The Saga Begins…

First Impressions

Overall, SWTOR continues to impress with a rich storyline and well developed game systems. I’ll cover a few of the bugs at first, but these are easily ignored in the richness of the rest of the game.

SW:TOR Biochem 1 – 400

This is my list of crafting materials and items to craft for Biochem to 400.  It isn’t ‘perfect’, but it focuses on the Stim abilities rather than Medpacs, as I figure if I’m going healing, I won’t need the packs, but reverse engineering for the advanced crafting items will be on my list of things to do.

Items To Craft

1 -  20    Battle Skill Stim x 20
21 -  40    Battle Fortitude Stim x 20
41 -  60    Field Tech Skill Stim x 20
61 -  80    Surgical Medpac x 20
81 – 100    Field Tech Command Stim x 20
101 – 120    Field Tech Fortitude Stim x 20
121 – 140    Bio-Enhanced Med Unit x 20
141 – 160    Bio-Enanced Skill Stim x 20
161 – 162    Hyperneural Skill Package x 2
163 – 180    Bio-Enhanced Command Stim x 18
181 – 200    Bio-Enhanced Fortitude Stim x 20
201 – 202    Bio-Receptive Skill Package x 2
203 – 220    Physician Med Unit x 18
221 – 240    Experimental Skill Stim x 20
241 – 260    Optoelectronic Cardio System x 20
261 – 280    Experimental Fortitude Stim x 20
281 – 300    Hyperelectronic Cardio System x 20
301 – 320    Advanced Skill Stim x 20
321 – 340    Psychotropic Cardio System x 20
341 – 360    Advanced Fortitude Stim x 20
361 – 380    Mind-Bending Cardio System x 20
381 – 400    Hyper-Battle Skill Stim x 20

Grade 1 Components

• 40 x Green Goo (Biochemical Compound)
• 60 x Dielectric Cell Fiber (Biochemical Sample)
• 40 x Bacterial Strain (Biochemical Sample)

Grade 2

• 60 x Luminescent Cell Culture (Biochemical Compound)
• 60 x Genetic Anomaly (Biochemical Compound)
• 20 x Toxic Extract (Biochemical Sample)
• 20 x Microscopic Symbiote (Biochemical Sample)

Grade 3

• 40 x Hallucinogenic Compound (Biochemical Compound)
• 40 x Blue Goo (Biochemical Compound)
• 40 x Medicinal Fluid (Biochemical Compound)
• 40 x Bio-Energy Cell Sample (Biochemical Sample)
• 40 x Unknown Microorganism (Biochemical Sample)

Grade 4

• 20 x Cosmic Trace Particle (Biochemical Compound)
• 80 x Nerve Damaging Chemical (Biochemical Compound)
• 80 x Inert Virus (Biochemical Sample)
• 60 x Alien Bacteria (Biochemical Sample)

Grade 5

• 40 x Nutrient Gel (Biochemical Compound)
• 40 x Psychoactive Compound (Biochemical Compound)
• 20 x Red Goo (Biochemical Compound)
• 40 x Quick-Growth Agent (Biochemical Sample)
• 20 x Microscopic Symbiote (Biochemical Sample)

Crafting Material

• 198 x Hypo-Syringe
• 78 x First Aid Kit
•  2 x Single-Impulse Implant Processor
•  2 x D-Package Implant Processor
• 40 x Double Pulse Implant Processor
• 20 x Advanced Power Implant Processor

Conclusion

My Bioanalysis skill is going to get hammered to get Biochem done.  All of the Green level items are purely from Bioanalysis and only the Blue and Purple reverse engineered patterns require items from Diplomacy.  I’ll probably still use Diplomacy when I get a 3rd companion, but its less critical.  I will need it up there once I get to the highest levels though, so that I can get the Blue components to make the Prototype items that can be reverse engineered into their Reusable counterparts.

Plus I expect that I won’t need quite so much since I get items back from reverse-engineering everything.

(Calculated on TORHead pre-release, subject to change)

BioWare… do you hate us for our Koalas?

Set to the sounds of much wailing and gnashing of teeth (and a few lamentations of the women) Bioware has announed that there will be no grace period for SW:TOR between the Early Access Program and the Release Date.

The two groups most affected are:

1. Collector’s Edition Orders: Those who have to wait for a boxed set delivery, because they wanted the CE version.  I’m less concerned with this but sure, its a bit painful that those paying the most have to wait longer than those who wander down to a store for the standard edition.
2. Red Zone Deliveries:  As an Amazon orderer, I have an ETA of 23rd to 29th, which means that I will probably get a day’s play, and then wait for 3-9 days for the box to appear.  Given that I’m on Annual Leave for that period, its not *so* bad.  But still…

I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I’ll be delayed right in the middle of my leave, so I’m hoping that my copy arrives early rather than later, but I still have 10 days to play it non-stop assuming that it turns up on the 29th.  But still… I mean really… BioWare… Do You Hate Us?

SWTOR Weekend Two

Well I managed to get into the last Beta weekend for SWTOR. This one appeared to be a stress test on the servers as there were only six own but with the extra Weekend testers we filled them many times over. 30 min to 3hr queues weren’t uncommon.

I took a different tack this time and leveled characters to L10 to try the other classes.