Hoth GSI Missions Guide

The below guide was originally written by FJ Brodie for his website FibroJedi. After he decided to shut the site down, I decided to reproduce this and his other GSI guides on my blog - with his permission of course. I also made a few small amendments to update them for the current level cap and to add some new information. You can still find an archived version of his original guide here.

Welcome to the back of beyond – also known as Hoth! Even on this snowball, Galactic Solutions Industries has research to do. And, of course, you’ve been coopted to do that research. So here’s my SWTOR Hoth GSI Missions Guide! I’ve included notes, screenshots and a couple of videos to help guide you through the icy wastelands.

Picking up the GSI Missions

Once you arrive on the surface of Hoth from the Space Station, you’ll need to locate the GSI Missions Terminal. In the past you also had to return to this terminal to hand in some mission items, but with patch 7.0, all the GSI dailies on Hoth were changed to auto-complete as soon as you fulfil the last objective.

Imperial: Inside Dorn Base

For the Empire, the GSI Terminal is right near where you properly start the Hoth story arc.

Republic: Exit of Aurek Base

For the Republic faction, the Terminal and dropbox are found right by the TaunTaun vendors.

Quick-slotting the Seeker Droid and Macrobinoculars

If you haven’t completely finished The Shroud and the Dread Seeds questlines, you can find your Seeker Droid and Macrobinoculars in the Quest Items tab of Inventory. You’ll find GSI missions easier if you just quick-slot these, rather than keeping the Inventory UI open.

Missions

Some of the Hoth GSI Missions inter-link. This means you can often progress two of them at the same time. I’ve tried to remember to note down where this is the case to cut down travel time.

Crash Courses (DAILY)

Hoth has, apparently, a particularly strong gravitational pull. This has led to a number of starship wreckages scattered across the planet. For reasons we probably don’t want to know Galactic Solutions Industries want to figure out how to replicate the effect. The mission involves scanning wreckages and downed escape pods so GSI can reverse engineer the effect.

Crash Courses: Notes

Mission: Scan Crashed Ships or Escape Pods × 4
Region: Clabburn Tundra, one in Crescent Canyon

• If you’re playing an Imperial-faction character, the wreck at -3984,540 (Wreck 2 in the video below) is surrounded by Republic soldiers and the occasional Talz. You may need to clear a few out to scan it without being attacked.
• If you’re playing a Republic-faction character, the wreck at -2522,-465 (Wreck 4 in the video below) has Imperial mobs on the approach to it. Because of a dip in the snow you can’t really scan it from afar, so defeating some Imperials will be necessary. But I’m sure you won’t mind: there is a war going on, after all!

Note: this wreck is en route to one of the sites for Picking up the Pieces so it make sense to complete this mission at the same time as Crash Courses.

Mission Rewards (Assumes L80)

• Credits: 18,630
• Reputation: Repair Toolkit (Small Galactic Solutions Industries gain)

Picking Up the Pieces (DAILY)

Despite extensive funds and influence, the White Maw Pirates have made off with research data from GSI’s Superweapons Division. Data breaches are not just our galaxy’s concern! GSI want that data returned.

Thankfully (for GSI at least), the pirates’ ship crashed into Hoth, presumably thanks to the gravitational pull mentioned in Crash Courses.

Mission Summary: Scan and Recover Crashed Ship Parts
Regions: Clabburn Tundra, High Mount Ridge and Glacial Fissure

This is one of the Hoth GSI Missions with a random element in it. There are five possible locations where the research data may have crashed. The mission will not complete until you’ve found the specific crashed ship containing it. But the “correct” ship may differ each time you do Picking Up the Pieces.

Site 1: Crescent Canyon (Clabburn Tundra)

This wreck is near the most Northern point of Crescent Canyon. It is filled with Imperials and the occasional Wampa.

Site 2: Highmount Road (Highmount Ridge) -1635,471

Road! Ha! Please note this coordinate is not in the tunnel-like section lower-down but up on top. If you can see this view, you’re in the wrong area.

Apart from the occasional Ice Cat, nothing should bother you here.

Site 3: Highmount Bluffs (Highmount Ridge) -740,1607

This crash site is South of Leth Outpost (Imperial). The path South is patrolled by White Maw Pirates and their droids. Further South are Ortolans and Talz (Republic allies). Once you’ve passed the Ortolan camp, the path is easy to the next wreck.

Site 4: Eruption Impasse (Glacial Fissure) – 620,386

This crash site is in the same area (and on the same level) as the volcanoes for Forged in Fire. So if you haven’t found the GSI data yet by wreck 4, do Forged in Fire at the same time. 

Site 5: Northern Whitelands (Glacial Fissure) – 900,-862

If you have yet to complete Warped to the Core, then the Ambria’s Fury is just a short distance from Wreck 5. Aside from the occasional Talz (Republic allies) and Ice Cat, you should be fairly safe from interruptions while scanning this wreck.

Picking Up the Pieces Rewards (Assumes L80)

• Credits: 18,630
• Reputation: Repair Toolkit (Small Galactic Solutions Industries gain)

Beneath the Spires (DAILY)

Crashed ships of recent origin are one thing. Ancient starships buried under many centuries of ice and snow is a totally different matter. Galactic Solutions Industries believes unearthing (or un-icing?) these starships would be valuable to their research.

FJ’s Note: despite the Seeker Droid seeming to just scratch the surface when it “digs”, apparently that cable can excavate starship parts from under many layers of snow and ice!

Mission Summary: Dig Up Ship Components Near Ship Debris × 3
Region: Jagged Plains, Clabburn Tundra

Health Warning: World Boss Gargath may be wandering around here. He was there when I was! Aside from that there are plenty of Whitefangs lurking around here too.

All you need to do is locate 3 × Ship Debris (see screenshot below). Then excavate them with your Seeker Droid. You can hover your cursor over scrap metals. The hover text will then confirm if it’s ship debris.

Once you've dug up three pieces of ship debris, the mission completes automatically.

Beneath the Spires Rewards (Assumes L80)

• Credits: 18,630
• Reputation: Repair Toolkit (Small Galactic Solutions Industries gain)

Forged in Fire (DAILY)

If you’ve wandered SWTOR’s rendition of Hoth (on a day you don’t have a headache, or didn’t before you landed on Hoth) you will have noticed some small volcanos. These volcanoes (which are pretty small) yield metallic ores that are instantly cooled by Hoth’s rather cold climate.

GSI have called this “Embersteel” that it believes only occurs near these volcanoes. Your research could assist the Empire (or Republic) with state-of-the-art plasma cannons.

FJ’s Note: Of course, your research will only give you a small discount on such amazing tech. Available exclusively from GSI, naturally!

Mission Summary: Dig Up Embersteel Ores inside Volcanoes x 3
Region: Eruption Impasse (Glacial Fissure)

• If you have not completed Picking up the Pieces, then Wreck 4 is in the same area as the volcanoes.
• The area contains groups of Hailstorm Brotherhood mobs, aggressive to both Republic and Empire factions.
• Use your Seeker Droid on volcanoes to see if any Embersteel is contained inside. I think you need to scan near the top. But you don’t have to be near the top yourself – molten rock will hurt you a bit!
• If your droid returns and you have a red ring about you, pick a volcano a fair way from where you were stood.
• There are a lot of volcanoes in Eruption Impasse/Southern Crevasse, so this mission requires patience!
• The precise point you need to dig on a volcano may take a few attempts. If you get a green circle around you after a failed dig attempt just adjust the area you’re digging slightly. Move in the direction of the solid green segment of the circle.

Eruption Impass from above

Seeker Droid digging into a volcano

Red and green circles after a dig attempt

Forged in Fire Rewards

• Credits: 18,630
• Reputation: Repair Toolkit (Small Galactic Solutions Industries gain)

Warped to the Core (HEROIC 2+)

Health Warning: This Hoth GSI Heroic is by far the hardest of all those available for Galactic Solutions Industries. There are multiple factors at play and it is timed. Timed missions are really bad for my Fibromyalgia, which is one reason I’ve taken so long to psych myself up to write this SWTOR Hoth GSI Guide!

Back Story

GSI are really interested in one particular downed Imperial ship – the Ambria’s Fury. They believe its reactor core has been affecting the ship’s durasteel hull. They intend to use this effect to help build new thermonuclear weaponry.

Yes, you’re going into an enclosed nuclear radiation box! So GSI recommend (!) finding and using any protective gear you find.

Mission Summary: Investigate the Ambria’s Fury

Instead of doing screenshots of the mission, I’ve recorded it below. But these are a few key notes:

• The Ambria’s Fury is surrounded by groups of White Maw Pirates (aggressive to both factions). No doubt they’re hoping to find some components to sell, or to improve their own arsenal.
• Pick up the Protective Headgear! Your first thing is to find and loot the piece of headgear from the highlighted crate. This can be done immediately from entering the phase. Don't forget to also open your inventory and actually equip it. Just taking it out of the crate is not enough.
• The protection lasts 15 minutes maximum. There is no timer in the quest but you can hover your cursor over the buff to see time remaining.
• A couple of doors need clearing by destroying the barrels stacked in front of them.
• Look out for (and avoid!) pools of flowing radioactive liquid.
• You need to make it to the very far end of the Ambria’s Fury, as this is where your Irradiated Durasteel Samples can be found. This area is guarded by a Champion-class Wampa.
• Once you’re done, you can use Quick Travel to exit the phase. If your Quick Travel is still cooling down or you want to save some credits, run out as fast as you can. You will have cleared all mobs so the route out should be straightforward.
• Don't forget to put your normal headgear back on once you've completed the quest! 

Warped to the Core Rewards (Assumes L80)

• Credits: 29,064
• Reputation: Energy Field Monitor (Medium Galactic Solutions Industries gain)

TL;DR The SWTOR Hoth GSI Missions Summary

From data retrieval and digging samples from volcanoes to taking on a radioactive Wampa, the SWTOR Hoth GSI Missions have a wide variety of tasks to undertake. Some can be done without defeating any enemies at all. So dust off that cold-weather gear and go do something more interesting than stringing out a pointless Empire vs Republic battle! 

Galactic Threads: Things Are Starting to Come Together

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

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

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

Galactic Threads

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

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

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

On The Run

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

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

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

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

Hoth Pursuit

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

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

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

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

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

The Library of Nul 

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

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

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

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

Dark Heart of the Fortress

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

Truth Sought and Found

There's a dynamic encounter on Hoth called "Trial By Fire", which I ranked among my top ten favourite encounters on that planet. As mentioned in that post, the encounter has you testing an experimental heat resistance suit inside one of the small lava fissures in the area, which requires you to press some buttons both to stay alive and to gather data.

Back in January I wrote: "I also feel like there's definitely more to how the suit works that we just haven't quite figured out yet, which intrigues me." At the time, I even spent some time trying to do more research on that myself, which included recording myself doing the encounter and noting down the sequence of available ability buttons in a spreadsheet. Unfortunately it quickly became clear that there wasn't a straightforward solution or "correct" button-pressing order. I was intrigued that on one of my attempts my charge button changed to "hyper-charge" but at the time, I couldn't figure out what that meant.

In the end I got bored of the whole thing again pretty quickly. In March however, the devs added new achievements to the dynamic encounters on Hoth with patch 7.6.1, and the real depth of Trial By Fire was revealed, including several new achievements and other rewards, which of course got the real super-sleuths on the case pretty quickly. That hyper-charge I had previously achieved by accident turned out to be only one of those achievements.

Going somewhat counter to what you'd expect considering my initial interest, I didn't immediately jump on working on all the new achievements myself. The main reason for this was that when I initially read about them, it sounded like you'd need a second person to help unlock most of them. You see, they required you to stay in the lava fissure for longer and focus on the data-gathering abilities at the expense of the self-preservation abilities, so initially the advice given was to bring another person to heal you through the damage (your own companion gets dismissed whenever you don the lava suit).

However, as new information was uncovered and the guides were updated, I learned that it was possible to survive by yourself, by falling back on tried and tested methods used for other purposes: buying a health regenerating meal on the fleet (yes, this is a thing) and getting the "refreshed" buff from the moisture vaporators on Tatooine, the same buff that's required to hatch an Orobird pet out of its egg (and serves to protect you from extreme heat in that context as well). It just really tickled me that they'd actually re-used an old mechanic like that in a way that made sense and I wanted to see for myself how it worked. So I got myself all refreshed, ate my dewback steak sandwich and started diving into the lava.

And what do you know, I had fun! I quickly got into the habit of just parking my character with the buffs next to where the encounter usually appears and then relogging her whenever it was up. (Both buffs last half an hour, so if you don't do anything other than spend five minutes on the dynamic encounter every time it's up, you can do several runs in a row without having to go back to Tatooine to refresh the buff from there.) It didn't even require a huge amount of effort, just a bit of patience. (I did make myself a little crazy at times checking the galaxy map every half hour to see whether the encounter was back up yet, but that part's not mandatory.)

A few weeks ago, I finally dug up the last item I needed for the last achievement, which earns you a special armour set and the title "Truth Seeker". The armour set kind of looks like the hazmat suit you wear during the encounter itself and therefore isn't exactly the most stylish of outfits, but I've been wearing both it and the title on my main for several weeks now because I'm just so proud of having achieved it. It's not proof of great skill or anything, just of patience, but it's such a niche thing that I don't think many people are even aware of it. Which, to be honest, is also why I wrote this post, to spread awareness of this bit of hidden content. I think it's a very fun little puzzle and I appreciate whichever dev came up with it.

The Best and Worst Dynamic Encounters on Hoth

I've had a lot of fun running dynamic encounters over the Christmas holidays, and after reaching 100% achievement completion on Hoth, I thought it would be fun to rank the different encounters by best and worst (not all of them though, there are too many of them for that).

The Top 10 Best Dynamic Encounters on Hoth

1. The "Ice Kitten Trilogy": Wire You Doing That/Wire Consequences/Wire You So Cute

Could there have been any doubt about this coming in first place? Who'd have thought that Republic power relay in Whiterock Wastes would ever become such a popular destination?

These three encounters loosely tell a story, though you can do them in any order. In the first one, Wire You Doing That, local ice kittens have been chewing on generator wires, leaving you to make repairs and shoo them away. In part two, Wire Consequences, the kittens are still around but grumpy, so your job is to soothe them and put them inside cat carriers. Finally, in Wire You So Cute you assemble some pet supplies and try to get random cantina patrons to adopt the kittens. A noble sentiment, though I'm not sure we're really doing a good thing here considering these are still wild animals and likely to grow a lot bigger... I feel more like someone trying to sell tiger cubs out of a car boot rather than a kind soul taking care of lost pets. Still, as long as you don't think too hard about it, these are very cute missions with virtually no combat (the first one has a chance to summon an "upset momma cat" that needs subduing, but even then there's no killing involved), and of course each one has a chance to reward you with the rare freckled Loth-cat Kitten pet. What's not to love?

2. Imperial/Republic/Pirate Attack

I'm lumping all the different "attack on base" encounters together here, because even though there are slight differences in the tools you're given to help with the defense, the basic concept is the same. I can see why an example of these was how the devs first promoted the concept of dynamic encounters to us, because it does still feel cool to me every time I land at a base and there's an attack happening. Seeing the shared progress counter tick up as an indication that someone else is already working on defending is almost guaranteed to make me want to join in to get credit too and it always feels quite satisfying.

3. Ice Fishing 

After being initially somewhat confused by this encounter on the PTS, now that it makes sense to me I'm really loving it. It's basically the seeker droid mini game with a different name, but the area you have to work in is quite small so it's very quick and pleasant. The fish "death sounds" crack me up and there's no combat involved except for the occasional hungry ice cat making an appearance. The only downside is that it's a bit out of the way for Republic players.

4. Taun Fawn Fun

This one seems to be many people's favourite and I think I would have had a riot on my hands if it wasn't included on this list! (I imagine some players would argue it should be number one.) Another very cute encounter, this one has you carrying taun fawns up a slope so they can slide down. Very simple, and another creative example of a non-combat encounter. The reason I rank it a little lower than e.g. the ice kittens is that it's almost a bit too cutesy for me - with the ice cats, you at least still have the context of looking after Republic infrastructure, but with the taun fawns you're really just pausing to play with some cute animals for no real reason. Also, the fact that only one fawn can be on the slide at a time can cause some annoyance with queue-jumping when multiple people try to do this encounter at once.

5. Fur, Fur Away 

This was one of my favourite encounters on the PTS and I still love it on live because of how simple it is: get three fur samples from non-hostile ice trompers and done! If you're lucky, you can finish in literal seconds, though the animals have a chance to resist by knocking you away. This can get a little annoying if you're suffering from a string of particularly bad RNG and get knocked about for several minutes, but even then I don't mind too much because the animation for being knocked back always amuses me. It makes you fly so high that you'd think you would take fall damage on landing, but the devs were generous in that regard, so you don't take any and can immediately get back into the action to try again. 

6. Under Fire!

This Imperial-only encounter is one of the ones that has a chance of dropping the Everglade Zakkeg mount, and probably the best one at that, as unlike the Loth-cat Kitten, the mount isn't a reward for completing the encounter but a random drop from the Talz mobs you fight. This event has you jumping in to save a beleaguered team of Imperial soldiers from an ambush, so you get a whole bunch of Talz popping out of the snow in easily AoE-able groups, which makes for an encounter that doesn't take a lot of time and also gives you many chances at the mount drop.

7. Snipers!

Another Imperial encounter vs. the Talz, this one can be a bit confusing the first time you try it - and it can also kill you! Once you understand what's going on, it's not hard to avoid dying though, and I find it quite satisfying to flush the snipers out of their hiding spots. If only snipers in PvP were this easy to kill and didn't constantly self-heal and run away...

8. Snow Capped Delicacies

This encounter has you climbing a mountain to pick some flowers for an Ortolan hermit, another pretty creative idea for an encounter in my opinion. It also has a chance to reward a flower decoration (this one still eludes me personally). The slightly lower ranking mostly comes from the fact that the mountain being a "fake exhaustion zone" can be a bit confusing (and you can die if you accidentally cross over into the real exhaustion zone), plus the VFX for the snow storm on the mountain are not easy on the eyes.

9. Trial by Fire

This is a fun little encounter that has you testing an experimental heat resistance suit in the local mini-volcanoes. I was rather amused that when I tried to look up a guide for what the different buttons do, both pages I found were basically like "I'm not really sure what you're supposed to do here, lol" and you can indeed "win" by just mashing random buttons. However, if you do it "right" for a given degree of right, you also complete a bonus mission and get credit for two dynamic encounters in one, which I think is cool. I also feel like there's definitely more to how the suit works that we just haven't quite figured out yet, which intrigues me.

10. Volcanic Rumblings

Speaking of volcanoes, another encounter in the area that I quite like is to take heat readings from volcanic fissures, which is a simple matter of running in circles for two minutes to find some clickies. Very simple and straightforward.

The Top 5 Worst Dynamic Encounters on Hoth

Boring disclaimer: I don't actually think that any dynamic encounters we've seen so far are truly "bad". At worst they're not that creative and feel a little generic, but that's still not exactly a huge issue considering their intended purpose as filler content. The main reason some encounters stood out to me as unpleasant was mainly due to bugs, and I expect that these won't seem so bad once said bugs are addressed.

1. Unnecessary Repairs

The simple reason I rate this as the worst encounter on Hoth right now is that it's currently bugged in something like three different ways, with the most important one being that the things you need to click on don't respawn once someone has used them, which means that if you ever want to complete this encounter, you basically need to be there when it spawns so you can get it done before anyone else arrives. That one was quite a nuisance to get credit for.

2. Pirate Problem

This is another encounter that suffers from a very annoying bug. This encounter is a shared one with three stages: kill lots of mobs, click on some stuff, then kill two named mobs. The problem is that one of the named mobs doesn't respawn right now (it can be either of the two, it's like the game just can't allow more than one of them to be alive at any given point after the encounter spawns). This means once again that you can only complete this encounter if you're there to take part in stage one right after it spawns - if you arrive any later, the whole thing will inevitably get stuck on stage three, since that one can't be completed without the missing mob, and you'll feel like you just wasted your time.

3. Snow Grift

This encounter has no bugs that I'm aware of, but is just a bit annoying in my opinion. An NPC sells you a treasure finding device which you then use to find the treasure/complete the encounter. There's no rhyme or reason to the treasure finding, you just have to keep spending credits until you get lucky. Other players can also "steal" the snow mounds you spawned with the device you paid for, leaving you with nothing. Very quick to do if you're lucky and don't mind spending the credits, but very annoying if you're unlucky and/or other players keep sniping your snow mounds before you can loot them yourself.

4. Wampa Hunt

This should be an easy and fun enough encounter on the surface, as you just need to kill three wampas in the area. The annoyance comes from the fact that the area has both a top level and a bottom level, and for some reason the bottom level doesn't count as part of the encounter area, meaning you're limited to a very small number of wampas on the top level, which can be annoying when there are multiple people hunting.

5. Lost Inventory

This is another encounter that is relatively inoffensive on the surface, but it has three stages, which can be a bit of an unpleasant surprise if you don't know what's coming up and can cause you to kill a lot of unnecessary extra mobs if you're fighting your way in the wrong direction compared to where the later stages want you to go. Also, it takes place in what used to be a heroic area, and while that has been nerfed a lot compared to how it was at launch, it feels like you still end up with a higher density of strong and gold mobs than in most encounters.

Dynamic Encounters Are Here and They Are Fun

I have to admit I wasn't immediately racing to check out dynamic encounters after the patch went live last week. Sure, I was looking forward to doing them eventually, but after completing fifty of them on the PTS, I figured I knew what I was going to be in for and didn't feel the same urgency to find out "what the new thing was like" that I sometimes feel when a patch adds new content. Plus I figured that things might be a bit overcrowded for the first couple of days and wanted to avoid that too.

When I finally set out a few days later, I was kind of surprised by how different the experience was to the PTS. Not dramatically, mind you, the basic system is still the same - but there were some changes that I absolutely didn't expect (beyond the obvious bug fixes like Republic characters no longer being prompted to kill Jedi in one dynamic encounter - that felt so wrong on the PTS).

For example, I'd noted on the PTS that encounters tagged as "encounter shared" would progress at the same pace for everyone in the area, just to then disappear once completed. This has been changed on live so the encounters loop endlessly (for the duration of the encounter anyway), which was initially kind of confusing to me. I don't think this is a bad change, mind you, just different, and it might affect how you want to prioritise different encounters when several interesting ones are up at once.

The number of events that are active on the map at the same time has also been reduced, at least on Hoth - my screenshot from the PTS showed 15 of them up at once, and I did in fact note at the time that I thought this was a bit overwhelming from a visual point of view at least. However, I didn't expect the number of active encounters to go down, as the general feedback on the forums seemed to be that the more active Hoth was preferable to the more quiet Tatooine. I would've expected the devs to up the number of events on Tatooine and not reduce the numbers on Hoth. Again though, this is not a complaint; it was just surprising to me. It does probably help with funnelling more people into doing the same encounters together, even if it means that it takes longer until certain ones come up in the "rotation".

Finally, there were some small changes - for example I quite enjoyed the ice fishing encounter on the PTS, but I was confused by the instructions to "look for the shadows" and I had the most success fishing by just plopping the fishing droid down on the cracks in the ice - I eventually figured it was meant to function similarly to certain GSI missions where you're meant to put your seeker droid over specific, static ground markers. I left feedback that I thought the instructions where unclear and expected those to be updated (if anything was going to happen at all) - but instead I found that on live, there are flitting shadows to target that never appeared for me on the PTS! And even funnier, when you catch a fish it appears to kill an actual invisible mob somewhere, as you get Conquest points and an "ugh"-style death sound plays. I just thought that was unexpectedly hilarious.

I've just been having a lot of fun doing dynamic encounters in general - I haven't been grinding them heavily, but have just been doing a few on both Hoth and Tatooine every day until I've completed both of the daily planetary "kill enemies" Conquest objectives. It's been nice to see more people out and about in the open world, with the new encounters proving quite popular at all times of day despite not offering any huge rewards.

In general it feels to me like these have the potential to fill a kind of gap in content that I didn't even realise existed, when you just want to play a bit but don't necessarily have the time or focus to dig into a piece of story or even a round of dailies. Dynamic encounters make it easy to play as little or as much as you like, and I've found them quite great as something to do while sitting in the PvP queue as well if pops take a bit of time.

I'm curious how long it will take me to complete all the related achievements, as the random nature of the events and the fact that only a limited number are up at any given point means that some encounters can prove kind of elusive. However, I'm in no rush as I'm happily just enjoying what we got and I look forward to (hopefully) seeing this system expanded to more planets in future patches.

Impressions from the 7.6 PTS

A combination of PTS incentives and curiosity about the new dynamic encounter system got me to spend some time on the public test server this past week.

My aging PC doesn't have enough disk space to support having two versions of SWTOR installed nowadays, so I had to put the PTS on my laptop, but that actually worked out quite well this time around as I was travelling last week and had the laptop with me for evening entertainment anyway.

Only two planets have dynamic encounters on the PTS right now: Hoth and Tatooine. It's currently not clear whether that's all 7.6 will launch with or whether these planets were picked for focused testing and we'll be surprised with some more content once the patch goes live. There were some indicators on the PTS galaxy map hinting at dynamic events on other planets like Alderaan and Belsavis, but with no actual content available there so far.

One thing I originally wondered after seeing the sneak peek trailer was whether dynamic encounters would be more like World of Warcraft's world quests (as in, personal to you) or dynamic events in other MMOs (shared and the same for everyone). Interestingly, the answer turned out to be "both". There are two types of events, designated as either "group shared" or "encounter shared". In the former, your progress is personal, and the encounter continues to exist for other players on the map even after you've completed it. In the latter, everyone doing stuff contributes to the event's progression, and once the encounter completes, everyone gets their reward at the same time and it disappears from the map. The shared encounters are generally rarer and can still be soloed if nobody else is around, but they tend to require killing more mobs and can therefore feel like a bit of a slog if you're the only person in the area. On the other hand it's a lot of fun (in my opinion) if there are other players around and you can see things progress really quickly as everybody does their part.

In general gameplay terms, the encounters are about what you'd expect: a lot of kill x mobs and some clicking on shiny things, though there are some standouts where the devs clearly tried to be creative and come up with more varied activities. 

I don't think dynamic events are intended to be a new "main" gameplay mode, though depending on how many planets will get them when 7.6 launches, I'd be curious to see how much levelling you could get done by just doing dynamic encounters - as an experiment if nothing else! Realistically though, I think they are meant to be similar to side missions, just without all the picking up and handing in required. At max level they currently award a tiny number of tech fragments and Conquest commendations, small enough that they wouldn't make for a great primary source of either currency.

One thing that made me wonder a little was how much focus there is on highlighting these new dynamic encounters on the map. The galaxy map highlights planets that have them active, and on the planetary map they show up as big glowy diamonds. There's nothing wrong with that in principle, but it does seem an odd choice when the devs took multiple steps in the past to hide away exploration missions and/or make them less prominent because they were apparently confusing/distracting people. Surely new levellers will get a lot more distracted by all these big glowy indicators on their maps? I dunno.

I'm still a bit torn on whether to try the new lair boss on the PTS as well or not. On the one hand I prefer not to spoil myself when it comes to content like that and would rather see things for the first time on live, but on the other hand every bit of feedback might help with making the Propagator Core a better raid.

The initial round of forum feedback certainly hasn't looked too good. Players were asked what they thought of the fight's different phases, and everyone basically replied "what phases?" because by all accounts, it was just an extremely long slog against an enemy with a lot of hitpoints while trying to manage some bad stuff dropping on the floor.

There has since been another dev post on the forums that basically admitted that almost nothing about the fight was working correctly and that it will see massive changes with the next PTS update. Which is good in the sense that it means the tedious version people experienced in the first week wasn't at all final, though it also makes you wonder why and how an operations boss ended up being put on the PTS in that state in the first place (since you'd expect the devs to be able to verify that at least the very basics are functioning before asking people to play test). I guess I'll have a few more weeks to see how things develop and whether I want to have a go myself.

Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 6

Week 6's objectives excited me for two reasons: It was the first week without a flashpoint objective, and it was the first week with not just one, but two PvP objectives. I don't like that it took six weeks to get any overlap between PvP Season 5 and GS6, and looking at the PvP track made me realise that after my initial excitement about the new PvP season, with plans to do at least the basic reward track on multiple servers, too much time had passed already for me to still complete the PvP track on Star Forge and Shae Vizla without buyouts, due to how focused I'd been on Galactic Seasons instead.

Anyway, in detail, the weekly objectives were:

• Earn 200k Conquest points: As usual.
  
• Visit another player's Rishi stronghold: Easy enough to do.
  
• Craft war supplies and two invasion forces: Once again something I was likely going to do on Darth Malgus but nowhere else, due to the lack of skilled crafters in my stable of alts.
  
• Dig up 3 treasures at a seeker droid dig site: Probably something I was going to do at least on some servers.
  
• Complete 15 missions as a trooper or agent: I was definitely going to aim for this one everywhere, as I usually do with the origin story objectives.
  
• Kill four named champion mobs on Corellia (2 Republic, 2 Imperial): Once again, not my favourite but one I was likely going to do at least on some servers to get the numbers.
  
• Kill both Taris world bosses: Easy and fast to do, I was counting on getting this one done on most servers again.
  
• Play 5-10 arenas (wins count double): I was definitely going to do that one on Darth Malgus, and maybe on other servers depending on whether I could get pops in the sub-80 brackets.
  
• Heroic space missions: I've never been good at space missions, to the point that I haven't even completed all the normal ones, so this was a definite no.
  
• Play 4-8 warzone matches (wins count double): I was probably going to aim to do that one on all servers, even if it's a bit time-consuming, but I do love warzones.
  
• Do dailies on Ruhnuk or Kessan's Landing: I figured I might do that one on Darth Malgus with Mr Commando, but nowhere else as I don't have that much story progression on any of the other servers.
  

Day 1 - Tuesday

I had another surprise working from home day after it turned out that the previous night's heavy winds had caused damage on my usual train line and I couldn't get into London. I was also feeling a bit tired and unwell though, so instead of using the time saved not commuting for gaming, I ended up napping instead.

In the evening I did ops with my guild, and then expanded my Copero stronghold to hit the daily seasons objective (I'd been saving up the unlocks for this kind of thing instead of using them the moment I got them).

I then logged over to Leviathan, where I had weird server lag problems when trying to transition between areas. It didn't just seem to be me either, as I played a warzone match and everyone else seemed to have issues leaving at the end as well, though it did eventually resolve itself. I then killed the Taris world bosses on both factions, which was nice and easy as lots of people were doing it and it basically took no time at all to find an impromptu group. I did the same circuit (one warzone plus both world bosses) on Tulak Hord, Star Forge and Satele Shan.

On Shae Vizla, I had no luck with warzone pops or world boss groups at this time of night, so I just parked two characters at their locations, visited a Rishi stronghold and did a couple of missions on my trooper.

Day 2 - Wednesday

In the morning I logged into Shae Vizla since I figured that was a better time for group content with the Aussies. I got both world boss kills done, and since level 80 warzones were popping instantly for me, I also played enough matches to complete the weekly. 

After the reset at lunch time, I returned to Shae Vizla to do some questing on my trooper, followed by a Black Talon run with my agent on Leviathan, which counted as 7/15 missions completed.

Later I was supposed to help out with an ops run on Star Forge, but it kinda ended up being cancelled, so the four of us that actually showed up ran a couple of master mode flashpoints instead (in the one week where this wasn't a seasons objective - typical! Still, it counted as ten missions done as a trooper.)

In the evening I first logged into Tulak Hord, where I did a warzone and a couple of missions on my trooper over there. I then spent some time PvPing on Darth Malgus, and finally I did exactly one warzone again on Satele Shan; plus I paid a visit to a Rishi stronghold.

Day 3 - Thursday

I was back in the office so didn't get any play time until relatively late in the evening.

On Leviathan, I visited a Rishi stronghold, did some warzones and killed the Imperial named champions on Corellia. Logging over to Tulak Hord, a single warzone there was enough to get my daily Conquest done, so I left it at that.

I then did some more PvP on Darth Malgus (both warzones and arenas), followed by a few warzones on Star Forge. While in the queue there, I also went around and killed the Republic champion mobs on Corellia. I started doing a couple of missions on my agent on Satele Shan, but it was late and I was tired, so I decided to leave any additional action for the next morning.

Day 4 - Friday

In the morning I logged back into Satele Shan and did an Esseles run on my little trooper there. Because of the Galactic Rampage Conquest objective, this completed her personal Conquest immediately, while also giving me several missions worth of credit towards questing as a trooper or agent. I then logged onto Shae Vizla and continued my trooper's class storyline on Belsavis for a bit.

In the evening I did more PvP on Darth Malgus, which resulted in me completing the arena weekly before it was time for ops. After that I logged into Leviathan where I played exactly one more warzone for the weekly mission (it was a Vandin Huttball in which I rocked by the way). Then I did the same thing on Tulak Hord, except that the match I played there was a Voidstar where we got properly spanked but still won on objectives.

On Star Forge I queued for a few midbie arenas (since this was the only other server where I could get them to pop without too much of a wait), followed by a couple of level 80 warzones on Satele Shan. Finally I did some PvP on Shae Vizla as well, even though I didn't need any more games for seasons there, but the guild I'm in was organising some level 80 warzones and I wanted to take part, so I completed another warzone weekly mission while killing some champion mobs and digging up treasure between matches.

Day 5 - Saturday

I didn't play until after reset, and then I started by going to Leviathan, where I dug up some treasures on my knight and did a few missions on my agent. Later on Tulak Hord, I visited a Rishi stronghold, and since that was my fourth weekly objective, I was immediately close to being done with the daily, so I just hopped over to Corellia and killed the named champs there to get myself over the finish line.

On Satele Shan I did some more missions on my agent, before logging into Shae Vizla to kill the champion mobs on Republic side. I was surprised by how tough this was on my level 74 Sage (my highest level Republic character on the server). I basically spent five minutes kiting Lord Rashal around a nearby pillar, whittling down his health one DoT at a time, until finally someone else showed up and helped to kill him. This was relevant in so far as I'd kind of forgotten at the start of the week that the reason I never did this objective on all servers before was that I never had a high-enough level Imperial character to kill stuff on Corellia. Now my Imps on Leviathan and Satele Shan were in their low forties, which is high enough to go to Corellia, but still low when it comes to killing level 48 champions. I'd been optimistic about my chances since I previously had pretty good experiences while doing the equivalent objective under-levelled on Taris, but my level 74's struggles made me seriously doubt myself.

I wanted to put the matter to the test right away, so I returned to Leviathan and took my level 42 bounty hunter to the first Republic champion on Corellia. Killing any mobs that dismounted me during the trip was definitely a lot slower than usual, but perfectly doable. I was happy when I got to the droid's spawn spot and saw someone else already waiting there. Unfortunately it turned out that person was also in their low forties and clearly waiting for help! Fortunately an 80 came by and took charge, so we were able to leech off their success easily. Unfortunately the trip to the next champion took a while since I didn't have any of the quick travel points unlocked yet, so I arrived just in time to see the 80 port away from the second champion's corpse. Fortunately another 80 was right there when he respawned.

I then re-did the same tour on Tulak Hord, where I'd forgotten that I actually got my Sorc up to 51 already. She killed the droid by herself with no problems whatsoever and would have done the same with Jimmy Weasle if someone else hadn't shown up to contribute some damage near the end. Are the Imperial champions just that much harder than the Republic ones? Let me know your experiences in the comments!

Emboldened by my success, I was going to try my luck soloing the champs on my level 42 Sniper on Satele Shan, but it just so happened that there were always other players present to support her anyway.

In the evening it was time for social ops with my guild on Darth Malgus, and doing Scum and Villainy on 16-man counted as completing four missions as a trooper. I finished the evening by completing the arena weekly in the midbie bracket on Star Forge.

Day 6 - Sunday

In the morning I logged into Shae Vizla and did a few missions on my trooper there, since I hadn't quite hit the Conquest target before getting distracted by the whole thing with the Corellia champions the previous day. This also took me to 7/7 weeklies completed.

In the evening I did a round of Kessan's Landing dailies with Mr Commando, which got me to 7/7 on Darth Malgus as well. On Leviathan, I did some questing on my bounty hunter for the daily - I still needed a few more missions on my agent as well but wanted to work towards my bounty hunter's personal Conquest target first. This was followed by a round of freeing Sobrik on Tulak Hord to get credit towards 15 missions completed as a trooper.

On Star Forge, I continued my trooper's class story on Corellia until I hit 15 missions completed there too, and swung by the remaining two champions as well since I was already in the neighbourhood, taking me to 6/7. Similarly, I did two warzones on my consular on Satele Shan and killed the champions during the wait time between matches, which took me to 5/7 weekly objectives completed.

Day 7 - Monday

In the morning I wanted to quickly catch up on what I had been a bit too tired to finish the previous evening. I did some quests on Shae Vizla for the daily and visited a Rishi stronghold on Star Forge. On Satele Shan I wanted to "quickly" dig up three treasures on Hoth but had the worst luck. The first dig site I visited was inactive, and the second had a guy already there who found the special treasure and depleted it just as I was honing in on my first target (and this was middle of the night for the west coast, FFS). I went to the last remaining site on Hoth in the Glacial Fissure and eventually got my objective done there, but for some reason every single treasure I found was inside a lava flow, which made it a pain to hone in on it without getting my poor guy set on fire. 

In the evening I logged into Leviathan to finish off my last few agent missions, though since I also had some juicy Conquest objectives close to completion, I also played other alts for a bit to easily reach their personal targets for extra rewards. On Tulak Hord I dug up some treasure (less painful in the Outlaw's Den this time) and then did some questing on my inquisitor for the daily Conquest.

On Satele Shan I completed my agent's class story on Tatooine to tick off my daily and last weekly objective, and on the other servers I only needed to do a bit more stuff on alts to finish off the daily objective there too.

Week 6 Thoughts

I had weirdly mixed feelings about this week. On the one hand I was happy to finally see a PvP objective pop back up as part of the regular season, but on the other hand they take ages to complete across all servers (and I was actually quite lucky with wins vs. losses). I think I completed a total of seven warzone weeklies and two arena weeklies this week, which is similar to the kind of craziness I would usually only engage in during a Total Galactic War.

In general there was little overlap between objectives, so getting to 7/7 felt quite time-consuming, no matter which route you decided to take - though again, this is in the context of doing it all on multiple servers. If I had only focused on a single one, it still would've been a breeze.