Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 4

After the madness of trying to push for a win in Total Galactic War while also doing seasons across all servers at once, week four looked like it was going to be positively chill. There was some oddness in the weekly objectives though, as there were two origin story objectives as well as two flashpoint objectives. Here's how I viewed the lot of them:

• Earn 200k Conquest points: Yes, easy, no problem.
  
• Visit another player's Manaan stronghold: Sure, of course.
  
• Complete 8 repeatable or side missions and kill 100 mobs on the capital worlds Coruscant or Dromund Kaas: I was definitely going to do this one, as I had plenty of alts in that level range across all servers.
  
• Complete 15 missions as a Jedi knight or Sith warrior: Another definitive yes.
• Complete 15 missions as a Jedi consular or Sith inquisitor: While the doubling up seemed weird to me, I saw no reason not to do both.
  
• Dig up 3 treasures at a seeker droid dig site: So, I generally like this one and there's a reason I made sure to unlock the seeker droid on at least one character on all servers. It's very chill and can be done while queueing for something else, but it can be kind of time-consuming as well if you're unlucky with your digs, so I figured I was going to do it on some servers, but not all.
  
• Complete 2 out of 4 selected "Underworld" flashpoints (Mandalorian Raiders, Cademimu, Directive 7, Spirit of Vengeance): I figured I might do this on a couple of servers, but not all.
  
• Complete 2 out of the 4 Revan flashpoints (Taral V, Maelstrom Prison, Boarding Party, The Foundry): Now this was super odd to me and I figured I might do either one flashpoint objective or the other, but there was no way I was going to do four flashpoints on each server.
  
• Earn 25 medals in Galactic Starfighter: I'm not a huge fan of this objective as I'm not great at GSF, so this one takes me at least three times as long as the regular "play matches" one. Still, I figured I might maybe do it on Darth Malgus.
  
• KotET chapter 7 on veteran mode or higher: As usual, no.
  
• Colossal Monolith on any difficulty: Like other lair bosses, I figured this was a given with my guild on Darth Malgus, but unlikely (though not impossible) to happen anywhere else.
  

Day 1 - Tuesday

I slept very little that night, followed by a long day in the office (where I was biting my nails around lunch time waiting for the results of Conquest to come in). As soon as I got home, it was time for our usual Tuesday raid, where we all (somewhat unusually) played like muppets. I had a brief look at the Conquest results that our... "Conquest accountant" sent me but was otherwise happy to go to bed early, not doing anything for seasons that day at all.

Day 2 - Wednesday

I decided to do a quick round of all the servers around lunch time, but before the reset. On Leviathan and Tulak Hord, doing few missions on Dromund Kaas on my inquisitors there got the daily objective done quickly (and offered nice synergy for the weeklies).

On Satele Shan, my knight still had a bunch of completed side missions from Coruscant in her log from god knows how many months ago, so I started by running around and handing all of them in. I was somewhat dismayed to find that only one of them counted as an exploration mission for the Coruscant seasons objective, but nonetheless I picked up some more where I had left off. As Conquest gains for low-level missions were much lower on a higher-level character, I eventually relogged my consular to finish off the seasons daily with a quick companion level-up.

On Star Forge, I logged into my lowbie consular and did some more missions on Tython. I smashed some flesh raiders and levelled up a couple of times until the daily objective was done.

Since it was getting close to reset at this point, I just expanded my Coruscant stronghold on Shae Vizla and ranked up a crew skill. On Darth Malgus I gave a companion gift to push me over the daily requirement (the previous night's ops had earned me some points already).

It was a busy day for me and I didn't get to play more until relatively late in the evening. I started by playing two GSF matches on Darth Malgus, before switching to Leviathan to continue questing on Dromund Kaas on my inquisitor. I only had to hand in two missions before hitting the daily objective.

On Tulak Hord, I decided to mix things up a bit by queueing for a random veteran mode flashpoint on my inquisitor. She was only eligible for nine of them, and five were featured seasons objectives, so I figured what were the odds? Of course I then got Black Talon, which was one of the not featured ones. Someone expressed annoyance as soon as we zoned in and quit the group the moment not everyone space-barred on the first cut scene. Ironically it went much faster after that person had left... at least the run completed my daily objective and counted as my inquisitor completing several missions.

On Satele Shan, I did a few more missions with my knight until I hit the Taskmaster Conquest objective and with that also my seasons daily. On Star Forge, I continued on Tython with my baby consular, and it didn't take long until she achieved Taskmaster and the daily objective too.

On Shae Vizla, I was about to continue my consular's class story for the missions as a consular when I realised I'd never done the Coruscant or Dromund Kaas side missions on this server. So I returned to Coruscant, hoovered up all the exploration missions and killed Migrant Merchants Guild members until I saw that lovely "influencing the galaxy" pop-up. I was ready for bed by then.

Day 3 - Thursday

After another long day at the office, I logged into Darth Malgus and just played a GSF match there. We won and this completed my 200k Conquest points objective, but only advanced me towards the 25 medals for GSF by one.

On Leviathan I did some more Dromund Kaas missions on my inquisitor, and on Tulak Hord I decided to spin the wheel in the group finder again. This time I got Cademimu and had a smooth enough run. The lowest-level person got a bit lost at one point after dying and having to run back, but I'm happy to say that we backtracked to rescue them and no unfriendly words were said. Apparently this counted as having completed 15 missions as an inquisitor already.

On Star Forge I continued on my baby consular on Tython, until she too hit the 15 missions completed objective. On Satele Shan, my knight handed in one mission on Coruscant, which completed her business there - since I still needed to complete more missions as a knight, however, I then continued with her class story on Alderaan until the daily objective was complete too. My consular on Shae Vizla also finished the objective on Coruscant before getting her daily done.

Day 4 - Friday

I did a bit of PvP on Darth Malgus around lunch time, and got put into four Voidstars in a row, three of which were losses. Thanks, game!

Later, I logged through all the servers to do a bit of tidying up - one side-effect of last week's Conquest mania was that while I had found time for some seasons objectives, I'd neglected to clear out my bags and they were full of junk everywhere. On Leviathan I followed this up with a few more Dromund Kaas missions on my inquisitor, and on Tulak Hord I decided that my inqusitor there might as well finish her "Searching for Allies" weekly mission by queueing for one more random flashpoint. I got the Foundry this time, which was also on the list of featured flashpoints. I also liked this run because we actually had a polite conversation about whether to do the bonus or not - we ultimately decided not to, but only after talking about it!

On Star Forge I decided to try my luck with the random queue on my knight, but unfortunately she just got a Hammer Station. At least that completed the daily objective, and somehow counted as no fewer than six missions completed as a Jedi knight. On Satele Shan, I completed my knight's class story on Alderaan, which ticked her over the 15 missions completed there.

On Shae Vizla, I decided to queue for a random veteran flashpoint on my consular. After a few minutes of waiting I realised that since it was still relatively early in the evening for me, most APAC players were probably still asleep, but just as I thought about going to do something else I got a pop after all. After a quick Taral V run with lots of trash skipping, I was halfway towards another flashpoint objective and had 15 missions as a consular ticked off on this server as well.

Later in the evening, I returned to Tulak Hord and did 15 missions on Tython on my littlest Jedi knight who is too low-level to do Conquest as of yet. By the time he completed the objective, he was level 9.

Day 5 - Saturday

In the morning I decided to log into Shae Vizla and queue for all the featured flashpoints on both veteran and master mode on my warrior. I got into a vet mode Boarding Party with a level 80 Sorc healer who used their knockback on cooldown to scatter trash mobs to the four winds. After one particularly egregious example where one of my smashes went into thin air after they'd knocked three mobs away from me a half-second before I would've hit them, I politely asked if they could stop doing that. They didn't respond and continued doing their thing, so I put them on ignore at the end of the run. Kind of petty, I know, but Boarding Party is a long flashpoint, and being trolled on every single trash pull was getting pretty damn aggravating. At some point I don't care anymore whether they were doing it intentionally or just a complete newbie who doesn't know their abilities and doesn't read chat, I just didn't want to get grouped with them again. At least this completed one of my flashpoint seasons objectives, plus it counted as completing five missions on my warrior.

I queued again for the remaining four flashpoints and got Mandalorian Raiders this time. I had a brief sweat drop moment when on the second pull the Sniper in the group catapulted a group of mobs away from me, but he was actually trying to defend himself and it was just a one-time thing. I enjoyed this run otherwise.

In the afternoon I mostly played GSF and did PvP on Darth Malgus. The GSF matches went a bit better than before and got me to 20/25 medals for the seasons objective.

In the evening I used our social night to kill the Colossal Monolith and get both flashpoint objectives done with Mr Commando. We chain-ran master mode Boarding Party, Spirit of Vengeance, the Foundry and Mandalorian Raiders in a single session. It felt long. On the plus side, since I made a point of asking to do this on Imp side (where we usually spend less time), we also got a bunch of achievement progress.

On the other servers I did the following things in the evening:

On Leviathan, I did a couple more Dromund Kaas missions on my inquisitor. The daily was done after only two of them and I was starting to realise that, since I usually switched servers after hitting the 25k Conquest for the daily and for some reason that was happening really quickly while playing my inquisitor, I had completed zero weeklies on Leviathan yet. I made a mental note to push myself a bit more on Sunday.

On Tulak Hord, I did a Dromund Kaas heroic on my inquisitor since I had run out of exploration missions for her to do. Interestingly, when you do this objective via the optional one-time quests, you'll usually get your kills way before you've completed enough missions, but the heroics seemed to be shaping up the opposite, though she did hit the 200k Conquest points earned objective. Logging over to Republic side, I put my trooper into the queue for all the featured flashpoints on master mode, though it was kind of late and nothing popped. I went and did a heroic on Coruscant to pad my kill count on the capital worlds and push myself over the 25k required for the daily objective.

On Satele Shan, I thought I'd queue for some seasonal flashpoints while digging for treasure on my consular, but I got a pop before I even made it to the dig site. I got into a vet mode Taral V that was... stressfully fast. Look, I've resigned myself to people wanting to skip and rush to some degree, and at times I even welcome it! But there are degrees, and the guy who took the lead in this run was just driving on and pulling more while completely ignoring the rest of the group, whether anyone got dismounted or aggroed a group we were trying to skip... the vibe was definitely "I can solo this so the rest of you don't matter to me". We completed the run smoothly enough but I felt unhappy and wished that people weren't like that.

Since I was now halfway done with one flashpoint objective and I wasn't sure I wanted to do both on this server, I queued again for Taral V and Maelstrom Prison only. And I got Taral V again! With the same guy! This time I managed to fall off a bridge at one point, something that hasn't happened to me in ages, though I was fortunate enough to not die... I landed safely further down the path we had originally taken, so just had to loop back around while the rest of the group continued on. To the guy's credit, they did give me a moment to catch up eventually... or maybe they were just slowed down by the unskippable mobs on the bridge... Either way: so not necessary.

On Star Forge I braved the random veteran queue on my Jedi knight again and got a Cademimu run this time, which counted for one of the flashpoint objectives. Nothing remarkable about that one other than that General Ortol almost forgot about his rockets... he only fired a single one towards the end, just before he was about to die.

On Shae Vizla, I queued for the set of four featured flashpoints again and went to visit a Manaan stronghold in the meantime (fortunately a public one was available). This gave me a bunch of Conquest for completing four weekly objectives, so when nothing popped after ten minutes or so, I just used a rep token to push me the last bit of the way to the daily requirement and called it a night.

Day 6 - Sunday

Around lunch time before reset, I logged into Leviathan to play a bit of catch-up. I queued for the featured underworld flashpoints and got into a vet mode Mandalorian Raiders that was interesting in a couple of ways. First off, we killed Braxx before his hounds and the world didn't end... I thought they had an enrage or something! But then on the last boss, most of us were still killing the turrets outside his room when one guy charged in and pulled the boss, and by the time we joined him, the boss was almost dead while only having spawned a single set of turrets? I have no idea how that went down. Anyway, the guy /stucked because of course the remaining turrets kept us in combat and he told us to do the same, but we just killed them instead. Afterwards I dug up some treasure with my seeker droid. While I was still only on one weekly completed at that point, I was partially done with a lot of others and felt like I was in a much better place.

I then logged over to Tulak Hord and queued for all the featured flashpoints on master mode again. I got into a Cademimu run where we even did the bonus boss and I was happy with that.

After reset I logged into Shae Vizla and queued for the underworld flashpoints first and got an instant pop for Mandalorian Raiders vet mode. This run completed both that flashpoint objective plus 15 missions as a Sith warrior, taking me to 7/7 weeklies completed on this server.

A bit later I logged into Leviathan and queued for the underworld flashpoints on my knight again. I got an instant pop and was pleasantly surprised to find myself in Spirit of Vengeance. Having four flashpoints to pick from for variety is less effective when a lot of people specifically avoid certain ones - I was fully expecting to see nothing but Cademimu and Mando Raiders in the public queue all week. It went fine and completed that flashpoint weekly objective for me.

Afterwards I visited a Manaan stronghold and since I was still short a few missions as a knight, I took her to Balmorra (where she's currently in her class story) and cleared out Sobrik to get that done as well. This put me at 5/7 weeklies completed on Leviathan, with two more almost complete and easy to finish off the next day.

I visited Star Forge next and decided to complete my knight's vet mode flashpoint weekly by queueing for one more random. I continued to have bad luck and got into a Hammer Station. The group had a level 80 Sage healer who took point. When we expected them to make the first corner pull, they just kept running... and running... all the way to the drill, where they then stood and spammed heals on themselves. We eventually caught up and AoE-d everything down that they had pulled, but I was glad I wasn't the only one who expressed confusion about this strat in chat. When we got to the retractable bridge, they raced across just before it turned off, and then slowly soloed the next pull on the other side while the rest of us actually killed the turrets. I got the feeling they quietly cursed our "inefficiency" as they didn't say another word the entire run and quit instantly the moment the completion message came up. While I'd now completed 15 missions as a Jedi knight, I was only on 3/7 weeklies otherwise and not too happy about that, but I wasn't sure whether I could be bothered with a push for much more.

I decided to log over to Darth Malgus for the time being, where I did a GSF weekly on one of my Sith warriors, pushing me over the 15 missions completed as a knight or warrior and earning the last medals I needed. Then I visited a Manaan stronghold to take me to 7/7.

I logged into Tulak Hord while eating dinner and put myself in the queue for master mode Taral V and Maelstrom Prison, but nothing popped. I ended up just doing a couple of Coruscant heroics and logging off to do something else for a while.

Late in the evening I hopped onto Satele Shan, dug up some relics, visited a Manaan stronghold and did a few missions on my consular until I hit 200k Conquest points.

Day 7 - Monday

I logged into Star Forge shortly before reset, visited a Manaan stronghold and knocked out a couple of Coruscant heroics on my trooper main. After the reset, I knocked out the last couple of missions on Dromund Kaas on my inquisitor on Leviathan, to get that server to 7/7.

I then put myself in the master mode queue for the Revan flashpoints on Tulak Hord again, even though I knew it was a bad time and ultimately nothing popped, but I was able to also do the seeker droid objective while waiting.

In the evening I logged back into my trooper on Tulak Hord again and put myself back in the queue while questing, but I barely lasted ten minutes before also listing myself for the veteran versions. I just wanted to get that last objective done! I was surprised that it then still took another ten minutes to get a pop, considering this was German prime time. The actual Taral V run then only took another ten minutes too, though this time I was quite grateful for that. Also, the guy leading the skips in this one would instantly turn back and help kill any extra mobs that were aggroed, which I thought made a world of a difference. I guess it's less about skipping or not skipping and more about working together and with the other members of your group. Anyway, this brought me to 7/7 on Tulak Hord as well.

Hopping over to Star Forge, I put my trooper into the master mode flashpoint queue for the underworld flashpoints and did more heroics on Coruscant until the related seasons objective was ticked off. Just as I was about to start digging for treasure, I got a pop for master mode Mandalorian Raiders. This was a smooth and pleasant run that stood out to me for the tank's perfect calculation of number of mobs needed for the bonus boss, as we killed exactly 80 and not one more (and the reason I could tell this was calculated was that he was a Shadow, which allowed us to skip some pulls, but he got just the right number for us to unlock the bonus boss too). Once done, I dug up three treasures on Alderaan and with that, was 7/7 on Star Forge as well.

On Satele Shan I just had to complete a couple more story missions on Belsavis with my consular to go 7/7, which just left me to earn 25k Conquest points for the daily objective done on Darth Malgus and Shae Vizla, which was achieved easily enough. (Incidentally, one of the random master mode flashpoints I decided to run on Darth Malgus ended up being Ruins of Nul, but that has nothing to do with seasons... let's just say it was still a pain but we got there in the end.)

Week 4 - Thoughts

I was kind of surprised by how much effort this week took. By Sunday I was definitely considering forfeiting full credit for the week on some servers, but then I was pretty close already, so giving up so close to the finish line would've been annoying as well. In hindsight I think the problem was that this week was one that greatly benefitted from synergies between different objectives (such as doing the planetary missions or flashpoints on one of the featured origin stories) but I didn't always min-max that aspect and when I didn't, it actually increased the time required by a lot. I also wasted some time on the random queue without getting into the flashpoints I actually needed, clearly overestimating my odds with a total of eight flashpoints eligible for seasons objectives. I need to learn to resist the lure of that, even if it's much easier than trying to find the correct boxes to tick in the unsorted jumble that is the full flashpoint list in the group finder panel nowadays.

Some of the objectives also highlighted to me the differences between the "efficient" way to do them and what I find fun, and again, they didn't always align. Doing four flashpoints on master mode with my guildies, including all the bonuses, was certainly interesting and enjoyable, but it also took us more than two hours. Comparatively, veteran mode Taral V with a pug that just rushes to the end barely takes ten minutes, but is also quite boring. Same with doing exploration missions on Coruscant or Dromund Kaas on a lowbie that's levelling (which includes watching all the cut scenes) vs. just blasting through the heroic circuit on a level 80.

Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 2

The second week of GS6 started with some deep thoughts for me. I know that doing this whole thing across all servers is weird. It doesn't make me unique, there are many others who do it, but compared to the player base as a whole, we're definitely a small hardcore fringe group. People may wonder whether it isn't stressful to play this way, and I guess it can be? But I do like playing in different environments and in different ways, as well as figuring out how I can get the most boxes ticked in a way that is somewhat efficient but still fun. Because it is fun for me!

That said, there's definitely a risk of hitting a point where the gameplay crosses over from fun into tedious. I remember there was a week last season when I did the same flashpoint something like three times in two days and I really didn't want to do it yet again... but it actually took a bit of effort to make myself stop and remind myself that I wasn't losing anything by not going 7/7 everywhere that week; completing the seasonal track on that server would just take one reset longer.

After I had achieved all my goals during GS5, there was also a moment when I looked at some of the objectives for the remaining weeks of the season and thought: "That would've been fun to do again on some servers... but instead I did Black Hole ten times in week one. Probably not the most fun path to take."

So with that in mind, I wanted to fight my self-imposed urge to push for 7/7 weekly objectives on all servers every week this time. My goal was to do only as many as I found fun, because I'd rather my overall season lasted a couple of weeks longer than burn myself out on grinding too hard in too short an amount of time.

With all that out of the way, the weekly objectives and my thoughts on them were as follows:

• Earn 200k Conquest points: Once again, a freebie on all servers.
  
• Visit another player's Mek-Sha stronghold: I wrote a whole post about how much I enjoyed this new objective, and it was effectively also free seasons points on all servers.
  
• Kill 25 mobs without a companion: An extremely easy and fast objective, I figured I was probably going to do this on all the secondary servers as well.
  
• Kill 100 mobs with a healer companion: Like all companion objectives, easy to do and easy to get done while also doing other things.
  
• Do the Black Hole weekly twice or the Onderon weekly once: Now this is where things got a bit tricky, because while I like the Onderon weekly, I only have access to it on Darth Malgus and Star Forge. I don't mind the Black Hole either, but having to do it twice on each of the remaining servers would be quite grindy (especially without stealth) so I wasn't planning to go that far.
  
• Complete 8 repeatable or side missions and kill 100 mobs on the Coreward planets Alderaan, Balmorra, Corellia, Mek-Sha or Onderon: Another easy choice that can be done in a variety of ways and also synergises nicely with the companion kills and the above objective to do daily areas (the Black Hole counts for Corellia).
  
• Complete 2 out of 4 selected flashpoints (Assault on Tython, Korriban Incursion, Depths of Manaan, Secrets of the Enclave): Like always, I never fancy doing twelve flashpoints across six servers, but I figured I might do this on a couple at least. Especially since three of them are part of the prelude to Shadow of Revan story chain, which I'm generally happy to start on alts before I've actually reached that point in the main storyline.
  
• Complete the Eternal Championship on Zakuul: I figured I might do this on Darth Malgus with Mr Commando, but otherwise I only had access to it on Star Forge and probably wouldn't fancy doing it again with the same character there.
  
• Hive of the Mountain Queen on any difficulty: An easy enough one-boss operation, but I couldn't count on doing this anywhere but on Darth Malgus due to the challenges involved with finding a pug group at a time that might not be the most active in the server's time zone.
  
• Explosive Conflict on veteran mode: First off, I'm very grateful that they took the feedback about the operations objectives introduced last season and reduced this to only requiring one operation. Nonetheless, the same rule applied as for the previous objective. I wouldn't say no to an opportunity to do this with a guild group, but I wasn't going to actively push for it anywhere. Even on Darth Malgus we'd just done EC VM the week before (since nobody had thought to look ahead at the objectives for the next week...) and I wasn't sure people would feel like doing it two weeks in a row.
  
• KotFE chapter 10 on veteran mode or higher: As before, not really interested in re-doing chapters.

Based on that list, I could easily see myself going 5/7 everywhere, and probably 6-7/7 on some servers, but whether I'd feel like pushing for 7/7 on all of them would kind of depend on luck and time. I didn't want to completely neglect my PvP season progression either.

Day 1 - Tuesday

It being another day in the office, I came home late again and then jumped straight into operations with my guild team. We spent most of our time wiping on Dread Master Brontes on master mode, which is actually oddly good for Conquest and completed my daily objective all on its own. I "influenced the galaxy" by running away from her zappy tentacle things. I then visited a local Mek-Sha stronghold before logging over to the other servers.

Since I didn't want to stay awake until 1 a.m. again, I just visited a Mek-Sha stronghold everywhere and mostly got the daily objective done with clickies, except for on Leviathan, where I did a bit of questing on Balmorra with my bounty hunter.

Day 2 - Wednesday

I got a bit of play time in around lunch time and used it to do a few warzones on Darth Malgus as well as a round of Onderon dailies. This completed two more weekly objectives (the one for the dailies and the 200k Conquest points one). I also used one of those buff items to increase the drop rate of the blueprint fragments and got 15 from my daily round (while killing fewer than 75 mobs) - not sure whether that's a good return on investment or not, though a guildie later posited that he got close to 60 from an hour of grinding on Oricon, so your mileage may vary.

In the late afternoon, an opportunity arose for me to join Swtorista's raid team for a run of Explosive Conflict veteran mode, which I was happy to come along to and which was good fun. This completed the associated seasons objective for me on Star Forge and also made my trooper there hit her personal Conquest target. (Also, since the operations missions terminals are often slow to update, I managed to re-pick last week's EC mission for bonus currency; go me.)

In the evening, I took part in a bit more PvP on Darth Malgus and then did some more questing on Balmorra on both the Leviathan (on my bounty hunter) and Tulak Hord (on my trooper). On Satele Shan, I did a round of the Black Hole on my stealthy consular. On Shae Vizla, I was wondering which Coreward planet to quest on, since I'd mostly levelled up through class stories there and had barely done any of the side content. I eventually settled on visiting Alderaan on my warrior for a bit. None of this took too long but I needed an early night.

Day 3 - Thursday

Another office day meant limited play time in the evening. I started with some PvP on Darth Malgus again, and then repeated most of the questing circuit I'd done the day before. My bounty hunter on Leviathan did more missions on Balmorra until he got credit for his 100 companion kills and Coreward missions. My trooper on Tulak Hord did the same for the Coreward missions, but didn't get the companion kills because she's a healer, and contrary to what a lot of people will tell you, I've always quite enjoyed levelling as a healer in this game... but questing as a healer with a healing companion is a level of masochism even I'll avoid stooping to.

My warrior on Shae Vizla did some more Alderaan missions, hit her personal Conquest target and completed her companion kills, but not her Coreward worlds objective because most of her progress had been through main planetary storyline missions and had only advanced the eligible mission tracker to 4/8.

On Satele Shan I did another stealthy round of the Black Hole, which completed the daily missions objective, but due to the stealth I hadn't killed enough mobs to complete the other two related weeklies. On Star Forge I did a round of Onderon on my inquisitor, which yielded similar results.

Day 4 - Friday

In the morning I visited Tulak Hord and logged into the knight I'd created there at the end of last season without ever playing him. I sorted out his inventory and then did the first couple of quests on Tython, because getting 25 mob kills without a companion is easy to do either way, but I particularly enjoy doing it on a character that doesn't actually have a companion yet. The same logic made me do a few more missions on Tython with my littlest consular on Star Forge.

Around lunch time, just after reset, I decided to queue for some warzones on Shae Vizla. Not only did I get quick pops, I won four matches in a row, completing my warzone weekly in the minimum amount of time possible. That is so rare that I was stunned, but I still ran around Alderaan for a bit as well to kill a few mobs without a companion so I could also feel like I'd done something for my main season progression.

In the evening I started my play time with some more PvP on Darth Malgus, followed by an operation with guildies. After that I hopped over to Leviathan and idled on the fleet for a bit while looking at something else on my second monitor, which is when I noticed that a pug group for Hive of the Mountain Queen was forming in general chat. I happily tagged along and got to tick that weekly off my list on the French server. I didn't expect to be as lucky on Tulak Hord when I logged over there, and I wasn't, but someone was forming a group for the Coruscant world boss instead, which I decided to join on a whim. It was still very good for Conquest if nothing else and pushed me over the 200k needed for the weekly objective.

Over on Star Forge, I decided to do another round of Onderon on my inquisitor - I didn't need it for the daily objective, but it was a handy way of getting my remaining Coreward worlds and companion kills, and I just like Onderon. This completed my inquisitor's personal Conquest and put me on 7/7 weekly objectives completed on Star Forge.

On Satele Shan I decided to grab my Imperial agent and continue her class story on Balmorra, first killing a few mobs without a companion and then continuing with Kaliyo by her side. I also got my Coreward mob kills but still had some left to go with a healing companion (since I'd forgotten to set Amity to heals on my first day of doing Black Hole with my consular).

It wasn't that late for a Friday but I was tired and felt quite satisfied with my in-game accomplishments so decided to call it an early night.

Day 5 - Saturday

The weekend! I was up nice and early, and since I'd achieved all my daily seasons objectives the night before, I decided to put some more work towards additional weeklies before the reset. I started by putting myself in the group finder queue on Satele Shan, for any of the four featured flashpoints on either difficulty. I ended up being put into a veteran mode Assault on Tython with a full group of 80s, and it was weird. One person ran past all the trash and then just stood there at the boss while the other two milled about uncertainly. I figured maybe the guy who had run ahead expected me to stealth the first three objectives since I was on a Shadow and I'd seen people do that before. I hadn't succeeded at it myself yet, but I decided to give it another go and pulled it off this time, go me! Meanwhile the other two players pulled some more trash though and died. I eventually put into chat "sooo, what are we doing?" since everyone seemed to have run off into a different direction, to which the guy at the boss responded that we needed to kill those three things... so they weren't expecting me to stealth but just wanted to go AFK while the rest of us did the killing?! It ultimately didn't matter, we just killed all the trash from then on, but that whole situation was a bit awkward. After that I queued again for the remaining three flashpoints and got a vet mode Depths of Manaan which was fast and uneventful.

Next I hopped over to Tulak Hord, where I did a solo mode Assault on Tython since I had the story quest for it, followed up by a round of Black Hole. Then I changed to my Sith inquisitor for a bit of story questing with a healer companion. I no longer needed anything on the Core worlds, so I was grateful to find that her class story was actually up to Nar Shaddaa already. (I'd thought she was still on Balmorra too and I'd had quite enough of that planet for the week.)

Leviathan was my next destination, where I hit up the group finder queue for the featured flashpoints again and got an instant pop for vet mode Depths of Manaan. Since we had two healers it was a bit slow, but otherwise alright. I did get a little worried on the last boss with the five minute timer when one of our two damage dealers suddenly had to go AFK, but we did still manage to beat the timer.

Finally I returned to Shae Vizla. I had to have a bit of a think about how I was going to go about the flashpoints and Black Hole runs if I was going to go for them there as well. The rewards would have been best on my level 80 warrior, but she'd already completed her Conquest for the week and I craved something slightly different, so I opted to go on my level 68 consular instead. The guild I'm in often alternates events between Republic and Imperial side, and I keep getting reminded that I don't yet have a level 80 on Pub side that can go to operations there, so it seemed prudent to milk these objectives for some XP at least.

I first queued for three of the eligible flashpoints (Secrets of the Enclave was out of reach due to level) and got into another Depths of Manaan. The irony of me running that same flashpoint three times in one morning after I wrote that whole intro about not wanting to burn myself out by repeating the same content too many times wasn't lost on me, but fortunately all the Shadow of Revan prelude flashpoints are pretty fun and not too long, so I genuinely didn't mind. Afterwards I did a round of the Black Hole and was reminded that the heroic is still somewhat challenging in levelling gear, as I actually had to run back out of the first room to save myself after starting with a bad pull. I proceeded with a bit more care after that and was fine though. The whole adventure netted me two levels, something I was quite pleased with.

After lunch and the daily reset I logged right back into Shae Vizla with the goal of repeating what I'd done earlier, one flashpoint and one round of the Black Hole. I put myself in the flashpoint queue (unticking Depths of Manaan this time, but at least Secrets of the Enclave was now available to me) and returned to Corellia, but nothing popped for the entirety of my daily run. I did have the pleasure of someone actually asking to group up for the Black Hole heroic though, something I happily accepted and which filled me with massive nostalgia.

Just as I was starting to wonder whether I should leave the flashpoint for another time, I got a pop and found myself in Secrets of the Enclave. A level 80 from my guild was in the run as well, and they instantly took off like a bat out of hell. Someone else said that they were new to the flashpoint, which prompted our bat to type out a few instructions at some point, so I can't even complain that they were being inconsiderate or anything, but they were still absolutely racing. Mr Commando went off to take a shower just when I got the flashpoint pop and he wasn't even done by the time we finished. With that, my consular completed her personal Conquest, gained another level (almost two actually), and Shae Vizla became the second server on which I hit 7/7 weekly season objectives for week two.

Later in the afternoon I went to cycle through the other servers again. On Leviathan I queued for flashpoints again, once again unticking Depths of Manaan, and ended up in yet another round of Assault on Tython. I sighed a little to myself, but it went fine. Feeling a bit flashpoint-ed out after that, I opted to just continue questing on my inquisitor on Tulak Hord to tick off the 100 companion kills objective. On Satele Shan I did the same with my Imperial agent, and finishing off her class story on Balmorra also pushed me past 200k Conquest points, bringing Satele Shan to 7/7 weeklies completed as well. Since I was already done with weeklies on Star Forge, I just spent some time on a somewhat neglected smuggler alt there to get my daily dose of Conquest done.

In the evening it was time for social night with my guild on Darth Malgus once again, where we did 16-man Hive of the Mountain Queen on story mode and Explosive Conflict on veteran mode, ticking those two objectives off for me.

I had held off on working more on my progress on Darth Malgus partially because I counted on getting those two objectives in specific done on social night and partially because I thought Mr Commando might want to do flashpoints and the Eternal Championship with me over the weekend, however it turned out that he was already on 7/7 himself after the operations. With that in mind, I logged onto my newest lowbie alt on Ord Mantell and did a bit of questing there for 25 kills without a companion.

Day 6 - Sunday

On Sunday morning I did a bit more questing to get to 7/7 weeklies done on Darth Malgus, specifically by doing some story missions on one of my inquisitors on Corellia until I'd achieved the last few kills for the Coreward Worlds objective.

I'd been so focused on completing weeklies on all servers that I hadn't even done the (admittedly quite time-consuming) first part of the new seasonal storyline yet, and neither had Mr Commando, so we made up for the missed shared play time from not doing the seasonal flashpoints by working our way through the first two chapters of the new storyline together.

After that I didn't log back into the game until evening, at which point paying a visit to each server to get caught up didn't take long at all. On Darth Malgus I just did some clickies. On Leviathan I did a bit more putzing around on Balmorra on my bounty hunter, which completed his personal Conquest target, the 25 kills without a companion objective, and the 200k Conquest points for seasons, taking me to 7/7 on that server as well.

On Tulak Hord I had one round of Black Hole and a flashpoint left to do. In an attempt to mix things up a bit, I only queued for the master mode version of the four featured flashpoints. It was European prime time and healers were even flagged as the role in need! However, I did the entirety of the Black Hole and nothing popped. Since that did earn me enough Conquest for the day though, I decided to leave the flashpoint for Monday.

Since the other three servers were all done with weeklies, I just had play a little bit on each one to earn my 25k Conquest points for the day. On Star Forge I did a few more missions on my smuggler, and on Shae Vizla the same on my trooper. On Satele Shan, I was just getting ready to make a start on Nar Shaddaa on my Imperial agent when I got a warzone pop! I've historically had bad luck with getting into PvP in the non-max level brackets on that server, presumably due to time zone conflicts above anything else, so this was exciting. In fact, the whole reason I was queued for warzones was that I still had the "introduction to PvP" quest in my log at level 39 - I'd originally picked it up at level 10 and had got the arena part done pretty quickly, but just never managed to get into a warzone. Apparently I got lucky that night and the game actually found enough people for a 4v4 lowbie Huttball. I did more damage than anyone else (Snipers are so brutal in the lowbie bracket, it's kind of amazing) and we dominated the other team 6-0. Sorry guys, but I did wait a long time for this.

I actually still felt like playing some more after all that and found myself at bit of a loss for what to do outside of seasons content that evening, so I ended up doing a bit of midbie PvP on Star Forge.

Day 7 - Monday

I decided to start my play session in the late afternoon by logging into Tulak Hord to get that last weekly seasons objective done. I thought I'd try the master mode queue for the featured flashpoints again while taking care of some errands like crew skills and GTN listings (since I'd done nothing but solo and veteran modes all week), and I could always switch to queueing for vet mode if nothing materialised within a reasonable amount of time. However, this time I got a pop almost immediately, which was for Depths of Manaan. What followed was a super smooth run that even included the bonus boss; I was very pleased. Since I was also on the story step for Depths of Manaan, my Shadow of Revan prelude progressed as well. And with that I was once again 7/7 on all servers.

Since I now only had to earn some Conquest points on the other servers, I just did that by cycling through various alts and playing them a little bit at a time.

Week 2 Thoughts

Okay, so... I was wrong again! I was quite sure that I wouldn't be able to do 7/7 weekly objectives on every server this week without feeling stressed, but not only did I do it again, I was almost fully done by Sunday. That was really surprising to me as this week featured a lot more repetition than week one, with me doing the same four objectives across all servers (while in week one the two "automatic" ones were the only ones I did everywhere). I think those lucky ops runs on Star Forge and Leviathan (which I definitely wasn't counting on) really helped me out, because I don't think I would've been able to stand any more flashpoints and dailies than I already did.

Now, next week - things really will be different I think, because in a classic case of "be careful what you wish for", after I bemoaned the lack of a Total Galactic War during the between-seasons break, the devs decided to give us one next week, right in the middle of the Galactic and the PvP season! It's simultaneously exciting and a completionist's nightmare, as I'll probably find myself wanting to focus on helping my guild on Darth Malgus win at Conquest, which would then leave little time to do anything on the other servers. We'll see how it goes I guess.

Planets I'd like to revisit

With 7.3's return to Voss, it's natural to wonder what other existing planets might be interesting to revisit as part of the ongoing storyline. Calphy shared his thoughts on this back in May, and in this reddit discussion thread on the subject people were offering up a lot of differing opinions a few months ago. Doesn't mean that I don't still want to add my own thoughts on the matter though! So without further ado, my personal top picks for planets I hope we'll get to revisit in the story at some point:

1. Alderaan

This was Calphy's first choice and the second most upvoted option on reddit, and it's my first pick as well. Now, it obviously helps that Alderaan is already my second favourite planet in the entire game, but it's not just about that. The lore surrounding the different houses in the base game is pretty complex, and I was not best pleased with the way the Star Fortress dialogue for Alderaan seemed to want to mostly brush that under the rug. I want to know how all those different nobles that we worked with in the class stories fared over the years! What happened after Bouris Ulgo was brought down in the planetary storyline?

I don't necessarily expect to get an update on every single story thread here, but I don't think it would be unreasonably complicated to have us visit a new house on a small new map (assuming a similar approach as was taken with the Interpreter's Retreat) and have some people there chat with us about at least some of the things that have been happening on Alderaan in the last few years.

2. Taris and Balmorra

I'm putting these two together because I want to return to both of them for the same reason, though I think the case for Taris is somewhat stronger than for Balmorra. Basically, what both of these planets have in common is that in the base game, they are in the unique position of existing in two different states at different points in time.

Republic players help with the reconstruction of Taris around level 20 and things seem to be going well, but then the Empire invades the planet and Imperial players get to beat the Republic back around level 40. For Balmorra it's the opposite, with Imperials seeing it firmly under Imperial control around level 20 (though they have to fight off rebels), until Republic players show up around level 40 and push the Imps back off the planet.

I always thought this was an interesting concept as it allows territory to change hands without making either side feel like a loser... though it is a bit weird that there's basically a whole story there that you wouldn't know anything about if you didn't play both factions. If you only ever played Empire for example, you might well think that your faction still owns Balmorra, because you're never told that it's been lost.

So the reason I think either of these planets would be interesting to revisit is that it would give us a chance to "canonically" get caught up with the current state of affairs, with Republic players having to deal with the loss of Taris and Imperials having to stomach being pushed off Balmorra. The reason I think Taris would be slightly more interesting is that we don't really know what happened there after the Imperial victory - how much did the Imps care about rebuilding there, and did they even have the resources after Fallen Empire? With Balmorra, we at least have a vague notion that it continued to support the Republic later.

3. Korriban and Tython

It's easy to see why there's a certain appeal to going back to the old starter worlds. I think most players have pretty fond memories of these (less so of Ord Mantell and Hutta, I suppose) and we know that they've been razed both during the prelude to Shadow of Revan and then again when the Fallen Empire invaded. We want to see them rebuilt and know how things have changed since our own Jedi and Sith were little! Have the Sith changed in any way in terms of the cruelty of their training? Whatever happened to those Twi'lek settlers on Tython?

I do think those are interesting questions, but the main reason I rank these two planets somewhat lower is that in practical terms, I can't see us going back to a fully rebuilt version of the exact same area of Tython and Korriban that we already know (as in, the Jedi Temple and the Sith Academy respectively). Assuming we'd follow the Interpreter's Retreat model of going to a different part of the planet that's set further in the future, it's just hard to image that being quite as interesting here. Still, I guess it would be nostalgic if nothing else.

How do you feel about revisiting older planets in new storylines?

The Stranger from Kubindi - Some Fun Personal Stats

As mentioned previously, I'm planning to write a three-part post-mortem about my experience with SWTOR's first Galactic Season. Let's start with some fun stats! Well, I thought they were fun anyway.

One of the nice things about keeping a diary of all the Seasons objectives I completed literally every day for three months is that it provided me with data that I could enter into a spreadsheet to find out how much some of my perceptions were backed up by reality. Did I really lose most of my GSF matches? How often did I use the re-roll function in the end? Let's find out!

First off... poor flashpoints. I got assigned the flashpoint weekly ten times out of eleven, but I only completed it twice! The other eight times I re-rolled it, while never re-rolling any of my other weeklies. You'd think I disliked flashpoints or something... I don't, but in the context of Seasons objectives I did find that weekly pretty time-consuming and inefficient.

The re-roll statistics for daily objectives are a little more varied, though they still paint a very clear picture of my preferences: The daily objective I re-rolled the most was insectoid killing, which I re-rolled 20 times throughout the Season! And yet I still ended up "having" to do it 14 times anyway. Heroics I re-rolled seven times, generic mob killing four, and dailies three. These weren't caused by any sort of strong dislike, but more based on general mood and often related to me having got a streak of the same objective several days in a row and craving some variety. GSF I only tried to re-roll once and the warzone daily never.

In general the number of re-rolls I attempted for daily objectives went up over the course of the Season; I'm guessing because my patience with repetition grew shorter. During the first two weeks I only used the re-roll function on dailies twice each, but in weeks eight and ten for example I used it no less than five times. I often regretted those later re-rolls though - the early ones were reserved for things I really didn't fancy doing, while the later ones were sometimes attempts at simply having a shot at something better... but usually it only made things worse. This is why gambling is bad, kids.

In terms of objectives I actually completed, there was a pretty good spread: Looking at my weeklies, I did GSF and warzones seven times each, and operations six times - flashpoints, as already mentioned, only twice. My most commonly completed daily objective was planetary mob killing with 31 times (note that this was always for the planets of the week - I did not see the ones for the starter planets even once). With 75 mob kills required each time (minus some bugginess), that resulted in a rampage of over 2,000 mobs cut or shot down purely for Seasons objectives!

My second most frequently completed daily objective was warzones, which I did 30 times, followed by 29 rounds of planetary dailies and 28 GSF matches completed. Thanks to the re-rolls I "only" had to do heroics 18 times and hunted down insectoids 14 times. The real outlier was the PO to complete GSI missions, which I only saw twice. I guess I could have lumped it in with the other dailies, but since it's mechanically so different that didn't seem right. I really wish that this one had come up more often, just for the sake of variety.

Anyway, what makes these numbers interesting to me was that they didn't feel this even while I was playing, probably because of how much some of them forced me out of my comfort zone. For example I do PvP all the time... not a lot of it, but quite regularly, often for Conquest, so also having a daily PO to do a warzone barely registered with me. GSF I hadn't done much in a while, but it's also something I'm quite comfortable doing at least occasionally for Conquest and such, so playing a few GSF matches a week didn't feel like a huge change either. But things like dailies and heroics are so rarely part of the way I play the game that being "forced" to do up to seven rounds of planetary dailies a week (I'm looking at you, week nine) felt pretty chore-like at times, even though realistically I didn't spend much more time on them than on the other activities.

Besides the objectives, the other two things I looked at were my PvP win-loss ratio and how much I travelled around the galaxy. Playing GSF over eleven weeks, it felt like I lost more matches than I won, and this was an accurate impression, though I guess the difference wasn't as drastic as it could have been: 14 wins vs. 19 losses. Warzones felt much better, and they were! In that mode I recorded 23 wins vs. 15 losses.

In terms of gallivanting around the galaxy, with each week being limited to objectives on a certain number of planets, I was curious whether I managed to mix it up or kept coming back to the same locations over and over. The answer is that I succeeded... kinda, I guess? The planet/area I visited the most often was CZ-198, on eight different days, due to the many "do dailies" objectives that sent me there. It's tied for first place with Balmorra, but that can be explained by the fact that the core world themed week is the only one I did three times (I only cycled through all the other weeks twice). The same reasoning applies to Alderaan, which I visited on seven different days.

Most planets I visited on around three to six different days, which seems quite reasonable. The biggest outliers were Iokath which I only visited once (though I would have liked to get an objective to go there more often), as well as Rishi and Voss. The latter I only visited that one time when I got the objective to kill Shaclaws and then decided "never again". Interestingly, Dantooine, Mek-Sha and Onderon were all eligible as locations to kill mobs at one point or another but I didn't visit either of them even once. Maybe something to consider for variety next time.

And that's it! Wasn't that interesting? Up next, we'll be looking at how this whole experience made me feel and what feedback I would give Bioware about what to change for the next Season.

Shintar's Galactic Seasons Diary, Week 11

The final week!

Day 1

My weekly objectives - the last weeklies I was going to do this Season - came up as warzones and operations, which was fine by me. My daily objectives were to play a warzone and generic mob killing on core worlds.

For the former I played a Hypergates match on my healing Sage that was pretty fun and we won. For the latter I returned to my little squid Sorc and did some more questing on Balmorra, like I'd done in week 6.

Day 2

The same daily objectives as the day before! This time my Sage got into a Voidstar, which was another nice win. During the attacker round I felt like I just spent all my time being killed over and over again by a veritable mob of enemies, but every time I caught myself noticing this, someone else on the team managed to plant a bomb on the other side of where I was - so I guess I did my job by being distracting?

My little Sorc continued questing on Balmorra. I can recommend the Okara droid factory as a place where you can get some side quests done while also killing lots of mobs.

Day 3

Heroics and Black Hole dailies made for a welcome change of pace, even if there wasn't any synergy between them. It was late in the evening and I didn't feel like risking a re-roll. For the heroics I went to Alderaan on my Assassin, since I figured Imperial heroics on Alderaan was one particular combo I hadn't done yet since the Season started. My picks for things that were quick to do and where stealth would be useful were mostly good, except for this one heroic where you're supposed to kill some enemies while friendly droids help, and for some reason it was just super buggy and everything kept evading. Fortunately blowing up a nearby barrel managed to un-bug at least a few mobs enough that I could kill them and then the rest followed suit.

For the Black Hole dailies I went back to Republic side after my previous observations about how I just have issues with these on Imp side. My Guardian made quick work of them.

Day 4

First I got my operations weekly out of the way by running Nature of Progress with my guildies, then I tackled more Black Hole dailies on my Nautolan Shadow and played a GSF match on my Assassin tank. In the latter both teams were neck-on-neck throughout the whole thing, though my team eventually eked out a win. In this one I was actually the worst player on my team, which made me oddly happy (because I know that I'm pretty bad at GSF, and every time I see how many people still manage to be even worse than me it depresses me a little).

I also kept looking at my Seasons points to figure out just how many more objectives I'd have to do in order to finish and was temporarily overcome by paranoia that I'd miscalculated and would actually have to do another week. I'm apparently not good at doing maths on the fly.

Day 5

I saw heroics and insectoids and immediately re-rolled the latter, just to then slap myself on the forehead for doing that because I'd forgotten that during "core week", the insectoid killing actually has good synergy with doing heroics and I could have got both of them done at the same time by doing selected heroics on Alderaan or Balmorra. As it was, I'd instead saddled myself with yet another round of the Black Hole instead. I went on another stealth character, my DvL Shadow, to at least make things there as quick as possible.

For the heroics I also went stealth on Imp side on my Operative, and opted for picking three heroics on Balmorra. My choices were pretty good: one didn't require me to kill a single mob; in another I killed two but probably could have avoided doing so if I'd cloaked when they aggroed. Only the third one actually required a bit of killing, but it still wasn't too bad.

Day 6

As if the game wanted to give me a second chance, I got heroics and insectoids again, and managed to resist the urge to re-roll this time. I completed both by doing a round of the Killik heroics on Alderaan on my Vanguard tank.

That just left me to complete the PvP weekly for the final few points! I queued for a warzone on my lowbie Merc and got into an arena where I initially was completely by myself on my team while the opposition had a full four. I pondered whether it was worth taking the deserter penalty if I was still alone by the time the gates opened, but fortunately two more people got added before the match started - though that still meant that we were one man down, but then, the other team didn't have a healer! Amazingly, we managed to win within two rounds despite the numbers disadvantage, and no, I don't think it was because of my healing actually... it's just that both damage dealers on my team did really high damage, and the Sage found the time to throw some off-heals on me on top of that.

After doing a couple of quests to finish my Merc's Conquest, I relogged on my main to claim my final Seasons prizes. There doesn't seem to be an achievement for completing the Season, but I did get one for Altuur's last custom gift pushing him to influence fifty.

Week 11 thoughts:

I'll go into more detail about my final thoughts on the first Galactic Season in a separate post, but I will say that it feels really good to be done. I don't regret committing to completing it as soon as possible and without using any of the buyout options, but some days I definitely did feel a bit pressured (by my own resolution I mean) to log in just to keep up even though I didn't really feel like playing or didn't have much time. So I'm looking forward to not having to worry about POs anymore for the next few months until they release Season two with the expansion.

Shintar's Galactic Seasons Diary, Week 6

Day 1:

We were back to week one objectives, and I got flashpoints and GSF for my weeklies. I decided to keep the flashpoints this time, since three of them are part of the Shadow of Revan prelude and I have a lot of alts that are somewhere on that step of the story (I don't like doing these on solo mode very much). So I figured this could be a good opportunity to progress their personal stories a bit.

My dailies were heroics and conveniently, more GSF. I returned to playing the latter on my Assassin tank, and I felt that I actually did incredibly well for once... I ended up being at the top of scoreboard in that match somehow, with most kills and the highest hit percentage. Sadly, we still lost by quite a margin, but at least I had fun. This also completed the character's first ever GSF weekly, which finished her Conquest three times over, so I knew that I'd want to do the remaining GSF matches for the week on another alt.

For the heroics I decided to return to Corellia, but this time on my Shadow tank to avoid having to kill too many mobs. However, this did not work as well as expected, as I'd forgotten that two of the three heroics I chose were full of mobs with super stealth detection, meaning that going into stealth didn't just not make me inconspicuous, but rather the opposite, sometimes causing mobs to come running from the other side of the room. This was quite amusing but fortunately didn't cause me to lose too much time (to some degree I could still get away with stealthing if I was fast enough running past the mobs with the detection skill).

Day 2:

This was kind of the ultimate test for my interest in Seasons as it was the day after the release of WoW's Burning Crusade Classic, which I was very excited about and therefore distracted by. I actually logged on extremely late at night to check out my objectives, re-rolled insectoid killing once again, but then decided that I couldn't be bothered anyway. However, in the end the FOMO won out and I logged back in the next morning to quickly get my objectives in before the reset after all.

One was to play a warzone, which I did on my lowbie Merc, and once again got into an arena. Now, this one definitely felt depressingly unbalanced in terms of levels - my team all in the thirties and the opposition between 65 and 74 except for one guy. I didn't expect us to stand a chance and we didn't, though I was surprised that I did manage to stay alive at least for a little while.

The re-rolled objective was to kill 75 mobs on a core world and I was unhappy to see from my spreadsheet that only a single one of my characters had any story quests there, and it was my little squid Sorc whom I'd specifically made to PvP and on whom I didn't care about doing the story anyway. Still, I logged into her anyway and flew to Balmorra. For a change of pace I also picked up all the other quests in Sobrik and then just went on a rampage in the nearby area. It was actually interesting to see those side quests again as it had been so long that I'd done some of them that they actually felt vaguely fresh again. I also "found" a datacron containing a green matrix shard and that required two people to unlock, again something I'd completely forgotten about... there was another person there clearly interested in getting it so I helped them out.

Day 3:

Once again I logged on extremely late at night and was therefore glad to see that neither of my daily objectives were group content, as PvP or GSF pops would likely have been non-existent at that time of night. Instead I was asked to do three core world heroics and kill insectoids on Balmorra... which I decided not to to re-roll for once, as the previous day's adventures had reminded me that this was actually quite a viable combo in more than one way, even if I was sick and tired of the Republic heroics featuring Colicoids.

So I logged my Sniper instead and picked up three heroics on Balmorra, two of which I was sure contained Colicoids, the third one I wasn't sure about (and it didn't). Still, after doing those three, I was most of the way towards being finished with the insectoid objective as well, so I just went to Bug Town and AoE-d down a couple of pulls of weak mobs there to finish off.

Day 4:

This time I logged in earlier in the evening and was presented with more generic core world killing and being asked to do a warzone. I played the latter on my Merc again and got into a Quesh Huttball. It was another loss, but I couldn't blame that one on levels; my team was sadly just a lot less co-ordinated than the enemy. Also, in a classic display, the one guy on my team who I could tell was really trying and of whom I thought positively early on in the match, then went on to be abusive in chat and AFK-ed out at the end. Because of course.

For the mob killing I returned to my little Sorc to do some more questing on Balmorra, even though she was long done with her Conquest, but I had no other characters that had anything useful to do on any of the highlighted planets. So I guess a lesson I learned about myself there was that while I generally like to spread out my activity to reach my Conquest target on as many characters as possible, when it comes to Seasons I'll prioritise making actual character progress over spreading out those Conquest points at all costs.

Day 5:

After three days of counting mob kills I was relieved to be presented with Black Hole dailies and a GSF match as my objectives for a change. The GSF match was one of those in which I played pretty abysmally, but everyone else somehow managed to be even worse, so it was no surprise that we lost.

For the Black Hole I decided to go on my Gunslinger, after having done the dailies on Imperial side every time they came up as an objective so far. I generally prefer to go Imp side for these things since our Imperial alt guild sometimes needs a bit of a push to reach the large Conquest yield, but for some reason I find the Imperial side of the Black Hole a bit irritating. I can't quite put my finger on it as I don't think it takes longer exactly, but it just doesn't seem to flow very well. Maybe it's just because I got so much more practice on Republic side back in the day when this zone first came out. On Imp side it always feels like I spend entirely too much time running back and forth to find a few more droids to kill.

Day 6:

My favourite combo of GSF and a warzone at last, woohoo! This GSF match went quite a bit better, and at the start it even looked like it might end up being an easy win, but somehow the enemy managed to turn things around and we ended up losing after all. It was pretty close though, and a good match overall.

The warzone I did on my healing Sage ended up being an Ancient Hypergates. That was another good match, despite of us losing - we were only four points behind, which is an absolutely minuscule difference in that game mode.

As it was Sunday and I had yet to even start on my flashpoint weekly objective, I also decided to run two flashpoints. First I did Depths of Manaan on my Powertech tank. The queue pop showed another tank and I hesitated for a moment as I tend to avoid double tank or double healer team-ups in veteran mode, but I decided to risk it. In the end it went fine, though the other tank was a bit odd. They were unusually chatty by flashpoint standards and seemed friendly enough, but they also bragged about their dps, seemed to pay little attention to any of our damage dealers lagging behind, and felt the need to quiz one of them about why their gear was so bad (not that this person responded).

On my second run I queued for Assault on Tython on my Shadow tank, again because she was on that step in the Shadow of Revan prelude (that had been my reason for choosing the Powertech as well). Funnily enough I ended up in a group with a guildie who was also trying to get his weekly done. I stealthily positioned myself to pull the first group but was instantly reminded that Tython is another one of those flashpoints where people will run all around the houses to skip as much trash as possible. I rolled my eyes a little but decided to let the "lead skipper" take point from then on and it all went very quickly and smoothly.

Day 7:

My last daily objectives for the week were to kill 75 mobs again and to play a warzone. I tried to re-roll the mob killing in hopes of getting a GSF match to synergise with my weekly but got bug killing on Alderaan instead.

I decided to finish my weeklies first and played one last GSF match, which we actually won decisively! First victory I had all week. Then I did Depths of Manaan with my Juggernaut tank and it was quite smooth. I liked that we had this one dps who pulled a couple of times but then actually apologised for it.

With just the dailies left, I joined a warzone on my Shadow, but it was a Hypergate that was less than a minute from ending, and my team was behind. Unsurprisingly, I didn't manage to pull off some miracle move to make us win after all, but at least it was quick completion credit. For the bugs, I couldn't be bothered to try and figure out some interesting activity that would maybe coincide with bug killing anymore, so I just grabbed my dps Sorc and did a round randomly AoE-ing down Killiks just outside the Imperial spaceport.

Week 6 thoughts:

Well, I kind of surprised myself with my persistence in this one, since this would have been the perfect time to end my perfect streak of doing all the objectives, but even in the throes of Burning Crusade hype I found the time to log on at least briefly every day and knock out my dailies. I'm just too much of a sucker for a routine I guess.

Having done the flashpoint weekly two weeks in a row now, I think I'll likely avoid it going forward as it just takes too long compared to anything else and has no synergy with any of the dailies. Like I said last week, it would be nice if there was a daily objective for flashpoints of some sort, but since there isn't it sadly doesn't line up with anything else.

Otherwise this week was kind of dominated by mob killing dailies, giving me a chance to grow tired of those. I'm generally somewhat ambivalent about this sort of objective, because on the one hand it gives you options and you can tie it into some other activity, such as doing story missions or heroics on that planet, but on the other hand it can be seen as a cue to just mindlessly AoE everything in sight for quick completion, which is not the sort of thing I'm fond of.

Shintar's Galactic Seasons Diary, Week 1

As I predicted when the Seasons system was first announced, while I dislike the concept of being incentivised to repeat old content yet again, that doesn't necessarily prevent me from engaging with it and being somewhat entertained anyway. As such, I thought it would be interesting to keep a diary of my first week of completing my personal objectives to document my experiences with the whole thing.

Day 1:

When I inspected the new Galactic Seasons objectives lumped in with my Conquest, I was initially confused why they were marked as "pee zero". Only later did it dawn on me that it's probably meant to be PO and short for "personal objective".

My weeklies were the one to do three veteran flashpoints from a short list and three warzones. The warzones were easy enough for me to do and I decided to jump into a few matches on a lowbie mercenary. I only found out on the day of the patch that 6.3 also included the merging of the lowbie and midbie brackets, meaning that now all players from level 10 to 74 are lumped into matches together. I can't say I was happy to see that change, but the matchmaker was with me and I was lucky that evening, so that my team absolutely stomped the opposition in all three matches that I played. Also, the two missing Huttball maps are back, yay! I got into Quesh once.

A group of guildies was doing a quick Scum and Villainy story mode run since that was a weekly objective for many as well. I was asked if I wanted to join but declined since I didn't have that one. Instead I posted in the Discord channel dedicated to chatter about Seasons objectives, which one of the other officers had set up with some foresight, and asked if anyone was interested in joining me for the flashpoints later. There were a couple of offers of assistance, though I found out shortly afterwards that apparently the flashpoint objective is currently bugged. Good thing I learned that before actively spending time on trying to complete it. I used the option to re-roll my second weekly and now got Scum too.

My daily objectives were to kill mobs on Alderaan or Balmorra as well as do three heroics there, which seemed nicely synergistic. I took my DvL Shadow to Balmorra since she also still had her class quest unfinished there, so I progressed it a bit and did the three heroics in the Colicoid area. I've never seen that place so thoroughly cleared out before, I actually had to fight people for spawns.

Completing all this allowed me to claim my first reward in the form of the new Kubaz companion, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that he had a short Alliance alert associated with him. For some reason I'd expected him to just be a clicky to unlock like the companions you can get from the Nightlife event.

Day 2:

We had previously assumed that you could re-roll weekly objectives more than once, but this turned out to be not the case, so I was "stuck" with operations for good or ill. Fortunately around lunch time another guildie with the same weekly decided to set up a Scum pug run (not many guildies were online). It was... an adventure, as pugs so often are, but we still completed the operation within the hour so it wasn't too bad.

I tackled the daily objectives in the evening and sadly they were less synergistic this time - but I wanted to at least give them a try once before re-rolling. One was to complete a GSF match, which was fine to me, though I got into a completely unbalanced death match on the losing side. It was over very quickly and I was the top performer on my team by having managed to earn one medal... everyone else finished on zero. Based on the general chatter about GSF, we seem to once again be back to the problem of Bioware adding extra incentives for participating to keep the queues popping, but this just ends up filling up the matches with people who hate Starfighter and may even intentionally decide to do nothing or even sabotage their own team by suiciding. I'm not sure what the solution to that is.

My other daily was to kill insectoids on Alderaan or Balmorra - and was already partially completed as it seemed to remember that I had killed a lot of bugs during my rampage the day before. So I went and did the Colicoid heroics again, this time on a different character - I could see now why the area had been so busy the day before, though it was a bit better that night. Still, killing 75 bugs specifically still felt like it took really long. I concluded that if I was going to do that one again I needed to find a better area to farm them in, with more weak mobs in it that are quick to kill.

Day 3:

One of my daily objectives was to kill enemies on "coreward worlds", specified as Alderaan, Balmorra, Corellia, Mek-Sha or Onderon. Something from the previous day must have carried over again because I was immediately on 63/75, significantly reducing the amount of killing required. Still, I couldn't quite decide on which planet to go to, so instead opted to go for my other objective first, which required me to do Black Hole dailies. Conveniently, this actually ended up also completing the other objective, as (somewhat to my surprise) the Black Hole did count as Corellia for the purposes of this particular counter, which is not something I expected. (I mean, yes, it's technically correct, but you never know with these planetary sub-zones.)

Day 4:

Got the same heroic objective as on day one, but this time combined with having to kill 75 insectoids on Alderaan in specific, so I went and did the three Killik heroics there. This time nothing had carried over and I had to kill the full 75 mobs to get credit, which felt quite tiresome, especially considering that the larvae didn't count. Not a fan of this whole insect theme so far.

Day 5:

I was not pleased to find myself saddled with the exact same daily objectives yet again, being asked to kill even more bugs. Deciding that nothing could be worse than dealing with more insectoids, I used a re-roll on that one and it changed to at least require only the killing of normal enemies. In order to not have to deal with Balmorra or Alderaan again, I opted to do three heroics on Corellia this time.

This was pretty relaxing, until I checked my progress about halfway through the third heroic and noticed that the counter was still on 0/3 - and that while the objective description listed several planets, the objective name actually specified Alderaan. I sighed to myself a little, finished off the last heroic on my Guardian tank, and since that had also completed her Conquest I relogged on my Gunslinger to go to Alderaan after all. At least the mob farming was done, so I could choose three heroics that were quick to do and required minimal killing.

When I completed the last one of these, I still didn't see a pop-up for the daily objective, so I checked my list, worried that I had messed up yet again, but it showed as completed. Now I'm not sure whether I just managed to miss the completion notification message or whether the three Corellia heroics had counted after all (which I definitely would have missed) and it was just the progression counter that was bugged. So confused.

Day 6:

When I saw that my daily objectives were to kill insectoids on Alderaan and to kill insectoids on Balmorra, I screamed. I immediately re-rolled the Balmorra one and got a generic "kill mobs on core worlds" instead, which I figured would at least synergise. Though I was then told by a guildie that the two bug objectives are currently also bugged in a weird way and if you have both they will complete at the same time if you just do one planet... or something. Who knows.

Since heroics weren't part of my requirements this time around, I decided to do some GSI dailies on Alderaan, since I remembered a couple of them taking place in areas full of non-elite Killiks. Unfortunately I'd forgotten just how much driving around they require. My daily objectives were actually long done before I finished the quests, especially the one to search for Big Red. The big thranta was unlocatable in two separate instances (yes, I checked all five spots in each), and I only found it in the fifth spot in the third instance I checked. Cannot recommend this particular experience.

Day 7:

This time my daily objectives consisted of GSF (yay) and yet more bug killing, which I immediately attempted to nope out of with a re-roll, and got lucky enough to get more Black Hole dailies instead. While these are hardly my favourite thing ever, they beat having to kill bugs for the fourth time.

For the GSF match I chose a random alt that had never even done a single match, so I probably ended up spending more time on purchasing and sorting out ships and components than on actually playing, but oh well. My team lost once again, but at least it was a fair and reasonably fun match. Basically we were all equally terrible, so that the match timer ran out with both teams only on twenty-something kills each, but at least it was close.

Impressions so far:

At the moment, Galactic Seasons features too many bugs of both kinds. I get that new releases are always a big buggy at the start, but when a system is all about offering rewards for completing content within a limited time window, being unable to do so because of bugs is extra annoying (even if the Seasons system has a considerable buffer for potential inactivity built in).

Also, it seems to me that the weeklies are skewed more towards group content while the dailies are more targeted towards the solo player, which would be fine if you could get by doing just one type, but you absolutely do need to do at least some of both to earn all the rewards in time. Given the nature of my play style, I was happy with my weeklies but the dailies to kill x mobs on a specific planet got old quite quickly and I barely seemed to get anything else, even when I used the re-roll option.

Funnily enough, when I went to the forums to check how other people felt about this, the first thread I found had the title "Galactic Seasons - Daily Priority Objectives - More Options Please!", so I thought hey, other people agree with me and think the same! Then I actually read it and the first few pages were mostly people complaining that one out of the eight listed potential daily objectives being "do a warzone" (wish I'd got that one!) was "forcing" them into PvP... good reminder of why the forums should never be approached with too high expectations.

Either way, I'm not hopeful that Bioware will make any major adjustments to things like the objective mix at this point beyond fixing obvious bugs. We'll see how long I can put up with the bug grind. At least next week should send me to different planets.

War on Balmorra and Living the Nightlife

After completing her tour of Alderaan, it was time for Pacis the pacifist Jedi to move on to Balmorra. Funnily enough, that planet was the complete opposite of Alderaan in terms of expectations vs. reality: On peaceful Alderaan everyone kept asking me to kill people, and on war-torn Balmorra... there was a lot of talk about killing people, but the actual quest objectives were often surprisingly non-violent. I found it strangely funny when I accepted my first couple of missions that were seemingly all about helping to fight Imps, and then the actual objectives were just to destroy some cannons/collect some supplies. On hand-in the quest givers talked about how well I'd supposedly beaten up lots of Imperial soldiers, while I was just quietly amused in the knowledge that I had done no such thing.

There were three easy heroics too, one to recover crashed probe droids, another to sabotage some Imperial bombers, and somewhat to my surprise I was reminded that while my old friend Larindaz really likes the taste of Colicoid steak, collecting said steaks is actually only a bonus and the main mission just requires you to click on some consoles, which can be done without fighting anything.

In the comment section of previous posts in this series commenters have urged me to check out some recurring events with Pacis. My initial gut feeling had been to stay away from them (Pirates? Argh! Bounty hunting? No thanks!) but on reflection I realised that they were right and that there were some events that would undoubtedly offer employment opportunities for a pacifist. The currently running nightlife event was an obvious candidate, being all about slot machines - whatever else you may think of them, they're not violent.

I knew there were two introductory quests that granted free chips, but was pleased to find that Bioware added a few more dailies this year. The one to advertise for certain companies is delightfully ridiculous - handing out fliers makes sense, but promoting heavy metals by dancing and security services by singing? Yeah, right...

The one where you sort of play bouncer and ask difficult guests to leave was kind of hilarious, because being a pacifist I was patently the worst bouncer ever: if anyone refused to leave and got hostile I always ran away! Fortunately there are enough customers who are willing to leave peacefully to not make it too hard to actually complete the quest without fighting.

I haven't completed the one with the counterfeit chips because the conversation choice I made resulted in combat, forcing me to back out, and I haven't re-tried to see if you can complete it without fighting if you accept to be bribed or whatever. Also, I think I read somewhere that it's currently bugged? Something to check back on later I guess. Either way it's a good event to easily get the "Mission complete: Nar Shaddaa" Conquest objective every day and it's on for another month.

Pirate Incursion Conquest

After I expressed some concerns about the idea of Conquest points being awarded based on a percentage of regular XP in my last post, I actually felt vaguely vindicated when this change went live on Tuesday and literally crashed the servers - it was causing them to lag so badly that this particular part of the patch had to be reverted during an emergency maintenance to make the game playable again. It vaguely reminded me of the time when the automated group finder for operations was meant to be changed to 16-man. Whatever happened to that anyway?

But I digress. According to those who were actually able to play a little during the big lag fest, Conquest points for straight-up XP were ridiculously overpowered. If I understood it correctly, some of my guildies were doing an operation at the time and everyone in the group basically hit their personal target just from killing trash. While the change has been reverted for now, Eric said on the forums that they're still planning to bring it back eventually - but I hope that if they do, they'll at least consider tweaking the numbers a bit, because as I said in my last post, I don't really want Conquest to become another bar that you just fill mindlessly and automatically.

Anyway, the patch also gave us Dantooine and I have thoughts on it, but I want to spend some more time playing there before I actually write anything down. (I've had a limited amount of time to play over the last couple of days.) In the meantime I'd simply like to express some love for the Conquest event that this new planet is tied to, "Pirate Incursion", because this event feels like it was designed specifically to address some issues with the current Conquest meta.

First off, there's the fact that it features seven planets instead of the usual three (nine if you count Balmorra and Taris twice for being split into separate Republic and Imperial versions). Actually winning first place on any planet still remains a challenge largely due to the fact that no more than three or four guilds on the whole server can do so in an average week. That's why I love Total Galactic War so much, and I'm sure I'm not the only one: With more than twenty planets up for grabs at once, it's a whole different (and much more inclusive) game.

Pirate Incursion isn't quite Total Galactic War, but more than doubling the available number of planets is still a big deal, and since this is going to be a recurring event along the lines of Relics of the Gree and the Rakghoul Resurgence, it should happen reasonably often as well, giving a whole number of guilds additional opportunities to call themselves Conquerors for once.

The planets featured in the event seem to have been chosen with care as well. Dantooine was a given of course, but Taris as the other large option was clearly not a coincidence either: out of the previously existing seven large planets, it was the only one that had only been available during a single event (apart from Total Galactic War), and a not particularly frequent one at that (Flashpoint Havoc).

A similar pattern can be seen among the medium and small yield additions. Like Taris, Balmorra had previously only been available during Flashpoint Havoc, and Ossus had only been a target during the Rakghoul Resurgence on Alderaan. Likewise, the Black Hole had only been available to be conquered during the Rakghoul Resurgence on Corellia, and Ziost could only be invaded during the Balance of Power Conquest. The choice of Rishi is the only one that isn't entirely obvious to me, as it was already featured in three other Conquests outside of Total Galactic War, but who knows - Bioware's internal metrics might well have shown more players still missing the Conqueror of Rishi title than the ones for other planets.

The objectives are also noteworthy because at last we have planetary objectives for Balmorra and Taris! Until now they were the only two planets that didn't have any Conquest objectives associated with them to kill mobs or do quests (aside from Quesh, but there's little to do on Quesh). This was noticeable to me as I like to kill two birds with one stone whenever possible and would sometimes use rampage or daily objectives as inspiration for which alt to play in a given week - e.g. if Alderaan Rampage was an objective during an event, I would choose to play a character who's currently doing her class mission on Alderaan. So it was very noticeable to me that Taris and Balmorra were effectively dead ends with that approach because they never featured - until now that is.

Finally, this event is just crazy generous in general. Just doing the Dantooine weekly on any character is enough to hit your personal target and then some, because for some reason all the daily quests on Dantooine grant more than three times as many Conquest points as you would usually get for different dailies during other Conquest events.

So thanks for paying attention and showing some love to your planetary conquerors, Bioware!