A Good Start to the Season

You may find it hard to believe after my outrage at how gutted the Esseles and the Black Talon feel without cut scenes, but I've actually had a pretty good start to Galactic Season 9 in spite of that. Patch day was a bit rough, with my game crashing to desktop something like seven times, but once I learned that this was caused by hovering over one specific UI element, I was once again too amazed by just how weird MMO bugs can be sometimes to really be mad about that. (Plus, once I knew what was causing it, it was easy to avoid. They then patched the issue a couple days later.)

The flashpoint theme has actually felt surprisingly invigorating. I've long said that I'm a big fan of flashpoints, but I'm not immune to incentives, and the fact that there's literally been nothing to earn for me in flashpoints for a couple of years now has admittedly discouraged me from running them. I would rarely go for the seasons objectives that required you to run two specific flashpoints because they were just too time-consuming and felt inefficient. The dedicated weekly objective for this season only requiring a single quick veteran mode run makes a world of a difference, and I was genuinely surprised that I actually had fun blitzing through Athiss six times this past week.

My favourite run was the one with my husband on our home server, where he actually bothered to go into one of the side alcoves to use his scavenging to repair the broken combat droid there, something I hadn't done in so long that I'd genuinely forgotten that it was even a thing. One of the guildies in our group then kept casting a heal over time on it to keep it alive, to the point that the temporary pet was actually still alive when we got to the last boss. This is where we learned that the living fire debuff can go on non-player characters! The poor droid didn't manage to survive that one, but it was good for a laugh. 

The other weekly objectives for the first two weeks were pretty good too, with some nice softballs that didn't take too much time to complete on multiple servers while also earning me new achievements.

My personal biggest delight last week though was that there was also an objective to run any random master mode flashpoint, which I did on five out of six servers. (Sadly I couldn't get the queue to pop on Shae Vizla even while queueing as a tank.)

Even better, not a single one of them was Hammer Station, even though I had queued for the full selection. I had the expectation that most people would use the new feature that allows you to exclude a few flashpoints without losing your random bonus to primarily veto long or difficult ones, but maybe there are more fellow Spammer Station haters out there than expected who are actually excluding that one instead.

Either way, the random master mode flashpoints I got put into were Assault on Tython (twice), Battle of Rishi, Lost Island and Crisis on Umbara. The latter must have been nerfed a lot since I last did it, as my group completed it successfully without wiping despite feeling pretty mid in terms of skill. I know there's been some gear inflation since 7.0, but the first two bosses barely even seemed to do any damage, and we pulled the bonus boss by accident with a bunch of trash and still killed that successfully too. Not that I'm complaining!

Battle of Rishi had me busting out my Shadow's tank spec on Satele Shan, which I had actually set up some time ago but then never ended up using. I was very pleased with myself for how I guided the rest of the group through the run after someone expressed that it had been a while and they weren't sure they remembered what to do. Trying to model good tank behaviour!

Lost Island was the most memorable one though, as that was what I got on the Leviathan server while queueing on my Sage as a healer. It quickly became obvious that the tank and one of the damage dealers knew basically nothing about the flashpoint, while the other damage dealer gave the vibes of someone who had done it before and generally knew how to play but couldn't fully remember all the tactics properly. It was pretty funny to read the chat and try to make sense of it, as my knowledge of French is very limited. I think I could generally get the vibe/general topic, but not necessarily what exactly people were trying to say.

Unsurprisingly we wiped something like five times on the second boss as everyone but me kept getting knocked off the platform. I tried to use Google Translate to explain where people needed to stand, but either the translation made no sense or they intentionally decided to ignore me because I sounded too weird, as they didn't appear to listen to my advice. Fortunately they eventually seemingly managed to figure it out on their own and we were victorious. The remaining two bosses after that were comparatively easy, but I still felt like I was carrying pretty hard, healing people through some significant amounts of "standing in bad".

I felt properly giddy after we finished, both excited and relieved that we'd succeeded despite our difficulties, but also a bit amused by how ridiculous the whole experience had felt. The dps who'd given me vibes of having some idea of what to do whispered me afterwards to... I don't know, I'm guessing it was something like "we're queueing again" though it might have meant something completely different; I genuinely had no clue. I just logged off because I'd definitely had enough for that evening.

I'm hoping to see that objective pop up more often though.

Flashpoint Levelling: Light at the end of the tunnel?

My Nautolan Shadow who's solely levelling through the group finder is getting close to level 60. Here's how her last five runs went.

Maelstrom Prison
I levelled: 52-54

Braving the full selection of flashpoints available to me once again for the sake of the weekly quest, I was pleasantly surprised to not get put into Hammer Station but Maelstrom Prison, which Nautalie had only done once before and for which she also had the story quest this time around. Once again the group consisted of nothing but damage dealers of a variety of levels.

The lowest among them, a level 40 Scoundrel, immediately expressed a dislike of the flashpoint, to which I felt the need to reply that I quite liked it. She responded that the "dude with laser eyes is one of the most tedious in the game IMO". I didn't actually say it, but all I could think on reading that was: "You've clearly never been to Copero, dear woman!"

At this point I felt the need to inspect her achievements and she had indeed never set foot into any of the Traitor flashpoints. I quietly amused myself trying to imagine what she was going to think of bosses like Syndic Zenta if she already hated Colonel Daksh.

Lest I give a negative impression of this person, she also suggested that we do the bonus, which instantly raised my opinion of her. We would have done both of them too if we hadn't missed one of the consoles somewhere, and by the time we realised that, even I couldn't be bothered to go back to search for it.

Just before we got to the first boss, one person who hadn't said a single word left the group seemingly at random. I queued us for a replacement and got a Scoundrel whose name was the term for the edges of a woman's underwear showing through her clothes, because why wouldn't you want to name your character something like that?

Colonel Daksh lived up to his reputation by the way and wiped us on the first attempt, with pretty much everyone in the group except me trying to face-tank him when they really shouldn't have. (I just died from all the other damage, clearly having overestimated my survivability at level 52.) During the run back I made sure everyone was now aware that they should hide if they got aggro during the laser phase, and on the next try we were victorious - though not without more deaths. Fortunately the Sage in the group knew where her combat revive was and with the reduced cooldown of thirty seconds she must have used it at least three times during that one fight. Beginner's Luck indeed.

Athiss
I levelled: 54-55

Queuing late at night and with Hammer Station deselected again, my wait time lasted several whole minutes! Then I got a group which included a tank for a change, which was nice as it at least established who should be making the pulls.

On the first boss someone did that weird ledge jump again and I had a moment of unpleasant memories, but at least this person actually waited for everyone to follow (except me, who preferred to just stealth past the mobs on the ground).

A guy whose name was the name of an Italian city written three times in a row revealed himself as new to the place by running off into a random direction at one point and pulling some completely out-of-the-way mobs, and he also tried to fight the Prophet of Vodal's flames for a bit - fortunately for him, neither event led to his death.

Hammer Station
I levelled: 55-56

Another weekly reset, another shot at the full selection of flashpoints (up to 19 at this point), and I got taken to Hammer Station once again. With a level 75 tank and two damage dealers of levels 75 and 65, I figured it should be fast and painless, just to have the tank stop the whole group dead after literally the first pull because she was annoyed with the Gunslinger not regenerating their health.

Now, to be clear, people not using their regen abilities can be annoying, especially when you're struggling to stay alive from pull to pull, but this was veteran mode Hammer Station after literally the first pull and nobody other than the Gunslinger had lost any health at all. It just seemed like a very bizarre thing to get upset about, though it was equally weird that the Gunslinger kept standing there acting confused instead of simply hitting their regen ability for five seconds. We did continue eventually regardless of the Gunslinger's health.

On the Tunneler the Vanguard tank and the 'slinger kept trading aggro, which seemed to annoy the tank even more. After that I was unsure for a bit whether she had decided to troll us out of annoyance, since she started pulling extra trash that wasn't needed and ran Vorgan the Volcano in constant circles, which made it very hard to dps him as a melee.

At the bridge someone actually asked whether we should fight the turrets or run, to which I replied that I preferred to kill them. This prompted the Vanguard to burst out with something in all caps which Google Translate rendered for me as Spanish for "it's the same for me" - I wasn't sure whether that was meant to signal agreement or indifference.

Anyway, we killed the turrets and the last boss just fine. Once again I just found someone's (in this case the tank's) behaviour quite weird at times.

Battle of Ilum
I levelled: 56-57

After taking another look at the 19 available flashpoints on my group finder list, I realised that I hadn't done 12 of them even once yet and made the executive decision that in the future I will untick all seven flashpoints below level 40 whenever I'm not aiming to get credit for the weekly quest to do a random. As it stands I've done all the lower-level flashpoints at least once and most of them multiple times.

I braced myself for a potentially longer wait... but got an instant pop for Battle of Ilum instead, with three people who were all in the same guild, no less! Some people might find that sort of setup uncomfortable, maybe for fear of being ganged up on, but I'm always happy to group with a partial premade as it ensures a minimum amount of co-operation and greatly reduces the risk of in-fighting or rage-quitting. Based on the guild name they were Polish, but they did speak English in chat and acted perfectly friendly towards me.

And the best thing? We watched the cut scenes, did all the bosses and both bonuses. I don't think I've ever gotten all of that done in my first run of BoI on a new character while pugging. I seriously felt like it was my lucky day.

As an additional bonus it was a pretty fun run in terms of gameplay too. The three guildies were all level 75, though not all of them were well-geared, and nobody played a class that could heal, so there were some pulls where things got a bit tight and got the adrenaline pumping, but in the end we always succeeded.

Battle of Ilum
I levelled: 57-58

Queuing for the same 12 level 40+ flashpoints again, I was surprised to end up in Battle of Ilum again. This run was closer to my usual experiences with the place, involving lots of trash skipping, but considering that I'd just had the run of my life literally the day before, I didn't mind. We did kill all the bosses, even the optional ones, and the extent to which we skipped the trash was actually kind of amusing because our group consisted of a Vanguard tank and three Shadows, so we essentially had one person running around with a stealth escort that was mezzing everything around them as they went.

By the end of the flashpoint we'd killed less than forty mobs, and it would have been even fewer if not for a couple of accidental/lazy body pulls. I don't think I would have levelled up if flashpoint completion hadn't also granted me the Socialite I Conquest objective, which resulted in a bit of bonus XP.

I fear I'm going to jinx it by even saying this, but I can't help but wonder if unticking all the easy low-level flashpoints that people like to farm is going to make things more fun for me going forward. At least the first two runs using this new strategy were very successful, and I don't find it hard to imagine that players who are happy to queue for these are more interested in actually doing the content and having a good time than those who just want to run Hammer Station a hundred times in as short a time as possible to maximise their rewards.

I'll find out I guess.

Stuck in Hammer Station

At the end of the Esseles, Nautalie the Shadow was level 14, but handing in the introduction to group finder quest ticked her over to 15, which was just as well since I didn't really want to do the Esseles a second time. (Ironic, considering what was to come.) At that point, the Esseles disappeared from her available group finder selection, to be replaced with... Hammer Station and Kuat Drive Yards. I picked up the KDY story quest and queued up for both, hoping to get KDY, just to get...

Hammer Station
I levelled: 15-17

So I should probably mention that my relationship with Hammer Station has really soured over the last few years. I used to think that it was a nice little instance, and to be honest it still is, but it's also somehow turned into the lowest common denominator of flashpoints, in the sense that it's usually the easiest and most popular way to gain whatever rewards are being given out for flashpoint running at any particular point in time.

This led to people targeting it specifically instead of opting to queue for a random, and many have run it over and over again so many times that it's been given the nickname "Spammer Station". While I don't particularly care if other players want to do that, it becomes a problem if those people put themselves in the shared group finder queue, as it means that many others who are queuing for the full variety of flashpoints also get funnelled into Hammer Station over and over.

If low-level characters are now additionally limited in their queuing options, with Hammer Station being one of only a few, I suspect that this problem will only get worse.

Anyway, with all that in mind, I wasn't surprised to be put into a Hammer Station run that was very business-like and quick. With three of us having stealth we ended up skipping even more than usual, only killing the occasional mob that the Guardian in the group couldn't bypass otherwise. As two of our dps were level 75 and one of them in full 306 gear to boot, things also melted pretty quickly. I was very surprised when I somehow managed to pull aggro on one of the trash pulls and died, though others suffered deaths throughout the run as well.

This was mostly because despite of the raw power at our hands, the group seemed terribly inefficient in some ways. The Scoundrel never seemed to bother to throw a heal on anyone but themselves, no matter how low they got, and nobody ever seemed to bother with any sort of survival cooldown before keeling over dead. I had an excuse because I was too low to have any, but they didn't!

Hammer Station
I levelled: 17-19

Level 17 added Athiss to my list of available flashpoints, so with three options to choose from, the randomiser of course threw me into Hammer Station again, this time with another Nautolan one level below me (a Guardian tank), a Sage healer in his fourties and a badly geared level 70 gunslinger.

Fun fact: I remember how that one pull with the two gold droids near the start used to be considered the instance's one real stumbling block, until I saw someone handle it via corner-pulling one day, and over time this knowledge has spread so far and wide that most groups deal with it quite easily these days. Our Nautolan tank didn't know though, so he jumped at the mobs right where they were and it was a mess.

Also, despite of having both a tank and a level 70 damage dealer, it was my lowly level 17 Shadow who ended up pulling aggro a lot of the time, and I didn't seem to be getting a lot of heals either (the healer's choice of spells seemed somewhat erratic to me), leading to me tanking the Tunneler for most of the first boss fight, until I failed to click a kolto station in time and died from lack of healing.

I always love it when that message pops up while I'm still alive on my screen (though I was falling over by the time I managed to hit my screenshot key).

Lest you think that I'm making myself out to be some kind of elite player being dragged down by flailing baddies, I did quite a bit of derping of my own in this run, such as getting knocked to my death on Battlelord Kreshan, something that literally hadn't happened to me in years.

As I respawned in Vorgan the Volcano's room, I did my best to run back quickly. To make matters worse, I then managed to pull one of the Boarder Suppression Droids that we had missed, but instead of attacking me even once it instantly made a beeline for where the rest of the group was fighting. It fell off the bridge in the asteroid tunnel but unfortunately climbed right back out again.

And I was so hopeful when I saw this...

I felt a bit bad bringing an additional gold mob with me but figured it shouldn't cause too much of an issue... easy fight, right? Then I rounded the corner into the final room, just to find the area absolutely swamped with adds and two of my three group mates about to die. I rushed in and started AoEing down the adds, and while the tank and healer died soon after, the boss and all his adds did too. Too bad the gold droid was still there and killed me right after. Unfortunately the level 75 gunslinger had little interest in helping to kill it and ran over to loot and click the console instead. This resulted in the droid killing her too once I was gone, but hey, at least she got that loot, right?

For me, things weren't over yet though, since releasing put us all back at the very start of the instance and I still wanted my tech fragments, so I started running back towards the boss room. So did the tank, who was running a bit behind me. Unfortunately I then managed to aggro another droid we had skipped. The tank caught up and tried to help, but couldn't keep aggro off me yet again, so that I died just before the droid did. "Oh well," I thought, "at least he can revive me and we can move on!" Nope, he ran right past my body and I had to release and go back to the start a second time. At least the boss's corpse and my loot were still there when I finally reached him.

Athiss
I levelled: 19-21

Yes, something other than Hammer Station! Unfortunately it was another weird run. This time I got teamed with a level 75 Guardian, a level 75 Gunslinger, and a level 73 Commando (all dps), so I thought it should be smooth sailing. However, the Commando shot off like a bat out of hell and kept pulling things so fast that nobody had a chance to regain health between combat encounters. In fact, he himself was often at less than half health when he pulled, but he kept rotating cooldowns and somehow managed to stay alive.

One of the other dps asked him to slow down please but this request was ignored, and things came to a head in Professor Ley'arsha's room, where he climbed up the ledge on the side for the shortcut that I've occasionally seen people use but that isn't particularly popular from my experience since it takes most people longer to get up there than it would take to simply kill the two trash groups that it allows you to skip.

Stuck on the wrong side of those droids... (I'm only posting this cause you can't make out the Commando's name in it).

Worse though, he jumped right down at the end without even checking whether anyone was following him and pulled the boss all on his own. Despite of my long history of failing at jumping shortcuts, I somehow managed to scramble up the ledge to follow him, but the other two dps decided to start pulling the remaining trash instead while the Commando was trying to solo the boss, and unsurprisingly we wiped soon after.

The Commando actually had the gall to start WTF-ing at people and asked why they were pulling unnecessary trash, which resulted in one of the other dps initiating a vote to kick the Commando with the reason "he's being a dick". I can't say I disagreed with the sentiment, but since I loathe kicking I abstained and instead told the Commando that most people can't even make the jump on that ledge. He didn't seem to think much of that, but the vote to kick didn't go through and we suffered no more deaths throughout the rest of the run, though he kept pulling more or less just as recklessly.

Hammer Station
I levelled: 21-23

When I saw the pop for this group I noted that aside from a level 75 tank it also included two other lowbies that were level 22 and 24 respectively. Still, they were all higher than me and Mandalorian Raiders had just been added to my selection, so maybe I'd finally get to do something other than Hammer Station? Nah, that would be silly.

The level 22 charged into the first pull all on his own and while I made it in time to help him kill things, the level 75 tank quit instantly. Then again, I'm not sure if his quitting was actually related to anything we were doing; for all I know he just might've been as thoroughly sick of Hammer Station as I was. Anyway, he was instantly replaced by another level 75 Guardian. In fact, this happened so quickly that the Commando later expressed surprise at our lack of a tank, presumably because he remembered seeing the tank icon on the pop-up window but hadn't noticed the switcheroo.

The level 22 dps Guardian kept running ahead and making more pulls on his own and died a few more times from this. We also wiped on "that pull" even though the corner pull was done correctly, but I think the Commando was lagging behind and with only the three of us we died.

On the Tunneler droid the level 75 Guardian tanked at first, died to the first laser and then complained about other people not clicking the kolto stations to heal him. I took over tanking and lived for longer (taking care of my own health as much as possible), however eventually I died as well since someone else had clicked the third kolto station when it wasn't needed, which meant that it wasn't available when I needed it. The boss died with the Commando being the last man standing.

After that things seemed to get better until we wiped on the two champion turrets before the bridge. I don't know if the Commando couldn't find his CC or if someone had broken it, but we just took too much damage and couldn't do enough ourselves. On the second round I did what little I could with Force stun and lift to keep the second turret off our backs at least for a little while, and to be fair the others also did what they could, with the Guardians swapping aggro and the Commando throwing out some heals.

Finally we suffered two more deaths on the last boss (this time it was someone else who got thrown off the edge) but we got him down on the first try at least.

I have to admit that this is turning out to be less fun than I expected so far. At this stage in my "experiment" four years ago I had already run four different flashpoints and was six levels higher. Being limited to four flashpoints is no fun, and even less so when Hammer Station is the only one of them that actually pops.

Also, no offense to anyone in particular that was in those runs, but I kind of feel like I'm stuck in the absolute dregs of the group finder right now, with people playing incredibly badly at times, failing to use any of their abilities and/or showing zero regard for the rest of the group because blind zerging is all they know and care about. I can only hope that it gets better soon or this diary is going to be very boring (and unhappy).

Pugging with Shintar: Venturing Into Master Modes

I've managed to continue to upload an episode of my pugging video series pretty much every week, despite of being worried at some point that I might not be able to keep it up. I'm kind of amazed by my own ability to maintain a routine sometimes. Too bad it's not really a very highly-valued skill (though handier in everyday life than you might think).

Somehow I've also ended up with one hundred subscribers on YouTube! Thanks, everyone! I hope the fame doesn't go to my head. Anyway, here are the new episodes I uploaded over the last six weeks:

Episode 13: Falling Off Lifts in Cademimu - Long-time readers may know that Cademimu is an old favourite of mine, and I was pleased to get it as my random that day. Following the age-old tradition, someone fell to their death off a lift, including me. You'd think I'd really know better by now.

Episode 14: Confusion, Chaos & Naked Anti-Bob - This episode started with me ending up in Cademimu again because apparently I had failed to unselect it from the group finder menu - still, what were the odds of getting the exact same thing again? Like back in Episode 7, I powered through quickly and then queued again. This time I ended up in Mandalorian Raiders, in a run that included a Commando who wore virtually no gear and needed on everything. Strange times!

Episode 15: Splitting the Party in Legacy of the Rakata & Pugette's First MM! - In a relatively unremarkable Legacy of the Rakata run Pugette reached the milestone of hitting level 50, which allowed her to queue for master mode flashpoints for the first time. I put myself in the queue right away, expecting nothing to happen, but got a pop almost instantly and therefore decided to turn the episode into another double feature. I got into master mode Athiss as my first of its kind, which was fortunately a relative softball, especially as my group consisted of pretty good players.

Episode 16: Trash Skipping Gone Wrong in MM Cademimu - With master modes unlocked in the group finder, I decided to queue for both veteran and master modes simultaneously, fully expecting the veteran mode to pop first... just to get into another master mode run instantly. Back to Cademimu I went once again, though this time in its harder iteration. No deaths from fall damage in this one, though I made a complete fool out of myself on the first boss. The ending was also a good demonstration of how badly (or not at all) communicated trash skipping attempts can go horribly wrong and just end up delaying everything.

Episode 17: Bad Chemistry in MM Assault on Tython - The instant master mode pops continued. This one was off to what I felt was a super awkward start, with the tank asking to be kicked, me causing a wipe by obliviously running into a group of mobs the others had skipped, and a strangely passive-aggressive exchange ensuing between the dps when we got a replacement tank. The run continued fine after that, but my good mood was shot, because that's what this sort of behaviour does to me unfortunately. I also found the last boss quite tough to heal!

Episode 18: Interesting Times in MM Maelstrom Prison - This late-night visit to hardmode Maelstrom Prison ended up being one of my favourite kinds of pugs: We actually did both the bonus missions for maximum XP, people were chill, and while some mistakes were made, they were amusing and/or simply shrugged off, so a good time was had by all (I hope).

Pugging with Shintar: July Update

I know it's August now but this is mostly about videos recorded in July. I thought I would give another update on how my Pugging with Shintar series is progressing for those who aren't subscribed to my YouTube channel (and at this rate, I really need to give these posts their own tag).

Episode 7: Defying the Randomiser - After getting Hammer Station for the third time in six episodes, I decided that while repetition had been fine while I was simply writing about adventures like these, in the video format redoing the same flashpoint over and over again was simply boring and rubbish. As a result, I cut down the run to a few key scenes in the video and then queued again with every flashpoint I'd already done unselected from the group finder list. This time I got Athiss, which was at least something new.

Episode 8: Sneaking Through Red Reaper - I decided to start doing the intros on Nar Shaddaa while the Nightlife Event is running and after a commenter reminded me that I could use the heroic quick travel to get there even without a ship. Forcing the group finder to always give me something new from now on, I ended up in Red Reaper, a place known for its nightmarish trash pulls at the start. Of course since I knew and talked about those, I ended up with a rock-solid group that had no trouble with anything whatsoever and managed to skip even more pulls than usual. In Red Reaper I've never minded because there is no bonus anyway.

Episode 9: Cheerful Musings in Korriban Incursion - After the previous episode I realised that out of sheer habit, I had been uploading these in a lower resolution than I actually use to record, so this episode brought an improvement in video quality as I finally made some adjustments. Korriban Incursion made me particularly talkative because there are so many connections to the Sith starter quests - though I wasn't beyond making mistakes when trying to recall them from memory. I oddly enjoy correcting myself via text overlays while editing the footage later.

Episode 10: An Unlucky Gunslinger in KDY - Finally I got the story quest for Kuat Drive Yards out of my log, after having had it there since level 15 or so. A gunslinger asked early on whether he could do the "rescue ten prisoners" achievement if we got the prison cell scenario, and everyone enthusiastically agreed... but this is a pug, you can already guess how it went.

Episode 11: Sentinel Silliness in Battle of Rishi - I was late with recording this episode due to real life distractions and recorded it on a weekday after work, feeling like I was going to fall asleep at any moment. Oddly enough, this made me even chattier than usual, and I ended up in a group with three sentinels, which I considered very humorous. Also, I enjoyed ranting about Battle of Rishi's wasted potential like I already did in a blog post once here.

Episode 12: Businesslike in Czerka Corporate Labs - After a slightly chaotic start, this flashpoint became quickly dominated by a scantily-clad Commando who was eager to push forward no matter what, clearly thinking that she didn't need the rest of the group. I couldn't fault her ability, but I also couldn't help highlighting it as another type of behaviour that I'm personally not super fond of in my pug groups.

Random Moments

Since I'm away from the internet this week, enjoy this automatically published filler post of random screenshots that I've taken over the course of the last two months, always thinking "haha, I really need to show this to someone some time" but then never doing so.

I'm open to caption suggestions for this one.

What's better than getting Risha as a companion? Two Rishas! It seems that this graphical glitch is loosely related to the "working on console" animation, because on Rishi I had the exact same thing happen with Theron.

No, tell us how you really feel about the Dark vs. Light event...

Has the group finder ever put you into a pug that consisted of nothing but stealthers? It actually took us a few pulls to realise that we could skip all the trash! Fastest Athiss run I've ever had. As a bonus, I had characters called Decent Person and Sad Panda in my group.

Speaking of interesting character names in pug groups...

One thing I quite like about Voss are the many named champion mobs. There's an achievement to get all of them (and it's a long list), and without ever having consulted a guide, I've only found about two thirds of them. The guys pictured above were new to me when I encountered them on my event Scoundrel, and the combination of two champions and two golds linked together was actually quite challenging!

I took a screenshot of this because this was the first time I saw all the nodes in the Proving Grounds active at the same time! Not seen this again since then.

I'd heard of stronghold "hauntings" before, phasing issues that cause people to appear in the wrong stronghold and such, but this was the first time that I ran into one of these myself - naked Andronikos is definitely not supposed to be there in my Dromund Kaas stronghold. When I turned around, 2V-R8 was right behind me as well. Creepy.

This was possibly my most decisive GSF win ever.

Dealing with Jakarro on my new Scoundrel, who always has Bowdaar by her side, was kind of weird. He's always roaring and mad about something, and I kind of wanted to point at Bowdaar behind me and go: "Look, it's perfectly possible to be a wookiee and act in a civilised manner!" They should have put some dialogue in there if the two wookiees meet up. It's not like it would have required the recording of any new lines.

From the category "interesting glitches observed in PvP", I present you the Voidstar match in which the left bridge extended itself invisibly. Took a bit of bravery to step on that at first.

I think the huge influx of event alts has us all struggling for good character names... it seems this guy decided to go for the "whatever's lying on my desk right now" method of naming.

Two for one in Hypergates: I quite like the name and costume combination in the foreground, and the bouncy person in the background is just funny.

I was quite gutted to lose that Proving Grounds match... closest I've experienced so far in that warzone!

Oi, Eric, get back to work!

Apparently pop-up trainers don't fall into the category of objects that get phased out during cut scenes. Since Calphy got out his Revan statue after every wipe on the tanks in EC, holo-Revan being part of the team quickly became a running gag.

The Dark vs. Light event made me realise that I hadn't created a new character on The Red Eclipse since they revamped the guild window. If you open it without being in a guild, it presents you with this nifty image plus text snippets encouraging you to join a guild.

I saw this guy and immediately thought: I bet he doesn't do regular group content (or maybe this is just his 427th alt). Why? Because we once had a guy join our guild who had foolishly named his first character "TheSexyKnight". Since he was actually a boy in his teens, we were all incredibly weirded out when during every operation he ended up being addressed as "Sexy" by everyone. He got himself a name change soon after!

You can't see it very well because I only caught it as it was already phasing out, but the latest announcement in the middle of the screen reads: "Intelligent Manhood has been defeated." I don't think any additional commentary is needed...

One of the disturbing side effects of NPCs being available as interactive furniture? You can sell Felusia Stato to herself, and apparently she only values herself at a hundred credits.

Flashpoint Friday: Athiss

Happy April Fools' Day! At the time of writing this, no April Fools' joke has been posted on the official website, but I know from past experience that Bioware can be very slow with getting these things out, so let's wait and see. In the meantime, let's talk about another flashpoint, one that has been with us since launch: Athiss.

General Facts

Athiss was another one of the original six levelling flashpoints accessible to both factions. I've covered four of them before - who's kept track and knows which one is still missing after this? Athiss was originally designed for levels 19-25 and is now available in a tactical version for levels 15-65. A hardmode was added with Rise of the Hutt Cartel, which is now also available from 50-65.

Fights

Athiss is actually a quite beautiful planet that makes you traverse more than one type of environment and also faces you off against a wide variety of different opponents. You start off in some Sith underground ruins where you kill wild animals inhabiting them and come up against a bunch of explorers gone mad. In fact their leader, Professor Ley'arsha, is the first boss. She's a fairly straightforward fight with adds, though she also causes players to place bad stuff on the ground that's somewhat hard to see and causes a stacking debuff.

After exiting the first set of ruins, you traverse some open space inhabited by "tomb dwellers" and their pets, who give the impression of being savages of sorts, dressed in rags and attacking with axes (though they do have blasters too). Finally you get to the tomb of Vodal Kressh, which is guarded by a giant snarler that is also the second boss. This guy can actually be quite nasty to pugs who don't know what to do as he regularly summons a set of adds from the tomb and likes to stun everyone around him. If not properly controlled, this can for example end up with your healer getting mauled by adds while stunned until you wipe. At the same time it's actually pretty easy if you know how to handle the adds and always AoE them down the moment they spawn. I like this fight as it really rewards good gameplay.

Finally you enter the tomb of Vodal Kressh, where you find some more wild beasts as well as various rogue Sith. In an interesting change from the previous trash packs, all the Sith are powerful champions that can be single-pulled if you're careful, but there are knockbacks and patrols to watch out for, which once again actually requires some care. This part actually had the dubious honour of causing one of my very first dungeon groups in the game to fall apart, as the last two trash mobs were still linked back then (which was later amended), and without crowd control the two of them together were just too overwhelming for little old us.

Finally you're up against the Prophet of Vodal, a Sith who is mostly a tank and spank with a painful dot that gets placed on a random group member and should be cleansed if possible. His interesting gimmick is that he vanishes repeatedly and marks one group member who will then be chased by deadly balls of... fire? These cannot be attacked and need to be kited away from the group by the targeted person until their debuff expires. Contact is very painful!

In hardmode there is also a bonus beastie with a powerful knockback that does lots of AoE damage in one of the rooms before the boss .

Story

Both Republic and Empire have intercepted a distress signal from a Republic survey team on the planet Athiss, most of whose members have gone mad. The Jedi Council wants you to look into rescuing them and fighting the ominous dark side presence on the planet that has caused their insanity. The Empire actually knows what it is: long ago, the planet used to be the base of a powerful Sith alchemist called Vodal Kressh. The Emperor didn't get along with him and wanted the place quarantined after his death. With the quarantine violated by the explorers anyway, you might as well go in and clean up the mess that the Emperor didn't want anyone to see.

You find the crazed explorers pretty quickly and can choose to activate a beacon to have them rescued... or leave it off to not draw even more people towards the planet's dark influence. Then it's just a matter of cleaning up said influence.

Based on the many Sith you find, it's eventually concluded that they must have been descendants of Vodal's followers and that he may have even continued to rule them as a Force ghost. Good thing that you brought an end to that... sort of. (To me it never felt like the Prophet of Vodal was the real guy in charge there.)

Conclusion

Like the other flashpoints of this particular "type", Athiss is a fun romp with interesting mechanics and it stands out for offering more varied environments and enemy types than most flashpoints. There are also little Easter eggs for all the gathering professions again: Slicers can repair a lift at the start to avoid fall damage, scavengers can repair a broken droid to make it fight for them, archaeologists can unlock two shortcuts and a small buff, and bioanalysts can summon little snarlers as temporary combat pets. While Athiss is not my absolute favourite of these story-light levelling flashpoints, it's definitely close!

Flashpoint Levelling: Up to 29

I wasn't planning to make my next post about my flashpoint levelling experiment quite so soon, but I'm progressing so quickly that I feel like I need to write it all down right now or I won't be able to keep up. In my last post I mentioned being level 17 after doing the Black Talon and completing associated quests. Four flashpoints later I'm already 29! Those levels are sure flying by, and I feel like I've already learned a lot.

By the way, you'll never guess which flashpoint I got as my first random after the Black Talon. I was so full of anticipation, maybe slightly worried that I'd get something that was originally tuned for level 60 and which might turn out to be really hard... and then I got: Hammer Station, the original 15-21 flashpoint. Woot?

Hammer Station
I levelled: 17-20 (and then dinged 21 from handing in the "do one random flashpoint" weekly, which once again gave way more XP than is reasonable at this level)

I had barely set foot into this flashpoint when I realised that something was off with my bars. I'd copied my keybinds over from my main and had tried to arrange my abilities in the same way, but while doing so I had been sloppy in terms of identifying which Mercenary "scan" corresponded to which Commando "probe". Once I'd sorted that out, I realised to my horror that I didn't have my free heal yet (Kolto Shot)! As a result all our pulls consisted of me frantically spamming expensive heals on people until I overheated, then Vent Heat and pray that everything would be dead before I was full on heat again. Fortunately I was able to train Kolto Shot after that run - apparently it unlocks at level 18 now.

Despite of me being woefully underequipped in the healing department, we did reasonably well. The other group members were three damage dealers of level 28, 50 and 65 respectively, and they seemed to have a healthy amount of interest in their survival (they clicked kolto stations, and the Sorcerer would bubble people and add some heals of his own if things got hairy). At a higher level I might have felt a little insulted by their efforts and their lack of faith in my ability to heal, but to be honest in that run I really wasn't very reliable. Still, in the end we only had one painful incident with multiple deaths, and that was on "that" pull at the start, which everyone knows is a pain. I was the only one who survived, because after everyone else had gone down I ran for it like a little girl until the rest of the group caught back up again and returned to finish off the rest of the pull.

Even though we did OK on them, some of the bosses also seemed to hit quite hard. The tunneler droid's debuff on whoever had aggro seemed to inflict almost hardmode levels of pain (and I had no dispel yet /cry), and Battlelord Kreshan's AoE similarly seemed to slice anyone's health to bits who just happened to stand in it.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I picked up scavenging as one of my crew skills, so I had a grand old time with that, though I noticed that scavengable corpses seem to disappear more quickly now if you don't grab them right away... I'm pretty sure it's not just my imagination. It's also worth noting that since all the 15-65 flashpoints officially scale you up to 65 now, any mats you gather in there will be rank eight. So running flashpoints for specific mats, like Red Reaper for Electrum back in the day, is definitely a thing of the past.

What I didn't mention was that I picked up slicing as my third crew skill! I have no expectation to level it at this point, but I was curious whether just having it, even at level 1, would allow me to access various slicing contraptions in flashpoints. The answer is yes! I found the elevator that commenter Joseph Brown mentioned in my Flashpoint Friday post about Hammer Station and greatly impressed my party by being able to unlock not just one but two shortcuts for us.

Queen of the unlockable shortcuts

When we did the little light/dark side choice about halfway through the flashpoint, one of the dps instantly instructed us to "spam that space bar", which gave me a bit of a nervous twitch, but since it was just that one really short cut scene with no dialogue, I wasn't too bothered. I just wonder why they were!

Overall, it was a pretty nice run though. I also realised that I really like the sound of Nico's Blasters (which I gave to my Merc to wield - not like I've had much other use for them so far).

After the flashpoint I was surprised to find that I actually had the debriefing quest to talk to Darth Malgus again at the holoterminal. I noted in my Flashpoint Friday about Red Reaper that these seemed to be gone with 4.0, but apparently that's just a Red Reaper bug or something, because Hammer Station apparently still has it, and so does Athiss which I did later (spoiler?).

Red Reaper
I levelled: 21-24

Speaking of the Red Reaper and its missing debriefing mission, that one came up next in my random queue. And yes, it still had no chat with Darth Malgus at the end to wrap it all up.

This was another run with three dps (of levels 47, 60 and 65 respectively) and went very smoothly, even though one guy said that he'd never done it before. If anything, I was the noob - I got myself knocked off that bridge near the end, and on my first attempt at running back I managed to aggro some turrets that we had skipped so I had to /stuck as I couldn't use the elevator while in combat.

Still not having a cleanse was annoying on Darth Ikoral, though not problematic. I was still glad to see Cure available on my trainer after that run.

Also, I got to slice another lift! Those crew skills are really paying off.

False Emperor
I levelled: 24-27

This was probably my worst run so far, though it was still far from terrible. This time my three dps (of levels 29, 50 and 60 respectively) just didn't seem particularly competent and flailed around a lot: standing in red circles with no regard for their health but hitting kolto stations when people were fine, breaking CC and generally showing little survival instinct. There were a fair few deaths but we muddled through. I just couldn't help but think that these guys would have been pretty screwed without a healer.

At the start someone also managed to start and space-bar through the entire intro conversation before I'd even zoned in properly.

After the second boss the level 50 left with a "sorry gtg". I pulled out Mako for the next pull and was rather amused to see her tiny little figure act as a tank. Then we got a level 17 dps as replacement.

HK-47 was seriously hard! And not just because of my fellow group members' flailiness; he just hit like a freaking truck every time he focused anyone. Sometimes I couldn't even keep people up with my single target heals and the kolto stations combined, though I managed to stay alive and kept at least one dps up for long enough for the other two that died to come running back. I can only imagine what a right nightmare that boss must be without a healer.

Finally, there was some minor random loot drama where people got annoyed with one guy for needing on a pair of boots. He apologised and said that it had been a misclick, offering them to anybody else who wanted them as they were BoE. The level 17 then declared that it was pointless now since they were already bound to the guy who had hit need. I commented to say that I thought she was mixing up WoW and SWTOR, as I can't remember Bioware ever implementing anything like that (but vaguely recall it being a thing in WoW a long time ago).

Towards the end of this flashpoint I got my first AoE heal, which was very gratifying.

Athiss
I levelled: 27-29

Adding some dps 'cause my party's awesome.

Another relative softball, this flashpoint started off with a level 56 tank and two level 65 dps. I felt quite excited to run with my first tank! Of course he then had to "reboot" and dropped group after the first pull, just to be replaced by a level 16 dps. One of the level 65 damage dealers also left soon after, but was replaced by another dps of the same level.

Regardless, this run was super smooth and an interesting contrast to the False Emperor run that came before, because it felt like I was just along for the ride and these guys would have been completely fine without me. I even saw someone use crowd control once! Mostly it seemed to be the power of the high levels though, as the 65s were able to tank whole pulls without too much trouble, even though they should have been quite squishy.

It also felt like I was getting a lot less XP though (I only barely managed to hit 29, having gained less than two full levels that run), which makes me wonder whether the wonders of flashpoint XP don't work quite similar to the grouping bonuses for missions after all. Those are based on how much XP each party member is earning, which means that anyone at max level who doesn't actually earn experience themselves anymore also contributes little to nothing to the rest of the group's bonus XP. At least that theory would explain why this run seemed to net me so much less than the previous runs that all had either only one or no max-level characters in them. Something to keep an eye on in future runs.

But hey, at least I got to level my bioanalysis.

Early Flashpoint Impressions

Back in WoW, small group instances used to be one of my favourite pastimes in the game for years - until the dungeon finder slowly sucked the fun out of them for me, that is. Unsurprisingly, SWTOR's more old-fashioned flashpoints make me very happy, and I've run all of them up to my current level at least once, some of them multiple times. It's been an interesting ride so far.

Difficulty-wise they seem to hit a pretty sweet spot for me. Trash is mostly very easy, but there are patrols to watch out for, mobs of different strengths to consider, and sometimes enemies surprise you by entering the scene unexpectedly. Personally I feel that this creates a nice atmosphere where most of the dungeon is fairly laid back, but not mindlessly boring, as you still have to watch where you're going and what you're pulling. The bosses tend to be a bit harder, and I've had quite a few deaths and even wipes at the hands of some of them. They all have a couple of mechanics each that you have to pay attention to and that can't be safely ignored, but there is some margin for error so the fights don't exactly feel twitchy either.

Interestingly enough, I've already had two runs where our group failed to complete the flashpoint because we simply couldn't get past a certain encounter. This felt a bit strange and surprising to me initially, as I haven't experienced anything like it since my party found it impossible to kill the last boss in Grim Batol when we ran our very first heroic five-man after WoW's Cataclysm launch. In SWOTR, the two offenders that had us running into a brick wall were Athiss and Taral V. On Athiss, we just couldn't get past what was I believe the last trash pull before the final boss, which contained two elites that both had AoE attacks and were wearing our group down faster than I could heal it up again. Since we were on the lower end of the level range for the place, nobody in the party had their long-duration crowd control abilities yet either. On Taral V, we first died a few times to the bonus boss before giving up on him, and then failed to kill the last boss too as he wiped us out within seconds every time he hit his low-health enrage (which was promptly patched out two days later, which is telling). In both cases we came back with another level or two under our belts and completed the whole thing easily. At the end of the day, the initial failure wasn't actually that terrible, as it just spurred us on to come back and get revenge together, not to mention that it provided some unforgettable memories to bond over.

Another thing that I found noteworthy was that most flashpoints seem to reward both explorers as well as people who've honed their crew skills. The former was particularly evident for me on Taral V, where the way through the instance is fairly straightforward, but there are plenty of hidden nooks and platforms that contain bonus objectives and chests. Both times I've been in there, our group had fun clearing out as much of the place as we could, and one time we even found a purple item in a chest. The runs took a lot longer than strictly necessary, but the whole experience felt very rewarding and fun.

As far as crew skills go, there seem to be a lot of little bits and pieces in many flashpoints that provide you with small bonuses if you take the time to notice them. On Athiss for example you can go into a side room and use scavenging to repair a broken droid, which will then follow you around and act as a combat pet for a bit. On Hammer Station, you can use crew skills to drill a hole through a wall to create a shortcut to the first boss. None of it is even remotely necessary, but it's a little something that feels fun. I was reminded of how I used to be grateful for someone who could pick locks in WoW's Shattered Halls so that we didn't have to go through the local sewer to get to the first boss. Sometimes it's the little things that make all the difference.

Finally, I found it notable that there's a huge stylistic difference between flashpoints. The first one you get access to on either side (The Esseles / The Black Talon) feels very creative and exciting. Lots of moving around, multiple conversations with NPCs, multiple light/dark side decisions that really make you feel like you're influencing the story. I found it to be quite different from what I usually expect to find inside an instance, but in a good way.

However, after that the next couple of flashpoints honestly felt like a bit of a disappointment. Hammer Station, Athiss, Mandalorian Raiders, Cademimu... there's nothing wrong with them, but they don't utilise SWTOR's unique selling points nearly as well and feel a lot more like classic dungeon crawls. Yes, there is a bit of voice work, and at some point there's usually a light/dark side choice for you to make, but it tends to feel a bit tacked on. Hey, there's a room full of innocents over there, want to save them or kill them? At their heart, these four instances can easily be summed up as "go kill some bad guys and then kill their boss", detailed story be damned. Still, this is only a problem when you compare it to what came before. Truth be told, I'm perfectly happy to do a classic dungeon crawl with some friends. I mentioned our fun little adventures in Cademimu before.

Interestingly, just as I was going to accept that the Esseles and the Black Talon were obviously outliers, the game threw Taral V and the Maelstrom Prison at me, two separate flashpoints that are part of one continuous story. They are not quite as interactive as the Esseles, but the story is considerably more involved, and at the end of the Maelstrom Prison we were rewarded with a hugely satisfying boss fight and a massive lore revelation (which might not actually mean much to Republic players without much prior knowledge, but fortunately for me I had just played through Dromund Kaas on Empire side, which had conveniently provided me with some context for events).

At first I was a bit bewildered by the way some flashpoints are so story-heavy while others aren't, but after doing some research on it, I think I understand the reasons for it. Basically, the difference seems to come down to whether a flashpoint is faction-specific or the same for both sides. I remember listening to a developer interview where the guy confessed that originally, they had intended to make all content shared between the factions to save development time, but the resulting stories were pretty dumb because you can't really make a very compelling quest that both Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader would find equally engaging (as the dev put it). So maybe those flashpoints are leftovers from early development, or the developers simply decided that they could afford to have at least a couple of group instances with a comparatively weak story, especially considering that they would be repeatable content at endgame, at which point the story fades into the background anyway.

All in all, I've enjoyed myself enough that I'm definitely looking forward to exploring the flashpoints that I haven't seen yet, and so far there hasn't been one that I wouldn't be happy to rerun.