Drop In: Yavin 4

Now that I'm pretty much done with my seasons goals on the other servers, I'm not sure whether I'll continue the "drop in" series... but last week, I still visited Yavin 4 strongholds on three different servers, which is enough material for a post.

Like Alderaan, Yavin 4 is huge and personally I just bought it when it first came out without actually doing much with it. As a result, my first visit to a Yavin stronghold last week was primarily spent doing a lot of running/driving around to figure out where all the extensions even were. You won't believe how long it took me just to find my way out of the first building the first time...

The first Yavin 4 stronghold I visited was Leeha's Pursuit of Peace on Darth Malgus. I always thought of Yavin as a very "Sithy" planet, so I was intrigued by how someone might convert it to a more Jedi theme (which is what the name seemed to imply).

I didn't think the entrance area looked particularly peaceful. I see some massassi there, an underwalker, statues of Revan and Darth Marr, and I forget who the guy posing for the statue at the top was, but I know he's also a Sith.

However, the first indoor area seemed a bit more on brand, with potted plants, datacrons and various crystals - which can also be Sithy to some degree I guess, but they didn't give that vibe here. It felt kind of colourful and friendly, as far as that's possible in a dank ruin like this.

Exiting onto the bridge leading to the biggest chunk of the stronghold, I found myself confronted with this giant Jedi statue, more crystals and an avenue of trees, which also seemed appropriate enough. Apparently I forgot to take pictures of this same spot elsewhere, but I generally felt that this view you have immediately after exiting the first building was well suited to creating striking vistas.

In one of the side buildings I found what I can only call a "Rakata room", which I thought was an interesting idea. There are a lot of Rakata-themed decos but while they were an evil Empire, I never got the impression that their use of the Force fit as neatly into the light-dark dichotomy of the Jedi and Sith (the casters in the Legacy of the Rakata flashpoint all use Sage abilities for example).

Now this staging ground was amazingly well done in my opinion. I like the neat lining up of soldiers and vehicles, and while many of the named NPCs came up as holograms for me, you could still tell that there was thought put into their placement. I like how C2-N2 and T7 are right next to each other as if they're roleplaying as C-3PO and R2-D2 for example.

On Leviathan I went to "Tyriuna's Temple of Darkness" because I figured why not see how it looks when someone goes all in on the Sith theme this time? The first building certainly looked very different, with hanging vines, gloomy-looking statues and Imperial flags.

This deco caught my eye because it looked like an ancient graveyard and I had not seen that before:

The cave at the far end of the stronghold housed a Kell Dragon, which I guess is the appropriate environment for one of these beasts!

And once again, the bad guys kept prisoners. Poor Choza.

 

Finally, I visited Mercwiththemouth's Stronghold on Satele Shan, just because I thought the character name was funny. It was listed as being at 99% completion, so I immediately had an uneasy feeling when I zoned in and the entire entrance area was empty. Deco spam incoming?

 

 

 

I started to wonder what was going on when I found more and more empty rooms, yet at the same time everything was super laggy. Had the game bugged out on me in some way? How could I be lagging if all these rooms were indeed empty? I got my answer when I got to the top of the first building and found that the owner had spammed his stronghold with small animated turrets... all their movements were what was making the whole thing lag.

 

Ultimately I was still surprised by how much empty space I saw at 99% completion though. I wonder if some of it was Yavin 4 plants which I kind of overlooked as part of the scenery, because otherwise I don't know how else you could get to 99% completion with so much empty space, even if one did fill a bunch of rooms with lots of small decos.