Last weekend was another one of those rare occasions when I got to join the New Outriders on Star Forge for some social fun. We killed world bosses, did some dynamic encounters together and generally had a good laugh. However, the most memorable part of the evening (for me at least) was the final activity of the day, which Intisar had advertised as "breaking reality".
To facilitate this, the attendees were whisked away to Ord Mantell, where we assembled at the southern end of Fort Garnik and were instructed to look west. "What do you see?" Int asked, and after various to-be-expected smartarse responses, we were told that the thing to look at was the mountain. We were going to climb the volcano.
Climbing walls you're not meant to climb, in order to discover terrain that players are not normally meant to see, is a time-honoured tradition in many MMOs, SWTOR included, and you can find plenty of YouTube videos out there of players breaking out of the map-imposed boundaries. I think developers are usually not very fond of this, as it can lead to all kinds of exploits, but on its most basic level, players being curious about what's beyond the visible horizon is understandable and not a bad thing.
I've never really been into that particular type of exploration as I'm no good at jumping and climbing walls, but the nice thing about undertaking something like that as a group is that people can help each other out with pulls and summons, so it didn't take us too long to get close to the visible top of the mountain.
We could tell that we were getting into an area we weren't really meant to be in when "reality broke" as Int had promised, which is to say our view of the terrain started to become glitchy, and depending on the direction in which you faced your camera, you either saw the mountain in its normal form, or an alternate reality where it was somewhat smaller, everything was orange, and player characters and mounts started to disappear. This was very disorienting and it became a lot harder to make progress, but someone managed to make it all the way to the lip of the volcano regardless and summoned the rest of us to their position.
Looking into the big... vent/caldera (?) the view was slightly strange, presenting a smooth, mirrored surface that looked almost like some sort of lake. After a bit of dancing and taking screenshots, we decided to finish the evening by hurling ourselves into the volcano.
Surprisingly, not everyone died immediately - instead, we actually found ourselves on some rocks above the separatist base built into the volcano, where troopers and smugglers deal with the final stages of their story missions on Ord Mantell. It was interesting to see that the base could actually be accessed that way, even if it clearly wasn't meant to be and wasn't visible from the top.
Another summon from someone who'd landed in a good spot gave everyone an additional screenshot opportunity with better views and allowed for another round of communal dancing. Then we hurled ourselves to our deaths for good and said our goodbyes.
It was a silly little adventure that didn't achieve anything in terms of in-game progression but provided a great sense of joy and wonder for me personally. I always admire the creative ideas that Intisar & Co. come up with for these social events.
Aside from a new story update, patch 7.8 also gave us a new zone that is very unlike SWTOR's typical content updates. The crash site on Dantooine was explicitly designed around being filled with dynamic encounters, with everything being centred around them.
It consists of three sub-zones or biomes, and each one has one of three states or levels. Doing dynamic encounters in the area levels them up, and once all three biomes have hit level three, an instance with a special nightmare-difficulty boss designed for a group of four unlocks for a limited time.
There's no time limit on the level progression itself, so biomes don't regress in levels if there aren't enough people around (unless the planetary instance shuts down entirely). Worst case there just isn't any advancement for a while. Unlike normal dynamic encounters, the ones on Dantooine aren't on a timer, so they just sit there forever until someone comes along and actually completes them. Progress for all encounters applies to everyone taking part, and once it's completed, it goes away and another encounter spawns somewhere else.
It honestly sounds a bit like something out of another MMO, and I've seen people who've played Guild Wars 2 compare it to some of the zones in that game, namely Verdant Brink and Silver Wastes. Having never played GW2, I have no idea how accurate that comparison is, but it does seem very clear that the zone is very "un-SWTOR-like".
My own first impression was quite positive, even if the experience was very chaotic. I did have to roll my eyes a bit when literally the very first encounter I attempted to do turned out to be bugged on launch, followed by another bug preventing me from progressing the introductory quest line. However, I eventually managed to resolve the latter with a workaround and quickly found myself getting swept along by the crowd. I didn't even care that much about achieving anything specific, I just followed the masses around and tried to click or attack things wherever we went in an attempt to get credit for whatever it was we were currently doing. So that was fun.
However, I also heard quite a bit of less positive feedback from other players. All three biomes are very hostile, with various environmental debuffs slowing and damaging you, with the idea being that progression through the reputation track will unlock various counters to that which will make things less painful. Most of the time it's impossible to mount up, and even as a healer I found myself dying quite a bit.
Now, I wasn't terribly deterred by that, but I can definitely see how others might be. The comparison that came to mind for me personally was The Maw from WoW's Shadowlands expansion, which I thought was a fine enough endgame zone at the time but which seemed to be almost universally disliked.
Population is another concern, and I saw someone from Shae Vizla comment that for them, the crash site zone was effectively dead on arrival since there aren't enough endgame players on that server to make it viable. While it's very much possible to progress the zone at a slower pace, many enemies are very tough and have huge amounts of health, to the point that I'm pretty sure that quite a few encounters are not actually soloable. Even as someone who's a big proponent of group content, I find that a bit concerning, and I hope that the devs will at least review the tuning of some of these encounters.
There's one in the glacial area for example that has multiple stages, and on the final stage you're supposed to defeat six champion mobs, three of which have a knockback while the other three have a long stun. Mr Commando and I attempted to duo this as tank and healer and were killed pretty quickly, as we were both simply stunlocked and whacked to death with no means of defending ourselves. We did eventually complete the encounter after a few more people joined in, as with the mobs taking turns attacking and killing different people, we could eventually zerg them down, but it was hardly what I'd call an optimal experience.
At the same time I really want to love the new zone because I really appreciate that the devs are trying something different with it. I guess one downside of trying to keep all content relevant forever is that adding more of the same type of content, be it daily areas or flashpoints, hits diminishing returns after a while. Adding a completely new type of endgame on the other hand has a chance of engaging people in new and exciting ways.
From my point of view, the zone is very beautiful and following other people around to dispatch enemies together can be very zen. The area is also very explorable, as it's been out for a week and even the content creators that constantly gather data and are trying to write guides are still in the process of figuring some things out. A lot of rewards simply drop from killing different mobs, so as long as you keep running along and hitting things, you're bound to be rewarded in some way.
I haven't attempted the four-man boss yet as it's supposed to be super hard and we haven't got a guild group together yet to attempt it in earnest. Having this boss be the "reward" for levelling up all the zones has also been somewhat contentious, as it's odd to let more casual players progress through the entire zone just to suddenly have them hit a wall at the end of the quest line. While Eric Musco has stated that unlocking enough of the reputation buffs should make the boss accessible to all eventually - as they are supposed to massively lower the difficulty - I don't think that's very well communicated in game right now.
Looking at it from the perspective of NiM raiders on the other hand, it's probably a bit odd to be reliant on "the masses" to level up all the biomes just so you can access the boss and work on your progression. I personally don't think it's a huge deal as I'm very much in favour of different types of players working together synergistically, but we'll see what the community reception is like in the long run.
Either way I applaud the dev team for trying something different with this zone, and I at least am absolutely planning to spend a lot of time there over the next few months.
Last year, I mentioned that the "Best View in SWTOR" contest, first held in 2021 for the game's tenth anniversary, made an unexpected return. I was even more surprised when I saw the announcement yesterday that it was coming back for a third round this year. If the SWTOR team wants to make a habit out of this, they'll have to give us a lot of new planets this year or else start repeating some of them on the featured planet list next year.
Anyway, I immediately felt inspired and spent some time traipsing around the galaxy and taking screenshots - none of which I'm going to show here yet of course. Instead, I'll share my submissions from last year. Back in 2021, I only submitted shots for three out of ten possible planets, but last year I actually entered nine out of ten possible screenshots, with Odessen being the one planet I left out since I just couldn't find an angle I was happy with there. Anyway, these were my submissions - you can compare them to the actual winners here.
Coruscant will always have a special place in my heart, and the quintessential experience of the Republic home world is stepping out of the spaceport into that perpetual dusk while the music swells and sky cars roar past overhead. There was no question that this was going to be the focus of my screenshot, and it was for the winner as well, but they basically faced the other way. It's a worthy shot, but I'll admit I still prefer my own submission in this case.
The winning shot of Quesh shows grass, water, trees and part of a Hutt Palace, and it's interesting to me that I took some similarly-themed shots during my own exploration of Quesh, but ultimately I opted for submitting the refineries blowing smoke into the sky, since to me, the toxic air is what defines Quesh more than anything else.
I had a hunch that this one wasn't going to be winning shot material, since I noticed that while NPCs are technically allowed to be featured in your submission, no winner has ever included one in the foreground. However, to me it was perfect since swamp and rakghouls are what defines Taris above all else. The winning shot was of the wreck of the Endar Spire instead (I think?) which is of course a KOTOR reference but never meant much to me personally.
There's something to be said for the stark beauty of driven snow, but while taking shots of Hoth I struggled with how empty it always looked, which is why I opted to include these tauntauns in my submission. Same problem as with the rakghoul I guess... though I also notice now that perhaps I've been using the full width of the screen too much, seeing how the winning submissions get cropped down to 4:3 for the in-game decorations. Half of that tauntaun wouldn't even be in the shot then.
Alderaan is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful planets in the game, but I find that this beauty can be a bit challenging to capture accurately in screenshots, so I was quite pleased with myself for managing to take this wide shot of the Glarus Valley. The winning shot ended up being one of Castle Panteer however, which I guess was kind of the more obvious choice. I had taken pictures of it myself as well, but opted against submitting them.
Dromund Kaas is an interesting mix of rain-swept jungles contrasted against the stark, futuristic spires of Kaas City, and I simply decided to submit this rather old screenshot I took of the city since I really liked it. The winner shows both the jungle and parts of the city in the background, which I really can't fault.
With Manaan there was the question of whether to screenshot the new invasion zone or the serenity of the old entrance area. For me it was an obvious choice since I really don't like the visuals of the invasion zone all that much. This particular shot was actually taken inside the Depths of Manaan flashpoint. The contest winner was from the new area though.
Iokath was a challenging place to frame, since it's incredibly cluttered visually, in a way that I honestly find kind of ugly. I eventually found this view at the edge of the expanse, which looked much cleaner and more serene, with just the Eternal Fleet ships taking to the sky in the background. I will admit that this isn't very "typically" Iokath though. The winner managed to take a much better shot of just outside the Republic (?) base that manages to be visually busy but still look good.
Rishi was a tough one because I couldn't decide whether the Rishi Maze or Raider's Cove were more iconic for the planet. I eventually opted for the former, with a grophet in the foreground because I love grophets, OK? I was quite surprised that the chosen winner actually included neither.
Anyway, I'm off to take more pictures of this year's featured planets! If you want to take part, you can find all the details here, and you have until the 29th of September to make your submission(s).
My feelings on Ruhnuk have indeed become more nuanced since then... though I'll say right away that I'm still not a fan of doing the dailies.
The Planetary Story
I realised that in my original posts about Ruhnuk, I never said much about the optional planetary storyline that unlocks after the main story, which seems like quite a big thing to leave out, especially considering that it's actually quite good. After the endless alien gibberish on Manaan, I definitely appreciated all the characters speaking Basic this time around, and it was just an enjoyable storyline in general (with one "bug"/flaw I ran into early on, where Lane chastises you for supposedly making a certain choice at a point where you're not actually given any choices). I especially liked how when you find the little Basilisk droid at the end, it's implied that it could join you as a companion or pet later on... we'll see whether Bioware ever follows up on that.
Relic Hunts
There's also this other "side quest" to unlock three minor buffs to help you with your questing. I have mixed feelings about this one. As an optional side mission, by itself, it works okay, even if the last part goes on a bit and features several bait-and-switch scenarios where it seems like you should be done after the next step but then yet another obstacle appears. However, in terms of how helpful these buffs actually are for everyday play, I'm not entirely convinced.
I liked the way this was done on Manaan, where you organically earned three temporary abilities as part of the optional storyline, and they were really useful ones as well, such as stealth for non-stealth characters or a reflective shield. With the Ruhnuk Relic Hunts, the abilities are both less powerful and require waaay more running around to acquire, to the point where if you don't strictly focus on completing the long mission chain as a priority, you might well max out your planetary reputation before you've actually earned the tools that were supposed to help you with making questing easier. That felt a bit misjudged to me in terms of effort vs. reward.
Datacron & World Boss(es)
First off, I generally really appreciate that Bioware took the time to add these things to Ruhnuk to make the planet feel more "worldly" and to ensure that there are some things to do beyond just doing dailies. I didn't actually bother with getting the datacron until today, but I liked that it felt interesting to get without being too challenging. I've kind of had enough of the fiendishly hard jumping puzzles to be honest...
The summonable wraid boss is a nice idea but somewhat hampered by not having any purpose beyond a one-time achievement and the fact that one of the drops required to summon him seems to have a stupidly low drop rate. The "regular" world boss, Kithrawl, was kind of disappointing to me in that his mechanics are extremely basic yet he has a ridiculous number of hitpoints, meaning that he's both quite boring to fight but also takes a long time to die unless you bring an absolutely massive group - not the best combination in my opinion.
Navigation & Obstacles
All that said, the main reason that I still don't like Ruhnuk all that much remains that it's just a chore to get anywhere. After six months and visiting the place on several alts, I kinda know my way around by now, but it remains easy to get lost by taking a wrong turn inside a tunnel. Still, there are other planets that are hard to navigate, and that alone hasn't been a reason for me to dislike them, so what's the problem?
I realised that what makes Ruhnuk such a pain to traverse is that a lot of the map consists of narrow ravines and tunnels stuffed with mobs, which means that assuming you don't have stealth, getting anywhere requires fighting every single step of the way (which makes it feel all the more punishing if you accidentally end up taking a wrong turn and then have to backtrack). I didn't like the endless tunnels of skytroopers in the KotFE chapters, and there's definitely a bit of that vibe here.
Even worse though, for some reason there are way too many silver and gold mobs sprinkled throughout the area, which makes everything take even longer. More specifically, the areas for the heroic missions are not clearly delineated but instead kind of "bleed into" the regular questing areas, which means that you might just be following an arrow towards a story quest objective when you turn a corner and suddenly find yourself in combat with a large group of golds and silvers.
I had one particularly memorable encounter of this kind which was exacerbated even more by the fact that two groups of mobs appeared to be linked in some way that didn't make sense, so I'd not just get one group, but another heroic-level group of mobs would instantly come sprinting around the corner the moment I pulled, which caused me to get overwhelmed and defeated in the same spot about three times before I could proceed to my quest objective. I like heroics as optional, more challenging content, but the way Ruhnuk has these unavoidable heroic-level mob groups blocking your path everywhere is just tedious.
I hope that Bioware will continue adding new areas like this; I'd just prefer them to be more open, to not have so many unavoidable mobs, and for side content to either be more rewarding or less tedious. Ruhnuk's planetary storyline and the datacron both hit a pretty sweet spot in my opinion; there's just too much other stuff that detracts from the experience for me to want to spend much time hanging around.
In an interesting contrast to Satele Shan, my trooper on Tulak Hord did not get removed from the guild she helped create back in Season 2. The one guy who actually remained in it was still active, but didn't seem to mind that I - the only other person in the guild - hadn't been around for a while. I don't remember whether we even talked at all this season, and yet I felt a strange sort of contentment about still sharing a guild with him. Yes, I'm clearly odd in my attitudes towards guilds.
My Commando finished Season 2 at level 67 and with her class story still on Taris. This season, she hit max-level and worked her way up to an average item level of 327, with legendary implants at 330 and 328 respectively. In terms of the PvP season, I only got up to level three.
As mentioned previously, I also made an Imperial alt that took the form of a Sith inquisitor and who got up to level 21, with my overall legacy hitting level 20.
In terms of story, I didn't make much progress on my trooper, only moving on from Taris to Nar Shaddaa, however unlike on the other servers I've opted to go for a more completionist approach on Tulak Hord, which meant actually doing all the things on Taris: fully exploring the map, doing all the exploration missions and getting all the datacrons. Yes, I even found a nice person to help me with the one where you need a second player to press a button for you to get it. While I filled out the map, I also found an unusual egg, something I hadn't even thought about in many years, so of course I took a brief detour to Tatooine to hatch it.
Doing the Taris bonus series was a slightly odd experience since it's been ages since I last did one of these (firstly because of how quick levelling is nowadays, but I also remember that at one point Bioware messed with the minimum level required to do them so that they wouldn't show up until you were sixty or something). At some point the bonus series were also made repeatable, which was another odd decision to me because there isn't really anything about this content in specific that screams, "Let me do this every week please!" I wonder if that wasn't just a roundabout way of dealing with the frequent complaints from players who got stuck on a bonus series due to having done some missions in the wrong order - since the individual quests reset daily now, it's easy enough to get back on track if you mess up. Ah, to have been a fly on the wall when Bioware decided on this...
7.0's new feature of having dailies and weeklies "expire" and clearing them out of your quest log every reset also added an interesting new dimension to the bonus series as the individual missions are now dailies and the overall series counts as a weekly, so better keep an eye on your progression and don't forget to hand anything in or you might have to start all over again. Fortunately that didn't happen to me with the overall chain, but there were individual missions that I had to repeat because something hadn't quite progressed far enough from one day to the next.
I really liked Ruhnuk's general visuals from the first preview we got of 7.2. The story impressed with intricate cinematics. We also knew from the 7.2 preview that the daily area on Ruhnuk would come with its own planetary story arc again, something that I quite liked on Manaan, and this time the NPCs were going to be voiced too instead of everything being alien gibberish (which had been my main criticism of Manaan).
What could possibly go wrong?
A lot, as it turns out.
You see, I'd initially held off on tackling the dailies since Mr Commando didn't have time to play for a few days, and a new daily zone is one of the few pieces of new content that we can still meaningfully play together, so I wanted to "save" my first experience for a shared play session. But boy, did that turn out to be a shitshow.
We started on Saturday at 3pm, with the caveat that Mr Commando would have something else to do for a bit at 4pm. "It's just dailies! This isn't going to take an hour, don't worry," I mocked. 4pm rolled around and we were nowhere near done, so we took a half-hour break while he did his other thing. Then we logged back in and continued... for another two hours. In total it took us no less than three hours to do the new storyline and a single round of the new dailies.
Now, to be fair, what with it being our first time and both of us going in blind, we were always going to be inefficient in ways that can be avoided once you know everything the new quests entail and where they take place. However, the amount of running back and forth we had to do was utterly comical, and it was made significantly worse by the fact that Ruhnuk's geography is terribly confusing to navigate. Mr Commando soon compared it to Iokath, at which point I felt the need to defend the latter, as I actually quite like Iokath nowadays and I don't think it's ever been nearly as confusing as Ruhnuk has been for us.
The problem is that Ruhnuk consists of a large number of little sub-zones, which are mostly either narrow outdoor canyons or indoor tunnels/corridors, none of which are reflected very well on the large planetary map (which the game helpfully shuffled out of the way onto a new keybind in this update as well), meaning it's really hard to get a grip on how they are all connected and which of the half a dozen exits from any given sub-zone is going to lead where.
Anyone who's played the game for any length of time knows that the helpful little map highlights that are supposed to show you where to go for a quest can also get a bit confused when it comes to things like taxi points or elevation changes, which only amplified our issues. (When I looked up some info about the daily area online afterwards, I found out that Vulkk's guide actually included multiple custom-made maps, which are awesome and contain so much additional information that's hard to impossible to discern in game.)
At first we just snarked about all this a little bit, saying things along the lines of how Bioware clearly took the feedback about 7.0 being quite short to heart by making these dailies take forever to complete. By the second hour we descended into hysterical laughter when we found that a quest marker made us fight our way through the same damn tunnel for the fourth time, but by the third hour we were honestly just kind of sick of it and wanted it to be over.
In hindsight I think we probably could have saved some time by making smarter use of quick travel points, but this is where the issue with the maps comes in again since it was impossible to see where on the planet we were supposed to go in order to plan ahead, meaning we couldn't do anything but follow the confused arrows back and forth through the same tunnels and ravines over and over. Other people seemed to be in a similar predicament, based on the number of characters we encountered that would just barrel through with a massive mob train in tow, trying to get from A to B at a decent pace without having to fight a dozen mob pulls... and often those mobs would then end up aggroing on us, forcing us to fight even more and making our own trip take even longer.
Despite of Mr Commando's initial passionate declaration that he was never going to come back to this horrible planet, we did give it another try today to see how we would do with a bit more knowledge of the lay of the land and with just the dailies and no more story missions left to do. This time it "only" took us a little over an hour, which is much more reasonable I'll admit... though still quite long considering we were playing as a duo in nearly best-in-slot gear and with maxed-out companions. I dread to think what kind of slog some of these mob pulls must be as a solo character with lesser gear (and without stealth).
I just don't quite know what to think. In general this patch has been shaping up to be a pretty good one, and I really like a lot of things about Ruhnuk... but I can't deny that in terms of gameplay, this has been the worst first impression I've had of a daily area in years, if not ever. I'd like to think that with time, it might grow on me the way Iokath has, but at the moment it's hard to imagine myself spending much time there beyond one visit per character and to max out the reputation, because endlessly wading back and forth through tunnels of mobs is just not my idea of fun.
A year ago, in the run-up to the game's ten-year anniversary and the Legacy of the Sith expansion, Bioware held the "Best View in SWTOR" contest. It wasn't anything fancy, just a basic screenshot contest inviting players to capture nice views of their virtual environment, but I liked the idea. After all, I like taking screenshots!
In the end I only submitted screenies for three of the ten eligible planets though (the ones used to illustrate this post) - I honestly don't remember why I didn't go for more. I only remember running around Zakuul for a while trying to take a shot that satisfied me but that I was ultimately not happy with any of the results.
I didn't win anything, but I can't really complain about that. In the news post that announced the winners, they stated that they received "thousands" of entries, and their chosen winners were all highly deserving. I still don't know where the winning Yavin IV screenshot was taken, but it looks amazing. (Feel free to enlighten me in the comments.)
I'd already liked the contest last year, but this time around it very much felt like the right thing at the right time for me. The other night I spent a whole evening just travelling to different planets and taking screenshots of the sights - it was quite refreshing to not think about gear or Conquest points for a change. As a result I've already submitted shots for nine out of the ten eligible planets this time around. I'm not sure I'll still come up with something for Odessen... in my opinion there just aren't a lot of good opportunities for nice views outside cut scenes there.
Again I'm not really expecting to win anything... but it just felt like a nice feel-good exercise, you know? I suspect that the devs and artists also enjoy looking at all the pretty screenshots and take satisfaction in knowing that players really look at their work and appreciate it. If you're feeling inspired yourself, you still have until the 12th of October to send in one or more submissions of your own.
... is one of the voice lines of (not particularly popular) consular companion Tharan Cedrax. This post isn't about him though, it's about me. Yes, I've been trying out the pacifist life!
Well, now I had to do it. And thus, Pacis (pronounced "Paa-sis" in my head) the Jedi Shadow was born. It was obvious that a pacifist character had to be a Jedi, but the reason I chose Shadow was that I figured that the ability to go into stealth would come in handy when it came to avoiding combat later on.
The Pirate Incursion event wasn't actually on when I first created Pacis, so since I couldn't travel to Dantooine right away, I vendored my weapon and then walked around Tython a bit to see how far I could get without fighting anything. There were actually a couple of missions that I was able to do, such as the very first consular story quest to gather holocrons, and the side quest to visit the Twi'lek matriarch. Most of my XP had to come from simple exploration though.
Initially I was extremely paranoid about getting aggro on anything, but I soon realised that at least on the starter planet nothing really hurt very much. By the end I was happily charging through tunnels filled with hostiles twice my level and they would barely scratch me before I'd run far enough to get them to evade again.
I ran out of areas to explore by level five, but was still not allowed off the planet. I genuinely can't remember whether the ability to use the shuttle is gated by your class story or your level. The error messaging tied to that could certainly be more informative.
Anyway, I left it at that and waited for the Pirate Incursion event to come around again. Then I used the quick travel option in the activity finder to get to Dantooine and hid in a corner. The next time I logged back in the event was over and Pacis was able to explore in peace, only occasionally getting chased off by an Imperial spy or angry Kath Hound.
I was somewhat dismayed to find that the bonus mission to pet friendly Kath Hounds gives no XP, but of course I'm still doing it because why would anyone not do that one? However, I'm trying not to let the experience turn into a chore, so I'm not fretting about doing my two daily quests every single day. The goal is to slowly level up over time, and once the next Pirate Incursion comes around, to see if - being higher level - I end up being able to explore other planets and can find a few more non-combat quests to do. (The reason I want to wait until the next event is that without a ship of my own I won't be able to return to Dantooine otherwise.) I'll keep you posted about my progress.
Can you believe that this is my 500th post on this blog? I can! I never quite get when people say that they have nothing to post about - if I can write 500 posts about Star Wars: The Old Republic alone, there is always something to say.
Traditionally I like to use these milestones as an excuse to look at the search terms through which people found this blog and see if there's anything funny in there. Here are the links to the previous posts in that vein:
Now, let's dive into what Google Analytics showed me this time:
why you should not be a soldier swtor - I'm guessing this was a German speaker, because troopers are called Soldaten (soldiers) in the German version. Anyway, there is no reason not to be a trooper! They are awesome! (Though I'll concede that their class story isn't the best.)
blakhol jnawa - There are no jawas in the Black Hole. If that is what you were asking about...
darth revan face swtor german - After thinking about it for a bit, I'm guessing this person was looking for the cut scene at the end of Yavin IV in German or something? The idea of people finding something particularly German about Revan's face amuses me though.
dirty-flirty swtor - /blinks in confusion
everyday i'm tanking - I don't know what this person was really looking for, but my first thought was that they were searching for an MMO parody version of LFMAO's Party Rock Anthem. Searching YouTube for "Everyday I'm tanking" just led me to this bizarre clip of part of the music video overlaid with the intro music to Thomas the Tank Engine. If the title isn't that important though and you would just enjoy a parody song about tanking, you might enjoy this song... or this one.
find me the meaning progenitor - Does playing on the Progenitor really need to provide special meaning? If you've ever wondered where the server got its name, click here.
glaciers in lack saperen lowlands - I put this one into Google myself and what do you know, my The Art of Achieving Map Completion post is the first result. What the heck? This is why spelling is important, kids! Best I can tell this was actually meant to be about this area in Wisconsin.
how do i get into the counselor phase next to the cantina in tython in swtor - Time to get out this image again:
To actually answer the question though, if I recall correctly you get to go there at the end of chapter one. Why not just play through the whole story and find out?
i want you to be a sith inquisitor - But I don't wanna!
lurfg - This search term invokes the mental image of someone trying to say "LFG" and then throwing up halfway through because the thought of having to pug makes them sick.
makeb kill it with fire - Aw, come on, Makeb's not that bad! Of course then I remembered that there's this achievement: Kill It With Fire. I haven't got it myself, but I seem to remember that it's either bugged or kind of awkward to get in that the kill won't count if your companion gets the killing blow, the fire doesn't actually cause the killing blow, or something like that.
new different golu decoration - My Sage is intrigued.
sith individualism - Yes. It's definitely a thing.
swtor jedi knight major hardon - I want to believe that this person thought that there's a character called Major Hardon in the Jedi knight story. The alternative is too awful and confusing to contemplate.
swtor whats a gf - While general chat requests like "need more for DP in GF" might give you the wrong idea if you have a dirty mind, it generally stands for "group finder".
tell me the meaning of foot commando. - What is it with people looking for meaning today? Surely feet are useful to have either way?!
warp speed from the earth to the moon in 4 minutes - warp speed - Sorry, wrong franchise. Though I do like Star Trek too.
From the good old "I don't know why Google thought I'm writing about that game" pile:
eq2 keeps crashing to deskop like i wasn't even playing fallout 4 max companion affection ff14 3.02 mwo keeps crashing why?
If I'm being honest though, the most fascinating part of going through the search terms for me aren't even the funny ones anymore, but simply the oddly specific searches some people go for. It actually makes me want to write a couple of guides - not about generic stuff like how to execute the perfect dps rotation (not that I know anything about that anyway), but... well... to answer oddly specific questions like these:
old republic dromund kaas entire map - Dromund Kaas is one planet I didn't mention in my Art to Achieving Map Completion guide, but I bet I still know which bit of the map this person was missing, because it's the same one I always forget about. You know that body of water located between Lord Grathan's Estate and The Unfinished Colossus? The Dromund Kaas world boss spawns in it, which is why it has its own name and needs to be uncovered separately even though it's a very small area.
swtor 4.0 heroic 2+ false history - I know it doesn't say so, but I'm pretty sure what they actually want to know is whether you can still solo this. I remember having to look this up pre-4.0 myself because I was struggling at the time. I just tried it again and it still works fine. I even recorded it, just for you you, anonymous Googler!
all interactions with juda (hutta) swtor - I don't have a list of all interactions with her, but I thought this one was interesting to highlight since you get the option to talk to her a couple of times even when it isn't highlighted by a quest icon, you just have to be curious enough to click on her without prompting. Republic has a similar thing going on with the planetary quest line on Belsavis, where you can spare a Sith Lord from death and work with him for a bit, and you can talk to him afterwards even though it's not required for or even pointed out by the quest.
can the revan quest line be continued without completing the torch flashpoint - Nope! It has a solo mode though, so you can just do it solo any time.
flashpoint kaon under siege solo swtor - I'm afraid they haven't given this one a solo mode yet. It's also not in the group finder as a tactical, but you can always queue for hardmode. Or you can try to solo the normal version at 65 - it hasn't been scaled up, so all the mobs are still level 50.
heroic moment abilities not in legacy since patch 4.0 - Don't worry, they are not gone, but they show up on a temporary quickbar instead whenever you activate your heroic moment.
i can't get out of kuat drive yard - Never fear! The "exit area" button above your mini map shall come to your rescue.
swtor what happend to the side quest? - I'm afraid they didn't make any for KotFE; it makes me sad too. If you are wondering about the old ones, those are (mostly) still there but hidden by default. To see the quest markers, you have to open your map and toggle the "show exploration missions" option in the top right corner.
what is a monsoon baffle - I was really surprised how often this one came up! Google defines a baffle as "a device used to restrain the flow of a fluid, gas, etc." so I guess the monsoon baffles on Rishi are supposed to protect Raider's Cove from the rain. Though I'm guessing what you really wanted to ask was: "Where the hell do I find those things?" Here's a screenshot of what they look like. There's a whole bunch on ground level right under the market near where you land.
which flashpoints have solo mode - So many questions about solo modes! Bioware actually posted the full list back in September last year, but I understand that this can be a bit hard to find nowadays.
My little PvP project took up a lot of playtime over the past month, and as a result other activities such as my alt levelling have been somewhat neglected. Now that I'm taking a break from max-level PvP again, I'm having fun digging up a different alt each evening to seeing how they're doing. More than anything else I've been meaning to post an update on my lone Imperial agent on the Progenitor.
I was really keen to get to Alderaan to get my second companion. Imperial agents have to make do with a single companion for longer than any other class, and on my first agent I absolutely hated Kaliyo. As an Imperial loyalist, an anarchist like Kaliyo couldn't have made for worse company. She hated everything I did and it made no sense whatsoever that I even kept her around. So I could hardly wait to be able to replace her with Vector this time. But then something funny happened: She actually grew on me. Agent Shintar the cathar is no Imperial loyalist - she's selfish, suspicious of others and likes to sass people (which makes her slightly dark side but not overly so). In other words, she's actually a perfect match for Kaliyo! I keep gaining affection with her for everything I say and do and our interactions actually feel fluid and natural. So even as I got Vector and later Doctor Lokin, I've kept her by my side. Funny how these things go.
I had fun finishing off Alderaan by getting the explorer and datacron master achievements for that planet. Explorer also had a really annoying side though, as you need to get very close to House Organa to officially discover it, which meant that I repeatedly got ganked by level sixty guard droids and found myself forced to respawn at the closest Imperial med centre, which was half a planet away of course. I'm hoping that with Coffee's level syncing they will get rid of such huge differences in guard levels (since there will be no need to defend against overpowered gankers anymore), which should make exploring somewhat less punishing.
For datacron master it came in handy that I tend to be overlevelled for the planet I'm questing on, as at level 37 and by using my ability to stealth, I was just about able to sneak through the killik heroic area that's part of the Republic bonus series. Otherwise I would have been forced to come back to that later.
I was really keen to get chapter one done and over with. It's not bad, but it relies somewhat on suspense and deception, which doesn't work as well when you already know what's coming. More importantly, I wanted to get to the big decision at the end of chapter one. The Imperial agent story has a reputation for allowing for more genuinely branching paths than any of the other class stories, so I was curious to see what would happen if I sided with the bad guy this time. Don't worry, I'll keep it vague - no spoilers.
The point is that what happens at the end of the agent's chapter one is supposed to be such a big deal, you would expect there to be a huge difference in the way chapter two starts after that. Needless to say, I was extremely disappointed when the transition to chapter two appeared to be almost completely identical: the same person in charge, giving me the exact same follow-up mission in exactly the same way. Just one brief line on the side about how someone else was the big boss now. Pfft.
I think my disappointment with that played into me wanting to shelve my agent for a while after that. The only silver lining was that I got to execute a certain very annoying Darth. However, after having taken a bit of a break from the character again, I feel much better about the way the story is going, probably also because things pick up quite a bit as chapter two progresses. There are some interesting plot developments there, and I did actually catch a couple more lines that referenced the different chapter one ending and my changed status, which pleased me. The only other disappointment so far was that it seems to have made no difference that I left Watcher X alive on this playthrough, except that I obviously didn't get the conversation option to say: "You're supposed to be dead!" But I'm curious to see what other small (and maybe even bigger) changes are yet to come.
While gallivanting across the galaxy to do things like collect datacrons on alts, I thought I might as well kill two birds with one stone and get some map exploration done at the same time (and get the Galactic Explorer achievement in the process). Surprisingly, this turned out to be more challenging than I expected.
The way SWTOR reveals maps to you as you explore is a bit weird. When you first enter an area, the map is covered in dark hexes that light up as you explore designated sub-zones of the region. However, not every hex is actually connected to a sub-zone. What this means is that you end up with little dark spots all over your map that make you think that there is something left for you to uncover in that place, when actually there isn't. They go away once you've found the last named area in the region, but until then, which one of all the little dark spots actually hides something that you still need to unlock is anyone's guess.
As an example, let's take this screenshot I took while exploring Jundland on Tatooine on my agent the other night. There are a lot of dark spots left, but I was actually only missing one explorable area at this point. Can you guess which one it is? There are some hints you can follow. For example the big triangular splotch just off the centre is out, because the hexes inside it have black lines instead of light blue ones. This is something I only noticed fairly recently, but basically the black lines denote the edges of the explorable map, like a big "nothing to see here" sign. There are also black lines around the outer edge of the area I've already explored, so it's not as if I haven't ranged far enough, even if there are seemingly large chunks of darkness out there.
That leaves a couple of small areas that are still covered by one to five dark hexes. The ones north and south of Outpost Salara look promising because they are the biggest ones, but looking at the map as well as considering what I know of that area, they appear to be the tops of cliffs you can't climb. However, that road coming out of the northern end of Outpost Rennar seems to lead straight into those two hexes north-east of it. Following roads usually works quite well, so I do, and eventually...
Ta-daa! Apparently I had missed a whole Imperial outpost there, but now that I've found it, the whole map reveals itself at once. This is useful if you're trying to uncover everything on a planet but can't remember how much you completed previously - as long as you can still see the hexes, you're not done.
Finally, let me just share with you a couple of planets and sub-zones that gave me particular trouble while trying to explore them myself: maybe this will help someone else who's experiencing the same issues.
Ord Mantell: The Lava Flow Overlook is the one area you'll never get sent anywhere near while levelling up through questing, and it's not immediately obvious how to get there. The "secret" is to jump up the rocks in the south-western corner of Fort Garnik. One of the henchmen during Bounty Contract Week spawns up there as well. Balmorra (both factions): In the Sundari Flatlands, I initially had some trouble to get the western edge of the map to uncover. As it turns out, those bits are actually the heroic area and the attached canyon which you access from the north-eastern corner of Gorinth Canyon, but for some reason they count towards progress for Sundari.
Alderaan: The Juran Mountains is one of those areas where you end up with tons of dark hexes scattered all over the map when it looks like you should've already revealed everything... yet the final sub-zone is actually somewhere completely different. As you enter the area from the south, go up the mountain path on the east, all the way to the top, where all those Rist soldiers hang out. Then, jump down the southern cliff face, where there appears to be a bit of a plateau leading down to King's Pass. It's called the Alaskan Overlook and probably the only thing you're missing. I don't think I ever would've come up with that one myself if it hadn't been for a helpful comment I found somewhere buried on the official forums.
Hoth: In the Glacial Fissure, the area at the very bottom of the map, south of the heroic area, has no obvious entrance. There is however a hidden path through the giant icicles, starting at roughly X: 330, Y: 1160.
Belsavis: In the High Security Section, a couple of dark hexes in the middle of the map drove me nuts. They are right where you go to the Willpower datacron, but they just wouldn't uncover! That's because they don't count as a sub-zone, and I was actually missing another area, in my case the perfectly rectangular bit underneath the southern exit towards Maximum Security. If you're on the road leading to the outpost where the Republic bonus series starts, there's a big tunnel off to the north that leads into a secluded area full of Trandoshans and Varactyls, which is where you need to go to reveal that part of the map. The Imps actually have a quest there, but as a Republic player it's easy to miss.
Makeb: I didn't have any issues uncovering the map on Makeb, but even after I had found everything on my Commando and everything showed up as completed and ticked off in the achievement panel, the status of the "Explorer of Makeb" achievement remained stuck on incomplete. The forums recommended doing it on both factions to get it to pop, so I logged on my Sorcerer and finished uncovering the map from her point of view as well, which finally worked to trigger the achievement.
I swear, these rakghoul event posts pretty much write themselves. Stuff just keeps happening. I think that's why I've been loving this event so much - not because it gave us another set of dailies similar to ones that have come before, but because it draws people together and encourages them to write their own stories. With everyone fighting for resources, against big monsters or against each other, it's hard not to be faced with interesting decisions and make new discoveries. I think it would be stressful if the game was like that all the time, but just for a week? Awesome.
In terms of Eyeless achievements, I got to tick off the last one by getting a 16-person hardmode run under my belt. Unlike the 8-person version, this one actually felt quite hard too. You still seem to have seemingly endless amounts of time (which we once again needed due to several people dying), but our very well geared tank took quite a beating. As Ernost also observed, after the boss jumps into the air he likes to pound on the tank like nobody's business, and both the tank and the healers better be ready to use some cooldowns at that point. Our own tank died shortly before the boss did, but fortunately we had a spare tank in the raid who could pick him up for the last couple of percentage points.
I also got to kill Shellshock in a pug group. I had only just arrived on Alderaan when I saw the call for a healer go out in general chat, so I thought: why not? He wasn't too hard, though that AoE that regularly removes your vaccine is quite annoying (and expensive, assuming you want to actually do something instead of spending the rest of the fight getting stunned every couple of seconds). We then switched instances to kill him again, but as we were doing so a couple of Imps showed up and several people in our ops group were PvP flagged... so the Imps had no trouble wiping us, especially with the boss stunning the entire group so frequently. Since we outnumbered them, we probably could have rallied and killed them in return, but people hadn't really joined the group to PvP and preferred to leave and do something else.
I ran into the Tunnel Lurker a couple more times. Once I was on my own on my gunslinger and immediately shot him out of some sort of "rare, must tag" kind of reflex, though that just led to me dying very quickly. Another time I saw someone else engaging him and joined in just because I could, even knowing that I wouldn't get anything for the kill. This guy is kind of tough to plan around, since he's strong enough that you need a group but also wanders around a lot, so you can't exactly spawn-camp him with your friends. You kind of need to be lucky and already be in a group when you happen to run into him. Fortunately that's exactly what happened to me and a guildie when we were running around doing dailies while an ops group was forming for another Eyeless run. As soon as I called out on TeamSpeak that the Lurker had spawned, everyone already in the group converged on my location and we killed him quickly and with no problems. We didn't get anything worthwhile from it, but it still felt good to get it done.
Another interesting new kill I got was the "Midnight Rakghoul", a special new mini-boss that has been added to Kaon Under Siege. I love that Bioware added something like that to an older flashpoint. Never let old content go to waste if it fits your current theme, I say! He drops a guaranteed Midnight Rakling apparently, as opposed to the low random chance it always had of dropping in Lost Island HM.
Speaking of guaranteed drops, I'm now up to three Pale Rakling drops from the random plague bearer spawns on Alderaan in House Organa or Thul. Don't evade them if there's an elite in the group, because so far they've always delivered some nice loot for me.
My Marauder was also among the alts I decided to take to Alderaan, and as usual it was a pretty hilariously terrible experience. I had basically only just arrived when I spawned a group of 53 mobs (my level), and as I was in the process of killing them, some level 55 drove by, spawned more mobs and for some reason they all aggroed on me too. I died, so I had to buy more vaccines. I really feel for any lower level characters trying to participate in this.
Then I noticed that I hadn't even trained my level 53 abilities, and when I summoned my Holo Hutt, I realised that I didn't actually have enough money to train. This is what happens when you leave a character on the fleet for months, doing nothing but run diplomacy missions to change her alignment, but don't do anything that could actually earn her money. Oops. After a couple more deaths, I did eventually make it through all the dailies, which gave me enough cash to buy all my training and also dinged me to 54. If you're feeling in a funk on any of your alts and are enjoying the event, it's definitely a good opportunity to earn some XP while doing something slightly different.
Two nights ago I was questing on Balmorra with my bounty hunter, specifically working my way through the Okara Droid Factory. This was my third time playing through that area so I had a good idea where everything was by now, except for one thing that remained a bit of a mystery to me: two elevator shafts that led to heroic areas according to the map, but I'd never actually been given a quest to go there.
Feeling confident and curious, I decided to have a bit of a nose around and see whether there was anything interesting down there. I immediately felt rewarded for my exploration when an [Area 4] quest popped up for me as soon as I descended on the first elevator. Since I've generally found area quests to be a bit easier than regular heroics and being a Powertech with a healing companion makes you very powerful at low levels, I decided to see whether I could solo any of it.
I managed to down the first two pulls without too much difficulty, but when I turned around after finishing the last mob I suddenly found myself face to face with an inquisitor and a juggernaut. They immediately threw me a group invite, and this turned out to be a very lucky coincidence for me as I'm pretty sure that there's no way I would have been able to solo some of the later pulls.
We didn't talk much but our progress was very smooth, as the juggernaut and I took turns tanking the elite and champion mobs while quickly burning down the weak and strong ones. Meanwhile the inquisitor crowd controlled, threw lightning around and dispensed heals where necessary. It struck me that since the story for the mission was very thin, we were effectively simply grinding mobs as a group - and it was very profitable for me too, as my bounty hunter is a scavenger and (what with everything in the factory being droids) could salvage crafting materials from pretty much every single mob we killed. I think Bioware has a pretty good grip on when to deliver a great story and when to let it take a step backwards to simply let the player enjoy playing with other people.
Once we were done, we headed straight for the other elevator, and lo and behold, at the bottom of this one another [Area 4] quest awaited. I only had a brief glimpse at the map to take in the objectives and decided to simply follow the other two guys' lead, which meant that it took until we were about halfway through the area for me to notice that we weren't actually on the same step of the mission. Apparently the two Sith had come down here before, had already completed the first step and had thus moved straight on to the ones afterwards. I felt pretty bad when I stopped and asked whether they would mind going back and getting me caught up, but while there was a bit of hesitation at first, nobody complained and in the end we did it. Since everything respawned pretty quickly, it took us bloody forever to go back and forth again through the entire complex.
When we were finally done, the inquisitor suddenly asked whether I had picked up the local datacron. I said that I didn't even know there was one, but that I wasn't too bothered. I felt that I had already "stolen" enough of their time with all the backtracking we had to do during the second mission and didn't want to impose any further, but the inquisitor happily led us back to the first heroic area, we fought our way through half of it again, and then jumped down some hole towards the datacron. My heart was in my throat for a moment when I saw all the pipes around me, as I've previously established that I suck at pipe-jumping, but fortunately this was more a case of falling down on two pipes in a row instead of jumping, which I just about managed.
I always try to be nice to people who need help or don't know what they are doing, but that night it was interesting to be in the role of the clueless newbie for a change and experience other people giving me a gentle leg up. I should really be used to how nice people in this game are by now, but WoW's pug culture has clearly left a very deep impression with me.
I have to confess, I've largely been ignoring datacron hunting so far, and I'm not even sure whether I should feel guilty about that or not. I've seen some comments around that getting all the datacrons that benefit your class should be part of being a good raider, and obviously it helps a little, but I wouldn't exactly expect people to make something that only increases their main stat by naught point something percent a major priority, not unless they are in a very hardcore guild at least. That's just my opinion though.
In a way it's weird that I haven't been more interested in this particular aspect of the game, considering that I rate pretty high as an explorer, but I guess there are different kinds of exploration - and sticking my nose into every last nook and cranny of the geography while levelling up isn't exactly my kind of thing.
The other night however I found myself suddenly overcome by a whimsical urge to hunt down some datacrons, with the intent of getting the right matrix shards to build myself a relic that has something other than endurance on it. As it turned out, one of the ones I needed was the infamous datacron on Tatooine for which you need to ride the Jawa balloon.
I made my way to the location where you can board the balloon, and as it turned out I had just missed its departure. According to online resources that meant that I was in for a wait of more than half an hour. I settled down under the twin suns and went semi-AFK, doing things outside the game and only checking back in every couple of minutes to see whether anything had happened.
It quickly struck me how very "old school" it is of Bioware to have a feature like this in the game, where you're flat out expected to just sit around and wait, for up to an hour in total. I'm sure many people would decry this as absolutely terrible game design today. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it though. It's not something that I would want to do all the time, but as an optional one-off thing... why not? It's certainly what I'd call an experience.
After a little while a bounty hunter showed up, and then a Jedi a little later. The Jedi didn't hang around for long though.
I soon started to feel a certain sense of kinship with the bounty hunter. We were like the only two people waiting at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere. I toyed with the thought of striking up a conversation (even though he was The Enemy), but dismissed it eventually because I knew that we'd be stuck with each other for quite a while, and I didn't want to deal with the pressure of having to keep the conversation going for that long. I wanted to be able to continue AFK-ing whenever I wanted without being rude.
When the balloon finally appeared in the distance I actually became giddy with excitement. Hell, even just remembering the experience makes my heart beat a little faster again! How silly is that? I called out in general chat that the balloon was coming around soon, just in case anyone else wanted to get on. Nobody else came though.
In hindsight my call was a bit premature anyway, because that balloon is slow. I didn't time it, but I think it must have been another ten minutes at least from the time it first appeared on the horizon to when it actually came close enough to board. As I observed its slow approach I felt like someone trying to watch a kettle boil. My god, is it even moving? Barely.
The closer it got, the more excited I became. When would be the best moment to jump? Should I be on my speeder or on my own two feet? I decided on the feet. I didn't dare to go AFK anymore because I didn't want to miss the crucial moment. I also found myself wondering whether it was moving slowly enough that you'd get a chance to run back up and try again if you missed with your first jump. Fortunately I didn't have to find out. When I finally felt that it had come close enough, I jumped and landed safely right in the middle of the basket. It turned out to be pretty huge and hard to miss actually. The bounty hunter made it too.
I was relieved, knowing that I was safe for at least a while, as the flight was going to take another half hour or so to get us to the sandcrawler with the datacron on it. I went semi-AFK again, but couldn't resist having a peek at our progress at least every couple of minutes. After all, I wasn't sure when exactly I'd have to jump off. I knew the location of the sandcrawler with the datacrons on it, but I didn't know which route the balloon was going to take. It didn't really seem to be going in a straight line, drifting this way and that every now and then. I also kept spotting other sandcrawlers in the distance and then kept cross-referencing the map to figure out whether this was "the one" or not.
Finally I spotted our destination. The glow from the datacrons was visible even from quite a distance.
My heart beat faster and faster. I kept telling my boyfriend about how thrilled I was and he kept telling me that I was mad. I had just spent the last hour sitting around semi-AFK, just waiting for the silly balloon to move, how could that possibly be exciting? But it was precisely the fact that my time investment was at stake now that made it feel important. I knew that I wasn't going to try again the same night if I failed, and since I'm hardly a pro at jumping, the chance of me missing my target was definitely considerable.
I started to carefully move around the edge of the balloon. My character automatically took the first step up without me having to jump, but the outer rim did block me from just walking off by accident. But would jumping out from the inner step take me far enough? Should I try to jump and land on the very edge first? Those "ropes" looked like they might prevent me from falling, but I wasn't sure.
And then it was right there, right below us. I don't even know how I jumped, I just did. My character tumbled and took some falling damage, but landed safely on top of the sandcrawler. Victory! The bounty hunter made it too and I cheered at him, though he took no notice. He just grabbed his datacron and was gone before I knew where he had jumped off.
I hadn't really looked much into the second datacron located on a ledge off to the side, since it was a strength one and as a trooper I don't really need strength. Still, I gave it a quick shot and promptly fell right past it. I was slightly disappointed but not hugely bothered. Maybe I'll get back to it some day, maybe not - either way it's not particularly relevant to me except for completionist purposes.
But that balloon ride... that was definitely something else. I might just have to ask my guildies to give me a shout if they are going on any rides in the future; I imagine it must be even more fun with a friend in tow.
