Elara is such a tease

My Trooper was busy assaulting a superweapon and he gets a call on the comm….

Crafting at End Game

My Preferred Goal for Professions

I believe in the model that says you should get more from a Flashpoint than you’d get solo for the same effort. And you’d get more from an 8 man than you’d get from a Flashpoint. For 8 vs 16 the jury’s still out. However, I’d still like to see professions more useful in endgame than they appear to be, and more the what they were in WoW.

My View of the Current State

I haven’t had a lot of exposure to the Ops environment, so is post is partly a ‘from the outside looking in’, so if my basis is wrong feel free to point it out in the comments.

Looking at SWTOR professions, only one, Biochem, provides a continuing stream of crafting past reaching 50 and making the best pieces. In WoW there were a number of ‘improvement’ skills that modified new gear (Jewelcrafting, Enchanting, Blacksmithing/Tailoring/Leatherworking to a lesser degree), as well as the ‘consumable’ profession, Alchemy. SWTOR’s Slicing and Cybertech appear to be able to do that at first glance with mods and augments, but the reality is that Augment Slots only appear on crafted gear, and both Augments and mods can be removed, at a cost, from existing gear. This means that even if there’s a way to make customized gear even to Ops gear, changing base pieces doesn’t require crafting.

Level 50 Daily Missions

All quests were completed using a Smuggler Scoundrel. This affects the rewards and the companion affection gains, and using Stealth is noted where applicable. Also, this post will be updated as more information is discovered.

At Level 50, after completing your Class quest chain, you go into the Interlude. This is essentially the start of your end-game experience, and one of the major parts is doing the Dailies for gear and mods. Two chains, one on Ilum and one on Belsavis, lead you through the areas where you need to go for your daily quests, gathering Daily Commendations as you go. After the break I’ll detail the Daily quests and their rewards.

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.

SWTOR Beta Weekend Musings

On the weekend, I managed to get into the Star Wars: The Old Republic Beta Weekend.  TLDR – I liked it

Note: My major experience is WoW and single player games, I’ve really only dabbled in other MMO’s. So mostly WoW in MMOs.  All my observations will likely be tinged by it.

Gameplay

I played a smuggler for 20 levels.  From what I read of the classes it was the closest to an all-round character that I could find.  (Yes I play a Druid in WoW.)  The Smuggler class starts like every other class, with a DPS setup up till Level 10, after which you choose a specialisation.   I chose Scoundrel to give the added healing ability as a survival component.  I didn’t spec into the healing tree, as I would if I wanted to be a full-time healer, but the basic heals worked quite effectively in close situations.

One flaw I did see to it though was the indecision.  The Smuggler has a basic move called Cover, from which one of their most powerful normal abilities can be used.  Additionally, Cover protects them from incoming fire similar to a Dodge or Parry mechanic.  Conversely, they have an almost Combo Point-like system called Upper Hand that allows them to use devastating attacks that consume an Upper Hand stack.  Upper Hand stacks are lost fairly quickly after battle, and can’t really get moved from combat to combat.  The only ways to get an Upper Hand are to kill an enemy (and you must land the killing blow, not your companion) or to use Blaster Whip.  Finishing off an enemy is fine, unless you’re fighting an elite by himself, and Blaster Whip requires you to be in hand-to-hand range.  I was torn between leaving cover and dashing up to people to use Blaster Whip, and hiding behind cover and hoping they’d come to me.  Those that did come all the way up were dispatched fairly quickly, but for some elites, getting into melee range with aggro is a very very bad idea.

Other notes on the Smuggler and general gameplay:

• Using cover often places you side on to your target, or even facing the wrong way, just because there was “Cover” from something right behind you.
• The AOE attack (I forget the name) that uses an Upper Hand buff to hit 5 targets in front of you, requires the Cover you’ve taken to be pointing at the target, or for you to stand up getting out of cover.  It won’t fire centered on your target.
• Hand to hand combat feels a little clunky, though that may have been my class experience.  I spent a lot of time hitting a guy over my shoulder because I was facing the wrong way but still able to attack.

Quests

The quests were your usual run of the mill in a lot of respects.  Go get this thing, go kill that guy, go investigate this.  Similar to the WoW proximity quests, there were bonus quests that turned up when you killed something, or moved into an area, tied to a quest that you had.

Bonus quests turn up when you kill something.  Thus you are compelled to kill at least one of EVERYTHING.  Their typical progression was “Kill X of the mobs in the general area.”  Once you were finished, a bot appeared with a new quest, giving “Kill three times X of the mobs in the general area.”  Finally, a “Kill this elite mob” quest would appear.

Something I discovered though was, you should never fall behind in these quests.  Don’t get the attitude of “I’ll come across enough as I complete the quest” because you never do.  I found after falling behind the third time that its better to complete the Bonus quests before you move on.

The quests themselves however, had one aspect which I initially wasn’t thrilled by, but eventually got drawn into, and will probably be the biggest drawcard for the non-MMO crowd.  Most questgivers are similar to BioWare’s other titles, where you walk up and are brought into an interactive cutscene.  The characters make sense, and have superb voice acting (Sorry Chris Metzen, and Bat-Boss/Alysrazor/Cigarette-smoking-woman) which feels very much like Gears of War or Mass Effect (so I’m told on the last one).  During each interaction, you have options like “Flirt” which have real consequences (I had a female character with a male companion who got jealous and lost Affection stat if I flirted).    The quests also have morality tests in the form of “You can hand the slave collars to the cops for destruction, or the Senator who ordered them” giving you Light and Dark points.  The points factor later on with Light or Dark gear, which apparently is a big complaint in the community.  If you a) redo repeatable questlines to see the other results or b) choose a middle line or an RPG choice structure, then you can be left short on having Light or Dark, and there’s not much ‘grey-side’ equipment available yet.

Storyline

Probably the second most significant improvement I found was the interactive storyline.  Each class has one, which threads its way through everything you do.  By level 15, you get a ship, which is awesome, though its mostly a major zone movement thing.  All the way from Level 1 onwards though, you get your own private areas to complete quests, and your own contacts and experience.  The private areas also are instanced meaning that when you enter, you don’t have 50 other Smugglers waiting around the quest giver, or killing the mobs you need before you can talk to them.

As part of the story you pick up a companion, one for each class, that helps you along your way the entire path.   They can be a real help while you’re learning, and as long as you gear them up as you progress, they stay just as powerful as you, if not more-so.   My only gripe was that their specialised gear (tagged with the character specifically) came at a cost of passing on token rewards on the class quest lines.

Immersion vs Co-operation

SW:TOR hooks you in like a BioWare game.  You get involved in the characters and their motivations etc, and you get the feeling that you’re really a part of it.  Then the other players turn up.  Instances have a quest stream and a lot of phasing, and it feels almost like the old PnP Star Wars days, but then you get someone who comes along and goes “Lol I NEED” on items that are completely wrong for them, and the player who its completely right for starts a diatribe and threatens to quit, and so on.  Those instances totally broke the immersion and I ended up skipping Heroic (group) quests, and skipping Flashpoints (dungeons) because I felt better in the single player game.

Admittedly this may have something to do with the fact that I was racing to see if I could get to L20 before the Beta ended (I got in on Sunday at 11am, and was home Monday my time in Aus), because in the WoW open beta (omg yes 7 years ago) I got to L19 before it ended.  All of the work finding a healer meant that Flashpoints were very hard to organise, and single player was just a better investment in time.

Crafting

I’ll put a special section in on crafting because I really quite liked the system.  You do not personally craft anything, your companions do it.  When you’ve only got one, if you send him off to craft, then you’re running solo, but at L15 when you get your ship, you get another companion that can be used to do all the grunt work.

A character gets 3 professions.  A Gathering skill (I chose Scavenging) that is used to collect items out in the world as you pass by.  This forms the basis of your general raw materials.  At lower skill levels you only need to Gather to be able to craft your items.  The second skill is your Crafting skill.  This is what you make items with, whether its Armstech (my choice) for weapons, Armourtech, Biochem or other item generating skills.  This is where the end product comes from.  The third skill, which falls in between is your Mission skill, in my case Investigation.  As well as telling your companion to craft items, you can send them on missions to investigate certain things (at a cost to you), which if they succeed will bring back items.  Investigation can bring back weapons tech, like chips that go with the raw materials, or companion gifts, to make your companions affection rise.

Once I got my ship, my Droid was eternally crafting or on missions, but this caused one unforseen issue.  As items are crafted, or missions completed, the results end up in your bag.  For me this meant having 20 odd blaster barrels in my bags until I hatched on a devious plan.  The ability to reverse engineer items meant that I could turn the blaster barrels back into raw materials (albeit less than it cost to make) which took up less space.  Once I got to a Cargo Hold Access (bank) I’d dump all the raw materials back into the bank.  Your companions quite happily crafted out of the materials in your bag no matter how far they were away, and once those were used up, they’d start drawing on the stuff in the bank.  All in all it meant a bit of bag juggling (the bag expansions are credit based, and relatively expensive)

Comparison to WoW

Yeah, you knew it was coming, and the comparison to WoW was the major rantfest in General chat in most zones till I’d levelled above the pack.  So here’s my breakdown of similarities.

• Keybindings are almost identical.  I had a chuckle when I discovered that your “Abilities” button was P.   Map (M), Bags (B or I), Character (C) were fairly obvious ones, though one switch around was Specialisation (K) and Crew Skills (N).  After the 5th time opening the wrong screen I swapped them around to match WoW with K for Crafting and N for Talents.  Auto-run button on the mouse was the same too, which I didn’t even notice at first, I just started running.
• Questing was very similar as mentioned above.  The bonus quests were nice, and the UI had the usual “Here’s the area you need to be in” stuff, though I think they relied on it a bit too much and not enough description of the location, because I found myself constantly opening the map, more than I would if I had a rough idea of where to go by description.
• Specialisations and talents were almost identical, except that once you chose your specialisation it became your class.  I couldn’t find a way to reverse that decision, but I’m sure if my next point happens there’ll be a way.
• The Dual-Spec concept of WoW was very needed here I think.  No-one wanted to play a healer for levelling, for the usual reasons, but Flashpoints were nigh impossible without it.  Forcing someone down a healing path is like making someone level a restoration Druid, or a Holy Priest.  You can do it, but its far from optimal.
• The concept of a tank was relatively foreign from what I saw.  I know there are classes who are designed for it, but I didn’t see much in the way of tanks and it wasn’t obvious without reading the specialisations who was supposed to be a tank.  There were 3 Healer and 3 Tank classes on each side, but it wasn’t obvious to people who was actually what.
• Bag space was a bit tough.  You started with 20 bag slots, and an extra 10 was 5000 credits, then an extra 10 was 20000 credits.  I didn’t see what was past that because I was saving for my 40,000 speeder bike at level 25.  Banks were hard to spot, though that probably comes with time and experience, so I didn’t empty my bags of non-vendor stuff often.

Conclusion

Of all the MMO’s I’ve come across, this is the closest I’d call to a competitor to WoW.  Unlike a lot of other games like Rift or Warhammer, this will draw subscribers away not because they’re bored with WoW, but because SWTOR actually holds the same shiny new joy that WoW did at one point for everyone.  I didn’t get to see the end-game, so I can’t say whether it’ll be a long-term competitor, but with the speed I levelled, if the end-game doesn’t hold people’s attention, they’ll play the game 8 times through to 50 and leave it there.  Hopefully that won’t be the case.

Whether it will draw me away from WoW, I don’t know, but I have gotten my pre-order in, so we’ll see.