Tatooine GSI Missions Guide

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 You can still find an archived version of his original guide here.

One of the ways I have created variation in my gaming has been to mix up story content with other styles of missions. One of these is the Seeker Droid and Macrobinoculars Missions for Galactic Solution Industries (GSI). Often revolving around research, GSI Missions are less about combat and more about exploration and discovery. In this blog post, the first in a new mini-series I will cover the overview of the Tatooine GSI Missions in SWTOR.

Gaining Reputation with GSI

It’s a simple model really: Complete GSI Missions and be awarded a range of reputation points. However, there are bonuses: Complete any Heroic 2+ for a medium amount of reputation. And there is also a weekly GSI Valued Partner Initiative. This requires you to complete 10 GSI Missions for a large amount of Reputation.

At level 80, GSI Missions pay around 18,600 Credits for normal missions and 33,500 Credits for the (Heroic 2+).

For more information about the GSI Reputation, Seeker Droids and Macrobinoculars in general, you can refer to Swtorista's guide here. 

Tatooine GSI Missions

Let’s zero in on the specific missions for Tatooine. They are all identical for Imperial and Republic characters, apart from the first mission.

A Droid Defiant: Heroic 2+

If you’re playing an Imperial character, then A Droid Defiant takes place in Mos Ila. If it’s a Republic character then this mission takes place in Anchorhead. The aim of this GSI Mission is to find and dig up (using your Seeker Droid) – scrambler transmitters around the town.

The map markers show approximate areas and do not indicate the actual positions of the transmitters. Your Macrobinoculars will not pick them up, so you need to use your eyes. The transmitters are located up on walls or on the edges of roofs. The spawn locations do change but not radically and with enough repetition you can speed up the process of finding them. Just direct your Seeker Droid to dig roughly under their location; you don't need to place the dig circle up on whatever building they sit on. Oh, and trust me: jump on your favourite vehicle or creature and use your eyes. It’s more forgiving than using the Seeker Droid and moving a few paces!

Once you have found three transmitters, the rogue droid is triangulated. It’s an Elite Droid, but as it’s H2, you can defeat it with just a companion. The results will be delivered to the GSI Dropbox automatically and you’re well on your way on your Tatooine missions!

Watch out: One of the spawn locations in Mos Ila (around X 880, Y 3190) has been bugged for years, and if a scrambler transmitter is located there, you'll be unable to dig it up (even though you can see that it's there), no matter how precise you try to be while targeting it with your Seeker Droid. Unfortunately all you can do if this happens is change instance to see if it's in a different location there, or else come back another day.

The offending location in Mos Ila 

Tatooine GSI Maps

The next four missions come with clearer maps, so here they all are. Click to enlarge them or feel free to download them later for reference!

Above the Fray

Above the Fray sees you trekking across the Desert Dustball looking for Moisture Vaporators, the back bone of farming on Tatooine. If you’re running this as an Imperial, it’s much easier as one of the vaporators is actually above an Imperial outpost (the most Southern marker). Thankfully your Macrobinoculars are really powerful, so you can get close to the Outpost as a Republic player and still see the Vaporator to catch it.

This mission is called Above the Fray because your targets are above eye level, so you’re looking up the cliff faces.

To show just how powerful the Macrobinoculars are, here’s an example of reaching one of the Moisture Vaporators.

Scanning the Depths

This mission sees you looking down…a lot. You’re looking for Meteorite Fragments in the valleys around The Wound. The map markers are very vague! And you’ll have to fight some Sand People away from the cliff edges to get the angles right. Although you need to look down, the meteorite fragments are not really deep. And you can see them with your eyes – they are a bluey-green hue, which is a stark contrast to the red and brown tinge of the cliffs. Once you know what you're looking for, you may find it easier to search with your eyes first before trying to scan, as scanning down into the ravine often ends up limiting your field of view.

You’ll spend most of this mission traipsing around The Wound. And the exact spawn points of the fragments do change slightly. Once you’ve found a fragment, scan it with your Macrobinoculars, breathe a sigh of relief and move on.

If you’re also doing The Shroud Story Arc, you can couple finding various items from the Tatooine GSI Missions with locating the Shroud’s Encrypted Transmitters. One of them is right next to a Meteorite Fragment for Scanning the Depths!

Buried in Time

Time to head out to the Krayt Dragon Graveyard for a much simpler GSI Mission. This time you will need your Seeker Droid, but you don’t need it for searching – only digging. You’re looking for small Fossilized Eggs near Larvae Clusters. These are bright yellow and are visible to the naked eye. Each Krayt Dragon skeleton tends to have 2-3 clusters spawning near it. So if you find another player digging these up there are plenty to go around! You’ll know if you have found one by hovering your cursor over the clusters before using your Seeker Droid to dig them up.

If you're still having trouble finding these after cruising around for several minutes, your camera settings might have something to do with it! Shintar has a whole post about this particular problem here, which also contains screenshots and exact coordinates for a bunch of different Fossilized Egg spawn locations.

Once you have excavated 3 batches of fossilized eggs, they will automatically be returned to the GSI Dropbox in Mos Ila or Anchorhead.

Looking for Droids

Warning: This is a Random Number Generation Mission. Galactic Solution Industries report some missing droids – probably the thieving Jawas again! You are to scan Jawa Sandcrawlers to find out which one contains the droids. It’s based on random numbers because it may be a different crawler each time.

To remind you again, your Macrobinoculars are really powerful, which matters especially in the Dune Sea! As soon as even the smallest tip of a Sandcrawler is visible on your screen, use your Macrobinoculars to scan them. No point wandering all the desert when your technology can do the trick!

Tip: If you're feeling cheeky and don't fancy moving around too much, the correct Sandcrawler for the mission is re-randomised every time you reset the mission. So you can start by scanning the one near your faction's outpost and if the droids are not there, just reset the quest in your log and try again until the mission completes. Note that Broadsword has added a 2-minute cooldown to the reset button to prevent people from going too crazy with this.

TL;DR The Tatooine GSI Missions

I’m enjoying the Tatooine GSI Missions, not because of the Reputation, but because of its gameplay style. It’s investigative, not based on your killing prowess. Scanning the Depths can be frustrating, but for a gaming session, they are really relaxing!

Galactic Threads: Things Are Starting to Come Together

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

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

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

Galactic Threads

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

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

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

On The Run

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

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

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

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

Hoth Pursuit

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

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

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

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

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

The Library of Nul 

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

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

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

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

Dark Heart of the Fortress

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Drop In: Tatooine

Being on holiday doesn't mean that I was going to skip writing about week eight's tour of Tatooine strongholds I did for seasons.

Like Nar Shaddaa, Tatooine was among the first batch of strongholds added to the game, and I have a particular fondness for it because out of that first set of four, it was originally my favourite. Unfortunately, it being old and from a time when strongholds served a slightly different purpose than they do now, I also saw some more evidence of old-fashioned deco spam, though not as much as I did on Nar Shaddaa.

I visited a Tatooine stronghold on all six servers this time, starting with Tlaocetl's Vacation Retreat on Darth Malgus. The first thing that struck me about this stronghold was that the decos were a pretty contradictory mix in terms of themes, with the room where you load in containing a bar, a serene fountain and an altar covered with skulls all in close proximity of each other.

As I looked around the other rooms, I initially got the impression that it was all a collection of personal trophies, but then I also found a room that was completely empty and a couple more that had obviously just been "spammed" to get to 100% completion.

On Leviathan, I visited Karen Himeki's Syndicate Nerver Center, hoping that perhaps the name was hinting at an underworld theme, but in practice this stronghold was probably one of the most competently done yet unexciting strongholds I've ever seen. Imperial flags and guardsmen indicated a clear faction preference, and several rooms contained setups with tables and comfy-looking couches that looked like nice places to hang out, but I didn't get much of a sense of purpose from the place. Unless the purpose was really just to make a comfortable place for Imps to spend their free time, in which case the owner succeeded at that.

My favourite stronghold of this lot was the one I visited on Tulak Hord, called Vermächtnishändler's Black Market (the character name is German for "legacy trader" by the way, implying that it's a bank/GTN alt, which somehow made it sound even more fitting).

What I liked about this one was that a lot of the rooms were very strongly themed and at least loosely fit the overall theme as well, starting with this very striking view when you first load in:

There were also multiple cantinas.

A detail I particularly loved was this outdoor bantha enclosure consisting of fencing and sun roofs and which used last season's depository of dark wisdom to create what looks like a sort of feeding trough for the animals.

The owner was also clearly proud of their PvP prowess, as they had a whole room dedicated to their various trophies.

Then there was what I could only call a "droid room"...

... and a Hutt room, though I'm not entirely sure what's going in the little scene that's set up in it. It looks like one guy is threatening the Hutt and the other one is defending him? Maybe?

On Star Forge, I visited Monsieur Fancypants' Hideout at 99% completion, which amused me with its name. I was surprised that this was the only Tat stronghold I visited that actually featured the Sarlacc pit deco (from what I saw).

 

 

Other rooms once again revealed a strong Imperial focus, with dark side relics and Sithy NPCs front and centre.

The room that really surprised me in here though was an unassuming hallway. You don't expect hallways to be interesting, as they're usually just connectors between different rooms, but this one was absolutely stuffed with carbonite trophies and flashing red lights, which just made me go "WTF", haha.

On Satele Shan, Kaómi's Republic Sanctuary finally offered a bit of reprieve from all the Imp lovers, with a stronghold filled with Republic guardsmen and featuring a briefing room that I liked.

The thing that really stood out to me in this stronghold though was its use of desert flora. You don't often see these cactus plants from Ruhnuk used for example, but this player really selected the right plant decorations to create scenery that looked appropriate for Tatooine, instead of simply assuming that an endless water supply could create an oasis where everything and anything can grow anyway.

Finally, on Shae Vizla I was once again somewhat limited in terms of choice and ended up visiting Ralyne's Marketplace Cantina at only 39% completion. One funny thing here was that I soon realised that it belonged to a guildie and they were actually inside while I was roaming around, browsing the GTN or something.

The owner once again did what they could with a limited number of decos, with a pretty "standard" selection of items as well as a dedicated relic room and med bay.

The funniest and most interesting thing to me was a small room containing only two decos: an animated metal/rubbish conveyor belt and a floor tile that's meant to look like there's a beast pit underneath, and they had been positioned in such a way that it looked like the conveyor belt's contents were being spilled into the pit. I don't know why, but that just tickled me.

Do you have any thoughts on these Tatooine strongholds or the ones you visited yourself for last week's season objective?

Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 7

This is being published a bit late since I wanted to get my April round-up and the dev stream highlights out on time, but I didn't forget! To clarify, this is about the period from 23rd to 30th of April.

I'd been pretty excited about doing Galactic Seasons objectives for the first six weeks, but week 7 was the first one where I looked at the weekly objectives and kind of thought "meh". I think this was mainly due to the fact that repetition was starting to become noticeable to me for the first time. Here's what I thought about each weekly objective:

• Earn 200k Conquest points: Yes, I'd do that one.
  
• Complete the GSI weekly mission: Somewhat time-consuming so I definitely wasn't going to do this everywhere, but I do like me a bit of GSI action every now and then, so I figured I was going to do this on some servers as least.
  
• Earn the seasonal currency: Will get done automatically, so yes.
  
• Blow up enemies with destructible barrels and the like: I was probably going to do this one one way or another because of how easy it is to complete.
  
• Do the Black Hole weekly twice or the Onderon weekly once: This was the first objective that made me sigh a little. Didn't we just have this one? Oh, apparently that was five weeks ago. Didn't feel that long ago, somehow.
  
• Complete 8 repeatable or side missions and kill 100 mobs on the Hutt Space planets Nar Shaddaa, Quesh, Voss, Makeb, Darvannis or Ossus: This one also felt like I'd done it before, but I triple-checked and it hadn't been featured yet this season. I can only guess it felt that way since I'd done a fair bit of questing on Nar Shaddaa while working on other objectives in previous weeks. Still, this wasn't too bad and I was definitely going to do it.
  
• Craft invasion forces and dark projects: As usual, yay for crafting on Darth Malgus but nowhere else.
  
• Complete four uprisings on veteran or master mode: Still not a huge fan of uprisings and I could still feel the after-effects of spamming them for Total Galactic War. I figured maybe I'd do this on Darth Malgus, but surely nowhere else.
  
• Complete 2 out of 4 selected flashpoints (Battle of Ilum, False Emperor, Legacy of the Rakata, Shrine of Silence): Now this one was definitely repetitive because these exact same flashpoints were featured only two weeks ago. I appreciated them then, but going through the exact same routine only two weeks later was definitely going to be a no from me.
  
• Earn 25 medals in Galactic Starfighter: And the more annoying one of the two GSF objectives again... I figured I probably wasn't going to bother with this one, except maybe on Darth Malgus.
  
• Karagga's Palace on story mode: Now this was one objective that made me happy, as I was pleased to see that like the vet mode ops objective in week two, it had been reduced to requiring only one run - instead of previously four! I was hopeful that I'd be able to get this done on multiple servers since I figured it shouldn't be too hard to find pugs for it.
  

Day 1 - Tuesday

I got home very late that day as I attended a memorial for the recently deceased co-worker after my shift at the office. I didn't really feel like playing games after getting home, so I just logged into each server briefly to collect my daily login reward and achieve my daily allotment of Conquest point via various clicky objectives.

Day 2 - Wednesday

I had a lot more free time that day but still didn't really feel much like playing SWTOR for most of the day. I did eventually log in late in the evening to do the rounds again. On Darth Malgus I just did some crafting, followed by some GSI dailies on Leviathan.

I've settled into a routine when it comes to doing the GSI weekly, which involves doing Buried in Time on Tatooine, followed by two of the missions on Alderaan, digging up ancient weapons near House Teral and toxic waste barrels near Outpost Luurdes just a short ride over. This is very quick and easy, and I just do it several days in a row. This time, I also did the heroic on Tatooine (since you need to do one for the weekly) and blew up the womp rats near the barrel in Anchorhead a couple of times while I was there.

I then logged over to Star Forge to see whether any ops pugs were advertising for KP story mode in general chat. It took a little while, but eventually I saw a group form on Imp side. It was a nice and smooth run that also got me some achievements, as I'd never done KP SM on Star Forge before.

On Shae Vizla, I did a bit of questing on Nar Shaddaa until I'd earned enough Conquest for the daily objective. By that point it was late though and I was tired, so I decided to leave the remaining two servers for the next day.

Day 3 - Thursday

In the morning, I logged into Satele Shan and did a round of GSI dailies mirroring what I'd done on Leviathan the night before.

After that, I logged into Tulak Hord and did the Nar Shaddaa bonus series, since I couldn't remember whether I'd completed it on that server before, just that I had all these issues with false starts and bugs. It's a shame that you pretty much have to do them in a single day now to make sure they don't bug out, and with that in mind I've found it best to be laser-focused on only the missions actually part of the chain, while making a note to come back for any heroics or unrelated exploration missions in the area another time. Either way, this completed my Hutt Space missions weekly.

In the evening, I spent some time on Darth Malgus doing stuff not strictly related to seasons, such as PvP, ops with my guild and a bit of questing (though this did also get my daily objective done).

When I visited the other servers afterwards, I did another "round" of GSI dailies (meaning the eggs on Tatooine and the two dailies on Alderaan) on both Leviathan and Tulak Hord, followed by a round of the Black Hole on Satele Shan (since that's the only server where my main's a stealther) and a round of Ossus on Star Forge (the only secondary server where I have access to that planet). Finally, I continued doing non-class missions on Nar Shaddaa on Shae Vizla until my daily was done there as well.

Day 4 - Friday

I didn't log in until the evening again. Starting on Darth Malgus, I did a variety of activities there, including a GSF weekly. I'd originally planned to skip that particular objective, but our Imperial alt guild was a bit low on Conquest points, so doing the GSF weekly a couple of times seemed like a good way to boost our score. Winning two matches only got me to 7/25 medals however.

On Leviathan, I went out to Nar Shaddaa - I knew that I'd completed the bonus series before, but I could've sworn I had some other side missions left to do in the area. This turned out to be wrong as I couldn't find a single one - clearly my spreadsheets to track progression across different alts aren't detailed enough for this. I instead started questing on Quesh until I hit my daily Conquest.

On Tulak Hord, I did some more GSI dailies, after which I logged over to Shae Vizla since I thought a KP guild run might be about to start. However, when I double-checked the time it turned out that I was wrong and the actual start time was something like 2.30 am my time, so I went and did some more quests on Nar Shaddaa instead. (I was clearly not having the best day in terms of knowing WTF was going on.) It didn't take long for me to complete my Hutt Space objective, so I went and started another GSI weekly mission. The Imperial version of the heroic on Tatooine has a bugged spot so you always need to check there first to make sure RNG hasn't assigned it to you, else you need to come back the next day (some say resetting the mission can also work but I've had no success with that personally). Fortunately I was lucky that day and the bugged spawn was not included in my objectives. On Alderaan, I realised I'd forgotten how much more of a pain the Killik weapons are to dig up on Imp side, as the nearest location for Imperials requires going up a long and winding mountain path with lots of bugs in your way. I eventually got there, but I vaguely seemed to remember actually preferring a more distant location with less of a hassle to get there...

On Satele Shan I did another round of Black Hole, and on Star Forge a round of Onderon for the daily area objective.

Day 5 - Saturday

I only played for a couple of hours in the evening, and only on Darth Malgus. Not everything I did was about seasons either, though I did do Karagga's Palace on story mode with my guild, and another GSF weekly. I got it in two wins again, though this time they yielded ten medals, getting me to 17/25.

Day 6 - Sunday

I got up late but with enough time left before the reset to do the rounds on the other servers. On Leviathan and Tulak Hord, I completed my GSI weeklies, and on Star Forge I figured I had it in me to do one more of these this week, so I started it on my trooper (including the heroic on Tatooine and blowing up some womp rats). On Satele Shan, I did some side questing on Nar Shaddaa.

When it came to Shae Vizla, I only had twenty minutes left before reset, but I figured that should be enough for a quick round of the Black Hole, right? Even on a character that is a healer (my level 75 consular)? Even if their highest-level companion is only influence level 12? (I hope you can tell where this is going...) I started but quickly realised that things weren't going fast enough. I decided to skip ahead to the heroic, since I figured I could at least finish that, but it was going so. Slow. Just as I was starting to wonder what would happen to someone inside a mission phase if the reset happened while you were doing the quest, I actually managed to die on a pull and just gave up. I quickly relogged my warrior to get my last few Conquest points for the daily objective before reset, but even that took too long and reset arrived with me being only 150 Conquest points off the daily objective. I was so annoyed I just logged off.

I logged back in later in the evening, completed the partially done Black Hole weekly on my consular and then did some GSI dailies on my warrior again (opting to take a taxi to the more distant but less awkward location for Killik weapons this time), followed by some more of those on my trooper on Star Forge.

By then it was time for ops with my guild, which took up a good chunk of the evening. Afterwards I did another GSF weekly, which was done within two wins again, and yet I was still only on 23/25 medals after that. This is what makes this weekly so frustrating. It doesn't even matter if you play well/win, whether you get any medal credit feels like a complete roll of the dice. Like, how many weekly missions should a single seasons objective require? It's ridiculous. After that, it took two more matches to get those last two medals. Yes, two matches for just two more medals.

After a couple more warzones, I switched to the remaining servers where I hadn't done the daily yet and got my daily Conquest allocation done with some questing on all three.

Day 7 - Monday

In the morning I logged in on Darth Malgus and quickly knocked out two more weekly objectives by doing a round of Onderon dailies and blowing up some womp rats. I'd held off on my last two objectives until close to the end in case Mr Commando felt like doing flashpoints or uprisings over the weekend, but that didn't happen, so I had to get to 7/7 by myself.

I then logged in again in the evening to finish off my personal Conquest on a couple of alts and get my daily objective done that way. On Leviathan, I completed my bounty hunter's personal Conquest on Quesh (a good Hutt Space planet to jump ahead to, and I was kind Nar Shaddaa-ed out).

On Star Forge I did two heroics on Makeb to get some more Hutt Space kills - the Ossus dailies on Thursday had taken care of the mission part of that objective but I had barely killed any mobs. Makeb was good for achieving the opposite.

On Satele Shan, I'd left things off with several Conquest objectives partially completed so that I only had to do a single mission hand-in on my agent to be done for the day.

Finally, I finished my SWTOR week on Shae Vizla by doing one more round of Black Hole and completing my GSI weekly.

Week 7 Thoughts 

I started this season with a promise to myself that I wasn't going to burn myself out doing objectives I didn't enjoy, but then I was so excited that I did 7/7 weeklies on all servers for several weeks anyway. This week though, I could definitely feel my enthusiasm wane for the first time, with several days where I just didn't feel like playing much at all. I was still going to get 7/7 on Darth Malgus, but I quickly resigned myself to probably only getting three or four weeklies done on the other servers. In the end I still did a bit better than that, achieving 6/7 on Star Forge and Shae Vizla, and 5/7 on all the others.

I didn't even think that the objectives were particularly bad, but there was definitely little to no synergy, and the feeling of repetition got me more than anything else. This was the first time this season where I really felt the conflict between "wanting to do the thing because I want to have the thing completed" and just not feeling the actual gameplay in that moment. It's a pretty normal thing to feel, but also something I personally like to keep an eye on, as I'm quite capable of making things un-fun for myself by being too determined to get things done no matter what. With that in mind, I was glad that I was able to recognise that I was not really feeling it this week and say "oh well, not gonna go all out this week then" pretty easily and early on.

Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 3

The tale of epic planetary Conquest in my last post may have left you wondering what happened to my ambitions in regards to Galactic Season 6 last week. Surely I didn't have time to grind Conquest points all day on Darth Malgus and do seasons objectives on the other servers? I'll be honest, I wasn't sure how well that was going to go myself, but I wasn't going to discard the idea entirely without even trying. Looking at the objectives for week three, my tentative thoughts on them were as follows:

• Earn 200k Conquest points: I figured this should hopefully still be a freebie on all servers, assuming I'd manage to get enough play time in on each one.
  
• Earn the seasonal currency: Same for this one.
• Visit another player's Alderaan stronghold: This was the one objective I was certain I'd be able to do everywhere.
  
• Blow up enemies with destructible barrels and the like: Easy enough to do, but I'd have to sit down and devote a little bit of time to it.
  
• Complete 15 missions as a smuggler or bounty hunter: I would have loved to do this one if possible, but I wasn't certain I'd have enough time to do that many missions across multiple servers.
  
• Craft war supplies and an invasion force: I usually do the crafting objectives on Darth Malgus, but on the other servers I'm not really very established with crew skills, making these an unattractive proposition unless I'm willing to buy a lot of the base materials (instead of gathering them for myself).
  
• Complete 2 out of 4 selected flashpoints (Kaon Under Siege, Blood Hunt, Traitor Among the Chiss, Objective Meridian): I figured flashpoints were definitely going to be out of the running this week due to time constraints.
  
• Kill champion guards or turrets on selected planets: I might do this one with guildies on Darth Malgus, but otherwise I didn't expect to get this done anywhere else.
  
• Kill the Coruscant and Dromund Kaas world bosses: These are popular targets and don't take long to kill, but there's still a degree of luck involved with getting a group, so I wasn't sure how well that would work out for me, especially while also not wanting to spend too much time on the other servers.
  
• Kill 2 bosses in R-4: Hah, no.
  
• Kill the Kessan's Landing world boss: Like in week one, quick and easy to do if there were other people around that were interested, but that was a big "if".
  

Day 1 - Tuesday

I got home super tired from work and it was immediately time for an operation with my guild. I assessed the Total Galactic War situation but couldn't decide on a planet to invade yet, so after lining up some bits of crafting, I hopped onto the other servers with the goal to just get the daily objective done with clickies.

However, someone was advertising a Coruscant world boss group on Leviathan and I thought "eh, might as well"... unfortunately I was the only healer and instantly died on pull, so the group wiped and didn't want to try again until they could find more people, something that felt like it dragged on and on... eventually they were willing to go again though and we killed it.

I logged over to Tulak Hord and... saw the same kind of world boss advert there! I joined again, and this group killed it on the first attempt. I also noticed that the other guy in my guild hadn't logged in for long enough that I had indeed usurped him as guild master this time.

On Star Forge I logged in on the fleet and... guess what? I saw a world boss group! This time I died again but that didn't matter for credit. I logged into Satele Shan, thinking that surely I wouldn't run into any activity there considering my usual problems with the time zone... but no! Immediately there was someone calling for people for the world boss in general chat. In this run I took on the role of fleet recruiter. I could've sworn that at least one of the names in the group was someone I'd also seen on Star Forge just earlier... perhaps other people were cycling through the servers just like I was.

After all that I was actually hoping to get the same experience on Shae Vizla, but while I saw a couple of people talk about the world boss on Coruscant, nobody wanted to start a group and I didn't have the energy to do it either, so Conquest via clickies it was.

Day 2 - Wednesday

As our Total Galactic War plans started to take shape on Darth Malgus, I went into full grinding mode. Seasons were all but forgotten as all I cared about was helping my guild take first place on Manaan. Both in the morning and in the evening, I did every Conquest activity under the sun, from questing on a lowbie to crafting to PvP. (I also had my worst warzone weekly in a while, as it took me ten matches to complete the mission, with nine of them being losses.)

There was no room for thoughts of seasons objectives, and I didn't even log into the other servers. I did complete three of the weeklies on Darth Malgus though, simply as a side effect of playing a lot, namely the 200k Conquest points, seasonal currency and the crafting one.

Day 3 - Thursday

I did more Conquest grinding in the morning, but by lunch time I figured it was safe to at least quickly check in on the other servers and achieve my daily seasons objective before the reset with clickies.

In the evening I did more Conquest grinding on Darth Malgus and completed the "affect enemies with exploding barrels" weekly objective during an Esseles run.

Day 4 - Friday

It being Good Friday, I had the day off and immediately launched myself into more Conquest activities in the morning. Before we went out to do our shopping for the weekend, I did another quick round of the other servers to complete the daily season objective with clickies. I also had a quick peek on some servers to see whether anyone was doing the Dromund Kaas world boss but had no luck at the time. 

My afternoon was once again spent conquesting on Darth Malgus, but by the early evening I was starting to feel a bit burnt out. I decided to take a break from Conquest... by doing a bit of seasons content on the other servers. I visited an Alderaan stronghold on Leviathan, Tulak Hord, Satele Shan and Star Forge, and managed to knock out the Dromund Kaas world boss on all four of these servers as well. This completed three weekly seasons objectives at once per server: the capital world bosses, the stronghold visit, and the blueprint fragment gathering. On Shae Vizla I had no luck with the world bosses and was disappointed to find that nobody with a public Alderaan stronghold was online either, so I decided to leave that for later.

Returning to Darth Malgus, I found people forming a group for some social Conquest activities so I joined that for the next couple of hours. Towards the end I saw a ping from my Shae Vizla guild that they were about to go for some seasons objectives, so I decided to tag along for that. This ticked off four weekly objectives at once for me (champion guards, capital world bosses, FR3-D0M and the seasonal currency), and between world boss summons I also spotted some public listings for Alderaan strongholds and quickly hopped into one of those, taking me to 5/7 on Shae Vizla.

Day 5 - Saturday

I continued to focus on Conquest on Darth Malgus, playing there for most of the day. In the evening we had our usual social night, where we knocked out the two world boss seasons objectives and killed some champion guards on Tatooine. This took me to 7/7 weeklies completed on Darth Malgus, but I didn't log into the other servers at all.

Day 6 - Sunday

In the morning before reset I decided to check in on the other servers again, as I'd kind of run out of steam for Conquest anyway. On Leviathan I got the "affect enemies with explode-y things" objective done by blowing up some womp rats on Tatooine. There are a lot of different ways to complete that particular objective, but when I don't want to faff around too much, going to a specific barrel on the edge of Anchorhead is my method of choice. I also logged into my bounty hunter and handed in two story missions on Balmorra that I'd completed previously.

On Tulak Hord I did the same thing with the womp rats and played my little bounty hunter on Hutta a bit to work on the "complete missions as this origin story" seasons objective. On Satele Shan I did the same with my little smuggler on Ord Mantell. As it was getting close to reset by that time and I didn't want to stress myself out, I just logged into Star Forge and Shae Vizla briefly to get the daily objective done with some clickies there.

The rest of the day was once again spent on doing Conquest on Darth Malgus.

Day 7 -  Monday

Easter Monday meant another day off and another day spent on Conquest. Once again I kind of ran out of things to do for Total Galactic War shortly before the reset, so decided to use this as another opportunity to check in on the other servers. I once again did a few missions on my bounty hunters on Leviathan and Tulak Hord as well as on my smuggler on Satele Shan. On all three of those servers, that pushed me over the 200k Conquest points needed for the weekly objective. I ran out of time before I really had a chance to devote time to Star Forge and Shae Vizla again, just quickly logging into them and getting the daily objective done by expanding my strongholds there.

The rest of the day was once again spent on earning Conquest points for my guild on Darth Malgus, and it didn't really hit me until quite late in the evening that due to the fact that I had to be in the office the next day, I wouldn't be able to do everything I wanted, as I wouldn't have time to log into the game the next morning and would have to go to bed at a somewhat sensible time. I decided that even though victory wasn't guaranteed, I'd done enough for my guild's ambitions and that I could take an hour or so out of my time before bed to do one more round of the other servers to polish off some partially completed objectives.

On Leviathan I did more missions on my bounty hunter until I hit the target of 15, which left me at 6/7 weeklies completed. I did the same on Tulak Hord, with the same result. 

On Satele Shan, I brought my smuggler up to 15 missions completed, and since I hadn't done the explode-y barrel objective on that server yet, I decided to also pay the womp rats on Tatooine a quick visit. This left my poor guy sick with womp rat fever, but hey, at least he got a codex entry for his trouble and Onna, the stims vendor with the cure, was just around the corner. This brought me up to 6/7 on Satele Shan as well.

On Star Forge I was the most behind, with only 3/7 weeklies completed, but blowing up some womp rats there as well plus a few extra Conquest points from clickies to push me past the 200k mark ultimately left me at 5/7.

On Shae Vizla I was already on 6/7, so I just blew up some more womp rats to get to 7/7 and clicked my way to some Conquest points to complete my consular's personal Conquest objective and the daily.

Week 3 Thoughts

At the risk of sounding a bit conceited, I was kind of proud of myself for how much I got done this week. I was pretty much ready for a worst case where I'd have time to do nothing but the daily objective and through that get to 3/7 on the weeklies maybe... instead I got to 7/7 on two servers, 6/7 on three, and 5/7 on the "least lucky" one.