Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 5

I didn't have any particular feelings or expectations going into this week beyond what I'll note down about the individual objectives:

• Earn 200k Conquest points: Yes, naturally.
  
• Earn the seasonal currency: After last week, I was happy to see this objective return as another easy one to complete on all servers.
  
• Visit another player's Nar Shaddaa stronghold: Of course.
  
• Kill four named champion mobs on Nar Shaddaa (2 Republic, 2 Imperial): Like the Quesh objective in week one, not my first choice to complete but an easy filler to round things out if needed.
  
• Complete 8 repeatable or side missions and kill 100 mobs on the Unknown/Wild Space planets Ilum, CZ-198, Iokath and Zakuul: Easy to achieve with dailies, but one to watch out for in terms of not burning myself out with a billion CZ-198 runs.
  
• Kill 100 mobs with a healer companion: Easy to do in combination with something else.
  
• Complete 2 out of 4 selected flashpoints (Battle of Ilum, False Emperor, Legacy of the Rakata, Shrine of Silence): Now, I actually liked this one because two of the featured flashpoints were ones that are also required for the first GS6 story mission, and I'd only completed that on Darth Malgus so far, so I figured this could help with progressing it on the other servers (even if sticking to those two was going to make it particularly repetitive).
  
• Earn 25 medals in Galactic Starfighter: Same as last week, not a fave due to how many matches it takes me to get there.
  
• Play 3-6 GSF matches (wins count double): ... however, combined with this one it certainly seemed like an attractive combo to do on Darth Malgus at the very least.
  
• Kill Nightmare Pilgrim: Since you can get credit for at least the seasons objective without even being in a group nowadays, this actually seemed somewhat viable to do on multiple servers, as you just need to hang out at the boss's spawn point and wait for a group of either faction to show up (and due to the nature of the fight, the groups always take a while to sort out, so you can usually tell some time in advance that it's a work in progress, it's not a quick "blink and you'll miss it" job like on some of the other world bosses)
  
• KotET chapter 2 on veteran mode or higher: Now, I've always rejected the chapter objectives so far because I don't like repeating chapters... however, with this one, I actually had a character on Darth Malgus that was exactly on this step of the story, so I figured I might do it as a two-for-one.
  

Day 1 - Tuesday

What was supposed to be a normal office day turned out to be very sad as it was revealed to us that a (fairly young!) co-worker had surprisingly passed away over the weekend. As everyone was upset and in shock, people were allowed to go home early, and unsurprisingly, I didn't feel like doing much of anything for most of the day.

In the evening I was ready for some distraction though and logged on to do ops with my guildies, followed by a GSF weekly, which progressed me to 4/6 on one objective and to 9/25 medals earned.

On Leviathan, I put myself in the queue for False Emperor and Legacy of the Rakata and instantly got a vet mode pop for the latter. This resulted in a nice triple whammy of seasons progression, credit for the GS6 story mission and credit for the Prelude to Shadow of Revan story mission. I then meant to park myself at Nightmare Pilgrim to hopefully get a kill later, but there was already a group of Imps assembling there so I hung around (I was on a Republic character so couldn't join them). Sadly they wiped on their first attempt. The second one went better, though I myself got mowed down by the Pilgrim's Rapid Fire that time. Funnily enough, since I wasn't actually in the ops group the fight "belonged" to, I could just revive on the spot even as the fight continued.

On Tulak Hord, I did a round of CZ-198 dailies and then parked myself at Nightmare Pilgrim's spawn spot. It being past midnight in Germany, I wasn't surprised that nothing was going on anymore.

On Satele Shan, I decided to just do the Ilum heroic, including the bonus. As I also gained a legacy level while doing so, this was enough to complete the daily objective. Still, I wanted to park myself at Nightmare Pilgrim again before logging out, and once again there were some Imps already there. I waited for a bit, but when nothing seemed to move for more than ten minutes (and there weren't that many of them), I started to wonder whether this was actually a group or just some randoms doing the same thing I was, waiting for someone else to do the actual work. I actually relogged to Imp side just to check whether there were people actually LFM on the fleet but saw nothing. When I returned to my Republic character, there were suddenly a lot more people there and the battle was already in progress, but fortunately I had enough time to join in.

On Star Forge I just did a round of Iokath dailies on my boosted Sith inqusitor, before logging over to Shae Vizla to join a Nightmare Pilgrim group organised by my guild there.

Day 2 - Wednesday

After reset, I briefly logged into Leviathan to visit a Nar Shaddaa stronghold and knock out the named champion mobs for both factions. Some clickies pushed me over the required Conquest point amount for the daily objective.

Later in the evening, I logged into Tulak Hord and once again, there were some Imps at the Nightmare Pilgrim's spawn spot. Why is it always Imps? I once again waited for them to assemble and do their thing, but unfortunately this group just wiped three times and then gave up. Since I was having dinner around that time and was mostly AFK in game anyway, I hung around to wait for the next group to come by (the area had never fully emptied out). Eventually a huge Republic group came by and got me the kill. Then I just did the Ilum heroic plus bonus to complete the Unknown/Wild Space missions objective and the daily.

After that, I returned to my home turf on Darth Malgus for some PvP and GSF. One of the characters I did PvP on was a lowbie on whom I did some quests while waiting in the queue, which got me a good way towards the companion kills objective already. The GSF matches completed one of the related weeklies and brought the other one up to 16/25 medals.

When I visited Star Forge later, my inquisitor (whom I'd also left at the Nightmare Pilgrim's haunt) logged in to sounds of a battle and a group having the boss down to 20% or so already. I quickly ran in to hit him for credit before travelling to Ilum and doing the Imp side heroic there (including the bonus again) to complete the planetary missions objective.

Over on Satele Shan, I put myself in the queue for False Emperor and Legacy of the Rakata just to get an instant pop for the latter on veteran mode. The run was smooth and fast, bringing me one step closer to completing the GS6 stronghold mission on this character. I then also did a round of CZ-198, which ticked over three things at once: the planetary missions, killing things with my companion and the seasonal currency.

On Shae Vizla, I did the same thing with the group finder but without getting an instant pop, so I took care of my GTN listings and started on a round of CZ-198 in the meantime. Just as I was about to get to the final mission in the waste disposal area, I got a pop for veteran mode False Emperor. It was another smooth and fast run, and we even did the bonus boss.

Day 3 - Thursday

The first thing I did in the evening was log into Leviathan and do some quests on my bounty hunter to work towards the "kills with a healer companion" achievement until I'd hit my daily 25k Conquest points. (Reminder: My knight is a healer and doing stuff with double heals is a no-no even for me.)

On Tulak Hord, I queued for False Emperor and Legacy of the Rakata and got into a vet mode run for the latter, which I did not enjoy. We had two healers, which can make things a little slow but isn't usually a big deal... unless both of your damage dealers are really slow and erratic in their participation (one of them spent half of the first boss fight AFK from what I could tell) and the other healer absolutely refuses to press a single damage ability despite the group comp, both of which were the case here. I actually opened up Starparse purely to see whether the other healer was doing anything other than run in circles and spam AoE heals while we were all at 100% health anyway, and the answer was no. Nobody talked either, not even to respond to my greeting at the start, so I was just glad to get out of there (eventually). To cheer myself up, I went and visited a Nar Shaddaa stronghold, which got me to 4/7 weeklies completed.

I then spent the biggest chunk of the evening on Darth Malgus, first getting myself to 4/7 weekly seasons objectives there as well by completing one more GSF weekly mission, then by helping out another ops team by wiping in Dxun master mode for two hours.

After that I logged into Star Forge, where I basically did the same things as on Tulak Hord, only that the Legacy of the Rakata run on this server was smooth and pleasant. This was followed by a similarly smooth False Emperor pug on Satele Shan (bonus boss included again). Finally, I logged into Shae Vizla and just did the heroic on Ilum there, which ticked off three more weeklies there as well.

Day 4 - Friday

I had made such good progress over the first three days, I felt like a could relax and not fret about seasons too much for a day. I just logged into Darth Malgus in the evening to do a bit of PvP and that was it for my day in SWTOR.

Day 5 - Saturday

Late in the morning/shortly before lunch time, I did a round of all the other servers to get my daily done. On Leviathan, Tulak Hord and Satele Shan I did some story missions on Imp side, plus on the latter I also visited a stronghold since I hadn't done so yet. On Star Forge I queued for False Emperor and got a quick run in, which was okay, though a bit rushy and nobody responded to my saying hello.

Finally, I queued for Legacy of the Rakata on Shae Vizla and got a pop, but one person timed out so it didn't go through. It was getting close to reset time so I started work on getting Conquest points from some other sources to be on the safe side, but I did eventually get another run just in time to finish it before the reset. This one had two guys always pushing ahead while one always lagged behind, and the lagging guy actually apologised for his slowness, bless him. 

I didn't play again until the evening, when I killed Nightmare Pilgrim with my guildies on Darth Malgus and then did a couple of operations with them. After that I did some more PvP, and the questing I did between pops finished my companion kills objective. I finished the evening by doing KotET chapter two on veteran mode on the smuggler who was actually at that point in the story. I died a few times, but that wasn't entirely unexpected. With that, I was on 7/7 on Darth Malgus.

Day 6 - Sunday

On Sunday morning I decided to visit the other servers again. On Leviathan I did a False Emperor run in which someone was chattering away in French for a while until they rage-quit after the second boss. I couldn't entirely make sense of what they were saying so I opened up Google Translate on my second monitor, but it was of limited help in this instance as it didn't know what "tous au cac" meant either, a phrase that was repeated several times. Considering the context in hindsight, I can only guess it meant something like "everybody stack"? But then I'm still not sure why this was important enough to rage-quit over, especially on the second boss in False Emperor. All I did was run to the cannon to make the ship go away... I took some solace from the fact that I understood what someone else in the group said after the rage-quit: "what an angry guy".

Interestingly, I seemed to get the answer to what had upset that French guy on Tulak Hord later, when I did another False Emperor run there too, and someone complained about me using the turret on the Jindo Krey fight there as well. At least they made it clear why: they felt that the absorb shield it puts on him for a few seconds "wastes time". I appreciated being able to have a conversation about it, but to be honest my real (private) response to this was to file it away under "stupid pug strats", because I can't quite fathom why anyone would think it's a good idea to make a fight ten seconds shorter by taking 300% increased damage. Plus as a healer, I always hate the attitude of "let's ignore simple mechanics and let the healer deal with it".

On Star Forge, I just did some clickies for my daily Conquest, while on Satele Shan and Shae Vizla I played alts for a bit. On the latter I cut it so close that I only got the "influencing the galaxy" pop-up two minutes before the daily reset.

I went through all the servers again in the evening, mostly just doing a bit of questing on alts, as I was either already 7/7 everywhere or just missing a few more companion kills or Conquest points towards the 200k objective. On Darth Malgus I played a few PvP matches as well.

Day 7 - Monday 

All that was left to do was to cycle through all the servers and earn some Conquest points for the daily, which I did with a mix of questing and clickies. The only thing worth remarking on is that I finally finished my first class story on Star Forge while doing so! Oddly, it was the smuggler, not the trooper I've had since forever, but the latter is still working her way through some side missions, so the smuggler (on whom I only did the class story) ended up overtaking her on Corellia.

Week 5 Thoughts

After how much of a slog week four was, this week was a pleasant surprise in terms of how quick and easy it was to get to 7/7 everywhere. Also, I can't believe I'm already halfway through the season track on all servers! So much for not pushing myself too much... but it's still been interesting to document my progress.

The Interpreter's Retreat

I've written in great detail about 7.3's new story as well as the new flashpoint, but I also wanted to take a moment to talk about the new area on Voss more generally. As I said after the 7.3 livestream, I think that adding new areas to existing planets is a marvellous idea, even if Voss isn't a particular favourite of mine. From a production point of view it's presumably very efficient, since existing planetary assets can be re-used, while still giving players something new to play around with.

My initial expectation of the Interpreter's Retreat was that it was going to be roughly Black Hole-sized (since that was the first "secondary planetary area" that was ever added to the game) and it... kind of is? I do have the feeling that it's probably a bit smaller, but it's not like I counted myself doing laps around the two zones to compare.

Compared to the rest of Voss, it's a lot less open, with a lot of relatively narrow paths and much denser mob placement, but after spending the last few months on Ruhnuk, it still felt almost liberating to quest there. You can't really dodge most mob groups very well, but at least they are easy to kill (unlike many opponents on Ruhnuk) and the area is at least open enough that you can keep running and shake some of them off before running into a dead end.

One thing that wasn't quite clear to me after the initial livestream was whether the Interpreter's Retreat was going to be a daily area or not. They didn't call it that, and if it was they probably would've said so, but it still sounded like there were things to do there other than the main story. Based on the PTR, commenter Iris informed me that the structure of the repeatable quests was a bit like Mek-Sha, and after having seen how it works for myself, I think that's a fair comparison, though I think the Interpreter's Retreat does things somewhat better.

With Mek-Sha, my general feeling was that the repeatable/side content was just not very interesting or rewarding. Why do things like the heroics or the trade house missions more than once just to see what they're about? There's the one heroic with the gangs that has an achievement attached to it if you repeat it forty times, but all in all, the experience always felt very "meh" to me.

The Interpreter's Retreat is better at luring you in with a plethora of decoration and pet rewards, and I found all of it to be pretty "discoverable". For example I never looked up a guide for the picnic achievement, I just found the leftover food naturally while doing the daily in the Gormak kitchen, and then spotted the spare drink while walking around town on another character. Then the description of the combined item makes it clear what you need to do with it. Considering the area isn't huge, it didn't take too long for me to find the right spot to use it as well. My discoveries of the contemplation achievement and the pet played out similarly. There were some things I looked up eventually, but in general I was positively surprised by how many items of interest I managed to encounter organically and how they drew me into spending more time in the area without having to look anything up.

I also thought it was interesting how a couple of achievements unlocked decorations on the vendor in town when completed, which isn't something SWTOR's ever done before I think. A guildie commented that he's seen something similar in Elder Scrolls Online though. No matter its origins, I think it's a neat idea, as it provides a bit of extra incentive to work on those achievements even if you're perhaps not much of an achievement hunter normally, though it's not very clearly communicated. The achievement description does point out that there are decos involved, but surely I'm not the only one who doesn't usually read achievement descriptions... I just think it could've been made a bit clearer, perhaps with the vendor having a quick chat option where they tell you that they'll show you some special goods if you help out enough or something like that.

All in all, I think the Interpreter's Retreat is a nice little addition to the game. I don't think it will have a lot of staying power for people, as even going after the achievements is not something that's going to keep you grinding for months and months, but I think that's okay. The mobs are supposed to drop decos randomly (though it's been acknowledged that the drop rates are currently bugged), which could be something to keep people interested in grinding them once fixed. Now if only the devs also added a Conquest objective or two for the area and we'd be golden.

Old Wounds - Story Review

The latest story update is here and I have thoughts - lots of them! If I had to sum up the experience in a single word, I would simply call it "interesting" - which is mostly a good thing, with some caveats.

First off, the team tried something slightly different with the way the content is structured this time around, and I'm honestly still undecided on how I feel about it. Basically you start with a "normal" story update with fully voiced dialogue, cut scenes etc., then you end up being sent to Voss, and what you do there is done in the KOTOR style and feels more like a planetary storyline. That storyline in turn then asks you to do a bunch of what I'd usually call side missions before you can continue, except that doing some of them is mandatory for story progression. At least one of these minor quests even has sub-tasks of its own... it's all nested like a Russian doll and honestly a bit weird.

I mean, people asking you to run errands for them before you're able to continue is a tried and tested MMO trope and I'm not against it, but I felt it was a bit extreme here in parts. When I was sweeping the floor of the Gormak cantina I was definitely questioning the life choices that had led me there when all I wanted to do was get a bit of intel from the Three. On the other hand though, there was a part of me that liked how that particular setup felt like it gave the update more "gameplay meat", instead of ending up in a situation like on Ruhnuk where you spend an hour watching a lot of cut scenes and then the optional content is to grind mobs in tunnels for the next month. I always do all this side stuff anyway, so having it a bit more integrated into the main story did work for me in a way. I'm conflicted.

Anyway, so much about the structural part of the update; let's talk about what actually happens in the story and my thoughts about it. As usual, full spoilers ahead!

We start with Darth Rivix and Tau Idair having a confrontation in some ruins, fighting over one of Darth Nul's trinkets. The winner depends on which faction you're playing. It's an opportunity to feature a cool lightsaber fight scene I guess, but the part that actually intrigued me the most is that Rivix is accompanied by a rival Sith called Lord Sovu and uses this opportunity to get rid of him. I played Republic side first, where the scene begins with Tau arriving and Rivix just having killed someone, but at that point it's not clear who it was. Seeing the Imperial version afterwards, with the brutish Sovu giving Rivix crap and the latter cunningly luring him into a trap was a delightful surprise. Meanwhile Tau gets an earful from Admiral Rava (whom you might remember from Manaan), for prioritising her relic hunt over helping with a planetary defense mission.

We cut to Odessen where your character receives Rivix or Tau, and they suggest that Doctor Oggurobb might be able to help with learning more about the relic they found. This soon leads to another cut to Sa'har and Ri'kan, where we learn that Sa'har thinks that her brother is Force-sensitive like her and wants him to try and unlock his potential. He does briefly try to move a datapad with his mind but quickly gets frustrated and tells Sa'har that he's fine having earned his position the hard way, once again highlighting the tensions between the two siblings.

They are interrupted by Heta and her entourage arriving. She gives a speech about how she's identified the reason her plan failed on Ruhnuk, and she blames it on the Dar'manda and Bask Sunn for his manipulation of the duel. If he's still alive, she shoots him right out the airlock! RIP, Bask; I quite liked you. (Though Indigo sends you a letter afterwards in which he notes that he's quite pleased to be rid of Bask.) If you betrayed Shae to collaborate with Bask, he's already run off and Heta is actually quite pleased, merely commenting on how shocking she found the other Mandalorians' level of fear for Shae's life. She then announces that Sa'har's holocron will form the basis of her next plan, and that only the two of them will know all the details, much to Ri'kan's visible dismay. In fact, we see that Sa'har was right about his latent Force abilities as his sheer anger ends up pushing the datapad from earlier off the table, unnoticed by anyone.

Back on Odessen, the relic is identified as (part of) Darth Nul's lightsaber and as having contained Adegan crystals, which are usually only used by Jedi. My immediate thought was "oh, so she was a Jedi before becoming a Sith", but your companions all go on about how she must have used the Jedi's powers against them or something like that. With this new knowledge, you're off to talk to Malgus again! I've got to admit that didn't seem like the most natural progression of things, especially considering how uncooperative he was last time, but whatever.

In an interesting twist, you enter Malgus' fleet prison to find an agitated Shae having her way blocked by the guard droids. We're reminded that she worked with Malgus once, in the original Deceived trailer, and she wants to question him about the holocron and Heta. I'm very glad that your character automatically points out that she had precious little interest in the holocron back on Ruhnuk... however, one way or another she does get to listen in on the conversation and share information via comms.

I actually found this conversation with Malgus much more interesting than the last one, because while the ending is ultimately the same, he does reveal some different bits of information depending on your conversation choices. I was also very intrigued by his last line implying that he kind of wishes the player character wasn't his enemy - which is something I've wanted for my Imperials since they originally brought him back, but part of me was like: "Really? Now you say that, after we had to beat you down how many times?" Plus he also says it to Republic characters, which I think makes less sense in general. Still, I'd be interested to know whether anything comes of that line and your response to it later on, though I barely dare to hope on that front. I realise that wanting another Malgus team-up after Ossus is just my personal fangirl vice and unlikely to happen.

Malgus senses Shae outside and mocks her, telling her that Heta will destroy her, which eventually leads to Shae rushing off in anger. When your character exits the prison afterwards, you get a call from Sana-Rae, who asks you to come to Voss.

She's returned from that mission you sent her or someone else off to several patches ago, and it's quite explosive: she found out Darth Nul's backstory. As it turns out, Nul was in fact originally a Jedi called Master Raniah (cue me going "I knew it!") who was expelled from the Jedi order for having the unique gift of being able to connect to other people's minds. She ended up exiling herself and her students to this mysterious planet in Wild Space where they did quite well for themselves for a while, until she unwisely mind-touched the old Emperor and he decided to subdue her and her students for his own purposes, turning her into Darth Nul in the process. This sequence was interesting to me as I believe it's the first time that the game has shown us a cut scene that is a flashback of the past, which incidentally revealed Darth Nul/Master Raniah to be a Mirialan.

Arcann is also there if he's alive in your playthrough and tells you that he felt like he had seen some of the locations relevant to Darth Nul before, and that he apparently had dream visions of these and other places while being cured by the Voss mystics. He then gets philosophical about all the horrors he's inflicted and wonders how he can ever atone for them. On my knight, who's romanced him, I thought that whole interaction was quite sweet. On my trooper it gave me more of a slightly exasperated feeling of: "Why does everyone have to be so emotional today and tell me all about it?"

Anyway, Sana-Rae also reveals that the reason she brought you to Voss is that there are murmurs of the mystics having had a vision involving Darth Malgus which would surely be interesting to you, but it won't be shared unless you manage to soften the Voss up a bit first. To do so, you're supposed to go to a place called the Shrine of Contemplation, where the Three are overseeing a restoration project.

This is where we get to the new sub-zone and get to the bit that feels like a planetary story. The restoration is led by a Voss call Maton-Ja and a Gormak called Kodom, and naturally, there are problems. As it turns out, some Gormak who distrust the truce between the two factions sought the aid of Czerka mercenaries, but Czerka is never up to any good, so of course they cause chaos instead. You go through a bunch of steps to help out and put things back in order until you've earned enough favour to see the Three.

Even though this bit is what will probably take up the majority of your time during a playthrough, I don't really have much to say about it - it's basically a planetary story and it's solid. Maton-Ja is surprisingly likeable for a Voss, and so is Kodom, with both of them coming across as genuinely devoted to their cause. There are also plenty of roleplaying opportunities in the dialogue to express different sentiments about this whole "Voss and Gormak working together" thing.

Either way, eventually you earn the privilege of being allowed to see the Three, and their reaction to you is honestly a bit of a mystery to me, because they were quite unfriendly to my trooper in specific, even though I had been nothing but helpful throughout the quest line. I wonder whether the devs actually set some sort of flag based on how you talked to them during the original Voss storyline? God knows what sort of options I chose on each character that had an audience with the Three ten years ago.

You also speak to Sana-Rae once more before the audience and learn that she's become a bit of a persona non grata in recent times, since she was actually supposed to return to Voss after Zakuul was defeated but chose to remain with the Alliance instead.

Regardless of how the Three feel about you, they tell you that the mysterious vision about Darth Malgus revealed that great chaos is coming (due to Malgus awakening a "great power [...] that will tear the galaxy apart" and it frightens them because according to the vision there is apparently nothing they can do. All they know is that things will deteriorate even faster if Malgus dies, and that your character will be at the centre of it all.

Now this was a bit of a weird one for me because on the one hand it was yet more vague mysticism, meaning we still don't really know what Malgus actually wants, and that felt like a bit of a meh way to end the storyline. There's also a part of me that cringed a little about being made the subject of prophecy yet again, and it reminded me of how Heskal was always yapping on about your destiny during KotFE. But then I thought, well, in a way that's interesting because my character's been there, done that, so how would that make her feel? Everything the Scions ever said can be seen as having come true or having been complete bogus, depending on how you want to view it, so this pronouncement by the Three could likewise be taken as anything from "Yep, here I go having to save the galaxy again!" to "Bah, more mystical gibberish!"

And of course the bit about Darth Malgus dying seems like it should be an important plot point, whether we personally get to decide whether he lives or dies, or find ourselves in some sort of situation where we actually might want to save him to prevent something even worse from happening. But of course, who knows when we'll get to that...

All in all, I thought this was a strong update. It included many different characters and had a lot of small ties to previous content, to the point that the moment I finished the story on my main, I immediately wanted to play it on an alt to see what was going to be different - which is always a good sign.

The character writing was on point, expanding on several NPCs' characterisations. Shae is coming across as increasingly unstable (just remember how chill she used to be in Blood Hunt!), which presents an interesting conundrum for your character in terms of how far you're willing to go to support her aspirations. Malgus actually sounds a little defeated at the end of his interrogation for the first time... and while that may just be a temporary lapse or even an intentional attempt at deception, it's acted incredibly well.

Arcann wrestling with his past is something that's honestly been a bit overdue - I still remember the addition of his Alliance alert back in 2018 (gosh, it's been a while) and how I and many others felt that it was very odd how his violent past just seemed to get completely glossed over at that point. And Sana-Rae's personal sacrifice adds a lot of new texture to a character who's been with us in some form since 2015 but used to be presented in an extremely utilitarian way.

The only two criticisms I have are that we once again spend quite a lot of time watching cut scenes or being told about stuff that our characters are not directly involved in or wouldn't even know about. Tau and Rivix get to hunt for relics, Heta executes one of her followers in cold blood (potentially, based on your choices), Sana-Rae stands up for herself against the leaders of her people... and we just get to hear about it all and then run some errands for the Voss. Slightly hyperbolic, I know, but I do wish they'd put a bit more thought into how to allow our characters to do interesting things themselves.

The second issue I had was that once again, we still don't know what Malgus is really up to. We made some progress on the Darth Nul front, so that's fair, but with the studio only being able to release about two major updates a year, story progress feels absolutely glacial. And this isn't me complaining about the update cadence, because I think you could stick to that schedule without having things feel quite so slow if more stuff actually happened in each update.

I appreciate that it's a bit of a conundrum because I can tell they are trying to have characters develop at a sensible pace and that takes time. There are many things I love about the original class stories (obviously) but they often feature NPCs having their minds changed and doing a complete heel-face turn after only two lines of dialogue, and that's a bit silly. So in a way I do like the writers taking a bit more time to build up to things nowadays, but coupled with the game's release cadence it just makes the story sooo slow in real time, I worry that whenever we do get to something actually happening with Malgus, it will either feel like a let-down because of how long the build-up was, or people will have just stopped caring altogether.

What did you think?

7.3 Livestream Review

On Wednesday the Bioware team treated us to a livestream to preview what to expect from the next major patch, 7.3. It even started at a really good time for me! I've got to say I really like the way they run these streams nowadays. I still remember when these sorts of streams were always in the middle of the night for Europeans so that I rarely bothered to watch them, and even if I did watch the replay later, I didn't always find it very interesting. The current format is always entertaining to me though.

I was wondering a bit how things would shape up after Charles Boyd's departure since he was always such a great cheerleader for the game, but Musco and Jackie have continued to hold the fort just fine. There was a moment where Jackie completely stunned Musco by suddenly whipping out a fan that made me laugh out loud.

In terms of what was revealed about 7.3, as is my wont I won't be discussing every single thing here. If you want a full summary of the stream, Swtorista or Vulkk have got you covered as usual. This is more about sharing thoughts about the items that particularly interested me personally.

The main event of 7.3 is going to be a new story update and a new zone. I say "zone" because it's going to be an addition to an existing planet! The Interpreter's Retreat is going to be a new area on Voss, from the sounds of it similar to how the Black Hole was an addition to Corellia for example. I wasn't sure whether it was also meant to be a daily zone because they mentioned that it would feature Voss and Gormak working together and that we could steer them one way or another, which to me seemed to hint at another reputation to work on, but the zone's already gone up on the PTS and apparently it only contains regular missions.

There were some comments about how everyone should love this addition because Voss is many people's favourite planet, but I'm of course not one of them. In fact, when I did my ranking of all planets not long ago, Voss came in fifth from the bottom. However, I still liked this announcement because I always like getting new areas to explore, and it doesn't always have to be a whole new planet - adding to existing planets is fine too. While I'm not the biggest fan of Voss, it does make sense as a place to revisit since a lot has happened there since the base game's storylines.

Now, we didn't really get any information about what to expect of the new story in terms of length, but from the sounds of it, it should be decently chunky simply based on everything that's supposed to be in it. Under the title "Old Wounds" we'll primarily continue the Malgus storyline, but Shae and the Mandalorians are also going to show up, there'll be the aforementioned factions on Voss to deal with, and we'll also get an update on the "away team" we sent off to that mysterious planet quite some time ago now. They also showed a teaser clip of Tau facing off against Darth Rivix, so it sounds like there's a lot going on! I'm looking forward to it.

We'll also be getting a new flashpoint and apparently for the first time in forever it will not be part of the main storyline - Musco invited comparisons to Red Reaper. I tried to think back to when we last had a flashpoint like that, and at first I thought it must've been shortly before the introduction of solo modes for flashpoints, but actually the most recent example I could think of was Kuat Drive Yards, which was added in early 2014. Ever since then, flashpoints have always been used to drive the main storyline forward and wow, that's really been a while!

I've been trying to figure out what might have prompted this change and what difference it even makes - I guess it means they could justify not having any (significant) cut scenes in there? But then with the way they've been handling story in flashpoints since the end of KotET, the group version already had minimal to no cut scenes anyway, and I wouldn't think it makes a difference for the artists whether the cinematics they create for the solo story are set in the outdoor world or inside a phase? Honestly, I got nothing. Maybe I'll have some sort of epiphany when I actually see the result for myself. Either way, the new flashpoint will be called Shrine of Silence and will apparently feature an end boss that's going to look a bit like a plant-based Terror from Beyond.

I'm usually not that excited by the item previews they always do in these streams, but I've got to admit that some of the decorations they showed off looked really nice. I especially liked the giant tree and the Voss lanterns, which I always thought looked lovely.

In terms of systems changes, there'll be more updates to warzone medals - the changes they made with PvP season 1 made them a bit too hard to get sometimes and they're now slowly backtracking on that, while awarding medals for different achievements compared to the past. For example everyone's supposed to get attacker points in the future when the team manages to score in Huttball, which sounds nice.

They'll also continue their rollout of economic changes to battle inflation, which will include taxation of item and credit trades, but the thing that stood out to me the most was that their long-term plan is apparently meant to include a full revamp of the GTN and the addition of a buy order system, which honestly sounds pretty exciting! Still nothing about crew skills and crafting though...

We don't know when this patch will launch, but they already managed to push it onto the PTS mere days later. And while they mentioned on stream that Nar Shaddaa Nightlife is meant to start on July 11th and PvP season 3 on July 18th, they were also quick to add that neither of those are necessarily tied to the patch.

With 7.2 I think they actually launched the patch only five weeks or so after first unveiling it - if they can manage such a quick turnaround again, that would put the patch release into mid-June and would put us at a content cycle of about six months between major patches (with smaller ones in-between). We'll see whether that works out.

What was your favourite part of the 7.3 announcements?

EDIT: Almost forgot: if you didn't watch the stream but are reading this before May 18th, you can redeem the code LotsSahar to claim a free stronghold deco featuring Sa'har.

The Stranger from Kubindi - Some Fun Personal Stats

As mentioned previously, I'm planning to write a three-part post-mortem about my experience with SWTOR's first Galactic Season. Let's start with some fun stats! Well, I thought they were fun anyway.

One of the nice things about keeping a diary of all the Seasons objectives I completed literally every day for three months is that it provided me with data that I could enter into a spreadsheet to find out how much some of my perceptions were backed up by reality. Did I really lose most of my GSF matches? How often did I use the re-roll function in the end? Let's find out!

First off... poor flashpoints. I got assigned the flashpoint weekly ten times out of eleven, but I only completed it twice! The other eight times I re-rolled it, while never re-rolling any of my other weeklies. You'd think I disliked flashpoints or something... I don't, but in the context of Seasons objectives I did find that weekly pretty time-consuming and inefficient.

The re-roll statistics for daily objectives are a little more varied, though they still paint a very clear picture of my preferences: The daily objective I re-rolled the most was insectoid killing, which I re-rolled 20 times throughout the Season! And yet I still ended up "having" to do it 14 times anyway. Heroics I re-rolled seven times, generic mob killing four, and dailies three. These weren't caused by any sort of strong dislike, but more based on general mood and often related to me having got a streak of the same objective several days in a row and craving some variety. GSF I only tried to re-roll once and the warzone daily never.

In general the number of re-rolls I attempted for daily objectives went up over the course of the Season; I'm guessing because my patience with repetition grew shorter. During the first two weeks I only used the re-roll function on dailies twice each, but in weeks eight and ten for example I used it no less than five times. I often regretted those later re-rolls though - the early ones were reserved for things I really didn't fancy doing, while the later ones were sometimes attempts at simply having a shot at something better... but usually it only made things worse. This is why gambling is bad, kids.

In terms of objectives I actually completed, there was a pretty good spread: Looking at my weeklies, I did GSF and warzones seven times each, and operations six times - flashpoints, as already mentioned, only twice. My most commonly completed daily objective was planetary mob killing with 31 times (note that this was always for the planets of the week - I did not see the ones for the starter planets even once). With 75 mob kills required each time (minus some bugginess), that resulted in a rampage of over 2,000 mobs cut or shot down purely for Seasons objectives!

My second most frequently completed daily objective was warzones, which I did 30 times, followed by 29 rounds of planetary dailies and 28 GSF matches completed. Thanks to the re-rolls I "only" had to do heroics 18 times and hunted down insectoids 14 times. The real outlier was the PO to complete GSI missions, which I only saw twice. I guess I could have lumped it in with the other dailies, but since it's mechanically so different that didn't seem right. I really wish that this one had come up more often, just for the sake of variety.

Anyway, what makes these numbers interesting to me was that they didn't feel this even while I was playing, probably because of how much some of them forced me out of my comfort zone. For example I do PvP all the time... not a lot of it, but quite regularly, often for Conquest, so also having a daily PO to do a warzone barely registered with me. GSF I hadn't done much in a while, but it's also something I'm quite comfortable doing at least occasionally for Conquest and such, so playing a few GSF matches a week didn't feel like a huge change either. But things like dailies and heroics are so rarely part of the way I play the game that being "forced" to do up to seven rounds of planetary dailies a week (I'm looking at you, week nine) felt pretty chore-like at times, even though realistically I didn't spend much more time on them than on the other activities.

Besides the objectives, the other two things I looked at were my PvP win-loss ratio and how much I travelled around the galaxy. Playing GSF over eleven weeks, it felt like I lost more matches than I won, and this was an accurate impression, though I guess the difference wasn't as drastic as it could have been: 14 wins vs. 19 losses. Warzones felt much better, and they were! In that mode I recorded 23 wins vs. 15 losses.

In terms of gallivanting around the galaxy, with each week being limited to objectives on a certain number of planets, I was curious whether I managed to mix it up or kept coming back to the same locations over and over. The answer is that I succeeded... kinda, I guess? The planet/area I visited the most often was CZ-198, on eight different days, due to the many "do dailies" objectives that sent me there. It's tied for first place with Balmorra, but that can be explained by the fact that the core world themed week is the only one I did three times (I only cycled through all the other weeks twice). The same reasoning applies to Alderaan, which I visited on seven different days.

Most planets I visited on around three to six different days, which seems quite reasonable. The biggest outliers were Iokath which I only visited once (though I would have liked to get an objective to go there more often), as well as Rishi and Voss. The latter I only visited that one time when I got the objective to kill Shaclaws and then decided "never again". Interestingly, Dantooine, Mek-Sha and Onderon were all eligible as locations to kill mobs at one point or another but I didn't visit either of them even once. Maybe something to consider for variety next time.

And that's it! Wasn't that interesting? Up next, we'll be looking at how this whole experience made me feel and what feedback I would give Bioware about what to change for the next Season.

Shintar's Galactic Seasons Diary, Week 3

So, hey! I guess me keeping a diary of my Seasons progress is a thing now.

Day 1:

New week, new bugs. When I logged in to check my new objectives, I found that I only had one weekly instead of the intended two. I could only add my voice to the forum thread talking about this bug and move on for the time being. The one weekly I had was flashpoints again. While I wasn't sure whether that one had been fixed, I wanted to wait a little with re-rolling to see if any more information was going to surface about the bug with the missing weekly first (in case it reappeared and I found myself wanting to re-roll that one).

My dailies were Hutt space enemies... and insectoids on Voss. I couldn't even think of any insects on Voss off the top of my head! Shaclaws count I guess, but still... I re-rolled it and got... three GSI missions on Makeb? Unexpected, but at least something different. I did them on the Scoundrel with whom I also did the GSI round on Alderaan in week one and made a point of not trying to be too sneaky so that I would naturally kill a decent amount of mobs on the way. This worked out well enough and I completed both daily objectives at almost the same time.

Day 2:

I checked the forum thread about the missing weekly and it was up to four pages of people saying that they had the same problem. There was some theorising going on about what might be happening, but nothing conclusive and no dev response yet.

My dailies were to defeat 75 enemies on any Hutt space planet and do two heroics on Makeb (I think - title and description disagreed on whether it had to be Makeb or could be another Hutt space planet). I figured I might as well go for it. I decided to go on my Vanguard tank, picking two Makeb heroics from the fleet terminal more or less at random. I know I've done them all before at some point, but it's been so long I honestly couldn't remember anything about them at all.

Then a funny thing happened when I charged into the first pull at the first heroic: I... died? And with hitting some cooldowns even! Another Vanguard was there too and threw me a group invite just before I died, which I accepted. Then he attempted what remained of the pull, and died as well. We both revived, and dusted ourselves off with slight embarrassment before proceeding to do the rest of the heroic together, which was of course much easier. The friendly fellow agreed to team up for another one as well, and he accepted me sharing my second choice of heroic (we did try the other way round but it said I wasn't eligible for the one he had picked).

I honestly can't remember the last time I grouped up with someone for a heroic other than to avoid fighting over limited spawns and it genuinely felt beneficial as well. Anyway, that little adventure took care of both of my daily objectives in short order.

Day 3:

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the devs had actually rolled out a hotfix for the missing weekly issue, and on login I now had a second weekly to do warzones. At this point I decided to risk re-rolling the flashpoints, as I was signed up for a Scum run with guildies the next day and it would have been nice to also get the operations weekly completion from that, but I got GSF instead, which I was also fine with.

It also aligned with one of my dailies being GSF, which ended up being a domination match during which I managed to blow myself up not just once, but twice, and yet still came out as the second highest ranked on my team. Unsurprisingly, with that being the average skill level of my team, we were three-capped and it was over quickly.

My other daily was more Makeb heroics, and that still felt novel enough to me that I didn't re-roll it. This time I took another one of my Scoundrels and picked two different heroics, hoping to save some time by stealthing since I didn't need the kills... probably needless to say that this once again didn't work out. I'd forgotten how involved some of those heorics were: fight three turrets that become immune to damage on a rotation - almost like a boss fight - pick up some explosives, free prisoners, plant explosive charges at four different points on an AA turret, start doing the same on another turret before a scripted interruption brings in an elite droid... and that was all in the same heroic! At least I didn't die this time.

Day 4:

My dailies were GSF again and more Makeb heroics. I decided that I didn't want to go to Makeb for a third day in a row (though according to my guildies the heroics on another planet should have worked as well, despite of the objective name only stating Makeb) and risked a re-roll while crossing my fingers in hopes of not getting shaclaws. I got the one to do a PvP match and all was golden.

My GSF match was another one of those in which everyone was so terrible that we ran out of time before achieving a sufficient number of kills, which I actually tend to find kind of fun, but sadly my team was still on the losing side. In contrast to that, my Sage's PvP match took her to the Huttball pit on Vandin once again, where she personally scored two of her team's goals (we won 5-0) and generally achieved some beautiful synergies with a few of her team members.

Day 5:

GSF and Makeb/Hutt space heroics again! I re-rolled the latter again and got the generic "kill mobs on these planets" objective instead.

For GSF I took a different character out for a spin since my Assassin tank was long done with her Conquest. My Powertech tank had never done a GSF match at all and did very badly, but as it happened that particular domination match ended up being a win anyway.

For the mob kills I did a couple of random quests on Quesh and Makeb on my DvL Assassin and my Juggernaut tank.

Day 6:

Got GSF as my daily yet again and the one to do a warzone. Honestly, that's pretty much the perfect combo for me, but if I was someone who hated GSF, I could see it being frustrating to get it as a daily objective four days in a row.

For GSF, I got into a death match where my team completely obliterated the opposition (no thanks to me), which also completed my GSF weekly objective to play four matches. My warzone ended up being another Vandin Huttball which was a pretty well-balanced game that we won 3-2 (and the enemy was close-ish to potentially scoring again so it really could have gone either way). Sadly I noticed in this Vandin that while Bioware did indeed address certain lag issues, de-sync still isn't a thing of the past, as I still witnessed people catching the ball while being nowhere near it on my screen and similar shenanigans.

Day 7:

On the last day of the SWTOR week, my daily objectives were GSF and Hutt space heroics yet again. I decided that I was okay with the heroics today and would just try a different planet than Makeb, but I didn't really want to do any more GSF after completing my weekly. I re-rolled it in hopes of getting a warzone maybe... and was promptly punished for this foolish gamble by being given the "kill 75 insectoids on Voss" objective, with no escape this time. D'oh!

I went to do a warzone on my lowbie Merc anyway, since I needed one more for my second weekly objective. I got into Vandin again (have I been doing anything else recently?), though this one was a 0-6 loss. I was tempted to blame it on the level disparity again (my team had no level 70+s, while the opposition had several) but if I'm honest it was probably just bad tactics. They had a stealther waiting on our line that nobody seemed to bother to dislodge for ages - I eventually went back myself and knocked them down twice but they kept coming back. Oh well.

As for my daily objectives, I remembered there being one or more Imperial heroics on Voss that had some shaclaws in it, though I wasn't sure which ones they were. I went on my Juggernaut tank and picked up both Ancient Guardians and Rock Eaters, since they sounded like likely contenders. Ancient Guardians turned out to be the right one, as it did have ten shaclaws in it, though it contained even more droids. Rock Eaters was also the heroic I'd expected it to be, but I'd misremembered the big mob at the end - it was a vorantikus, not a shaclaw.

I then swapped to my DvL Assassin to do Ancient Guardians a second time. I killed both groups of shaclaws in it and paused. My insectoid counter was on 20/75. It was really late in the evening and while I was sure there were plenty of shaclaws out in the open world somewhere, I didn't know for the life of me where exactly, and I knew that driving around blindly to find some would take me forever.

I remembered how commenter Pallais had mentioned the idea of resetting a heroic over and over (probably this one) in response to my last Seasons diary. It was only ten mobs... but they were all non-elites, right by the entrance, and as a stealther I could skip the pull consisting of strong and elite droids located between the two groups as well. So I exited, reset the phase (just the phase, not the heroic), went back in and killed the shaclaws again. Then I repeated this process five more times.

Once my insectoid killing objective was completed, I continued to actually complete the heroic, which took care of the second objective. (Fortunately the game had no qualms about giving me credit for doing the same heroic twice on two different characters.) All in all, this was actually reasonably quick, but I have to confess I felt slightly dirty. Talk about degenerate gameplay.

Week 3 impressions:

The bugginess hit a new high (or low?) for me with the missing weekly, though I appreciate that this particular issue was addressed quickly. Still, the amount of small bugs continues to be headache-inducing, as it feels like you should be visiting the forums every day just to check which objectives are reported as buggy before actually attempting to do anything.

In terms of RNG, I felt pretty lucky this week as about half of my objectives were things I liked doing anyway. I do kind of appreciate how the system encourages you to take part in different activities though, including things you may not have done in a while (or ever, in the case of some more casual players I guess). I'd seriously forgotten so much about those Makeb heroics...

I saw someone on the forums say that Seasons is basically what Conquest used to be (the personal part of it at least), back when it had more limited objectives and the weekly themes were more distinctive. This feels very true to me.

Voss Seeker Droid Bug

Consider this one of my rare PSA posts, which usually come about after I stumble across a question or problem that's very peculiar, and then on trying to google the answer/solution, I realise that nobody seems to have posted one so far. Hey, might as well perform a small public service and do it myself, right?

This time the issue is the Seeker Droid/Dread Seed quest line which sends you all over the galaxy to dig up Dread Seeds, as there are a couple of areas where the Seeker Droid mechanic is a bit buggy. One of them is Balmorra from what I remember, but it's relatively easy to work around that one because the area is very open, so you just run around a bit and eventually you'll get it to work.

Voss on the other hand is a tricky one, because the dig site for the mission is underneath Voss-Ka and can only be accessed via a tunnel and by going down a narrow little path. What happens is that you do that, get the "Your Seeker Droid detects something in the area" message, take two more steps, and immediately get its "Your Seeker Droid no longer detects anything" counter, which causes the icon/item to get greyed out again. If you then continue into the area marked on the map, you can run around as much as you want, the icon won't light up again and you can't dig. Frustrating!

Fortunately there's a simple workaround, which I'm not sure everyone's aware of, so I made a little video about it last night while doing the quest on my Scoundrel:



Basically it seems to be less about absolute positioning and more about making sure you don't "trip" over the line that triggers the "Your Seeker Droid no longer detects anything" message. So the thing to do is to walk down the path very slowly and stop instantly the moment your Seeker Droid lights up as available. Then, instead of continuing down the little winding path, turn towards the cliff and edge your way down into the area that way. If you run into the "Your Seeker Droid no longer detects anything" message at any point, go back up and start again. You should quickly be able to find an invisible "path" though that allows you to enter the area without your droid becoming disabled, and then you can run all over the place and dig to your heart's content. Hope this helps someone!

The Trouble With Voss

I took an alt of mine to Voss this weekend and it reminded me of how much that planet bugs me at times.

At first glance, there is much to love: I adore the open, grassy zones in autumn colours; they are simply beautiful. And the Voss themselves are at least intriguing initially if nothing else. My very first impression of the planet back in 2012 was mostly positive, even if I found it a bit awkward to deal with the Force-obsessed Voss as a trooper.

But the more often I've revisited the planet, the more it's bugged me, and I've long struggled to put my finger on why. I now think that one reason at least is how extremely repetitive all the storylines on Voss are. If you look back at the original class stories in general, the writers did a pretty amazing job at constructing plots that forced you to visit the exact same planets (not to mention the different sub-zones on each one) in the exact same order on every character while still making for a vastly different experience on each class. Everyone comes to Tatooine, but while a smuggler visits a crime lord's hideout, a trooper goes on a mission to hunt down a traitor and a Sith warrior has a spiritual experience while trying to find a certain Jedi.

On Voss though, everything feels the flipping same. The planetary arcs for both factions, while spiced up with different details, both have you visiting the Shrine of Healing to impress the Voss and then follow this up with a visit to the Nightmare Lands while emphasising what a scary place they are and how the Voss don't like you going there. Yet when you look at the class stories, they all have you do the exact same thing! We're not just talking about visiting the same sub-zones here, but every single class having to enter the same building to grovel to the Voss mystics. It made me feel thoroughly sick of the place, which wasn't helped by the fact that part of the planetary storyline is a prerequisite to get the local endurance datacron, so it was one of those pieces of content you wanted to redo on every single alt too... at least that's something that legacy-wide datacrons have done away with.

The Voss as a species grate on me too, and I'm continuously surprised by their popularity with roleplayers. I guess it's fun to pretend to be a Voss purely because you can't actually play one, so you get to feel all special and different for having thought of it (even if lots of other people have actually had the same idea). But as a species, they are extremely dull. They love their mystics, hate the Gormak, and... what exactly? Through class and side missions we get a bit of extra insight into the lives of Voss Commandos, but not everyone can be a mystic or a commando. What are "normal" Voss like? There don't seem to be any. I'm somewhat reminded of how in early Star Trek all aliens were basically slightly funny looking humans with some random character trait exaggerated to the point of ridiculousness that then defined their entire species (Klingons with wanting to fight for their honour, Vulcans with the logic etc.). That's the sort of vibe I get from the Voss too and it feels old.

As the cherry on top, I really dislike the way they talk. They aren't supposed to be emotionless, but for some reason they always speak in some sort of weird monotone that makes it sound like nothing interests them. It's rare that they display even a tiny bit of excitement in their voices and on their faces, and that even though there is nothing in the dialogue or lore to explain this strange lack of emotional expressiveness.

Feel free to tell me why you think Voss and its people are totally awesome though.

KotET Chapter by Chapter - Chapter 1: Wrath and Ruin

I've said that Knights of the Eternal Throne's story left me with a lot of thoughts that I still needed to put into written words, and I've decided that there are definitely enough of them to warrant a separate post for each chapter. I might still write a post summarising my feelings about the story as a whole afterwards; but we'll see. For now, get ready for some spoilers as I review KotET chapter one!

The Story

Knights of the Eternal Throne starts in a similar way to Fallen Empire: with a new cinematic (the Betrayed one), followed my an opening crawl explaining what's currently going on. (See, Rogue One, Star Wars games have had opening crawls without being part of the main trilogy for decades! You didn't have to be shy.) A bit of a time jump between KotFE chapter 16 and this one is implied, though its exact length isn't specified and it doesn't appear to have been too long. Vaylin's just had time to establish herself as new empress and get a change of clothes. Oh, and she's decided to invade Voss, which you've come to defend.

Theron is already in Voss-Ka and watching everything getting blown to bits when the Alliance joins the fight properly, with the player getting treated to some great space battle shots in the process. You land in a shuttle with a bunch of Mandalorian troops and start carving your way through the besieged city. This is somewhat reminiscent of the defense of Darth Marr's ship in KotFE chapter one, meaning you're essentially running in circles, watching things get blown up all around you, while getting directed from one objective to the next. There are a couple of neat Easter eggs here if you completed the Star Fortress story arcs, as Rokuss (Voss) will basically auto-complete a bonus mission for you and Leyta (Tatooine) will offer her sniper skills as an extra button to press during one of the early boss fights (credit to Calph for spotting that one).

Eventually you rendezvous with Theron at the Tower of Prophecy, where Valkorion also reveals that he's rattling around in your head again. After defending the tower from several waves of Vaylin's troops (featuring, among other things, some of her new "Horizon Guard", which appear to have partially replaced the Knights of Zakuul as her personal elite fighters), you meet up with Sana-Rae and receive a distress call that reveals the reason Vaylin decided to attack Voss: Senya is hiding at the Shrine of Healing, trying to heal and restore Arcann. However, things are pretty dire for her with the Eternal Fleet pressing the attack. For good or for ill, you travel to the Shrine of Healing to meet with her.

You need to make the final approach on the ground, and Torian provides you with a walker to get through Vaylin's ground forces in front of the shrine, which means that you get to go through an interesting vehicle section stomping skytroopers to death. On the way you run into some Voss and Gormak working together now that they have a common enemy in the Eternal Fleet. Your way appears blocked for a while, but Koth shows up with the Gravestone to give you some breathing room - yes, even if he left you before. In fact, the scene seems a little odd if you didn't fall out with him, as everyone seems kind of surprised by his appearance, even when they really shouldn't be.

In the shrine, you find Senya behind a force field, which I get is a plot device to make sure that you have to talk to her first even if you want to kill her, but there's still some weird space-time stuff going on here, as regardless of what you say to her, there will suddenly be troops between you, either Mandalorians or Zakuulans... how did they get there? But never mind. Vaylin calls in just to taunt you some more and Scorpio orders the fleet to bombard the shrine directly. Senya urges you to help her save Arcann and you get to say yes or no.

If you decide to help her, you get to fight off some enemy forces for her, buying her some time to complete the Voss healing ritual for Arcann. It's still really rushed though, and she has to offer up some of her own life force to make it work, causing her to pass out afterwards. If you vow to kill her and Arcann still, some of your troops somehow get ahead of you and you eventually run in on Senya duelling Lana and get to take her down (Senya that is, not Lana). She's a pretty tough cookie even on story mode I have to say! I can't imagine that she goes down easily on veteran. When she dies, Valkorion comes out for a few last words and they share an oddly touching moment before she expires.

Either way, Arcann wakes (healed, or started by the mayhem surrounding his mother's death) and makes a run for it since he's slightly delirious and confused. You arrive just in time to see him take off in a convenient shuttle, and Koth is too busy to chase him down for you.

At this point Vaylin gives the ultimate kill command to the fleet (one has to wonder why she waited this long to do so), but suddenly a bunch of Imperial ships show up and join the battle. Being free-willed now, the Eternal Fleet captains are not willing to duke it out to the death and retreat, much to Vaylin's chagrin. If you killed Senya, she's also pissed that she didn't get to do so herself.

Lana suggests that the Empire might have come to help. Valkorion pops up once again to make you feel insecure about your position and tell you that you must seize the Eternal Throne for yourself if you want to overcome the threat of Arcann and Vaylin. Shortly afterwards, the Imperial fleet calls - it's Empress Acina herself, proposing an alliance between the Sith Empire and your Alliance. You can express scepticism about her motives but eventually agree to a meeting on Dromund Kaas to hear her out in person.

My Thoughts

Initially, I honestly wasn't too enthralled by KotET's chapter one. Despite of jumping right into the action with some impressive battle scenes, it reminded me too much of KotFE chapter one and its very noticeable attempts to also be a tutorial for players who bought a max-level character token. The return to Voss also evoked mixed feelings in me. On the one hand, I was actually happy to go back to an existing planet and look at how things were going over there (I don't care if other people disparage it as recycling), but on the other hand it was kind of heart-breaking to see beautiful Voss-Ka laid to ruin. I always found the Voss as a species a bit annoying, but they didn't deserve that. I was kind of reminded of my first impressions of the Assault on Tython and Korriban Incursion flashpoints. Can we go back to a familiar location without it getting completely wrecked some time, please?

However, the moment I got to the walker section, I realised that this was going to be a bit different. I'm neither a big fan of vehicle fights nor do I hate them, but the fact that mechanics like these haven't really been used in SWTOR prior to the HK bonus chapter made it interesting if nothing else. Even though I died a couple of times on my first attempt (despite it being story mode), I found stomping around in the walker to be decent fun. In hindsight, considering that there are more vehicle sections in KotET, the one in chapter one actually strikes me as the weakest though, due to how unintuitive it is. For example if you don't follow the winding road to the Shrine exactly, Theron won't tell you about the repair spots, so you have to figure that out for yourself; and I took a lot of damage from the "bubble troopers" until I realised that they could only be defeated by stomping on them.

Seeing Voss and Gormak work together just like that actually felt a bit disappointing to me, because the Eternal Empire certainly hasn't been the first outsider to threaten them - just the most powerful I suppose. It's not that I don't want them to make peace with each other, but it just seemed to have come too easily.

Of course, the last part of the chapter is where things get really interesting. KotFE received a lot of criticism for many of its choices not feeling meaningful enough, and you can tell that they tried a lot harder in KotET. There is a bit of a delay until you get to reach Senya for dramatic reasons, but if you wanted her to die, you do actually get to kill her this time. That Arcann gets away yet again is tolerable, with the hope that you will get to decide his fate this time before the story's over. And then of course we have the Empire showing up to save the day as a surprise twist - wherever will that lead?

Onwards to Chapter 2!

Day 5: NPCs #IntPiPoMo

Wondering what the hashtag in the title is all about? Click here. Want to know all the themes that I have used and will be using for my 10 Days of SWTOR Screenshots? You can find the full list here.

Paring down the number of screenshots for this one was extremely hard because a) SWTOR features a lot of interesting non-player characters, and b) I've taken even more screenshots of them in the past year. In the end I just accepted that this would be a big one with lots of pictures.

Okay, this is neither a great screenshot nor are these great characters, but I just felt like including it anyway as a reminder of just how creepy the few child characters in SWTOR are. Rav made a whole post about this once. Why does a boy who's apparently meant to be about eight have half his head shaved (not to mention that the rest of the haircut is terrible)? Why does a girl of presumably the same age have an adult figure and boobs? Yikes.

I really like the subtle ways in which the original class stories are intertwined with the world story arcs, meaning that while they work perfectly fine as self-contained tales there are plenty of "Easter Eggs" to be found for those in the know. For example Doctor Ianna Cel here, whom you encounter on Imperial Taris as an Imperial agent, is a quest giver for all Republic players on Republic Taris.

For me it's quite rare that I meet an NPC that makes me go "huh, this guy/girl is quite good-looking" but this Sith Pureblood was a rare exception. His name is Lord Torius and he features in the trooper class story on Voss.

Another interesting connection between class and world stories is the fact that while "The Three", the rulers of Voss, are mentioned pretty much all over the place, the Imperial agent is the only one who actually gets to meet them in person during their class story... and in the process finds out just why the Voss have been so stubbornly neutral for a long time.

 

Captain Hanthor on Makeb is an NPC that I found quite memorable, what with being the first Cathar we see in the service of the Empire. He serves to illustrate the somewhat increasing Imperial tolerance for aliens after the whole Malgus debacle. I also think it's quite clever that while he's only a very minor character in the main story, you have the option to talk to him and get a bit more background in at least one of the side missions.

 

I just love this screenshot of Revan and every time I look at it I feel the urge to turn it into a meme saying "Sad Revan is sad".

That sad face totally runs in the family by the way.

I'm really proud of this shot of Master Surro because it took me several playthroughs of Ziost to actually capture this split-second frame of her Force-pushing someone away (I think it was Lana). Master Surro in general is quite a striking and memorable character, but if you think about it properly, we actually know virtually nothing about her as she spends 99% of the Ziost story being possessed by the Emperor.

 

I really loved the looks of these two Jedi you meet in the People's Tower on Ziost. I think I may have subconsciously modelled my Guardian Starberry after the Mirialan here because I just love the contrast of the sassy pink hair against the green skin.

This screenshot may superficially appear to be centred on everyone's favourite cranky engineer Tora, but the real reason I saved it was that it made me notice the diversity of Vik's stable of thugs! First we have that lady to the left who appears to be a Bothan, making her the... what, third one in the entire game? And to the right of Tora there's that walrus guy... I don't know what they are called, but I know they exist in KOTOR as well and I had never seen one in SWTOR until then.

While I think that Vaylin's character in KotFE is quite underdeveloped for someone with this much screen time, she seriously has the best facial expressions.

IntPiPoMo count: 43