GS9, Week 4 Thoughts

This week was probably the least fun week of Galactic Season 9 for me so far, though I can't tell for sure whether the objectives were just less fun by themselves or whether my "new season enthusiasm" was slowly starting to wear off. That isn't to say that it was a bad week, just one that felt like it required more effort.

The dynamic encounter planet of the week was Dromund Kaas, which was weirdly enough quite a mixed bag. First off, it required 25 instead of 15 encounter completions again, which I found off-putting, though that didn't prevent me from doing the objective anyway, at least not this early in the season.

More strikingly though, Dromund Kaas was a weird inverse of Ilum last week - as mentioned then, I think the dynamic encounters on the latter are usually somewhat less fun due to the high mob density, so having more people around who were constantly clearing things out actually made everything more pleasant. Dromund Kaas on the other hand has a lot of encounters that are usually quite fun in my opinion... but they just don't scale with large crowds at all. Watching a dozen people all try to be the first to click that one terminal in "Rogue Droid Uprising" would have been funny if it hadn't also been very frustrating. The cherry on top was that this particular encounter has an achievement for clicking the terminal really quickly after getting to that stage of progression - not this week, bucko!

The veteran flashpoint of the week was the first part of the Jedi Prisoner storyline on each faction, which meant running either Taral V or Boarding Party and was another objective I wasn't too thrilled about. The Jedi Prisoner is an interesting storyline, but all the flashpoints involved in it are definitely in the bottom half of my list if I had to rank all flashpoints from best to worst. Gameplay-wise, they're all kind of long and boring, and while there are a lot of mobs that can be skipped, that just makes the whole experience feel a bit unsatisfying in a different way (to me anyway). Also, what's the point of doing Boarding Party if you don't get to confront Captain Yelto at the end?!

Unsurprisingly, my favourite run of this objective was the one I did with Mr Commando, who - despite not having run any flashpoints in what felt like forever - still remembered his exact pulling routine to unlock the Taral V bonus boss in what he felt was the most efficient way possible, which I thought was quite beautiful to behold. As it happened, we also had to pug one dps in that run, and I was a bit worried that we might get someone who'd be annoyed at us not skipping everything to finish the run as quickly as possible. However, we got lucky and got a level 15 who actually seemed quite delighted by the experience, gained six levels throughout the flashpoint and asked us at the end whether we wanted to do another one, which I thought was cute.

Running a master mode flashpoint was also an objective once again, and I was happy to do so on five servers (Shae Vizla is only being left out because I can't get the queue to pop there, even while queueing as tank or healer). My random pops this week were Blood Hunt, Cademimu, Mandalorian Raiders and Assault on Tython times two, which took me up to four runs of the latter this season already.

I'm curious whether that was just pure RNG or whether this is a side effect of the new exclusion rules. I have this theory that people primarily choose to exclude flashpoints from their random queue for three reasons:

1. They're perceived as too hard (e.g. Ruins of Nul, Shrine of Silence).
2. They're perceived as too long (e.g. The Esseles, Directive 7).
3. They're perceived as easy and overfarmed to an annoying degree (e.g. Hammer Station, Athiss).

If all four people that are up next in the queue have excluded five flashpoints for different reasons, that narrows the selection down by quite a lot - and I reckon Assault on Tython may simply be one of those that slips through the net either way, as it's neither faceroll easy nor particularly hard, and not terribly long either (especially if you skip some of the early trash). Has anyone else been seeing more of this one than usual? My hypothesis will need further testing for sure.

As for the other flashpoints, Blood Hunt was largely unremarkable, and Cademimu was the one I did with Mr Commando, which once again meant doing the bonus and just dragging a pug along whether they liked it or not, though they didn't complain about it. It was funny though when the guildie who was our fourth accidentally took the elevator downstairs in the middle of the bonus boss fight. 

That said, the weirdest/most amusing run was probably the Mandalorian Raiders I did on Satele Shan. I noted last week that I'm not a fan of dps running ahead and pulling when I'm the tank, right? Well, in this one there was a Guardian dps who took off like a bat out of hell the moment we zoned in and then kept pulling non-stop. I considered saying something like "you know this is master mode, right" but decided that this would've been too passive-aggressive - but also, I was honestly kind of confused more than anything because of how he kept getting away with it, in the sense that none of the trash seemed to hurt him too badly even when he got all the aggro. I was even starting to wonder whether I'd accidentally queued for veteran mode by mistake.

It wasn't until we killed Braxx the Bloodhound with the healer dead and everyone else on about ten percent health that the Guardian paused and said something along the lines of "I only just realised this is master mode since there were no kolto stations". So that was kind of humorous. He did stop pulling after that, we had a few more mishaps anyway, but ultimately it was all good.

GS9 Flashpointing, Week 3

I wasn't planning to keep a diary of my weekly activities this season - and I guess I'm still not really keeping one, at least not one that involves the level of detail with which I kept Galactic Season diaries in Season 1 and Season 6 - but I do find the weekly flashpoint objectives interesting enough that I keep wanting to take some notes on them.

In general, the third week of Galactic Season 9 was another really pleasant one with multiple easy objectives, to the point that I ended up going 7 out of 7 on all servers. You know it's an easy one when you set yourself a goal to reach a certain objective by the end of the week and end up ticking off several others by accident before you even get there! That's the kind of week it was.

The dynamic encounter planet of the week was Ilum. It's the planet I've ranked as the least fun in terms of dynamic encounters so far, but the reason I did so was that I think many encounters have a high mob density that tends to get in the way of whatever the actual objective is. In a week like this one, where there were plenty of people on Ilum every day, this wasn't nearly as bad as mobs were constantly getting cleared out left and right. Turns out even the rather tedious Fall of Fort Tonvarr can be fun with a sufficiently large crowd of people around.

The featured veteran mode flashpoint of the week was Mandalorian Raiders, which is another relatively easy one. I wonder if all the featured flashpoints will be softballs or whether the devs will make us "graduate" to some of the trickier ones as the season progresses.

Anyway, nothing too noteworthy happened in any of my runs of this particular flashpoint this week, except that in one run where we had particularly high dps (it was a group with multiple level 80s if I recall correctly) the last boss was burned down so quickly that he completely forgot to do any mechanics, just stood there and didn't move until he died. The only downside of this was that this also seemed to bug out his on-screen position, as none of us were able to loot him, always getting the "you can't reach that" error message.

I still remember when at least parts of this flashpoint could be quite deadly, such as if you pushed the last boss himself too quickly and got too many turret adds, but in the one group where this happened it was no problem to survive the turret fire anyway.

Also, the dog trash used to hit so hard, I remember on master mode we'd have to rotate stuns to make sure the tank would survive. I will say though that in runs with lower-level characters, I did notice that ahead of some pulls with multiple dogs, people often suddenly step on the brakes, clearly waiting for someone else to go first and get pounced on (I tended to volunteer).

The more exciting thing were once again the master mode flashpoints though, even if I got a pretty tame selection this week.

On Leviathan I got Hammer Station at last! I'm happy that it took until week three for it to show up in my randoms. Also, we actually killed all the trash to the first boss properly instead of trying to run like headless chickens, which is something I appreciated.

On Tulak Hord I got into a Maelstrom Prison and nearly died on the first pull when I got all the healer aggro just as a guildie was asking me something, but other than that it was smooth. And yes, a guildie was actually online in the largely inactive guild I joined! They asked me to invite an alt of theirs into the guild, so I had them invite two of mine in return after the flashpoint, so I can at last reap a few more Conquest rewards on this server. (Now, if only I knew what to do with my Imps...)

On Star Forge, I did several flashpoints on Swtorista's stream, and we got Nathema Conspiracy and Legacy of the Rakata. In the former, we actually did no skips, and we all agreed that the last boss used to be way harder somehow. In the latter, we wiped once on the bonus boss, oops! But it was all good fun.

On Satele Shan, I once again used my magic tank powers to get an instant pop for a pug. The power is addictive! This time I got into Red Reaper, a flashpoint I hadn't done in ages. A dps Powertech was constantly running ahead, which annoyed me a bit because if you're on a class that can tank and you want to always be the first to charge in, just queue as tank, damn it! These sorts of damage dealers are my least favourite to tank for. Though this one did stop just short of actually trying to pull for me. Fortunately I did still end up remembering all the pulls and skips so I managed to keep up reasonably well. I was really just having tank ego problems here: I got an instant pop and had a smooth run where nobody died, but one of the dps was playing in a manner that was slightly annoying to me, woe is me.

On Darth Malgus, we managed to field two groups for master mode flashpoints after our social ops run on Saturday, which was something I was very happy to see as I've always felt that flashpoints are a great social activity. My group got the Esseles, which I didn't have any particularly strong feelings about at this point, but Mr Commando groaned as it was the third time he'd had to run the Esseles in three weeks. I will note that I think for master modes the cut scene skip is fine by the way, because these were always meant to be a gear grind above anything else.

I'm curious to see what exciting places the group finder will take me next week!

Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 4

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

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

Day 1 - Tuesday

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

Day 2 - Wednesday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 3 - Thursday

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

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

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

Day 4 - Friday

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

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

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

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

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

Day 5 - Saturday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 6 - Sunday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 7 - Monday

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

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

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

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

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

Week 4 - Thoughts

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

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

Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 1

It's been a while since I last posted a detailed diary of my Galactic Seasons exploits - in fact, the last time I did so was almost exactly two years ago in Season 2. I basically stopped writing these posts because I found that the changes to the system after Season 1 made it so much easier to get both the daily and weekly objectives done that I didn't really think it was worth going into detail about how exactly I completed them each day/week.

This was quite a contrast to Season 1, when my blog basically turned into nothing but my Galactic Seasons diary for three months. This was because the first Galactic Season used a very different model that relied a lot on randomised daily objectives and was a lot more demanding of your time. It fills me with a certain degree of amusement now to look back at the time I fretted about whether I could get two rounds of dailies done before having to shoot off to an emergency dental appointment. I mean, that toothache sucked ass, but the circumstances seem funny in hindsight.

Anyway, the reason I decided to give this diary thing another shot this season was that, now that I'm effectively doing seasons on five six servers, it's actually somewhat demanding again, and it's only going to be more so this season with the nerf to the reputation Conquest objective for easy points! I thought it would be interesting to document my journey as it happened once again, and maybe approaching the whole endeavour with more awareness might also help me with not going too crazy pushing myself through too many objectives every week.

I think for clarity it would be good to start by listing all the available weekly objectives for week one as well as my thoughts on them, as my descriptions of my daily play sessions might seem incredibly random otherwise.

• Earn 200k Conquest points: This is one that kind of takes care of itself while you work on other objectives, so pretty much a freebie on all servers.
• Earn the seasonal currency: Same for this one.
• Kill 100 mobs with a tank companion: An easy filler that can be done in a variety of content and stacks well with other objectives; I figured I'd do this one on several servers.
• Kill four named champion mobs on Quesh (2 Republic, 2 Imperial): Not one of my favourites since you have to do a lot of driving around for not much action and minimal Conquest points, plus if you're unlucky there can be quite a bit of wait time for respawns, but it's an objective that's easy enough to do as long as you have a high enough character on both sides of the faction divide.
• Complete 15 missions as a Jedi consular or Sith inquisitor: Wanting to be able to complete these origin story-based objectives is why I have at least four alts on every server now, and it's almost guaranteed to be one of my picks on each of the secondary servers.
• Complete 8 repeatable or side missions and kill 100 mobs on the Outer Rim planets Tatooine, Hoth, Belsavis or Rishi: Another one I choose often as it can be completed easily and in so many different ways, which counters repetition while playing across multiple servers.
• Complete 2 out of 4 selected flashpoints (Mandalorian Raiders, Cademimu, Directive 7, Spirit of Vengeance): I like flashpoints but this objective can be kind of time-consuming compared to others. I'll always pick it on Darth Malgus as an opportunity to play with Mr Commando, but I'll want to limit myself to only doing it on one or two of the other servers.
  
• Kill the Quesh and Nar Shaddaa world bosses: Very easy and rewarding if a group can be found within a reasonable amount of time. Camping them by myself while waiting for a raid to come by gets boring however.
  
• Play 3-6 GSF matches (wins count double): Like the flashpoints, this one's a bit time-consuming, so probably something I'd choose to do on a few servers but not on all of them.
• KotFE chapter 14 on veteran mode or higher: The only objective of the week that I knew I definitely wasn't going to bother with anywhere as I don't enjoy replaying chapters on characters that have already done them.
  
• Kill the Kessan's Landing world boss: Another quick and easy one if a group is available but that "if" does matter.
  

Day 1 - Tuesday

Patch day was an office day for me, which meant that I didn't come home until late, and as soon I had the game patched up it was time to jump into a scheduled operation with my guild. After that I didn't have a lot of time or energy left to work on seasons objectives. I just did a bit of puttering around on alts to earn enough Conquest points to complete the daily seasons objective, such as raising a companion's influence level here and doing a bit of crafting there.

I thought it was interesting that the preview of the first four weeks of seasons objectives didn't include a single one that could be completed in PvP (not counting GSF), which means no overlap between the two seasons for at least a month. In order not to neglect my PvP ambitions right away, I did three warzones on my level 80 dps Juggernaut and won all three. I wish I could just be happy about good luck like that, but since it's so random whether I end up on the winning side or not I always just feel like I'll "pay" for the lucky streak later (by having an equal or worse losing streak).

Since it was late, I wanted to limit my efforts on the other servers to quickly grabbing the daily seasons objective. On Leviathan I did some quests on Korriban on the lowbie Sith inquisitor I created last season, which got me there quite quickly, but I also knew that I didn't actually feel like questing this much on every server that late at night. In the past I would've just popped a reputation token everywhere else to get it over with, but of course that was no longer an option. Through a bit of trial and error I found out that I could still get to the required 25k points on Tulak Hord, Satele Shan and Star Forge with (relatively) minimal effort by using a reputation item, raising a companion's influence, levelling up a crew skill, doing five crew skill missions (they can be low level to make it quick) and placing five stronghold decorations - give or take one or two of the smaller objectives depending on my stronghold bonus on each server and on whether the character is in a guild with any additional bonuses.

On Shae Vizla, I put myself in the queue for warzones and GSF just to see whether the transfers had already made a difference (even though it wasn't prime time for the Aussies) but I had only been in the queue for a few minutes when I saw someone looking for dps for the two weekly world boss objectives. This was too convenient to pass up, so I ended up completing three weekly objectives in quick succession (the two world boss ones plus the one to find blueprint fragments). Ironically, this meant that I unlocked the Copero stronghold on Shae before I did so on Darth Malgus, though it was 1 a.m. for me at that point and I was too tired to even look at it; I just wanted to go to bed.

Day 2 - Wednesday

I tried queueing for warzones and GSF on Shae Vizla again for a bit before the daily reset (which happens at noon in my time zone) since that's closer to APAC prime time and I actually got into a level 80 warzone... though that just ended up being a reminder of why doing PvP with a higher ping can be frustrating, as I jumped out of the starting zone into the pit in Huttball, and then watched - while down there - as an Operative holotraversed up to where I had stood before and scored.

I continued queueing past the reset and got into another warzone and two GSF matches. I won both of the latter, which completed my first GSF weekly mission since Galactic Season 5 and also got me two thirds of the way to the GSF weekly seasons objective. The matches themselves were a bit weird though. In the first one I was top damage, which never happens, and in the second one we had more than twenty self-destructs before either team even had time to capture the first satellite. I actually asked in chat what was going on and someone responded that they were "cycling through ships for Conquest points". (I later saw this behaviour to a lesser degree even in a death match. Just... ow.) Sooo... when the devs inevitably nerf that Conquest objective or change it to require more interaction to get credit for flying a given ship, you'll know whose behaviour is to blame.

In the evening I started my game time by doing some PvP on Darth Malgus. It may surprise some, but in a way I'm actually the least focused on seasons on my home server, because I spend so much time there that objectives will basically get done one way or another. It's the other servers where I really have to work on it to achieve the desired progress. Either way, doing this also completed the 200k Conquest points weekly so that I could finally unlock the new stronghold on Darth Malgus.

After also completing one GSF weekly mission, I decided that it was time to do the rounds on the other servers again. I played two GSF matches on Tulak Hord that were horrible losses and decided that was enough GSF for me for the day. I saw someone talking about world bosses in general chat so asked whether there was a group going and got a whisper in reply that there wasn't one "but why don't we make one?" Turns out that "us" making one meant that the other person sent me a group invite, made me leader and then just sat there expecting me to do the work of getting more people. I tried to LFM a few times but got literally zero responses so just excused myself after a few minutes.

On Leviathan I continued my baby inquisitor's journey across Korriban, and on Satele Shan I did some side questing on Belsavis, since my level 80 consular was already there for his class story anyway. On Star Forge I kept things quick by just doing two dailies on Rishi (which also gave reputation!) using my boosted inquisitor, and then doing a few more clicky things to make up the difference for the daily objective. (This would generally become my MO throughout the week if I didn't quite hit the required number of daily Conquest points with my initial choice of activity, and I didn't always mention it anymore.)

Day 3 - Thursday

Another day at the office meant limited play time once again. Once home, I decided to log into Tulak Hord first this time and arrived just in time for the formation of a world boss group. However, they didn't want to do FR3-D0M for some reason, so I hopped over to Ord Mantell by myself just to check whether anyone was doing the boss there at all. One (1) guy from the previous world boss group showed up too and decided to pull. I'd heard that FR3-D0M was technically soloable, but technically and practically are two very different things, so I was unsure how we would do with just the two of us, but we killed the boss just fine.

I logged into Leviathan to keep an eye on fleet chat there while eating dinner in case I could catch another world boss group. However, there wasn't much going on there, so I eventually relocated to Quesh to see whether I could leech off any passing guild groups that were there to kill the world boss, but had no luck on that front either. I just learned that like Gargath, the Rogue Cartel Warbot doesn't move until you get too close to him. His personal cut-off between caring and not caring about your presence is at 70m.

I decided to leave Leviathan for now and played a GSF match and two warzones on Darth Malgus before returning to doing the rounds on the rest of the other servers. On Star Forge I did another two Rishi dailies, and on Satele Shan my consular did some more side-questing on Belsavis. Back on Leviathan, I decided to return to my little inquisitor, who only killed like five mobs on Korriban before triggering the "gain five levels" Conquest objective - I was happy to take the easy win for the day and moved on to Shae Vizla for the evening.

I unlocked the stronghold there and put my warrior in the queue for GSF, warzones and flashpoints, but got impatient when nothing popped within ten minutes, so I ended up swapping to my consular to do some side-questing on Tatooine instead.

Day 4 - Friday

Since there was a login reward of eight seasons points for four consecutive days of logins this week, this meant that after the daily reset on Friday I was able to unlock the Copero stronghold on all servers that day, even where I hadn't completed many objectives yet.

I tried queueing for some activities on Shae Vizla around lunch time again (mostly keeping the game in the background while doing something else) but only got one warzone pop in over an hour of waiting. After the daily reset I saw someone put together a group for the Dromund Kaas world boss, which I decided to join for easy daily objective completion (plus I had the weekly world boss quest on 3/4). Just as I was thinking about logging off again, I got a GSF pop though, which allowed me to complete the GSF seasons objective and another weekly mission.

In the evening I did some PvP and a couple more GSF matches on Darth Malgus before it was time for ops with my guild team again. Afterwards I did some more PvP before finally switching to Star Forge. There was a world boss group forming in general chat there, so I jumped right in and was able to tick those two weekly objectives off on this server too. I then just hopped over onto my inquisitor to do two more dailies on Rishi.

After that I returned to the Leviathan and finished off the last few quests on Korriban to get credit for my 15 missions done as an inquisitor, before switching to my level 80 knight and killing the two named Imperial champion mobs on Quesh.

It wasn't that late for a Friday, but I was tired so decided to leave the dailies on Satele Shan and Tulak Hord for the next morning.

Day 5 - Saturday

Ah, the weekend! I logged into Satele Shan in the morning and first checked general chat on the fleet to see whether there were any world boss groups going on, but there was just some paragraphs-long discussion about philosophy and science, so I continued my consular's questing on Belsavis once more. Within a matter of minutes, I ticked off four weekly objectives in a row: Outer Rim missions, questing as a consular, playing with a companion set to tank, and finding currency. I love it when things line up like that, and this also sorted my Conquest for the day with ease.

After that I hopped over to Tulak Hord and did a GSF match there, which completed my trooper's GSF weekly mission and the daily seasons objective. Having achieved my goals much quicker than expected, I logged into Shae Vizla to queue for some PvP and was happy to complete a warzone weekly mission there for the first time since PvP Season 4 ended.

Later in the afternoon, after the daily reset had happened, I logged into my knight on Leviathan and started doing some exploration missions on Tatooine while also putting myself into the queue for all four flashpoints eligible for the seasons objective. I got a pop for veteran mode Cademimu after a while, which pushed me over the number of Conquest points needed for the daily objective.

Next I went to Tulak Hord and put myself in the GSF queue on my trooper while getting started on the Tatooine bonus series. I got a pop about halfway through it and won the match, which completed that seasons objective and my Conquest for the day, however due to the bonus series being known to bug out if you pause halfway through, I pushed on to complete it the same afternoon anyway. This completed the Outer Rim missions and questing with a tank companion objectives, making Tulak Hord the first server on which I was on 7/7 weeklies completed for the week.

Checking in on Star Forge, I did two more Rishi dailies on my inquisitor and completed her weekly Conquest target, but I noted that this hadn't really advanced me all that much throughout the Outer Rim objective since while I had done eight missions, they'd been so easy that I'd only killed fewer than thirty mobs. Since I don't like just grinding mobs without a purpose, I made a note to myself to tackle the requirements for the remaining, only partially completed objectives on other characters over the next two days.

On Satele Shan, I consulted my missions spreadsheet and realised that my consular had never done the Directive 7 story, so I decided to do that flashpoint on story mode for a triple whammy of story, seasons and progression of the first quest you get in the Copero villa (more on that another time).

In the evening it was time for my guild's social night on Darth Malgus, which helped me tick off the two world boss objectives there before we launched ourselves into an operation. Afterwards Mr Commando and I conscripted two damage dealers to run D7 and Spirit of Vengeance on master mode for another seasons objective. After that I was properly conked out and went off to enjoy an early night.

Day 6 - Sunday

I started my Sunday morning by logging into Shae Vizla and continuing my side-questing on my consular on Tatooine. She was effectively working on three objectives at once that way, but I only needed two more for the week. The Outer Rim and companion tank ones completed way before I would have hit 15 missions as a consular, which made Shae Vizla the second server on which I completed 7/7 objectives for the week.

As this meant that I was caught up with daily objectives for the current reset, I decided to return to Star Forge and do some work on the consular missions objective on my newest baby alt there. Being only level 2, she wasn't going to contribute to Conquest anyway. Breezing through the early Tython quests, she hit the 15 missions completed (keeping in mind my boosted inquisitor had already done 8 missions on Rishi as well) by level 7.

I returned to the game in the late afternoon/early evening. Starting on Leviathan, I logged into my level 34 bounty hunter and travelled to Quesh to kill the two named Republic champions there. At 34, he was a bit low for the planet, but my experiences on Taris last season taught me that this wasn't really a problem. I did however arrive just in time to see someone quick travel away from the first champion's corpse, so that I had to wait for him to respawn. On my way to the second one, I saw a level 80 zoom past me as I got dismounted by a group of weak mobs and quietly went "nooo" in my head as I figured that he'd also kill the second champion just before I could get there, but I managed to catch up in time to get a few hits for credit in. After that I continued to putter around a bit longer for Conquest purposes, which pushed me over the 200k weekly objective.

On Tulak Hord, there wasn't much to do since I was done with the weekly objectives, but since I had invaded small yield with the two-person guild again, I had incentive to still fill that bar up as well. Fortunately I had a half-finished GSF weekly mission in my log, so one GSF win later I was done with my daily Conquest and the guild's Conquest target was most of the way there as well.

On Darth Malgus, I played two warzone matches to complete another character's warzone weekly and knocked out all four champion mobs on Quesh to get myself to 7/7 seasons objectives on my home server at last.

I continued on to Star Forge, where after some contemplation in regards to what I could do to complete my remaining weekly objectives while minimising boring repetition, I decided to do the Hoth bonus series on my trooper. It had been so many years since I'd last done it, I literally couldn't remember a thing about it at first, though some bits started to sound familiar once I got going. When I got to the mission about the Onderonian beast-lord I literally shouted "oh snap" out loud, much to the consternation of Mr Commando, since I had never realised that the blackmail you can use on Akoru as an Imperial during Onslaught isn't just made up, but based on this actual quest chain. Ahh, this game is still so good, you guys! Anyway, that finished my companion questing and Outer Rim missions objectives, leaving me with just a smidge more Conquest points to gain for both my personal target and the 200k Conquest points objective, but I decided to leave that for Monday.

On Satele Shan, I decided that after playing nothing but my consular there all week, I should give some love to my level 62 knight instead, so I had her kill the Imperial Quesh champions and put her in the queue for vet mode Cademimu and Mandalorian Raiders. She quickly got into a run for the former, which was fast and smooth. I then sent my level 38 agent to kill the Republic targets on Quesh, and with that Satele Shan was on 7/7 weeklies completed too.

Shae Vizla was already done as per my earlier paragraph about questing in the morning, and I had the Taskmaster Conquest objective for sub-80 characters sitting at a partial completion of 9/10, so I basically just had to make my Jedi do a companion mission for Qyzen to tick it over and that was that done for the day as well.

Day 7 - Monday

With four out of six servers sitting on 7/7 and the other two being as good as done too, there fortunately wasn't too much left to do. On Darth Malgus, Star Forge and Tulak Hord I completed my daily objective with some clickies and a bit of puttering around. On Star Forge this also completed the 200k Conquest points weekly objective for me, and on Tulak Hord it achieved my guild's small yield Conquest target.

Leviathan was where I had the most work left to do, as I needed one more flashpoint plus a bit more questing on Tatooine to wrap up my last three weekly objectives, plus my bounty hunter had (unintentionally) gotten really close to reaching his personal Conquest target the previous day, so I wanted to make that tick over as well. The latter was easily achieved by having him do a bit of story questing on Balmorra. After that, I got back on my knight and queued for all seasonal flashpoints on both difficulties again, which got me into veteran mode Mandalorian Raiders this time. It was another uneventful run, except that someone asked to "focus boss" on the last encounter, which is not usually a good idea... as it turns out, you can indeed burn him down before the turrets kill you nowadays, but I still didn't see the benefit as the turrets don't despawn and you can't exit in combat, so you need to run around and still kill them all afterwards anyway. A few more Tatooine exploration missions later, another personal Conquest target was achieved, as well as 7/7 season weeklies.

This just left the daily objective on Satele Shan and Shae Vizla, and I took care of that on both servers by completing Conquest on an alt each.

Week 1 Thoughts

Well, that whole "not going too crazy with the playing on multiple servers" thing didn't quite work out, did it? Seeing how I pushed myself to completing 7/7 weeklies on all six of them once again. In fairness, this week had a lot of very easy objectives, several of which could be completed in multiple ways, so it was honestly just pretty fun. I do think that based on the information we've been given, I'll want to take it easier in week two since the objectives on offer will be different.

Pugging on Tulak Hord

It's been a while since I had a good pug tale to tell! However, as part of my efforts to work my way through Galactic Season 2 on servers other than Darth Malgus, I've also found myself running some veteran flashpoints there. I was curious whether there were going to be noticeable differences in "pug culture" among servers, but so far I haven't really noticed anything particularly remarkable... except for the fact that both of the veteran flashpoint runs I've had on the German server Tulak Hord have been weird AF.

First my levelling Commando healer got into an Esseles with three level 80s, two of whom were in a guild together. I can't say that I loved getting that particular flashpoint as my random at that point in time, but whatever. I expected everyone to start space-barring immediately, but the first conversation lasted suspiciously long... I was starting to wonder whether people on this server were just generally in the habit of watching the cut scenes when someone asked to skip after all and I was like: "Ahh, of course!"

The request was met with a sort of partial compliance, as conversations seemed to pass noticeably faster but still took a while, as if someone was watching at least a few lines play out every time. In general, everyone's behaviour just seemed ever so slightly odd. Aside from the initial greetings, only a few words were said in chat that made absolutely no sense to me and which made me wonder whether someone was drunk or I was missing some important context (such as the guildies talking to each other in guild chat).

At points there was some erratic running around as if people didn't know where to go or really wanted to have a closer look at the scenery. I suppose it could've been some people's first time, though I'd consider it slightly unusual for a group of 80s to have never done the Esseles. At one point the guy who wasn't in the guild with the others initiated a vote kick on one of the other two without providing a reason. I voted no and it failed due to insufficient votes (I didn't think the other guy was going to vote to kick his guildie either).

We made it through the instance without any real issues, but the slightly off-kilter behaviour made me glad to be out of there. I figured that it was just a weird group as you just get them sometimes on any server and that hopefully my next run on Tulak Hord was going to be better.

Spoiler: It was not!

This time I got into Mandalorian Raiders with a group of levellers: a Guardian tank in his 20s, an Operative in his 30s and a Vanguard in his 50s. The Guardian and Vanguard were in the same guild. I saw the group makeup and instantly realised that a group of levellers was going to make things slower and more challenging, but at the same time we had both a tank and a healer (me) so it should still be relatively easy, right?

It immediately became apparent that the two guildies didn't really know where to go, though the Operative seemingly did and tried to lead the way. On our way to the first boss the two guildies ran off into random side rooms on two occasions that I didn't even remember existed, and we could only just prevent them from doubling back entirely. I was already noticing that dps seemed low and that I was getting aggro on a fair number of mobs but I didn't think too much of it yet.

That changed when we got to Braxx the Bloodhound and not only did I end up tanking him for most of the fight, the fight also took forever. As I was running in circles clicking the kolto stations and bemoaning my life choices to Mr Commando (who told me that I only had myself to blame), I started looking a bit more closely at what my group mates were doing and noticed that the Guardian had a permanently filled focus bar - he wasn't using any abilities other than his basic attack! I also found myself wondering whether the boss was going to hit some sort of enrage eventually because of how long we were taking, but the answer seemed to be no. He eventually died after more than seven minutes - longer than many ops boss fights.

On the next few trash pulls I noticed that the Operative's energy bar was also barely moving, and that he spent his entire time shooting from range with his basic attack (for those not in the know, Operative is a melee class).

On the enemy boarding party encounter I ended up tanking most of the mobs yet again, and by the time only two of them were left alive I got sick of it and started kiting them around one of the containers in the room to reduce my damage taken. Fortunately it wasn't that high anyway, but I didn't see why I should just stand there and let them smack me in the face just because nobody else was doing anything resembling tanking. Sure, it meant that the others had to run in circles behind me too, but it's not as if they didn't have the option to actually take aggro...

Between the second and third boss there is this one section where you cross a bridge and on it there are two patrolling droids as well as several adds that can spawn in depending on where you enter combat. I watched with some horror as my clueless protegés pulled absolutely everything and then the two guildies jumped or fell off the bridge onto the level below as well. I just stood there and healed myself while the Operative did some meagre dps from range. Eventually the other two, who had survived the fall on low health, managed to run back up and rejoin us. I thought it was a minor miracle that we didn't wipe, though the Operative got downed towards the end.

And so it just continued for the rest of the run. Another memorable moment was when we went down the big lift and I found myself wondering whether I could perhaps make things easier for myself by crowd-controlling one of the three silver mobs at the bottom... but nope, as if the rest of the group had read my mind, they fanned out perfectly to each engage one enemy on their own and duel it to death in the slowest way possible.

I guess one good thing about terrible damage dealers is that them not knowing the tactics for the last boss didn't wipe us, because while the two guildies did attack the boss initially, their damage was worthless and they did listen to the instruction to focus on the turrets eventually, so that we did not trigger any premature jumps.

When we finished I felt both relieved and oddly giddy that we had actually made it through somehow. I'm not sure that group would've made it very far without a healer (aka me) or at least an otherwise very strong and competent player carrying them through, but we'd succeeded, even if it had been an extremely slow and in parts quite painful journey.

I just hope that pugs on Tulak Hord aren't always like this...

Flashpoint Levelling: Halfway There?

Nautalie the Shadow's levelling journey through the group finder continues.

Hammer Station
I levelled: 46-47

After several weeks of not seeing the place, I didn't mind getting it quite so much this time.

This group almost would have gone down as my first one where nobody said a single word, as nobody responded to my greeting at the beginning of the run, but then someone suddenly typed "hello" in chat halfway through the instance for some reason.

That, and our tank told us to just run past the turrets before the bridge, a tactic I'd read about somewhere but hadn't seen in action for a while (or ever? not sure now). It worked, but also meant that the tank almost died on the trash pulls afterwards, as we were unable to get out of combat to regenerate and nobody had any healing abilities. Also, at the end people had to commit suicide by hurling themselves off the platform since you can't exit while stuck in combat. Another prime example of how to make things unnecessarily complicated just to avoid killing two mobs if you ask me.

I also found it interesting that while the tank did a great job at rounding up mobs and holding aggro, she didn't seem to have much of a survival instinct. I watched closely on the Tunneler to see if she'd take the two steps to the side to click the kolto station next to her, but she didn't and only survived the first laser due to her Life Warden tactical proccing. After that I started clicking them for her.

Also, as an aside, for the last four or five runs all the personal loot I'd been getting was gear that required level 48 to wear, which I found funny. It formed a proper pile in my inventory by that point, since I couldn't put any of it on yet.

Hammer Station
I levelled: 47-49

I suppose I had been pushing my luck with all those times I queued without deselecting Hammer Station. At least this was a fairly uneventful and pleasant run with no weird behaviour from anyone and a group that was just tearing through the flashpoint as one happy wrecking ball. I felt smug about once again ending up tanking the Tunneler against three level 75 damage dealers without having used any taunts (while also taking care of my own health clicking kolto stations, as you do).

Hammer Station
I levelled: 49-50

By this point I knew that I really had to go back to making sure that Hammer Station wasn't part of my random selection. At least it was another solid group of 75s, with a healer who actually healed and dps who managed to generate more aggro than me. The only thing that detracted from my personal satisfaction was that it was another group that decided to just run past the turrets by the bridge, getting us stuck in combat for the remainder of the flashpoint.

I also got some level 65 green gear for some reason. I think I must have won the roll on some random loot.

Mandalorian Raiders
I levelled: 50-51

I made sure to unselect Hammer Station for this run, which fortunately did not prevent me from getting a pop within literal seconds. The group I got consisted entirely of mid-level damage dealers like me. I was also auto-granted the weekly to do five veteran flashpoints, as level 50 is apparently the first time you can pick that up.

The Commando in the group was very adept at turning everything into a corner pull, which I found admirable... but he was also impatient, rarely waiting for people to fully heal up before he ran into the next pull, which was less admirable. I also noticed that he was the only person rolling need on all the crafting drops...

I have to admit I felt somewhat vindicated when we wiped on Braxx after the Commando once again ran in without paying attention where everyone else was and promptly died within five seconds. This wipe also led to the only comments from fellow group members throughout the entire run (nobody replied to my hi or thanks), as one guy went "...." and another commented that "no way we're doing this shit". I half expected that one to drop out at that point, but we just tried again and the next attempt went perfectly. (Shocking, that one wipe isn't an indicator of utter failure!)

Nobody said anything before we pulled Mavrix either, and the Sentinel in the group stayed on the boss the entire time, but fortunately his dps wasn't enough to push the boss through before the rest of us could take out the turrets.

Not a terrible run by any means, but I've got to say the general attitude on display got a thumbs-down from me.

Mandalorian Raiders
I levelled 51-52

Another day of queuing for everything but Hammer Station, another instant pop, another group of four dps for Mando Raiders. Meh.

This group was fun though. They didn't talk much either, but at least everyone said hi and bye. The other Shadow in the group and I facilitated a lot of trash skips by doubling up on crowd control, which I didn't mind in this case and didn't find annoying at all since it required us to co-ordinate, which is actually fun to me (as opposed to people impatiently tapping their feet waiting for the newbie to get some awkward jump just right).

They were also the happiest kolto clickers ever. I've previously said that I often adopt the role of quasi-healer since nobody else seems to have sufficient awareness of their own health and of when they should be clicking on a kolto station, but this group was happily running laps around the room clicking each one almost as soon as it came off cooldown. In a fight with fewer stations that could have been problematic, but fortunately there is no shortage of kolto on the Allusis.

On the Imperial strike team I once again became witness to a slightly different strategy, because while people killed things in the order I expected, there was no dps split on the last two so that the agent was still on full health when the bounty hunter died. I worried a little that we might be done for, but the guy with aggro just ran away and hid behind some crates, and for some reason the agent wasn't too bothered by this and just kept vaguely firing in his direction while the rest of us killed him. The more you pug, the more you learn.

Half Time

With 23 levels left to go I reckon I'm at around the halfway point, so I decided to do a little tally of how it's been going so far. I've run a total of 24 flashpoints, and 10 of them (or 42%!) have been Hammer Stations. Not exactly an exciting amount of variety, which I think is the main reason I've been dragging my feet a little. Both Tessal's and Pugette's levelling journeys felt like exciting adventures, never knowing what the group finder would spit out next, while poor Nautalie is just becoming an expert in asteroid-throwing battle stations. That's what I get for wanting to find out what life's like for the "average" pugger I guess! Still, I'm committed to finishing this so I can do a proper round-up once she hits 75. Another 24 flashpoints or so to go I guess?

Hammer Station No More

Let's ring in the new year with an update on my Nautolan Shadow's progress levelling through flashpoints.

Hammer Sta... Kuat Drive Yards!
I levelled: 38-40

As it was the start of a new week I queued for the full selection of available flashpoints once again, expecting to be thrown into Hammer Station for this transgression (when the queue popped I could see that we had a level 17 in the group so it couldn't have been anything other than that, Kuat or Athiss), but I got Kuat again! Yay!

In this one I was actually the highest level, grouped with two Sentinels and another Shadow below me. The Shadow was the lowest level and admitted that it was her first time in a flashpoint of any kind. Poor thing got lost at the very beginning as she couldn't even find the elevator but I showed her the way.

We got the Starship Assembly first and things went well enough, except for one or two deaths, which I consider fairly normal in a low-level group with no healer. But one of the Sentinels clearly wasn't happy, as (from what I could tell) he started swearing in Polish after dying once. Then he jumped into another big pull all on his own while the rest of the group was still low on health from the previous fight, died shortly thereafter and finally quit the group.

I re-queued us for a replacement unfazed and tried to actually do the puzzle properly since neither of the two lowbies seemed to know what to do and were therefore unlikely to interfere, but I messed it up and picked the wrong options anyway. D'oh! A level 75 Shadow joined the group just as we finished the section.

The second part was the hangar, and I'm happy to say that for once we completed all the bonuses in that one!

The final boss was Lieutenant Krupp again. I explained what to do and everyone executed things perfectly so that we got him down on the first try. Afterwards I stayed grouped with the newbie Shadow for a bit longer and she told me that she played other MMOs but had only just got started on SWTOR. She also said that she'd had fun in the flashpoint and added me as a friend. Warm fuzzies all around!

Hammer Sta... Taral V!
I levelled: 40-42

My initial enthusiasm for these runs diminished a lot after the first week, which made me log in to work on this project more infrequently, but being ill for a few days caused me to take a break for a full week, so that I soon found myself with the weekly quest yet again. Again I braved the full random selection and did not get Hammer Station - instead I found myself getting sent to Taral V, which was handy as I had the story quest for it too.

Taral V is one of those places where I always struggle with the majority's desire to skip as much as possible, but this time around I decided to take it easy and go with the flow. The other dps was a Nautolan Sage, and we had a level 75 tank and healer, so I let the tank lead us past most trash and bonus objectives, just doing their thing. The only skip that stung a bit was Doctor Zharan, whom I consider a very fun boss and I always expect him to drop loot (though I later verified that he doesn't), but I didn't say anything either way. At least with full restedness I still gained two levels despite all the skips.

Ha... Mandalorian Raiders
I levelled: 42-43

Third time in a row that I queued for everything and didn't get Hammer Station! Is the madness finally over? Even better, I got another flashpoint that Nautalie hadn't done yet.

This was another all-dps group, consisting of me, a level 75 Guardian and Commando, and a level 41 Sage. Contrary to expectations, the 75s didn't seem entirely sure what to do and were initially very hesitant to make the pulls, despite of it being the most sensible thing for them to do considering our level distribution. The Commando also ran off into completely the wrong direction (which is to say backwards) after we took the shortcut involving the elevator. Meanwhile the Sage seemed to be the one person who knew what they were doing... never judge your pugs by their level!

The first boss was the usual crazy mess (though nobody died) and it was once again mostly down to me to click kolto stations. I'm coming to appreciate that it really is an art, knowing when to click these, in particular that you need to start thinking about doing it before you're almost dead.

The Boarding Party was interesting in so far as I swear that I've killed its members in the same order pretty much since the dawn of time (warrior, inquisitor, then agent and bounty hunter more or less simultaneously), but as usual pugs are great at providing new experiences. I didn't actually know what would happen if you changed the order... as it was, the group actually left Rotham for last and he promptly one-shot the Sage with a Force choke from hell the moment all his friends were dead. Good thing I had been hitting him at least, so he didn't have that much health left.

Considering how it had been going I made sure to highlight the rule not to attack the final boss while turrets are up, and fortunately everyone was compliant in that regard so that we downed Mavrix Varad himself with no problems.

Ha... Cademimu
I levelled: 43-45

This was a run with three level 75s, two Sentinels and a healing Sage. Considering that, it was still harder than expected. The Sage was one of those odd healers where I'm never quite sure what they are doing, because he was obviously healing specced and I could see him cast healing spells, but somehow we were still all on half health even on the most mundane of pulls. On two of the bosses I had to click a kolto station because I was about to die from a complete lack of any incoming heals, just to get yanked away from it right afterwards by the very same Sage as if I he as annoyed at me daring to keep myself alive. Very odd.

I learned two new trash-skipping tricks, both of which failed and generally (as these things so often are) seemed way more hassle than simple killing the mobs we were trying to bypass. But I guess it's still interesting to know to what lengths people will go to in places to avoid killing one more mob.

Finally, on the last boss the healer died to rocket fire and then tried to tell us what to do while lying dead on the floor. One of the Sentinels died as well, but me and the other Sent finished the boss off just fine with just the two of us. It was just one of those groups that kind of grated on me despite of nothing going terribly wrong - I just didn't really like the juxtaposition of the dps being in a hurry and wanting to skip everything with a healer who came across as having a pretty high opinion of himself while doing very little healing.

Ha... Kuat Drive Yards again
I levelled: 45-46

And fifth time in a row that I didn't get Hammer Station! Though it was Kuat again, but then I'm not really tired of that one yet. This run was already in progress and halfway through the Starship Assembly when I joined. It didn't look to me like they were going for any of the bonuses, but when I saw the elite defender just sitting in a corner I asked whether we should kill it, and while I got no verbal reply someone else immediately charged it, so yay for communication I guess? As there was some dithering about the actual starship assembly I started to wonder whether they were actually trying to solve it, but the prototype turned out to be a failure as usual.

The second half was the prison wing, which we also blasted through in short order. This time the elite defender just kind of sat in the way of one of our objectives anyway, so I didn't even ask before charging it. I was happy to get all three bonus missions done for once!

We finished up with Lord Modo and I defaulted to clicking the kolto stations again, but this time it was more out of habit than due to a feeling that we were all going to die if I wasn't looking after our health. I haven't mentioned it yet, but this party also consisted of three level 75 damage dealers (two geared, one not) but for once the effect was actually as expected, which is to say that everything melted in short order.

I'm up to having nine flashpoints unlocked and not far off unlocking more at this point, so hopefully I'll be able to keep queuing for a random without being put into Hammer Station all the time anymore. It's certainly more fun to see some variety.

Pugging with Shintar: Venturing Into Master Modes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.