Shintar's Galactic Seasons Diary, Week 9

Day 1

This was the closest I've actually come to missing a day, and to explain why, I need to share a bit of personal information. Basically what happened was that I came down with a horrendous toothache out of nowhere in the late afternoon, so that I spent all evening desperately trying to get some sort of emergency dental treatment, though I did not succeed at this. In the end I could only take a lot of painkillers and go to sleep, meaning that I was in no state to play at any point.

The next morning I felt a bit better and managed to get a dentist appointment, at which point I finally remembered to log into SWTOR to check on my Seasons objectives. My weeklies were GSF and flashpoints, but I re-rolled the latter and happily, it turned into warzones. My daily objectives were Oricon and Yavin dailies - both activities I didn't mind, and in fact Yavin had never come up for me as an objective before so I appreciated the novelty, but I was a bit disappointed by the complete lack of synergy. Looking at the time, I had about an hour left until I had to leave for the dentist, and I knew I wouldn't be back before the daily reset. Could I try to squeeze both sets of dailies in before then? Should I even try? Wasn't the very fact that I was having an urgent dental issue reminding me that there are more important things in life than video games? I decided to give it a go anyway just to see if I could... and I did manage to complete both sets of dailies just in the nick of time.

(Just in case you're wondering, the dentist identified the issue and I'm receiving medication now, plus further treatment has been arranged. I'm still in some pain but at least it's being worked on.)

Day 2

I logged on late in the evening to find that my daily objectives were to kill insectoids across the galaxy and 75 opponents across "Seat of the Empire" planets. I paused for a moment to think whether these could overlap somehow, but I don't think there are any kind of bugs on Oricon, Taris, Yavin or Dantooine, so I ended up re-rolling the insectoids once again and the associated daily turned into the warzone objective.

For the latter I played a late-night Huttball on my Sage, which was one of the rare matches that really frustrated me, not because it was a 1-5 loss but because it felt like it was due to a single player on the enemy team: This one Shadow scored most of their goals and repeatedly pushed or pulled our ball carrier into fire traps when we were close to scoring. (He finished the match with more than twice the objective score of the next person down the list.) I mean, on the one hand... respect! But on the other... damn it, a single guy shouldn't be able to run circles around an entire team like that.

For the mob killing I consulted my quest spreadsheet and decided to continue my DvL Commando's class story on Taris. Only when I logged in, I realised that the step in the story she was on was literally the last bit of talking on Taris before leaving the planet. I mean, I did do that while I was there, but it didn't help me with my mob kill counter. I moved on to my Scoundrel that I once created for lowbie PvP. To be honest, what she had left of her class story on Taris didn't require that much mob killing either, even more so with a stealther, but I just made sure to aggro and kill every single pack of rakghouls and scavengers I encountered on the way, so that completing my objective and finishing the planetary class story ended up aligning quite nicely.

Day 3

Like on day one, I ended up with two non-overlapping PvE objectives, Yavin dailies and heroics on Taris. For Yavin I ended up completing the weekly on my Marauder, who had done her first four quests there for Tuesday's daily objective (and I also found out - very much to my surprise - that based on the codex entries she received while doing them, I'd apparently never done the Yavin weekly on her before), and for the Taris heroics I returned to my DvL Shadow, whom I recalled having a pretty chill time stealthing through them last time. It worked out well.

Day 4

More Yavin dailies and insectoids across the galaxy. I re-rolled the latter and it turned into Ziost. I gritted my teeth a bit, as three out of four days up to that point being dailies was not exactly my favourite combo, but it was alright. I did half the Yavin weekly on my Sniper, fully expecting to have to do the other half later in the week, and a round of Ziost on my Operative healer - after all, it's not like there's anything that requires killing on there.

Day 5

Finally a GSF daily, which brought my weekly counter to one out of four, even if it was another somewhat depressing domination loss. (You know it's bad when you're fighting at satellite B, and when you get the message that the enemy has captured A and C, your team is only on a single point... then someone on the enemy team self-destructed and we went to two.)

The other objective was Taris heroics again... I decided to risk a re-roll to insectoids since I really needed more warzones for my weekly, but it landed on Oricon dailies again. Sigh, more dailies. I decided to start the Oricon storyline on my dps Juggernaut since I knew that the one-time story quests also counted as "dailies" for Conquest - but apparently Seasons are programmed differently, since I soon noticed that my objective tracker was not moving as I was progressing through the story. So I abandoned that angle and logged onto my dps Powertech to do the dailies the "normal" way instead.

Day 6

Since my daily objectives were to do more Yavin dailies (as expected... sigh) and to play a warzone, I started off by playing two rounds of GSF. No, really, that made sense! With my weekly still sitting at one out of four and the week being on its sixth day, the opportunities for synergetic dailies had mostly passed. I played both matches on my Powertech tank: The first one was a loss during which I still had a good time since I had the highest score on my team (not that this was any sign of me actually being good at GSF, mind you), and the second one was a solid win in domination mode for once.

For the dailies I first took to Vandin Huttball on my Sorc healer, and it was one of those frustrating matches that started out feeling relatively even but then quickly devolved into a 0-6 beatdown. Also, my mind boggled when I saw at the end of the match that I had the lowest objective score on my team despite of constantly chasing the ball and feeling very much alone in that. I guess you don't get points for healing nearby team mates and vainly trying to stop the enemy ball carrier without succeeding.

Completing the Yavin weekly on my Sniper ticked off the other daily objective. She too, got codex entries that indicated that she'd apparently never done it before.

Day 7

On the last day of the week, the game presented me with generic mob killing and Ziost dailies as my daily objectives. I was fine with the mob killing as I had an Oricon weekly to finish off anyway, but I eyed the Ziost dailies thoughtfully. Checking back with the official post about Season one, I figured I'd have a one in three chance of re-rolling to something more synergetic with what remained of my weeklies, and a one in six chance of making things worse by getting the insectoids - everything else would be a wash. Those odds seemed good to me, so I decided to risk it... and got the bloody insects of course, prompting Mr Commando to ask why I was swearing so loudly (something that's not usually my wont).

I decided to start off with finishing the weeklies. The GSF match I got into on my Assassin tank was an easy ride for once, as I spent most of the game squatting on the middle satellite (owned by us) while the rest of the team laid waste to the opposition for a quick and easy win. When I played my regular PvP match on my healing Sage a bit later, things looked a lot less promising as I loaded into an arena with horrible lag (I've been having recurring connection issues in the evening lately). I figured it was bound to be a loss but somehow the rest of the team carried us to victory regardless of me only getting a heal off every three seconds or so.

This just left the two rounds of daily slaughter. For the generic mob killing on a Seat of the Empire planet I finished off my Oricon weekly on my main (she'd still had the heroic mission left after doing the regular dailies on day one), and for the insectoids I decided to go slaughter Geonosians in Jundland on Tatooine on my DvL Shadow. While running around the area I noticed that I'd never done the local side mission to kill Geonosians (the one that used to be an [Area] mission), so I picked that up too while I was there.

Week 9 thoughts:

What a week, with personal emergencies, connection issues and other mishaps! I can't say that was as fun as it could have been. And yet I persisted, bringing my Seasons level up to 83 (or in other words, 660 out of 800 points earned). I'm in the final stretch now, with only one full week and a bit left to go to max out.

I'm definitely feeling somewhat ambivalent about the whole system at this point. I can't deny that it's worked to somewhat revitalise my interest in the game and made me play more - I'm a sucker for a good fill-the-bar routine. On the other hand though, it's also been somewhat exhausting and with both raiding and completing Seasons objectives, I feel like I haven't really had any time left to just log on and do something random for fun, if you get what I mean. So I'm very much looking forward to being able to say that I'm done with this Season thing, at least for a while.