GS5 Review: Tulak Hord

My Galactic Season 5 experience on Tulak Hord was interesting. When I first started playing there in Season 2 and my trooper reached the fleet, I immediately got roped into helping someone create a guild. I had no particular interest in being in that guild, but neither did I have anywhere else to be, so I stuck around just to see what would happen. What happened was that they tried to recruit for a little while, but then everyone but me and one other guy left.

The only real in-game interaction I recall having with the other remaining member was while levelling, when we once ended up on the same team in a lowbie arena match. Other than that we were rarely even online at the same time, though when we were, he asked me to invite a few more of his alts into the guild, which I did. It basically seemed to become his personal alt storage guild, and I was simply allowed to be in it as well. At the end of last season, I noticed that he'd even purchased a guild ship at some point.

When I first blew the dust off my Tulak Hord trooper at the start of Season 5, I noticed that my "guild buddy" hadn't logged in for a couple of weeks. Looking at my rank, I thought that I'd accidentally deposed him as GM (though I later realised that this hadn't been the case and I had simply got confused by the rank names). I wasn't sure when/if he was going to be back, but I didn't want it to look like I was trying to steal "his" guild... so I decided to change the guild message of the day to something like: "Just let me know if you want GM back!" (in German of course) and left it at that. I felt rather tickled when I logged in a few days later to find that it had been updated with a response from the other guy, telling me that he was still around, but on a break to play Diablo IV.

In practice I was on my own for the whole season though... the guild ship gave me an idea, however. A small yield invasion only requires earning five hundred thousand Conquest points in a week - which is easily doable for a single person if they put their mind to it, especially with some bonuses unlocked - so why not earn Conquest rewards with my seasons gameplay as well?

Last season I noted that I was struggling a bit on Tulak Hord because my gameplay experience was too similar to what I was doing on Leviathan, seeing how I'd started on both servers at the same time and levelled up in similar ways. However, this new, added Conquest adventure on Tulak Hord gave me new purpose. No longer was I just there to get my seasons objectives, I also needed to earn some Conquest points while I was at it to hit the weekly guild Conquest target.

I suppose you could say that I just added extra work for myself by doing that, but it really wasn't that much extra effort... I just had to make sure to pop a reputation token every day and to also do other simple daily objectives such as giving a companion gift or raising a crew skill, and this did wonders for my engagement. I felt like I was finally making some real progress with my legacy, and even finished chapter one of my trooper's class story at last (because doing story missions isn't bad for Conquest either).

It was an odd sort of experience... and certainly not as satisfying as actually having some company, but it did help mix things up a bit. It also pushed my legacy from level 25 to 31, though this was also aided a bit by me playing my inquisitor on Imp side a bit more and earning another fifteen levels on her. Finally, I also made a brand new little bounty hunter (for the "complete 15 missions as X origin story" objective, as mentioned in my previous post) so now I'm only missing a knight or warrior for a complete "seasons set".