Drop In: Manaan

When the weekly seasons objectives for weeks 5-9 were posted the other day, part of me was hoping there would be one week without a stronghold drop-in objective soon to make it easier for me to get caught up with my posts about these, but it seems the devs are keen on keeping us visiting these public strongholds, so I just have to be better at getting my summaries out in a timely manner! With that said, let's talk about what I saw in various Manaan strongholds during week four.

For some reason I had it in my head that Manaan was another really big stronghold, which was why I was quite surprised when I first visited one and was reminded of how small it actually was. In fact, it's one of the smaller options out there... I think I somehow must have conflated size and price in my head, because it's quite pricey for what it is.

Also, I once again didn't visit a stronghold on every server, with Tulak Hord being left out this time, though this was due to accident more than intention. I didn't make it a priority to do the stronghold visits early in the week, so I somehow got to 7/7 on Tulak Hord without even realising I'd skipped that objective. Could have saved myself a lot of work if I'd realised that earlier!

Anyway, on all the other servers I did visit one public Manaan stronghold each, and the first one I checked out was Koqh'rotzhim'evoss' Temple of Light on Shae Vizla. I would have loved to choose a stronghold with any other name considering how much of a pain that character name was to type out every time, but there were only two public strongholds available at the time I checked and the other one was at 2% completion, while this one was at 37%, so...

I still expected 37% to look pretty barren to be honest, so I was quite surprised when I zoned in and saw rows and rows of NPCs, palm trees and holocron decorations at the entrance. The holocron decorations in particular surprised me because they are quite rare nowadays, so accumulating that many would require you to keep an eye on the GTN for a long time. I can only guess that the owner acquired at least the bulk of them back in the day when they were much more common as drops.

When I entered the hallway leading to the rest of the stronghold, my immediate first impression was "whoa, these planters are kind of big for such a narrow hallway". I had no idea what was still to come in other strongholds.

In one of the underwater chambers they had this weird swirly statue that intrigued me and that I didn't recognise. Also, I didn't know you could have huggable wookiees as a deco in your stronghold (pictured to the left). Does hugging one of these count towards the achievement?

On Leviathan, I visited Zayn Dora's Chamber of Truth, and was surprised to see a similar arrangement of palm trees and rows of holocrons at the entrance. The holocrons in particular caught me out, because like I said... they are rare. I did like the HK statue though.

Inside, I was intrigued by this room with the strange purple glowy things in big jars. From a distance they look a bit like brains, though I don't think that's what they actually are. It all looks a bit ominous either way.

I also liked the way this giant Revan statue was positioned to poke its head through the skylight, creating the impression of Revan being surrounded by a bit of a halo when looked at from below.

On Darth Malgus, I was surprised to find that the top listing in the Manaan directory at the time of me checking it out was actually someone I knew. It's not someone I particularly like though, so I opted for the next stronghold down the list instead, Leah Clarke's Jedi Academy.

I zoned in and... immediately those rows of holocrons again! What is going on with that? Is there some meme I'm not aware of?

Turning around, the other half of the outdoor area was really nicely decorated with trees, shrubs and statues though. I feel like plants make more of an impact in this stronghold than in others because it's so stark and white by default. It really invites you to inject some life and colour.

In the underwater area I always looked out the window to see whether anything had been placed on the big hook outside the stronghold itself, and this was the first place where I noticed someone actually doing something with that, which pleased me.

This room really lived up to the Jedi Academy theme, what with the Jedi NPCs, the crystals and the giant holocron. I really liked that.

On Satele Shan I ended up visiting Endonae's Pursuit of Peace at 69% completion. I think this might be the same Endonae that writes for Vulkk.com? 

Uh-oh, a hypergate at the door seems like bad news!

I really liked this arrangement with the statues, Onderonian palm trees and plants. I appreciated how things were intentionally somewhat spaced out and not every hook filled, in order to let things breathe.

This room in the underwater area made me doubt the "Pursuit of Peace" in this stronghold for a bit because that sure looks like some dark side shenanigans going on in this scene! I was quite fascinated by the weird lava sarcophagus and fire floor tile though, neither of which were decos I recognised.

Now this room definitely looked very serene and inviting, once again making good use of empty space to make it feel more welcoming and less crowded. It was this room in fact that made me think that it's the closest one among all the strongholds I've visited so far that actually looks somewhat like the kinds of environments the devs themselves tend to build, both in its use of space and thematic coherence.

Finally, on Star Forge I must have done this objective I think at what was the middle of the night for the Americans, because there were only four public listings available, with the highest one at 56% completion, which is pretty dead by that server's standards. I ended up visiting said 56% completed stronghold, called Dathayde's Galactic Stronghold.

Right at the entrance, I was greeted by a giant Revan statue and, like, all the companions, even if they were all just holograms to me. I imagine it looks better when you actually own them.

So remember what I said about that first hallway feeling crowded to me with the big planters in the first stronghold I visited? I didn't take screenshots of it everywhere I went, but I soon found that this was pretty standard in a lot of Manaan strongholds - until I got to this one, where the owner had decided for some reason to put the biggest possible ceiling decorations in this hallway, to the point that they almost block it entirely. I don't know why they did that, but I thought it was funny and weird.

Also, someone was really proud of doing the first boss in Eternity Vault on all three difficulties (back in the day...)

Did you notice anything of interest in these or other Manaan strongholds you visited last week?

Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 4

After the madness of trying to push for a win in Total Galactic War while also doing seasons across all servers at once, week four looked like it was going to be positively chill. There was some oddness in the weekly objectives though, as there were two origin story objectives as well as two flashpoint objectives. Here's how I viewed the lot of them:

• Earn 200k Conquest points: Yes, easy, no problem.
  
• Visit another player's Manaan stronghold: Sure, of course.
  
• Complete 8 repeatable or side missions and kill 100 mobs on the capital worlds Coruscant or Dromund Kaas: I was definitely going to do this one, as I had plenty of alts in that level range across all servers.
  
• Complete 15 missions as a Jedi knight or Sith warrior: Another definitive yes.
• Complete 15 missions as a Jedi consular or Sith inquisitor: While the doubling up seemed weird to me, I saw no reason not to do both.
  
• Dig up 3 treasures at a seeker droid dig site: So, I generally like this one and there's a reason I made sure to unlock the seeker droid on at least one character on all servers. It's very chill and can be done while queueing for something else, but it can be kind of time-consuming as well if you're unlucky with your digs, so I figured I was going to do it on some servers, but not all.
  
• Complete 2 out of 4 selected "Underworld" flashpoints (Mandalorian Raiders, Cademimu, Directive 7, Spirit of Vengeance): I figured I might do this on a couple of servers, but not all.
  
• Complete 2 out of the 4 Revan flashpoints (Taral V, Maelstrom Prison, Boarding Party, The Foundry): Now this was super odd to me and I figured I might do either one flashpoint objective or the other, but there was no way I was going to do four flashpoints on each server.
  
• Earn 25 medals in Galactic Starfighter: I'm not a huge fan of this objective as I'm not great at GSF, so this one takes me at least three times as long as the regular "play matches" one. Still, I figured I might maybe do it on Darth Malgus.
  
• KotET chapter 7 on veteran mode or higher: As usual, no.
  
• Colossal Monolith on any difficulty: Like other lair bosses, I figured this was a given with my guild on Darth Malgus, but unlikely (though not impossible) to happen anywhere else.
  

Day 1 - Tuesday

I slept very little that night, followed by a long day in the office (where I was biting my nails around lunch time waiting for the results of Conquest to come in). As soon as I got home, it was time for our usual Tuesday raid, where we all (somewhat unusually) played like muppets. I had a brief look at the Conquest results that our... "Conquest accountant" sent me but was otherwise happy to go to bed early, not doing anything for seasons that day at all.

Day 2 - Wednesday

I decided to do a quick round of all the servers around lunch time, but before the reset. On Leviathan and Tulak Hord, doing few missions on Dromund Kaas on my inquisitors there got the daily objective done quickly (and offered nice synergy for the weeklies).

On Satele Shan, my knight still had a bunch of completed side missions from Coruscant in her log from god knows how many months ago, so I started by running around and handing all of them in. I was somewhat dismayed to find that only one of them counted as an exploration mission for the Coruscant seasons objective, but nonetheless I picked up some more where I had left off. As Conquest gains for low-level missions were much lower on a higher-level character, I eventually relogged my consular to finish off the seasons daily with a quick companion level-up.

On Star Forge, I logged into my lowbie consular and did some more missions on Tython. I smashed some flesh raiders and levelled up a couple of times until the daily objective was done.

Since it was getting close to reset at this point, I just expanded my Coruscant stronghold on Shae Vizla and ranked up a crew skill. On Darth Malgus I gave a companion gift to push me over the daily requirement (the previous night's ops had earned me some points already).

It was a busy day for me and I didn't get to play more until relatively late in the evening. I started by playing two GSF matches on Darth Malgus, before switching to Leviathan to continue questing on Dromund Kaas on my inquisitor. I only had to hand in two missions before hitting the daily objective.

On Tulak Hord, I decided to mix things up a bit by queueing for a random veteran mode flashpoint on my inquisitor. She was only eligible for nine of them, and five were featured seasons objectives, so I figured what were the odds? Of course I then got Black Talon, which was one of the not featured ones. Someone expressed annoyance as soon as we zoned in and quit the group the moment not everyone space-barred on the first cut scene. Ironically it went much faster after that person had left... at least the run completed my daily objective and counted as my inquisitor completing several missions.

On Satele Shan, I did a few more missions with my knight until I hit the Taskmaster Conquest objective and with that also my seasons daily. On Star Forge, I continued on Tython with my baby consular, and it didn't take long until she achieved Taskmaster and the daily objective too.

On Shae Vizla, I was about to continue my consular's class story for the missions as a consular when I realised I'd never done the Coruscant or Dromund Kaas side missions on this server. So I returned to Coruscant, hoovered up all the exploration missions and killed Migrant Merchants Guild members until I saw that lovely "influencing the galaxy" pop-up. I was ready for bed by then.

Day 3 - Thursday

After another long day at the office, I logged into Darth Malgus and just played a GSF match there. We won and this completed my 200k Conquest points objective, but only advanced me towards the 25 medals for GSF by one.

On Leviathan I did some more Dromund Kaas missions on my inquisitor, and on Tulak Hord I decided to spin the wheel in the group finder again. This time I got Cademimu and had a smooth enough run. The lowest-level person got a bit lost at one point after dying and having to run back, but I'm happy to say that we backtracked to rescue them and no unfriendly words were said. Apparently this counted as having completed 15 missions as an inquisitor already.

On Star Forge I continued on my baby consular on Tython, until she too hit the 15 missions completed objective. On Satele Shan, my knight handed in one mission on Coruscant, which completed her business there - since I still needed to complete more missions as a knight, however, I then continued with her class story on Alderaan until the daily objective was complete too. My consular on Shae Vizla also finished the objective on Coruscant before getting her daily done.

Day 4 - Friday

I did a bit of PvP on Darth Malgus around lunch time, and got put into four Voidstars in a row, three of which were losses. Thanks, game!

Later, I logged through all the servers to do a bit of tidying up - one side-effect of last week's Conquest mania was that while I had found time for some seasons objectives, I'd neglected to clear out my bags and they were full of junk everywhere. On Leviathan I followed this up with a few more Dromund Kaas missions on my inquisitor, and on Tulak Hord I decided that my inqusitor there might as well finish her "Searching for Allies" weekly mission by queueing for one more random flashpoint. I got the Foundry this time, which was also on the list of featured flashpoints. I also liked this run because we actually had a polite conversation about whether to do the bonus or not - we ultimately decided not to, but only after talking about it!

On Star Forge I decided to try my luck with the random queue on my knight, but unfortunately she just got a Hammer Station. At least that completed the daily objective, and somehow counted as no fewer than six missions completed as a Jedi knight. On Satele Shan, I completed my knight's class story on Alderaan, which ticked her over the 15 missions completed there.

On Shae Vizla, I decided to queue for a random veteran flashpoint on my consular. After a few minutes of waiting I realised that since it was still relatively early in the evening for me, most APAC players were probably still asleep, but just as I thought about going to do something else I got a pop after all. After a quick Taral V run with lots of trash skipping, I was halfway towards another flashpoint objective and had 15 missions as a consular ticked off on this server as well.

Later in the evening, I returned to Tulak Hord and did 15 missions on Tython on my littlest Jedi knight who is too low-level to do Conquest as of yet. By the time he completed the objective, he was level 9.

Day 5 - Saturday

In the morning I decided to log into Shae Vizla and queue for all the featured flashpoints on both veteran and master mode on my warrior. I got into a vet mode Boarding Party with a level 80 Sorc healer who used their knockback on cooldown to scatter trash mobs to the four winds. After one particularly egregious example where one of my smashes went into thin air after they'd knocked three mobs away from me a half-second before I would've hit them, I politely asked if they could stop doing that. They didn't respond and continued doing their thing, so I put them on ignore at the end of the run. Kind of petty, I know, but Boarding Party is a long flashpoint, and being trolled on every single trash pull was getting pretty damn aggravating. At some point I don't care anymore whether they were doing it intentionally or just a complete newbie who doesn't know their abilities and doesn't read chat, I just didn't want to get grouped with them again. At least this completed one of my flashpoint seasons objectives, plus it counted as completing five missions on my warrior.

I queued again for the remaining four flashpoints and got Mandalorian Raiders this time. I had a brief sweat drop moment when on the second pull the Sniper in the group catapulted a group of mobs away from me, but he was actually trying to defend himself and it was just a one-time thing. I enjoyed this run otherwise.

In the afternoon I mostly played GSF and did PvP on Darth Malgus. The GSF matches went a bit better than before and got me to 20/25 medals for the seasons objective.

In the evening I used our social night to kill the Colossal Monolith and get both flashpoint objectives done with Mr Commando. We chain-ran master mode Boarding Party, Spirit of Vengeance, the Foundry and Mandalorian Raiders in a single session. It felt long. On the plus side, since I made a point of asking to do this on Imp side (where we usually spend less time), we also got a bunch of achievement progress.

On the other servers I did the following things in the evening:

On Leviathan, I did a couple more Dromund Kaas missions on my inquisitor. The daily was done after only two of them and I was starting to realise that, since I usually switched servers after hitting the 25k Conquest for the daily and for some reason that was happening really quickly while playing my inquisitor, I had completed zero weeklies on Leviathan yet. I made a mental note to push myself a bit more on Sunday.

On Tulak Hord, I did a Dromund Kaas heroic on my inquisitor since I had run out of exploration missions for her to do. Interestingly, when you do this objective via the optional one-time quests, you'll usually get your kills way before you've completed enough missions, but the heroics seemed to be shaping up the opposite, though she did hit the 200k Conquest points earned objective. Logging over to Republic side, I put my trooper into the queue for all the featured flashpoints on master mode, though it was kind of late and nothing popped. I went and did a heroic on Coruscant to pad my kill count on the capital worlds and push myself over the 25k required for the daily objective.

On Satele Shan, I thought I'd queue for some seasonal flashpoints while digging for treasure on my consular, but I got a pop before I even made it to the dig site. I got into a vet mode Taral V that was... stressfully fast. Look, I've resigned myself to people wanting to skip and rush to some degree, and at times I even welcome it! But there are degrees, and the guy who took the lead in this run was just driving on and pulling more while completely ignoring the rest of the group, whether anyone got dismounted or aggroed a group we were trying to skip... the vibe was definitely "I can solo this so the rest of you don't matter to me". We completed the run smoothly enough but I felt unhappy and wished that people weren't like that.

Since I was now halfway done with one flashpoint objective and I wasn't sure I wanted to do both on this server, I queued again for Taral V and Maelstrom Prison only. And I got Taral V again! With the same guy! This time I managed to fall off a bridge at one point, something that hasn't happened to me in ages, though I was fortunate enough to not die... I landed safely further down the path we had originally taken, so just had to loop back around while the rest of the group continued on. To the guy's credit, they did give me a moment to catch up eventually... or maybe they were just slowed down by the unskippable mobs on the bridge... Either way: so not necessary.

On Star Forge I braved the random veteran queue on my Jedi knight again and got a Cademimu run this time, which counted for one of the flashpoint objectives. Nothing remarkable about that one other than that General Ortol almost forgot about his rockets... he only fired a single one towards the end, just before he was about to die.

On Shae Vizla, I queued for the set of four featured flashpoints again and went to visit a Manaan stronghold in the meantime (fortunately a public one was available). This gave me a bunch of Conquest for completing four weekly objectives, so when nothing popped after ten minutes or so, I just used a rep token to push me the last bit of the way to the daily requirement and called it a night.

Day 6 - Sunday

Around lunch time before reset, I logged into Leviathan to play a bit of catch-up. I queued for the featured underworld flashpoints and got into a vet mode Mandalorian Raiders that was interesting in a couple of ways. First off, we killed Braxx before his hounds and the world didn't end... I thought they had an enrage or something! But then on the last boss, most of us were still killing the turrets outside his room when one guy charged in and pulled the boss, and by the time we joined him, the boss was almost dead while only having spawned a single set of turrets? I have no idea how that went down. Anyway, the guy /stucked because of course the remaining turrets kept us in combat and he told us to do the same, but we just killed them instead. Afterwards I dug up some treasure with my seeker droid. While I was still only on one weekly completed at that point, I was partially done with a lot of others and felt like I was in a much better place.

I then logged over to Tulak Hord and queued for all the featured flashpoints on master mode again. I got into a Cademimu run where we even did the bonus boss and I was happy with that.

After reset I logged into Shae Vizla and queued for the underworld flashpoints first and got an instant pop for Mandalorian Raiders vet mode. This run completed both that flashpoint objective plus 15 missions as a Sith warrior, taking me to 7/7 weeklies completed on this server.

A bit later I logged into Leviathan and queued for the underworld flashpoints on my knight again. I got an instant pop and was pleasantly surprised to find myself in Spirit of Vengeance. Having four flashpoints to pick from for variety is less effective when a lot of people specifically avoid certain ones - I was fully expecting to see nothing but Cademimu and Mando Raiders in the public queue all week. It went fine and completed that flashpoint weekly objective for me.

Afterwards I visited a Manaan stronghold and since I was still short a few missions as a knight, I took her to Balmorra (where she's currently in her class story) and cleared out Sobrik to get that done as well. This put me at 5/7 weeklies completed on Leviathan, with two more almost complete and easy to finish off the next day.

I visited Star Forge next and decided to complete my knight's vet mode flashpoint weekly by queueing for one more random. I continued to have bad luck and got into a Hammer Station. The group had a level 80 Sage healer who took point. When we expected them to make the first corner pull, they just kept running... and running... all the way to the drill, where they then stood and spammed heals on themselves. We eventually caught up and AoE-d everything down that they had pulled, but I was glad I wasn't the only one who expressed confusion about this strat in chat. When we got to the retractable bridge, they raced across just before it turned off, and then slowly soloed the next pull on the other side while the rest of us actually killed the turrets. I got the feeling they quietly cursed our "inefficiency" as they didn't say another word the entire run and quit instantly the moment the completion message came up. While I'd now completed 15 missions as a Jedi knight, I was only on 3/7 weeklies otherwise and not too happy about that, but I wasn't sure whether I could be bothered with a push for much more.

I decided to log over to Darth Malgus for the time being, where I did a GSF weekly on one of my Sith warriors, pushing me over the 15 missions completed as a knight or warrior and earning the last medals I needed. Then I visited a Manaan stronghold to take me to 7/7.

I logged into Tulak Hord while eating dinner and put myself in the queue for master mode Taral V and Maelstrom Prison, but nothing popped. I ended up just doing a couple of Coruscant heroics and logging off to do something else for a while.

Late in the evening I hopped onto Satele Shan, dug up some relics, visited a Manaan stronghold and did a few missions on my consular until I hit 200k Conquest points.

Day 7 - Monday

I logged into Star Forge shortly before reset, visited a Manaan stronghold and knocked out a couple of Coruscant heroics on my trooper main. After the reset, I knocked out the last couple of missions on Dromund Kaas on my inquisitor on Leviathan, to get that server to 7/7.

I then put myself in the master mode queue for the Revan flashpoints on Tulak Hord again, even though I knew it was a bad time and ultimately nothing popped, but I was able to also do the seeker droid objective while waiting.

In the evening I logged back into my trooper on Tulak Hord again and put myself back in the queue while questing, but I barely lasted ten minutes before also listing myself for the veteran versions. I just wanted to get that last objective done! I was surprised that it then still took another ten minutes to get a pop, considering this was German prime time. The actual Taral V run then only took another ten minutes too, though this time I was quite grateful for that. Also, the guy leading the skips in this one would instantly turn back and help kill any extra mobs that were aggroed, which I thought made a world of a difference. I guess it's less about skipping or not skipping and more about working together and with the other members of your group. Anyway, this brought me to 7/7 on Tulak Hord as well.

Hopping over to Star Forge, I put my trooper into the master mode flashpoint queue for the underworld flashpoints and did more heroics on Coruscant until the related seasons objective was ticked off. Just as I was about to start digging for treasure, I got a pop for master mode Mandalorian Raiders. This was a smooth and pleasant run that stood out to me for the tank's perfect calculation of number of mobs needed for the bonus boss, as we killed exactly 80 and not one more (and the reason I could tell this was calculated was that he was a Shadow, which allowed us to skip some pulls, but he got just the right number for us to unlock the bonus boss too). Once done, I dug up three treasures on Alderaan and with that, was 7/7 on Star Forge as well.

On Satele Shan I just had to complete a couple more story missions on Belsavis with my consular to go 7/7, which just left me to earn 25k Conquest points for the daily objective done on Darth Malgus and Shae Vizla, which was achieved easily enough. (Incidentally, one of the random master mode flashpoints I decided to run on Darth Malgus ended up being Ruins of Nul, but that has nothing to do with seasons... let's just say it was still a pain but we got there in the end.)

Week 4 - Thoughts

I was kind of surprised by how much effort this week took. By Sunday I was definitely considering forfeiting full credit for the week on some servers, but then I was pretty close already, so giving up so close to the finish line would've been annoying as well. In hindsight I think the problem was that this week was one that greatly benefitted from synergies between different objectives (such as doing the planetary missions or flashpoints on one of the featured origin stories) but I didn't always min-max that aspect and when I didn't, it actually increased the time required by a lot. I also wasted some time on the random queue without getting into the flashpoints I actually needed, clearly overestimating my odds with a total of eight flashpoints eligible for seasons objectives. I need to learn to resist the lure of that, even if it's much easier than trying to find the correct boxes to tick in the unsorted jumble that is the full flashpoint list in the group finder panel nowadays.

Some of the objectives also highlighted to me the differences between the "efficient" way to do them and what I find fun, and again, they didn't always align. Doing four flashpoints on master mode with my guildies, including all the bonuses, was certainly interesting and enjoyable, but it also took us more than two hours. Comparatively, veteran mode Taral V with a pug that just rushes to the end barely takes ten minutes, but is also quite boring. Same with doing exploration missions on Coruscant or Dromund Kaas on a lowbie that's levelling (which includes watching all the cut scenes) vs. just blasting through the heroic circuit on a level 80.

Drop In: Alderaan

A bit less than three weeks ago I wrote about how genius I think it is that Galactic Season's 6 unique weekly objective is to visit another person's stronghold. It's simple, educational and fun. I wanted to write more posts about visiting different planetary strongholds as each objective appeared, but then week three was so busy with Total Galactic War and everything that I didn't get around to it. I still took screenshots though, so it's time to catch up!

The drop-in objective in week three was to visit an Alderaan stronghold. This was an interesting contrast to week two as the Mek-Sha stronghold is very small, while the Alderaan one is huge. I'm honestly not sure I've ever checked out all the rooms in one. Sadly, this did have the side effect of me growing a bit tired of the whole thing after the first couple of stronghold visits. Like, I'm sure they're all meticulously decorated, but there's still a degree of diminishing returns in terms of interest by the time you check out how the third stronghold owner has arranged the chairs in the northern lodging in the mountain retreat, if you get what I mean. I also didn't visit a stronghold on Darth Malgus this time, since the Conquest madness meant that I hit 7/7 weekly objectives from other sources anyway.

So the first stronghold I visited was Starbuck's Jedi Academy on the Leviathan server, and once again the work of a French architect turned out to be my favourite. They have style! This one was 99% decorated, and unlike on Mek-Sha, I made no effort to seek out places with lower completion rates, because as mentioned, the Alderaan stronghold is huge and definitely won't feel overcrowded even if you fill the maximum number of hooks.

So what did I like about Starbuck's Jedi Academy? Well, I thought it was all very tastefully done. The outdoor area where you arrive was filled with a lot of trees and vendor stalls, and the first room you enter had a bunch of those posable taxidermy decorations that commenter Thander mentioned in a reply to my previous stronghold post.

There was a room that looked kind of like a classroom, which seemed very fitting for an academy.

The balcony featured a bunch of benches under a pergola and looked properly serene.

Finally there was what looked like a chamber intended for the Jedi Council to meet.

Now, as nice as that had been, I noticed from the listings that (at least based on the name) a lot of decorators had decided to go with a Jedi theme for their Alderaan stronghold, so my next goal was to intentionally visit strongholds whose name implied a different focus, to see what else people had come up with. This led me to Bejarah's Trade Emporium on Tulak Hord. I think this was a much less obvious fit for an Alderaanian castle, but they definitely made it work.

The outdoor area contained a lot of building structures I didn't even recognise, including what looked like a mini fighting arena for duels? It kind of made me wish there was a better way to check what decorations were used in a room than trying to come up with a decently descriptive Google search.

The statues outside made it quite clear that the owner was quite fond of bad guys, featuring Revan in his "Returned" get-up, Darth Malgus, Valkorion and Darth Marr (don't @ me about calling Marr a bad guy).

The first indoor area was filled with a lot of stalls and terminals, plus some indoor plants, which seemed fitting for a market.

The balcony was an amusing contrast to the serenity of the Jedi Academy, as it featured hot tubs and skimpy dancers.

There was also a cantina with a lot of booths, a med bay (I was really fascinated by the deco that looks like a guy undergoing some sort of full-body scan) and a second cantina with a dance floor filled with a whole load of dancing NPCs. I had no idea there were so many of these.

Still, after this is when my enthusiasm for visiting every single room in each stronghold started to wane, so that the other three I visited were only treated to a quick look around the initial set of areas.

Ayaleeta's Stronghold on Satele Shan didn't seem to have a single, clear overarching theme that I could make out, which to be honest is quite similar to most of my own strongholds. There was a landing area with a lot of shuttles and ships.

Inside, one thing that stood out to me was that the large main room had been split into lots of little alcoves via use of those placeable wall decos.

There was also a kind of council chamber similar to what I'd seen in the Jedi Academy on Leviathan, only apparently overseen by... Z0-0M?

Finally I screenshotted this room of "miscellaneous tech decos", mostly because it's a vibe I can relate to.

On Star Forge, I visited Terria Mazi's VIP Lounge, where the first thing that stood out to me was a ginormous deco just outside that was kind of reminiscent of Soa's platforms, and I spent a little time trying to climb them (with no success). Once again I would've loved to be able to check what it was called (feel free to tell me in the comments if you know).

The inside didn't particularly wow me, but as mentioned I was getting a bit bored by this point. My main impression of the main hall was that everything seemed a bit too symmetrical, as if every deco was placed exactly where the hook is by default, with no moving around or turning. I'm not even sure whether that was actually true though, I just know that something felt ever so slightly "off" to me.

I was also surprised to see that this decorator had actually created a little hangout in the Killik cave - a place I'd visited once or twice but had otherwise given up on checking out as most people didn't seem to put anything there.

As I mentioned in my Galactic Seasons Diary, the Shae Vizla server was a bit trickier as I at first couldn't find an Alderaan stronghold in the public listings, but at a later point I was able to visit Slayerassassin's Stronghold at 23% completion. Now this was a true fly-by visit as I didn't even bother with most of the rooms and was off to kill a world boss with my guild minutes later, but I did like giant solar system decoration outside, and how the wealth of Imperial flags left no doubt about the owner's faction allegiance.

What are your thoughts on other people's Alderaan strongholds that you visited?

Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 3

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

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

Day 1 - Tuesday

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

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

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

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

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

Day 2 - Wednesday

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

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

Day 3 - Thursday

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

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

Day 4 - Friday

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

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

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

Day 5 - Saturday

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

Day 6 - Sunday

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

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

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

Day 7 -  Monday

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

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

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

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

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

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

Week 3 Thoughts

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

At (Token) War with the Czech Empire

After I recently bemoaned the lack of a Total Galactic War between seasons, the devs decided to give us one last week, right in the middle of both Galactic Season 6 and PvP Season 5. Too many things to do at once, argh!

Twin Suns Squadron, my guild on Darth Malgus, isn't big enough to win first place on the Conquest board in regular weeks, but during Total Galactic War we usually give it a shot since there are so many planets on offer and the big guilds get all spread out. This can basically go one of three ways for us:

1. We invade a planet and then a bigger guild lands on top of us. We try to push for a bit but are quickly outclassed, causing us to give up. This rarely happens anymore nowadays, since I've learned to keep a close eye on which guilds are too big for us to beat, and I'll insist on holding off from picking a target until they've chosen a planet to invade, so that we know where not to go.
2. We invade a planet, push hard for a couple of days, but it turns out that none of the other guilds on there can even remotely compete with us, so we slack off for the rest of the week and enjoy a free win.
3. We invade a planet and find ourselves toe to toe with a guild that is big enough to challenge us, but not so big as to automatically leave us in the dust. A fierce battle ensues that lasts all week.

The third one is the most fun outcome in my opinion, at least for an event that comes around only once every six months or so. (I fully admit it's not something I'd want to stress about all the time!) And it's what we got last week as well.

We had set our eyes on Manaan (Invasion Zone) since that's a planet we'd never conquered before, and the biggest guild on the board at the time was "Remnants of the Eternal Empire", a guild that we knew to be reasonably large but that we thought was probably possible for us to beat. However, we had barely chosen to commit to the planet when a third contender appeared: Czech Empire.

Now, Czech Alliance is an absolutely ancient guild that has been around forever and for which I actually have a slightly soft spot. Many years ago we had a Twi'lek smuggler called Zayac in our guild with whom I enjoyed PvPing. He was Czech and eventually decided to leave us to join his countrymen, with no hard feelings on either side. He probably stopped playing long ago, but on some level I still thought of him whenever I saw the guild name. I also had them marked down as one of the guilds we wanted to avoid, however I hadn't had any real awareness of their Imperial alt guild as a name to watch out for.

Guilds that are active on both factions are an interesting beast in the sense that no matter how much they want to be supportive of both sides, there'll usually be one that's more popular than the other, and not all members will have an equal number of characters in both, so even if the guild is really strong on one faction, it might not be able to bring quite the same power to bear on the other, as resources can only be shifted around up to a certain degree. With that in mind, while I would have felt somewhat discouraged if we'd been up against Czech Alliance, I felt that we could probably beat their Imperial counterpart if we put our minds to it, so we got to grinding.

Somehow I've ended up in the role of the officer most involved with Conquest, and it's a weird position for me to be in, as it's still strange to me that everyone else pretty much defers to my judgement on this matter. I enjoy rallying the troops to the cause and seeing everyone get busy to contribute to our guild score, but there's also a certain responsibility that comes with this, in that I feel I really need to give it my all too, or else how could I ask others to do the same?

We were off to a good start and managed to pull ahead of Czech Empire quickly, though beyond a certain point we seemed to be unable to shake them. No matter how hard we tried, we just couldn't maintain a lead larger than ten million points - if we did manage to surge ahead at any point, they'd soon catch us up again within a few hours. It was mildly infuriating, but also helped to keep us going.

We really squeezed the Conquest objectives for the week for everything there was to be had. Star Fortresses were amazing for points a few years ago until the devs nerfed them. Now they're not as good anymore but still well worth your time if you can go in with a full group and do three heroic ones for the weekly mission. We did runs where we just powered through and killed everything in our way, and we did full stealth runs where we managed to skip quite a lot of the trash. There was also a weird in-between mode where one or two stealthers would go ahead and then allow non-stealth group members to skip part of it, though I wasn't entirely convinced by the efficiency of that unless the non-stealthers used the time outside to actually score Conquest points from another source in the meantime, which not everyone did.

I've never been a huge fan of uprisings, but they are incentivised quite heavily with Conquest points during Total Galactic War, and eventually I decided to take the bait. A guildie showed us that it was possible to do Landing Party in particular in something like six to seven minutes since you can skip a lot of trash in it, and it was honestly quite amazing. I'm not usually a fan of trash skipping, and we were musing on whether this needed to be nerfed in some way to be more on par with the other uprisings, but we did a lot of runs of it all the same.

At one point we even resorted to "rampaging" a.k.a. running around different planets as a full ops group, killing random mobs for the "[planet]: defeat enemies" objectives. This is something we hadn't done in many years, but one evening when I was "spying" on the enemy by checking on them via /who, I noted that all of them were in Black Hole together and I questioned whether they were doing dailies in groups. Another guildie who has alts in other guilds opined that they were probably rampaging, since "that's what all the big guilds do for Conquest". So we decided to imitate them... to admittedly mixed results, because it turns out a bunch of independently-minded, scatterbrained and questionably "helpful" individuals are not great at running in tight circles to kill mobs as a group (people were constantly running off in different directions to go "look what's over there" or to "pull more"). There are probably ways to handle this more efficiently, but I'm not sure we got much wiser in that regard. Still, it did the job of earning us some points.

We had a thread on Discord to keep everyone updated about the newest developments on the scoreboard, and early on Monday morning, another officer posted an update that claimed that Czech Empire had suddenly gained eight million points on us overnight. When the next update came hours later, the gap was back to ten million once again, and much confusion ensued about how they had managed to "lose" so many points (had they kicked someone who scored a lot of points?), until it was finally revealed that the first screenshot had simply been someone's idea of an April Fools' joke. Argh!

So that ten-million gap remained, no matter what we did. You'd think that having a ten million point lead should be plenty, but we knew better than that. Several years ago now, back when you could still score points with endless crafting, we were up against another guild whom we appeared to be beating until the very last day of Conquest, when they suddenly seemed to get an army of crafters online in the morning and managed to overtake us just before reset. Now, that particular crafting "hack" is no longer a concern, but instead we have the Personal Conquest Requisitions from the login rewards, and in a way those are even worse, because while you only have a finite number of them, they can be hoarded over months and years, just to add millions of points to your guild score within a matter of seconds.

I didn't want to be paranoid, but I had an odd feeling about the whole situation. I've mentioned in the past that there's a degree of "psychological warfare" to Conquest, and the way Czech Empire remained active at a steady level throughout the week was a bit unsettling, as it didn't match the profile of a guild making either a big push to take the lead or getting close to giving up. I mean, unless you have a spy literally within the guild itself, you can't know for sure what's going on on the inside, but sometimes... you can just tell, you know? I recently had someone claiming to be the GM of ChissMyHutt comment on one of my old posts in which I described my guild beating them in a tough battle, and their comment basically can be summed up as "lol, we weren't even trying at the time". And I mean... that was one and a half years ago now, so I don't know. But whenever we checked on Czech Empire via /who, they were very visibly busy working on activities with high Conquest point rewards, with no random levellers in sight, so there was no doubt about their intent - it was just odd that being ten million points behind pretty consistently apparently hadn't demotivated them at all. The last thing I posted on Discord on Monday night before going to bed was: "Here's hoping they don't have a token sneak attack up their sleeve in the morning or anything like that."

The Discord ping came at 5:41am the next morning: "ALERT" in all caps. They had indeed launched a surprise attack with Personal Conquest Commendations early in the morning, popping about 200 of them in quick succession and catapulting themselves from being ten million points behind to almost ten million points ahead. And that on what was the first day of being back to work after a long weekend for many of us! I had to get out of the house for a day in the office myself, so I just logged in quickly, cleared my cargo hold of my own Personal Conquest Requisitions and popped them all, before wishing the rest of the guild godspeed with the remaining few hours before reset, since I wouldn't be able to be there myself. Several other guildies did the same, which pushed us back into first place, but who could say whether there wasn't more to come?

I only know what happened afterwards from snippets posted on Discord that I was able to see from my phone. Basically both guilds scrambled to get some more points from playing and the occasional token, with Twin Suns Squadron in the lead, but we were on alert now for one last push immediately before the reset, and several people were at the ready with more Conquest Requisitions, waiting for Czech Empire to make their move.

About fifteen minutes before reset their score started to surge again, something to which Twins responded with more token clicking of their own, which led to both guilds leaping up another thirty million points each within that time frame alone, burning hundreds of commendations in one last, desperate bid for victory. However, my guildies maintained the upper hand, and we ultimately came out ahead... with so many points that we had the biggest score of all guilds during that Conquest event, even outdoing the big Conquest guilds (not that they had to try particularly hard, just getting their wins on other planets the "normal" way, but it was still funny to see).

I figure the Czechs must have been pretty annoyed/disappointed to have burned hundreds of their tokens just to come second place after all, but they can't really cry wolf as we simply beat them at their own game. In fact, I raise my glass to them for providing us with one of the most exciting Total Galactic War races in many years and wish them better luck next time (just not against us please, hah).

One thing that was interesting to me was that even though we were happy to have won, several guildies expressed a certain distaste with the way we had won after the fact. We had worked hard all week to raise our score to more than a hundred million, and then that crazy race to pop as many Conquest Requisitions as possible had nearly doubled our score in a matter of hours; it didn't seem right. There was some armchair game design discussion about how they could be "improved", such as by giving them a twelve hour cooldown to avoid this kind of last-minute craziness.

I honestly thought some of those ideas were pretty good and I wouldn't mind if such a change was implemented, but at the same time I kind of wonder whether it would really be worth the devs' time to fix this, as it was such an incredibly fringe situation. Yes, the battle of the last-minute token clicking was kind of wacky and not the best gameplay, but it also resulted in literal years of Conquest Requisitions being burned away within minutes, so it's not like this is something that anyone in either guild will be able to do again any time soon. 

It was quite an event either way, and I definitely enjoyed the sense of camaraderie throughout the week as everyone was working on gaining points and hanging out on voice chat during all hours of the day. I'm actually not huge on being social that way too much of the time, but on special occasions like these I do enjoy it, plus it served as a reminder of just how well we can all work together when we really put our minds to it.

Around the SWTOR-sphere: March 2024

It's hard to believe we're already a quarter through 2024! That means it's time for another round-up of SWTOR content I enjoyed throughout the month.

(On a side note, I've been kind of surprised by how well-received these posts have been, because from a creative perspective, they're quite... well, lazy. I just paste links into a draft post throughout the month and then add some context and formatting at the end, but there's little research or creative energy required. Still, it's nice to know that people still appreciate some manual curation in this age of algorithmic recommendations everywhere.)

• Chash Larol of the Old Republic Era blog has been levelling alts, and one of their newest projects is to level a character while ignoring the main quests. Certainly a different take on a game that is so focused on its main storyline above all else! I enjoyed the first installment, and as a fan of unconventional levelling methods, I'm looking forward to reading more.
• Intisar from This Week in Aurebesh always has interesting insights into the world of graphic design when he translates Aurebesh signs and posters, and I really liked this month's post about how the design of the HK poster from KotFE was inspired by real life World War II-era propaganda.
• One of patch 7.4.1's biggest surprises was the introduction of "ancient armaments" or "fitted" gear, which has no stats and is only meant to be used for outfit creation, while making a bunch of old looks from the game's early days widely accessible again. I think this has been great and I've enjoyed throwing them on the GTN for cheap in hopes of expanding the cosmetic options for newer players in particular. However, there are hundreds of them, so there's little documentation of what's what at the moment. Swtorista has compiled (what we hope is) a complete list of all fitted armour pieces and weapons with the help of Jedipedia, which does show you the in-game icon for each item and should give you at least a vague idea of what it looks like, though this is of course far from ideal for casual browsing or finding specific looks.
  
  Meanwhile Kal from Today in TOR has created a page with screenshots of all the fitted weapons (of which there are fewer than armour pieces), which certainly helps with getting a better look at them, even if the alphabetical sorting is still not great if you just want to see what e.g. all the fitted blaster rifles look like. It's early days and I'm hopeful that the documentation on this subject will improve over time.
• I wasn't sure whether to include this next video in here. You see, every once in a while I'll come across a video with a stupid, clickbaity title like, say, "The Shocking State of SWTOR in 2024", which obviously makes me want to avoid it, but I've also learned from experience that such videos don't always live up to their dumb titles and can actually be quite interesting sometimes... I decided to take a chance since I'd never heard of the creator sawmanUK before (so he wasn't known to me as someone with an axe to grind), and the video did indeed turn out to be more of a general review of the new/returning player experience, with nothing purporting to be "shocking" at all.
  
  There were still some things in there that made me roll my eyes a bit, especially at the beginning, such as repeated use of some of the worst, most worn-out jokes under the sun (I made a fat character, isn't that hilarious! Let's mention diabetes!) and the fact that he complains about having a voice-acted character... why would you pick an MMO that's famous for having that as its main feature then as opposed to literally any other MMO on the market?! All that said, he did clearly enjoy his time in the game overall and does make some more fair points further in. For example, I thought it was interesting that he wanted to buy access to more species unlocks at character creation but couldn't figure out a way to do it. And his first PvP experience being abysmal due to half-empty teams and lack of/bad backfilling is something I've experienced in the lowbie bracket as well, so while I know how much fun it can be when it works properly, I thought his account highlighted how easy it is to ruin someone's interest in this mode by providing them with a bad experience early on.
• You may be starting to get an idea of what kind of topics I find the most interesting on the SWTOR subreddit by now... my favourites are the ones that spark conversation and encourage people to talk about their different experiences with the game. With that in mind, two threads I quite enjoyed in March were "What are some light side choices and some dark side choices you would never make on any playthrough regardless of character alignment?" and "Which of the eight characters is 'literally me' for you?" The first one was an interesting look into just how differently people respond to various in-game choices, as a lot of the responses were things that didn't feel like a big deal to me personally, yet when I commented that I personally hate the dark side choice at the end of Directive 7, someone else replied with "it's just a droid". Different strokes! I'm not sure what exactly I expected the responses to the second thread to be, I just know that what I got was absolutely not it. It was good for a chuckle though.
  
• I know I said these posts are mostly here to highlight content that was actually released throughout the last month, but ultimately it's my blog so I can break my own rules! Someone linked this video to me the other day, and while it's four years old, I had somehow never seen it before (and it's currently sitting on 3.3k views, while I think it deserves more): "Let Madness Release You: The Dread Master Raptus Rap" by Aravail. As one of my guildies commented when I shared it with them, it's not really a rap but more of an electro remix, but still... all the Dread Masters have such iconic lines and great voice acting, I'm surprised there isn't more of this kind of stuff around.