You know I never intended for these to be annual updates,
but I guess they are, as I’m always updating once around the same time of year,
so I guess it’s that time again. As far as the playerbase is looking the game
things are pretty bleak, as of July last year there was another big server
culling with the game going from 17 servers down to just 5, pretty scary for a
game that once had 200. But it matters not, until they shut down the servers
completely I will keep on going, as I’m not finished yet, not by any means,
despite a couple of requests from friends to start playing Elder Scrolls Online.
Doin some heroics on Balmorra, was glad I got the chance to do em with someone
So we begin with my Trooper and the conclusion of his
storyline which occurs on Corellia which in case you didn’t know I the planet where
all class storylines conclude. But actually before that Havoc Squad was off to
Voss for the conclusion of Aric
Jorgen’s mission to rescue his old Deadeye squad companions on Hoth, and when we found that two of
his squadmates were dead due to a careless Republic officer so I decided to let
Aric shoot the bastard.
Senior Agent Zane gets what's coming to him.
I’ve been doing Dark side options a lot more now while
playing, maybe it’s because quite a few companions I have prefer the naughty
things. From the start of the game I’ve had many characters who were very
light-side orientated, on my Jedi Knight T7-O1 and Kira Carsen
were good examples of this, on my Sith Inquisitor it was more difficult being a
Light-side with Khem
Val but as soon as I got Ashara Zavros things got easier. Playing my Trooper
was a mixed bag, Elara Dorne was very light orientated, Aric Jorgan
and M1-4X were
mostly fine but their fanatical devotion to the Republic favoured some Dark
side choices and towards the end of the storyline I just started choosing them
for a change of pace, I didn’t use Tanno Vik or
Yuun much at all but
Tanno is definitely Dark side orientated. I guess after playing purely Light
side characters for so long I wanted to have some fun with dark side options,
and you can have some pretty
messed up fun indeed. Also I am actually seriously considering creating a
female character as either the a Sith Marauder or a Smuggler Scoundrel it’ll be a
bit weird romancing guys but then again it’s the same thing you’re just on the
other side.
Companion's play a large part in your class story, but you don't always have to do things that get their approval.
I actually regret not promoting Aric to Lieutenant now as
when I decided to promote Elara that was for the selfish reason of trying to
curry favour to get into bed with her, but that was the time previously where
you needed to build influence with your Companions in order to continue their
story but now this happens progressively as you complete each story chapter. So
anyway after that it was on to Corellia, another city planet with a confusing layout like Coruscant. The
story was mostly about the Empire vs Republic and the showdown with General Rakton which I
and the forces of the Republic collectively kick his ass, I’m not sure whether
I killed him or sent him to jail but I think it was the latter. At some point I
had decided to replace my green
striped armor with orange striped armor and a new helmet in an attempt to
standardize the squad colours in preparation for the coming grandiose
congratulatory ceremony and meeting with the Supreme Chancellor.I decked my
squadmates out pretty well all except for Yuun who had appropriate
armor on but I forgot to change the colour, oh well, they still looked good.
Havoc squad in full force
I’m finding the new adaptive/customisable gear vendors on the fleet are a great
source of custom gear as an alternative to the Cartel Market especially when
you hit level 60 where you start receiving only Knight of the Fallen Empire
gear which all looks the damn same. I’m basically building collection a set of
‘Outlander’ and upgrading it as I obtain more gear from the Command crates
though I’ll have to work out how to get the gear to the character as the Fallen
Empire chapters are basically just go-go-go and I have no idea when the first
mailbox is though I suspect it’s at the Gravestone but even then
that’s a couple of chapters in. I have decided to do Knights
of the Fallen Empire on my Trooper as I want to see what it’s like when you
do it with a non-force user though I feel like doing it with my Imperial Agent
as I reckon he’s my favourite character at the moment.
Doin my part for the battle of Coreillia
So that was that, end of the storyline for my Trooper, three
class stories down, 5 to go, hopefully I get through em. It was then on to my
Consular Sage who was sporting some pretty cool looking white and bronze gear.
With the start of the Consular Chapter 2, I was tasked with finding a group of
leaders of various planets trying to break away from the Republic called
the“Rift Alliance” and to do this I was to be a Jedi Master! so I graciously
accepted of course then went to their ship which was being attacked by the
Empire so I saved them and met them all, one of which was a future companion Nadia Grell
which was odd as she is the last companion you get so it was strange to see her
so early. Then they end up being passengers on my ship, geez I don’t even think
the Defender
had enough bunks. I enjoyed the process though as in this chapter I’m really
doing a lot of mediation work and keeping all these ambassadors happy, which is
fun because some don’t trust me and it involves a few arguments. So we first
went to Balmorra to assist Tai Cordan and met the future
companion Zenith
who is a Balmorran resistance fighter. So I go to war with Darth
Lachris (again) and reluctantly slash through her fit body with my
lightsaber (though all female bodies of that size are the same really) and pick
up Zenith along the way who I now use as a ranged tank. At one point I decided
to use the ever popular adaptive gear vendor to make myself a new more-consular
style armor set which looked pretty good with the orange highlights.
I like this shot, even if my armor is a bit glitchy
So then I’m off to Quesh and finished it off pretty fast and
I also find out Nadia has force aptitude, then we go to Hoth after yet another costume
change from the adaptive gear vendor. This time I added this really strange
headpiece which seems to be some sort of weird leather visor around my head but
It’s cool and as it’s highly unusual think it looks ok on the consular. On Hoth
I defeat some more Rift Alliance enemies and another companion, Lieutenant Felix
Iresso, I save the King and Queen of Sarkhai and also find out that one of
the Rift Alliance ambassadors on my ship Blaesus is a special Sith called a
“Child of the Emperor” and I kill him and another random Sith called Lord
Kyrus. And that was that for the chapter, next up I’m back to the Academy again
to check on the Noetikons.
Lookin good, me of course not that guy's arse
Bounty Hunter time again and from what I can remember I was
still on the perpetual-night-time-though-only-for-the-Sith-Empire-instance
planet of Taris. Here is where I had met Torian
Cadera and we were hunting his dad cause his dad was on the bounty hunter
blacklist so after a pretty cool scavenger hunt over Taris to find Jincoln
Caldera, Torian and I found him and turned him over to the Mandalorians. Not
much else happened though I managed to do the heroics on this planet and soon
it was on to Quesh for a very
short amount for a very short amount of class story where I am invited to
endorse some battle stims then find out it’s a republic trap, I also did the
planet storyline which didn’t take too long. It was then on to Hoth and I
defeat a Trandoshan
Warrior with the help of Blizz the Jawa
who then joins the crew. I didn’t finish off the story but I did re-mod the old
orange and maroon insect themed outfit I had on before it got outdated rather
quickly as now I am level 70 I won’t be getting any new armor.
Heroics again, I like this shot
Now it was time for Knights of the Eternal Throne except this time
on my Sith Inquisitor, not that it’s much different from a Jedi really it’s
just down to the choices you make, and I did make some different choices this
time. Firsty I decided to kill Supreme Chancellor Suresh instead of sending her
to jail, I also decided to leave Vette
to die instead of Torian and possibly most important of all, I decided to rule
the galaxy as an emperor instead of heal it as a peace keeper. Surprisingly
this didn’t give my allies too much ire of me, Theron and Lana and everyone else just
seemed to accept it with no private conversation expressing anything, and now
they say “May the Force serve you” wow. So after that I went to do the brief Iokath storyline where this
time I sided with the Empire of course, and this time Jace Malcolm got the old hot
seat messin’ with the Iokath chairs. But after that was finished I had had enough
and moved on.
A lot goin on in this shot
Before I have been thinking a bit about what I’m going to do
with the future of my characters and SWTOR in general, specifically with my
Jedi Guardian and Sith Inquisitor, I can’t call them ‘max level’ characters as
because of the ridiculous speed in which you level up almost all of my
characters are max level now . Anyway they have now both done their individual
class stories, Ilum/False Emperor story,Rise of the Hutt Cartel/Makeb Expansion, Rhakgoul Outbreak, The Dread
War, Shadow of Revan, Knights of the Fallen Empire/Eternal Throne and the
Iokath war. There’s always something to play when I come back to them but once
I’ve finished that do I stay and look for more things to do, operations?
flashpoints? other high level content? Etc I guess it depends what’s currently going
on in the server, whenever I’m on the fleet on whatever character I’m always
checking the chat to see which ops
(aka raids) are going on but with less and less people it’s getting harder..
And that’s what did, While playing my Imperial Agent Sniper I saw a call out
for the last boss of The Ravagers Raid, Coratanni. So I moved to my
Assassin and did the raid, I was a bit disappointed that it was only the last
boss, but I still managed to get to Rishi first and get the main quest in order
to complete it and boy did I also get a lot of command xp and items.
The Ravagers Raid final boss, Coratanni
Now back to what could possibly be my favourite character at
the moment, my Imperial Agent Sniper, you may have
seen in my previous post that I had finished Balmorra and you may also know that
because I did this on a two week special event of triple xp while levelling I
was level 61 when I finished the planet. I decided that I had levelled too fast
and acquired all of my abilities too quickly. I also wasn’t happy with a lot of
choices I had made on the way and decided this time to go full badass. My
reasoning for this was if I was going Dark side on my Sage then I have to go
Dark on at least one Empire character and technically my character is supposed
to be a cyborg but I was roleplaying that I’m actually a droid so I got no
feelings, which definitely makes things easier. The other thing that makes
things easier is thatKaliyo as annoying as she is prefers the Dark side
options so this was good at least. So I decided to cut my losses and transfer
any items I wanted and sell off any I didn’t or were bound to me. Unfortunately
I had already put on my Series 212 Cybernetic
set binding it to me so I had to buy the damn things again but I had all the
credits that I needed so I bought it again and thankfully it wasn’t too
expensive. I also might have to end up wearing the a helm similar to the Citidel Duelist’s
set which I wore on my Sith Assassin as it’s a perfect helm both with voice
modulation and even moving droid eyeballs though it’s a shame I already used it
with my Assassin, the only other ones that could come close would be the helm
from this setand that helm which looks like General
Grievous which I’ve forgotten the name of.
Kaliyo and me, a entertaining relationship
And so I started again going through Hutta, Dromund Kass and
then Balmorra making different choices along the way and boy was I bad, I can’t
think of any light side choices I made. Speaking of Light and Dark side
choices, I may have mentioned this before but on my Sage I am going Dark Side,
but I forgot to set myself as “Fighting for the Dark side” on my “Force
Alignment” feature thingy so I ended up just gaining more light side points
which I didn’t want. So now I don’t know what I’m going to do I wanted to see
my Jedi Sage all evil with the Dark side effects on his face but I’ve wasted
all this time going Light side and I don’t think I’ll ever get be able to get
to full Dark unless of course I want to go through every expansion like I have
with my Guardian and Assassin. I am going full Dark with my agent though there
are a couple of problems, as you might have seen I got the “White pupil” cartel
market item for my Agent who is supposed to be secretly a droid, and one of the
first effects of dark side corruption is yellow eyes, so there goes that side
of the corruption as I’m not getting rid of my white eyes, and then of course
I’m going full on droid so I won’t see anything anyway which sucks, so If I
don’t get my Sage onto the Dark face (heh) I’ll have to do it with either a
Marauder or Smuggler. Anyway so I conquered Balmorra and killed Grand Marshall Cheketta this
time and boinked Darth
Lachris for the third time and it looks like I’ve still got the Balmorra
bonus series to do but then my subscription ran out.
You makin fun of me boy? These eyes will be the last thing you ever see.
After some deliberation I have decided to get HK-51 on my Agent as he uses a
Sniper Rifle and with us both as Droids we’d go well together though I’m not
looking forward to the questline
as it seems pretty involved, I hope I can get someone to help me. But anyway
that will be in the next time I get on my Agent, for now it’s on to my Guardian
and the mysterious ‘Crisis on Umbara’ flashpoint of Game update 5.4.
Hello
again, it’s me JD here with more updates from my world of Star Wars the Old
Republic or maybe my galaxy of. Anyway as you have probably read the Knights of
the Eternal Throne 5.0
patch is now live bringing with it the next chapter in the Infinite Empire
series, you’re now up against Vaylin and blah blah blah I’ll get to on my Jedi
Knight later. You can also now level up to 70 which to be perfectly honest I
couldn’t give a rats, I remember the first expansion in WoW where you could
level to 70 and everyone lost their shit but even now in SWTOR I’m like mreh,
I’m not quite sure why I think it was just the whole Epic/Flying mount and
raiding thing when you got up to max level or maybe just the achievement of
going the distance to make it to max level. But now in SWTOR you level so
goddamn fast that you don’t even notice and also because SWTOR is much more
story focused the milestones seem to come with the story more than the levels.
Knight of the Eternal Throne graphic
There is
also the new Galactic Command system, this is basically your go-to screen for
Endgame as you can access anything from Flashpoints to Galactic Starfighter,
almost everything you do in the game now gives you “Command XP” I think it’s
something to do with you having gained the Eternal Throne and are now in
command of the galaxy or something like that. So anyway you gain command points
and every new level you get Command crates which contain items including modded
and unmodded gear, crew skills schematics, reputation items etc, these are
quite useful and I have added quite a bit of custom gear to my legacy storage
which I really need to use as it’s getting a bit crowded in that storage space.
There is also the Dark vs Light system where you can choose to fight for the
Dark or Light side of the force, this has no bearing on your character’s personal
Force alignment so basically I just fight for the light side all the time, I
suspect it may usually be the weaker of the bunch, you gain points in either
side by doing pretty much anything and if your side “wins” you get a boost to
command experience, it’s just a sort of passive system like when you used to
wear a tabard to champion a faction in WoW, there are now new Dark and Light
Side vendors and also bosses that appear around the galaxy as well.
The Galactic Command menu
So without
further ado we start off with my Trooper who is currently up to level 55 and
was starting out on Hoth which
went well without a hitch, only thing notable to report was the recruitment of Yuun a GandFindsman who was actually
already in the Republic. It was around this time actually that I re-enlisted
for the security key, for my SWTOR account, I figured I’d give it another try
since I really wanted those companion appearance customizations , I’ve been
using it on my phone again and haven’t had a problem since. So I decided I’d
give some characters new looks just to be different from others, I gave M1-4X a new heavier more painted
looking model and gave Yuun a new greenish tone look with removed mouth pipes, Aric Jorgan
and Elara
Dorne I left the same, Tanno Vik’s change was so minimal that I didn’t even
bother.
Yuun, a Gand Findsman
So after Hoth it was time for the culmination of part 2 of the Trooper Storyline
where Havoc Squad was tasked with the destruction of the Imperial Superweapon
the Gauntlet which was one of those space station or ship missions in between
the planets and we actually used that briefing room on theBT-7
Thunderclap though I don’t know why we needed that many seats.This
went pretty much as planned though it seemed depending on the choices you made
one of your squad members would be seriously injured. It turned out to be Aric
though I guess it wouldn’t have happened to Elara or M1-4X as that would have
been out of character for them.
Is that two M14X's i see there? oh c'mon I know he's usually in this room but damn that's lazy
.
Is he really ok? the looks of him writhing around like that he didn't seem so good.
At this time I was using M1-4X
as my tank styled bodyguard who is basically a Republic fanatic, I even
garnered some Dark side points executing republic traitors though it felt good
to do so, I then completed Directive-7
a long but worthwhile flashpoint about a droid uprising and had some fun with
my guild members duelling on our flagship, it’s kind of sad now to think back
to those times when they were actually around. The it was on to Chapter 3 where
the Republic is now at war again as the Imperial General Rakton has invaded
several Republic planets and Havoc squad is required to go toBelsavis to recover a squad of
pilots called Dagger Wing which I did before finding out that my old squeeze
Sergeant Jaxo is in trouble and I had to go rescue her and that’s about where I
got up to on my Trooper.
Man Belsavis is a cool looking planet
So then it
was back to my Bounty Hunter and I did Directive 7 yet again except this time
in solo mode the only problem with this is you don’t get as good loot as if you
were doing it with a group. It was then on to Alderaan and boy I had a lot of
fun dealing with all the house and family drama on there. It was around this
time that I started experimenting with different armor sets as I was a bit sick
of what I was wearing currently and decided to try out some new gear. I always
had this idea of making my character into a droid as it would be fun to play a
droid character so when looking around I found out about the Cybernetic gear sets which
were almost perfect though I had to choose the Series 212 Cybernetic
as the better looking ones because others such as the Series 512 were
hella expensive on the GTN.
Well are you two gonna help or what?
So I tried out the set but found I didn’t really
like it on my Bounty Hunter and would instead use it on my future Imperial Agent Sniper where I
think it will look much better especially with that Sniper Rifle, very HK-51-esque. So went looking on
the GTN and
found some interesting looking pieces that looked sort of like some kind of
‘insect’ theme to it and it looked pretty cool when I painted it purple and
orange, took me a damn while to decide which colour was primary but it looked
good anyway. Though before long I did all of the heroic quests for the planet,
which below level 60 give you new armor pieces which is pretty damn cool, so I
ended up getting rid of that armor that I’d modded up and using the new stuff
although that helmet makes both Mako and I look like we have KFC buckets on our
heads. Speaking of heroics, I have found recently that when you hit level 60
the rewards for Heroics turn into supply crates which are used in the Knights
of the Fallen Empire expansion which to be honest are actually pretty damn
useless to my character at the moment but on the flipside wew I can conquer
more Star Fortresses XD.
The helmet actually has a moving 'jaw' under those tubes which is creepy
So anyway
on Alderaan I was looking for someone called the “Durasteel Duke” but he ended
up being dead already, after that I was ready for the final part of Chapter 1.
So I was tasked with killing this Jedi and went to a ship and found my Arch
Nemesis Tarro Blood in
the ship’s brig, which I then had an interesting choice of fighting him or
leaving him in the cell to die which I did much to Mako’s pleasure. After
killing the Jedi I went back to good old Dromund Ass as was crowned
the Grand Champion of the Great Hunt by that Wookie and soon I was off to meet Mandalore the Vindicated himself
aboard his ship. On the ship there was a meeting between all of the tournament
champions which was held by Mandalore, where he then instructed me to go BACK
to Dromund Kass to kill this big monster and I happened to meet Torian
Cadera so then I went back to good old ‘Mandy’loreand
then it was announced I now had access to the “Blacklist” a list of the most
notorious high profile target which sends me to Taris which in the Empire side is
in perpetual darkness for some reason where I’m looking for a man called
Jincoln Cadera (yes he’s related to Torian) and do a bit of Enemy at the Gates
style cat-and-mouse snipering wars. The Planet storyline involved a Sith Lord
and his brat apprentice who is always trying to show you up which I remembered
from doing it on my Sith Inquisitor and that’s basically where I finished up.
W00t I am now Mandalore the something! that ale doesn't look very black to me
It was now
time for Guardians of the Galaxy 2! No actually it was time for Knights of the
Fallen Empire (KOTFE), Empire style! yes it was time for my Sith Inquisitor to
start the storyline for the Empire point of view. I’ll mention that I decided
to give my Sith Assassin a slimming down as I originally had him as a large
bodied character as he was supposed to be a tank but since I’m DPS on every
single character now and don’t even need to bother tanking with groups I
decided that a stealthy assassin would look much better with the average build
instead of looking like He-man. Doing the KOTFE storyline from the Empire side
wasn’t too much different apart from the start, there were only minor conversation
changes etc, I actually went Dark side using Valkorion a few times.
Hi Maul, lookin good.
I also
enjoyed finally getting out of my armor with that droid-like Citidel
Duelist’s helm which I’m actually going to end up using with my droid
outfit on my Assassin. It was fun to just take off random parts of the armor as
they got upgraded just to see what it looked like. I ended up with some very
non-Sith style military armor with an almost bucket-like helm but it was all a
laugh and I could get new armor whenever I wanted though I wouldn’t bother as
it’ll get upgraded again with the next part of the expansion. There was some
special event on for killing Dread Master Bestia
though my group wasn’t able to but I did find out I could disappear by using
the vanish ability and save many a repair bill. I also did probably the most Star Fortresses I’ve
done, more then on my Jedi and after that and defeating Arcann, that was it,
speaking of Arcann, it was much easier after reading up on what to do.
Then it was
time to get back on my moderately evil Jedi Consular Sage Qxan. I finished off Alderaan, I managed
to get to be a representative of House Teral and gained
access to the peace summit of the Alderaanian leaders in order to stop Jedi MasterSidonie
Garen from starting an all out war. I killed her as usual for good measure
and I can’t quite remember but I’m pretty sure I killed Bouris Ulgo this time at
least I hope I did after letting him live all these other times, I’m supposed
to be evil aren’t I? anyway. Then it was on to Tatooine
without much ado successfully formed a group with others for all the heroic
quests and I killed yet another Jedi Master who was under the control of Lord Vivicar who had a
strong kinship with the sand people.
I do some heroic quests on Tatooine, look at that do-rag looool
Soon after doing that Master Yuon Par and I had the breakthrough
we needed and I boarded Vivicar’s ship and battled through the brainwashed
Republic and Empire forces to get to him. When he was defeated however I was
faced with a difficult choice. Vivicar had infected dozens of other Jedi
Masters and if I killed him they would all die with him, or I could try to
shield him as before and make myself weaker, well phuc dat, I killed the tard
and indeed I did get a message for Master Syo Bakarn listing all of the Jedi
that had perished because of this but screw it I’m hard as fack. Funnily enough
this could not be further from what you actually sound like in the game as the
male Jedi Consular sounds as straight and honorable as possible and playing a
bad guy in some parts makes it all the more weird exactly like playing a good
guy Sith, my Light/Dark ratio is more tilted to the Light Side but that’s
because I’m always fighting for the Light side. After that I kitted myself out
in some new armor and that was it.
I end Lord Vivicar like a boss, Qyzen approves.
Now after
this you would have thought that I would go directly to my Jedi Knight to do
Knights of the Eternal Throne, but no I was too excited to start an Imperial Agent and use my droid armor set which I
mentioned earlier. I noticed that the character creation screen has been
updated as per the change that required you to pick your advanced class
straight away. I had decided long before to go Sniper as theOperative has
similar sort of playstyle to my Sith Assassin but I’ll do that when I play a
Smuggler, also an Imperial Agent Sniper is the only one which can use Sniper
Rifles, so It was a no brainer really hah. I went with the Marksmanship as I wanted to be a full on
Sniper and didn’t want to bother with droids or poisons though technically the Engineering tree might have gone well with my
droid suit but meh I wanna strike from the shadows and take em down fast, and
that’s exactly what I did.
The Advanced Class info screen when creating a character
The Imperial Agent starts on Hutta just like the
Bounty Hunter, I walked into the same shitty cantina as last time and spoke to
the leader of Sith intelligence ‘Keeper’,
I was then charged with bringing Nem’ro the Hutt to the side of the Empire. I
started off with one hellova gun for a starting weapon, looked sort of like a
science-fiction version of a winchester Rifle. So I ran around and I shot a lot
of people etc and I got my first companion the infamous Kaliyo Djannis who is quite the
disrespectful bitch though so must you be if you want to curry favor with her
which made for a bit of an annoying but fun experience with conversations. I
decided to go with Armstech
and Scavenging as the gathering skill (saving slicing for last on my Smuggler probably) generally these
days because you level so goddamn fast trade skills don’t make things of much
worth unless you get really high in them. I did The Black Talon and ended up
killing the captain this time just for the hell of it which was a bit scary but
meh had to see that version of the story and man killing that Jedi brat is damn
satisfying.
Well it's this shithole again ooh at least I got a sweet gun
I arrived in Dromund Ass and
decided that I now would try out my droid armor set which consisted of the Series 212 Cybernetic
set and a similar style helm from the Brutal Executioner
set which I paid a hefty 300,000 credits for. So I modded it all up thenpainted the whole set black and white which
looked pretty cool except unfortunately although your whole head was covered my
voice still came out normal not with the static crackle when you were usually
wearing a helmet. I think this may have been because it is actually a Sith helm
and also someone did suggest a different helm, so ah well back to the drawing
board there goes fackin 300k though but it’s not like broke the bank, I don’t
really spend credits on much anyway. The quests I did do using that helm and
armor set were fun looking like a droid, there was this ridiculous moment where
I had to seduce a ministers daughter and we shared a kiss with me in my robo
Sith helm and presumably had robo sex afterward, ouch heh. I mostly played with
Kaliyo as a tank to distract the attackers so I could shoot them which worked
well.
I still think that helm looks awesome lol
So I looked
around for some more helms, I found a very “General Grievous” style helm one
that this
guy used to make a droid outfit though unfortunately it wasn’t an adaptive
gear version, when looking on TOR
Fashion which is a great resource for SWTOR gear details btw I found a helm
called the Enigmatic
Hero’s Mask worn very well in an outfit similar to mine by this guy,
in fact I’ll probably be making something very similar as that helm looks damn
good, though as it’s probably from a cartel pack hopefully I can find it and
it’s not too expensive. Though the problem with modding up adaptive gear for a
special outfit is that you always come across gear that is better but don’t
want to change it cause you want the set, it’s part of that age-old dilemma of
better-but-ugly gear vs worse-but-good-looking gear and the other thing was you
get gear sets from doing heroics so there was that too. So I decided to leave
my droid outfit till later and wear what I had, I also bought one of the Meirm
speeders as it was cheap and a purple colour which suited my agent though he
looked of silly.
Wooo silly looking speeder lol
So continuing the story I metDarth Jadus, infiltrated Lord Grathan’s estate and then inevitably went into the Dark
Temple to stop a terror plot then found that Darth Jadus ship had been blown up
and this bloke called "The Eagle" a former Imperial fighter pilot was behind it.
I was promoted to a Cipher Agent and got the X-70B Phantom ship which is freakin
cool I might add possibly the sleekest coolest looking player ship in the game.
Then it was on to Balmorra
and I guessed that I’d just be hunting down associates of this Eagle fellow
from now and I did indeed do that. I infiltrated a Terrorist cell on the planet,
killed one of the Eagle Lieutenants and helped the Empire win Balmorra along
the way. I did more heroics and went through more gear changes though I changed
my rifle with one from the GTN as I was sick of using the same one.
Now that's a cool ship
I ran into an issue that there was currently an event on
where you get triple xp or something ridiculous so I ended up breaking level 63
on finishing Balmorra. This was utterly ridiculous Balmorra is supposed to be
levels 16-20 for facks sake, I kind of wished I hadn’t started my agent during
this time especially when I was next going to be playing my Jedi Knight who was
already at max level. Thank fack this isn’t world of Warcraft who don’t have
the area-balancing feature so I’d be in an area for like a few quests before
moving on either that or constantly be doing grey quests for shite all rewards.
It’s taken away the joy of getting new abilities as at this rate I’ll be max
level well before the end of chapter 1 and not be able to look forward to
anything new. In any case that’s where I left off on my Agent and finally it
was time for….
I did Cademimu on my Agent, one thing I had to get used to was one of the abilities bars changing every time you went into "cover" mode so when changing abilities you have to make sure you did both normal and "cover" mode.
Knight of the Eternal Throne! Yes it was a long time coming,
but first I had to update my crew skills and give my armor a re-dye hahaha.
****BEWARE SPOILERS AHEAD*** As I mentioned before Vaylin is now on the Throne
with SCORPIO by her side
the her first plan of attack was Voss
so all the bros and hos from the Alliance rolled up to that planet and started
kicking ass, it turns out that Vaylin chose Voss because she somehow knew that
this is where Senya and
had run to, to try and heal Arcann.
I enjoyed the new ‘vehicle’ mechanic where you pilot an assault walker and kick
ass along the way. We end up successfully defending Voss and receive a
mysterious call from Darth
Acina the new ruler of the Sith Empire and you travel or Dromund Ass for
talks of a possible alliance, though while talking to her privately your
shuttle is ambushed with suspected treachery from those who dislike the idea.
So you skip and jump through the storm on Dromund Ass near to Ass City then
kill those responsible. You then go to the planet of Iokath which was the original planet for the GEMINI droids, SCORPIO, the Eternal
Fleet and the Gravestone and wow this place is so amazing and you find
robots and monoliths and a whole bunch of other stuff and it’s very 2001 a
Space Odyssey-esque almost. The planet is now run by this guy called ARIES but
you defeat him then SCORPIO takes over and that’s the last we see of her for
awhile.
Piloting the big robot on Iokath, I enjoyed these new "vehicle" based sections as the broke up the usual routine of play.
While doing this I made a new armor set for myself and decided to use
up some of my dyes so used an orange and light blue one which made myself look
absolutely ridiculous but it was funny. There was an interesting mission next
involving infiltrating Vaylin’s coronation party on Zakuul where you and Theron
are disguised as Zakuul Knights and you had to sneak you way into the party and
destroy it from within Mission-impossible style where you came face to face
with Arcann and have another fight with Vaylin’s forces. Then you head to Nathema the Birthplace of the
Emperor, where Valkorion
sent Vaylin to be trained in the force to look for a way to stop Vaylin though
you run into her again.
I am arrested by the fashion police
When you get back the whole base on Odessen is being attacked by
Vaylin’s forces and you fight your way through though you have to make a
decision of which comrade to save with the other getting killed. I then had a
final confrontation with Vaylin and defeated her with help from Arcann and
Senya, woo. It wasn’t over then though you journeyed back to Zakuul with Arcann
and Senya and go to the Eternal Throne where you then enter your own mind to
‘repair’ it and prevent Valkorion from taking over your mind. This battle was
long and kind of complicated with all the different things you had to do but
eventually you persevered and Valkorion was gone for good.
Myself as Valkorion inside my own mind
You then get the option of ‘Healing
the Galaxy as a Peacekeeper” or “Ruling as an Emperor” and of course I went for
the Light Side option for first go though it made little difference in the end.
There is a kind of epilogue afterwards as patch 5.2 brought in a new storyline
where the Empire and the Republic return to Iokath to obtain a “superweapon of
unimaginable power” and you as the leading of the Alliance have to choose
whether to aid the Republic or Empire, so I guess with the Eternal Empire gone
it’s back to that is it? Oh well good to be back to normal, there was a very
brief couple of story missions then it basically changed to dailies. It appears
that Bioware are bringing back raiding as there is a new operation ‘Gods from
the Machinebased on Iokath but the only
boss so far is only the God of Rage ‘Tyth’. I’m
glad to see these features back as hopefully maybe my old guildmates will
return, I haven’t really done any operations at all lately the last one being
probably failing at Bestia. There are still places that I have to complete or
even just see for the first time notably The
Dread Palace, The Ravagers, Temple of Sacrifice and the new one on Iokath
of course. Doing operations isn’t my forte, but I like seeing all the content
at least once
The Eternal Alliance! Looks like they forgot to pose Senya, also I got some better looking armor for my position thankfully
So now we come full circle back to my
Trooper, I usually just go through all the characters only once in a post but
since this is where I left off in the Subscription I may as well detail what I
have done. So I finished off the Belsavis bonus series then hopped off the
planet where I found I had to rescue some prisoners of war including my old
fling Sergeant Jaxo which was apparently a trap set by that bstard General Rakton . Then I had this
agonizing choice of saving her or all the rest of the prisoners, though it
wasn’t that hard I was with Elara now so felt that I
could now let go of Jaxo, and it was the right thing to do as well.
Kapow! (I like this shot)
I then
decided then I really needed a new armor set as I was sick of the silly looking
outfit with the ‘radioman’ scout backpack and the hat with goggles and
earmuffs, I annoyingly had to start Voss before doing this and level up to 65
so I could get the best mods. So after doing this I purchased the Stalwart Protector
set from the Cartel Market and bought a helm from the cartel market. The helm
was a bit shabby and battle-damaged looking for the set but it looked alright,
I also got the Czerka CZX-4
Blaster Rifle as I had been wanting to use one of the Czerka weapons for
ages but was just put off by the green colour. In response to this I actually
coloured the highlights on my armor a Dark green to match it and it ended up
looking pretty good. I actually found that there was an
“adaptive gear vendor” on the fleet, which sold adaptive gear sets for all
classes, so I could use them as well as the Cartel Market and GTN if I needed a
new armor set.
My new armor and Czerka blaster rifle
So then I swaggered back to Voss and
was dealt with another political situation where this uppity-ass Senator who
was keeping Troops near the planet in firm belief that the Empire was going to
invade. So I did the usual Voss storyline as well as winning the favour of the
Voss from the Empire who was up to no good. Unfortunately when I finished I had
not yet done the heroics as I could not get anyone to do them with me though I
guess it doesn’t matter that much as you only receive supply crates after level
65. So that was that really my subscription ran out in good timing, next up is
Coreillia and the conclusion of my class storyline for the Trooper, this will
be my third one now and looking forward to it.
A mission in a cave on Voss
Well hoooweee that’s one hell of a
post right on 4500 words! Well I guess it’s been a while between posts, well I
guess it has been almost exactly one year since the last one so it’s basically
summing up a year’s playing. Well get ready people cause Knights of the Fallen
Empire is finally over and we’re back to the good old Republic vs Empire and
operations woo, hopefully we see a lot more people coming back to the game but
only time will tell…
Greetings again, it seems a very short time to be updating
on my Old Republic happenings but I guess there’s no harm in keeping up to date
especially with the big new expansion that has been introduced. Yes Knights of the Fallen Empire
(KOTFE) and boy is there some huge changes as I did mention last time. Update
4.0 brought with it a wealth of new changes. Most prominent being the new
“more RPG” style (KOTFE) storyline.
New loading screen!
I had a bit of a rant in my guild Eternal
Oblivion’s forum which I will go over
here as well. Speaking as a person who liked the game the way it was, a Star
Wars MMO, I've never played Knights of the Old Republic and honestly didn't
feel the need for a huge hoo-haa into more involved story. Wasn't there enough
story in SWTOR already? it had ten times more voice acting and cutscenes then
WoW ever had, all you got in WoW most of the time was a box with scrolling
text. Now that I’ve played a bit of the new expansion I will go into it later
but I can say it’s definitely not bad though not that much of a change to
things really as it’s still an MMO and you can still do most things that you
used to be able to. Also I have obtained KOTOR from GOG.com and will be interested to see the comparison.
Knights of the Fallen Empire Trailer E3 2015
You can now level faster than ever before as I’m not sure
what the precise number is but your Main story and the Planet story “arc”
questlines give a huge amount of experience allowing you to level up to 60 by
just doing these missions. Of course I originally thought this was terrible as
you would level too fastand they
actually had a way to stop this by purchasing a special artefact from a Gree
vendor on the Fleet that was meant to stop the extra experience but I soon
stopped doing this because of another change they made to the levelling. This
“Planet Level Sync” is one of my favourite changes, this automatically lowers
your characters level to slightly higher than the planet’s maximum level for
quests and adjusts your Stats, Armor and Damage to reflect this. You also earn
scaled experience, so no matter how high I am for the planet the mobs and
missions still give experience to my level. So I decided to just go all out and
do every quests like I usually do but as I was questing on my Sage I noticed I
was only getting my main story and planet arc quests.
I still like to do the bonus series'
After looking it up
online I then realised the non story arc and ‘bonus series’ quests are now
titled “exploration missions” andyou
need to click a button on your map to reveal these which is kind of annoying as
I forgot about this with my Trooper too but should be fine once I’ve turned
them on for all characters. But doing all this as I had done before along with
the “exploration” and bonus series missions and also using up experience boosts
I had means that you level ridiculously fast, to give an example my Sage is
currently level 53 and doing level 28 quests on Alderran, as some have said at
this rate you’re going to get to 60 before you even finish the first chapter of
your class story. Which would be ok except I actually liked having less
abilities, I’m gaining them so quickly now it’s just too hard to manage, like
stuff I don’t even bother with as you won’t need it till late game when you
eventually get there.
Alderaan was originally for levels 28-32 and I've just started it and I'm level 53, I said it once and I'll say it again, thank god for planet sync
Heroic missions have also been changed as now they only
really need two people to complete and they are available in the field from
npc’s of course but also available all at once from a heroic mission console
near the main base. When you have them tracked here is also a very handy
ability that warps you to where the heroic mission is. I found what happens
then is that you just ask in general chat “who’s up for heroics?” and you get a
group of two or more people and do them all at once.
Gettin them heroics done quick.
They now give an almost
complete set of arm which is dps or tank or dps or heal depending on your
class, though the downside is this armor is blue (prototype) rather than orange
(custom) so there’s a bit of a lack of custom gear around for a few reasons,
the first is because of the heroics giving out blues, me doing flashpoints in
solo mode and getting green (premium) and blue items and also the fact that
there is no more basic commendation gear vendors they only sell modifications
now but you can still buy the custom gear from the GTN. Here’s a guide to gear
colours in case you didn’t know the names as I often forget, thanks to CaptRogue from
the Shadowlands server for their excellent up-to-date gear guide.
Green items are Premium. Blue items are Prototype. Orange items are Custom. Purple items are Artefact.
Companions have now had a big overhaul, affection has been
replaced by ‘influence’
so it works apparently like Dragon Age where
instead of the companion’s “affection” for you going down when you choose to do
something they don’t like, you still gain influence it just comes up saying
they approve or disapprove, this still hasn’t deterred me from doing what my
companions prefer though. The other problem is if you originally had max
affection with one companion they start off at rank 10 which is 2100 influence,
more influence basically means the same as affection, they boost your presence stat and do their
tradeskills faster and better. This creates problems though in the character
progression as when I got to max affection I would have gotten the legacy
achievement and knew that I had seen all cutscenes and done all of that
companions side missions.
The companion legacy and missions screen on KOTFE
In the case of Elara Dorne for example
right before the path 4.0 I had gotten up to romancing her but after the patch
I couldn’t use any courting gifts on her and have not had any more cutscenes
with her. I have now found that Class Companion conversations will now unlock
based upon class story progression, rather than affection/influence thresholds
which is great to know so now I don’t have to build up on characters influence
to max so I can get all of the cutscenes with them. This is useful as I have
used Elara for quite a while and she amassing a bit too much influence (not to
mention all of the courting gifts I’m going to give her) if you ask me I need
to spread it around a bit.
As an affect of the new companion changes I was able to access all of my remaining companion conversations on my Assassin and Knight.
Some more changes include the fact that your companions gear
is now purely aesthetic, they no longer gain stats from it and their stats are
based on your level. I had mixed feelings about that at the start cause I loved
pimping out my companions and making them OP but now I can dress them up in
whatever I want which is hella fun, you can make them wear the craziest things
and give them awesome looking weapons too though there has been some changes to
what weapons different companions can use. When the patch first came in I got a
crapload of items in the mail that were previously worn by my companions, droid
armor was reduced to white vendor trash as armor slots which made no difference
to a companions appearance, such as droid armor, relics, earpieces etc was
removed, funnily enough with humanoid characters such as Qyzen Fess
you could still put gloves and boots on him although they didn’t show up.
Sometimes my companions still had some gear on, other times they didn’t most of
them were missing their pants for some reason which was weird. Also as well as
the armor they had, their original armor set that they had on when you
recruited them also came in the mail in case you wanted to dress them in that
which was nice.
Nice cape on Elara
Another change was that companions can now perform all three
combat roles with set abilities that are tied to their character type, for
example if you got Tanno Vik to heal he’d have the “tech-healer” set of
abilities whereas Kira Carsen would have the “light-force-healer”
abilities and Lord
Scourge would have “dark-force-healer” this works the same way with tanking
and dps they get a set of abilities appropriate to their character. Though it
doesn’t make some combinations any less ludicrous though like getting Talos
Drellik to tank or Khem Val to heal which really doesn’t make sense.
The other guy in my group sets his Lana companion to heal so I have my Senya as DPS, it's pretty useful as you can use whichever companion has the most influence for whichever role.
Flashpoints
(FPs) have also had a change, you can now do many of them in solo mode similar
to the Forged Alliances and Shadow of Revan patch FP’s which were previously
available to be Solo’ed as they were needed to be completed to advance in the
story. I love this change as now I can do all of the Flashpoints I miss out on
like The Battle of Ilum and The
False Emperor cause no-one wants to do them as they are old level 50 flashpoints
and everyone is already doing Shadow of Revan by that point. Additionally
almost every Flashpoint is now able to be done in tactical mode, which is great
(but also sad) as now you don’t need the “Holy Trinity” group of Tank, Healer
and DPS, but it’s still good as now I have almost no problem of doing lower
level flashpoints, I just pick the FP and look for a group. It’s weird cause
most of the time I select only one FP to do and I guess when it’s selecting a
random one for people it picks mine cause that’s the only one that’s selected.
I actually started doing every flashpoint I could in Solo mode as it’s just so
efficient but the problem is the gear just isn’t quite as good unless you do
the tactical version, I kind of forgot about this then realised I actually did
have the option of looking for a group if I wanted, must remember to do that in
the future.
Gault and I assault the Foundry with the very helpful GSI support droid.
The Primary stats, Strength, Cunning, Willpower etc are now
gone, replaced with the ‘Mastery’ stat, yes this is dumbing down of the game as
I didn’t see anything wrong with the primary stats but whatever. Datacrons are
now Legacy wide, so now you don’t have to bother getting the Fleet and Makeb
Datacrons for every character, thank god for that. Though there is one downside
as since you’re not going around collecting Matrix Shards they have removed
Matrix cubes from the game so you need another artefact to replace the one you
had. Gear commendations have now been changed to crystals which doesn’t make
too much difference apart from getting them confused with crafting crystals but
it’s good to know you can purchase mods right up to the level you are at. Crew
skills have also undergone a few changes, there was heaps to pickup from the
trainer. All of the old schematics are moved into an “Archive” folder and all
armor, weapons and accessories made are now either Prototype or Custom and are
“Adaptive” meaning they adjust to your character classes armor type . Material
requirements have been changed around and you now create “Components” which is
used to create new gear. I realised on my Trooper with these new changes that I
wouldn’t be able to make Droid armor anymore as there was no point, which made
the whole idea of Cybertech pretty redundant but there are other cool things
that I can make, I can’t make armouring anymore unfortunately but Enhancements
are now exclusive to Cybertechs.
Cybertech, now not so useful, or exciting
So all in all some interesting changes, now that I got that
out of the way it’s back to character progression and I continue with my
Trooper who was just getting started on chapter two of the storyline which was
about stopping a new superweapon called ‘The Barrager’ that the Empire had
created to destroy entire fleets from a planets surface . So I travelled to Balmorra, a
sun-drenched war-torn grassy and rocky world and enlisted the help of a
‘demolitions expert’ who was none other than Tanno Vik
who has quite a shady personality and paid little or no heed to my authority much to the ire of Elara. I pondered doing some dark things
eventually doing one where I sold off some weapons for profit instead of giving
them to the republic which to be honest was kind of unfulfilling with the puny
amount of credits made though I suppose it scales to the level but man I could
have guessed it was trying to tell you it was the wrong thing to do.
Tanno Vik, doesn't like authority, at least he's on our side.
I then
travelled to Quesh
to rescue a team called the “Safecrackers” who could apparently disable the
superweapon. I also helped out the Republic defend themselves against attacks
from the Hutt Cartel and Empire. This also meant teaming up with a particular
Hutt and saving them from a Sith Lord. I rescue the Safecrackers and managed to
do The Red Reaper
instance as well, and that was it I must remember not to split up these blog
updates in between character sessions makes it look like I didn’t spend enough
time with one of them.
Ahh Quesh, a toxic nightmare as usual
And so it was back to Hxan my Jedi Knight and the Eternal
Empire expansion! Of course there was a couple of things I had to get through before that. For one as per the changes to companions with the conversations being based on story progression not affection I got to do all the rest of them all at once, and
then was the Ziost missions that
followed the Shadow
of Revan expansion.
Having a good old chat with your companions in your stronghold, fun times.
Previously I had completed the Yavin 4 missions that ended with
the supposed spirit of Emperor Vitiate
being thrust into the sky from a Massassi Temple on Yavin where he had tried to
usurp all life from the planet and failed but escaped into the galaxy. His
influence is then found on Ziost where Theron Shan goes to
investigate, then that’s when you come in. You both then investigate along with
Lana
Beniko and find that Vitiate is corrupting the minds of everyone on Ziost
including the force of Jedi that Theron brought with him and forcing them to do
his bidding, which through several encounters you manage to stop him briefly
through the use of a huge EMP. But in the end the coalition fails and you watch
as Vitiate destroys all life on the planet killing millions. You then can do
quite possibly the most lonely series of quests/dailies ever which involve
going back and investigating the dead world, man there was seriously no other
people there the first time I did it.
What a lonely world, even the lighting is greyed.
I got another set of gear which looked
identical to the Yavin
Pummeler gear I had though the stats were a bit better, I swear you get so
many sets of gear when doing expansions. I also headed to Ilum
to check out he Grey
Secant and do some Relics of the Gree Missions but found there wasn’t much
to do but there is some very nice reputation
rewards which I might look at getting later, that armor would look best on
an Imperial agent I bet. Speaking of armor, currently all of my companions were
wearing the Devoted allies
gear I had gotten them all from repeated running of the Yavin dailies and
weeklies to beef their stats up with new gear which was actually now redundant
because there was no more gear stats for companions, so before starting the
Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion I had found that the Devoted Allies
Force-Lord gear that I had given Kira was actually better
than my current gear. I think this was because although this gear used to be
Light Armor with Willpower as the main stat since the new patch it was now
marked as adaptable which means it changes stats to suit your class and also
its main stat was now mastery so could be used by any class.
Kira wearing an orange and white version of my old Yavin Pummeler gear.
So I gave my old Yavin and Citadel
pummeler gear sets to Kira and Lord
Scourge with an orange-and-white and red-and-black dye respectively and
they looked pretty cool. Meanwhile I put on Kira’s Devoted Allies
Force-Lord and man did I look ridiculous, the outfit is sort of like a
multi-layered robe with bandages, I reminded myself why I hid the helm while
Kira was wearing the armor as it had an odd looking Hutt-like hat with a hood
and a bandaged facemask. I was completely covered up to my eyes and with all
the bandages I looked like some sort of burns victim which would work well with
one of those hugely scarred faces you can create for your character, the helm
actually reminded me a lot of Pang
Tong from the Dynasty
Warriors games.
Awesome pose, silly armor
And so I went into the Knights of the Fallen Empire
expansion looking ridiculous, I’m going to explain the story from the Jedi
Knight point of view by the way as I know things might change for other
classes. So the expansion starts with a full on intro with that famous star
wars flying text with you and your crew heading into “Wild Space” investigating
something or other when you are set upon by the Eternal Empire,
meeting Darth Marr’s Fleet
along the way, on his ship you receive a interesting choice to tell you crew to
escape or have them stay, I told them to get out while they can of course being
the heroic Jedi Knight I am but am wondering what would happen if I had had
made them stay. So then your Fleet is overrun and you and your buddy Darth Marr
are captured Prince Arcann
who we’ve all seen in the trailer for KOTFE then we are brought before the
Eternal Throne where Emperor
Valkorion stands and I’m not going to spoil anything but you end up getting
frozen in carbonite for 5 years and when you come backthe entire Republic and Empire has been
defeated and it’s up to you to restore order, man no tall order huh?.
Darth Marr and I, the outfit seriously made me look fat, my huge chest and six-pack was for pretty much naught.
You have dreams while in carbonite, talking to Valkorion who
offers you many Dark Side choices of power, you are eventually awoken by Lana Beniko
who has come to rescue you and fill you in about what’s happened along with
your old buddy T7-01 who is the
only one of my crew still around. You also meet some new characters inc Koth
Vortena a Zakuul native and a smuggler who agrees to help Lana on her
seemingly impossible mission, Senya Tirall, wife of Valkorion and mother of his
children and Vaylin, who is
the sister of the twins Arcann
and Thexan. Knights of the
Fallen Empire is Divided into chapters
of which the first 9 were readily available via patch 4.0 with the others being
added later. So through the chapters you battle the Eternal Empire forces and
venture to some new planets including a gas giant where the city of Asylum was floating and Zakuul the capital of the
Eternal Empire itself, you take control of the Gravestone, and ancient
warship which was needed to take on the eternal fleet. After some run-ins with
Arcann and Vaylin and their Zakuul Knights, lots of talking and Dark/Light side
choices with Valkorion and a scene with Satele Shan in exile you eventually
escape the Eternal Empire’s forces and settle on Odessen with a contingency of
Republic Forces, Imperial Forces, Jedi and Sith alike similar to the alliance
on Yavin in the Shadow of Revan expansion.
My new crew and I discover the Gravestone and you are treated to the very first "montage" that I've seen in SWTOR
This time you are even more so the
focal point of the alliance and were able to do either an inspiring or
intimidating speech which was fun, it then gets complicated as you are
introduced to your base and alliance of various specialists. The ‘alliance’
base built into a cliff on the green world of Odessen is now basically your
central hub like the fleet platform was previously, as well as your regular
crew who were in the story before you are now introduced to many “specialists”
who run different parts of your alliance: Bey’Wan Aygo a
former republic general who commands the alliance military presence, Dr. Oggurobb (who
you may remember from the Makeb missions) an engineering specialist who heads
the science and tech team, Hylo
Visz a smuggler who takes care of the alliance supplies and Sana-rae, a Voss mystic who
curates the Force Enclave.
Admiring the Zakuul cityscape amongst other things...
Conversations are slightly different in the expansion as it
now looks a lot like Dragon Age as instead of a wheel you have black bars on
the top and bottom of the screen and a more plain list of multiple answers (up
to 4 now). Influence in KOTFE works a bit differently to the initial game, the
people you are speaking to are now “amused” or “will remember this” and you can
read the notes in the companion window. Speaking of which, the companion window
has been redesigned to support the “Alliance
system” it’s difficult to explain but you can influence with everyone and
can call anyone (apart from the specialists) to help you in combat. There is a
‘notifications’ section on the companions window which alerts you to various
missions you can do to find more companions to add to your alliance who are
mostly companions characters from other classes like Yuun or “new” characters like Nico Okarr.
The Alliance supplier and blockade runner Hylo Visz and the new conversation system.
Additionally the
companion alerts menu gives you ‘Star Fortress’ missions from Theron Shan, the
enemy has set up various Star
Fortresses above many planets under their control to subdue the population
and you must destroy them, when doing this you liaise with a characters you may
have met before on that particular planet and gain them as a companion. The
Star fortresses are basically short instances that need to be completed with
two people in order to defeat the npc in command the destroy them. I’ve
basically done all that I can up to a point, I think I ran out of something or
other that you needed to do daily missions on the planets to obtain supplies to
do the Star Forge mission. I used Lana most of the time as she is my most
“influenced” companion and managed to get enough credits to purchase a new set
of Outlander
Pummeler gear which I dyed pale yellow and along with my yellow crystal
lightsaber made a nice effect. I also managed to finally finish The Dread Fortress
defeating Dread Master Brontes and after destroying the
star fortress on Alderaan I
thought it was time to finish up on the Jedi Knight for now.
Running the Dread Fortress in my Outlander Pummeler Gear
It was then on to my Bountry Hunter Txan who if I recall was
up to Nar Shadaa, I still
have not been able to romance Mako
yet but I guess I’ll get there. While doing Nar Shadaa I completed the Directive 7
flashpoint (FP) in Tactical mode and the Boarding
Party FP in solo mode. I finished off the pretty mediocre story for Nar
Shadaa which was something about killing a rival gang as usual I was then on to
Tatooine which I passed
without too much trouble. I killed a world boss, I met the mysterious Lady of
Pain and chased Tyresius
Lokai who turned out to be Gault
Rennow who I totally forgot was one of the Bounty Hunter companions, so now
I have two companions, though Gault is a damn greedy bastard who might be hard
to please. I also completed The Foundry
to finish off the Empire side of that series. So that was that I guess for my
Bounty Hunter, can’t think of anything else especially exciting that happened.
The last encounter of the Boarding Party instance done in solo mode.
And so it was back to my Inquisitor and time to finally
start the Shadow
of Revan expansion on Rishi,
I was still wearing my old Citidel
Duelist Force Lord gear that I had dyed light purple and dark red XD and
decided to keep it for the duration of the quests but unfortunately there was
nothing else that was better really though I gave the Raider’s
Cove Boltblaster armor to Andronikos
Revel as it suited his style and he looks pretty damn awesome in it hah. It
was during this time I decided to start using a Security Key again, for two
reasons, one to keep my account safe and two to get all those sweet companion
customizations, specifically the one for Xalek that hides his
hood and gives him more bone-mask facepaint. I have forgotten to mention that
in KOTFE doing missions for your specialists gives you loot boxes which often
contain adaptable orange gear which can be used by anyone, and was testing
different outfits on Xalek as I wanted to change his appearance. I originally
had my Jedi Knight make some new armor that actually may have been light armor,
but although this looked ok him all dressed in red Xalek is actually a tank so
the cloth didn’t suit, I could almost hear him saying that “Master I need
better armor to protect myself” lol. So I gave him the Dreadseed armor plus parts of the
Devoted Allies Bulwark
armor and got him lookin pretty good.
Xalek and I waltz in, note Xalek's awesome new armor and new customization which features no hood which is great because I think he looks better without it,
The Empire side of Rishi wasn’t too much
different I found that there is a class quest inside all of them though with my
Jedi Knight communicating with his old master and my Sith Assassin researching
immortality. I completed the Blood
Hunt flashpoint which was lots of fun to do again and then on to the Battle of Rishi, and then
in no time I was on Yavin 4.
The Battle of Rishi FP
Except this time the questing was much shorter as since the last patch you no
longer received companion gear as rewards which kind of sucked as I’d really
like to get some new outfits as they are great to mix and match and swap around
with. The battle with Revan was much harder this time as I didn’t realise at
first but I had Light armor on so was much more vulnerable to Revan’s attacks
and ended up dying for the first time. I basically had to take every measure I
could to avoid death, I called up Talos to do healing and activated my tank
mode with the shield bubble on myself and avoided combat where I could. I was
actually glad I didn’t need to do that battle numerous times as it was
difficult. Once I had finished off Revan it was on to Ziost again though the
missions as before weren’t too much different on Empire side though I decided
to do some Dark choices this time such as sending Master Surro who had been
under the emperor’s influence to be experimented on (Lana’s choice) instead of
being sent for rehabilitation, could have been worse though I could have killed
her instead. So that was that on my Assassin, I did the lonely ruined Ziost
missions again and then hunt up my saber in preparation for Knights of the
Fallen Empire, oh yeh!
My holographic image taunts Valkorion who is controlling Master Surro
Then I was back on my Sage to hit up three flashpoints in a
triple whammy: Hammer Station, Athiss and Mandalorian Raiders which I literally blasted
through with others on tactical mode. Then I was up to Taris wading through
the muck and saving lives as I may have mentioned my Sage has an evil side and
I decided to kill off a Kel
Dor Master who had been infected, much to the dismay of his Padawan but she
realised it was for the best. I was actually spurred on by a republic officer
whose men he had killed and It’s actually pretty funny to see the Male Jedi
Sage be evil as he sounds so calm, at least it’s made easier by Qyzen approving of killing
powerful enemies. I also received a set of robes that I swear was meant for
females as I looked like the biggest queer but stats better so meh I won’t have
to wear it for long as I’ll do another round of heroics and get a new set.
Man these robes look really out of place and impractical for Taris not to mention I look like a ninny
I
did Nar
Shaddaa where I met my new companion Tharan
Cedrax along with his delightful hologramatic friend Holiday, who I also
didn’t realise at first that they were a Consular companion. I wanted to
confide with Bareesh the Hutt and not mention his past to the republic
ambassador but I did the particular quest with a group and the other guy who
chose the light side option and won the roll so I had to do it the same way
anyway, gaaah oh well that’s what happens when you do those kind of quests with
people. The Jedi who had the sickness was a very charismatic Master named Duras
Fain who acted like a gang leader and even had scantily clad women around him
and boasted that he’d slept with my Master Youn Par. I defeated him and then
had a run-in with the Hutt Cartel enforcers who wanted him as well but managed
to stave them off with a bribe, I felt like killing Fain or giving him to the
Cartel but I had to have Tharan with me and he wouldn’t approve. So I shielded
the infected Jedi while weakening myself again.
Nar Shadaa heroics session, we sure earned it hah.
Later on you head to a spacecraft which is being taken over
by Laranna Fain, Duras Fain’s daughter who had met with the creator of the
plague Lord Vivicar and was now killing it’s crew members, you defeat her by
sacrificing some of your power again then you get to speak Lord Vivicar himself
and he tells you that the Jedi who came up with cure lost his life while
healing others which kind of ominous, gives me even more reason to continue
killing hah.
"You know those compassionate Jedi, I'm not one of them, though I may look and sound like one"
I had decided for most of my companions I would get the
customisation that required a security key so my companions would be different
from everyone elses so I got the one for Qyzen which was a dark blue instead of
yellow. I got Txan my bounter hunter to create some new armor for Qyzen as he’d
had the same stuff on for a while which was difficult as the same armor changes
style when you post it to a Republic character, frankly I would have rather had
the Empire version but the armor looked ok on him as I put a dark green and
dark blue dye so it suited his features though I think I might set him back to
yellow skin and it goes well with my characters yellow skin, lol it almost
seems like companions are a becoming fashion accessories. The next stop was the
beautiful and picturesque Alderaan,
where I had to get into some kind of meeting of all of the houses of Alderaan
and that was when my subscription ran out. As I mentioned before it was getting
pretty hard to keep track of all of my abilities as I had gotten to 53 so was
past the old maximum level but I guess that’s something you have to get used to
with the new system.
I just got rid of my girly armor and actually get to wear a hood for once then I get another silly looking helm which has better stats, I can't win. At least Qyzen looks pretty cool in his new customization skin and armor.
So as I said big new changes for 4.0 pretty much all of them
good if not for the dumbing down of the game and update on each of my
characters story progress or otherwise, I'd hate to say it again but there still needs to be a proper dual-spec system. Stay tuned for my Jedi Knight’s foray
into the next few chapters of Knight of the Fallen Empire, and my Sith
Assassin’s first experience of it.
JD
A very cool looking cutscene for Empire side of the Shadow of Revan questline.
