Flashpoint Friday: Lost Island

It seems strange to be covering this flashpoint so close to the end of this series (only two flashpoints left to cover after this one), especially since it was an early reader request. I think I tripped myself up by wanting to do things in order and starting with Kaon Under Siege, which turned into a mega-post that made me yearn for something shorter and simpler to write about for the next installment... and then one thing just led to another. However, I was bound to get there eventually: It's time to talk about Lost Island.

General Facts

Lost Island was the second flashpoint added to the game after its release, as part of patch 1.2 - called "Legacy" - which was released in April 2012 and also saw the introduction of the legacy system and the group finder, as well as adding a new raid (Explosive Conflict) and a new warzone (Novare Coast). It's crazy to think that even then people were leaving the game in droves, complaining that there was nothing to do.

Lost Island finishes up Outbreak in the Tion Hegemony/Trouble in the Tion Hegemony, the rakghoul story arc that started with patch 1.1's Kaon Under Siege. A new plague of sentient rakghouls has emerged to threaten the galaxy, and by the end of Kaon you have traced it back to a rogue scientist called Dr Lorrick who secretly operates from Ord Mantell. It's time to pay him a visit and get to the root of the problem.

Interestingly, Lost Island has received only limited love in 4.0. Its hardmode has been retuned for levels 50-65, but its story mode remains an old-fashioned level 50 flashpoint that can't be accessed through the group finder, and there also isn't a solo mode.

Fights

Lost Island has achieved somewhat legendary status among players for having been stupidly hard on release, at least on hardmode (though story mode was quite challenging for your average pug as well). I know people that, to this day, will proudly talk about things like having gotten the first Lost Island HM clear on their server (not that this is something that anyone would be able to prove). In my own post about my first run, I mentioned how another group of guildies hadn't even been able to make it past the first boss, and how we also wiped a lot during our own run (though we did complete the instance). At the end I felt the urge to take a screenshot as if we'd defeated an operations boss. I also have a video of a run we did about two months later (unlisted because it's neither very well edited nor interesting, being one of my first attempts at video editing) that shows us still needing no less than six attempts to get past the first boss.

Bioware made no secret out of Lost Island intentionally being harder than any other flashpoints available at the time, rather the opposite. As I mentioned, this was the patch that also introduced the group finder, and in this first incarnation, there were two "tiers" of hardmode flashpoints: the first one consisting of everything else released until then, and the second one consisting of Lost Island alone. It also dropped better gear, with the last boss dropping the coveted Rakata chest piece, which you could otherwise only get from hardmode Soa. It was a concept that was later abandoned without much fuss or any kind of explanation, and since the first year was a tumultuous time for the game in general it's hard to say what prompted the change in direction. All I know is that to this day, whenever I see people complain about content being too easy, they like to wistfully refer to old-school Lost Island as an example of how things should be.

What is is that made Lost Island so hard? Well, the trash was actually not as bad as in Kaon (nothing could top those Infected Mercenaries and Screamers) but it could still throw people for a loop with mechanics like AoE pulls, knockbacks, mobs unexpectedly bursting out of the walls, groups requiring a specific kill order, or extremely powerful healers refusing to let any enemy die. I remember a pull close to the end that used to contain two strong medics (one of which was later removed) who could both make themselves immune to interrupts and would cross-heal the whole trash pack until kingdom come if you didn't use crowd control or focused stuns to burn them down quickly.

The first boss, a sentinel droid, is the one I actually always found the hardest personally, probably because of how many wipes I had on him over the years. There was the Incinerate on the tank that needed to be interrupted or dispelled or it would kill the tank in seconds, that other ability whose name I forget that was also useful to interrupt but not as essential, domes of lightning spawning on group members, adds, fire coming out of the ground, and so on and so forth. Basically, the boss has a lot going on that can potentially kill you, and in those early days his damage output was very high. Most of his abilities remain to this day, however they've been toned down a lot so that none of them hurt nearly as much.

The second boss, the monstrous Project Sav-Rak, is a particular piece of fun with pugs to this day, because he has mechanics that aren't easily nerfed, apart from the dot that deals damage and keeps the healer busy. Otherwise his two key mechanics are that he will jump on top of a pipe and just keep attacking you from afar, until you can force him back down via some co-ordinated button pushing from most group members, and that every so often he will do massive knockback that will send you to your doom in the surrounding lava if you don't stand in the right place. This is fun in so far as pretty much every time you do this in a pug, even if you explain the mechanics beforehand, someone will fall to their death the first time the boss does his knockback and then go: "Oh. I didn't expect it to be like that." It would be sad if it wasn't also funny.

Oh yeah, and there are also two mini bosses which aren't too challenging in terms of mechanics but who both hit like trucks. Even when running this with my guildies last week, I was the last woman standing when Transgenic Sample Seven finally died.

The bonus boss is actually the easiest fight in the entire instance, merely requiring you to not stop moving whenever he smashes the floor and to not cross paths with other people while doing so, but even that can be challenging for some.

Finally we have Doctor Lorrick himself, whom I generally don't recall ever being as challenging as what came before, but who still offers a nice and pretty cinematic fight, throwing poison vials and explosives at you and jumping around the room until he finally succumbs to the virus himself and turns into a seemingly mindlessly roaring rakghoul monstrosity of his own.

Story (spoilers)

You travel to Ord Mantell to locate Doctor Lorrick's secret base, which is once again at least partially situated inside a volcano, demonstrating that the planet has a problem with attracting people who like to build stereotypical super-villain lairs.

As you make your way past innocent wildlife outside and then some guard droids, you encounter the first log entries from Lorrick's assistants (you need to access them all to unlock the bonus boss), who describe him as someone heroically looking for a cure for the rakghoul virus... until it becomes apparent that actually he is doing no such thing but rather refining it for weaponised use. You learn that his assistants tried to stop him once they found out, but the fact that you keep encountering increasingly monstrous and intelligent mutant rakghouls doesn't make the situation look good.

Eventually you find Lorrick in his lab, where he holds a speech about how his modified rakghoul virus is in fact a perfect evolution of humanity and even offers to turn you into a rakghoul too. All his heroic assistants have fallen prey to his machinations, and like a true mad scientist he's even injected himself with the virus, eventually turning into another fearsome monster that you can only put down.

Conclusion

Like Kaon Under Siege, Lost Island is one of Bioware's early masterpieces, combining an atmospheric environment, an interesting story and fun game mechanics into a perfect blend. This is definitely still true today, even after its overall difficulty has been nerfed. Whether that initial high difficulty was even a good idea or not is debatable, but I think it's unlikely that we'll ever see its like again, and as the number of day one veterans still playing the game continues to decline, there'll also be fewer and fewer who will even remember what it was like.

I'm somewhat mystified why Bioware has largely ignored Lost Island during its 4.0 flashpoint revamp. I can sort of see several of the fights being hard to tune for a solo mode, especially considering the Jesus droid's limited AI (you just know Project Sav-Rak would knock him into the lava every time), but I don't really understand what prevented the old story mode from being turned into a tactical.

The Missing Companions

We knew well in advance of going into Fallen Empire that our old stable of companions would get shaken up in this expansion... but I suspect that many of us still feel somewhat uncomfortable to be approaching the last chapter and think of all the companions that still haven't come back, especially since many of them are potential love interests and may be our character's husband or wife. About a year ago, I wrote a post called Companions I Wouldn't Want to Lose, in which I picked a favourite for each class that I wouldn't want to be without. Seven of those eight are still missing. I'm sure I'm not the only one hesitant to take certain characters into KotFE because we currently don't know when they'll ever see their companions again, if at all. I wanted to look at how badly different classes have been affected by this and consider their chances of still getting their missing companions back later.

Jedi Knight

For being pretty much the game's "poster child", the knight hasn't fared well at all in KotFE in terms of relationships with their old companions. The only one that has returned to date is T7-O1, and while he does so fairly early on in the story, his role is very minor and there seems to be little of the boundless enthusiasm left that used to define the little droid's personality in the base game.

Kira Carsen: Even though she is a love interest, which automatically complicates matters, I'm actually kind of surprised that Kira hasn't come back for KotFE. Considering her past, I would have expected her to be all over fighting the Emperor again, like flies on toast. Maybe she is afraid of him? The love letter she writes to a knight who romanced her states that she has nightmares of the knight falling under the Emperor's spell (again). She might even fear for herself, considering her past. Or maybe she's just too caught up with what's happening in the Republic right now. Either way I wouldn't expect her eventual reintroduction to pose any major problems.

Doc: Like Kira, I would have thought of Doc as someone easy to introduce into the current storyline, seeing how he is basically a good guy who tends to get involved wherever his skills are needed. Just have someone get injured on the front lines and bam! Doc to the rescue.

Sergeant Rusk: I would expect Rusk to still be busy fighting loyally for the Republic. I read that dataminers have spotted an Alliance alert for him lurking in the game files, but at this point I'm not sure we can expect any more of these to go live after 4.7 and before KotET.

Lord Scourge: Now this guy's reintroduction is a pretty big issue. He really should have had a presence in Shadow of Revan already, considering his close involvement with the Emperor (seriously, just read the Revan novel). The fact that he hasn't commented on any of the events since then has put him into an awkward hole that is going to be difficult to crawl out of. It doesn't help that Bioware doesn't appear to have been able to get his original voice actor back, considering that his voice lines for his new combat roles added in 4.0 are voiced by somebody else who sounds jarringly different. For this reason, Lord Scourge is one of the companions about whose return I'm somewhat doubtful. I wouldn't put it beyond Bioware to just cut their losses with him and pretend to forget that he ever existed.

Jedi Consular

You wouldn't have thought it possible, but the Jedi consular is even worse off than the knight, with only a single consular companion having returned in KotFE so far (Qyzen) and he's not even part of the main story, just an Alliance alert. I suppose we can take some comfort in at least an ally of the Barsen'thor returning in a later chapter, but it's not quite the same.

Tharan Cedrax: Again, another companion that has me somewhat surprised that he hasn't returned yet, at least as an Alliance alert. As a quirky genius he would be a perfect addition to Doctor Oggurobb's team of scientists.

Zenith: Apparently this is another one that's had an Alliance alert lurking in the game files already. I would think that Zenith would feel right in his element fighting against the Eternal Empire as the underdog, seeing how he seemed to struggle with dealing with "normal" politics after the liberation of Balmorra. I bet he'd love to blow up some Star Fortresses (hint hint)...

Lieutenant Iresso: I don't see any major obstacles to Iresso making a comeback, but like other characters already mentioned, he's probably been busy serving the Republic and doesn't necessarily have an easy way of operating independently like Havoc Squad did.

Nadia Grell: Nadia may have remained staunchly loyal to the Republic and the Jedi order or may have redirected some of her efforts towards her old home world, but either way she's always struck me as more of a defensive character, so I'm actually not surprised that she isn't out there fighting Zakuul already. I don't think it would be difficult to reintroduce her if the Outlander made closer contact with the Republic though.

Trooper

The trooper has probably been the luckiest of all classes (go me), as they got all but one of their companions back, and two of them even featured in the main story.

The only one missing is Elara Dorne. If you talk to Aric as a trooper in chapter eleven, he mentions that Elara got in trouble after your disappearance.. presumably still something to do with her being a former Imperial? That would be a bit disappointing considering that this issue appeared to be done and dusted by the end of her companion story, but it's not completely unreasonable. This puts a bit of a question mark on where she might be and what she might be up to at this point in time, but at the same time that just means that Bioware has options to get creative.

Smuggler

The smuggler hasn't had too much luck with their companions. Bowdaar came back in an Alliance alert, but not until several months after KotFE's release, and it looks like we should finally get Guss in 4.7. It's telling that both of their stories were delayed repeatedly though!

Corso Riggs: Based on his previous antics, Corso could pretty much be anywhere, doing anything (as long as it doesn't involve being mean to women). That should make it easy to reintroduce him. On the other hand, let's be honest.... he's a bit of a shmuck! It would take some skill to come up with a reason why any non-smuggler would want to recruit him in particular.

Risha: I think reintroducing Risha could be a bit tricky because of the whole thing with Dubrillion (trying to remain vague here). Of course Bioware could always ignore it and say that she's just continued working as a freelancer for the past five years, but to be honest I'd find it a bit disappointing to learn that she hasn't made any progress whatsoever towards reclaiming her heritage during that time.

Akaavi Spar: While Akaavi is very much of a loner, it still feels like a bit of a missed opportunity that she wasn't brought back in some way related to chapter fourteen, which was about Mandalorians after all. While she's a skilled fighter, she's not someone to get caught up in fighting for a cause not directly related to matters of personal honour, and I think bringing her back would require the writers to come up with something new for her to actually care about.

All in all, the Republic got the short end of the stick here, as twelve out of the original set of twenty companions remain missing (I'm already counting Guss as returned here). In comparison, the Empire is only missing nine, and no Imperial class is as badly off as the two Jedi classes who've seen neither hide nor hair of four of their five old companions.

Sith Warrior

The Sith warrior is one of the luckier classes and had three of their five companions restored, one of whom featured in the main story arc. The only ones still missing are two love interests.

Malavai Quinn: I think reintroducing Quinn shouldn't be too difficult in terms of story, as any contact with the Empire would probably work, but I suppose the story could be tricky to write in such a way that it pleases both the people who hate him with a passion and probably want to off him the moment he shows his face and those who actually forgave him or simply don't know him at all.

Jaesa Willsaam: Jaesa is probably one of the two most difficult companions to reintroduce and I'm not sure Bioware will be up to the challenge. Since she has a separate light and dark side version, she is basically a different person depending on your Sith warrior's choices, which would require two potentially very different recruitment quests... and then you'd still be stuck with the question of which version is "canon" and should be presented to non-warriors. I suspect that even if Bioware is up to tackling this problem, it would still have to be relegated to a side mission/Alliance alert, as I can see no way that two different Jaesas could be part of the main storyline. Which is a pity, because I'd love to see her use her special talents on Valkorion!

Sith Inquisitor

Khem Val: Khem Val is the one character I would classify as Jaesa's equal in term's of difficulties with reintroducing him, because he too effectively ends up being two completely different people depending on your choices at the end of his companion arc. I'm a bit concerned that Bioware may have given up on dealing with this issue already, which would explain why they gave us an Alliance alert for a "replacement Dashade". I hope I'm wrong about that though, because nothing can replace good old Khem.

Andronikos Revel: Similar to several of the smuggler companions, Andronikos is enough of a free spirit that he could be doing pretty much anything, but one has to wonder what would motivate him to fight against the Eternal Empire and what would make the Alliance interested in him.

Ashara Zavros: The letter Ashara sends to an inquisitor who romanced her at the end of KotFE chapter one is full of despair. She feels that she's neither Jedi nor Sith and doesn't belong anywhere while everything is crumbling around her. I would have expected her to run off into Wild Space or something, but I'm open to Bioware coming up with some kind of plot to bring her back.

Imperial Agent

The Imperial agent is probably the luckiest of the Imperial classes, because like the warrior they already had three companions returned, and two of them featured in the main storyline. However, like the warrior, two of the agent's love interests remain missing.

Vector Hyllus: I think that the ease or difficulty of reintroducing Vector would depend on what he's gotten up to since the Eternal Empire took over. If he's still loyal to the Sith Empire, he can probably make an appearance related to that. If he's hanging out with the Space Killiks, it might be a bit hard to get him to care, unless they feature as an independent faction somehow and he serves as their ambassador.

Raina Temple: Temple has a similar "problem" in that she could have cut herself loose from the collapsing Empire and might be seeing herself as more of a free agent than as someone loyal to anything or anyone. That's not exactly a major obstacle though.

Bounty Hunter

Oh wait, the bounty hunter also had three companions returned already, with two of them featuring in the main story. Did I mention yet how favoured the Imperial classes appear to have been in this?

Mako: Of course the one major bounty hunter companion we're still missing is Mako, your very first friend. KotFE has given some conflicting info in regards to what she has been up to. Her letter to a romanced bounty hunter is full of despair and talks about how she's giving up on bounty hunting because all it's ever done for her is get people dear to her killed. However, in my bounty hunter's story, where Mako and Torian had been a couple, he said that he and Mako continued to hunt together after your disappearance and that he only left her because of Mandalore's summons, noting that she is quite capable of taking care of herself. I'd be happy to see the story continue in either direction... plus there is also the possibility that Mako found out more about her biological "family" in the past five years. There are definitely lots of opportunities to tie her into the main story line in an interesting way here.

Skadge: Apparently this is another companion that has an unfinished Alliance alert lurking in the game files. Like with Quinn, I'm curious how Bioware will reconcile potential re-recruitment with the many bounty hunter players who will simply want to shoot him on sight.

Looking at everything I've just written, I think the best way to reintroduce a lot of these missing companions would be to revisit the Republic and Empire in the next season... yes, I'm totally biased because that's what I want to happen, but you also have to admit that all of these loyal Jedi and dedicated soldiers might be hard to integrate if you completely disregard their loyalties and background.

Fun With /Played

This week I discovered a long-standing and very prolific SWTOR blog in German that I'd never even heard of before. Sadly it doesn't appear to have an RSS feed that would allow me to always show its latest update on my blogroll, but I still added a link to the blog itself at the bottom of the list. (EDIT: Never mind that, found an RSS feed after all.) So if you're one of my German-speaking readers (and I know there are at least a few of you), go check out Pfannenstiels Welt.

In yesterday's post, Pfannenstiel did some musing on which Jedi and Sith classes he likes more, and as part of this he looked at his /played time for each class. The slash played command is always an interesting subject to discuss among MMO players, but at the same time I think a lot of us more dedicated players actually tend to shy away from consulting it, because being told that you've literally spent hundreds of days in game can be a bit sobering in a bad way.

Personally I was intrigued though, since I haven't played much attention to the /played command in SWTOR, other than on a couple of occasions where I was wondering how long it took me to level up a particular character. So I decided to log through all of my alts on The Red Eclipse and catalogue my time spent on each of them. I do have a couple of alts on other servers, but none of them are at the level cap or had a lot of time invested in them, so focusing on the many characters on my home server should paint an accurate enough picture.

When I added it all up, it said that I had played 290 days, 19 hours and 48 minutes of SWTOR on all my characters... which does sound like quite a lot, but I can't say that I regret any of it. Also, I'm pretty sure that this is still less than the amount of time I spent in World of Warcraft over the years, especially since back then I didn't have to spend nearly as much time on real-life distractions such as work.

The numbers also show that while I have a pretty impressive stable of alts, there is absolutely no doubt about my attachment to my main. Shintar the Commando has more than 109 days of played time to her name alone, which is more than a third of my entire time spent in game and more than twice as much as I've spent on the next character down the line. That would be my Sage Golu, whom I've considered my "main alt" for a long time and who clocks in at a still impressive 42 days. After those two follow a bunch of alts that I've had for a long time and that I feel fairly attached to, who all have between 10 and 20 days of played time to their name.

The alts with fewer hours played mostly demonstrate how much the game has been sped up since 4.0 in particular. My DvL "event main" Shilu for example has been played for only about two and a half days, during which I played through the entirety of her class story, did lots of flashpoints and even some operations by now... yet I've got the same amount of time spent on an old Sage alt that's still in her forties because I never bothered to level her up any further.

Other interesting observations I made while recording this info:

Of my currently 22 characters on TRE, only three have a valor rank of 1, meaning that they've never set foot into a warzone. This shows that while I'm far from being a hardcore PvPer, I do like to at least dip my toes into PvPing on each new alt that I make.

My ten most played characters all have a social rank between 8 and 10, with the exception of my Operative, who's still only social 6 after years of play (nearly 16 days of raw playtime), since I was always a bit of a loner while playing her.

Looking at all these numbers also reminded me of a post I did about my WoW playing once, where I counted the number of dungeons I'd run during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Apparently I did nearly nine hundred of them in that expansion alone, which is a crazy contrast to SWTOR, where in the three and a half years since the achievement system was introduced, I still haven't got the "run this 25 times" achievement for any flashpoint (except for one, and that was clearly a bug because I hadn't actually run the instance anywhere near that often). That is not to say that I don't enjoy SWTOR's flashpoints - the opposite is the case - but even though most of them aren't very difficult and can be completed quite quickly these days, they still strike me as something to be savoured every now and then instead of something to be farmed for daily rewards the way people treated WoW's WOTLK dungeons.

Do you dare look at your /played time?

Dark vs. Light: Out of Order

Has the DvL event really been live for four weeks already? How time flies.

I still haven't progressed past the second reward tier, because as I anticipated, the thought of launching myself into Knights of the Fallen Empire for the sixth time has posed a bit of a mental block to me. People tell me that you can space-bar through it all quite quickly if you want, but I don't like doing that, and playing "properly" takes time. I still think that I will get there... eventually.

For now, I've been working on random objectives from the other tiers instead, such as collecting the event datacrons, running flashpoints and participating in warzones and GSF. In terms of getting the rewards this is quite a gamble, because if I run out of steam before the end I won't get anything for those half-completed achievements. But the funny thing is that I'm not even that fussed about the rewards. I simply like the way the event achievements provide that little nudge towards making me jump into content that I haven't done in a while. Like I said before, nearly five years and I never created an Assassin? Madness. Let's look at some of the things I've been doing in the past few weeks then, one character at a time.

Shilu, the Scoundrel

I completed the smuggler story for the third time, thereby making it the class story that I've completed most often. Somewhat to my surprise, I don't have much to say about it. It was pretty much how I remembered it. My only "issue" was that - as I observed previously during the 12x XP event, it's a bit hard to get a "feel" for a character when all you do is the class story and don't gain any sort of connection to what else is going in the world via regular quests. I'm not really sure what sort of person Shilu is, other than vaguely light side.

I hit 65 about halfway through the Rishi storyline and haven't made any further progress on it since then. I do have to say that some of the achievements definitely feel somewhat out of order as they are - for example it makes no sense that hitting level 65 is part of the fourth reward tier, when it's impossible not to hit 65 during the first nine chapters of KotFE, whose completion is a requirement for the third tier.

I've also maxed out all of her crew skills (bioanalysis, biochem and diplomacy), thereby taking my first step towards the "max out all crafting professions" achievement required for the final tier.

Finally, I've also started running hardmode flashpoints with her. My pet tank, who was initially completely uninterested in the event, did a bit of a turnaround now that he is on holiday for a few weeks and levelled an event alt from 1-65 in only three days (less than nineteen hours /played). I joked that he did it purely to tank hardmode flashpoints for me, but joke or not, he has been doing exactly that. We knocked off seven of them in only two nights. We even had some wipes in the process, though overall it has been a fun experience.

The whole thing made me realise that I've barely set foot into hardmodes since 4.0. I think it may have had something to do with the one experience that I do remember, where my Sage - not even 65 yet at the time - ended up in hardmode Blood Hunt with a pug that couldn't even kill the first boss. Our dps seemed really low, but I couldn't be sure that my low level wasn't dragging the group down as well, and after a few wipes I politely bowed out. That probably wasn't representative of the average hardmode pug, but I suppose it did leave a subconscious impression on me...

Shinister, the Assassin

I haven't progressed Shinister's class story beyond Dromund Kaas, and even that I only really did because it's embarrassing to not have a ship. Otherwise she's been levelled entirely via random tacticals, warzones and the occasional GSF match. I've completed the achievements for the latter two, but that hasn't stopped me from continuing to level through them anyway. As I said, I'm clearly treating the DvL achievements as suggestions or prompts rather than as a strict guide on how to play. For the tactical flashpoint achievement I'm only missing Battle of Ilum and Battle of Rishi now, though I'm bound to do the latter once I take Shilu through the second half of Rishi. Through all of this, Shinister has almost hit 65, by which point it will probably be time for her to retire for the time being.

Zeresa, the Commando

Since I enjoyed the whole "levelling through flashpoints and PvP" lark, I decided to roll up another character (again with an eye on the legendary reward tier) to take to level 50 this way at least. I decided on a Republic class to get back to my home faction for a bit after spending so much time on the Assassin as of late, and I opted for a Commando to try out the dps side of life. Shintar has been a healer since the time she originally got to choose her first talent point, and I never respecced her to another role in the entire time that I've been playing - despite of guildies' frequent requests when we were trying to adjust group composition for a more casual ops run. I'd always rather log an alt.

However, I'd be lying if I said that I've never been curious what Commando dps is like, especially since people always talk about how easy it is (cue jokes about "one button wonders"). I can definitely already see where that reputation is coming from, because even without having consulted any kind of guide, it's quite obvious that the single-target rotation is pretty much limited to three abilities, with two of them having a cooldown. My problem is actually finding mobs to practise this on, as anything but a flashpoint boss dies too quickly for me to execute much of a rotation! It does seem like the kind of dps that even I could handle though.

PvP on this character on the other hand has been pretty painful. I thought that Shin was already a popular target as a Commando healer, but being dps you end up getting focused even more because you don't have the heals to keep yourself alive. I remember getting into an arena where - even though I used every single defensive cooldown I had at my disposal at the time (stun breaker, medpack etc.) I only got a single attack off before I died. Not every match has been quite this painful, but it has been the general trend. It reminds me of how "[class] sucks in PvP" is really a remarkably - if not self-fulfilling - then at least self-reinforcing prophecy. Are dps Commandos objectively weak in PvP? Yes. But you know what's worse? The way that this provides the enemy team with unprecedented focus the moment you enter the battlefield. Never mind the enemy healers, everyone pile on the (supposedly) easy kill! Bleh.

Are you still working on the event (if you got into it at all) or are you one of those people who are already completely done with it and are only waiting for KotFE chapter sixteen to be come out to get final completion credit?

Twin Sunmergames 2016

Sunday a week ago my guild held a fun little social event that was dubbed - based on what was originally a typo but was quickly appropriated for its punniness - "Twin Sunmergames". As turnout for social events on dedicated social nights has been somewhat lacklustre at times, it was decided that we would actually sacrifice an ops night for this one, something I was personally quite pleased with. I'm actually one of the people who tends not to attend social nights, but it's not due to a lack of interest - the problem is rather a lack of time and energy for additional nights dedicated to group events on top of our regular ops.

As the theme was summer fun, we were instructed to show up in swimwear. I initially bristled at this a little, considering my usual dislike for all the inappropriately bikini-clad characters on the fleet, but I couldn't deny that it fit both the overall theme and the silly nature of the event in this case. Once I actually set my mind to putting an outfit together, I was shocked by the prices of a lot of potentially interesting pieces. Pretty much any piece of Covert Energy armour was going for several million credits! I remember when these were a super common drop from the current pack and nobody wanted them... I was proud that I eventually managed to settle on something that didn't break the bank while also still providing a minimum amount of cover for boobs and butt. I was particularly happy with the cheap piece of random armgear I found that - while not invisible - looked like fairly light armbands.

The evening itself was going to be split into three parts: a game that the organisers had dubbed "Hot Ball", a relay run on Ord Mantell, and a race to get through normal mode Legacy of the Rakata as quickly as possible.

"Hot Ball" took place in our guild stronghold on Tatooine and was based on using the Custom Huttball Stand, an interactive furniture item, to play what's basically a variant of Hot Potato/Pass the Parcel. For those who don't know, the Huttball stand generates a ball that looks similar to the Huttball, which players can pick up and throw around - but it expires after a little while, which causes it to either disappear quietly or explode, with the latter option tossing the person currently holding it high into the air. As blowing up your fellow guildies is always a popular pastime, this was unsurprisingly good for a lot of laughs. To keep things organised, we were split into four teams, and the judges made a point of timing the matches and keeping score.

The second activity of the evening was a relay run on Ord Mantell. To be honest I kind of expected this one to be the least interesting bit, because well... it's just running around, right? I guess the team with the most classes with speed boosts wins? Fortunately things turned out to be a lot more fun than that.

What caused a lot of unexpected surprises was the fact that the proposed course wasn't entirely straightforward, and it turned out that several guildies had apparently never bothered to fully explore Ord Mantell's map or hunt bounties there. This resulted in multiple people dying from falling off cliffs, into lava, or just generally running in circles like headless chickens because they couldn't figure out how to get up that cliffside. I never would have thought that a starter planet could be this deadly and confusing to max-level characters. The high point of the run came in the form of a surprising and particularly amusing twist, when the guy who everyone thought was going to win (as his team was the only one who had made it to the last stage of the relay so far) ended up going completely off the rails, circled the local volcano instead, and eventually had to give up without ever having reached the finish line.

Finally the evening was wrapped up with a race to get through tactical Legacy of the Rakata the fastest, for which we were split into three random teams. This is another activity that I would have expected to be relatively straightforward, but once again I had greatly underestimated my guildies' ability to cause mayhem. From wipes due to overpulling trash to foolish use of the /stuck command and clickable objects bugging out for multiple people, it ended up being quite a mad race. Interestingly, the team that ended up winning by completing the instance in a mere sixteen minutes probably approached things in the most conservative way, just trying to kill things quickly while moving from one objective to the next as fast as possible.

Want to get a glimpse of the mayhem? I made a summary video:



It's cliché, but having a good group of people to play with and do things that go beyond what the game's basic framework provides makes any MMO so much better. I can only encourage any guild who might be thinking about organising similar events; it's definitely worth it!

Flashpoint Friday: Legacy of the Rakata

Today it's time to talk about a flashpoint that shares an acronym with Lord of the Rings. Don't be confused like I sometimes I am when I see people talking about it!

General Facts

Legacy of the Rakata forms part three of the Forged Alliances story arc (which consists of four flashpoints in total) and was released as part of patch 2.10 in September 2014, which was aptly named "Forged Alliances". It wraps up the Prelude to Shadow of Revan as it is also called now, though at the time we didn't know that yet.

It was originally a tactical-only flashpoint for the level cap at the time (55), received a hard and a solo mode in 3.0, and was retuned to cover a wider level range in 4.0, like most flashpoints in the game.

Fights

Legacy of the Rakata takes place on Rakata Prime, which is populated by primitive Rakata, bits of wildlife, as well as Revanites and their droids. The trash generally doesn't pose any challenge, though some of the Rakata pulls feature powerful healers that can drag things out if they aren't shut down.

There are three boss fights in LotR, plus a bonus boss on hardmode. The bonus boss is actually quite challenging due to a combination of adds and powerful AoE that has to be avoided, but the "main bosses" are all fairly unexciting in terms of mechanics.

First there is the Rakata War Chief Rehkta and his pet Rancor. The Rancor smacks people about and Rehkta runs around like a maniac due to being untauntable and drops puddles of fire on the floor. However, there isn't really anything you can do about any of it, aside from stepping out of the fire every so often, so it's just a matter of slowly draining the two bosses' hitpoints (and boy, do they have a lot of them).

Next we have Commander Rand, a cyborg, who I suppose is moderately interesting in that he becomes invulnerable every so often, which forces you to kill a bunch of adds instead. Actually, I suppose it would be more appropriate to say that this was moderately interesting on release. Sadly that particular mechanic has since been re-used ad nauseam in several of the mini-boss fights featured in KotFE, so veteran players are probably pretty tired of it by now.

Finally, Darth Arkous and Colonel Darok have more or less the same issue as the first encounter: They have a bunch of abilities but there isn't anything you can do about them other than burn the bosses down (slowly), and try to kill them at roughly the same time as one will enrage at the time of the other one's death.

Story (spoilers)

By the end of Depths of Manaan, you have teamed up with Theron Shan, Lana Beniko, Jakarro the smuggler and his pet droid to uncover a conspiracy hatched by the cult of the Revanites. You know that they are working on building a cyborg army based on Rakata technology, but not to what end.

Part three of Forged Alliances starts with you entering Theron's/Lana's old office on the fleet to find it wrecked and you end up reuniting with them on Manaan instead. They've tracked down the Revanites' base of operations on Rakata Prime, where they are making use of old Star Forge debris to enhance their cyborgs. You're going to hunt them down.

You land on a beach on Rakata Prime with a plan to assault the temple where the base is located. Jakarro promises to provide a distraction while Theron and Lana will monitor the situation from his ship. You successfully "sneak up" on the temple by slaughtering a whole bunch of Rakata (who have apparently been hired to be an obstacle), wild Nexu and eventually Revanites on the way.

Inside the facility you find a room full of dormant cyborgs and end up talking to Theron and Lana about them on the holo. Depending on your faction, one of them sends the other way away under false pretenses, in order to be able to quietly urge you to deal with the cyborgs in their preferred way. Theron wants them destroyed via an overload so the technology won't fall into the wrong hands, while Lana wants them killed the old-fashioned way so that the tech can be preserved and stored for future use by the Empire.

Regardless of your choice, you find yourself chasing Darth Arkous and Colonel Darok (the emerging baddies from the previous parts of the story) to the roof of the building, where you eventually have a big showdown. After you defeat them, a fleet suddenly pops out of hyperspace... and it turns out that it's under the leadership of Revan, who has seemingly returned from the dead to lead the Revanites into a grand new battle. After briefly chatting with you on the holo, he starts to bomb the planet and you have to board a shuttle to escape.

Conclusion

I was really quite impressed with Legacy of the Rakata when it first came out, though over time my affection for it has somewhat diminished. I find that it scores highly in terms of first impressions, what with all the KOTOR throwbacks, the beautiful environment and the grand reveal at the end. But those are things that can't be experienced the same way on subsequent runs. In fact, I think nobody these days can experience it the way we did when it first came out, when we genuinely didn't know where it was going and who was leading the Revanites (Revan was supposed to be dead after all). These days, even if you generally try to avoid spoilers... well, the quest itself is called Shadow of Revan: Prelude! Not much room for surprises there.

Legacy of the Rakata's biggest flaw in my book is that its boss fights are pretty dull. Unlike in some of the earlier flashpoints with weak bosses, it's not that the bosses have uninteresting designs or virtually no abilites, but the problem is that they have few abilities that matter, abilities that you can actually do anything about (such as avoid or counter them). They just interrupt your tank and spank routine every so often with knockbacks and stuns but that only really serves to slow you down.

Still, overall I do like Legacy of the Rakata because in general I feel that its good sides outweigh the bad ones. I just consider it a missed opportunity that they couldn't make the boss fights a bit more interesting.

Knights of the Eternal Throne - Hard to Have an Opinion

I feel I should really comment on the announcement of Knights of the Eternal Throne at Star Wars Celebration... but it's hard to have much to say about it at this point, considering that it was very much a non-announcement. Seriously, I've never seen an expansion announcement that was this thin on actual content. Literally all we've got is the name, a teaser image, a vague release window ("this fall") and promises that it's going to be great (one of the largest updates since launch). OK?

It's been suggested that Bioware may have mucked up their marketing schedule with the delays to chapters ten and sixteen - if those had been out on time, KotFE probably would have been wrapped up by now and they would have been able to give us more information about how it all ties into the next season. Still, that doesn't really explain why they were so shy about revealing any sort of technical details, such as whether there will be another level cap increase, how many new story chapters and so on and so forth. Anyway, let's try to work with what we've got.

The name: I have to admit, I'm kind of disappointed that they went with another "Knights of the Something Something" title. It's uncreative and pretty much asking for people to get the two expansions mixed up in casual conversation. Not to mention that I still don't know to this day why KotFE is even called KotFE. The only Empire that has fallen is the Sith one, but the only one that has knights is Zakuul, and the only one of those that really features prominently is Senya. I guess we theoretically still have a chapter to go that might answer the question of who the title "Knights of the Fallen Empire" is really referring to, but I'm not holding my breath. I can only guess that there is a directive from marketing that all expansions now need to have "Knights of the" in the title to make sure to draw in as many KOTOR lovers as possible... As an aside, for a German speaker like me, "KotET" is a really unfortunate acronym - in German, it literally means "(he/she/it) defecates".

The image: Pictured above, it shows Senya facing off against a slender figure, possibly Vaylin? If nothing else, it's good to see Senya, because this pretty much guarantees that she will survive whatever happens in chapter sixteen, which is not exactly a given with Bioware. Since she's a great character, I would have hated to see her die. If the slender figure is Vaylin, what's with the weird blue glow around her hands? Either way, people have been speculating for a while that KotFE might end with us finishing off Arcann but Vaylin somehow taking over or getting away, offering an opportunity for a tie-in with the next season, which this image seems to confirm. I have to admit I'm not super keen on dragging out the whole Zakuul story arc even longer, so I do hope it goes into a different direction eventually. I want to see what's happening with the Republic and the Empire, damn it!

Release window: I was actually surprised to hear that the expansion is already supposed to be out this fall, or autumn as we call it on this side of the pond. I was almost convinced that we wouldn't see the new season until the very end of the year or even the start of the next year, and I think we all kind of assumed that the Dark vs. Light event was meant to keep us occupied through a major content drought. I suppose autumn could still mean as late as November, but that would still "only" leave three months between the release of KotFE's last chapter and the start of KotET, which isn't too bad in the grand scheme of things.

Grand promises: Already I see people doing the same thing they do every time Bioware tells us that they've got something great in store - project all their hopes and dreams onto that vague promise, hoping against hope that this will finally bring whatever change or content they've been waiting for, whether it's a change to the business model, new operations or whatever. Hold your horses, people! We really don't know anything at this point, so let's not get too excited, OK?

All that said, I do look forward to hearing more about this. Call me weird, but I do actually kind of like the way you never quite know what you're going to get with a new SWTOR release. There are areas where I absolutely loathe change and surprises, such as when it comes to core class gameplay, but experimenting with adding different types of content in different ways is fine by me. Getting a predictable cookie cutter expansion every X months or years gets boring after a while anyway.

London Community Cantina, Take Two

Long-time readers may remember that more than three years ago, I attended the last community cantina event that was held in London. While I did enjoy it overall, there were also some disappointments, and attending the latest cantina event this past Friday was an eerily similar experience in some ways.

First the good stuff: Last time, lack of space in the venue was an issue, but this time they were better prepared in that regard and had rented a much bigger place. And it was good that they did, because it was packed! There must have been several hundred people there. It's interesting that it was so much busier than last time, considering that the game is actually quite a bit older now, but I guess the association with Star Wars Celebration definitely helped to draw in people who might otherwise not have bothered to travel to London just for a community cantina.

In what I assume was more spillover from the Celebration event, there were loads of amazing cosplays on display, especially many great-looking Twi'lek ladies! Though my personal favourite was a male Zabrak Jedi knight whose make-up and armour were both absolutely impeccable. I'm not entirely sure if he was supposed to be Satele Shan's old master or a different character, but he looked fantastic regardless. Also, among those who weren't actively dressed up, I was pretty impressed with the amount of Star Wars-themed fashion on display. We're not just talking t-shirts here, but things like dresses with storm troopers around the hem and similar. I'm not really someone who cares about fashion in real life and I hardly ever wear dresses myself, but I still couldn't help but notice these things.

My pet tank and I had arranged to meet Calphy from Galactic Antics, which was nice, though in hindsight I can't help but wonder if I shouldn't have tried to meet some people from Twitter as well, because apparently loads of them were there! (I was amused when @Blachloch posted a crowd shot in which I spotted myself...) Maybe we should have all worn little name tags with "Hello, my name is X a.k.a. Y on Twitter" or something... Apparently I managed to look right at Stardust, noticing her great Hylo Visz getup, without realising that it was her!

The disappointment started with the complete absence of any sort of news announcement (at the actual cantina) or Q&A. While I've joked previously about how useless the cantina Q&As have often been because people would always asked questions like "When will we see (more of) [content type]?", to which the answer would inevitably be something like "It's on the Wall of Crazy" or "We can't talk about that yet", which didn't really tell us anything new. However, I thought that they were working on improving that system - I seem to remember reports from a community event where they had everyone write questions on cards early on and then picked out a bunch of them that they could actually give useful answers to - whatever happened to that?

As it was, they "only" had an interview with Natasha Loring, the voice actress for Vaylin, who I'm sure was absolutely lovely but I couldn't hear a single word she said. The positioning of the stage was a bit awkward, so that about a quarter of the venue was behind and partially walled off from it, which of course happened to be where we had decided to sit. Eventually my pet tank and I ventured forth towards the "main area", where we ended up spending half an hour queuing for drinks, but even though this put the stage in front of us, we still couldn't hear anyone but Musco (I'm guessing he's used to having to shout into the microphone to be heard). They also had an "imitate Vaylin" competition among the fans that were present, and again I couldn't hear any of the entries. That was pretty disappointing and probably could have been avoided with a bit of sound testing beforehand / putting an extra couple of speakers up in the corners or something.

The "worst" / most bizarre thing however was the handing out of swag. This was actually handled pretty well at the 2013 cantina, with everyone simply being handed a pre-packed bag with t-shirts and pet/mount codes on the way out, which seemed to go very smoothly. This time around however, people had to queue up for their freebies during the event itself, and for some reason handing them out took absolutely forever. I can understand that there was some delay as they were actually giving out different sizes of t-shirts this time and had to ask what everyone wanted, but I have no idea why it took so long. We spent nearly an hour in that queue, and during the entire time the line only kept growing, not shrinking, until it wound pretty much around the entire inside of the venue.

I also have to admit that while I appreciate the thought behind giving out t-shirts of different sizes, it didn't really work that well for me personally. I don't know if that's a weird US sizing thing or something, but the women's XL shirt that I was given didn't just feature a different cut (which made sense) but was for some reason also about three sizes smaller than a comparable men's shirt, which means that it barely fits me, and only in such a way that I probably wouldn't want to wear it in public...

Overall I'm still happy that I went: the atmosphere was nice, I got to meet another guildie in real life, and free stuff is always great! I just wish it had been less of a queue-tina, with a bit more "meat" for the wider community, not just for those who managed to stand right in front of the stage or who happened to catch Musco or Charles Boyd in person to ask them questions.

P.S.: If you haven't seen it elsewhere yet, they were giving out a shareable code again that you can enter under your account management on the website to claim a free speeder for all your current and future characters. This time it's the same code for everyone: CelebrationCantina16. Enjoy!

The Social Side of KotFE

While doing all these chapter write-ups for Knights of the Fallen Empire, I've come to appreciate that KotFE does actually have a social side. Admittedly not in the gameplay itself, but in talking about your choices.

Now, you might want to dismiss me right there because a) obviously I like talking about games more than the average person or else I wouldn't have a blog and b) you can talk about anything, so what makes talking about KotFE in any way special?

I think that Bioware RPGs in general (and similar games as well probably) lend themselves to a particular kind of socialising because of their odd value proposition: that the choices you make will result in a unique (but still pre-crafted) story, so you're basically paying for lots of content that you won't see. Sure, in theory you could play the game over and over to explore all the different paths, but who really does that? In a single player game I suppose you can at least mess with save files to explore different outcomes for some situations with minimal effort, but in KotFE you don't even have that. While you can buy a level sixty character these days, that's just going to be based on a template, meaning that some options will still be locked out by default. If you want to know how things differ if you made different choices in your class story or romanced a companion, you'll actually have to level an alt from scratch.

So, if we accept that most people won't see the results of a lot of the built-in choices, how do they even know that they are there, that they aren't actually playing a completely linear game that's merely pretending to offer multiple different outcomes? And the answer is of course: by talking to other people.

As soon as I'd finished my first playthrough of KotFE's first nine chapters, I asked my pet tank if and when he had accepted Valkorion's help and we exchanged stories. When chapter ten came out, nothing very exciting happened in my own first playthrough... imagine my shock when I opened a forum thread about the new chapter that immediately started off with a player grousing about how a certain companion had left them. And so on and so forth. I don't really want to get into spoilers in this post, but basically I've discovered so many more things that can happen in KotFE - and that I would have been unlikely to ever have discovered myself - by simply reading about other people's experiences. References to companions. Choices from previous chapters leading to surprising results later on. I actually get super excited every time I find a mention of something like that on a forum or on a blog now.

I score very high as both a socialiser and an explorer on the Bartle scale, and I always like to remind people that exploring is about more than uncovering bits of the map. It's about finding things that most players don't usually see, and KotFE is quite a treasure trove in that regard - if you are willing to put up with some repetition while replaying chapters, but even more so if you are simply willing to share the experience with other people.

KotFE Chapter by Chapter - Chapter 14: Mandalore's Revenge

Apparently this chapter was originally going to be called "Mandalore the Avenger" but then Bioware decided that a mere mention of there being a new Mandalore was too much of a spoiler? Seems a bit odd to me. Either way, time to get into some real spoilers.

Click here to go back to Chapter 13.

Another outside view of Odessen base (sorry) transitions to yet another strategy meeting of the Alliance leadership, except that this time only Lana, Senya, Scorpio and Theron (via holocall) are present. Everyone else is "out patrolling", which is a nice way of not having to worry about which characters can be included and which ones may have been driven off or killed due to player decisions in previous chapters.

Scorpio has new information about the Gemini network that controls the Eternal Fleet - it can't be subverted from outside because every ship is captained by a droid based on her design, something the player has already sort of known or at least suspected since the cut scene that finished off chapter seven. She doesn't like this and wants to get to the bottom of it. She's also found out that all captains are moulded after a physical template called the Prime, which is stored in a factory on the planet Darvannis.

The name Darvannis will make the ears of old-school raiders perk up - while newer players might think it just another new planet, the desert planet Darvannis has actually been in game since Rise of the Hutt Cartel, as it's where the operation Scum and Villainy takes place. In my guild at least, this led to some humorous moments when this chapter was launched, such as an ops leader logging in on patch day and being absolutely bewildered to find everyone already (seemingly) in an operation, and in three different instances of it to boot. This is the first time that a location from inside an operation or flashpoint has successfully transitioned to the "outside world".

Senya and Lana inform you that the factory is too large to be taken by a mere strike team, and Lana cautions that you don't have the forces for a large scale assault. However, Theron claims to have called in some favours in the Outer Rim that should get you enough allies to go through with the operation, though he doesn't want to give any more details over the holo.

As you land on Darvannis, the nature of your allies becomes apparent very quickly (and not just because of Vode An playing in the background) - it's the Mandalorians, now led by Shae Vizla aka "Mandalore the Avenger". Apparently the Mandalorians haven't got along with the Eternal Empire either and are eager for an opportunity to actually hurt it, plus raiding the giant factory should result in lots of armour and weapons for them. They already have teams deployed hammering away it, trying to get its shield generator down. Shae (I can still call her Shae, right? Mandalore is so formal...) suggests that you could help by capturing the nearby perimeter guns and aiming them at the factory as well. As support she assigns you a certain, totally random Mandalorian called Torian Cadera... whom bounty hunter players will of course be happy to see, especially if they romanced him, though there isn't enough time for an extended reunion at this point.

You get a bonus mission to pick up some Mandalorian gear, which then leads to you killing three Zakuulan walkers and gives you three extra buttons to press for the rest of the chapter if you like that sort of thing. Otherwise you just fight your way to the three perimeter guns and reprogram them to fire at the factory. There are a lot of skytroopers in the way, but since this is an open world area, you can benefit from other people clearing them out or at least distracting them for you occasionally. While making your way around, you hear various Mandalorians giving status updates about their own progress and generally expressing their bloodlust, as Mandalorians are wont to do. Even Jos and Valk from Blood Hunt are here!

Once you've reprogrammed all the guns, you get to fire them... except a whole bunch of Mandalorians have been trapped inside the perimeter. The dark side and Torian are in favour of blowing them to smithereens along with everything else because apparently there is no honour in dying to droids, but you can order him to change the guns' targets to create an opening so the Mandos can escape instead.

We cut to a view of the Eternal Throne where Arcann and Vaylin watch the Mandalorians' suicidal attacks with a mix of bewilderment and amusement. Vaylin shows just how disturbed she is once again by going on about how the Fleet should burn them all to glass so they can be turned into a pretty window, however Arcann is convinced that they will eventually exhaust themselves on the defenses anyway, without the need for intervention.

You return to camp to find Shae's second in command, Khomo Fett, holding a speech about the honourable deaths of the Mandalorians who died fighting mindless droids... I wonder if I'm the only one who initially found this scene a bit confusing, as he does sound quite sincere in that boasty way that Mandalorians have... but Shae frowns at him and Torian tells him to not mock the dead. You can ask about why they are acting so weird when it comes to the subject of fighting droids and Shae explains that they've been fighting them in such huge numbers since the rise of the Eternal Empire that killing them has pretty much lost all meaning. Khomo likens dying to a droid to "falling off a cliff".

Before the next assault it's time for a little catch-up with Torian and for a Mandalorian "party", which means people shoving and punching each other at random and shooting holes into the ceiling. (Sadly it's just a brief cut scene and you don't get to participate actively.) The next morning an attack on the factory's power stations is planned, while you and Torian are supposed to distract Zakuulan forces at a nearby tactical outpost. Time to kill more droids while Mandalorians shout things over the comm!

Once you've finished up, Lana calls you on the holo to let you know that Theron has procured schematics for the factory, which should help with assaulting it. She also warns you not to trust the Mandalorians too much, likening them to wild animals.

Up next, it's time for the main assault. Khomo already dreams of all the glory that will follow once you win. You explain that your own target is the Gemini Prime droid, which the Mandalorians are all too happy to let you have while they get the rest of the spoils. Shae expresses worry about the factory being a bit of a death trap, at which point you can offer to share the schematics or withhold that information. Finally, she steps on a crate outside to hold a rousing speech for the assembled Mandalorians, explaining that while today's fight isn't that honourable by their standards, it will ultimately lead to much greater things.

You and Torian set out to recover the Prime. Time for yet more droid killing while Mandalorians transmit their death cries! There's another boss fight featuring the tiresome "immune to damage until you kill all the slowly spawning adds" mechanic. Then you get notified that hundreds of droid reinforcements are on the way, and Torian offers to hold them off on his own while you get the Prime. Um, sure, buddy! Before that he just wants you to know that he overheard your conversation with Lana and that Mandalorians are not animals.

We briefly cut to the Eternal Throne again, where Vaylin in particular is displeased that Arcann's not following her advice seems to once again not have worked out so well. Arcann realises that it must be the Outlander who's to blame for the Mandalorians' renewed fervour, but Vaylin points out that it's too late now to send the fleet to stop them. Nonetheless Arcann feels that he's been sitting on the throne for too long (no kidding, he doesn't seem to spend time anywhere else) and asks for his flagship to be readied.

You find Gemini Prime floating in a sort of stasis tube. She is not pleased by your interference but maintains a sort of detached curiosity. She identifies Scorpio as familiar but claims that instead of her being a copy, they both come from the same source, the so-called Luminous Engine. Scorpio doesn't want to hear any of it and just urges you to remove the Prime quickly. You can allow her to disconnect herself or remove her forcefully.

As you load the frozen Prime into your shuttle, you observe the Mandalorian wounded and the counting of casualties. Torian has survived somehow, what a shock. If you withheld the factory schematics, both Khomo and Shae are pretty angry about the casualties and kind of questioning whether it was all worth it. Otherwise they are super happy about their victory, with Khomo already dreaming of the next big battle, and you sort of suggest that they should redirect their energy elsewhere, whether it be helping Zakuul rebuild or attacking your former enemy faction. Torian joins you as a companion as he is assigned to you as your new Mandalorian liason.

Back on Zakuul, Scorpio is analysing the Prime's brain and says that she will soon be able to locate all Gemini units. She still can't control them remotely, but she thinks that she could gain control of the fleet via the Prime if they could plug her into the command console of one of the Eternal Fleet ships. She's also already located a suitable target: a lone Eternal Fleet ship making a transport run in a nearby system. There isn't much time to intercept it, and you may not get such a good chance again. It's time to go on the offensive.

Conclusion

I just mentioned in my last Flashpoint Friday that I'm not overly fond of the Mandalorians, so what did I think of a chapter entirely dedicated to them? Well, actually I liked it well enough, even if it couldn't match the greatness of chapter thirteen, but that doesn't really have anything to do with the subject matter. In fact, I did like the way the Mandalorians were handled in this context. It was interesting to see the introduction of another major faction that still wields some fighting power and also opposes the Eternal Fleet. On my trooper I also got a nice line in about how the Mandalorians are pretty much just another type of soldier and are at least easier to understand than all that Force stuff.

On Twitter I joked that the chapter had a certain kind of meta humour to it, considering that we, the players, have been complaining about the overabundance of skytroopers for months and here are the Mandalorians, having pretty much the same issue. The fact that Darvannis is actually an open planet that you can revisit outside of the chapter feels like another small favour to the player base's clamouring for more planets, though the actually accessible area is quite small. Also, there isn't really any reason to go there outside of the chapter's story, unless you really enjoy gathering grade nine crafting materials out in the world.

What I found the most striking about this chapter however was how "old school" it feels. There aren't many fancy cut scenes, and the pacing is more akin to something you might find in the original levelling game: lots of conversation, then you run around and kill things, then another conversation, then you go to the other end of the map and kill things again. I'm actually kind of unsure how I feel about this - on the one hand I really like how immersive the newer format introduced by KotFE feels, but on the other hand it can almost be exhausting to play through an hour-long chapter that doesn't offer many good opportunities to have a break. Chapter fourteen is less exciting than many previous chapters, but I'm finding it fairly chill to replay since it's very clearly segmented, and the skytrooper fighting bits can be as long or as short as you want to make them.

Looking at the wider community, the reaction to this chapter seemed to be fairly calm if you weren't a big fan of the Mandalorians already. Those that liked it thought that it was nice and those that didn't thought it was kind of boring, but it didn't seem to excite people very much either way. It's easy to see why: Chapter fourteen doesn't have any great moments that make you gasp or laugh (though I liked Torian's letter afterwards where he comments that members of the Alliance like his hair...) but it continues the story in a solid way and one can only wonder what's coming up next now that the Alliance actually has a plan of attack... we'll find out in the next chapter!

Onwards to Chapter 15!