Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 2

The second week of GS6 started with some deep thoughts for me. I know that doing this whole thing across all servers is weird. It doesn't make me unique, there are many others who do it, but compared to the player base as a whole, we're definitely a small hardcore fringe group. People may wonder whether it isn't stressful to play this way, and I guess it can be? But I do like playing in different environments and in different ways, as well as figuring out how I can get the most boxes ticked in a way that is somewhat efficient but still fun. Because it is fun for me!

That said, there's definitely a risk of hitting a point where the gameplay crosses over from fun into tedious. I remember there was a week last season when I did the same flashpoint something like three times in two days and I really didn't want to do it yet again... but it actually took a bit of effort to make myself stop and remind myself that I wasn't losing anything by not going 7/7 everywhere that week; completing the seasonal track on that server would just take one reset longer.

After I had achieved all my goals during GS5, there was also a moment when I looked at some of the objectives for the remaining weeks of the season and thought: "That would've been fun to do again on some servers... but instead I did Black Hole ten times in week one. Probably not the most fun path to take."

So with that in mind, I wanted to fight my self-imposed urge to push for 7/7 weekly objectives on all servers every week this time. My goal was to do only as many as I found fun, because I'd rather my overall season lasted a couple of weeks longer than burn myself out on grinding too hard in too short an amount of time.

With all that out of the way, the weekly objectives and my thoughts on them were as follows:

• Earn 200k Conquest points: Once again, a freebie on all servers.
  
• Visit another player's Mek-Sha stronghold: I wrote a whole post about how much I enjoyed this new objective, and it was effectively also free seasons points on all servers.
  
• Kill 25 mobs without a companion: An extremely easy and fast objective, I figured I was probably going to do this on all the secondary servers as well.
  
• Kill 100 mobs with a healer companion: Like all companion objectives, easy to do and easy to get done while also doing other things.
  
• Do the Black Hole weekly twice or the Onderon weekly once: Now this is where things got a bit tricky, because while I like the Onderon weekly, I only have access to it on Darth Malgus and Star Forge. I don't mind the Black Hole either, but having to do it twice on each of the remaining servers would be quite grindy (especially without stealth) so I wasn't planning to go that far.
  
• Complete 8 repeatable or side missions and kill 100 mobs on the Coreward planets Alderaan, Balmorra, Corellia, Mek-Sha or Onderon: Another easy choice that can be done in a variety of ways and also synergises nicely with the companion kills and the above objective to do daily areas (the Black Hole counts for Corellia).
  
• Complete 2 out of 4 selected flashpoints (Assault on Tython, Korriban Incursion, Depths of Manaan, Secrets of the Enclave): Like always, I never fancy doing twelve flashpoints across six servers, but I figured I might do this on a couple at least. Especially since three of them are part of the prelude to Shadow of Revan story chain, which I'm generally happy to start on alts before I've actually reached that point in the main storyline.
  
• Complete the Eternal Championship on Zakuul: I figured I might do this on Darth Malgus with Mr Commando, but otherwise I only had access to it on Star Forge and probably wouldn't fancy doing it again with the same character there.
  
• Hive of the Mountain Queen on any difficulty: An easy enough one-boss operation, but I couldn't count on doing this anywhere but on Darth Malgus due to the challenges involved with finding a pug group at a time that might not be the most active in the server's time zone.
  
• Explosive Conflict on veteran mode: First off, I'm very grateful that they took the feedback about the operations objectives introduced last season and reduced this to only requiring one operation. Nonetheless, the same rule applied as for the previous objective. I wouldn't say no to an opportunity to do this with a guild group, but I wasn't going to actively push for it anywhere. Even on Darth Malgus we'd just done EC VM the week before (since nobody had thought to look ahead at the objectives for the next week...) and I wasn't sure people would feel like doing it two weeks in a row.
  
• KotFE chapter 10 on veteran mode or higher: As before, not really interested in re-doing chapters.

Based on that list, I could easily see myself going 5/7 everywhere, and probably 6-7/7 on some servers, but whether I'd feel like pushing for 7/7 on all of them would kind of depend on luck and time. I didn't want to completely neglect my PvP season progression either.

Day 1 - Tuesday

It being another day in the office, I came home late again and then jumped straight into operations with my guild team. We spent most of our time wiping on Dread Master Brontes on master mode, which is actually oddly good for Conquest and completed my daily objective all on its own. I "influenced the galaxy" by running away from her zappy tentacle things. I then visited a local Mek-Sha stronghold before logging over to the other servers.

Since I didn't want to stay awake until 1 a.m. again, I just visited a Mek-Sha stronghold everywhere and mostly got the daily objective done with clickies, except for on Leviathan, where I did a bit of questing on Balmorra with my bounty hunter.

Day 2 - Wednesday

I got a bit of play time in around lunch time and used it to do a few warzones on Darth Malgus as well as a round of Onderon dailies. This completed two more weekly objectives (the one for the dailies and the 200k Conquest points one). I also used one of those buff items to increase the drop rate of the blueprint fragments and got 15 from my daily round (while killing fewer than 75 mobs) - not sure whether that's a good return on investment or not, though a guildie later posited that he got close to 60 from an hour of grinding on Oricon, so your mileage may vary.

In the late afternoon, an opportunity arose for me to join Swtorista's raid team for a run of Explosive Conflict veteran mode, which I was happy to come along to and which was good fun. This completed the associated seasons objective for me on Star Forge and also made my trooper there hit her personal Conquest target. (Also, since the operations missions terminals are often slow to update, I managed to re-pick last week's EC mission for bonus currency; go me.)

In the evening, I took part in a bit more PvP on Darth Malgus and then did some more questing on Balmorra on both the Leviathan (on my bounty hunter) and Tulak Hord (on my trooper). On Satele Shan, I did a round of the Black Hole on my stealthy consular. On Shae Vizla, I was wondering which Coreward planet to quest on, since I'd mostly levelled up through class stories there and had barely done any of the side content. I eventually settled on visiting Alderaan on my warrior for a bit. None of this took too long but I needed an early night.

Day 3 - Thursday

Another office day meant limited play time in the evening. I started with some PvP on Darth Malgus again, and then repeated most of the questing circuit I'd done the day before. My bounty hunter on Leviathan did more missions on Balmorra until he got credit for his 100 companion kills and Coreward missions. My trooper on Tulak Hord did the same for the Coreward missions, but didn't get the companion kills because she's a healer, and contrary to what a lot of people will tell you, I've always quite enjoyed levelling as a healer in this game... but questing as a healer with a healing companion is a level of masochism even I'll avoid stooping to.

My warrior on Shae Vizla did some more Alderaan missions, hit her personal Conquest target and completed her companion kills, but not her Coreward worlds objective because most of her progress had been through main planetary storyline missions and had only advanced the eligible mission tracker to 4/8.

On Satele Shan I did another stealthy round of the Black Hole, which completed the daily missions objective, but due to the stealth I hadn't killed enough mobs to complete the other two related weeklies. On Star Forge I did a round of Onderon on my inquisitor, which yielded similar results.

Day 4 - Friday

In the morning I visited Tulak Hord and logged into the knight I'd created there at the end of last season without ever playing him. I sorted out his inventory and then did the first couple of quests on Tython, because getting 25 mob kills without a companion is easy to do either way, but I particularly enjoy doing it on a character that doesn't actually have a companion yet. The same logic made me do a few more missions on Tython with my littlest consular on Star Forge.

Around lunch time, just after reset, I decided to queue for some warzones on Shae Vizla. Not only did I get quick pops, I won four matches in a row, completing my warzone weekly in the minimum amount of time possible. That is so rare that I was stunned, but I still ran around Alderaan for a bit as well to kill a few mobs without a companion so I could also feel like I'd done something for my main season progression.

In the evening I started my play time with some more PvP on Darth Malgus, followed by an operation with guildies. After that I hopped over to Leviathan and idled on the fleet for a bit while looking at something else on my second monitor, which is when I noticed that a pug group for Hive of the Mountain Queen was forming in general chat. I happily tagged along and got to tick that weekly off my list on the French server. I didn't expect to be as lucky on Tulak Hord when I logged over there, and I wasn't, but someone was forming a group for the Coruscant world boss instead, which I decided to join on a whim. It was still very good for Conquest if nothing else and pushed me over the 200k needed for the weekly objective.

Over on Star Forge, I decided to do another round of Onderon on my inquisitor - I didn't need it for the daily objective, but it was a handy way of getting my remaining Coreward worlds and companion kills, and I just like Onderon. This completed my inquisitor's personal Conquest and put me on 7/7 weekly objectives completed on Star Forge.

On Satele Shan I decided to grab my Imperial agent and continue her class story on Balmorra, first killing a few mobs without a companion and then continuing with Kaliyo by her side. I also got my Coreward mob kills but still had some left to go with a healing companion (since I'd forgotten to set Amity to heals on my first day of doing Black Hole with my consular).

It wasn't that late for a Friday but I was tired and felt quite satisfied with my in-game accomplishments so decided to call it an early night.

Day 5 - Saturday

The weekend! I was up nice and early, and since I'd achieved all my daily seasons objectives the night before, I decided to put some more work towards additional weeklies before the reset. I started by putting myself in the group finder queue on Satele Shan, for any of the four featured flashpoints on either difficulty. I ended up being put into a veteran mode Assault on Tython with a full group of 80s, and it was weird. One person ran past all the trash and then just stood there at the boss while the other two milled about uncertainly. I figured maybe the guy who had run ahead expected me to stealth the first three objectives since I was on a Shadow and I'd seen people do that before. I hadn't succeeded at it myself yet, but I decided to give it another go and pulled it off this time, go me! Meanwhile the other two players pulled some more trash though and died. I eventually put into chat "sooo, what are we doing?" since everyone seemed to have run off into a different direction, to which the guy at the boss responded that we needed to kill those three things... so they weren't expecting me to stealth but just wanted to go AFK while the rest of us did the killing?! It ultimately didn't matter, we just killed all the trash from then on, but that whole situation was a bit awkward. After that I queued again for the remaining three flashpoints and got a vet mode Depths of Manaan which was fast and uneventful.

Next I hopped over to Tulak Hord, where I did a solo mode Assault on Tython since I had the story quest for it, followed up by a round of Black Hole. Then I changed to my Sith inquisitor for a bit of story questing with a healer companion. I no longer needed anything on the Core worlds, so I was grateful to find that her class story was actually up to Nar Shaddaa already. (I'd thought she was still on Balmorra too and I'd had quite enough of that planet for the week.)

Leviathan was my next destination, where I hit up the group finder queue for the featured flashpoints again and got an instant pop for vet mode Depths of Manaan. Since we had two healers it was a bit slow, but otherwise alright. I did get a little worried on the last boss with the five minute timer when one of our two damage dealers suddenly had to go AFK, but we did still manage to beat the timer.

Finally I returned to Shae Vizla. I had to have a bit of a think about how I was going to go about the flashpoints and Black Hole runs if I was going to go for them there as well. The rewards would have been best on my level 80 warrior, but she'd already completed her Conquest for the week and I craved something slightly different, so I opted to go on my level 68 consular instead. The guild I'm in often alternates events between Republic and Imperial side, and I keep getting reminded that I don't yet have a level 80 on Pub side that can go to operations there, so it seemed prudent to milk these objectives for some XP at least.

I first queued for three of the eligible flashpoints (Secrets of the Enclave was out of reach due to level) and got into another Depths of Manaan. The irony of me running that same flashpoint three times in one morning after I wrote that whole intro about not wanting to burn myself out by repeating the same content too many times wasn't lost on me, but fortunately all the Shadow of Revan prelude flashpoints are pretty fun and not too long, so I genuinely didn't mind. Afterwards I did a round of the Black Hole and was reminded that the heroic is still somewhat challenging in levelling gear, as I actually had to run back out of the first room to save myself after starting with a bad pull. I proceeded with a bit more care after that and was fine though. The whole adventure netted me two levels, something I was quite pleased with.

After lunch and the daily reset I logged right back into Shae Vizla with the goal of repeating what I'd done earlier, one flashpoint and one round of the Black Hole. I put myself in the flashpoint queue (unticking Depths of Manaan this time, but at least Secrets of the Enclave was now available to me) and returned to Corellia, but nothing popped for the entirety of my daily run. I did have the pleasure of someone actually asking to group up for the Black Hole heroic though, something I happily accepted and which filled me with massive nostalgia.

Just as I was starting to wonder whether I should leave the flashpoint for another time, I got a pop and found myself in Secrets of the Enclave. A level 80 from my guild was in the run as well, and they instantly took off like a bat out of hell. Someone else said that they were new to the flashpoint, which prompted our bat to type out a few instructions at some point, so I can't even complain that they were being inconsiderate or anything, but they were still absolutely racing. Mr Commando went off to take a shower just when I got the flashpoint pop and he wasn't even done by the time we finished. With that, my consular completed her personal Conquest, gained another level (almost two actually), and Shae Vizla became the second server on which I hit 7/7 weekly season objectives for week two.

Later in the afternoon I went to cycle through the other servers again. On Leviathan I queued for flashpoints again, once again unticking Depths of Manaan, and ended up in yet another round of Assault on Tython. I sighed a little to myself, but it went fine. Feeling a bit flashpoint-ed out after that, I opted to just continue questing on my inquisitor on Tulak Hord to tick off the 100 companion kills objective. On Satele Shan I did the same with my Imperial agent, and finishing off her class story on Balmorra also pushed me past 200k Conquest points, bringing Satele Shan to 7/7 weeklies completed as well. Since I was already done with weeklies on Star Forge, I just spent some time on a somewhat neglected smuggler alt there to get my daily dose of Conquest done.

In the evening it was time for social night with my guild on Darth Malgus once again, where we did 16-man Hive of the Mountain Queen on story mode and Explosive Conflict on veteran mode, ticking those two objectives off for me.

I had held off on working more on my progress on Darth Malgus partially because I counted on getting those two objectives in specific done on social night and partially because I thought Mr Commando might want to do flashpoints and the Eternal Championship with me over the weekend, however it turned out that he was already on 7/7 himself after the operations. With that in mind, I logged onto my newest lowbie alt on Ord Mantell and did a bit of questing there for 25 kills without a companion.

Day 6 - Sunday

On Sunday morning I did a bit more questing to get to 7/7 weeklies done on Darth Malgus, specifically by doing some story missions on one of my inquisitors on Corellia until I'd achieved the last few kills for the Coreward Worlds objective.

I'd been so focused on completing weeklies on all servers that I hadn't even done the (admittedly quite time-consuming) first part of the new seasonal storyline yet, and neither had Mr Commando, so we made up for the missed shared play time from not doing the seasonal flashpoints by working our way through the first two chapters of the new storyline together.

After that I didn't log back into the game until evening, at which point paying a visit to each server to get caught up didn't take long at all. On Darth Malgus I just did some clickies. On Leviathan I did a bit more putzing around on Balmorra on my bounty hunter, which completed his personal Conquest target, the 25 kills without a companion objective, and the 200k Conquest points for seasons, taking me to 7/7 on that server as well.

On Tulak Hord I had one round of Black Hole and a flashpoint left to do. In an attempt to mix things up a bit, I only queued for the master mode version of the four featured flashpoints. It was European prime time and healers were even flagged as the role in need! However, I did the entirety of the Black Hole and nothing popped. Since that did earn me enough Conquest for the day though, I decided to leave the flashpoint for Monday.

Since the other three servers were all done with weeklies, I just had play a little bit on each one to earn my 25k Conquest points for the day. On Star Forge I did a few more missions on my smuggler, and on Shae Vizla the same on my trooper. On Satele Shan, I was just getting ready to make a start on Nar Shaddaa on my Imperial agent when I got a warzone pop! I've historically had bad luck with getting into PvP in the non-max level brackets on that server, presumably due to time zone conflicts above anything else, so this was exciting. In fact, the whole reason I was queued for warzones was that I still had the "introduction to PvP" quest in my log at level 39 - I'd originally picked it up at level 10 and had got the arena part done pretty quickly, but just never managed to get into a warzone. Apparently I got lucky that night and the game actually found enough people for a 4v4 lowbie Huttball. I did more damage than anyone else (Snipers are so brutal in the lowbie bracket, it's kind of amazing) and we dominated the other team 6-0. Sorry guys, but I did wait a long time for this.

I actually still felt like playing some more after all that and found myself at bit of a loss for what to do outside of seasons content that evening, so I ended up doing a bit of midbie PvP on Star Forge.

Day 7 - Monday

I decided to start my play session in the late afternoon by logging into Tulak Hord to get that last weekly seasons objective done. I thought I'd try the master mode queue for the featured flashpoints again while taking care of some errands like crew skills and GTN listings (since I'd done nothing but solo and veteran modes all week), and I could always switch to queueing for vet mode if nothing materialised within a reasonable amount of time. However, this time I got a pop almost immediately, which was for Depths of Manaan. What followed was a super smooth run that even included the bonus boss; I was very pleased. Since I was also on the story step for Depths of Manaan, my Shadow of Revan prelude progressed as well. And with that I was once again 7/7 on all servers.

Since I now only had to earn some Conquest points on the other servers, I just did that by cycling through various alts and playing them a little bit at a time.

Week 2 Thoughts

Okay, so... I was wrong again! I was quite sure that I wouldn't be able to do 7/7 weekly objectives on every server this week without feeling stressed, but not only did I do it again, I was almost fully done by Sunday. That was really surprising to me as this week featured a lot more repetition than week one, with me doing the same four objectives across all servers (while in week one the two "automatic" ones were the only ones I did everywhere). I think those lucky ops runs on Star Forge and Leviathan (which I definitely wasn't counting on) really helped me out, because I don't think I would've been able to stand any more flashpoints and dailies than I already did.

Now, next week - things really will be different I think, because in a classic case of "be careful what you wish for", after I bemoaned the lack of a Total Galactic War during the between-seasons break, the devs decided to give us one next week, right in the middle of the Galactic and the PvP season! It's simultaneously exciting and a completionist's nightmare, as I'll probably find myself wanting to focus on helping my guild on Darth Malgus win at Conquest, which would then leave little time to do anything on the other servers. We'll see how it goes I guess.

Republic Saboteur, Part 2

My Republic saboteur's journey continues. 

Since I learned that Imperial saboteurs have a special alternate ending for one of the Onderon dailies, I was curious to see whether there was a similar Easter egg for Republic saboteurs. There was, though it's somewhat less cool than the Imperial version (in my opinion), since it's only a bonus.

The daily mission to destroy Imperial listening devices has a bonus to find and take out the Imperial surveillance commander. As a saboteur you tell this person to hold their fire instead and that you secretly work for the Empire. They point out that you're not being very helpful by destroying their stuff, and offer you the option to do something useful for them by planting some listening devices inside the city. If you take it, you get a follow-up task to do just that, which feels kind of ironic considering that the main mission's objective was to do the literal opposite.

On Mek-Sha, I was kind of surprised that there wasn't even a mention of committing sabotage by influencing the vote so that the fuel sale would be blocked. (After all, if you play Imperial side, that's what Veek and Indigo expect you to do.) I guess you could argue that directly sabotaging the sale would've been kind of obvious, but it's not like you couldn't have come up with some way to shift the blame.

Instead everything proceeds just the same way as it does for a loyalist, until you get to the Imperial attack on the docks at the very end, where you arrive just in time to see Narlock confronting Major Anri - and the saboteur option is to just shoot him, which I did. Anri is confused by the unexpected assist for a moment but knows better than to ask too many questions when you prompt her to get a move on. So once again, the Republic's plans fail because you were too late to stop the Imperials. Oops?

At the debrief afterwards, Narlock is replaced by a Nautolan with an eye patch and a Scottish accent called Captain Prenton, and Arn wonders how the Empire could do this to "us" twice in a row... gee, I wonder.

I have to admit I felt kind of bad about this particular act of sabotage, because it was so cold and personal. It's one thing to (not) press a button that triggers something bad, but quite another to directly shoot someone in the back who thought you were their ally. You also get to hear about how Narlock had a daughter and Junker Jott agonises about having to tell her about her father's death. She later writes you a letter asking whether you saw what happened. Junker also writes you a letter, saying he reviewed some security footage (gulp) that showed Major Anri so it was probably her who killed Narlock (phew).

You continue on to Objective Meridian, which is pretty unremarkable from a saboteur point of view as a Republic player. For all the devastating losses you inflict on the Republic fleet on Onderon and Mek-Sha, it doesn't look any smaller during the attack on Corellia and I didn't notice any differences to the loyalist outcome during the battle. The only thing I'll say is that like on Imp side, the ending with you leaving your buddies behind after the Malgus fight without a care in the world feels so much more natural as a saboteur than as a loyalist. I briefly considered not committing sabotage on this last step since I still felt bad about Narlock and handing the facility over to the Empire seemed like kind of a big deal, but it turned out to be just another opportunity to be just a second too late to press the button that was meant to prevent the shields from going down... it was simply too easy to do.

At the post-battle conversation on the fleet, things got a bit buggy as an angry Theron yelled at my smuggler for not using the fleet to protect the civilians the Empire was bombarding and then ran off... just to then proceed to contribute jokey comments to the rest of the conversation while invisible.

In the debrief on Nar Shaddaa, NR-02 introduced me to Darth Xarion. Unlike on my agent, I didn't even have my smuggler ask about being allowed to join the Empire properly; I think she quite enjoys being a chaotic force not strictly beholden to anyone. I just chose to have her complain about Malgus trying to kill her on Corellia, which of course just got her the response that he didn't know about her real loyalties since they're a closely kept secret.

All in all, the things that really stood out to me about the Onslaught arc for Republic saboteurs was that coming from a defensive perspective, with the Republic always caught on the back foot and scrambling to deal with Imperial attacks, it felt so much easier to justify the sabotage as failure and much less suspicious than the way the Imperial saboteur always makes it all the way to the objective of an offensive strike just to then mysteriously fail at the finish line.

Also, the Republic is incredibly chill about failure compared to the Empire. The Sith were always angry and seeking to place blame, but the Republic attitude can pretty much be summed up as "too bad, so sad". It's almost comical how they're only mildly disappointed by mission failures causing hundreds and thousands of deaths, and it's never anyone's fault, just a tragedy. All they do is talk about how they need to find ways to soldier on anyway.

If you asked me whether I preferred the Imperial or the Republic saboteur path up to this point, I'd honestly struggle to choose. The Republic version seems much more believable, but on the other hand the consequences of sabotage on Imperial side feel a lot spicier (what with angry Sith blaming and trying to murder each other), which is more entertaining in a way, even if the way you keep getting away with it is much less convincing.

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 2

Continued from part 1!

I completed the rest of the Onslaught base story on my saboteur agent and there were some interesting things to see. However, first I'd like to note that I also did a round of dailies on Onderon and was quite surprised when I realised that one of the daily missions has a cut scene with a different outcome if you're a saboteur! It's the one that tells you to hunt down a Republic assassin, and to be honest I always wondered why the end of that took place in a phase, considering that you just kill him (usually). However, if you're a saboteur, you get to talk instead of attacking straight away and you have the option to distract the guards to help him escape! How cool is that? Now if only the quest giver had remembered that King Petryph wasn't alive in my playthrough anymore...

As for Mek-sha and beyond: There are a couple of opportunities to randomly be nice to people aligned with the Republic, which generally didn't strike me as a wise thing to do in public, not to mention unlikely to actually achieve anything, so I didn't always choose those options, except to try out the concept on Tau, to whom my character said something like: "You have nothing to fear from me, Jedi". I think her reply was something along the lines of: "We'll see about that".

When you infiltrate Junker Jott's base to steal the schematics for the failsafe, you can intentionally leave evidence of what happened, which results in Anri's diversion at the end being less successful. At least I think that's how these two things were connected... it wasn't entirely clear to me what Anri's diversion being less successful actually meant in practice.

I didn't get to find out because I chose to commit maximum sabotage again by simply not triggering the failsafe and pretending that it just didn't work.

Darth Malgus doesn't go ballistic on Darth Shaar during the debrief at the end the way he did on Savik, so I chose to actively throw her under the bus by saying that her whole plan was bad when Malgus asked me about what I thought went wrong. It was fun to see Shaar get pretty mad about that, though Emperor Vowrawn downplays the whole thing when you talk to him later.

I already felt that my sabotage on Onderon was pretty suspicious, but having a second mission in a row fail in the exact same way - because I mysteriously couldn't press the right button when left in a room on my own - made things even worse, so I was pleased to see that at least Darth Malgus seemed to agree. He sent me a pretty angry letter afterwards in which he asks: "How is it that you, who have accomplished so much, display such incompetence?" Good question, Malgus; very good question.

In the run-up to the attack on Corellia, you can try to sabotage Krovos' proposal to bomb civilians on the other side of the planet by suggesting that she's hiding something, but it doesn't work. (Good on you, Krovos.)

During the actual attack on Corellia, you see the consequences of your sabotage on Onderon and Mek-sha, as the Imperial fleet struggles and several ships get blown up before your strike team can make it to the surface, which I thought was another neat difference compared to the very successful assault that loyalists get to experience.

The Objective Meridian flashpoint goes the same as always, with Malgus being back to talking nice to you. It struck me as kind of amusing that the ending with you escaping without displaying any concern for your fallen companion - something that always struck me as a bit weird - is something that actually makes sense for a saboteur. I mean, Malgus was obviously on to me, so good riddance to him!

At the end of the flashpoint you do actually get to choose again whether to do what the Empire wants or make the whole mission a failure. I did the latter, though this also made it the third time in a row that I mysteriously failed to press the right button when left to my own devices so I don't know how the Empire can continue to put any faith in me at this point.

Jonas Balkar actually gave my agent a holo call right in front of some Imperial guards just before I was about to meet the Dark Council and nobody batted an eyelid. You can chide him for calling you at a bad time and he responds that calling during the actual meeting would have been worse. That's a false choice, Jonas, and you know it!

Watching the Dark Council play blame games with each other about who was responsible for the mission failure was admittedly quite amusing, though it's once again surprising that the finger doesn't get pointed at your character more directly. One thing of note was that while Vowrawn talks about reinstating the Hand, he didn't ask me to return the Alliance to the Empire as a whole - though Lana kept making comments later as if he had.

In the chat on the fleet afterwards, Theron is actually very angry that so many civilians died on Corellia and questions the point of being a saboteur if we can't do more to prevent this kind of stuff. In the in-person debrief with Jonas later, you can also ask whether you can join the Republic properly now, and he's kind of evasive about it and says that you're more useful continuing to be an undercover agent - I can't say I'm entirely convinced by that argument. He does introduce you to Master Sal-Deron via holo, however.

I also had a note here saying ,"Why does Anri still admire me so much?" because she only met me on Ossus and I've done nothing but mess things up for the Empire since then. I guess she might still have been impressed by my character's prowess in combat.

All in all, Onslaught has some pretty interesting content variations for saboteurs - in fact, I found out while doing some reading up on the subject that there's an additional variant if you agree to become a saboteur at the beginning but then always choose not to sabotage at the crucial moments, making you a sort of triple agent... oh god, does that mean I need to take another character through this to see that dialogue?

I also have to say that your character's not really a very convincing saboteur here and I don't think it's great storytelling for the most part, as your repeat failures are just too obvious - you kind of have to tune out any concerns about realism at that point, and just agree to roll with it for the fun of seeing how much the game will let your character get away with while still praising you for how amazing you are. The question is whether that will actually end up going anywhere. Continued in part 3.

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!

Day 4: Missions & Conversations #IntPiPoMo

I'm taking part in IntPiPoMo, and this is the fourth of ten screenshot posts I'm making this month, each one themed around a certain topic. Today's topic is... missions and conversations, which means everything surrounding story content and the sorts of cut scenes we get to experience while playing through it.

I think I've said it before, but the Makeb storyline is one of those pieces of content that I've come to appreciate more and more over time. When it came out it seemed like a downgrade from the unique class stories, but from where we are now I see it as a good example of a planetary story that is unique for both factions, with both halves coming together to form something greater.

One thing I like about the Imperial storyline in particular is that the Imps are effectively doing good for selfish reasons, like in this scene where they end up rescuing some civilian scientists from evil mercenaries... because they need them for their own ends of course.

Another thing I've mentioned before is that thanks to the quick travel between planets I don't see the "planetary ship approach" cut scenes very often anymore, so when I do come across a shot like this one of the Jedi knight ship landing on Voss it honestly takes my breath away.

Beautiful scenery and framing are another thing I loved about the Ossus storyline, such as this series of shots of Darth Malgus and the player character coming out of the Jedi library.

Speaking of framing, I like this shot of my group coming up to Lord Tagriss to claim the last Dread Seed. I've done this infamous group quest more than a dozen times, but I hadn't really taken in the sights of the corrupted Jedi temple properly until this time.

Another thing I enjoy taking screenshots of: good action scenes! Above we first have a Sith warrior facing off against Nomen Karr during their chapter one finale, and below we have Senator Nebet fighting Beast Lord Akoru on Onderon.

Of Akoru I also have this fun shot of my bounty hunter whispering to him... I think it's to blackmail him? But the gestures and expressions make it look more like she's making a pass at him or something, hehe.

IntPiPoMo count: 30

Onslaught in Review

As I said previously, we still don't have a launch date for Legacy of the Sith, but it can't be far off now, and I don't expect us to get another major content update before then, so I thought it would be interesting to look back on how Onslaught has gone as a whole. I wasn't sure what conclusion I'd come to when I first started writing this, but honestly, now that I've added it all up, this has been a pretty ace expansion.

Features

After Bioware tried (and failed) to reinvent the wheel for the last two expansions (with the single player focus in KotFE and Galactic Command in KotET), it was nice to see them refocus on simply adding features that players had actually been asking for in one form or another.

• Nautolans as a new playable species: They ended up looking a bit more... weird than most people expected I suppose, but I still think they were a good addition. Based on forum polls and the like, Nautolans were easily the most requested species that wasn't available yet - so much so that after this, I'm not actually sure what playable species they could add next. Sure, there are lots to choose from and you can find people suggesting pretty much all of them on the forums somewhere, but I haven't seen anything else have the same kind of consistent demand as Togruta and Nautolan had before they were added.
  

• Spoils of War: Gearing was a mess towards the end of KotET and needed a revamp desperately. I think the new Spoils of War system worked out well overall! It's not perfect, but what ever is? I'd say its biggest flaws are that a lot of set bonuses and Tacticals they introduced were pretty useless so that there ultimately weren't that many viable choices to make about what to get, and that drop rates for both types of items were pretty poop, meaning that most of the time, you were better off just saving fragments to buy from a vendor, even when all you were doing was gambling at Kai's. Still, overall the ease of gearing up in terms of item levels was amazing, and everything being bound to legacy so that you could gear all your alts in one fell sweep has been super neat.

• Material storage: I liked how they never even advertised this as a feature; it was just suddenly there and amazing, freeing up tons of space in cargo and legacy bays across the land. This is the kind of quality of life improvement we all love to see. Separate but related, they also added all those event currencies to the legacy currency tab.
  

Story

I didn't love the Onslaught base story quite as much as Jedi Under Siege, but it was still excellent overall, making use of the game's large pre-established cast and adding all kinds of great little touches to remind players of their class identity. Over the course of the expansion, we then got three more story installments:

• Echoes of Oblivion: This was a pure love letter to the game and its community, taking all kinds of loose ends that had been left dangling in an unsatisfying manner and tying them into a neat little bow.
  

• Spirit of Vengeance: Probably the least interesting of Onslaught's updates, it still introduced Rass Ordo as a likeable new character and laid the seeds for what's hopefully going to be an interesting arc about the Mandalorians facing off against an intriguing new villain.
  

• Secrets of the Enclave: The expansion's second piece of story that was actually different for both factions (after the Onslaught base story), this again featured a plethora of interesting character moments, even if it didn't advance the plot very much.

If I were to criticise anything, I guess you could point out that there is no clear theme to all of these to tie Onslaught together: a bit of Darth Malgus here, some Mandalorian stuff here. Then again, this is pretty in line with how things used to be in SWTOR's "good old days": After all, Rise of the Hutt Cartel was only really about Hutts for a very short time; all the content added after its launch centred on organisations like Czerka or the Dread Masters.

"MMO Stuff"

It seems to me that after the early years of most content additions being standard MMO content and the wild swing in the opposite direction with KotFE & KotET's story chapters at the expense of all else, Bioware has finally settled into a nice balance between continuously adding engaging story installments while also consistently churning out repeatable content to keep dedicated players busy in the gaps in-between.

• Two new planets: Onderon and Mek-Sha were both smaller than I would have hoped, but they were fully fleshed-out planets with datacrons and everything. The Onderon daily circuit is decent fun. Unfortunately Mek-Sha felt a bit half-baked with its somewhat random selection of side missions in different places, some content being quite buggy initially and none of it ever really becoming very rewarding.

• One new operation: Nature of Progress (or Dxun as most people call it) is a brilliant op in terms of story and undoubtedly the funniest piece of group content Bioware ever released. The fights are mostly good fun as well, except for the last boss, whom I find kind of tedious mechanically to be honest.

• Three new flashpoints: Objective Meridian, Spirit of Vengeance and Secrets of the Enclave. I stand by what I said about Objective Meridian seeming a bit dull at first blush but being interesting to replay. The last boss(es) can be infuriating but in a good way (to me anyway). Spirit of Vengeance was a bit meh - some neat little Easter egg achievements couldn't make up for the fact that it consists of too much boring trash and the environment isn't exactly thrilling to look at either. Secrets of the Enclave is probably my favourite of the three, meaning it's fairly fast-paced, features decent boss fights and includes some beautiful environments to feast your eyes on.
  

• Two new world events and more: We got the Ultimate Swoop Rally on Dantooine and the Feast of Prosperity as a seasonal event in autumn. I liked both of these as creative non-combat additions. I found that swooping gets quite boring quickly if you do it for too long but it is something different. I also enjoyed the little mini-games coming with the Feast and the way it livened up the world boss pugging scene - I'm quite looking forward to doing that again this year actually. Finally, we also got the Alderaan stronghold and Galactic Seasons for what it's worth.
  

Summary

I know people always complain about wanting more from Bioware - and it's not like I'd object to being given more! - but honestly, looking back at all this, it strikes me as a pretty decent tally for a two-year long expansion that came free with the subscription. Especially considering that for a lot of that time, Covid was interfering with the devs' working patterns as well.

I like that there's a clear effort to balance single player story content with MMO features and additions now, and most of it was really good quality as well, with just a couple of not-so-great items on the list but nothing completely awful or boring. If Legacy of the Sith can deliver in a similar way, I'll be one happy camper.

Daily Tour: Onderon (Republic)

My post about my daily route across Oricon got a better response than I expected, so I guess I'll post a few more of these over the next couple of months. Today I'd like to take you along to the game's newest daily area, Onderon - but only on Republic side, because Imperials get different missions and I've not done those often enough to have really developed a routine. In fact, the last time I did them on an Imp, I actually found myself pausing more than once and wondering whether I'd gone the wrong way.

My tour around Onderon on Republic side could be described as roughly counter-clockwise. Starting in Iziz, I first do the one mission inside the town, find the beast tracks just outside and then proceed north along the shoreline to root out Imperial spies. I'm guessing at least that part of my route must be similar for many people, considering that the beast-tracking quest requires you to hit certain markers along the way in order.

After killing the bonus guy in the cave, I usually spend several minutes flailing around trying to find the next traces of the beast - I've said it from the start: Onderon is pretty and a good place to have a gathering skill, but the missions that require you to find tiny clickies or camouflaged markers on the ground that can move ever so slightly from one day to the next are a royal pain in the butt. There's more of that sort of searching required around the crashed ship, and then I proceed to rounding up the Orlaxes.

After that I kill the big beast by the lake and cross over to the main part of the Mandalorian camp. The quest to collect Mando gear is always a bit weird in terms of drop rates, because sometimes I kill a few mobs and I'm done, while other times I have to clear out the whole camp and do another circuit around the lake and still don't have enough drops afterwards.

Then it's through the first cave to root out some conspirators, and the same in the next cave on my way to Untamed territory. There I light the torch and go into their temple/cave to challenge their champion and kill some Zakkegs. Here I have to take care to not get too distracted by gathering nodes in the surrounding jungle or my torch might go out before I can use it, and then I'd have to re-light it.

Finally I plant a few sensors just outside the area and then loop back down to flush out conspirators in the last cave to finish up.

I expect that the Onderon daily route is a lot less popular than Oricon, seeing how the planet's only been out for two years and requires completion of a sizeable bit of storyline, unlike the much more accessible Oricon, which has also been out for more than eight years now. Still, if you've done the Onderon dailies at least a few times, dear reader, I'd be curious to hear how you go about them.

Datacron Hunt on Mek-Sha and Onderon

Ah, datacrons - I have such an interesting history with them. Originally I was pretty oblivious to them while levelling, to the point that I'm not sure I came across even a single one organically (the one simply lying on the ground on Coruscant perhaps...), but then other players started showing them to me and datacron hunting became both a fun social activity and something I liked doing on my alts. Then they were made account-wide with KotFE and that whole avenue of play kind of fell off a cliff... especially as Bioware didn't add any new ones either - until Ossus that is, and I wrote about my experience with those datacrons in this post.

Onderon and Mek-Sha were similar to Ossus in that guildies were offering summons to the new datacrons within days, but like on Ossus I refused because simply accepting a summon to an unknown location, clicking a cube and leaving again kind of seemed to defeat the purpose of the whole thing to me. I told myself that I'd go back to get them later, but to be completely honest I mostly forgot about them again after that. So I was delighted when my guild decided to host a guild datacron hunt for the first time in literal years and that Onderon and Mek-Sha were supposed to be the first destinations. 

We started with the endurance datacron on Mek-Sha, which follows in the footsteps of similar datacrons from the base game such as the mastery ones on Imperial Nar Shaddaa and Corellia, which both require you to jump on a small kiosk/carrier as it floats past and ride it (close) to the datacron location. I would rate the Mek-Sha one as slightly less fun than either of those though, as part of the path you ride along is a bit buggy, which is disorienting (the environment around you goes all crazy, the platform appears to disappear under your feet etc.), and after successfully jumping both on and off the floating "sign" you then still have to make another couple of (admittedly not very difficult) jumps before reaching the datacron.

My guildies and I spent some time chatting while repeatedly falling to our deaths here, but our guide for the evening made it to the finish line very quickly and was able to offer limited assistance for some classes with a Sage pull (we also found that with some skill and/or luck a Scoundrel could jump to them with Trick Move.). After a given time limit we simply used a guild flagship summon for anyone who was still struggling... but I refused to accept it, as - despite of my repeated failures - the whole thing felt very doable and I figured that I'd be able to do it the "proper" way if I just gave myself a bit more time.

Still, for the time being we moved on to the endurance datacron, which was a more straightforward jumping puzzle in a fairly small area. I actually did pretty okay with this one except for one really far jump near the end. Here we sort of moved along as a group, initially falling down and re-trying all the jumps on our own, but I wasn't the only one struggling with that one particular jump, so we eventually started to "pool" around that one and once a couple of people got across they helped others with pulls and such. I was not too ashamed to accept a little help there myself, as getting a bit of a leg up with one jump in a row of about a dozen jumps isn't on the same scale to me as simply getting a summon to the final destination. In the end we all managed to get this datacron without having to use the guild flagship summon at all.

After that we were off to Onderon, first to deal with the endurance datacron there. This was another jumping puzzle but with a deadly edge, as missing one of the first three jumps meant falling to your death. Fortunately a medical droid wasn't far away, but it was still quite silly how many times I fell to my death here. Otherwise it was a similar affair to Mek-Sha in that I eventually managed all the jumps by myself except the very last one, for which I accepted a pull since I was the only person who hadn't made it yet and people wanted to move on. We took a little group photo next to the datacron since the backdrop was quite nice up there.

Finally, there was the mastery datacron, which was introduced as "the Indiana Jones datacron" to the group and it sure lived up to its name. This one lives in a personal phase and requires you to leap across a bridge with invisible holes by following a certain pattern (in what is undoubtedly meant to be an Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade reference), followed by dodging a bunch of floor spikes in the dark that insta-kill you if you step on them. This is already tricky enough one way, but then you finally get to the datacron, a little cut scene plays and some sort of electric/force field gets unleashed, forcing you to make it back the same way with the additional pressure of a timer or you die. I must have died a hundred times to that thing and was once again one of the last people to get it (cheaty Sages and their Phase Walks...) but it didn't really feel impossible at any time... it was just a matter of mastering the sequence to the point that I was able to execute it both flawlessly and quickly enough.

At this point some of my guildies moved on to Ossus, but since I already had those 'crons, I instead opted to return to Mek-Sha and went back to practising riding the sign. It took me another half-dozen attempts or so and then I made it to that datacron as well.

I'm glad that I originally decided to save getting these datacrons for a more opportune time, as getting them with my guildies was much more fun than it would have been to simply get a summon or even to follow a guide on my own.

The Indiana Jones datacron was probably my favourite, despite of being sequestered in a personal phase and causing me to die a hundred times. It was just a very fun idea, and restarting after a death was extremely fast so the failures didn't feel too punishing. Though I guess the time pressure at the end could be considered a bit harsh for the rather casual player base that the game has cultivated over the years. Sure, casual players don't "need" the stats from it either, but I just think it's a pretty fun experience to have regardless, for all kinds of players.

The endurance datacron on Mek-Sha was the sort of mini adventure that I usually like with datacrons, but I was a bit let down by the bugginess of its implementation. Also, considering that there are follow-up jumps after the sign ride that you can fail, having to wait about two minutes for the sign to come around again after each try was a bit annoying.

The two jumping 'crons were both alright - they both featured at least one pretty fiendish jump, which always strikes me as a bit frustrating when it's part of a whole series of jumps that you have to restart if you fail, but at least the run back wasn't long in either case. The Onderon one also had what you could call "save points" in the sense that if you fell off at a later point, you only had to redo the last couple of jumps and didn't have to start over from the very beginning. That was good.

I wonder if there'll be datacrons on Manaan?

PS: It's the first of August, which once again heralds the return of Blaugust! Whether you enjoy discovering new blogs, would like to promote your own writing or are maybe only just thinking about starting your own blog, I can definitely recommend checking out this community event.

Three Months of Onslaught

I realised today that as of yesterday, a full three months have passed since Onslaught's launch. Time flies when you're having fun!

My initial excitement has of course tapered off a bit, but I'm still happily chugging along, as the game feels like it's in a pretty good place right now.

First off, the expansion has really managed to reinvigorate my interest in endgame of all kinds. Working on the new operation has been a blast, and my guild has been able to run two full progression teams to focus on it. The other team actually managed to kill the Apex Vanguard (the last boss) on veteran mode last week, but my own team isn't far off either - just yesterday we had a zero percent wipe (/cries).

While there'll still be things left to do after he falls, I really like the thought of soon being able to say that we cleared the new operation in both difficulties. It's not something I've ever been able to say so shortly after the release of a new raid.

The Conquest rebalancing also revived my interest in that part of the game, and my guild managed to conquer both Mek-Sha and Taris in the last month, which was fun and exciting.

My excitement about gear has tapered off a lot since I earned full 306, simply because the set bonus I want seems ridiculously hard to acquire - it's not available from the regular vendors and I don't think I've seen a single piece drop in the operation it's supposed to be dropping from after three months of running it nearly every week. So I just keep spending tech fragments on sets for alts whenever I get close to the cap and that works alright for me.

Despite of my initial criticisms I did the Onderon dailies for quite a while, even after I'd maxed out the reputation, mostly because running them was something that Mr Commando was happy to do too, so it gave us another in-game activity to do together. Once he lost interest I mostly did as well, though I've been back a couple of times mainly to combine doing them with a round of gathering. The way Bioware has balanced gathering skills this time around, hours of running missions don't yield nearly as much profit as simply picking flowers while doing a round of dailies on Onderon.

The repeatable content on Mek-Sha has been oddly disappointing though. I only found one of the heroics really fun to repeat, as the other one required an odd amount of running around that made the heroic quick travel option feel almost pointless. Then later they added a third one which seemed like it was supposed to give you some fun options to support different factions and unlock achievements, but it was buggy as all hell on launch and gave no real reward, which caused Mr Commando to dismiss it after one run and we haven't been back since then.

Bioware also added a terminal with supposedly rotating dailies in patch 6.0.2, but I also only visited that one once. It gave me a mission to pick some fruit on Dantooine but sent Mr Commando off to Nar Shaddaa. The fruit-picking was cute enough, but being sent off to different planets at random obviously didn't make it a good choice for something to do as a team. I should probably revisit it anyway though...

To get back to gathering for a second, crew skills in general launched in a pretty messed-up state (which is honestly why I didn't bother to look into them too much initially), mostly with even the simplest crafts being ridiculously expensive in terms of materials. A patch has improved the situation somewhat since then, but it's still incredibly slow. I only got the achievement for getting all crew skills to level 700 the other day, and am slowly chipping away at trying to research this or that schematic, without too much commitment.

All of that aside, there is of course always more story content to go through. I've "only" completed Onslaught on six characters and I have so many more alts parked at various points, from their class story to KotET. And I do enjoy logging into different ones to play a bit here and there, but as much as I want to see different outcomes on a cerebral level, when it comes to deciding how I'm going to spend my one hour of playtime in the evening - or however much I happen to have - I all too often end up doing something else instead. But it's okay, fortunately that content isn't going anywhere, so I'll just keep chilling and chipping away at it as time allows and depending on my mood.