The Dynamic Pacifist Duo

I mentioned in my last post about reactivating my pacifist Jedi Pacis and acquiring Amity as a companion that I wanted to take them both to Dantooine so they could pat the Kath Hounds and dig up relics together. But then I thought: Why wait until next week to start levelling? Dantooine is a mess this week because of the pirates, but that doesn't mean I can't traipse around the galaxy a bit and have Pacis show Amity what she's explored so far.

So I took them to the heroic terminal on the fleet and grabbed one mission each on every planet where I'd previously identified pacifism-compatible heroics.

The first thing I discovered was that Amity did not like to stay passive, as he reactivated himself every time I travelled to a new planet. I don't know if that's a bug, some intentional setting meant to prevent newbies from accidentally neutering their companion, or just another facet of the way the game resets your character's status in certain ways whenever you travel (such as non-combat pets disappearing).

Speaking of non-combat pets, I had a funny experience in the very first heroic on Coruscant, Trouble in Deed. At one point when I wanted to put a mob to sleep I accidentally hit the wrong ability and summoned a non-combat pet instead (I forgot that as a pacifist, Pacis has a very different quickbar layout from my other Shadows). This broke my stealth and aggroed the mobs I'd been standing next to, though it was no problem as I could just stealth out. However, even after I'd exited combat, the mobs did not (as I was told they were still in combat when I attempted to apply my CC again) - they kept their weapons drawn and remained transfixed by the little droid I had summoned. They couldn't attack it of course, but they clearly wanted to. I ran around the area a bit and was very amused to watch them chase the droid in circles.

On Nar Shaddaa, I struggled a bit with my Two Cloaks Tactical seemingly not working reliably... or maybe it was just a visual bug with the cooldown clock not displaying, but it looked like it wouldn't start adding the second charge sometimes until I un- and re-equipped it. It's weird because I don't recall running into this issue before, but I guess my other Shadows also don't usually spend much of their time standing around waiting for Force Cloak to come off cooldown, so maybe I haven't been looking hard enough until now.

On Alderaan, I experienced the fun of the game being unable to decide whether companions are separate from the player character or not. Basically, while Pacis and Amity were stealthing around, a bunch of Killiks aggroed on him. I wanted to vanish out, but the game told me that I couldn't because I was already in stealth. Which one is it, game, are we still stealthed or not? I had to watch Amity get beaten to a pulp while in stealth (at least he took it like a proper pacifist, bless him) and was only able to cloak and exit combat once the mobs started hitting Pacis. I do vaguely recall experiencing this on other stealth characters before, but I can see this becoming a bit of a nuisance for this duo in particular.

On Balmorra, I did the heroic where you collect intel from the crashed probe droids - an occasion where I decided that Amity could make himself useful by healing Pacis through the damage from the toxic sludge. Of course this was when I noticed that he wasn't doing anything even while set to active. A quick look at his action bar revealed why: like player characters, he needs to have a weapon equipped for many of his abilities, and the one heal he was able to do without his staff was turned off by default. D'oh! I turned it on of course.

Fortunately the remaining heroics didn't reveal any more issues, but I guess this went to show that having a companion definitely introduces new complications to Pacis' life. I was also a bit dismayed to find that after doing all those heroics, I was only sitting on 40k Conquest points. Last time Pacis participated in Conquest, it only required 50k points to complete, and I think it still may have awarded credits and XP as well? I actually approved of all of those things being changed, but when you're a pacifist, every little helps, and on the other hand even small changes can make your life a lot more difficult. Fortunately the Pirate Incursion conquest featured an objective for doing ten heroics, which allowed Pacis to complete her Conquest the next day. During other weeks it might be harder (comparatively), but it should also still be doable as long as I actually remember to log in and play her every day.