The Shrine of Silence is Pretty Spiffy

As announced during the 7.3 preview, the new flashpoint Shrine of Silence is a bit of an experiment/return to the game's roots, in the sense that it's the first flashpoint since 2014's Kuat Drive Yards to not be part of the main storyline. And I'm happy to say that this seems to have worked out well!

Kinda like in the days of Hammer Station and Athiss, you just pick up a little breadcrumb that leads you to an introductory conversation that explains why you should be going there, please and thank you, and then you're free to go at your leisure, with no further cut scenes inside. The wrapper mission is still story-gated a little bit as I don't think you can pick it up before you've been sent to the Interpreter's Retreat as part of the main story, but because it's just a minor side mission, it doesn't feel too bad to just go in there whenever and without the story quest if you happen to do so.

The mission is also done in KOTOR style, except this one time it bugged out (?) for me and showed the normal UI, which meant I couldn't actually read the conversation options in full.

An interesting side effect of the flashpoint being independent of the main storyline is that its solo mode features the return of the GSI droid, a fellow we haven't seen since Battle of Rishi. This makes sense because there isn't an official story companion that should be accompanying you, so you can take whoever you like and the droid is there to provide support if needed, no matter your choice.

I was personally never a fan of the GSI droid because to be honest it's both OP in the sense that it makes the player feel kind of redundant (I seem to remember seeing videos of people just /dancing during trash pulls while the droid did all the work), but also kind of dumb in the sense that it doesn't care about what role your character is specced for, will constantly taunt off you if you're a tank and so on.

That said, the flashpoint is easily doable without the droid as well if you don't like it. I know this because during one of my run-throughs I was playing as dps with my companion also set to dps (since the droid provides endless healing anyway, whether you like it or not) and somehow managed to lose the droid at some point... and I didn't even notice until my health just kept going down and down and down on the second boss fight. However, I was still able to complete it easily by just running through the provided kolto power-ups whenever needed.

In general, I was pleasantly surprised by how easy and quick the flashpoint felt. There's trash to help pace things, but it doesn't come in copious amounts and dies pretty quickly on all difficulties. No Spirit of Vengeance style slogs here! It's also very easy and I've got to admit I was slightly disappointed to find that the devs managed to resist the urge to give any of the vine mobs knockback abilities, even on master mode. With all those holes in the ground, you know that would've been delicious...

The environmental design in general is also appealing. The flashpoint takes place in a mix of ruins and dark caves, but mysteriously glowing crystals and strangely ethereal golden shimmers in the air prevent things from getting too gloomy. Instead the atmosphere is slightly strange and mystical, which I suppose is what the designers were going for. All the deep chasms make for good old-fashioned "people falling down holes" fun, whether by accident or because a mysterious glow lured someone into exploring just a bit too far (I've seen both).

The boss fights are also interesting without being too complex, and as a bonus there's a bunch of achievements for doing things in different ways. (My favourite of these was when we were doing the bonus boss on master mode and a guildie pointed out a strange button on the wall. We pressed it and got an achievement called "Wonder what this does" - how appropriate.) There's also a very basic puzzle early on that can be used to unlock the bonus boss.

My only slight criticism here is that some things aren't very well communicated, e.g. you can miss out on the bonus very easily by not realising the importance of the early puzzle, and some of the boss mechanics are a bit opaque. For example the Vorantikus boss puts a white circle on someone that you can put over the boss to... debuff him I think? I'm still not entirely sure precisely because it's not super clear. Basically, we all know that red circles are bad, but yellow or white could honestly go either way and with no other indicators of what's going on it can be a bit tricky to figure things out on the fly. Again though, it's not as bad as the first and third boss in Spirit of Vengeance for example. In Shrine of Silence, you'll generally figure out what to do pretty quickly on the higher difficulties (and on the lower ones it doesn't really matter).

I remember running the flashpoint on master mode and thinking: Wow, this is so much fun. Everything's just perfect! This might be the best flashpoint that the SWTOR team's created in years. I mean, the previous ones weren't bad either, but there's always that one boss whose tuning is completely out of whack and who makes things a bit of a pain. They seem to have managed to avoid that this time! Naturally, this was when we got to the last boss on master mode and it was a wipe fest. While we did get it down eventually, it probably shouldn't have been as hard as it was, especially considering that our group was in 339 gear. The issue is that the boss has a soft enrage mechanic that causes more and more untouchable adds to cast disruptive abilities, and the dps check to overcome this is insanely tight on master mode, never mind the poor healer who's supposed to keep everyone alive while everyone's running in circles and being knocked about (*cough*me*cough*). I can't imagine the nightmare that must be in pugs. I'm sure it'll be nerfed eventually.

Let's call it a draw.

Still, overall I think this flashpoint is a big win for devs and players alike. I've had fun re-running it multiple times already and I didn't miss it being integrated into the main story at all, so I hope we'll see more of that again going forward.