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 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!

Republic Saboteur, Part 1

When Bioware first added the option to the game to sabotage your old faction after KotET, I was not ready for it. All my most progressed characters were simply way too loyal to their faction!

It took me until last year to finally get my Imperial double agent up to the point where I could start making saboteur choices on Ossus and beyond. I wrote about the experience in a series of posts here, here and here.

Of course, after that, the next step was going to be to be repeat the exercise on Republic side, which required me to get yet another character caught up to the relevant point in the story. The choice fell on my somewhat dark-sided smuggler Racelle, since I always pictured her as quite chaotic and enjoying personal power. I figured she would view it as liberating to break free from her old ties to the Republic, and to be fair, Acina and the Empire did help her during KotET...

Getting her up to Iokath was very slow though, and by the time I finally got there I was baffled when a piece of dialogue reminded me that she had romanced Theron. He must be my most-romanced companion at this point; I just can't resist flirting with him on the blaster-wielding ladies... on re-evaluation, I figured that the two of them probably weren't going to be a good match, but then, even a somewhat dark-sided, chaotic smuggler can have a soft spot, right?

Interestingly, when my bounty hunter who had also romanced Theron reached Iokath, that felt like a reason to side with the Republic there for the sake of his dad, but on my smuggler I had no such compulsion, even though she was also dark side and in a romance with Theron. Instead, she seemed to take the obvious cue that Theron didn't actually seem to like his dad very much, and saw it as just one more justification to turn her back on the Republic. Though that then led to her having to watch her beloved Theron get upset when his dad died, which was not a combo of events I had really anticipated seeing.

Up next was the traitor arc, which I'll admit was really tricky to decide on in this instance. My bounty hunter had turned her back on Theron on this occasion, but I felt that despite her chaotic nature, my smuggler wasn't quite that cold. When he asks you whether he can stay with the Alliance at the end, I actually selected "no" at first but then escaped out and changed my mind. Turns out this smuggler just had to forgive him... even I didn't see that coming.

In the Nathema Conspiracy, I was kind of disappointed by the way that this smuggler also got the dialogue with Master Sumalee at the end, just like my light-side smuggler did. Based on a quick Google search, there seems to be some disagreement on how exactly you trigger the alternate variant.

Anyway, Ossus was next and I got to start sabotaging in earnest. First you damage the water pumps in the Jedi base, then you plant an extra bomb in the cave with the Geonosians to make sure it collapses completely and no artefacts can be preserved (I think that's what the sabotage is about anyway, considering the loyalist version is to save some relics) and you steal the Jedi's farming data in a somewhat blatant way as it's handed to you directly and then when someone asks about it later you go "oh, but it was corrupted". Just a little suspicious I think...

Interestingly, unlike on Imperial side I didn't really get any vibes that the ending monologue sounded noticeably more pessimistic than for non-saboteurs. I went back to compare the loyalist and saboteur ending cinematics on YouTube just to make certain, and the overall sentiment really wasn't that different. There is some disappointment about the lost farming data and some of the escaping shuttles being snatched up by Imperials, but the overall vibe is still one of "yay, we got the Jedi back and we'll totally show the Empire".

During Hearts and Minds I confessed about the sabotage to Theron and he took it surprisingly well! I mean, he was taken aback and didn't like it, but also assured my smuggler that it didn't affect his love for her, plus he seemed to be more worried about how taxing the whole double agent business can be than anything else (based on everything that happened during Fractured Alliances).

The saboteur version of the interview with Alec Ranin was a hoot as expected - I especially loved the bit where the camera pans to your character and they just break into a big goofy grin, and how when Alec asks whether you have any last words, my smuggler said: "I really like your boots!" A true TV natural.

Onderon starts the same way for Republic characters as for Imperials, with a space battle where as a saboteur you let the enemy get away instead of shooting them down.

Interestingly, I found the first act of sabotage on Onderon much more convincing on Republic side than on Imperial, where you just mysteriously fail to press the right button at a crucial moment. After all, Republic side has you reacting to Darth Savik's attack on Iziz, and when you get to the point where you would usually stop the cannons from firing at the fleet, you just pretend that you were simply too late. Much more believable!

This means that all but a few of the Republic ships above Onderon are destroyed, and surprisingly little fanfare is made about it compared to what happens on Imperial side regardless of outcome. After that, there isn't really much sabotaging left to do, as you hunt down Darth Savik just like a loyalist would and there are no options to try to be nice to her (not that it would matter as she has a personal grudge against you).

All in all, my first impressions of the Republic saboteur path so far are that it feels surprisingly more subtle than the Imperial version, but also less impactful somehow. On Ossus, stealing the farming data for the Empire is a decent win I guess, but ultimately the Republic still wins the day no matter what you do. And on Onderon your sabotage is simultaneously much more believable, but also kind of downplayed in the story as you quickly shrug and move on to chasing down Darth Savik. I'm curious to see whether these vibes will stay the same or start to change as my sabotage continues. Read more in part 2.

Imperial Saboteur, Part 1

Ever since Jedi Under Siege introduced the concept of loyalist vs. saboteur (the faction switch on Iokath was treated as more of a one-off before that), I've been curious to see the saboteur story options for myself - problem was, all my most advanced characters in terms of story were pretty loyal to their faction and I couldn't see any of them going down that path.

So I've slowly been chipping away at progressing more suitable saboteur characters through the story as a sort of side project... and the other week I finally reached the crucial point on my Imperial agent Corfette, the Sniper who became a double agent for the Republic during her class story - is there a more natural fit for the role of Imperial double agent?

What follows are my impressions of this path up to the end of Onderon, so consider this your spoiler warning for that content.

First off, I gotta say that it felt a bit odd to return to the Empire as a saboteur after openly siding with the Republic on Iokath. Paradoxically it actually felt better to return to being an Imperial loyalist after betraying them on Iokath on my bounty hunter, whose loyalties were always a bit questionable and for whom Iokath had been a somewhat impulsive decision based on a dislike for Acina's scheming and being in a relationship with Theron at the time.

On my agent however, who had previously been assisting the Republic undercover, Iokath was almost a sort of "coming out", and to then go back into the Imperial closet so to speak felt weird and like my old faction would obviously be suspicious of me now.

Incidentally, on Nathema I was confronted by the former Watcher Two, who did not look kindly upon my involvement with the Republic, despite of everything I'd done for her on Rishi.

Anyway, so the start of Ossus felt a bit awkward, but it seemed easy enough to slide back into the old agent patterns, what with Darth Malora expressing distaste for my character and the option to commiserate with Major Anri about the moods of Sith superiors.

I'd previously been told that Ossus wasn't that different for a saboteur vs. a loyalist and I would say that's broadly true. The bonus mission at the start is to sabotage the Imperial fighters instead of giving them a boost, and when it comes to the Jedi farming data, you tell Major Anri that it's not really your focus while secretly passing it on to the Republic. The main events stay the same however.

Interestingly, the wrap-up at the end sounds very pessimistic compared to the optimism a loyalist gets presented with, with the implied justification being that your small acts of sabotage made the whole mission way too costly. However, it doesn't really feel different, because the base still gets shot up by a Republic attack either way and the damage doesn't look any different as far as I could tell, even if it gets talked about in very different ways.

During Hearts and Minds, I told Theron about my saboteur status and he actually commented: "So it's true what Shara said on Nathema", which made me squee except that I thought it was it a bit odd that Theron would be on a first-name basis with my former Imperial colleague whom he saw exactly once.

I was also happy to choose the saboteur option for the speech at the end of the mission, which was pretty hilarious in that you're not saying anything that's obviously meant to be detrimental towards morale, you just come across as being absolutely abysmal at giving speeches. After the repeated air punching while yelling "Empire!" over and over again, you're basically quietly escorted away, and Doctor Oggurobb sends you a message in the mail later to suggest having you checked for Geonosian brain worms. (Nice reference!)

Onslaught starts with your character being involved in this little space battle, and I was pleased to see that as a saboteur, you don't end up killing the Republic fighter you're engaged with but let them get away.

The mission on Onderon initially goes exactly the same as on a loyalist, what with ingratiating yourself with King Petryph and enlisting the aid of the Untamed. But then! When you're at the point where you'd usually use the cannons in Iziz to shoot down the Republic fleet, you can pretend that they're not working. (Your character gets a very over-the-top smirk on their face as they do this - you won't survive long as a saboteur if you make faces like that every time you successfully perform some sort of sabotage! I just thought it was funny.)

Savik frets but doesn't panic quite as much as I would have expected and tells you to at least get to the throne room to help King Petryph. And here I got the opportunity to just shoot him and leave Senator Nebet be, which is exactly what I did! To be honest this is an option I've kind of wanted to have even on my loyalists sometimes, simply because it seemed like it could be useful to capture a Republic leadership figure that isn't a complete idiot.

Then I got back to base and Malgus absolutely lost it with Savik for failing, going instantly into remote Force choke mode, at which point you get the option to suggest whether you think she should be allowed to live or die. I really liked this choice as you could argue that either one can make sense for a saboteur: You can position yourself as a voice for moderation and potentially earn Savik's favour for the future, or you can simply let her be offed and be happy that there's one less Sith in the galaxy. I chose the former option here.

I gotta say the saboteur options on Imperial Onderon felt extremely satisfying and I was quite surprised that they actually allow you to blow the whole mission this time. You'd think that might make the Empire suspicious... but I guess from the point of view of the NPCs you aren't "the player character who never fails at anything" but simply another person who's fallible to some degree... plus you were just following Savik's plan, right?

I'm looking forward to what more there is to see. Continued in part 2!

Levelling from 75 to 80

Adding five more levels to the level cap whenever a new expansion comes out seems to be one of those things that SWTOR just does at this point, but as much as I like levelling in general, I do have to wonder a bit about the purpose of those extra levels nowadays. Levelling is generally so fast that you'll hit max level long before you run out of content, so it doesn't feel like the extra levels are there to preserve some kind of pacing or anything.

Legacy of the Sith has really kind of highlighted the absurdity of it all because the amount of story content added wasn't really that much, yet Bioware still had to make sure that it would cover five levels, even if people stealthed past most of the trash mobs and didn't do the bonus missions. As a result, each completion of a story mission on Manaan gives an absolutely absurd amount of XP - even without having any sort of XP booster active, several of my characters actually jumped up two levels at once when handing in a quest.

My main hitting 80 at the end of Manaan.

For characters who were fully or mostly caught up with the story, this has meant that levelling from 75 to 80 is both quick and easy. For anyone who wasn't up to at least Ossus or beyond however, it's been a very different experience. In recent weeks I've been levelling some of my alts that were level 75 before LotS but were also at a much earlier point in the story from a narrative point of view, and it's been super weird.

My tanking Guardian Starberry, originally created during the Dark vs Light event many years ago now, actually still had the end of her class story to do. I took her to Corellia and because it coincided with a season objective or two, I didn't just do her class story there, but also the planetary storyline and all of the non-heroic side missions. Then I did the final Jedi knight mission on Dromund Kaas. Then I continued on to Makeb and cleared out two and a half mesas there (again, including non-heroic side missions) before I hit 80.

I know that still working on my class mission at 75 meant that I was very much behind (or is that ahead of?) the game's original levelling curve, but with everything being scaled you should still get decent XP everywhere you quest, regardless of what planet it is, right? So having to do a whole planet worth of quests and then some to get through five levels felt quite odd. It reminded me of the way levelling was paced when the game first came out, and I haven't had reason to reminisce about that in a long time!

As a different example, let's take my Scoundrel Racelle, who hadn't really done any story content since Shadow of Revan. Since 7.0 I did all of Ziost with her, a round of dailies there, and then got her started on KotFE. I didn't really get into the Alliance alerts when those became available, but I did do the introductory mission for Star Fortresses. In addition to those things, it took thirteen and a half chapters of KotFE to make it to 80. That's only about a third of a level per chapter! Then again, chapters giving poor XP shouldn't really be news I guess - I noted as far back as 2017 that I managed to complete all the Fallen Empire chapters without gaining a full five levels on my Sith inquisitor at the time.

For yet another example, my Sniper Corfette was on KotET chapter six when the expansion came out, and made it about halfway through Traitor Among the Chiss before dinging 80, though it's worth noting that this included a fairly extended stay on Iokath during which I did the weekly there about three times. So levelling was kind of speeding up by that point, but still far from fast.

Soon after 7.0 launched, I noticed that a lot of people were looking for ways to speed-level their alts from 75 to 80 if said characters weren't caught up with the current story. Several of my guildies took to running heroics as a group to level up and seemed to be quite happy with the results. I was kind of shaking my head at them initially, considering how fast levelling in SWTOR is most of the time, but after having taken more of my own alts through that stretch I have a bit more sympathy for their impatience.

The most bizarre (to me) outgrowth of this desire to speed up levelling from 75 to 80 has been the "Nathema farm". I quizzed a guildie about it after he kept bringing it up in guild chat and eventually learned that this particular speed-levelling method involves running the Nathema Conspiracy flashpoint up to the penultimate boss, Gemini 16, and fighting her to the point where she splits. Then you kill all her clones and jump off the platform to reset the fight. There are even videos advocating for this.

As far as I can tell the reason this works is because killing a flashpoint boss gives a decent chunk of XP, and for some reason Gemini's clones all reward the same amount as you get for killing the boss herself properly. So every aborted boss attempt counts as killing four flashpoint bosses and it only takes a couple of minutes to reset and do it over.

It's the very definition of degenerate gameplay, something I'm generally not fond of, but at the same time I have to admit I was kind of amused by the irony of all of this happening in Nathema of all places - a flashpoint that hasn't been super popular in the past due to its length and perceived difficulty.

Either way I had no plans to take part in that silliness myself, but as these things so often go, circumstances conspired against me. Last night we had our first social ops run on Empire side since 7.0, and someone raised the question of whether it was possible to quickly level an Imperial character from 75 to 80 between his return from work and the start of ops, so of course someone brought up the Nathema method. Before I knew it I had another guildie giving me puppy dog eyes about whether I wasn't going to "help" the two of them level their characters for the op (I am leader of the Imperial alt guild after all), so I had my level 75 Powertech tank strap on her helmet and off we went.

Our expedition took about an hour. We didn't have a stealther to skip a lot of the trash as people sometimes do, so we had to clear the flashpoint properly, which took about half an hour and awarded me about three quarters of a level on its own. Then we spent another half hour killing Gemini's clones a few times and by that point we were all 80. I was actually the last to ding as the others seemed to have additional XP boosts active, while I only remembered to pop a normal consumable when we started on the dedicated farming portion instead of at the start of the flashpoint.

Still, it was impressively fast - though this was of course helped by the fact that there's a double XP event happening this week. I'm not sure I would have enjoyed the whole process if it had taken twice as long. As it was, it was a fun little one-time adventure, but I have no particular desire to go back and repeat it.

My Powertech tank dinging 80 in Nathema.

How have you been levelling your alts to 80?

Day 5: NPCs #IntPiPoMo

I'm taking part in IntPiPoMo, and this is the fifth of ten screenshot posts I'm making this month, each one themed around a certain topic. Today's topic is NPCs.

Let's start with Attros Finn, a character that features early in the Jedi consular story and who - to me - embodies a lot of a consular's good qualities. He's a healer, and I've always liked the humble Jedi outfit he wears - plus Mirialan is a great species for Jedi in general.

From the series "Twi'leks I really like", we first have Juda from the bounty hunter story and of course, one of the game's more recent but no less fabulous additions, Major Anri. I have this short clip of her on my YouTube channel (warning: Onslaught spoilers) and it gets a lot of love.

The fact that Shadow of Revan's side missions didn't include cut scenes made the NPCs in them somewhat less memorable I think, but I still loved "The Slayers Three" and their odd love for hunting. I always thought those three siblings in intimidating outfits could have an interesting story behind their adventures!

I've mentioned previously how the little detail of which character appears as an extra antagonist at the end of the Nathema Conspiracy based on your character's class and alignment has a fascinating amount of permutations, though I avoided spoiling myself for the full list. Pictured above, we see my light-side loyalist agent being addressed by Marcus Trant, formerly head of the SIS and Theron Shan's boss, and below we have Master Sumalee hating on my poor smuggler. Why, Master Sumalee? I was light side all the way!

A shout-out to various nameless Sith and Jedi NPCs that go out looking cool in various cut scenes. (This is from some Imperial class story on Alderaan... Sith warrior I think?)

This guy on Balmorra might have had a name, but if so I didn't note it down. I do remember that he's one of those characters where the dialogue teases the option of getting him to back down without a fight but regardless of your choices you can never succeed.

IntPiPoMo count: 38

Day 2: Class Stories #IntPiPoMo

My 10 themed days of SWTOR screenshots in celebration of International Picture Posting Month continue. If you want to see a list of all the themes I'm using, you can find it here.

My first thought when I was putting together screenshots for this theme for this year's run was: Crap, I didn't really play any class stories this year, did I? And I wasn't entirely wrong, in the sense that I didn't complete any of the original class stories in the past year. I did however progress a few casually played alts a little bit through their stories, whenever I felt like it - which is the worst way of playing these of course, as by the time I get back to any given character, I've usually forgotten what kinds of decisions I made on them previously. But oh well.

My Commando on the Ebon Hawk Star Forge has finally got her whole team together after two and a half years - one advantage of not having to worry about gearing your companions anymore is that if you're as lazy as me and can't be bothered with giving them all unique outfits, at least their default get-ups create a somewhat coherent-looking team, instead of everyone looking like they just put on whatever armour they were able to salvage from their fallen enemies (which is of course exactly what we used to do). I think I last left her somewhere on Belsavis, so she still has some ways to go.

At some point last year I also decided to roll up a Gunslinger on Star Forge to keep my Commando company, and I played her up until the end of act one of her class story. That first act of the smuggler story is just so full of awesome that I found it impossible to choose only one screenshot from it. Here's Comptesse (as the little lady is named) meeting the shiniest bounty hunter on Nar Shaddaa...

... and here she is dealing with the stupidest of Skavak's ex-girlfriends.

Meanwhile, the smuggler's class story on Tatooine is a perfect illustration of just how absurd Jedi and Sith can potentially look to "normal" people.

My eternally pugging Commando Pugette has also nearly completed chapter one of her class story, mostly from me doing bits and pieces of it while waiting in the queue for uprisings. Here she is guarding a Twi'lek slicer that's doing a job for her. Now that I think about it, slicers/slicing used to be quite a frequently used plot device for the non-Force-using classes back before the storyline went all supernatural in Shadow of Revan, wasn't it?

I've said before that I really like cut scenes in which my characters make angry/determined faces. So here's one of my second Sage on... I think it was Balmorra? This is my slowest-levelled character of all time by the way, as I created her relatively early on (I think it was shortly after the game went free-to-play) as a dedicated grouping character in an attempt to get some old friends from WoW to play SWTOR with me. It quickly became apparent that this wasn't working out at all, but I've still been dragging my feet when it comes to levelling her alone ever since. Five or six years later she only just finished Quesh, heh.

Now this screenshot isn't from an original class story but from the Nathema Conspiracy flashpoint, but I actually consider that flashpoint to be the closest thing we've had to something approaching unique class content since Shadow of Revan. Sure, it's only a short conversation via holo that's unique, but there are so many variations! I took a quick look at a spoiler thread about the flashpoint on reddit because I didn't really want to know all the possible permutations, but I kind of did want to know how many there were (and therefore, how many different classes I could take through it to see different content) and there were a lot - at least two per class I think.

IntPiPoMo count: 10

Endgame Pugging So Far

Pugette's adventures at max level continue, though I haven't been able to release new episodes as consistently as I did while I was levelling her through flashpoints. Partially this has been due to holidays etc., but partially also because the episodes about operations in particular actually take a lot more out of me than a simple flashpoint run, so I don't necessarily want to dedicate time to recording one every single week. That and wanting to run each operation when it's the featured op of the day through the group finder limit my options further. I've recorded five more episodes since April:

S2E2: Ragging on Uprisings - My first episode about uprisings actually only went on to reinforce why I don't like them all that much, though I was also reminded of some good things about them.

S2E3: Special Nathema Conspiracy Edition - Because I couldn't resist making an episode about a brand new flashpoint, even if I wasn't going to feature flashpoints in this season otherwise. This also featured what's probably my biggest ever gameplay fail in this series, though it was very funny (and goes to show that you shouldn't mistake my years of experience with much of the older content for innate ability).

S2E4: I love Eternity Vault (but nobody queues for it) - This was a bit of a game changer for me because I had planned to feature some more operations pugs built purely through the group finder, but after three full hours of waiting in the queue I got fed up with it and just joined a group from general chat. This did make me wonder whether SWTOR is seeing a bit of a seasonal population drop-off right now. Also, I committed another major fail in this episode, though I won't spoil what it is.

S2E5: Trying To Find The Fun in Uprisings - By this point I was actually wondering whether including uprisings in this was a good idea because I'm really not enjoying them all that much and I think it's very apparent in the way I talk about them. I feel I'm kind of committed now though. And they do give me a nice break from the more intense operations episodes...

S2E6: Getting into a partial guild run for Explosive Conflict - Here I initially failed to get a group through chat, but came back to it later and then ended up joining what turned out to be a partial guild run. Apologies to any members of BRACTWO whom I might have made look bad in any way; the awkward start to the run really threw me off though.

The Nathema Conspiracy - Mechanics

After players got confused by the way the one-time story mode was handled for Crisis on Umbara, and then got even more confused by yet another implementation of how to handle it for Traitor Among the Chiss, Nathema Conspiracy saw a return of the Umbara model where the one-time solo mode is baked into the story mission, and while you're on that you just can't enter any of the other difficulty modes: deal with it. I remain unconvinced that this is the best way to handle it, but it is what it is.

How's gameplay on Nathema otherwise? Quite pleasant really. Unlike another reviewer I was kind of surprised by how little trash there was. I won't go so far as to say there was too little, but it seemed to me like the space had originally been designed for more. It made me picture the designers initially coming up with a much denser and longer flashpoint, but after the negative feedback they received about the trash on Copero, they decided to just take 50-60% of their planned trash pulls out, leaving a lot of empty space behind. That's my theory anyway.

The mobs have a variety of abilities and at least on hardmode some of them have one hell of a knockback, which is amusing to watch as a healer to say the least. Another interesting mechanic on all difficulty modes is that some of the zealots seem to have a stupidly powerful heal over time - though I haven't actually seen a cast for it, which kind of takes out the fun of actually being able to do something about it, with the net result being that the mobs just take longer to kill. Likewise many of the other trash abilities, while they create all kinds of colourful geometric shapes on the floor, ultimately don't do enough to be truly disruptive and don't really give you the opportunity for intelligent counter-play. Maybe I was expecting too much - fun trash like in Kaon Under Siege or Lost Island has always been the exception rather than the rule. I guess I just can't help but note that the trash both on Copero and on Nathema comes very close to being interesting to deal with but then just misses the mark.

The boss fights are all pretty solid. The first fight is very simplistic, somewhat reminiscent of the Vrblther in Czerka Core Meltdown only without the adds, but that's fine. Since the consoles that you "pop" to increase your damage output on the boss are limited in number and don't respawn, you can strategise a bit when it comes to deciding when to use them.

The bonus boss encounter with the two Hands of Zildrog is a bit boring, as it's mostly a tank and spank with a few circles on the floor. I'm also still not sure if there's even any difference between the two bosses. At first I thought they cast different abilities, but then I swear I saw the second one start using the same abilities as the first one after the first one had died...

What's good is that like in Umbara and Copero, the bonus encounter is accessible without having to do a lengthy quest chain, so that each group can decide on the spot whether to do the fight or not. There is a bonus mission to find seven "Treasures of Valkorian" (which reveal that someone at Bioware doesn't know how to spell Valkorion's name), which is decent fun as the chests are all just hidden enough to make you look around a bit but don't require you to clear every inch of the flashpoint of trash, unlike on Copero. The odd thing is just that it literally rewards nothing: no CXP, no regular XP, no credits, not even a one-time codex entry. I can't decide whether that was an oversight or is a sign of Bioware kind of throwing in the towel on bonuses, thinking something along the lines of: "You know what, it doesn't seem to matter what sorts of rewards we put on bonuses, the majority will always want to skip them. Let's just add a few shiny things to click on for people who enjoy that kind of thing [such as me], but if they can't get their group members to go along with it, at least nobody misses out on any rewards."

Up next is the Giant Kitten Ancient Guardian Droid, who is an interesting amalgamation of a Kell dragon skeleton and a droid skin. His main mechanic is a spinning move that does AoE damage similar to Dread Master Styrak's pet in Scum and Villainy, however instead of hiding behind the tank you're supposed to hide behind some probes that you first have to damage but not kill. I have somewhat mixed feelings about this. On the one hand I think it's cool to see them repurpose what was previously a raid-only mechanic for smaller group content, but on the other hand it's kind of unintuitive. In solo mode you can pretty much ignore the mechanic and just heal through it, but in veteran and up it suddenly kills you and you might not even know why. Also, "damage this but don't kill it" is a mechanic that's always hard to execute for pugs. Maybe the hiding part could have been implemented in a way that makes it more obvious what to do.

In the final room you have two boss fights: first Gemini 16, then Vinn Atrius and Zildrog together. I really liked that Gemini 16 splits into multiple copies in a way that's reminiscent of the Gemini Captain fight in KotFE chapter 15; it makes for a nice bit of consistency (even if it's quite a painful mechanic to deal with as a healer, as all the split adds will instantly aggro on you). She also does a powerful damage beam that you can just move out of on solo mode but need to line of sight on higher difficulties to avoid the damage - again something that might take some trial and error for pugs.

Fun fact: When I did the flashpoint on veteran mode for my pugging series, I said that I expected the last boss to be relatively easy... and then we wiped on him. I still think that nothing he does is inherently difficult to deal with, but he does stack a lot of mechanics on top of each other: circles to avoid, a knockback you have to be careful with in order not to fall to your death, a beam that connects two players who then have to stay close together or else they'll heal the boss, and adds that reduce everyone's hitpoints for the duration of the fight. My pug ended up healing the boss a lot due to not quite understanding the beam mechanic right away, but what actually did us in were the adds, which I had completely forgotten about since they hadn't been an issue for me on solo or hard mode. However, left to do their thing unimpeded on veteran mode, they ended up reducing our hitpoints so much that we were barely at 10% of our normal health by the end and a bog-standard attack could one-shot us. Fun times.

All in all, the Nathema Conspiracy backs a great story up with very solid mechanics, yet I couldn't help but feel like something was missing. I think above everything else I felt a bit let down by just how easy the flashpoint felt on master mode in particular when compared to Umbara and Copero. It's not that everything has to be super hard, but to have the climax of the story of all things be a relative cakewalk felt a little underwhelming to me.

It did make me muse about difficulty in general though and how I too am sometimes guilty of saying that I want one thing but then acting counter to my own words. I like the idea of really tough fights such as in hardmode Umbara, and I certainly feel highly accomplished whenever I beat them, but I don't exactly go out to repeat them often. The last time we got MM Umbara as a random, my guildies sighed a lot, and we didn't end up finishing because we just couldn't get a handle on the last boss's endless add waves (not to mention the countless wipes we had on the way). I've even heard people talk about taking gear off just to make sure they don't fulfil the minimum gear requirement and can safely queue for a random hardmode without getting one of the new flashpoints. And I can't claim that I've been actively seeking them out myself, or that I don't relate to the frustration experienced when every single boss causes multiple wipes even though we know the basic mechanics.

I guess what I'm saying is that a part of me wanted master mode Nathema Conspiracy to be harder... but at the same time there's a part of me that is glad that it isn't. I'm not sure how both of them could be satisfied at the same time.

The Nathema Conspiracy - The Story

It took me a few days to gather my thoughts (and to find the time to actually write them down), but it's time to talk about what happens in the Nathema Conspiracy. If you can't guess: this means spoilers! You have been warned.

To recap what happened in the previous two installments of this story arc: Theron Shan suddenly betrayed the Outlander, claiming that you were just using the Alliance to do evil, regardless of what you'd actually been doing. After trying and failing to track him down on the Chiss world of Copero, you as the player learn that he seems to be posing as a double agent for an organisation called the Order of Zildrog, but his divided loyalties are not yet made clear to your character at this point.

The Nathema Conspiracy starts with you and Lana following a mysterious signal to an abandoned Imperial listening post, where your character finally learns the truth, as Theron has left you information about the Order there. You learn that it is led by a former Horizon Guard called Vinn Atrius, a handsome cyborg who comes off as surprisingly sympathetic compared to all the megalomaniacs that we've been fighting since KotFE, and who actually has relatable reasons for hating the Outlander.

From the holos left behind on the station you learn that he's been searching for and has now found Zildrog, who turns out to be as real as the rest of the Zakuulan pantheon, except that it he's a superweapon stored in a vault on Nathema instead of on Iokath. Working with Vinn are Gemini 16, a former Eternal Fleet unit who managed to escape re-enslavement by cutting herself off from her "sisters" and who now wants to see them dead to avoid ever being influenced by the Gemini network again, as well as a couple of other characters who have reasons to hate you and whose identity varies based on some of your previous story choices. For example redeeming Arcann makes you an enemy of a Nautolan from one of the worlds that Arcann bombarded previously and who's outraged that you just made him part of your Alliance without any kind of punishment (understandable). Yet if you killed him and Senya, one of Vinn's allies ends up being a former knight who was apparently very close to Senya and who's furious that you killed her (also understandable). Just goes to show again that there's no winning when it comes to some situations!

Theron's info also tells you to go to Nathema to prevent Vinn & Co. from unleashing Zildrog, which is corroborated by your Alliance specialists on Odessen, who have finally made sense of the star map you retrieved from Copero. (Wait, didn't that get blown up before we could lay our hands on it?) Time to return to Nathema to find out what's what!

You and Lana take a shuttle there and find the planet transformed after Valkorion's death, full of new growth and wildlife. On meeting Theron at the co-ordinates he provided, you don't get to kill him right away (even if you want to) as you need him to point you in the right direction to prevent Zildrog's release.

Eventually you reach the vault where Zildrog is stored, and sadly he turns out to be a boring computer terminal instead of a cool lobster dragon creature... thing like Izax. Wonder how he became a dragon in the Zakuulan legends? You also learn that Vinn's precious allies ended up being recruited for no other reason that to serve as fuel for the machine - too bad for them.

Initially held back by a force field, you can't do anything but watch as Zildrog powers up and it turns out that his actual "body" is the Gravestone, which he promptly flies up into orbit above Odessen to one-shot the entire Eternal Fleet. He then turns it towards Odessen but needs to recharge before being able to fire again, which results in the shield around you dropping and allows you to engage Gemini 16, Vinn and Zildrog. You manage to successfully destroy/capture all of them, however Theron gets stabbed in the back by Vinn and ends up mortally wounded. You get the option to save him by quickly returning him to Odessen or leaving the "traitor" to die.

Back on Odessen you wrap things up with Lana (and potentially Theron if he's still alive) and get to muse on what's going to come next now that your Alliance has effectively been robbed of what gave it most of its power. You also have to choose whether to throw in your lot with the Republic or the Empire going forward.

Even though that was still a fair number of words, it's actually a very bare-bones summary of the plot that leaves out a lot of lovingly inserted detail. For example I've read that if you romanced Lana or Theron, you get the option to marry them at the end (which I haven't seen yet as none of the characters that I've taken through the story so far were romantically involved with either of them). My Guardian, who romanced Arcann in his Alliance alert, got to share a tender moment with him, but even if you're not romantically involved he makes a brief appearance if he's still alive.

On Nathema you have a holo call with one of Vinn's allies who's actually different based on your base class. I've tried to avoid spoiling myself for all the different possibilities, but from what I've gathered this person can even be different for some classes based on decisions taken during the class story. The sad thing is that this went completely over my head during my first playthrough because for my trooper said character wasn't anyone I knew; they just made the briefest of references to something that had happened in my class story, so I thought that sentence was as far as the customisation went. In reality however the identity of the person themselves varies, and for some classes it's even someone you know. Considering that the ally in question ends up being one of the people that get turned into fuel for Zildrog, that's a considerable cast of characters who could now potentially be dead.

None of this changes the overall flow of the narrative, but it does add some much added distinction between characters for those of us with many alts and showcases a love for detail that has often been absent in more recent content releases, probably making this one of SWTOR's best story updates in a long time.

But what about the plot, you might say... Is it any good? Well, I already summarised it earlier in this post, so you'll be the judge, but most of the reactions that I've seen have been very positive, and I was actually kind of surprised by how much I enjoyed it myself. I could see people who were really in love with the role of Alliance Commander hating it, and of course if you were already super jaded with the game to begin with, it's unlikely that this update will change your mind. (Though I have seen some comments from players who felt that the Nathema Conspiracy served to invigorate their previously flagging interest in the game.)

Personally, I've been wanting to see the Alliance come to an end for a while, so I guess I was positively biased towards developments in this flashpoint that way, but this hasn't stopped me from being critical of poorly written story installments in the past (see Iokath as an example). The Nathema Conspiracy just handles things better in every possible way, largely because of the aforementioned love for detail but also because the plot just works much better in general.

Vinn Atrius and Gemini 16 make for interesting and convincing villains despite of having been complete unknowns beforehand, and I wasn't surprised at all to see people asking for an option to romance Vinn the very day the patch came out. There are also some interesting character moments for Lana and Theron. Personally I found it amusing that Lana serves as your foil regardless of which stance you take towards Theron - if you say that you trusted him all along she keeps telling you to be cautious, yet if you leave him to die she's actually taken aback and later confesses on Odessen that despite everything that's happened she's genuinely saddened by his death.

The way the dialogue and cut scenes are set up, they also manage to hit some very strong emotional notes. For example I was genuinely worried about Odessen getting blown up and was actually relieved when we managed to save the planet - not because of it being my base, but because it's a lovely planet and I didn't want any of the characters still stuck on it to die! And when I chose to leave Theron to die on my dark-sided Marauder, I actually felt a pang of regret despite of her having wanted to kill him for months. Honestly, if I had to pick one thing I didn't like it would probably be that everyone kept referring to Zildrog as "it", which seemed like an oddly detached way of talking about a well-known mythical being with a personality.

As far as major plot points go, the Emperor having yet another superweapon stored away in a vault somewhere seemed plausible enough based on what we know about him. While I've seen some people express unhappiness with Zildrog's dialogue claiming that it was him who wiped out the population of Nathema, I don't think it takes anything away from Vitiate/Valkorion to know that he used an actual weapon to kill everyone to achieve his original "ascension" instead of just doing it purely through the power of the Force.

I suppose the Gravestone turning out to be Zildrog's body is a bit convenient, especially as unlike with the Gods from the Machine there's no physical resemblance between the body and the image the Zakuulans have of the deity/mythological creature. The Dark Sanctuary also doesn't really feel like it was originally meant to be a "brain connector" or whatever we want to call it, but I guess it was a leftover mystery from KotFE that had never received a resolution, and resolving it like this felt appropriate enough.

After how lacklustre this story arc started out with Iokath and Crisis on Umbara, the Nathema Conspiracy really restored my faith in Bioware's storytelling and makes me genuinely curious about what they will come up with next. What were your thoughts on the story?

Looking Good

When Crisis on Umbara came out, I thought that it was set in an interesting environment, what with the moving train and those weird tentacle things coming out of the ground. Traitor Among the Chiss raised the bar by taking us to the gorgeous Chiss world of Copero. I didn't think it could get any better than that, but the Nathema Conspiracy proved me wrong. That was quite a surprise too, considering Nathema's dreariness in KotET chapter seven.

The Force made it pretty again though. I swear most of my time during my first playthrough of the flashpoint was taken up by just looking around and taking screenshots. Here are a few of them:

I remember recently in my comment section Soots commented about how none of the new flashpoints are as fun and attractive as the classic ones, and another commenter replied - quite rightly so - that in a comparison of the visuals between False Emperor and Traitor Among The Chiss, the latter would come out as a clear winner. As much as it's fun to reminisce about the good old days sometimes, in terms of looks SWTOR's environments have only become prettier.

I think this will only add to people's already existing longing for another "proper" open-world planet to be added to the game again soon. The fleet is fine as a hub but sometimes you just want to treat your eyes to something nicer. And Iokath didn't really fit the bill for this due to its mechanical design.

Speaking of appearances, the patch also brought with it a new hairstyle. Please tell me I wasn't the only one who paused after seeing it for the first time and went to the Cartel Market to check if a new hair bundle had been released?! Bioware surprised everyone in a positive way however by simply adding the new hairstyle to the existing selection for free. It's a pretty good one as well, a nice variant of the classic short ponytail. I just fear that I might get sick of seeing it pretty quickly, what with seemingly everyone on my Twitter timeline rolling up new alts with the exact same hairstyle now!