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!

Ranking the 7.7 Dynamic Encounter Planets

I've been meaning to write more about the dynamic encounters that were added with patch 7.7 for a while, but I struggled to make up my mind about what format I was going to use for the post. I had fun with the top ten lists I made for Hoth and Tatooine, but that format doesn't work so well when you're dealing with a larger number of planets, each of which has a much smaller number of dynamic encounters than those two.

I ultimately decided that I'm just going to rank the planets against each other instead, talking about each planet in more general terms instead of discussing too many individual encounters in detail.

Going from best to worst, I would start with: 

1. Dromund Kaas

If you split the seven planets that had dynamic encounters added in 7.7 into three groups - capital worlds, starter planets and Ilum - I think both of the capital worlds definitely came out on top. With more than twenty unique encounters per planet they offer the most variety of the bunch, as well as offering an easy way to grind Conquest points.

The encounters on Dromund Kaas are thematically very varied, mostly leaning into the different regional "themes" previously established in side missions, such as the spaceport being somewhat in disarray or the lightning spires being under attack. They mostly seem to be set in the same time period as those original exploration missions, though I noticed while dispersing unruly Imperial citizens in Kaas City that one of them yelled "What is Xarion hiding?", which I thought was an interesting detail that would place that one after Onslaught in the timeline.

In general, most of the encounters are quick and fun, and strategically placed in locations where people are bound to come through on their way to some other mission objective, making it very temping to allow yourself to be distracted for a moment to complete an encounter. Prime examples of this are doing "Bad Monkey" just after arriving at the spaceport, or hunting down the rogue bounty hunter while passing through Kaas City.

If I had to cite anything negative, I'd say that there are a couple of encounters with flaws. The Apex Predator in "Shock and Awe" feels way overtuned for levelling players (trying to solo it on a level thirty-something with a healer companion I was chunked to death within only a couple of hits), and the final boss for "Kubaz Incursion" can be a bit annoyingly hard to find. "Powder Keg" actually being possible to fail is a neat idea but the fact that it's the only encounter of this kind and that it's not obvious at all what is going on unless you're already in the know makes it a bit unpleasant in that regard.

Also, I wish they'd fix encounter voice lines sometimes playing when the encounter isn't even up, because every time my speeder rides past the lightning spires I get spammed with yells about multiple encounters that may not actually all be active.

Anyway, all in all it's still a fun romp, and the reason it's edging out Coruscant for first place in my opinion is that the map makes it both cheap and easy to get around if you want to do multiple encounters. Which brings us to...

2. Coruscant 

In general, Coruscant is one of my top three planets in the entire game, and most positive things I said about the dynamic encounters on Dromund Kaas above also apply to Coruscant. The reason I put it in second place is simply the fact that it's a bit of a pain to travel between dynamic encounters due to the planetary layout with the different sectors, which all count as being really far apart, which in turn means that moving between them always requires either a looong taxi ride or paying the maximum price for quick travel. Even if you do opt for quick travel though, the sectors are still laid out in such a way that it can be a pain to just travel from one dynamic encounter within the same sector to the next one.

The said, I adore most of the encounters in the Senate Plaza, which is where I'm always passing through when I exit my stronghold, and I basically never pass on an opportunity to set off some fireworks or to help clean up the party's aftermath.

Negatives are that some of the Black Sun and Justicar encounters don't have nearly enough clickies if there's even more than one person trying to do the encounter at the same time, the way Ugnaught Engineering was horrifically bugged when it first came out and made people get into fights about who was supposedly causing it to bug, stealing kills or whatever (regardless of whether it was true or not), and the one encounter on the Senate Plaza that I don't like, "Understaffed". Like with "Powder Keg", you can tell someone just wanted to try something different there, but the final result is just too undercooked, with a tutorial mode that teaches you to do things the wrong way, and people being able to ruin the encounter for each other - both intentionally and unintentionally - which is never a good thing.

3. Tython 

Next we have the starter planets, which I think are all pretty similar in quality, and I don't feel particularly strongly about the order in which I've ranked them against each other. The main reason I consider them worse than the capital planets it that there are very few encounters, so you'll run out of things to do pretty quickly if you're just trying to grind on a single planet, and that none of the DEs on the starter planets give Conquest points. I can see why the devs decided to have that limitation, but it still means that for someone who's very Conquest-focused like me, they tend to have a lot less replay value.

With that general preamble out of the way, Tython is definitely my favourite of the bunch, since it's my favourite of all the starter planets and I think all its dynamic encounters are very on point, whether you're doing simple chores at the Jedi Temple or beating back the flesh raiders.

The only thing I'll say is that I do wonder a little how having a dynamic encounter pop up the moment you leave your intro phase is going to affect new players' perception of the planet and the game as a whole, and whether it might make things come off as a bit "loud" and overwhelming to less experienced gamers. I would love to have insight into the devs' behavioural metrics on the starter planets for that one... 

4. Hutta

Hutta is actually one of my least favourite planets, generally speaking, but I think in terms of dynamic encounters it works well enough. Again, the themes of the encounters go very well with what's also conveyed via the existing side missions, from dangerous wildlife to rebellious evocii.

The only thing I'm not so sure about is having an encounter that is basically a vehicle quest right outside the spawn phase, because it makes me wonder whether that isn't a bit confusing/overwhelming for new players. Even if seeing a bunch of droids enter the gang wars right outside the Poison Pit does serve to drive home the point that the town is a bit of a mess. 

5. Ord Mantell

Ord Mantell is one of two planets where I actually feel like some of the encounters are slightly off in tone. This may very well be my personal bias speaking, as someone who mains a trooper and was instantly scarred by being blamed for the death of Bellis the informant at the hands of the separatists by multiple people, but I always perceived the whole setting with the separatists as very dark and desperate. Even the smuggler story with all its goofiness has a pretty dark turn here with Corso's parents being dead because of the separatists and him having that one moment where he wants to execute that random sep in cold blood.

With that said, I just feel like some of the encounters involving separatists feel a bit too silly. Like that mad scientist type sending you out to shoot separatists with one of his droids? It's one thing if there's a specific NPC that's bit ridiculous when you talk to them, that's clearly just that one character, but the fact that you hear the dynamic encounter yells repeated endlessly even when you're just driving by gives them a much stronger impact on the mood in my opinion. Might just be me.

6. Korriban

That's also the reason why I rate Korriban last of this batch, because again, several of the encounters just feel a bit too goofy to me personally. Don't get me wrong, both the Sith warrior and inquisitor stories have plenty of humorous moments even on Korriban, but I still always got the vibe that as a setting, the planet is clearly meant to be very grim, with all the racial purity nonsense and dog-eat-dog behaviour encouraged in the acolytes. Stuff like k'lor'slugs running wild around the academy feels more like the kind of hijinx you'd find in a young adult book series about a magic school. (That said, looking at how busy each planet is, this one actually seems to be very popular with people, so again, this might just be me.)

7. Ilum 

Finally, in last place - alas, poor Ilum. I really wanted the addition of dynamic encounters to this planet to feel like a revival for it. I have some fond memories of Ilum from the game's early days, even though it felt somewhat unfinished even then, but over time it's only ever declined in relevance. Sadly I can't say that I feel like dynamic encounters have put it back on people's radar, and based on the small number of other people I see doing encounters there, I get the impression that it didn't really land for the majority of the population either.

Good things first: the theming is once again spot-on on this one. They really leaned into the Republic vs. Empire conflict from the original storyline and even added some encounter achievements that are meant to encourage world PvP. (I'm 99% sure that almost nobody will bother with those, but I appreciate the effort.) On the Western Ice Shelf, they've expanded on the lore of the Tonvarr Pirates that were previously only really relevant during the Gree event. It all works.

The problem is simply that too many of the encounters are just not very fun. Too many of them have multiple stages and feature a large number of mobs - when sometimes mob-killing isn't even part of the main objective, which makes it feel like you're just endlessly wading back and forth through constantly respawning mobs to actually get to the next clicky you need. It just feels tedious to the point that my brain keeps trying to forget that Ilum is another planet that has dynamic encounters now and I very rarely even remember to go there.

All that said, I wanted to also give a shout-out to a change to dynamic encounters in general that came with 7.7 but that I didn't see in the patch notes: When they released these new encounters, they changed it so that on staged DEs, you no longer need to complete every single stage by yourself to get credit, but rather you can join in at any time and still get completion. I feel that this has been a great change and has been most noticeable for me during encounters such as the base attacks on Tatooine and Hoth. It used to be that I felt that there was no point in joining in if people were already fighting the stage two walker, as it wouldn't give me anything and I'd just have to restart the encounter from scratch afterwards anyway. Now I'll gleefully jump in and help out because I'll actually be rewarded for it too, which I think has been a great change.

How many of the new encounters have you done at this point? And do you agree with my ranking of the planets or not? Let me know in the comments. 

Galactic Season 8 in Review

We're once again at the point where the current Galactic Season has several weeks left in it, but more and more people are done (or close to being done) with it. Personally, I've hit level 100 on all servers, and on Darth Malgus I just need a few more weekly objectives to complete the last meta achievement. So what did I think of this season?

I was very negative about it when the details about it were first revealed, and was then disappointed a second time when even the few hopes I had for the uprising theme were quickly crushed. All that said, it ultimately turned out... alright, I guess.

I would still put it near the bottom of my ranking of all Galactic Seasons so far, for having a theme I didn't really care for, not having any rewards that particularly excited me (there was quite a lot of stuff that was "nice", but I've said before that I consider it a downside when there isn't a big central reward that also supports the theme), and for feeling more repetitive than any season before it (I still can't quite believe they made me kill all the DvL bosses again for a third achievement). 

At the same time though, things were not as bad as I had feared. Once they made the fixes to make doing your weekly uprising via the group finder more viable, the system worked well enough to funnel people into that to guarantee regular pops even on the smaller servers. (I could even get it done on Shae Vizla, where I hadn't done anything through the group finder in a long time.) With Trench Runner being the one notable exception, the tuning was such that even a group of low-level or generally underperforming characters could muddle through without too much effort.

I saw more than one comment, whether explicit or implied, that indicated that the person making it was actually doing uprisings for the first time, which is something that's always nice to see. And while my overall opinion of uprisings hasn't changed (still not a fan), I'll admit that I liked them more as levelling content than as max-level content, if that makes sense. The XP was pretty good every time I went in there on a levelling character, and somehow mowing down hordes of weak mobs feels more "on-brand" on a low-level character. It's what you do on the starter planets after all, when you're just learning how to play and might not necessarily have that many abilities yet. As endgame content I've always found that kind of gameplay a bit unsatisfying though.

The other thing I did like about this season was how the devs incorporated the dynamic encounters on Hoth and Tatooine into the weekly seasons objectives. I think they're a fun new kind of gameplay and I appreciated their addition to this. Especially on the other servers, where I hadn't had any reason to do dynamic encounters before, so I enjoyed gathering a bunch of achievements all over again.

There are a few things I hope they tweak in coming seasons though: First off, there were two variants of each dynamic encounter objective as far as I could tell, one that required you to do 15 for the weekly, and one that required 25. I thought the first was reasonable, while the second was too much. I still did both types this time around because I also had the draw of wanting to work on the achievements to keep me motivated, but when that's no longer applicable I don't think I would bother with doing 25 again; it's just too time-consuming.

The second "issue" I had was that just having encounters on Hoth and Tatooine made things a bit repetitive. One of my favourite weekly seasons objectives up until now has been the one to do "repeatable or exploration missions" on a number of planets, and I think the dynamic encounter objectives largely replaced those this season. (I did a count, and in the same number of weeks, Season 7 had 17 objectives of this type, while Season 8 had only 7.) This makes sense in so far as they fill a similar niche and the DEs were the new hotness, but it also meant that what previously made this objective so much fun to do - that it was so varied in its locations and could be done in a number of different ways - was kind of lost as we were just stuck on either Tatooine or Hoth week after week.

We'll see how they'll handle this in future seasons, but I think my personal preference would be if they simply merged the two types of objectives together, into something like "Complete Dynamic Encounters, Repeatable, Exploration, or Bonus Missions while defeating enemies on Coruscant or Dromund Kaas", therefore restoring the "rotating between different planets" aspect while also including dynamic encounters in the mix.

Still, I've got to admit I'm going to try and temper my expectations for whenever they announce Galactic Season 9, because I'm definitely a bit bored of the repetition and lack of even small bits of newness at this point. And by god, if they ask us to kill all the DvL bosses a fourth time... I actually don't know how to finish this sentence, but I still hope they come up with something different for us to do next time.

Some Rambly First Impressions of 7.7

Patch 7.7 dropped this week! MassivelyOP's post about this fact started with the line "A big Star Wars: The Old Republic game update without a story is kind of like Christmas without the presents", which I found surprisingly poignant... but of course there were still interesting things to discover and look forward to.

First there were the new alien skin colours, which seemed to be thing that had people the most excited on social media from what I could tell, based on the number of screenshots and clips from the very first cut scene that I scrolled past and that were meant to show off the poster's newest character in a brand-new hue.

I myself ultimately didn't end up creating a new character, because I realised I still had a bunch of lowbies that I hadn't actually played that much yet. Also, am I the only one who doesn't necessarily create and start new characters at the same time? Sometimes I'll just feel like playing with the character creator and come up with a new concept that I then end up not actually playing until weeks or months later.

Anyway, this week did not feel right for creation, so I just changed the shade of yellow on my newest already existing Twi'lek. After using the character customisation station, he got teleported onto the roof of my Coruscant stronghold... the last time that happened I thought it was just a one-time glitch, but I might have to upgrade it to bug - then again, it might just get filed away under "weird stuff that happens inside player housing" anyway.

The new dynamic encounters were very fun. I took some lowbies to the starter planets to check them out as I would've felt a bit weird razing all those level 5 mobs on a max-level character in raid gear, though other people clearly had no such reservations. The new events brought a lot of existing players back to the starter worlds to check out the the new content and earn some new achievements, and the experience felt like absolute mayhem. Anyone who just so happens to start playing SWTOR for the first time this week must be wondering what the holy hell is going on once they leave their first story phase. Now, this particular level of craziness obviously won't last, but I do think that in the long run these new encounters will still serve to make things a lot more lively on the starter planets going forward, and I can't help but wonder how that will affect players' first impressions of the game in the future. 

Unlike when the first dynamic encounters were added to Tatooine and Hoth, I didn't check these newest ones out on the PTS this time, so it was all fresh and exciting to me. Even having only checked out the starter planets so far, I thought it was very charming how the new encounters were used to enhance the mood and setting of each area. For example the Jedi training grounds on Tython were always meant to be under attack by flesh raiders when you first arrive there, but it was all fairly tame, with the same couple of NPCs shooting at each other without anything really happening. Now there's an actual dynamic encounter about a flesh raider attack on top of that, during which you'll see way more mobs spawn, as well as a proper flurry of activity from players joining the fight or otherwise defending the area. It's quite cool. Jiguuna on Hutta was another good example, as there's always meant to be a gang war going on there when you arrive, but now that is dialled up to eleven when the associated dynamic encounter is going on.

I have yet to dip my toes into the encounters on the capital worlds and on Ilum, but I don't want to rush to "the end" and reach a point where I've seen it all too quickly. My ops team also wants to check out XR-53 on master mode, and while I'm personally not hopeful that we'll make much progress on it, it's at least another new thing to check out. 

7.7 Dev Stream: More Alien Colours Are Nice, but Still No Story

Yesterday it was time for another dev stream, this time focused on the upcoming patch 7.7. There was some competition for my attention as the new pope had gone live mere moments earlier, but I loaded up Twitch on my laptop and dived right in.

There was a new Twitch drop to be earned (a purple-framed Dromund Kaas poster), for watching one hour of live SWTOR content, but apparently Twitch measures time a bit differently from the rest of the world as it took almost the full one and a half hours of the stream for it to show as earned. Yes, the stream lasted one and a half hours! I wish I could say this was a sign of it being chock-full of exciting updates, but to be honest I get the feeling that they've just got better at fluffing up what they have to make it look bigger. For example there was a whole section about fixing a bug with the sprinter guild perk, which... don't get me wrong, fixing bugs is a good thing, no arguments there! But is a single bug fix of that nature really important enough to warrant a segment with the game producer on your livestream to get players hyped up? Personally I don't think so.

The thing that we of course all wanted to know above all else was whether there was any update on the story content and sadly, the answer was not really. Basically, they've built 7.7, but the voice actors' strike is still going on, so we're still not getting anything. The only thing I noted down here was that they showed the little trailer from Star Wars Celebration again (the one that included [Spoiler?]) and the accompanying slide said it featured "a mysterious figure that has been pulling the strings behind the scenes", which does seem to confirm that this person's role is going to be more than a throwaway cameo.

Anyway, having the second major patch in a row release without story content will be a bummer, but I guess I can't really complain as we know the voice actors' strike is still a thing. I'd just gotten my hopes up a little as a "datamining-adjacent" friend had told me that something had happened and somehow the 7.6 story looked ready for release now. (You know who you are; consider yourself given the side eye!) But that's not the devs' fault, and just goes to illustrate once again why you shouldn't put too much stock in things that are datamined.

Anyway, they still managed to fill a one and a half hour stream, and it wasn't all bug fixes, so there obviously were some other things announced.

Among a number of UI updates to the mission log and map, the one that stood out the most was the addition of the so-called "eras window", a new tab on your mission log. All this does is basically show you the storyline split into "eras" (which mostly align with expansions, but not 100%), to show you where you are and what's coming up. This seems like it could be a major boon to returning players who don't remember where they left off in terms of story. It was also noted that it doesn't "currently" include notes on any decisions you've made, though I guess this is something they could expand on in the future. Either way, it's a good feature but won't do much for me as a "power user". I wrote about how I had to create a spreadsheet to keep track of all my alts' progress almost seven years ago, which is much more detailed and most importantly, let's me see where each character is at without having to log into them in game to check. I still rely on that to this day, but for less hardcore Swtorites this new window will be useful.

In terms of group content, we got the official announcement for master mode XR-53, which is cool for the relevant target audience but I suspect it will be too hard for me and my guildies so I can't muster too much enthusiasm for it right now. I was also a bit disappointed by the clarification that the new augment schematics it will drop will be brand-new gold augments that will outclass the purple ones that people spent the last few months researching and crafting. We don't even know whether you'll be able to reverse-engineer the gold ones by deconstructing the purple ones (it was asked in chat multiple times but not answered). So eh. As a side note to this, they said that PvP weeklies will start rewarding small amounts of corrupted bioprocessors, the (until now) unique crafting material dropped by XR-53, which is nice I guess, though for me personally the bottleneck has actually turned out to be other mats.

Speaking of PvP, PvP Season 8 will launch with 7.7 and in order to align it more with how Galactic Seasons work, it will now also include an option to just buy out levels with Cartel coins. I've got to admit there was a small part of me that bristled at this because isn't PvP about skill? You shouldn't be able to buy that, right? But then, these new PvP seasons have always been just about participation with no particular requirement to succeed, so I guess it's not that big a deal.

They talked about Nar Shaddaa Nightlife returning in July, which just felt weird to think about this early in May, but I guess summer isn't that far away. The main thing that irked me here was that there was no comment about making the various slot machine chips a legacy-wide currency. They talked about this last year and said it was complex and would take time - but then they managed to change the DvL tokens from character- to legacy-bound within a couple of weeks, so I was really hoping we'd be able to start this year's Nightlife with something similar. But nope, nothing. I guess I can still hope that it will be addressed later, but for now I'm just disappointed that the main thing I was curious about in regards to this event was not mentioned at all.

The biggest and most universally accessible bit of gameplay to be added with the patch will be new dynamic encounters on seven planets, which will include all the starter planets, the two faction capitals and Ilum. The starter planets won't have that many encounters due to how small they are, but still. I thought going for these early planets next was an interesting choice when I first heard chatter about it during the previous PTS. I thought Tatooine and Hoth made great sense as first locations for this new feature, and in my mind the best place to use it going forward were going to be other large planets with a lot of empty space, such as Quesh, Belsavis or Voss. Cramming them into the tiny starter planets is kind of the opposite of that, but I can understand the devs wanting to introduce the feature to new players early on in order to get people interested and familiar from the get-go. I'm still a little concerned that it might end up being a bit of a pain to have god knows how many players compete for the same six k'lor'slugs on Korriban (which would not improve the new player experience I reckon), but we'll see how it goes. In general I've really enjoyed dynamic encounters and am looking forward to getting more of them.

One interesting thing they announced closer to the end was "combat updates", which is to say they are going to make some changes to combat styles, such as which discipline is selected for new players by default and what order you get some abilities in. The example they gave was that Guardians/Juggernauts don't really have any AoE other than Force Sweep/Smash for a long time, so they want to pull Cyclone/Sweeping Slash forward and grant it automatically at level 7 instead of making it a level 27 optional choice like it is right now. This sounds like a good idea in principle, though I could have thought of better examples to choose. From what I recall there are currently some utilities that actually give you buffs to certain abilities several levels before you actually get that ability, which is just weird, and I'm hoping that this kind of thing will also be included in this overhaul. (I quickly logged in to find an example and e.g. Deception Shadows have a talent option at level 27 to add functionality to Force Cloak when they don't actually get Force Cloak until level 31.)

I do wonder a little though, as another example they gave about something they want to change was to make the default spec for Shadows Serenity (the dot spec) instead of Deception (the direct damage one). I just wrote down "why?" in my notes here as the latter is much easier to play, so why change to the more difficult one as default? So I have some reservations as well, not fully understanding what they are going for here.

The big surprise at the end of the stream (including one here seems to be a pattern they are settling into) was that they'll be adding lots more skin colours for aliens in the patch, and I do mean lots. Like, Nautolans will go from having 10 colours to 95 different shades. Now, only some of those will be completely new colours, like the (inexplicably, to me) popular purple Twi'leks, but just getting a lot more different shades of say, green, will be cool too. I think this was the most exciting announcement of the stream for many players, and I liked it too. It's just no replacement for actual story content, you know? I continue to wait.

Meanwhile, further info about the patch and stream, should you want it:

• VOD on Twitch
• VOD on YouTube
• Article on the official website
  
• Swtorista summary
• Today in TOR summary
• Vulkk summary

Is the Remote Trading Outpost Bundle Good Value?

I'm not the biggest fan of the Cartel Market, but it helps to keep the game alive and is relatively inoffensive when compared to the monetisation efforts of many other MMOs. While I can't recall buying Cartel coins for real money more than once in the past decade, I do occasionally buy things with the CC I get through subscribing and completing Galactic Seasons. One item that caught my interest when it was announced was the Remote Trading Outpost Bundle first presented during the dev livestream for 7.6.

I'll admit that the fact that the devs who talked about it were super funny certainly helped to pique my interest, but primarily I was curious about the concept of a decoration bundle that came with a built-in quest. I think we haven't had to buy anything story-related from the Cartel Market since those cubes with the Shroud diaries. (I'm not counting the HK-55 chapter since subscribers originally earned access to that as part of the normal content release cadence.)

Now if you're worried about "having" to buy this bundle for the story... don't. There's no voice acting and nothing's tied to any existing story content, it's just a little side mission utilising the new comlink interface and tied to the bundle itself.

However, I did think that this made for a nice bit of "added value" to the decorations, which was the primary reason that I bought it - curiosity about just what was going to be included. So I'm writing this post for anyone else who might be wondering.

On opening the bundle, you are given 82 decorations of various types and sizes, plus an item that starts a quest. If you do so it will instruct you to place the Neglected Spire Basin decoration, which is basically a broken fountain, in one of your strongholds and to interact with it. As you identify it as damaged, you're given the option to contact the manufacturer about the problem, which leads you to a terminal on Mek-Sha, where after going through some of the expected red tape, you're eventually being assigned a repair droid to fix the basin (and seemingly everything else).

When you complete this quest, you're rewarded with another 86 decorations, a pet, and another quest item. This follow-up quest starts from the same Neglected Spire Basin, as even after it's been repaired, it turns out to have a baby dianoga stuck in the pipework. The new mission asks you to learn more about dianogas on the fleet, again using the comlink interface, followed by a trip to Hutta to gather some items to lure the dianoga out. Once you've successfully done so, the second mission is completed and the baby dianoga also becomes your pet.

As with many virtual items, it can be hard to assess whether something is good value or not, and if that wasn't tricky enough, decoration bundles are even tougher to judge because they are pretty much guaranteed to contain some items that you don't care that much about. Still, just by comparing the Remote Trading Outpost Bundle to other items on the Cartel Market, at least some conclusions can be drawn.

At 2500 Cartel Coins, it's a bit pricier than most decoration bundles, which more commonly run between 1300 and 1800 Coins. However, those other bundles also usually contain only around 10-30 decos, so the fact that you get more than five times as many decorations for a price increase of less than 40% is insane. And that's without even attaching any value to the little quests or the two pets. (Pets are usually another 240 CC each.)

The only caveat as per Swtorista (I didn't think to check this myself) is that all the items are bound and can't be sold on the GTN. The quest also isn't a legacy unlock, so while you can move the quest starter item around between characters of your legacy, once it's completed it's done, and you can't repeat it on another character, though the two pets themselves can be unlocked in Collections.

So in my opinion at least, this bundle is great value for money if you're into decorating at all and have some CC to spare. You can see a full list of all the decorations on Swtorista's site, but I particularly like the fountains/basins and different types of lamps.

If you have to spend real money to get the required CC, I'd be a bit more hesitant, simply because I don't like that the pricing of 2500 CC is just a bit more than you get with the 20 dollar Cartel coin bundle (which buys 2400 CC) and I'm not a fan of those kinds of upsell tactics. 

Still, I consider that a relatively minor niggle, and overall I've got to give this one a major thumbs up. I've only used some of the decos so far, but the pets have certainly gotten some comments! I'd be happy to see more "value-added" bundles like this in the future.

The Best And Worst Dynamic Encounters on Tatooine

Today I hit 100% achievement completion for dynamic encounters on Tatooine, so I thought it would be fun to write a post about which encounters I liked the best and least, just like I did for Hoth.

In general I'll say that Tatooine has been a bit less exciting to revisit repeatedly because none of the encounters there offer unique rewards like the pet, mount and decoration you can earn on Hoth, and in my opinion there were also more encounters that felt perhaps a bit too similar to each other. Or maybe I only got that impression because there are literally three encounters with the objective "kill 20+ womp rats".

The Top 10 Best Dynamic Encounters on Tatooine 

1. In Search of a Problem

My favourite encounter on Tatooine is this Imperial-only one just outside Mos Ila. Imperial scientists want you to test their newest concoctions on the local banthas to make them healthier, larger and more docile, but Imperial science being what it is, the medicine sometimes does the exact opposite of what it's supposed to. I just really enjoy the funny effects it sometimes has on the banthas, such as when the growth serum goes wrong and shrinks one of them to absolutely miniscule size. The event also doesn't take very long to complete and is quite convenient to reach for Imperial players.

2. Weary Travellers

Sort of the equivalent of the above for Republic players just outside Anchorhead, this encounter asks you to provide food, water and medicine to the refugees of a sand people raid. Again, it's very convenient and quick to do, but I also feel it conveys the planet's inhospitability very well.

3. Spaceport Chaos

This is an encounter you run into as a Republic player immediately upon landing (if it's up) and it'll be hard to miss as the entire spaceport is overrun with batha calves that need to be wrangled back into their cages. Another fun little romp that reminded me a bit of my ship's gizka infestation in KOTOR.

4. A Worse Exchange

Here, too, the other faction has a sort of equivalent, with the difference being that as an Imperial, you're being asked upon landing on Tatooine to use a mouse droid to scan and tag cargo containers containing contraband as well as disable Exchange surveillance devices. This encounter is part of a group of three Exchange-themed encounters, but to be honest I didn't want to call out the entire trilogy in this case since I personally thought the other two parts were pretty mid.

5. Imperial/Republic Attack

Yeah I know, I already called these out as great on Hoth, but they work on Tatooine too, you know! Due to Tatooine's layout it feels like you're a little less likely to run into these randomly compared to Hoth, but I still enjoy jumping into the fray to help defend my base, regardless of which side I'm on.

6. Sarlacc Snacktime

This hilarious encounter in the Dune Sea asks you to pick up a repulsor gun near the sarlacc pit and punt Gamorreans into it to feed the monster. The punting power of the temporary ability you gain is absolutely insane and makes for some extremely funny results. Just the other day I was there with another person who was also trying to get it done at the same time, and we were almost on top of each other for a bit and competing for mobs, but our aim also wasn't great so some of those Gamorreans were getting punted back and forth across the sarlacc pit multiple times. That just made me giggle.

7. The "Road Gig" Trilogy: The Debut, The Sophomore Album, The Comeback

This Republic-only trilogy of encounters in Anchorhead offers something slightly different as it has you helping out the band "The Double Sunburns". First you help them fix their broken speeders, then you assist with advertising their gig, and finally you get to go to the cantina to listen to them and join the party. The first part is a bit meh as it's another encounter asking you to kill womp rats with a side of RNG for quest drops, which I'm not a huge fan of, but I figured the other two parts were enjoyable enough to warrant including the whole set on this list. The second part is probably my favourite, as it has you controlling a cute gonk droid to play adverts for the residents of Anchorhead.

8. The Scavengers' Tale, Another Scavengers' Tale, The Last Scavengers' Tale

This trilogy of encounters in the Dune Sea centers around helping out a band of Jawas. In the first part you help them repair some droids, in the second part the droids go haywire and you need to defend against them (naturally), and in the third part you fight off one big droid. The last encounter has an interesting mechanic where the droid will cast a massive damage reduction shield on itself and you need to use an exploding barrel to get rid of said shield. It's unfortunately quite unintuitive to figure out how to do this the first time around, but once you know what to do it makes for a decent change of pace from all the more mindless fights.

9. The Renegade Dewback

The dynamic encounters that have you fight a single mob are usually neither particularly great nor bad in my opinion - some are faster than others, but many are located in kind of awkward places where it feels like too much effort to travel there just to kill one mob. The Renegade Dewback is fairly conveniently located for both factions however, doesn't have too much health, and just oozes personality. I mean, "Mister Grumbletail"? I don't know about you, but the moment I saw that name I wanted to make up a backstory for him.

10. Tread Lightly

This simple encounter asks you to disarm some mines in a canyon, no combat required. Not bad, but also not that exciting, is it? Well no, but stepping on the mines and setting them off also counts as "disarming" for this one, and players have been having fun with that.

The Top 5 Worst Dynamic Encounters on Tatooine

It may be somewhat less exciting than Hoth, but Tatooine is also less buggy and annoying, and I actually struggled to even fill this list.

1. Maintaining Order

This is the one encounter that I found that was bugged out in an annoying way, which is why it's number one on this list for me right now. You're supposed to intimidate outlaws in Mos Ila with a special temporary ability, but for some reason the button likes to vanish before you actually get in range of the NPCs you're supposed to use it on. It doesn't do this 100% of the time, so you can eventually finish the encounter with some patience and repeated careful approaches towards different outlaws, but it's annoying. Add to the fact that the event area is very small and doesn't actually have that many outlaws in it, so any sort of competition makes things worse.

2. Twin Suns Brutalizer

So remember how I said a few paragraphs ago that the single-mob encounters can be so-so? Well this is the prime negative example in my opinion, as the guy is located at the back of the toughest heroic area on Tatooine and quite out of the way for both factions, so if you don't have stealth you have quite a lot of travelling and fighting to do just to get to this one guy. Not worth it unless you just want to do it once for the achievement or already happen to be in the area for another reason.

3. Breezepunks

I remember when I read the PTS feedback thread about dynamic encounters, there was this one person who posted a fair bit of detailed feedback about things they liked, but then they also had several mentions of how they thought "Breezepunks" was the worst thing ever. This was before I'd ever done it myself, but once I got to it on the PTS, I actually had no problems with it that I can recall. I don't know if my memory is just faulty or if this encounter actually got worse from the PTS to live, but the initial instructions now seem buggy/misleading, so you kind of need to google how to even start it, and then there simply aren't a lot of the quest clickies around considering the number of them you need, so if more than one person is in the area, things quickly get tedious.

4. Sand People Warband

This would be a single-mob encounter except it consists of three champion mobs that take a while to die and... well, that's kind of annoying if you arrive while the encounter is already in progress, because odds are that at least one mob has already been killed and completion requires you to tag all three. So you help with killing what's left, and then you stand around to wait for that one guy to respawn - however, since they respawn as a group, you'll probably have to kill all three again. Not the worst thing in the world but definitely a little annoying.

5. Militant Jawa

I was initially hopeful that this fight would be a bit like the droid in The Last Scavengers' Tale, something with interesting mechanics, but actually, you can continue damaging this guy through his shield and he just summons a bunch of droid adds that are more annoying than anything (one of them has a really long stun). Again, not a fan.

On the Comlink

One of patch 7.6's more minor features was the addition of the new comlink interface. To be honest, when the devs announced this on the stream in November, part of me wondered how something like that was considered important enough to be included on a stream... but in hindsight I think it's good that they showed it off in advance, as otherwise I'm pretty sure my reaction would've been a big WTF on first encountering it in game.

Musco also said on the stream that this new interface wasn't meant to replace cinematics and proper conversations, so naturally in the first place I encountered it... it felt like it was replacing a proper conversation, namely the short intro mission for the new ops boss.

The story wrapper missions for operations have been in KOTOR style for almost a decade, so suddenly seeing this purely text interface pop up, with not even an NPC talking to me in Huttese or anything, was certainly surprising. To be honest, the dialogue also felt a bit like it had originally been written for a traditional conversation, as the NPC - after indicating that they don't know who they're addressing on first contact - replies to your first comment with "Oh! It's YOU!". This is the kind of response that would make sense in an in-person interaction, as many a quest giver in the game starts by muttering something or other just to suddenly recognise our character the moment they look more closely. But in a texting interface, where it's already been established that the NPC doesn't know whose number this is... what are they recognising without seeing my face or hearing my voice? Does my character have a super obvious profile picture in her chat app? It just felt like a bit of a stretch is all I'm saying.

Anyway, I may poke fun, but ultimately I didn't mind this change to an ops intro mission of all things. As an operations player, I was just happy to have a new boss to fight, and one that's well-tuned and fun too. I would've gone and done the new ops even with zero story attached to it, and so would many others I'm sure, so the fact that they trimmed down the intro and post-ops debrief to a simple text exchange is no skin off my back.

I will say though that I liked the other two situations in which I encountered the new interface better. One is the little story that comes with the new Remote Outpost decoration bundle from the Cartel Market (about which I'm planning to write another post) and the other was one of the new dynamic encounters on Tatooine, where you're simply interacting with some terminals. In the latter, having this new interface instead of a KOTOR-style cut scene felt very organic, and the Remote Outpost missions felt like something that simply wouldn't have existed without this feature - the devs wouldn't have made a voiced storyline to go along with a bunch of decos at this stage of the game, but using the comlink interface they could add a little something extra that we wouldn't have gotten otherwise, so that was nice.

All in all, I think this is a positive addition to the game, assuming the devs do stick to using it in ways like these. Most people around me haven't minded it at all either, though I will say that there was one guildie who absolutely freaked out when he saw the new ops mission in writing, shouting something along the lines of: "What is this? They are going to make me read? I specifically play this game because I don't want to read things; if I wanted to read things I'd be playing WoW!"

The Best and Worst Dynamic Encounters on Hoth

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

The Top 10 Best Dynamic Encounters on Hoth

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

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

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

2. Imperial/Republic/Pirate Attack

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

3. Ice Fishing 

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

4. Taun Fawn Fun

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

5. Fur, Fur Away 

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

6. Under Fire!

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

7. Snipers!

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

8. Snow Capped Delicacies

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

9. Trial by Fire

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

10. Volcanic Rumblings

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

The Top 5 Worst Dynamic Encounters on Hoth

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

1. Unnecessary Repairs

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

2. Pirate Problem

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

3. Snow Grift

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

4. Wampa Hunt

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

5. Lost Inventory

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

Dynamic Encounters Are Here and They Are Fun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7.6 Dev Stream Reactions

After watching the big Warcraft Direct stream yesterday, it was quite a contrast to spend time on SWTOR's 7.6 dev stream tonight. Smaller studio, fewer viewers, but also a much more relaxed atmosphere and lots of laughs. I was immediately overcome with an urge to make a bunch of gifs of the interactions between Eric Musco and Papa Keith, intending to post them on Bluesky, but it couldn't cope with me uploading any images at the time (I later learned it wasn't just me), so I'll be inserting them into this blog post instead, even if that may seem a bit random!

As usual, if you want the full rundown of every little detail, I recommend watching the recording of the stream yourself or reading a detailed summary elsewhere - Kal already has one up here for example. Over here I'm more choosy with what I talk about and won't mention everything, but I'll add some commentary to make it more interesting. Let's get on with it!

Topical and time-sensitive things first: There's a new Twitch drop for the next 14 days, an Ilum poster deco with a purple border. Handily livestream viewers were able to earn it right away simply by watching the stream as it only requires one hour of watch time. There'll also be another Twitch drop, a purple Vulptilla mount, once 7.6 launches. We weren't given an exact date for that, but from what they did say on the stream it sounds like it will be early December.

Also, effective immediately, there's a big 50% off sale on dyes going on! The interesting thing related to this was that they mentioned that they're planning to make changes to how dyes work soon... I'm sure I'm not the only one whose mind immediately jumped to the notion of making them unlockable in Collections, something I've seen people request more than once. I don't think that will happen though - dye sales have got to be too much of a money-maker for that - but I'm still curious to hear what they've got in mind once the time comes.

We got some info about the 7.6 story, and I tend to not go into too much detail about story previews in these posts, but I did want to note that Imperials will finally get to see Major Anri again, almost three years after Manaan, and that the story is supposedly going to be structured a bit differently, consisting of four threads you can advance in any order, about Shae Vizla, Darth Malgus, the Hidden Chain and Darth Nul's holocron respectively. I'm curious to see how that'll pan out - it could mean more content, but I've got to admit that personally I'm a little worried that "you can do them in any order" means that each "thread" will contain a lot of exposition/cut-scene watching and fewer interesting choices - but we'll see.

Unfortunately after all that talk about how interesting the new story is going to be, we won't actually get to see it at 7.6's release, because while the patch itself will still land as planned, they had to delay the story update part of it because they "currently don't have all the elements [they] need to complete this story", which I've seen people interpret as having to do with the voice actors' strike, though I don't know whether that's just speculation or backed by anything that was said elsewhere.

There was some talk about dynamic encounters and the new lair boss, but I won't go into that here as I already covered those topics in my post about the PTS from last week. They just confirmed that dynamic encounters will only exist on Hoth and Tatooine at launch, with the possible exception of Hidden Chain invasions, which might also happen on other planets from the sounds of it.

The new lair boss is also going to drop crafting materials for new augments, something that people had already caught on to some time ago but that hadn't been officially announced. These new augments will be better than the current gold augments. I guess this will offer a sort of gear progression without further raising overall item rating, though it does make me wonder whether the next gear reset perhaps isn't as far away as I thought.

There was some talk about new Cartel Market items, which I usually don't go into here either, but there was one thing that piqued my interest: there'll be a new decoration bundle called the Remote Outpost Bundle, and it'll come with a small amount of story/gameplay attached from the sounds of it. I was immediately reminded of the encrypted datacubes from back in the day and how people were not happy with those, though I guess a big part of that was that they came from inside Cartel packs, while this will be a direct purchase. I'll make sure to get it when it comes out and will let you know whether it's worth the money or not.

In terms of gameplay, there'll be a new UI feature called comlink to interact with terminals and characters in a more organic way without having to always resort to KOTOR-style cut scenes. They emphasised that this isn't meant to replace cinematics and proper conversations but should simply serve as another option for interactions where appropriate. The example they showed was of someone using a terminal and being given a prompt to enter a password, where in the current system that would bring up the KOTOR-style black bars and mute dialogue options like "enter code" or "walk away". They explained that they could also see this working for characters "texting" you.

PvP Season 7 will still start with the launch of 7.6 and bring an end to 8-man premades, as they'll once again be limited to four people max, and the devs are also disabling the old level 75 set bonuses in PvP to reduce the power of twinks. Not what I personally consider PvP's biggest problems right now, but better than nothing. What did stand out to me was that one of the new season rewards is actually going to be a proper emote instead of the previous "text-only" one, which might actually be something to look forward to for me.

As the stream was getting close to wrapping up, Eric and Keith dropped a few more surprises on us at the end. First off, we'll get a new mount as a free subscriber reward that introduces something new: the ability to have your (humanoid) companion ride in a sidecar beside you and a non-combat pet in the luggage rack. The preview looked hilarious and made me laugh out loud. I'm not sure how much I'll use it but it'll be fun for a little while if nothing else. Plus I appreciate that they decided to make it a sub reward instead of a Cartel Market item. There'll also be two new mounts from dynamic encounter-related achievements that won't show your companion but will include your active mini pet.

Next they announced that they'll do a character name purge for the first time in a long time. If you're a subscriber, all your characters are safe, but if not, you'll want to log into any toons that haven't been logged into since January 1st of this year, else they will be flagged for a rename. I wonder if that'll give me a chance to claim Shintar without the funny i on Tulak Hord, the one server where I don't currently own the name... they also mentioned that they'll try to remember to do this a bit more often in the future to not have all these names taken up by inactive characters.

Finally, a big surprise at the very end: they're working on more art modernisation for planetary environments, but also for player characters. Musco immediately assured everyone that their number one priority was to not change the overall feel of the characters. The examples they showed looked really good, with just more detail on the facial textures and more gloss on the eyes. (When I tried to explain this to Mr Commando afterwards, he said that talking about shiny hair and eyes made me sound like I was trying to sell him a dog!)

All in all, a fun stream with lots of news and some interesting things to look forward to, though the story update being delayed with no clear ETA was a bit of a bummer. What was your favourite part of this stream?