20/04/2023

Daily Tour: Black Hole (Republic)

Is it me or does the Black Hole come up as a seasons objective more often than other daily areas? Maybe it's because it's the most accessible of these zones, having been the first of its kind. Looking back at what I had to say about the Black Hole at its release, I was quite charmed by its design, even if the whole concept of SWTOR having "proper" dailies (instead of story missions that just happened to be repeatable) still felt kind of weird and novel at the time.

Nowadays though, I have to admit I'm not nearly as fond of it anymore. The whole concept of having a [Heroic 4] at the end that you needed to group up for worked well enough when it came out, when there was less to do at endgame and grouping up for a round of dailies seemed like a natural thing to make time for in your weekly routine. Nowadays there are so many more daily areas, and players are more spread out, so Bioware made the heroics soloable - but to be honest that just makes them a slog. I'm not crazy about spending ten minutes on the "regular" dailies in the zone and then another fifteen on just doing the heroic.

If you're a stealther, mind you, it's super easy because you can just sneak straight to the end and be done just as quickly as with any other quest. It's just that I so rarely play a stealthy combat style that I tend to not think of that experience by default...

Anyway, here's a visualisation of my usual route through the Black Hole on Republic side (I never did it much on Imperial side for some reason):


I start by clearing out the mobs in the north-east corner of the map and then turn back to rack up more kills along the northern zone border, eventually looping down to Quick-Hands Quarl when I need him. If someone just killed him, I can always go do the "Eyes and Ears" mission first, else that comes after. Then I cross over diagonally to free the dralls (I used to always turn left at the entrance, but someone converted me to turning right at some point by pointing out that there was one less mob group to deal with on that side).

When I exit that building, I go in a straight line and drop down to a group of mobs that will usually drop one of the anti-radiation thingies for that quest. I make sure to use it right away so I can loot a second one and have that ready to use as soon as the first one expires. Once I've fixed the leaks, I continue to the heroic, and after completing that I used to quick travel back to base for hand-ins, though that part is no longer needed.

Now that I think about it, I still have a pretty good time whenever I go to the Black Hole, it's just that whenever I think about going there in the first place, the idea just doesn't seem that appealing in my head anymore for some reason.

1 comment :

  1. I did it twice last week for the season objective on Satele Shan because I only had one character there and it wasn't high enough level for the other options. They need to add some kind of reputation for it, or at least give it a currency like Ziost. There is just no reason - outside of season objective points - for me to ever go there. The heroic is definitely one of the more difficult ones for soloing, too.

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