Master Mode Flashpoint Tips: Syndic Zenta

Introduction

It's been a while since I've written one of these! I did however have a few more bosses on my list that I really wanted to cover, and one of them is Syndic Zenta in master mode Traitor Among the Chiss. I've been told by some people that they haven't had that many issues with her, but to me she's been a right pain in the rear on more than one occasion, which I think makes it worthwhile to share what I have learned, for the benefit of others who might be having the same difficulties.

The boss in a nutshell

She starts on the floor, then jumps up onto the walkways above her, changes position a few times, then jumps down again and covers the floor in lightning periodically. There are also a lot of adds, and during the top phase she throws some targeted circles around that you should avoid placing on other players. That really is the gist of it, but once again I'll happily point you towards Vulkk or the old Dulfy guide for more details on the mechanics.

What to do as a tank

At the start of the fight, round up the adds on the ground as best as you can while damage dealers focus on AoEing them down. Once Zenta goes up, follow her (either by leaping or via using one of the available grappling hooks) and position yourself just around the corner from the ramp that leads up onto the walkways. Feel free to taunt and hit the boss occasionally, but she shouldn't really be your main priority at this point as she doesn't actually hit that hard. It's more important that you focus on rounding up the adds as they appear and do your best to keep them from overwhelming your healer (who should be standing near you.)

Once Zenta goes down again you're basically racing against a soft enrage as more and more adds will be spawning in rapidly. Use everything you've got to get their attention while staying alive (AoE taunt, stuns, damage reduction cooldowns etc.) and hope that the dps can kill her in time before you and the healer both get overwhelmed.

What to do as a damage dealer

Start off by killing the adds on the ground, then dps the boss until she goes up. Follow her and continue to focus your damage on her, but keep an eye on the tank and healer, and jump over to them occasionally to mop up the pile of adds that will accumulate on them. When Zenta goes down again, just nuke her from range if you can.

If you're playing a melee class, make sure to wait a few seconds as she will cast her big lightning floor move almost immediately, and you don't want to jump right into it. Then jump down after it and nuke her with all you've got (while also hitting what damage reduction cooldowns you've got available) before the swarms of unending adds overwhelm your tank and healer.

What to do as a healer

At the start, you can hide behind a nearby crate to the left to avoid getting sniped. Once Zenta goes up, stick close to your tank as you will be getting healing aggro on any and all adds that spawn, and you'll rely on the tank picking them up to stay alive. Keep an eye on dps taking damage as well, though it shouldn't be too bad on them. Once Zenta goes down again, leave the damage dealers to their fate and focus on just keeping yourself and the tank alive as best as you can. If you can survive until Zenta's defeated, all remaining adds vanish automatically.

A Series of Unexpected Events

When I wrote about skipping story content last year and why I'm conflicted about it, one of the arguments I gave against it was that at least for me, there can be quite a difference between imagining how a character would react to certain story beats in the abstract, purely based on their personality and alignment, and actually playing through that same content, because small details such as certain pieces of dialogue can end up making quite a difference to the way things feel in the moment.

I've had a great example of this recently in the form of my bounty hunter - or should I say "one of my bounty hunters"? I'm up to three of them at max level for some reason and have been splitting my play time between them in the most awkward of ways. Anyway, this story is about my dps Powertech T'ir (don't ask me how to pronounce that, I just added the apostrophe somewhat randomly when she lost her original name during the first round of server merges), who is the bounty hunter with the most story progression and on whom I've been making a concerted effort to get caught up with current events. In case it's not obvious, this means that this post will contain spoilers about story content from KotET onwards.

T'ir's a Chiss and tends to lean towards dark side decisions, so I thought everything would be pretty cut and dry for her. She's not exactly an Imperial loyalist, but she's been getting along with the Empire well enough, so I couldn't really picture any set of circumstances in which she would defect to the Republic when given the choice.

So the other week I finally finished the last chapter of KotET on her. Declaring herself an Empress at the end seemed like quite a high point for a bounty hunter fond of personal power. I don't think she has any real desire to rule nor interest in politics, mind you... she just likes being the strongest and punching people. Calling herself an Empress must have felt like a bit of a joke to her, to be honest.

Then it was time to go to Iokath, to find the Republic and Empire squabbling there. T'ir didn't really want to support either of them - they both seemed kind of beneath her at that moment. Acina had previously been an ally, but here she was trying to snatch some superweapon for herself behind everyone else's back - typical Sith scheming, bah!

And who was representing the Republic? Jace Malcom, a hardened war veteran with whom a bounty hunter could actually see eye to eye, and who also happened to be her boyfriend's dad. (In hindsight I honestly I have no idea how or why I ended up in a relationship with Theron on this character... they are/were a terrible match. However, the point is they were a couple at the time, so the familial relationships were a consideration.) With all that in mind: Why not side with the Republic on this occasion and bash some Imperial heads in? To a bounty hunter like her it's all the same anyway. (Fun fact: If you pause this story arc after "defecting" and then click the launch button to resume, it will put you in the wrong base and you'll get murdered by guards as soon as you arrive. Huzzah!)

Anyway, if you're all caught up with the story, you know what comes after that - the traitor story arc. Oddly, the bit I enjoyed most about that was the interaction with Aristocra Saganu. In particular, there was one line of dialogue where you get to say something along the lines of: "Really, you'd sell out one of your own just like that?" and his response is: "You're one of our own too." I actually had to pause and blink there for a moment to realise that he was talking about the fact that T'ir is a Chiss just like him. I hadn't even considered that! At the end he also sent her a letter about how she was a role model for all young Chiss, which I thought was great.

The issue of the traitor himself largely played out as I expected. While there were a couple of heart-wrenching lines about love, T'ir wouldn't have become a bounty hunter if her heart was that easily wrenched. I'm not sure she would have been able to pull the trigger herself, but simply turning her back on him when he had already been injured by someone else's hand was surprisingly easy.

Where do you go from there though? Surely not back to working with the father of the man you just left to die? Handily though, Emperor Vowrawn also wrote her a letter asking to let bygones be bygones and saying that he'd quite appreciate her working with the Empire again. He might not be so bad; he reminds her a bit of Darth Tormen... I also think she'll get along just swell with Malgus, though I don't know how well he will like someone who already switched sides twice. I guess the best way to find out is to play! I'm very curious to see how things will play out for her from here, as I never expected to have an Imperial loyalist that would be dealing with Vowrawn instead of Acina...

Reviewing Objective Meridian

When I talked about the part of Onslaught's story that takes place on Corellia, I said that the Objective Meridian flashpoint probably deserved a post of its own... this is that post.

Functionally, it works the same as the previous three flashpoints we got over the last couple of years (Crisis on Umbara, A Traitor Among the Chiss and Nathema Conspiracy): there is a single-player story mode that you're meant to play through while making your way through the main storyline and which has all the cut scenes and dialogue. Then there are repeatable solo, veteran and master modes that are virtually devoid of cinematics and more about having fun with the combat and pursuing rewards.

However, this is already where the commonalities between Objective Meridian and those other flashpoints end. In fact, in every other aspect they are pretty much opposites.

The three flashpoints forming the traitor storyline wowed us with beautiful new environments, with each new one more stunning than the last. Story mode aside, they were also fiendishly hard however. (Nathema Conspiracy slightly less so, but still.) I didn't view this difficulty as a bad thing exactly; instead I found the challenge interesting - but after beating every difficulty once or twice, I started to dislike having any of them pop up as my random of the day in the group finder, as it always meant having to work so much harder than in most other flashpoints.

By contrast, Objective Meridian is visually quite dull. I'm biased in that I never liked Corellia's environments much, and this is just more of the same. The trash feels old-school as well, with wide and open spaces in which groups of enemies stand around neatly spaced out so that you can actually just run past a fair number of them without even engaging. I did enjoy the story very much, but in terms of flashpoint visuals and mechanics I wasn't at all impressed on my first run.

On the other hand though... it's really fun to re-run! I'm actually happy when it pops up in the random group finder because I know it won't be too long or difficult (though like Dxun when compared to other operations, it currently seems to award less loot than the older flashpoints for some reason). The fights aren't boring - Malgus and Tau in particular are quite well done in my opinion - and you may well find yourself wiping a couple of times the first time around while figuring out the mechanics, but once you understand what's going on the tactics are straightforward enough to execute without pushing you to your absolute limits.

Speaking of fight mechanics, another thing that was a pleasant surprise for me is that while the flashpoint's layout and progression are the same for both factions, the bosses actually have different mechanics for each side. I had expected it to be more like Assault on Tython/Korriban Incursion, where you essentially deal with the same content only with a different skin. But no, here every boss actually has their own unique mechanics (and Imp side actually seems more of a pain to me than Rep side, but maybe that's because I've only done the former on master mode once and am therefore less familiar with it).

Tl;dr version: My first impression of Objective Meridian wasn't great, but it's really grown on me with each subsequent run. On the other hand I got both Crisis on Umbara and Traitor Among the Chiss as my random master mode several times over the past couple of weeks (once we even got Copero twice in a row!) and as pretty as they are, it always elicits groans. It's really made me think about the comparative value of dazzling the player with a great first impression but being tedious to repeat vs. the other way round.

Day 6: Environments #IntPiPoMo

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

Let's start the environments theme with this shot of Pugette cruising around Taris while waiting in the group finder queue. I always think of Taris as an ugly and unwelcoming place, but when I looked up that day it struck me as strangely beautiful despite of the devastation.

Similar thoughts went through my head here, as my Sage was meditating in Section X while waiting for everyone to get dready to pull Dreadtooth. I never actually realised that the big cannon that you're sent to sabotage in the heroic mission actually looms above the area quite so majestically.

Here's my Guardian regenerating some health on Copero. I noted in one of my initial posts about the Traitor Among the Chiss flashpoint that it was stunningly beautiful, and so far the effect hasn't lessened yet whenever I rerun it. It boggles the mind a bit that they made the Umbaran freight train into a stronghold but nothing on this world... I guess the Chiss aren't very welcoming to strangers.

SWTOR's environmental designers really do get to shine in all areas if they are only allowed to design something other than spaceship interiors or barren wastelands. Here we have the trash run between Nahut and Scyva in Gods from the Machine. The screenshot doesn't really do it justice, but the area is vast and has a certain eerie beauty to it. It's just kind of hard to take a break to really appreciate it and find good screenshot angles when you're also supposed to keep people alive at the same time... maybe one of these days I should go back into a cleared out version of the instance and just do a tour of the area to get a better look at it.

Speaking of taking a moment to appreciate the landscape in unusual places, here's my Sentinel admiring the view during the pre-match timer in Novare Coast.

With the addition of the Battle over Iokath map, even GSF got its chance to look pretty! Easily my favourite of all the death match maps (and not just for its looks).

Finally, a screencap I took of my Commando main harvesting some crystals in her stronghold. Ever since I upgraded my PC two years ago, crystals have turned from just another resource to harvest into pretty good-looking environmental props, so this scene filled with them struck me as strangely beautiful.

IntPiPoMo count: 39

A Traitor Among the Chiss - Mechanics

I didn't want to make this post until I had actually cleared the new flashpoint in all difficulties, and since I didn't get around to tackling master mode until this weekend, it took a bit longer than anticipated to get this write-up done. However, it's finally ready now. And boy, was there a lot to talk about on this subject.

It starts before you even enter the flashpoint, with the fourth "one-time story mode" flashpoint difficulty that Bioware introduced with Crisis on Umbara. For Umbara, this was baked directly into the purple-coloured story quest, which could be a bit confusing if you had picked up the story but wanted to try another difficulty mode before completing the storyline, as the game wouldn't let you pick any other difficulty and didn't tell you why. (Officially you were already on another difficulty, but this wasn't obvious.)

While I suspect that this was only a problem for a minority, Bioware decided to try to fix it this time around, by making you pick up the flashpoint quest at the door, independent of the story mission, like we're used to from the older flashpoints. There were two problems with this, however: Firstly, while we're used to the flashpoint quest being a separate thing, most story missions put the solo mode into your log automatically. Since this wasn't the case here, people had to go pick it up themselves... and here the issue was that for some reason, the one-time story mode (required for the mission) was called "solo mode", while the repeatable solo mode was dubbed "story mode". This makes no sense, and as a result many players picked the wrong one and were then confused why their story wouldn't advance. Since the story mission technically tells you correctly to pick up "solo mode" (which is story mode, remember) you could theoretically say that it's people's own fault for not reading the instructions, but I do feel that Bioware is definitely to blame for using very confusing nomenclature here. They should really swap those names around and give you the correct one by default when you actually pick up the storyline.

Okay, so we're finally ready to enter the flashpoint itself. Remember how one of the main draws of splitting the story into a separate solo mode with unique cut scenes was to avoid people accidentally getting spoiled if they end up in the instance early due to running a random flashpoint through the group finder? Why oh why do you then start the cutscene-free, generic difficulty modes with a voice-over that is a giant spoiler for Crisis on Umbara? Someone didn't really think this through.

But enough of all this ranting for now. Loading into the flashpoint for the first time actually took my breath away because of how beautiful it is. So many screenshot opportunities. It also has no fewer than three different bonus missions as well as a couple of hidden achievements, none of which you will complete by just following the straightforward path. In my first run-through on solo mode, I spent over an hour in there and had a really good time sticking my nose into various different corners.

I did notice however that everything took me longer than usual to kill, and there was more damage going round than I had expected. As someone who always runs as a healer, I'm used to killing things slowly, but this was something else. It turns out that I wasn't the only one, and Bioware has already announced that they will reduce both boss health and damage as well as the number of mobs in the flashpoint in the next patch. While I'm glad to be able to say that I got in there and did it all "pre-nerf", I think the move does make sense.  FibroJedi, who has a disability that makes long and intense play sessions painful, came out on Twitter to talk about what a literal pain the flashpoint had been for him, and that's just not right. I've always said that if you intentionally make an easy mode for people to just see the story, then it needs to be easy enough to actually fulfil that purpose. With a return to telling story through flashpoints, you also have to consider that these don't work like KotFE and KotET's chapter format, where you can just pause in the middle. A flashpoint has to be done in one session or it will reset after a while. (That said, since I'm not the kind of player who is the target audience for easy solo modes, I'd still appreciate not being forced into them. /forlornly waves her little "let story advance in groups again" flag)

So what exactly is it that has been deemed to need nerfing and reducing? Well, let's talk about the trash first. My first impression of it was actually quite positive. Many of the trash mobs on Copero, especially in the first section, have distinctive abilities that you are pretty much forced to take notice of, so you can't just round them all up for AoE without a care in the world. That said, this positive first impression wore off once I realised that two of the most prevalent abilities are an instant flash grenade (stun) and an instant-cast shield that makes the mob immune to damage for several seconds. Being instant casts, neither of them can be reliably avoided, but at the same time there is no real consequence to them either other than that they just cause everything to take longer. The flashbang breaks on damage so you're not going to die from being stunned, it just means you stand there for a couple of seconds doing nothing while the mob ignores you. Likewise, the immunity shield just means that you're not able to do damage for a couple of seconds. Where is the fun gameplay in that?

What's also noteworthy is that at least in the first section of the flashpoint (the resort), the mob groups are quite tightly packed, to a degree that we haven't seen in game in a while. Personally I didn't really mind that, but a lot of players did, to the point that Dulfy's recommended strategy for dealing with the trash is to suicide run to the nearest medical droid because dying and reviving further in is deemed to be more efficient than actually fighting things. If you have a stealther in the group, they can avoid the mobs in the first area in their entirety, and if the rest of the group then commits suicide after the stealther has briefly engaged the first boss, they'll immediately respawn right next to them. I tried the latter once and it felt weird. I actually don't mind killing trash all that much in a group - all those silver and gold mobs give pretty decent CXP too. But when you've got characters jumping into the sea instead of actually fighting and it results in faster advancement, something is definitely wrong. We'll see what things are like after Bioware culls the Chiss' numbers on Tuesday.

The first boss, a big droid, is my least favourite of the lot and probably many other people's too, based on the comments I've seen. Part of this is probably that he's currently the most egregious hitpoint sponge in the instance, but we'll see what that's like after the nerf. Even without that though, he's just kind of... boring. Basically he's got two abilities that you need to avoid, and he spawns a lot of adds that take ages to kill. This last part is actually the one thing that's at least somewhat interesting, as the idea seems to be for players to kill adds selectively for a change. The smaller ones without a lot of health are best off killed because they do more damage, but the big "tank droids"  - the clue is in the name - might as well be ignored, as they take ages to kill, do little damage and don't multiply if you ignore them (however, killed ones do get replaced quite quickly). On master mode we just opted to kill one of them to give ourselves a bit of room to move (as you otherwise end up with pretty much the whole room covered in circles to avoid).

I've also seen it suggested to just ignore all the adds, but I reckon that would be a bit painful to heal through and likely lead to disaster in a pug group. I'm not sure how feasible it would be in a veteran mode run with no healer at all. In a group of random people, you're probably better off taking a bit longer and killing more adds just to play it safe.

The second boss is a Chiss sniper whose gimmick is that she moves up and down between two floors and summons a lot of adds (even more on master mode). This was actually the fight that gave my own master mode group the most trouble, as the adds are just all over the place and hit pretty hard. The trick seems to be to control carefully just when and where to kill them, especially near the end, taking out the last group just before the boss hits 25% health and goes into her last ground phase, at which point you try to burn her down quickly. Otherwise you get the little buggers running all over the place and killing people.

Like in Crisis on Umbara, there is a challenging bonus boss that doesn't require a quest chain to unlock, you just need to know where to look. This fight is probably the most intriguing encounter in the whole flashpoint, managing to be interesting simply through a peculiar combination of mechanics. It's a walker that gets plopped down on a narrow platform on the mountainside, buffed by a probe droid that is immune to damage and occasionally reinforced by a small group of soldiers. On solo mode you can pretty much get away with just tunnelling the boss, occasionally taking out adds and avoiding fire. However, on master mode, the walker itself has an unavoidable knockback that can send everyone flying off the platform and the probe droid needs to be stopped from healing and buffing it too much.

The solution to the first is that the tank needs to position himself with his back towards the walkway you used to enter the area, so he only gets knocked onto that, while the rest of the group huddles near a bunch of boxes on the other side so you always bounce off those when the knockback comes. And throughout all of that, people have to cycle through interrupts, stuns and longer-duration crowd controls (though the probe droid refuses to be controlled for longer than 20 seconds at a time) to keep the probe droid locked down. As a healer my job was actually the easiest one, as me helping out with probe droid control was welcome but optional. It was actually pretty damn fascinating to watch our two damage dealers continuously dart back and forth between the boss to do damage and the support droid to cycle through all their interrupts and stuns. I'd imagine it to be quite difficult to achieve this level of co-ordination in a pug though.

Up next we have a sort of second bonus boss, a giant ice cat that you're actually not supposed to fight but simply pass by after pacifying it with a piece of fruit. (Ooh, so clever!) However, if you want to, you can kill it anyway and get an achievement for it. (Poor kitty.) The only thing to really discourage you from doing that is the fact that the cat has an absolutely monstrous amount of health and therefore takes a very, very long time to kill. On master mode it also has a highly deadly, channelled attack that places a stacking dot on the target which will pretty much insta-kill if it isn't interrupted within a second or so. So again, our damage dealers had to rotate their interrupts. There literally is nothing else to the fight, but even one mistake will most likely cause you to wipe. Is that good design? I don't know, but I have to admit the relentlessness of the interrupt requirement gave me fond flashbacks to my prime raiding days in WoW (it made me think of Reliquary of Souls phase two, if that means anything to anyone).

What follows next is a series of puzzles with few trash mobs: having to start a machine to melt an ice wall, navigating a little maze with lasers in it etc. Initially I found this really refreshing, and I still think it's a neat idea, but what makes the whole concept fall down on repetition is that the "puzzles" never change and that there are no consequences to getting them wrong. For example the part you need to start the machine is always hidden behind the leftmost door up on the hill, which is easy to remember so you'll only ever open any wrong doors the first time. And the lasers in the maze do so little damage, even on master mode, that you don't really have to bother with deactivating them but might as well just run through to the end right away.

The final boss is a slightly confusing one. First off, he has a new mechanic that causes him to be invisible to you if you aren't in close proximity during his last phase. (The new operations boss Nahut is based on the same basic idea by the way.) That's good for a little game of hide and seek near the end when he decides to temporarily disengage, but doesn't really add anything else. Aside from that, he once again just has a few things to dodge and at least one attack that you can't really do much about, an instant stun. Somewhat bizarrely, he's probably the easiest boss in the instance.

Also, he has some sort of mechanic that I haven't really figured out yet and haven't really seen any in-depth information about anywhere either. There are some pillars around the courtyard in which you fight him, and if you hide behind one of them when he fires certain abilities, it actually crumbles! I thought maybe he was like Kephess in Terror from Beyond and would take increased damage if you managed to drop the pillar on his head, but I couldn't get that to work. When trying again on master mode today, I noticed that the pillar actually fell apart into a bunch of rocks that the boss then hurled at us! So breaking the pillar actually gives him more ammunition? Even though it's clearly not necessary to beat the encounter, I hate feeling like I'm missing something here. Feel free to share in the comments if you have any more information about this mechanic.

So, after more than two thousand words, what's my verdict on A Traitor Among the Chiss? Yay or nay?

Despite of my initial ranting at the start of this post, it's a definitive yay. I love how much effort clearly went into designing the environment for this flashpoit, and you can tell the designers tried really hard to come up with some creative and new ideas mechanics-wise as well. Unfortunately the tuning for some of them was off, but they were quick to promise fixes for the worst issues. It's just a shame that they couldn't make the trash mobs' abilities actually reward smart play (for example by making the immunity shields an interruptible cast) and give actual replay value to the puzzles.

Pugette Hit 70

After seven months of (near) weekly recording of her adventures with random groups in the group finder, Pugette the Commando has hit level 70! Her actual /played time is pretty short though, only 1(!) day and 9 hours, which once again reinforces my impression that flashpoints are actually a pretty good way to level but also that levelling is just super fast in general nowadays.

I got to finish on a nice round number after exactly 30 episodes. Towards the end I decided to ditch the random queueing in favour of choosing some specific destinations, to make sure that I would go out on a bang instead of by blitzing through yet another randomly assigned Hammer Station, and I think it worked out great, with several of the last few episodes being (in my opinion) among the best ones of the whole run. The only thing that could be considered an issue with them is length (if you don't actually like long videos), as two of them ended up taking close to one and a half hours in the end. Either way, without further ado, here's a list of the final six episodes with links:

Episode 25: Racism in Progress in False Emperor - Even though I always had the option to accept in-progress runs ticked, this was the first and only time I actually got into one, with the group already standing at the second boss in False Emperor. My entrance was kind of overshadowed by one of the pugs greeting Pugette (who, unlike me, has dark skin) with a racist term. That was just so confusing, I had no idea how to react. I let it go and moved on and nothing else offensive was said, but it was certainly a strange experience.

Episode 26: Thinking About The Future in Assault on Tython - After having already bested this flashpoint on master mode in an earlier episode, veteran mode felt very easy, and I mostly used the opportunity to do some speculating about the changes coming to the group finder in patch 5.6. I was wrong about pretty much all of it by the way.

Episode 27: Noobing It Up in Blood Hunt - At last, the flashpoint I had been simultaneously dreading and looking forward to since I started this series. All things considered, it didn't go too badly, though we did have the inevitable wipes on Jos and Valk. I also always find this flashpoint to be a bit of a team-building exercise, and our dps Commando in particular had me in stitches at times, which made for a very fun run.

Episode 28: Going Old School in MM Lost Island - I got this one as a random quite often lately, and every time I was surprised by how smoothly it went. This run was not like that. However, it was still fun because people took the wipes in stride and tried hard to do better. When we finally bested the last boss, it sure felt very satisfying.

Episode 29: Reliving Fond Memories in MM Kaon Under Siege - This one was much easier than Lost Island and I mostly used it as an opportunity to reminisce about all the good times I had in this flashpoint and how it provided all kinds of memorable moments for me in the past.

Episode 30: Pug Interrupted in Traitor Among the Chiss - This is the one in which Pugette finally hit 70, and also the first one in which she encountered a type of obstacle she hadn't run into before (I won't spoil what it is). Just prepare to be exposed to some eardrum-bursting laughter at one point...

What's in store for Pugette and the channel next? Well, as for Pugette, I'm planning to keep her "pure" and out of guild runs, limited to what she can achieve in the pug world, but first on the agenda is probably finishing her class story up to the end of Coruscant at least so that she can finally get her ship and make that damn galaxy map icon stop flashing.

As for the channel... to be honest, I don't know! I was pleasantly surprised by how many subs and views I gained while recording this series, especially considering that the original purpose of the channel was just to have a place to upload boss kill videos for my guild and the like. I do think I would like to record a "season two" of pug adventures and I do already have an idea for it as well, but even if I do go ahead with it I won't actually put my plan into action until early next year. You'll just have to content yourself with reading the blog in the meantime. /wink

A Traitor Among the Chiss - The Story

Just like with Crisis on Umbara, I'd like to make two separate posts to talk about the new flashpoint Traitor Among the Chiss: one about the mechanical side of it and one about the story. Unlike with Umbara, I'd like to start with the story his time around and talk about the mechanics later.

As usual, this means: spoiler warning! Though I was shocked by how little Bioware themselves seemed to care about that this time, considering that they spoiled Umbara's big twist in the very patch notes for 5.6...

Either way, let me start by saying that I enjoyed the story of this one a lot more than that of Crisis on Umbara. Admittedly my first thought on initial completion was that not very much happened in this flashpoint, but on replaying it I realised that there was actually more going on than I initially thought; it's just more subtle. After some of the clunkers delivered in Crisis on Umbara, that felt like a welcome change.

I liked the intro with Raina Temple and Aristocra Saganu - not just because we're getting another one of the original companions back as part of the main storyline, but also because I like Bioware bringing back minor characters for another run. I also feel like I really, really need to bring my main agent up to speed now so she can see what class-specific dialogue there is in this bit of the story. Worse, I kind of feel like I should level my Chiss sniper who romanced Saganu too, just to see what that changes. Damn you, Bioware...

Anyway, then we're off to chase Theron. In my Umbara story post, I said: Hopefully we won't be chasing Theron for the next couple of patches. Yet here we are of course. Surprisingly, I didn't mind that much.

Actually, let me go off on a tangent here. I realised the other day that the ending of the main Eternal Throne story has put Bioware into a tricky situation in more than one way. Not only is the Eternal Alliance way too powerful to be challenged by much of anything, but there is no clear direction for the story to continue, and that is a problem.

When a player chooses a class at level one, they sign up for a particular kind of plot, and Bioware knows how to appeal to them. If you roll a trooper, you expect a story about fighting for the Republic. The choices you get to make throughout the process allow you to fine-tune the experience, turning into a benevolent hero of the people or a bit of an opportunistic asshole who just likes to shoot things, but the overall direction remains the same. Nobody would create a trooper and then be disappointed that they can't run off to join the Empire.

The story of the Outlander - even if we disregard all the issues with whether it's appropriate for your class to become the Outlander to begin with - was all about fighting the Eternal Empire, an opponent that is now gone. As a result you're left with a bunch of players who may all want completely different things from the story going forward. Some may want to go out and conquer the galaxy. Some may want to trash the Eternal Fleet and step off the galactic stage to focus on smaller issues again. Some way want to side with the Empire. Some may want to help the Republic. Many of these motivations are at direct odds with each other, so there is no single direction you could take to please everyone or even most people. So where do you go from here?

Making a story arc focused on one of our companions makes sense at this point because it avoids the issue by simply ignoring it. It doesn't matter what exactly we want to do with the Eternal Fleet if we don't have to make a choice about it because we're not doing anything where it would actually come in handy. And while you can still get people like me that grumble that they don't like Theron that much and aren't there more important things to worry about than chasing him around the galaxy anyway, at least it's not something that feels utterly wrong for any character. With that in mind, I've decided to embrace this arc and roll with it.

To get back to the actual flashpoint's story, Saganu tells you that Theron is hiding on the Chiss world of Copero, sheltering under the roof of a Chiss miscreant who is too powerful to be taken out openly - but if the Outlander just happened to kill her while chasing Theron Shan it would be most welcome. That... feels a lot less contrived than anything that happened on Umbara, well done.

I also really liked the use of environmental voice-overs during the early part of the flashpoint to give you a bit of time to talk to Temple. More importantly, at one point you pass a holo terminal where a news bulletin is running which updates you on what's been happening with the Republic and the Empire after the events of Iokath. If you sided with the Republic, you learn that Empress Acina has been supplanted by Emperor Vowrawn (last seen kneeling to Emperor Arcann in KotFE chapter two). If you sided with the Empire, you hear that Chancellor Madon has resigned (looks like Calph's burning desire to finally find out more about him won't be sated any time soon) and has been succeeded by Galena Rans. (Is that the former Supreme Commander Rans or a relative? I have no idea what his first name is actually.) As someone who always devours every bit of info about what's going on with our old factions I appreciated the way they managed to fit that in there without making things too complicated.

Anyway, you have no trouble locating the Chiss miscreant and taking her out. Unfortunately Theron played her too and is already on his way out again. You run to catch his shuttle but he gets away again. The big revelation comes at the end when you see Theron talking to the masked guy from Umbara again and he reveals that the mysterious order he is working for is basically another branch of the Heralds of Zildrog. Okay, that's... not totally surprising I guess? But on Zakuul those guys were a bit of a joke, how can they be such a big threat now?

The above paragraph sort of sums up how I saw the flashpoint after my first playthrough. It's all fine and well, but we didn't really accomplish anything here, did we?

The main thing I realised on my second playthrough is that this flashpoint more or less confirms the theory that Theron is actually a double agent. It's easy to miss the first time because you don't know what it is, but you see Theron switch on a little device when he talks to the Herald at the end. Afterwards you get a message from Hylo that she was able to intercept a transmission that basically reveals Theron's conversation with the Herald. Coincidence? Clearly not when the recorded message is exactly the bit of conversation that happened after Theron switched on the little device! So while our characters still don't officially know, it's pretty clear to us as players that Theron isn't really on those guys' side.

Then there is the star map that reveals Theron's next destination. Bioware has already hinted that the next story update will take us to a planet we likely didn't expect to return to, but now we know the details. Well, if one can read star maps that is. I don't, so I still don't really have a clue. If you were able to make out where Theron is going next, do let me know in the comments!

Finally, I liked the nuances many of the cut scenes delivered. I liked the conversation where you are asked to pass judgement on Syndic Zenta for example. She's not exactly sympathetic, but she hasn't done anything to make you hate her either, and you know virtually nothing about just why she's so hated by the other Chiss. The usually rather charming Saganu's pressure to kill her on the spot feels uncomfortable. It's something that made me think twice even on my dark-sided Marauder.

The cut scenes with Theron and Valss are also a joy to behold - their faces tell so much yet leave you guessing about even more. Theron is clearly somewhat uncomfortable with what he's doing, but also seems to hold a certain affection for Valss, while the latter's face repeatedly shines with an almost religious zeal. It makes you wonder what the story is between those two - could be good material for a short story to post on the website or something.

What are your impressions of the Copero storyline? I've seen a lot of people talk about the mechanics this time (which I will cover in another post) but I haven't seen much feedback about the actual events of the flashpoint other than that people hate Theron's new haircut. (No shock there.)