I finished off the class mission I was on, but then got sent to various other places before it continued on the next eligible planet, Belsavis. I'd actually completed my Conquest almost twice over before my mob counter finally hit 75.

Day 3:

My daily objectives were outer rim heroics and Section X dailies. I um-ed and ahh-ed a bit but eventually decided not to re-roll as I might just have ended up with bug killing again.

I returned to Section X on my Powertech tank to finish up those last two dailies for her weekly, but sadly only one of them counted towards the four dailies needed for the Seasons objective, so I had to come back and do some more on another character. I chose my Marauder for this.

For the heroics I opted to take my DvL Shadow to Tatooine with the intent to do the quickest, most stealth-friendly heroics I could find, but my memory ended up betraying me and I did pretty much the opposite (as in: several heroics that required a stupid amount of killing). Also, the first heroic I completed didn't actually count towards the total for some reason - there was probably already another bug report about that somewhere on the forums, but I didn't think to check in advance.

Day 4:

GSF made a comeback and I got a generic kill objective for the outer rim that for some reason already sat on 54/75. Sure, why not? I quickly finished off the latter by killing a few more mobs on Belsavis on my DvL Assassin and went back to my Assassin tank for more GSF. I got into a domination map where I started off by accidentally suiciding into some debris mere seconds after the start, but we ended up winning and I earned a whopping 13 medals defending the middle satellite on my bomber.

Day 5:

With more Section X dailies and heroics I was once again dithering about whether I should re-roll, since I was getting quite tired of the former and wasn't really too keen on the latter either, but once again I didn't want to risk ending up with something even worse.

I finished Section X on my Marauder who had started it on day 3, and learned that while the area daily doesn't count towards the Section X daily objective counter, the heroic apparently does.

For the heroics I logged my dps Powertech and took her to Belsavis. Once again I made my heroic choices based only on very vague memories, and this time I did a bit better, though only one was really conveniently short. The others would have been quick if I had been on a stealth character instead of one that needed to wade through every single pack of trash between me and the boss.

Day 6:

I got a repeat of my day 4 objectives, only for some reason this time the kill counter was already on 67/75, so it was easy enough to dispatch the last seven mobs to get credit. My GSF match was a death match that felt like it was going pretty well for me personally (I earned eight medals) but we actually lost by eleven points.

I also did a warzone to push my weekly to 2/3, since I could only potentially get one more warzone daily objective anyway. I got into a Vandin Huttball which was a draw that we won by holding the ball at match end. I did find the improved performance in the warzone very noticeable - to be honest I was a bit sceptical of just how much Bioware had "fixed" Quesh and Vendin during their several-months-long absence from the PvP rotation, considering how little fuss was made about them being added back in, but it was very obvious that I didn't get the weird lags/apparent teleportation anymore that I used to get when jumping on the air vents for example.

Day 7:

The last day of week two presented me with requests to kill bugs on Tatooine and another buggy daily that told me to do missions on Rishi while having a counter for Section X. I decided to re-roll the latter as I didn't really want to spend a fourth day in Section X this week, or deal with more potential bugginess for that matter. Killing bugs on Tat didn't exactly thrill me either, but in fairness it was actually the first time that week that this objective had come up, so there was at least some novelty to it. The re-roll turned into "do a warzone", which was nice as I needed to do that anyway to complete one of my weeklies.

For the bug killing I took my Guardian to Jundland, to that area where the Jedi consular has a class story quest interacting with Jawas. There were a few other people there, but there were so many Geonosians and they respawned so quickly that I nonetheless got my business done quickly and without too much of a fuss. It also completed my Guardian's Conquest.

For PvP I played a match on my lowbie Merc and got into a Voidstar. We started defending and couldn't hold the enemy back for long, making me curse the new unified levelling bracket, as our team seemed to average around 40, while our opponents were mostly 60+, with several of them in the 70s, and it felt like we were just getting stomped. Somewhat to my surprise we ended up winning anyway though, as we had a couple of keen stealthers that managed to crack open the enemy doors even quicker than they had.

Finally I did one more GSF match to finish off that weekly, and got into a deathmatch during which I lagged horribly at first, making it hard to hit anything at all. I wrote it off as a likely loss, but the score remained remarkably even and in the end we won 50-49. "Wow, gg," I commented in chat... just to have an angry Imp whisper me to say "no, it was not". Some people.

Week 2 impressions:

I liked the mix of objectives I got better this week, or maybe I just liked the planets more that were this week's focus. The general bugginess continued, though at least it actually worked in my favour a couple of times. It was also nice to have a reason to play a bit of GSF again after not doing any in ages, even though I'm not great it. The only thing I got a bit tired of was being sent to Section X over and over.