Flashpoint Friday: Star Fortress

I was initially hesitant about whether to include the Star Fortresses in this series or not, which is why I left them until the very end. I eventually decided in favour because there is no denying that they are labelled as [FLASHPOINT] in game, even though they have very little in common with any of the other flashpoints.

General Facts

Star Fortress is a level 65 flashpoint accessed from Odessen that requires you to have made it up to chapter nine of Knights of the Fallen Empire. (In case that doesn't already give it away, it was added to the game with the release of KotFE in October 2015.) You cannot enter a Star Fortress any other way, even if you are grouped with someone else who has them unlocked. They also aren't part of the group finder and need to be entered straight from the Alliance base.

While every Star Fortress is the same in terms of gameplay, there are technically supposed to be six different ones: one each above Alderaan, Belsavis, Nar Shaddaa, Hoth, Tatooine and Voss.

Unlike regular flashpoints, the Star Fortresses are not designed for a group of four players. Instead they have an easy solo version and a heroic mode, with the heroic mode still being soloable if you are both sufficiently geared and skilled. The heroic mode follows the same basic format as the solo mode except that everything has a lot more health, and the final boss fight has you facing off against a different opponent that is considerably harder than the end boss of solo mode.

Also, unlike in regular flashpoints, if you die, you can't simply pick things up right where you were defeated previously but instead wake up in a prison cell and have to go through a little sequence to free yourself and escape.

Fights

Similar to Kuat Drive Yards, the Star Fortresses have a modular design that is random every time you enter one. Excluding the boss level, the skytrooper production level in the middle (which is the same every time) and the two "transitional" levels which just consist of a short walkway, each instance consists of four floors you have to fight your way through, with each floor potentially having three different layouts as far as I could tell. Unlike in Kuat Drive Yards however, there are no different objectives to pursue here.

Example: The first floor could look like any of these.

There is little excitement to be had while fighting your way through the levels, as your opposition consists of Zakuulan troops and droids that pose little challenge. At one point in the instance, a bonus objective will light up, highlighting a certain room you have to clear out, which will earn you reputation with your currently active companion and with the one associated with that particular Star Fortress (see story section below). Also, one of the upper levels and one of the lower levels will contain a named "paladin", basically a hard-hitting Knight of Zakuul that serves as a sort of bonus boss. There are achievements for killing all of these.

Otherwise the only bosses you have to face are the Skytrooper Praetorian on the skytrooper production level, who uses various stuns and summons adds, and the instance end boss. On solo mode, this is the AI Ephemeris, which initially sics adds on you until you destroy its backup power cores, which results in it possessing a droid body that you can then kill.

On heroic mode, the final boss is the Exarch overseeing the Star Fortress (a special type of Knight), and you cannot face him or her until you've chased them all the way around the station's central sun reactor. This is quite challenging as the chase consists of several phases, each of which has the Exarch being guarded by two gold mobs, and more weak opponents continually streaming into the room, all while you have to interact with a console and sometimes kill a special add to move the encounter to the next phase.

None of the bosses drop "traditional" flashpoint loot - instead you gain lots of decorations as well as various item level 208 mods and enhancements, which is the same level as the gear you can buy with common data crystals. Additionally there are quite a few achievements that encourage you to re-run the place, including the ones to kill the paladins already mentioned, as well as ones to find lore objects or take on special challenges. If you get your influence level with your Alliance experts up to ten, there are also hidden caches on each level that you can unlock for extra combat abilities. I've previously written a bit more about some of these features here.

Story

Not much story takes place inside each Star Fortress, however the story arc surrounding them is actually quite interesting. In KotFE chapter four Lana mentions that Arcann has had powerful battle stations built in orbit around several planets to keep their population in line. This is brought up again in chapter nine, when the actual side story arc for the Star Fortresses becomes available.

Planets that are being suppressed in this fashion are Alderaan, Belsavis, Nar Shaddaa, Hoth, Tatooine and Voss, and while you have a contact on each of these planets, you know too little about the interior of a Star Fortress to take action right away. You get tasked with exploring one of them to find out more, which means doing any one of them on solo mode first. While doing this, you learn that each Fortress is protected by a ground-based shield generator that needs to be destroyed before the Fortress itself becomes vulnerable (very Return of the Jedi-like).

After this, Alliance alerts for the contacts on the six planets pop up in your companion panel, and you can start each planet's individual story arc. They all follow the same basic plot: Your contact asks you to scope out the shield generator, then tells you that they and their allies don't have enough resources to mount an assault. You are prompted to hand in five resource crates of the type you get for doing heroics at max level, and then the attack can begin. Destroying the shield generator is trivial, and afterwards you are asked to destroy the Star Fortress in heroic mode. (You cannot start the heroic mode for any planet until you complete this part.) If you succeed, your planetary contact joins you as a permanent companion.

While the plot is very basic, what makes the story interesting are the interactions with your would-be companions. They are all gibberish-speaking aliens, presumably to save on voice acting, but many of them are given vibrant personalities and some very interesting conversation options. For example my Jedi knight was given the option to talk about her missing companions while chatting with Choza Raabat, the Ithorian Jedi who serves as your contact on Alderaan. (Though no, he didn't know anything about Lord Scourge's whereabouts either.)

Conclusion

That the Star Fortresses are labelled as flashpoints is a bit baffling and makes one wonder whether Bioware is trying to go into a new direction with this content type. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when they came up with this... The fact that the solo mode seems to be the default and that the heroic mode is soloable as well initially gives the impression that this is meant to be a challenge that's primarily meant to be tackled alone. On the other hand the final boss on heroic is significantly easier in a group and well worth grouping up for, being more reminiscent in difficulty of the way heroic missions used to be. Also, the actual story arc can only be completed by doing all the heroic modes.

With all that said, the Star Fortress flashpoint occupies a strange place in the game, unlike any of the regular flashpoints. Locking access behind the first nine chapters of KotFE makes it quite hard to get into, and the lack of any sort of group finder option for it makes it even harder to get the heroic modes done if you can't or don't want to take them on alone.

It's not a good way of acquiring gear, however it's great for decoration drops and some of the better mods and enhancements can fetch a decent price on the GTN. Inside the flashpoint itself there also isn't much going on in terms of story or interesting mechanics (except for the heroic end boss), which makes them kind of grindy - which can be a good or a bad thing, depending on your preferences. Considering its story focus, SWTOR doesn't offer many opportunities for the kind of "mindless grinding" gameplay where you just mow down mobs for an hour while watching television on the side, but the Star Fortresses are actually really good for that. And the extra companions are fun, if not really needed considering the deluge of companions you end up with on your way through KotFE.

Finally I wanted to note that this marks the last installment of my Flashpoint Friday series. 27 posts and nearly a full year later, I've used it to talk about all the flashpoints currently in the game. I'm quite pleased with myself for having been able to stick to my fortnightly schedule for the entire time without missing a beat even once, but I have to admit that I'm also kind of glad that it's over. While I stand by what I said in the past about a series being a great way of providing yourself with something to write about at all times, it did start to overwhelm the regular content a bit when I started running the KotFE chapter discussions as well. Also, a full year is a long time to commit yourself to writing about a very specific subject like this - I suspect I'd think twice before doing that again.

Flashpoint Friday: Blood Hunt

Yep, I prepared this one in advance as well so I wouldn't break my perfect fortnightly publishing streak while away.

General Facts

Blood Hunt was released as part of the Shadow of Revan expansion (patch 3.0) in December 2014. Both Blood Hunt and Battle of Rishi were part of the expansion's main storyline and the first two flashpoints that launched with a solo mode right off the bat. Group-wise they only offered a tactical version initially, with the hardmode getting added in 3.1 two months later. Since 4.0, the tactical version is available from level 15 and the hardmode from level 50 onwards.

Even though nearly two years have passed since Blood Hunt and Battle of Rishi's release, we haven't seen another "regular" flashpoint since then. I don't really count the Star Fortresses, but I will be talking about those in more detail in another two weeks.

Fights

Blood Hunt is all about fighting Mandalorians and their pets, which is not totally unheard of (*cough*MandalorianRaiders*cough*) but not exactly a common theme in flashpoints, so it provides some variety from the usual fare. There is minimal trash, but instead there are six mini bosses aside from the three main boss fights, none of which really amaze in terms of mechanics, but none of them are boring either. In an interesting departure from most flashpoints, there isn't a single droid to fight in Blood Hunt.

The first boss is a giant jungle wampa called Kyramla Gemas'rugam (which apparently means "deadly hairball" in Mando'a) that throws rocks and summons adds, with the fight's main difficulty being a mix of considerable damage output and the fact that it is incredibly busy visually, making it easy to miss something important, like that your healer is getting mauled by adds for example. Said adds even used to have an enrage on hardmode (not sure if they still do), as does the boss himself.

The six mini bosses continue the theme of murderous pets, and three of them (one of two sets picked at random) need to be bested before the second "proper" boss fight unlocks. On hardmode, killing the other three afterwards counts as the flashpoint's bonus encounter, making this an incredibly easy bonus to snag.

The two sets of mini bosses are a k'lor'slug, a lurker and a rancor, or a jurgoran, a krak'jya and a tonitran. (All six are always present, but it's random which set of doors is open.) They all have little gimmicks to them, like the k'lor'slug only spawning after you've destroyed enough of its eggs, or the lurker slowly patrolling around its enclosure in a circle, but nothing that's in any way difficult to figure out. Like the first boss, they all have names in Mando'a, with the translation given underneath as a title. They are horrible to pronounce and nobody calls them by these names except crazy Mandalorian fanboys (you know who you are), but let's list them for the sake of completeness:

K'lor'slug - Adeen Edeemir - Merciless Bite
Lurker - Pirun Ut - Water Slime
Rancor - Cerar Be Kyr'am - Mountain of Death
Jurgoran - Yustapir Kyramid - River Assassin
Krak'jya - Dralne be te Oya'karir - Strongest of the Hunt
Tonitran - Hodayc Sur'haai - Cunning Eye

After besting these three randomly selected pets, you go up against the Mandalorian couple Jos and Valk Beroya, about whom I've written my fair share, mostly about what a horrible pug killer this fight is. You fight them separately at first, then a bunch of animals swarm the floor, and then you have to fight both at once. They have several high damage abilities that complement each other, and Jos has a brutal knockback that instantly sends players to their death if they are too close to the edge of the platform.

This fight is infamous for causing people issues on every single difficulty - yes, even on solo mode, as the GSI droid can get knocked off as well, or cause the bosses to evade by jumping to places he isn't supposed to be.

Tactical mode used to be relatively easy when it was originally released, but the 4.0 re-turning has turned it into a brutal death trap. The kolto stations at the edge of the platform almost feel like a cruel joke, considering that trying to activate them means leaving the safe middle and putting yourself in danger of being pushed to your death. The mobility requirements and the bursty damage that was originally designed with level 55 characters in mind - who had the tools to deal with them - is also a terrible burden on anyone coming into this flashpoint at a lower level these days.

Finally, the hardmode was incredibly punishing on release. Many groups couldn't even make it past the first boss's dps requirements, and if you did, Jos' incredible burst damage could kill even a tank in best in slot gear in seconds. Unlike the difficulty of Lost Island, which I wrote about two weeks ago, this inspired few declarations of love. Maybe the player base as a whole is less interested in challenge these days, but I would bet that the lack of any meaningful rewards and an instance with so much higher difficulty being thrown into the same mix as the other hardmode flashpoints definitely had something to do with it as well, neither of which were an issue with Lost Island. After completing Blood Hunt on hardmode for the first time since 4.0 the other night, I'm happy to say that Jos' worst abilities seem to have been tuned down a bit, but it still remains one of the more challenging hardmodes, no doubt about it.

The last boss is positively easy in comparison - while very flashy visually, she's basically a case of "stay out of the fire" (even if there is a lot of it), and as long as everyone can do that you'll probably be fine.

Story (spoilers?)

As this flashpoint is part of the main Shadow of Revan storyline, this is mildly spoilerish, but only very mildly.

While trying to find out what the Revanites are up to on Rishi, you've learned that a Mandalorian called Torch was in league with the Revanites for a while but had a falling out with them later on. You decide that it would make sense to question this Torch person to find out more about the Revanite's plans.

You borrow a shuttle to fly to the island where she and her fellow Mandalorians are hanging out. As you approach, you get shot down by its defenses and end up crashing on the edge of the island at night. It soon becomes clear that Torch is observing you and enjoys watching you fight the vicious wildlife she keeps on the island as well as her clan mates.

When you finally reach her, it turns out that "Torch" is Shae Vizla, the red-haired Mandalorian of "Deceived" trailer fame, only with some more wrinkles around her eyes by now. She still isn't too impressed by you and offers to talk only if you best her in a duel first. Once you do, she does commend you on your martial skills and is willing to share what she knows about the Revanites' plans.

Conclusion

Blood Hunt is a flashpoint of extremes. It's very atmospheric, and the Mandalorian compound could rival any James Bond villain's base of operations. I mean, Star Wars is often a bit over the top and generally embraces this, but the elaborated folding floor surrounded by lava falls in the last room is ridiculous even by those standards. While the animal bosses' names are hard to pronounce, the humanoid bosses are quite memorable, whether it's Shae's ruthless calm or Jos and Valk's endless bickering.

However, narratively it's in an awkward place in the story, forcing you to effectively spend more time and effort on interviewing a random Mandalorian than taking down the Revanites' fleet. The fights aren't bad in principle, but their wacky tuning has unfortunately made them stick in people's minds for all the wrong reasons, making Blood Hunt the sort of flashpoint many people immediately want to drop out of if they get it as their random of the day.

Flashpoint Friday: Lost Island

It seems strange to be covering this flashpoint so close to the end of this series (only two flashpoints left to cover after this one), especially since it was an early reader request. I think I tripped myself up by wanting to do things in order and starting with Kaon Under Siege, which turned into a mega-post that made me yearn for something shorter and simpler to write about for the next installment... and then one thing just led to another. However, I was bound to get there eventually: It's time to talk about Lost Island.

General Facts

Lost Island was the second flashpoint added to the game after its release, as part of patch 1.2 - called "Legacy" - which was released in April 2012 and also saw the introduction of the legacy system and the group finder, as well as adding a new raid (Explosive Conflict) and a new warzone (Novare Coast). It's crazy to think that even then people were leaving the game in droves, complaining that there was nothing to do.

Lost Island finishes up Outbreak in the Tion Hegemony/Trouble in the Tion Hegemony, the rakghoul story arc that started with patch 1.1's Kaon Under Siege. A new plague of sentient rakghouls has emerged to threaten the galaxy, and by the end of Kaon you have traced it back to a rogue scientist called Dr Lorrick who secretly operates from Ord Mantell. It's time to pay him a visit and get to the root of the problem.

Interestingly, Lost Island has received only limited love in 4.0. Its hardmode has been retuned for levels 50-65, but its story mode remains an old-fashioned level 50 flashpoint that can't be accessed through the group finder, and there also isn't a solo mode.

Fights

Lost Island has achieved somewhat legendary status among players for having been stupidly hard on release, at least on hardmode (though story mode was quite challenging for your average pug as well). I know people that, to this day, will proudly talk about things like having gotten the first Lost Island HM clear on their server (not that this is something that anyone would be able to prove). In my own post about my first run, I mentioned how another group of guildies hadn't even been able to make it past the first boss, and how we also wiped a lot during our own run (though we did complete the instance). At the end I felt the urge to take a screenshot as if we'd defeated an operations boss. I also have a video of a run we did about two months later (unlisted because it's neither very well edited nor interesting, being one of my first attempts at video editing) that shows us still needing no less than six attempts to get past the first boss.

Bioware made no secret out of Lost Island intentionally being harder than any other flashpoints available at the time, rather the opposite. As I mentioned, this was the patch that also introduced the group finder, and in this first incarnation, there were two "tiers" of hardmode flashpoints: the first one consisting of everything else released until then, and the second one consisting of Lost Island alone. It also dropped better gear, with the last boss dropping the coveted Rakata chest piece, which you could otherwise only get from hardmode Soa. It was a concept that was later abandoned without much fuss or any kind of explanation, and since the first year was a tumultuous time for the game in general it's hard to say what prompted the change in direction. All I know is that to this day, whenever I see people complain about content being too easy, they like to wistfully refer to old-school Lost Island as an example of how things should be.

What is is that made Lost Island so hard? Well, the trash was actually not as bad as in Kaon (nothing could top those Infected Mercenaries and Screamers) but it could still throw people for a loop with mechanics like AoE pulls, knockbacks, mobs unexpectedly bursting out of the walls, groups requiring a specific kill order, or extremely powerful healers refusing to let any enemy die. I remember a pull close to the end that used to contain two strong medics (one of which was later removed) who could both make themselves immune to interrupts and would cross-heal the whole trash pack until kingdom come if you didn't use crowd control or focused stuns to burn them down quickly.

The first boss, a sentinel droid, is the one I actually always found the hardest personally, probably because of how many wipes I had on him over the years. There was the Incinerate on the tank that needed to be interrupted or dispelled or it would kill the tank in seconds, that other ability whose name I forget that was also useful to interrupt but not as essential, domes of lightning spawning on group members, adds, fire coming out of the ground, and so on and so forth. Basically, the boss has a lot going on that can potentially kill you, and in those early days his damage output was very high. Most of his abilities remain to this day, however they've been toned down a lot so that none of them hurt nearly as much.

The second boss, the monstrous Project Sav-Rak, is a particular piece of fun with pugs to this day, because he has mechanics that aren't easily nerfed, apart from the dot that deals damage and keeps the healer busy. Otherwise his two key mechanics are that he will jump on top of a pipe and just keep attacking you from afar, until you can force him back down via some co-ordinated button pushing from most group members, and that every so often he will do massive knockback that will send you to your doom in the surrounding lava if you don't stand in the right place. This is fun in so far as pretty much every time you do this in a pug, even if you explain the mechanics beforehand, someone will fall to their death the first time the boss does his knockback and then go: "Oh. I didn't expect it to be like that." It would be sad if it wasn't also funny.

Oh yeah, and there are also two mini bosses which aren't too challenging in terms of mechanics but who both hit like trucks. Even when running this with my guildies last week, I was the last woman standing when Transgenic Sample Seven finally died.

The bonus boss is actually the easiest fight in the entire instance, merely requiring you to not stop moving whenever he smashes the floor and to not cross paths with other people while doing so, but even that can be challenging for some.

Finally we have Doctor Lorrick himself, whom I generally don't recall ever being as challenging as what came before, but who still offers a nice and pretty cinematic fight, throwing poison vials and explosives at you and jumping around the room until he finally succumbs to the virus himself and turns into a seemingly mindlessly roaring rakghoul monstrosity of his own.

Story (spoilers)

You travel to Ord Mantell to locate Doctor Lorrick's secret base, which is once again at least partially situated inside a volcano, demonstrating that the planet has a problem with attracting people who like to build stereotypical super-villain lairs.

As you make your way past innocent wildlife outside and then some guard droids, you encounter the first log entries from Lorrick's assistants (you need to access them all to unlock the bonus boss), who describe him as someone heroically looking for a cure for the rakghoul virus... until it becomes apparent that actually he is doing no such thing but rather refining it for weaponised use. You learn that his assistants tried to stop him once they found out, but the fact that you keep encountering increasingly monstrous and intelligent mutant rakghouls doesn't make the situation look good.

Eventually you find Lorrick in his lab, where he holds a speech about how his modified rakghoul virus is in fact a perfect evolution of humanity and even offers to turn you into a rakghoul too. All his heroic assistants have fallen prey to his machinations, and like a true mad scientist he's even injected himself with the virus, eventually turning into another fearsome monster that you can only put down.

Conclusion

Like Kaon Under Siege, Lost Island is one of Bioware's early masterpieces, combining an atmospheric environment, an interesting story and fun game mechanics into a perfect blend. This is definitely still true today, even after its overall difficulty has been nerfed. Whether that initial high difficulty was even a good idea or not is debatable, but I think it's unlikely that we'll ever see its like again, and as the number of day one veterans still playing the game continues to decline, there'll also be fewer and fewer who will even remember what it was like.

I'm somewhat mystified why Bioware has largely ignored Lost Island during its 4.0 flashpoint revamp. I can sort of see several of the fights being hard to tune for a solo mode, especially considering the Jesus droid's limited AI (you just know Project Sav-Rak would knock him into the lava every time), but I don't really understand what prevented the old story mode from being turned into a tactical.

Flashpoint Friday: Legacy of the Rakata

Today it's time to talk about a flashpoint that shares an acronym with Lord of the Rings. Don't be confused like I sometimes I am when I see people talking about it!

General Facts

Legacy of the Rakata forms part three of the Forged Alliances story arc (which consists of four flashpoints in total) and was released as part of patch 2.10 in September 2014, which was aptly named "Forged Alliances". It wraps up the Prelude to Shadow of Revan as it is also called now, though at the time we didn't know that yet.

It was originally a tactical-only flashpoint for the level cap at the time (55), received a hard and a solo mode in 3.0, and was retuned to cover a wider level range in 4.0, like most flashpoints in the game.

Fights

Legacy of the Rakata takes place on Rakata Prime, which is populated by primitive Rakata, bits of wildlife, as well as Revanites and their droids. The trash generally doesn't pose any challenge, though some of the Rakata pulls feature powerful healers that can drag things out if they aren't shut down.

There are three boss fights in LotR, plus a bonus boss on hardmode. The bonus boss is actually quite challenging due to a combination of adds and powerful AoE that has to be avoided, but the "main bosses" are all fairly unexciting in terms of mechanics.

First there is the Rakata War Chief Rehkta and his pet Rancor. The Rancor smacks people about and Rehkta runs around like a maniac due to being untauntable and drops puddles of fire on the floor. However, there isn't really anything you can do about any of it, aside from stepping out of the fire every so often, so it's just a matter of slowly draining the two bosses' hitpoints (and boy, do they have a lot of them).

Next we have Commander Rand, a cyborg, who I suppose is moderately interesting in that he becomes invulnerable every so often, which forces you to kill a bunch of adds instead. Actually, I suppose it would be more appropriate to say that this was moderately interesting on release. Sadly that particular mechanic has since been re-used ad nauseam in several of the mini-boss fights featured in KotFE, so veteran players are probably pretty tired of it by now.

Finally, Darth Arkous and Colonel Darok have more or less the same issue as the first encounter: They have a bunch of abilities but there isn't anything you can do about them other than burn the bosses down (slowly), and try to kill them at roughly the same time as one will enrage at the time of the other one's death.

Story (spoilers)

By the end of Depths of Manaan, you have teamed up with Theron Shan, Lana Beniko, Jakarro the smuggler and his pet droid to uncover a conspiracy hatched by the cult of the Revanites. You know that they are working on building a cyborg army based on Rakata technology, but not to what end.

Part three of Forged Alliances starts with you entering Theron's/Lana's old office on the fleet to find it wrecked and you end up reuniting with them on Manaan instead. They've tracked down the Revanites' base of operations on Rakata Prime, where they are making use of old Star Forge debris to enhance their cyborgs. You're going to hunt them down.

You land on a beach on Rakata Prime with a plan to assault the temple where the base is located. Jakarro promises to provide a distraction while Theron and Lana will monitor the situation from his ship. You successfully "sneak up" on the temple by slaughtering a whole bunch of Rakata (who have apparently been hired to be an obstacle), wild Nexu and eventually Revanites on the way.

Inside the facility you find a room full of dormant cyborgs and end up talking to Theron and Lana about them on the holo. Depending on your faction, one of them sends the other way away under false pretenses, in order to be able to quietly urge you to deal with the cyborgs in their preferred way. Theron wants them destroyed via an overload so the technology won't fall into the wrong hands, while Lana wants them killed the old-fashioned way so that the tech can be preserved and stored for future use by the Empire.

Regardless of your choice, you find yourself chasing Darth Arkous and Colonel Darok (the emerging baddies from the previous parts of the story) to the roof of the building, where you eventually have a big showdown. After you defeat them, a fleet suddenly pops out of hyperspace... and it turns out that it's under the leadership of Revan, who has seemingly returned from the dead to lead the Revanites into a grand new battle. After briefly chatting with you on the holo, he starts to bomb the planet and you have to board a shuttle to escape.

Conclusion

I was really quite impressed with Legacy of the Rakata when it first came out, though over time my affection for it has somewhat diminished. I find that it scores highly in terms of first impressions, what with all the KOTOR throwbacks, the beautiful environment and the grand reveal at the end. But those are things that can't be experienced the same way on subsequent runs. In fact, I think nobody these days can experience it the way we did when it first came out, when we genuinely didn't know where it was going and who was leading the Revanites (Revan was supposed to be dead after all). These days, even if you generally try to avoid spoilers... well, the quest itself is called Shadow of Revan: Prelude! Not much room for surprises there.

Legacy of the Rakata's biggest flaw in my book is that its boss fights are pretty dull. Unlike in some of the earlier flashpoints with weak bosses, it's not that the bosses have uninteresting designs or virtually no abilites, but the problem is that they have few abilities that matter, abilities that you can actually do anything about (such as avoid or counter them). They just interrupt your tank and spank routine every so often with knockbacks and stuns but that only really serves to slow you down.

Still, overall I do like Legacy of the Rakata because in general I feel that its good sides outweigh the bad ones. I just consider it a missed opportunity that they couldn't make the boss fights a bit more interesting.

Flashpoint Friday: Mandalorian Raiders

... because it came up in my Assassin's random queue and I haven't covered it yet.

General Facts

Mandalorian Raiders is the last of the six story-light levelling flashpoints available to both factions that were in game at launch. That is to say - it's the last one that I haven't covered yet; in terms of the original levelling curve it was designed for levels 23-29, making it third in line after Hammer Station and Athiss. It didn't originally have a hardmode version but received one with the release of Rise of the Hutt Cartel.

These days it's available from level 15 onwards as a tactical and from level 50 onwards as a hardmode instance, like most flashpoints. Like its other story-light brethren, it doesn't have a solo version.

Fights

Mandalorian Raiders takes place on the Republic battlecruiser Allusis, which has been hijacked by the Mandalorians of Clan Varad. Their troops consist of Mandalorian warriors, their pet hounds and - as pretty much in all flashpoints - loads of droids.

The environment is your typical ship interior and therefore not very interesting, though attempts have been made to spice things up a bit with things like a bunch of lifts, but they don't really add that much.

A lot of the trash is however actually fairly challenging, with some pretty large packs here and there. Especially the ones with multiple hounds can be quite deadly.

Mandalorian Raiders features three boss encounters (plus a fairly nondescript bonus boss on hardmode), and all three of them are actually fairly interesting.

First there is Braxx the Bloodhound, a Mandalorian with two untauntable pet hounds that do more damage if they are close to him. If you have a tank, the strategy is generally to tank Brax somewhat off to the side, while the rest of the group tries to kill the hounds, who are usually jumping around like mad, constantly switching targets. If you don't have a tank, this fight takes on a whole new level of manicness.

Secondly we have the Boarding Party - which uses the premise that both factions are after the Mandalorians and takes it to an interesting new level. Basically you enter a room with a whole bunch of Mandalorian forces in it, when the back wall suddenly gets smashed, burying the Mandos, and a boarding party of the opposing faction comes through, consisting of one member of each base class of that faction. They cannot be crowd controlled, which makes the early stages of the fight pretty crazy, with what's effectively four bosses all over the place. They also get madder and madder as you kill them one by one, so that you want to make sure to kill the last two close together or the last enemy standing will be so buffed that your group runs the risk of being wiped out by powerful AoE.

It's worth mentioning that the Republic and Imperial boarding parties get treated as different bosses by the achievement system, meaning that this flashpoint requires twice as many runs on hardmode as any other to reach 100% achievement completion (as you need to do each faction's version 25 times).

Finally there's the clan leader himself, Matrix Mavrix Varad, who repeatedly leaps towards different corners of the room and summons turrets there. The trick is that these turrets need to be killed before you continue attacking the boss himself, or he'll go on to the next corner, summon more turrets, and you'll get overwhelmed. I remember having quite a few interesting wipes on him throughout the years.

Story

Clan Varad of the Mandalorians has decided to break with the rest of the Mandos (who support the Empire) in order to "search for battle", as the Empire is not offering them enough of it. For this purpose they have hijacked a Republic battlecruiser and are now running rampant raiding both Republic and Imperial colonies, giving both Republic and Empire a reason to hate them. You board their ship and fight your way through it to regain control. About halfway through, you get the option to either trap (light side) or kill (dark side) some engineers to create a disruption. The crisis ends once you have defeated the clan leader himself.

Conclusion

Like most of these early levelling flashpoints, Mandalorian Raiders features mechanically interesting boss fights and some challenging trash pulls, making it very engaging instance in terms of gameplay. In terms of atmosphere however, I always found it a little lacking, even compared to its siblings which also don't feature a very in-depth story. It doesn't feel as unfinished as Red Reaper, but just lacks a certain something in my eyes to make it truly memorable. There is a reason I didn't feature it any earlier in this series, and that's because I keep forgetting that it even exists! Hammer Station is a flying superweapon, Athiss features varied environments populated by dark Force users, Cademimu is just plain fun, Colicoid War Game is all about the puzzles, and Red Reaper has an intriguing back story. Mandalorian Raiders has.... um, Mandalorians?

This may well be personal bias speaking here, as I'm simply not very fond of the Mandalorians in general. They remind me a lot of the Klingons in Star Trek, and I never liked those very much either. Both are meant to be intriguing warrior cultures based on a code of honour but in practice usually end up being incredibly one-dimensional, so that characters from both respective cultures are often just portrayed as antagonistic douchebags purely "because it's their way". I suppose if you like Mandalorians, Mando Raiders is a good place to visit to hear Mavrix Varad go on about how you're not bad fighters but not as good as Mandalorians. The fights are definitely worth seeing! The overall setting however is a little less interesting than usual, though your mileage my vary.

Flashpoint Friday: The False Emperor

In this week's installment of Flashpoint Friday we're going to look at the flashpoint that "finished up" the game's story as far as it was released at launch. I'm of course talking about (dun dun dunnn)... False Emperor.

  
General Facts

False Emperor has been in game since launch, serving as the grand finale for the game's non class-specific world storyline, which started with the regular missions on Ilum and continued throughout the flashpoint Battle of Ilum, which I already talked about.

False Emperor was originally designed for levels 48-50 and came with a hardmode at launch in which the last boss dropped a Columi (first raid tier) chest piece, which caused people to farm it like mad back in the day. A solo mode to see the story was added in 4.0. The base version is now tactical (role- and level-neutral), which must really confuse people who end up in there at level 15.

Story (spoilers)

A short reminder of the story so far: While Republic and Empire are fighting over the ice planet Ilum, which provides valuable crystals that can be used for the production of stealth generators, Darth Malgus declares himself the Emperor of a "new" Empire that embraces alien diversity and goes up against both Republic and Empire at once. After stealing one of the stealth ships from his fleet, a strike team boards his cloaked space station to cut off the snake's head.

This is where the flashpoint starts off, with either Cole Cantarus (for Pubs) or General Hesker (for Imps) flying you there. The Emperor's space station is the same one Jedi knight players encounter during their class story, only bigger. After a lot of fairly nondescript fights you have to kill HK-47 again, whom Malgus had apparently rebuilt after that whole thing in the Foundry. He's defending an Anomid scientist called Arkis Wode, who gives you big lip initially but panics as soon as all his guards are taken out. You can show your alignment by either letting him live so he'll turn the station's weapons against Malgus' own fleet, or shooting him in the face, in which case he'll call out a last warning to Malgus before he dies.

Finally, you face down Malgus himself, who quickly activates the station's self-destruct sequence. (Who keeps building self-destructs into everything anyway?) There is no option for reconciliation, even if you kind of agree with his stance on aliens in the Empire at least. Once he's defeated, you take his stuff and flee the station as it's breaking apart at the seams.

Fights

Malgus' space station is filled with lots of droids and some aliens, similar to the trenches of Ilum in Battle of Ilum. Like in that flashpoint, there are a lot of voice-overs going on about the strengths of this "new Empire", even as you go around killing everyone. It's also worth mentioning that while there are still a lot of enemies to fight, there used to be a lot more of them until the flashpoint was "thinned out" somewhat in later patches. The main possible exception to this is the very first pull, which is still huge and has sent many a pugger to their death over the years.

About half the boss fights are nothing to write home about: There's the Trandoshan with the red circle around him, the two droids who become temporarily immune to damage one at a time and the mini-boss that does a spin attack. However, there are also some more interesting encounters:

Bounty hunter Jindo Krey is a bit of a Boba Fett lookalike - that alone would be enough to make him cool, but he also calls on his ship during the fight to shoot you, which you in turn have to repel by using some conveniently located nearby cannons. In its original incarnation, the ship could also move sideways so that you actually had to make sure you used the right one of the three cannons to shoot it down, but apparently this was considered too challenging for puggers...

HK isn't really that interesting except for being HK and liking to brutally knock down people who charge him with a leap, a mechanic that just seems pointlessly cruel.

The Sith Entity bonus boss which consists of three different  targets that periodically vanish and reappear is also moderatlely interesting and used to have a reputation for having an unforgivingly harsh enrage timer on hardmode back in the day.

The undisputed crown jewel of the instance is however the encounter with Darth Malgus, which is a fantastic example of how you can give a fight a cinematic quality while also keeping it engaging for the players. Aside from a massive knockback that you need to avoid by tanking him near the stairs or else you'll go flying down the nearest chasm, Malgus doesn't have that many regular interesting abilities, however he cycles through all the group members (if given enough time) to "fill their minds with doubt" until he forces them to face him alone while the rest of the group is stunned. This isn't that interesting these days, but at launch he hit hard enough that dps players in particular had to kite him during that phase, usually while the rest of their stunned group cheered them on. A couple of times he also tries to cast an insta-wipe mechanic called "Unlimited Power", which absolutely needs to be interrupted (or needed to be... not actually sure how deadly it is these days as I haven't seen it go off in a while).

The memorable finale of the fight however used to be the fact that Malgus became invulnerable once he reached a certain percentage of health and had to be knocked down the aforementioned chasm to be killed, Darth Vader vs. Palapatine style. This required multiple knockbacks to be timed just right, which could be quite challenging for most groups. Nonetheless I was still very sad when this mechanic was removed as part of a round of nerfs. These days Malgus just falls over dead at the end like any other boss, which I still think is sad. That knockback mechanic could have been made more manageable without removing it entirely.

Conclusion

False Emperor was certainly a memorable end to the story of Darth Malgus. Even though it was a shame that he was killed off so early in the game, he at least got a suitably epic send-off initially - plus the fact that you didn't actually see his body left an avenue for a potential future return, though I think it's safe to consider that particular door closed by now.

That said, the flashpoint as a whole wasn't exactly an unmitigated success. The interior of the space station isn't particularly exciting except for the view of the final throne room. People hated how long and filled with trash it was. And from a story point of view it honestly kind of sucked having to kill off Malgus as an Empire player even if you agreed with many of his points. I already mentioned in my Battle of Ilum post that he's basically not a very convincing betrayer in the sense that players might not necessarily disagree with him enough to want to kill him. Plus there's the whole "what is this I don't even" factor if you don't do the planetary quest line and the flashpoints in the right order.

That said, I'm still very fond of False Emperor almost for the Malgus fight alone, because it really is (was) that good. Also, as Calphy pointed out in his post about flashpoint favourites, considering its brief life, Malgus' new Empire was actually very influential in terms of the overall storyline, as the Makeb arc sees the Empire softening its stance on aliens in the aftermath of Ilum, which always struck me as a little odd. Not that I'm complaining really, but I would have thought that the last thing you do after eliminating someone as a betrayer and heretic would be to adopt some of his policies.

Flashpoint Friday: Depths of Manaan

In today's Flashpoint Friday I'd like to talk about a flashpoint that I realised I haven't actually done very often (my achievement panel counts 13 full tactical runs and 6 on hardmode). RNG probably has more to do with this than anything else, but it's still a shame - because the more I thought about it, the more I realised that Depths of Manaan is pretty damn awesome.

General Facts

Depths of Manaan forms the second part of the Forged Alliances story arc that leads/led up to the Shadow of Revan expansion and is now labelled in game as "Shadow of Revan: Prelude". It was released as a max-level (then 55) tactical flashpoint in patch 2.9, which otherwise focused on Galactic Strongholds, in August 2014 and continued the story that had started with Assault on Tython and Korriban Incursion. A solo and hardmode version were added in 3.0 and since 4.0 it's a tactical accessible from level 15 onwards.

Depths of Manaan takes places on the planet Manaan (duh), which was literally introduced just to hold the entrance to this flashpoint. It's still nice that you can travel there at any time though - it means that you can commit suicide by drowning in a game where otherwise no body of water ever goes deeper than up to your knees! One can also always hope that Bioware will find a reason to return to the planet and add some more content to it one day.

Fights

Depths of Manaan takes place in a research facility staffed by droids and Selkaths. Some of the latter are Force users as well! While none of the trash is particularly challenging, it's varied enough and there isn't really enough of it for it to ever get boring. The first half of the flashpoint is also stuffed with kolto barrels, which you can blow up to heal yourself and work towards an achievement that awards a legacy title. I remember when this first came out, every run was a mad dash towards the nearest barrels as they aren't present in solo mode and the achievement only counts barrels that you pop personally. More recently however it always seems like I'm the only one who's interested in them (I'm on 334 out of 500) - has everyone else already got the achievement or am I surrounded by newer players who simply don't know about it?

There are three boss fights in Depths of Manaan (plus one bonus boss on hardmode) and every single one of them is fun and interesting. First there is security chief Sairisi, who is accompanied by two riot suppression droids that shield him. You need to first damage the droids to get them to retract their shields to be able to attack the boss, all the while dodging red stuff on the floor and getting knocked about. The real kicker however is the hardmode mechanic that causes the droids to regenerate health and re-shield Sairisi after a while, which requires you to split your damage and take them down roughly at the same time or they'll effectively "take turns" healing up and shielding the boss, keeping him invulnerable permanently. What fun that is in a pug, and I'm only partially joking!

Next up we have the infamous Ortuno, one of the few non-ops bosses in the game with a mechanic that is guaranteed to kill you if you mess it up. Throughout the fight he keeps dropping puddles of water on the floor, and every so often he summons a sort of lightning storm that does AoE damage to everyone regardless of what you do, but if you also happen to stand in a water puddle at the time you die almost instantly. Even without the lightning the puddles are bad for you though, because standing in them causes you to periodically get stunned by Ortuno's attacks. Oh, and did I mention yet that he also summons two silver adds after each lightning phase and hits like a truck? Seriously, what's not to like about this guy?

The last boss, a cyborg Selkath called Stivastin comes with a shield that absorbs a huge chunk of damage and can only be broken by leading him under the spouts of flame that periodically erupt from the ceiling. There are also adds and a kick mechanic that messes with the aggro table. Funnily enough I remember this boss being super annoying on solo mode because the Jesus droid would always taunt him, making it impossible to lead him towards the flames to pop his shield. At the same time, the droid still did enough damage that he would get the boss down in time despite of the shield, but it was slow and boring. Interestingly, when I did a solo mode run before writing this post, the Jesus droid did not taunt Stivastin anymore and I was able to kite him wherever I wanted him to be. Seems they improved his AI. The fight also has an interesting enrage mechanic, as you have five minutes before the whole building (supposedly) gets destroyed, so if you take too long, the fight resets.

The bonus boss is another masterpiece of encounter design, unique and difficult, but just about manageable even in a pug if you can get everyone to understand the tactics, follow them and communicate if necessary, which admittedly is no small task for a pug. The boss is a droid who summons a steady stream of explosive drones that float along the narrow corridor in which the fight takes place and can be dodged, though only with a lot of care. However, every so often a moment will come when you face a row of drones that you cannot fully avoid, requiring someone (usually a dps) to run in and "pop" one, taking huge damage in the process but freeing a path for the rest of the group. Said person is also debuffed by this, so the next time you get trapped, someone else needs to go and "sacrifice" themselves to a drone. I always find this fight simultaneously nerve-racking and exhilarating.

Story (spoilers)

The first part of Forged Alliances ended with both factions having assaulted the home world of the enemy Force users and having successfully repelled an attack on their own. However, on both factions one of the people that interacted with you during the story mission found the odd timing of those events very suspicious - and eventually either Theron Shan (for Republic players) or Lana Beniko (for Imperials) asks to meet you on Manaan to follow up on a lead they've discovered.

They've found out that Colonel Darok and Darth Arkous, the other two people involved in part one and the ones suspected of fishy activity, have been meeting in a secret research facility on the ocean planet Manaan. (Fishy indeed!) Your job is to go in there and find out what's going on, while Theron/Lana plans to meet a mysterious contact.

You soon find an imprisoned wookiee smuggler called Jakarro and his partially disassembled droid C2-D4. They tell you that they were originally hired to bring in medical supplies but were then captured and interrogated, with a threat of being used as guinea pigs for some sort of experiment looming in the near future. You agree to free them because... why not? My enemy's enemy is my friend and all that.

Theron/Lana stays in touch throughout via voice communications, until he or she suddenly has to go and gets replaced by their mysterious new contact - which turns out to be the other faction's quest giver.

Eventually you find a laboratory where a Selkath scientist is building a bunch of cyborgs, claiming that they are going to become a new breed of super soldiers due to implantation of Rakata technology. Jakarro recognises the scientist as the one who wanted to experiment on him and jumps to shoot him - you can let him have his revenge or talk him out of it.

In a small room overlooking the laboratory you find Darth Arkous and Colonel Darok working together. You can demand answers from them but they only give cryptic responses about how their work is bigger than any of you and soon make their escape. On the way out they bomb the building, causing it to slowly sink to the bottom of the ocean.

Lana or Theron informs you that all escape pods have been jettisoned but that a little emergency vehicle is in place if you can only reach it. Unfortunately the lab is sinking quickly, and the cyborg that the scientist was working on earlier has also woken up and wants to tear your limbs off. Once you defeat him, you realise thanks to a quick holo conversation that your new contact is of the enemy faction - you can express annoyance with that, but ultimately following their guidance to your escape vehicle takes precedence.

In the debriefing afterwards you meet your new contact in person and it's revealed that apparently Arkous and Darok work for the Revanites, a known Imperial cult that worships Revan. What exactly they are up to however remains unknown. Theron, Lana and Jakarro are going to do all they can to find out more.

Conclusion

When the Forged Alliances arc was originally completed, the general consensus from what I saw on forums and the like seemed to be that Depths of Manaan was its best part - sort of the Empire Strikes Back of this storyline. I initially disagreed because I really liked the environments in Legacy of the Rakata (the third part), however I think that with time I've come around to agreeing with the popular opinion. Depths of Manaan is just one of those rare flashpoints that manages to incorporate both an interesting story as well as challenging and mechanically interesting boss fights throughout. On top of that it takes place in a unique environment and the Selkath are unusual opponents to fight, while the whole place practically oozes with small touches of loving craftsmanship. (The depictions of "kolto" molecules visible in some places are actually caffeine molecules!)

I think what initially brought my opinion of this flashpoint down a bit was the character of Jakarro (and his droid). I suppose they are meant to be a comedic duo, but personally I just found them slightly annoying. Plus they are a prime example of the Star Wars Expanded Universe's strange habit of taking all kinds of details from the original trilogy and replicating them to the point of absurdity. It's as if someone looked at the section in Empire where Chewbacca carries a broken C-3PO around and went: "Oh man, we need a wookiee with a broken droid attached to him... all the time!" The result is just bizarre. Nonetheless my attitude towards them has mellowed somewhat over time and ultimately they can't detract from the fact that Depths of Manaan is just a great flashpoint.

Flashpoint Friday: The Foundry

I'm keen on finishing my write-up of this group of flashpoints in this series, so let's get on with it. The grand finale of the mid-level Revan storyline!

General Facts

The Foundry is an Imperial-only flashpoint that has been in game since launch and was originally designed for levels 35-42. It's the last part of a story arc that spans four levelling flashpoints in total, with the first two taking place on Republic side and the Imperial part of the story starting with Boarding Party. Since 4.0 they are all tacticals accessible from level 15 onwards and also have a solo mode in order to enable people to just see the story.

The story that you've been told in the quest Call to Arms up to this point is that the Emperor supposedly allowed a powerful Jedi Master to escape from captivity so he would lead the Empire to an even more powerful, hidden installation called the Foundry. In the previous flashpoint you stole a Republic ship to approach said installation more stealthily, while this instance is about the main event of invading it.

Fights

The Foundry is basically a giant droid factory, so it's no surprise that most of the enemies you fight in it are droids too (and there are a lot of them). Interspersed are a couple of Jedi, plus in that bit where you exit the main installation for a while there are those moon slug things, one of which is the bonus boss.

Aside from said bonus boss, there are two fairly unremarkable droid bosses, plus that one Jedi where I'm never even sure whether he's supposed to be a boss or not, but he does drop some crystals as far as I recall.

What makes this flashpoint interesting however are two fights: HK-47 and... the Jedi Master.

HK-47 is a fairly interesting fight in terms of mechanics, though to this day I'm not entirely sure how much of it is intended and how much of it is simply due to bugs. Apart from add summons, the key mechanic is that HK will disappear into a giant machine core every so often to power up, which you have to interrupt by clicking on four panels on its outside. However I've also seen HK stand in the core's spot with no actual core visible, while simply being immune to all damage, and people getting one-shotted when they tried to attack him. I guess we're willing to forgive that because he's HK - being a bit of an unpredictable killer is in character.

And of course at the end we have... Revan! Sadly he's not nearly as cool in terms of mechanics as he could have been. The fight is quite impressive visually, with Revan drawing from a mix of Jedi and Sith abilities while going on about how he uses the power of the Force in balance. In practice however, there's simply a lot of dodging out of circles and not much else. His body mysteriously disappears at the end, leaving the door open for a possible return of the character, which Bioware eventually made a reality in 3.0.

Story (spoilers)

So... I guess I kind of already spoiled it in the paragraph above, but it just so happens that the mysterious Jedi Master in charge of the Foundry turns out to be Revan. He contacts you on the holo shortly after you kill the first boss, offering to not treat you badly as his prisoners if you give yourself up peacefully. Of course that's not an option.

Later you run into a holographic projection of HK-47 who explains that his master has devised a plan to eradicate something like 98% of the Imperial population because they all have some traces of Sith blood in them and the galaxy needs to be cleansed of that. In other words, Revan has turned into a genocidal maniac and needs to be stopped. So you kill first his droid and then the man himself.

The flashpoint ends with the Empire taking control of the Foundry, a super powerful installation that is sure to win it the war, just to never be heard of again.

Conclusion

Overall the Foundry is another fun romp, if maybe filled with a bit much trash. (It's one of the few places where I'm not too bothered if the rest of the group wants to skip the two bonus quests.) Getting to fight HK-47 and Revan is kinda cool.

Kinda.

Here's the rub though (and I already talked about this to some extent in my Maelstrom Prison review): Putting a storyline about Revan, which is incidentally also a direct continuation of the Revan novel, into a bunch of mid-level flashpoints was simply not a good idea, because it meant that it had to be completely disconnected from the game's main storyline, which in turn resulted in it being both kind of nonsensical and not really doing the character of Revan justice. And I'm saying that as someone without previous attachments to KOTOR!

If you come to the Foundry as an Imperial player first, you kind of go: "Wait, Revan is alive? And he's insane? Why?" If you actually played through the part of the story on Republic side first, you know the answer to the first question, but instead you go: "No way the Republic would have sanctioned genocide like this, what is going on? And we're killing Revan, yet nobody ever mentions this anywhere on Republic side?" Everybody kind of loses.

After having played through all the flashpoints in this story multiple times, I do kind of appreciate the effort that was clearly expended to tie all of it together... but it's simply not good enough. Even if you play both factions, it feels like there is too much missing, mainly any sort of explanation of why Revan has turned into a genocidal maniac. Sure, you could argue that the long imprisonment by the Emperor drove him insane, but having to look for an explanation for something this crucial to the plot after the fact is not very satisfying. Plus there is the whole issue of the Foundry being this incredibly powerful installation, clearly a defining point in winning the war... and then it is never mentioned again. If you want to keep flashpoints separate from the main storyline, you can't just leave all-powerful MacGuffins lying around at the end of one.

I still recommend visiting the place to see the storyline, even more so now since it's kind of required background reading for the Shadow of Revan storyline that was added in 3.0. However, overall it definitely isn't one of Bioware's more shining examples of storytelling. Even though I enjoy aspects of it, I still find the Foundry to be the most disappointing of the lot, simply because up until then there was still room (in theory anyway) to explain some things. However, the Foundry just goes "nope, this is it", which is a bit of a letdown.

Flashpoint Friday: Czerka Core Meltdown

In today's Flashpoint Friday I'd like to talk about Czerka Core Meltdown. Would you believe that I had virtually no useful screenshots of that place? On the plus side, when I ran it today to grab some, I got a nice chatty group with two players who were new to the flashpoint and enjoyed being shown around.

General Facts

Like its "twin", Czerka Corporate Labs, Core Meltdown was released as part of patch 2.3 in August 2013. Said patch was called Titans of Industry, just like the accompanying quest line for both flashpoints.

They were the first flashpoints to be released as role-neutral (though Bioware hadn't come up with the term "tactical" yet), though they still came with a hardmode version that required a trinity group. Both flashpoints were also part of the CZ-198 weekly quest until patch 3.2, which meant that people ran them a lot at max level (then 55)... until that requirement was dropped, that is.

Core Meltdown is a straight continuation of the story started in Czerka Corporate Labs.

Fights

The trash, consisting of guard droids and a couple of "experiments", is fairly unimpressive - like the trash in Corporate Labs, it was clearly designed to be easy on groups without a tank or healer - but at least it's not completely without variety. The bosses however range from interesting to challenging.

The first two bosses can be done in any order and are both large beasts kept in special habitats that also play a role in fighting them. (I'm actually a bit unclear on why you need to kill them to progress to the end, but hey... video game logic!)

One of them, a giant Vrblblblther, summons groups of flappy little adds and needs to be weakened by repeatedly being dragged near giant spores that you need to pop at the right time. The other one, a desert Duneclaw, is surrounded by generators that simulate a sandstorm and do heavy AoE damage. Every time one activates, you have to drag the boss towards it so that his smash attack destroys the generator and ends the sandstorm.

Since the boss needs to be directed in both fights, stable aggro is really helpful, but even if you don't have that, whoever has aggro at any given moment will have to take responsibility and lead the boss towards the right spot. This can be a considerable challenge for a pug! The Duneclaw also has the added difficulty of the sandstorms doing considerable AoE damage, which means that it's the boss most likely to result in a "wipefest" (quote from one of my puggers) if you don't have a healer and a tank and/or several of your party members are low level. If the group is reasonably balanced, it's not too bad. I also remember this boss's hardmode version being a bit of a turning point for my Scoundrel because I failed really hard at healing through the fight as a hybrid spec (back when that was a thing), leaving me with the lesson not to go back in there again unless my character was fully prepared.

The last boss, the Vigilant, is something of an odd duck. He (as well as the trash leading up to him) are obviously supposed to be these scary experimental super soldiers created by Czerka... but they all look like flesh raiders, mobs that can otherwise only be found on Tython. It's kind of hard to be impressed by something that reminds you of the wimpy enemies from the starter zone.

Mechanics-wise, the fight is also strange, as you spend more time fighting the environment - taking down static props and spawned adds - than the boss himself. He just waits until you've finished all of that, then pounces down and pretty much dies within a minute.

Story

After having defeated the corrupt Czerka special executive Rasmus Blys in Corporate Labs, it's time to secure the rest of the facility, and Blys managed to activate the mysterious "Vigilant" security system before he died. What could it be?

After having unlocked a way to the core by shutting down all the security systems, including various animal habitats, you finally face the Vigilant: Turns out the mysterious security system is basically one big monster. Once you defeat it, the facility is yours.

Conclusion

I have kind of mixed feelings about Czerka Core Meltdown. First off, it has the same pros and cons as Corporate Labs: The lack of a meaningful story and of interactive cut scenes makes it feel a bit out of place in a Bioware game but also makes it much more repeatable than many other flashpoints.

That said, I also feel that Core Meltdown doesn't come together as well as Corporate Labs. Individual set pieces are well done, but there's a certain feeling of... "What is all of this?" Finding out that the much talked-about top secret security system is just a slightly silly looking monster is a bit of an anti-climax.

On the other hand, the fights are more interesting than those in Corporate Labs in terms of mechanics, with the Duneclaw in particular being one of the more challenging bosses to be found in random flashpoints today. Depending on who you run with, that can also be a bad thing of course...