My Total Galactic War Routine

Last week was Total Galactic War again - my first after successfully conquering the galaxy with my guild last June. I was kind of wondering at the time what that would mean for my interest in future Conquest events, and last week I got my answer: I wasn't any less engaged and it was still as much fun; I was just a little less tense now that the stakes were no longer as high for me personally. We re-conquered Ruhnuk and it took some effort, which made it more enjoyable, but it wasn't as manic and crazy as the last few TGWs have been.

It also occurred to me that maybe the time has finally come to share some more of my accumulated knowledge about Conquest. It may sound a bit paranoid, but I've actually held back a bit on that subject in the past because I didn't want to accidentally help any of our opponents in case they came across this blog. At this point I'm not really that worried about that anymore though, plus as a guildie pointed out, any guild coming across this place in search of more information about how to take on Twin Suns at Conquest should mainly come away with the conclusion that we are all maniacs and they are better off not messing with us.

As a start, I thought I'd share my Conquest routine for Total Galactic War, which always has me generating between five and fifteen million Conquest points across my legacy, depending on how much time I have and just how much effort I'm willing to put in for that particular week.

To begin with, I tend to mentally think of the objectives I decide to tackle as split into roughly three "tiers". Tier one includes the ones with the best payout for the time invested, and the ones I try to do every day, even if I don't have a lot of time after a long day of work. Tier two is how I generate additional points if I have extra time, and tier three is what I do when it's the weekend, we desperately need more points and I'm trying to find just a few more activities to squeeze points out of. 

All number values cited in this post are rounded up or down using a full stronghold bonus as the baseline. Yours might be smaller if you don't have that maxed out, or bigger if your guild also has a Conquest guild perk slotted. The point here isn't to provide exact number values to do maths with, but just to give a general idea of how rewarding an activity is - it obviously makes a difference whether something awards 5k, 30k or 100k Conquest points.

Tier 1:

- My first priority of the day is to do the Galactic Starfighter weekly objective, "Starfighter: Achiever". It requires you to play only two to four matches (depending on whether you win or lose) and grants over 100k points. Make sure to fly all four different types of ships whenever you get the chance and over the course of the week you'll also earn an additional 120k or so for completing the "Starfighter: Bomber/Gunship/Scout/Striker Pilot (Eternal)" objectives (after flying each type in six matches). The only downside to this objective is that GSF queues don't pop at all times of the day even on busy servers, so you've got to make sure to get this done during prime time. Also, you can only repeat it up to three times on the same character. If you want to get credit for more than three days you need to use alts.

- My next priority is to do the weekly warzone objective, "Warzones: Achiever". If you win every single match it will be done after only four games. Now this one carries more risk than the GSF weekly, as the worst case - if you were to lose every single match - would require you to play twelve of them, but realistically you'll get something closer to a 50/50 win rate while queueing solo, which would then complete the quest for you after six matches. You'll also earn additional points from "Warzones: Medalist", "Warzones: Victorious" (which comes in three tiers) and "Activity Finder: Socialite" (which also comes in two tiers). If you win a lot, there's also the infinitely repeatable "Warzones: Infinite Domination" which grants an additional 80k for every tenth win. Like with GSF, you'll need alts after three completions.

- While sitting in queues for the above activities, I do the Iokath weekly. Many people seem to hate Iokath, but it really doesn't take that long once you know what you're doing and awards an insane 50k points for "Iokath: Patrol" plus some extra from "Iokath: Mission Complete" and "Iokath: Defeat Enemies". Last I checked, this can be done twice per week per character, so again, alts are needed to get the most out of it.

- Alternatively, you can also do heroics. I prefer to use a stealther to do a really quick one on each planet, since you get bonus points for one planetary heroic per day, but you can also go for one that requires more mob killing and try to knock out the "Defeat Enemies" objective for that planet at the same time. 

- Alongside all of this, I also do various easy clicky objectives if I have the resources for them, such as "Advancement: Reputation", "Companion: Influencer", "Crafting Invasion Force", "Crafting: Dark Project", "Crafting: Inventor", "Crew Skills: Missions" etc. None of them give huge numbers anymore, but they can add up to an easy 50k or so points that you just earn almost passively/in the background. If you haven't fully expanded all available strongholds yet, opening a new room also earns 30k per day.

Tier 2:

- If I have time to get into tier two territory, the first thing I like to do is to play a low-level alt (below level 70). You gain about 4k points each time you level up, plus 30k every fifth level once per day, plus 25k for completing ten quests of any type once per day. If you do your personal story, that also gives 6k for each quest completed.

- Next it's doing three uprisings for "Uprisings: Veteran Weekly", which is worth over 100k points by itself. You should also get credit for "Uprisings: Tour of Duty" along the way, though that one's buggy and not all uprisings count for some reason. If you do Landing Party, you'll also get credit for the one-time "Chapters: Defeat Skytroopers" for about 20k plus the less profitable daily repeatable version of the same objective. In terms of raw points earned per time investment, this is really a tier one, but to do it efficiently you kind of need to create a pre-made group that knows what it's doing, which takes extra effort. Personally I also find uprisings a bit tedious, so I don't actually want to do this one every single day.

- I have a similar attitude to the arena weekly for "Arenas: Achiever". Everything I've said about the warzone weekly actually applies to this one as well, I'm just personally not as fond of arenas. You objectively also need to do more arenas to complete the quest, even if you win all the time, and pops tend to be less frequent than for warzones, meaning it takes longer. Still, if you enjoy warzones and arenas equally, you can almost double your daily points by doing both of these. I limit myself to doing this one maybe twice over the course of the week.

- Another thing you can do while waiting in queues - if they take long and you've already done Iokath and a heroic on every planet - is work on dynamic encounters (outside the starter planets, since those don't count) for about 4k points per encounter and an extra 80k+ for completing fifteen (up to once per day). This isn't huge but can add up, especially if you choose encounters that don't take too long. You'll also get points for killing mobs for "Defeat Enemies" on that planet, so it might be worth moving around the galaxy a bit. The only risk to doing these while queued is that you might get a pop before you're able to complete the event you're currently working on.

- Finally, there are daily areas other than Iokath that award points for completing their weekly mission (usually once per day): In descending points order: Makeb ~50k, Ossus ~30k, Kessan's Landing, Manaan, Ruhnuk, Yavin 4 ~25k each, Rishi, Onderon, Oricon, Section X ~20k each, Black Hole, CZ-198, Ziost ~10k each. I'd actively avoid Makeb since its missions are way too spread out and take forever to complete, and I very much recommend Ossus as something that gives a lot of points for how quick and easy it is to complete, but beyond that, your mileage may vary. Personally I can't do too many of these without starting to feel burnt out.

Tier 3:

- Star Fortresses were my bread and butter during Total Galactic War at one point, when they awarded about 100k per completion, but the devs realised that this was perhaps too good and nerfed them heavily. Nonetheless, the weekly mission still gives over 60k points, plus 10k+ per heroic or 5k for a normal run. There are also additional objectives for completing specific Star Fortresses. It's not the best way to earn points, but if you've exhausted most of your other avenues or are just looking for a change of pace, there are some valid points to be gained here. Though they do require your character to be past KotFE chapter nine to start doing them. While they are technically soloable, this is another piece of content that greatly benefits from bringing a competent friend along.

- Finally, there's what we tend to call "Rampaging" after the "Galactic Rampage" objective, though that one is no longer part of Total Galactic War and limited to other Conquest events. Its goal is to simply kill mobs of any type. While that particular objective is no longer relevant during TGW, there are still all the other "Kill enemies" objectives on most planets, which net about ~15k points per planet for killing 75 mobs. Now, I mentioned above that these can feel like a nice bonus to get while you're already doing dailies, dynamic encounters or heroics, but just running around killing mobs is pretty dull. Still, if you're out of other things to do, it's an option. It's also worth noting that as an organised guild activity, this can be extremely efficient, because having a whole ops group scouring the landscape makes 75 mob kills go past in a breeze. Still, this post is primarily about what choices to make as an individual player, and from that perspective simply killing mobs is a lot less exciting and profitable. 

Galactic Threads: Things Are Starting to Come Together

With more than 18 months having passed since the last story update, my anticipation for 7.8's Galactic Threads was high, and I'm happy to say that it didn't disappoint.

It's a decently sized piece of story that sets itself apart with what I'd describe as a somewhat more "old-school" vibe, with slightly more running around in the open world and more varied gameplay. As was already revealed during the first previews, it's also structured a bit differently than normal, with three "mini arcs" that can be completed in any order instead of a single, strictly linear narrative. I was a little worried that this might make the shorter arcs feel kind of inconsequential (since by necessity, nothing you do in one of them could influence events in another) but that didn't turn out to be the case.

Let's go through everything one by one, shall we? As usual, there will be full spoilers.

Galactic Threads

The story starts with a cut scene showing us Malgus, Shae and her newly assembled ragtag band from the prison break fighting the Hidden Chain on Tatooine, which includes Malgus reaching out with the Force and downing two small ships by smashing them together in the air. I thought this was a nice callback to the Deceived novel, where Malgus' sheer power is also demonstrated by him stopping a shuttle from taking off by pulling it down with the Force.

That short scene is largely it for "meanwhile, here's what's going on somewhere else" cinematics in this update though, and going forward it's all about our character and their companions. I think it's been a while since I got to take so many good screenshots of my own characters, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Back on Odessen, Jakaiah and Rass Ordo arrive in a shuttle and let you know that they are pissed off about Shae's prison break too, as it meant that she effectively abandoned her position as Mandalore. I wonder if there are any precedents for that kind of thing in Star Wars lore? Either way you agree to pursue the matter together, which leads us to the aforementioned three mini arcs that can be done in any order, taking you either to Tatooine, Hoth or Elom. I've played through them in different orders and can confirm that your choice in that regard makes absolutely no difference. I did wonder at one point, when Rass made a complaint about something that included the line "if we got here sooner, this might've been a whole lot easier", whether there might be slight differences in voice lines depending on the order, but that didn't turn out to be true. He says that line even if you go to Hoth with him first. 

On The Run

In my first playthrough however, I started on Tatooine, so I'll start there in this post as well. With the help of Akaavi Spar, you go there to answer a distress signal from a high-ranking Hidden Chain defector. You eventually find her, though it turns out that she didn't actually signal you, which points towards a mysterious third party interfering. Nevertheless you make a deal to help her and her love interest get rid of a band of mercenaries that have been hired by Heta Kol to hunt them down. In turn they provide you with the intel that Heta's fleet is moving through Sith space, seemingly unbothered by anyone even though she doesn't particularly like the Empire, which again, is somewhat mysterious.

Gameplay-wise, this section is probably the least interesting as it involves a lot of running around to first track down the defector's safe house, and then to hunt down the mercenaries scattered across all four corners of the map. I could see some people not being too thrilled by this, but to me, cruising across Tatooine for a story mission actually felt very nostalgic and I even made a point of not always taking the fastest route via quick travel and instead using taxis and my speeder so I could take in the scenery and pause for the occasional dynamic encounter on the way (at least on my first playthrough). I also liked the mechanic for finding the stealthed mercenaries and how you could tell you were getting close by either your character or Akaavi emitting a small startled sound.

Story-wise, Jemala from clan Ha'rangir and her lover Ora are certainly... memorable for their slightly melodramatic behaviour, and I think people were just happy to see a lesbian NPC couple in game for what I think might be the first time. (Darth Krovos and Zasha Ranken are pretty clearly an item as well, but it was never that obvious and depending on your choices you may be responsible for Ranken's death, so less of a happy story.)

It was also interesting to get more interactions with Akaavi that showed more of her character to players who perhaps never played a smuggler and aren't that familiar with her. The letter she sends you afterwards also ties in nicely with her origin story in the base game.

Hoth Pursuit

On Hoth you're after the slicer from Shae's little band, and you're accompanied by Rass Ordo, who continues to be in a very bad mood about the whole Shae thing, which manifests in a lot of anger and disgust about the slicer and how Shae could throw everything away just to do a heist with a low-life like him.

You visit a place called Shai Tenna's Pleasure Den and I was a bit disappointed that smugglers don't get any comment about their previous adventures with Shai. Also, am I the only one who found the concept of a "unique slicer signature" a bit weird? I always thought the point of slicing was to do things without being traced... but that's just an aside.

After a lot of searching you finally manage to corner Greb Besrik the cyborg Mon Calamari (for some reason I found his name extremely difficult to remember and spell correctly) and he confesses that he doesn't know where Shae and her crew are right now, as he doesn't hang out with them all the time, he just sends them stuff via a broker. He just knows that Shae and Malgus are still sticking together, as they seem to have some sort of plan that involves both of them going after the same target for different reasons.

Gameplay-wise, this section also has a lot of running around, but slightly less than Tatooine I guess. Also, the final chase to catch Greb at the end was actually really funny. Usually I'm not necessarily a fan of these kinds of scenarios where you're running after someone who keeps getting away repeatedly, but this one was really well done. I had to chuckle at the bit when you're almost caught up to him and he lets out a yelp, gains a sudden speed boost and just jumps into the ice water. And they make you climb a ladder! I always thought it was weird that they introduced ladders on Onderon as a terrain mechanic and then promptly seemed to forget about them again, forever. 

I needed Illeva to point out that you can see Greb swimming through this tube above you during the chase sequence.

The Library of Nul 

The Elom bit of the story actually starts on Nar Shaddaa, where you help Talos Drellik procure an ancient droid part to repair a droid that's meant to help you access Darth Nul's library. The game repeatedly hits you over the head with how everything about this replacement droid part is odd and weird, to the point that I thought to myself "if this doesn't go wrong in some way, I'll be very disappointed". I was not disappointed.

The repaired droid seems to work fine at first and does indeed grant you access to Nul's sanctuary, where you find old holos of Nul and three small puzzles. It felt like ages since we last got to do a little puzzle as part of the story, though I guess thinking back, there was a short one as part of the story in the Interpreter's Retreat, back in 7.3. I know I've said in the past that puzzles in SWTOR can be contentious, but I enjoyed this little change of pace.

You learn from Nul's holos that she seemingly didn't fully embrace the Sith code but rather warped her old Jedi teachings into something new that suited her better. She also talks about how she did indeed design the machine that Heta replicated with the goal of expanding on her personal power to awaken the Force in people. Her last recording has her explaining that the Emperor is on to her and that she intends to distract him to keep her secrets hidden. At that point the spare droid part suddenly starts transmitting data to somewhere else, and if you don't interfere yourself, your faction companion smashes it. Here too, you worry about what mysterious third party caused this to happen.

I enjoyed the different pace of this section of the story, with minimal movement and combat but instead featuring those three puzzles. It also adds a taste of faction flavour as you're either accompanied by Arn or Major Anri, both of whom have some great, amusing commentary on Darth Nul's little setup. 

Dark Heart of the Fortress

During the intermission conversations between these three mini arcs, Lana updates you about a survey team sent to Ilum to investigate the old ruins of the Emperor's crashed space station (where we also found XR-53). If you ever wondered why nobody looked at that thing before, the implication seems to be that at least part of the stealth technology actually survived and hid it from view.

As the survey team becomes non-responsive and seems to have run into trouble, Lana asks you to go to Ilum with her to search for them. You follow their tracks and eventually find their bodies in the ruins of the station, though it's not clear what killed them. Soon afterwards some of them get up as zombies though, and I immediately thought "uh oh, just like those Czerka guys who messed with the Rakata mind trap on Tatooine" - good foreshadowing there, as you eventually do find a Rakata mind trap, as well as some Malgus holos that seem to indicate that he talked to someone there. You also pull Darth Nul's holocron out of your back pocket and the mind trap tugs at it, though I was a bit baffled why my character would be just carrying that thing around with her so casually. In general, this whole section was really well done in terms of atmosphere though - I was very immersed in the creepy vibes.

You check in on the mind trap and find Darth Nul herself inside, or at least what's left of her mind. She talks about "he who came before" and you conclude that she must mean Malgus, though she doesn't really confirm this, so I'm not sure that's actually who she meant. What's left of her mind doesn't seem to be entirely there anymore (she also has the equivalent of a legacy title under her name that says "Fragments of Intellect") and she attacks you in an attempt to take over your body. After you successfully fight her off, the sparse scenery inside the mind trap comes crashing down and you awake outside to see the physical mind trap fall over, seemingly lifeless.

Back on Odessen, you're given the option to share everything that's happened with your faction or hold back, and you suddenly find yourself with a mysterious recording that someone seems to have smuggled into your situation room. It reveals Darth Jadus of agent story fame, enlightening you that he's been the one leaving hints for you (such as the distress signal that led you to Jemala). He sees the galaxy changing with the events that are already in motion, and wants you to follow his advice on what to do next (without telling you more about that). He also reveals that Sa'har and Ri'kan are not dead (not the biggest surprise in the world I guess, though I didn't expect it to be revealed so soon) and that Ri'kan appears to have taken Sa'har prisoner, presumably in an attempt to get back into Heta's good graces.

We already knew about the Darth Jadus reveal thanks to the trailer from Star Wars Celebration, but at the time I wasn't sure what the context for it was. I'm pleased to see that he seems to be back "properly", though I was taken aback by how different his voice sounded. I was convinced he had been recast, but according to the credits it's the same voice actor (Stephen Rashbrook); he just sounds quite different to me (and I've seen others comment on this too). I guess it must be hard to hit the exact same pitch you once used for a character you recorded some fifteen years ago and haven't revisited since then.

Conclusion

While this update didn't have a big "whoa" moment - the Darth Jadus reveal would have qualified if the devs hadn't opted to spoil it ahead of time - I thought it was really strong in other ways.

I've generally been positive about all the goings-on with Shae, Sa'har and other important NPCs, but I did note as far back as 7.2 almost three years ago that I was getting a bit concerned that we were perhaps spending too much time watching other characters having adventures that didn't really involve us. And I do think that has kind of held true over the patches that followed. I still enjoyed those story updates, don't get me wrong, but you know how sometimes you don't realise you miss something until it suddenly comes back and you go "oh wow, I forgot how good that was"? That's how this update made me feel by limiting its "meanwhile, somewhere else" segment to that brief shot of Malgus and Shae and then focusing everything else on the player character and their relationships with existing companions. I feel like I haven't had a chance to take so many screenshots of my characters just looking cool in a long time! We also get to interact with half a dozen different companions who often have interesting banter that fleshes out their characters or our relationships with them, or that's just plain fun. What's not to love?

In terms of overall plot progression... eh, I wouldn't say that we made huge strides in this update, but I've got to admit the structure with the three mini arcs actually made me appreciate how frikkin' complex this plot they've been building is in terms of what all the different characters' motivations are, and I think this was the first time the writers really managed to pull it all together a little bit.

The Tatooine arc reminds us that Heta is a threat by herself, regardless of her rivalry with Shae and the details of her goals and motivations, while the trip to Hoth deals with the impact of Shae's betrayal and her alliance with Malgus. The visit to Elom finally provides some clear answers about Darth Nul, which on Ilum then get tied back to Darth Malgus. All of these people are converging towards something, and it feels like whenever they all finally manage to meet up, it could result in massive fireworks due to their different alliances and rivalries: Heta hates Shae, who works with Malgus, who in turn doesn't seem to care about Heta but actually appears to have similar ideas as her (wanting to carry on Nul's work) even as he helps Shae fight her! Just thinking about all that makes my brain hurt!

And now we also know that the Kateen siblings are still alive, and Darth Jadus has been planning something too. Where the heck is this going? At this point I feel like all of this could be heading towards a pretty epic finale.

Galactic Season 9 in Review

It's finally done! I completed all Galactic Season 9 meta achievements on all servers. I didn't have to wait with writing this until that was done, but I kind of wanted to, just in case anything that happened towards the end was going to change my mind in some ways - it didn't.

Galactic Season 9 was easily one of my favourite seasons so far. While most of the rewards were solid and the armour sets pretty versatile, my enjoyment was mostly down to the theme. I love flashpoints! I ran the featured flashpoint of the week up to six times per week, sometimes multiple times per night, and it never got boring because no two runs were the same.

I saw people that were in a hurry, and I saw others that were proceeding at a more slow and careful pace. I had groups that tried to skip as much trash as possible and others that killed absolutely everything in their way. Most importantly though, it was almost always good fun. There were a couple of badly behaved exceptions early in the season, but the vast majority of runs were pleasantly uneventful or filled with some amusing shenanigans. It was pretty reaffirming really, both in the way it reminded me of just how much I really enjoy flashpoints and have been missing having a good reason to run them more regularly, and how the majority of the SWTOR community is pleasantly chill and considerate of others in group content.

If I had to cite any negatives, I'd say the fact that the weekly objective was limited to veteran mode only meant that few guildies could be motivated into running flashpoints during our weekly guild event, as vet mode is so easy and quick, I can understand why many didn't see it as worth the extra effort of waiting for a dedicated time and place. I did appreciate though that there was at least an optional master mode objective during quite a few weeks, which I always did when it was available.

The special queue for the veteran mode of the week was a bit of a double-edged sword. Some nights I really would've preferred to just walk in with two guildies and a companion for example, but undermanning like that or even just going in manually with a full group to see the cut scenes was simply not an option. On the plus side though, the simplicity of this system meant that it saw plenty of use, as it was very straightforward with not much room for confusion.

As far as other objectives go, I was glad to see that the addition of all the new dynamic encounters in summer led to much more varied objectives from one week to the next, and we weren't constantly hopping back and forth between Hoth and Tatooine like in GS8. That said, I still felt a bit burnt out on these and mostly skipped those two planets, focusing mostly on the objectives for the starter planets, capital worlds and Ilum instead.

In general I reached a state this season where I spent very little time doing things I wouldn't really have felt like doing otherwise. The flashpoints were always a joy to do, and then I'd just add two or three other weekly objectives from the list depending on what I liked most.

I don't expect to go this hard (going for all the achievements on all servers) next time around, but even so I feel like I'm pretty well set to continue completing the season on all servers without too much stress in the future - more so than before, in fact, as this season was a stark reminder of how comparatively little effort it takes to just max out the reward track. That said, we now know that Galactic Season 10 will "work a little differently than previous seasons" - I'm very curious to find out what that means.

Legacy Level 50 on Satele Shan

Back in September I posted about hitting legacy level 50 on Shae Vizla, and at the end of that post I noted about the three remaining servers where I hadn't maxed out my legacy yet that "I wouldn't expect to ding 50 there this season, but I could see myself hitting that milestone on all three servers in quick succession at some point next year." What I didn't expect when I said that I would ding 50 on Satele Shan literally on New Year's Day!

It basically managed to juuust get in there at the end of the season, as I'd literally just completed my one hundredth weekly season objective and was just doing a couple more quests to hit the character's personal Conquest target when the "legacy level up" pop-up appeared. I actually paused for a moment and went "wait, what legacy level am I again on here", hovered over the bar and it said 50! I hadn't realised I'd been that close already!

Anyway, that's another one off the list. I double-checked The Leviathan and Tulak Hord now and I'm 47 and 48 there respectively, but I'm also fully done with the season, so my alts there will be getting a bit of a break over the next few weeks. Definitely something to keep an eye on next season though!

Once I'm legacy level 50 everywhere, I guess hitting legendary on all servers could be my next long-term goal. I'd definitely post about that on reddit if I ever got it, as while I surely wouldn't be the first person to ever do it, it's still gotta be something extremely rare...

Either way I'd have quite a way to go to that one on most servers, as I've only actually completed one class story on Satele Shan even at legacy level 50, just like it was on Star Forge when I maxed out there.