**OFFICIAL** Star Wars: The Old Republic Thread

[DaveSimmons]

I don't think one needs to be an end game raider to know how to cast a buff for you as well as your teammate. It takes a special kind of stupidity to have to be reminded to cast a single buff, the only buff, that you get at level 1. Let's hope you're not one of those scrubs.

You're assuming again that everyone has played an MMO before.

I don't recall the tutorials ever telling me that I could buff anyone but myself -- I figured that out on my own after some random other person did it to me.

"Read the codex"? Yeah right, 2-3 paragraph descriptions of things like crafting.

"Read the TOR website"? Hah, even more vague than the codex.

"Read the TOR forums"? Hah again, no working search last time I checked.

"Use Google" -- that's starting to work sometimes now, not really 2-3 weeks ago.

As an example, relics from the light-side vendor -- are they one-time use like stims, or once a day, or what? I haven't wanted to burn 3K to find out since you can't just try it then reload your last save.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

i'm not sure if it was here, the other thread, or whatever, but somebody was asking about purple crystals in swtor:

1. not purple. magenta
2. step by step guide
3. i wish you luck

 

[The Boston Dangler]

posting this here so everyone gets a chance to benefit from it, maybe spark a discussion or a fresh question. i bolded some good stuff:

http://www.swtor-spy.com/guides/swtor-tips-tricks/6/

General tips
Group loot: There is a handy option that will let you loot all the enemies you have killed and that are in your vicinity. Press Escape, go to Preferences, go to Controls, in the window with options on the right check the Area Loot option. You will loot ALL things now.

(make sure you bind at every point and click on every taxi)
Fast Travel: When you start on Hutta remember to click on the fast travel droid station located right outside the cantina you start in. It will help you get back to this quest hub faster later on.
Bind Points: There are bind point terminals scattered all over every planet. You can bind to each one. Using your Quick Travel skill you can travel to any of the terminals you previously bound to, not just the latest one.

Both factions can talk to each other through “/say”. There’s no cross-faction mail or socializing between them (no tells, no trading or grouping). The only way you’ll be able to send items to the characters of the opposing faction is through the neutral auction house on Nar Shaddaa, since it’s shared by both factions.

Once you pick your spec you can not change it.
You can respec your talent skills at any time for credits.
At level 25, you can get your first Speeder (vehicle or mount) for a total price of 48000 credits. 40k for the skill and 8k for the vehicle
To link an item in the chat simply press SHIFT + left mouse click on the item

If your UI freezes you can reset it by pressing CTRL + U twice.

You can create new chat tab by right clicking on any existing tab.
You can trigger some bonus quest by attacking monsters on your way.
If you are in a dialogue with someone and you lead the conversation in a bad direction and want to repeat the conversation to see how your options effect someone, you can hit ‘esc’ and that exits the conversation. Once exited, it resets the conversation.
If you want to have White Lightsaber there is a World Boss Ulgo Siegebreaker who drops Advanced White Resistance Crystal. Note: He doesn’t drop the crystal every time you kill him.

Companion related tips
Your companion can sell trash (gray) items for you. Just right click on the companion icon and choose the option Sell trash items
Being a dark-sided Sith Warrior gives you 2 romance options: Vette and Dark Jaesa Willsam.
Your gender has no effect on companion’s gender and you cannot change it.
There are level restrictions to how many companions you can send to craft at the same time. You can send 2 companions up to level 25, 3 companions up to level 35, 4 companions up to level 45, and 5 companions at level 45-50.
You can customize your companion’s appearance, so it looks different from other companions, by adding look modification “item” to a special slot in companion character sheet. Press the C key on keyboard and choose companion tab. Appearance modification slot is next to the weapon slot. Look modifying items can be purchased from vendors or earned as quest rewards.
Your companion will never leave or attack you, no matter how low is your affection with him.
You will reduce the time for crafting by increasing affection with your companion. Also, the success rate on missions is increased with higher affection.
You can talk with your companion in private in your ship or cantina rooms
You can finish some group content like Heroic quests or Flashpoints with your companion (the group size can not exceed 4), but you cannot take them in PvP Warzones or Raids.
All mission-based crew skills have the option of granting companion gift based missions (ONLY the mission-based ones though, not gathering ones).
There are only 5 tiers of gifts, and so the gift-based missions on the 6th tier will always be “Rich” tier 5 missions.
There are 5 tiers of affection divided into 2000 points each (so tier 1 is 0-1999, tier 2 is 2000-3999, etc).
A gift WILL work for a tier above it, but it’s value will be halved for every tier you go up. So a tier 1 gift that is worth 24 affection on tier 1 will be worth 12 affection on tier 2, and 6 affection on tier 3.


Crew Skill (Crafting) related tips
You get 450 exp for each crew skill trainer you visit (there are 14 trainers).
With the current game build you can train crew skills at level one. Read our full guide on how to do this here.
After gathering, you can leave your crafting materials in Cargo Hold (bank) and your companions can craft even though the materials aren’t in your bag.
If you are unsatisfied with your crew skills you can easily unlearn it. Just press “n” key button, and then click the little x button beside the crew skill points.


PvP
Once you hit level 10 you can join a PvP “arena”, or warzones as they are called in TOR. You can do this by clicking on the Republic/Empire logo near the mini-map to enter the queue.
In The Old Republic you can be matched up with higher levels than you in a warzone, but that does not matter, because all your abilities and healtha are scaled so that none has a distinct advantage base on level of the character, just skill.
SunnyD says the above is bogus

Space missions related tips
Upon getting a star ship, you will have daily quests for space combat.
You will gain huge experience by doing Space mission quests at your level. The difficulty and the level of the missions does not change, thus, as you level up the space missions become harder and the lower ones grant far less experience.
Space missions are highly useful to alts

 

[Sentrosi2121]

Max level you will find they all have uses if you gear them up reasonably well, for leveling as a dps you just can't beat having a pocket tank that doesn't whine

Oh I don't mind the whining. As a Sith Pureblood I just backhand Khem when he does whine. Love my social ability.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

Oh I don't mind the whining. As a Sith Pureblood I just backhand Khem when he does whine. Love my social ability.

..and he loves you for it too bad he gets rolled more often than paris hilton

 

[darkewaffle]

Hit 50 and finished my class quest and Khem quests yesterday on my sorcerer, seemed kind of appropriate that I levelled off them lol. The cutscene to end the story was cool, but it did feel kind of abrupt. Also you would think you'd get more than 15k XP and a green item box for finishing it lol. Even so, looking forward to finishing Corellia and doing the Ilum stuff anyway, might head back to clean up Voss/Belsavis sometime too.

The PVP is growing on me. The two non-huttball ones are actually pretty fun, Huttball has potential but there's way too much emphasis on the whole 'obstacle course' aspect and passing/charges/pulls/knockbacks are too game changing as is, but I think it'll get tuned eventually. The 'conquest' one can be difficult for the defenders if the offense gets momentum and you can lose consecutive points in a matter of seconds. The capture point one is pretty decent all in all.

 

[Beev]

You're assuming again that everyone has played an MMO before.

I don't recall the tutorials ever telling me that I could buff anyone but myself -- I figured that out on my own after some random other person did it to me.

"Read the codex"? Yeah right, 2-3 paragraph descriptions of things like crafting.

"Read the TOR website"? Hah, even more vague than the codex.

"Read the TOR forums"? Hah again, no working search last time I checked.

"Use Google" -- that's starting to work sometimes now, not really 2-3 weeks ago.

As an example, relics from the light-side vendor -- are they one-time use like stims, or once a day, or what? I haven't wanted to burn 3K to find out since you can't just try it then reload your last save.

I don't know about you, but when I get new skills I simply hover over them and take the 10 seconds (max) to read what it does. Done and done.

 

[paperfist]

posting this here so everyone gets a chance to benefit from it, maybe spark a discussion or a fresh question. i bolded some good stuff:

http://www.swtor-spy.com/guides/swtor-tips-tricks/6/

Thanks that is awesome! Half that stuff I didn't know and now knowing will make in-game life easier!

 

[KentState]

The difficulty and the level of the missions does not change, thus, as you level up the space missions become harder and the lower ones grant far less experience.

I'm having a hard time understanding this. If the difficulty and level do not change, why does it become harder? Does this mean as you level up, new missions become available which are harder?

 

[Dahak]

I'm having a hard time understanding this. If the difficulty and level do not change, why does it become harder? Does this mean as you level up, new missions become available which are harder?

Yes

 

[coloumb]

I'm having a hard time understanding this. If the difficulty and level do not change, why does it become harder? Does this mean as you level up, new missions become available which are harder?

They are basically the same type of mission yet the difficulty [and name of the mission] changes. There are a few new types of missions [different area of space, different objectives] as well.

 

[SunnyD]

posting this here so everyone gets a chance to benefit from it, maybe spark a discussion or a fresh question. i bolded some good stuff:

http://www.swtor-spy.com/guides/swtor-tips-tricks/6/

This is absolutely, unequivocally NOT TRUE.

PvP
Once you hit level 10 you can join a PvP “arena”, or warzones as they are called in TOR. You can do this by clicking on the Republic/Empire logo near the mini-map to enter the queue.
In The Old Republic you can be matched up with higher levels than you in a warzone, but that does not matter, because all your abilities and healtha are scaled so that none has a distinct advantage base on level of the character, just skill.

A level 50 will absolutely RAPE anyone more than ~5 levels lower 1-on-1 in warzones without even breaking a sweat. Yeah, damage and health are normalized, but armor and stat values are not. The level 50 is going to repeatedly crit you for about 3000+ damage while you might get one lucky crit around 2000. There's also a huge disparity in the abilities available to the level 50 versus that level 10/20/30/40 character. I watch a level 50 2- or 3-shot level 20's day in and day out, while I can say from experience that a level 20 character might take about 20% of a level 50's health off before they are obliterated.

That said, even I don't ragequit against a stacked level 50 premade warzone, because for starters I know it will be over quickly, and secondly even losing you still get a shitload of xp, decent valor & commendations, and a pile of credits.

That said, warzones severely need brackets... even if they're fairly wide like 10-30 and 31-49 with 50's in a bracket all their own.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

I'm having a hard time understanding this. If the difficulty and level do not change, why does it become harder? Does this mean as you level up, new missions become available which are harder?

exactly. the missions themselves never change (same roller coaster ride) but new ones are added. and by "harder" they mean "level check" - there's pretty much no difference from where i'm sitting.

 

[Nizology]

This is absolutely, unequivocally NOT TRUE.



A level 50 will absolutely RAPE anyone more than ~5 levels lower 1-on-1 in warzones without even breaking a sweat. Yeah, damage and health are normalized, but armor and stat values are not. The level 50 is going to repeatedly crit you for about 3000+ damage while you might get one lucky crit around 2000. There's also a huge disparity in the abilities available to the level 50 versus that level 10/20/30/40 character. I watch a level 50 2- or 3-shot level 20's day in and day out, while I can say from experience that a level 20 character might take about 20% of a level 50's health off before they are obliterated.

That said, even I don't ragequit against a stacked level 50 premade warzone, because for starters I know it will be over quickly, and secondly even losing you still get a shitload of xp, decent valor & commendations, and a pile of credits.

That said, warzones severely need brackets... even if they're fairly wide like 10-30 and 31-49 with 50's in a bracket all their own.

You are correct sir. 50s will dominate lower lvls...unless they get outnumbered.

The 1.1 patch will be adding a lvl 50 bracket.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

One thing I haven't been able to check out since I'm doing the Agent storyline and moving around a lot in the 2 days I've been playing...do quests like "talk to X, go kill 5 of Y" become available to repeat 24 hours later or are they gone forever?

 

[SunnyD]

You are correct sir. 50s will dominate lower lvls...unless they get outnumbered.

The 1.1 patch will be adding a lvl 50 bracket.

I know about the 50 bracket, I'm also saying they need a couple lower tier brackets too. At level 20, I can fare well against a level 30. At level 20, trying to kill a 47 is pretty much futile.

One thing I haven't been able to check out since I'm doing the Agent storyline and moving around a lot in the 2 days I've been playing...do quests like "talk to X, go kill 5 of Y" become available to repeat 24 hours later or are they gone forever?

That's the M.O. of MMOs. You have to have some sort of objective for missions/quests. What else are they going to have you do?

(In short, no. Those types of missions will NEVER go away.)

 

[KeithTalent]

One thing I haven't been able to check out since I'm doing the Agent storyline and moving around a lot in the 2 days I've been playing...do quests like "talk to X, go kill 5 of Y" become available to repeat 24 hours later or are they gone forever?

Most do not, but there are some repeatable missions. The Flashpoints can be done over and over and the space missions reset each day; there are some on the bounty board too which seem to be repeatable.

Most of the gathering missions are one and done from my experience. Make sure you do all of the bonus missions though, some good experience and stuff from doing those.

KT

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

That's the M.O. of MMOs. You have to have some sort of objective for missions/quests. What else are they going to have you do?

(In short, no. Those types of missions will NEVER go away.)

Yes, I know, but this isn't like the previous MMO I played...which in its early days before they refined it would let you repeat most tasks immediately(what few existed) and in its later days, it would actually tell you you're locked out. With TOR, after you finish a task the NPC can no longer be communicated with and as far as I know there is no notification of being locked out, except for waiting however long it takes and then come back and see if he's able to be talked to again.

As an example, there was a guy on the way out of Kaas City toward the Dark Temple who wanted you to collect 5 suspicious transmitters from droids...does that kind of quest ever become available again?

 

[SunnyD]

Yes, I know, but this isn't like the previous MMO I played...which in its early days before they refined it would let you repeat most tasks immediately(what few existed) and in its later days, it would actually tell you you're locked out. With TOR, after you finish a task the NPC can no longer be communicated with and as far as I know there is no notification of being locked out, except for waiting however long it takes and then come back and see if he's able to be talked to again.

Oh I see... no. Those are peripheral storyline progressions - kind of 1-time only. They DO have repeatable missions as well, but those are generally the HEROIC/GROUP quests that are repeatable once every 24 hours.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Oh I see... no. Those are peripheral storyline progressions - kind of 1-time only. They DO have repeatable missions as well, but those are generally the HEROIC/GROUP quests that are repeatable once every 24 hours.

And I'm guessing that when you reach, say, level 20, you can no longer do the heroic quests that were available at 10? And you can't really do heroics at your level with just your companion?

Despite me being accustomed to spending time LFG in other games, this game has me so used to just doing everything alone that I hate the idea of being suddenly stopped to have to LFG...

Not that I want to have to talk to kind of people who actually play the game, lol, if you watch general chat it's everyone saying REPORTDED for the least little thing then someone saying reported for misspelling reported....

 

[Red Storm]

I was expecting something similar to the Skyrim thread when this game launched (cool finds, pics, funny stories), but all I'm seeing is FAQ on MMO mechanics.

I didn't get into the beta and there's no trial, so it's... disappointing.

 

[sigurros81]

You're assuming again that everyone has played an MMO before.

I don't recall the tutorials ever telling me that I could buff anyone but myself -- I figured that out on my own after some random other person did it to me.

"Read the codex"? Yeah right, 2-3 paragraph descriptions of things like crafting.

"Read the TOR website"? Hah, even more vague than the codex.

"Read the TOR forums"? Hah again, no working search last time I checked.

"Use Google" -- that's starting to work sometimes now, not really 2-3 weeks ago.

As an example, relics from the light-side vendor -- are they one-time use like stims, or once a day, or what? I haven't wanted to burn 3K to find out since you can't just try it then reload your last save.

Wow dude, are you kidding me. You don't have to go through all that shit just to learn about a buff. The moment you start the game, you get skills in your skill bar at the bottom, all it takes is a mouseover on one of the buttons and bam, pop-up description.

Or even better, someone eventually will tell you about it, and one can learn that way, by someone else telling you. But that's the issue, the fact that you have to be told when you 're level 20 or above, have to be reminded when you die and all buffs are lost, now that's truly something.

But that's my point, and it's validated by your post, that THERE ARE a lot of noobs in this game.

 

[Nizology]

And I'm guessing that when you reach, say, level 20, you can no longer do the heroic quests that were available at 10? And you can't really do heroics at your level with just your companion?

Despite me being accustomed to spending time LFG in other games, this game has me so used to just doing everything alone that I hate the idea of being suddenly stopped to have to LFG...

Not that I want to have to talk to kind of people who actually play the game, lol, if you watch general chat it's everyone saying REPORTDED for the least little thing then someone saying reported for misspelling reported....

You can repeat any of the heroics at any level. Once they become grey though, you'll get very little xp. You can run through some of the Heroic 2/2+ depending on your level. Heroic 4s however, good luck. Also Flashpoints are definitely repeatable, and once you get to 50, you can attempt them on "hard" mode. FPs are great for awesome gear.

You are playing a MMO you know?

 

[SunnyD]

And I'm guessing that when you reach, say, level 20, you can no longer do the heroic quests that were available at 10? And you can't really do heroics at your level with just your companion?

Despite me being accustomed to spending time LFG in other games, this game has me so used to just doing everything alone that I hate the idea of being suddenly stopped to have to LFG...

Not that I want to have to talk to kind of people who actually play the game, lol, if you watch general chat it's everyone saying REPORTDED for the least little thing then someone saying reported for misspelling reported....

Yes, when you level out of a series range, then it does stop offering those quests. At least for the space missions it does that. I honestly haven't gone back to some of the lower level zones to check on this. Of course why would I? Once a given quest, heroic or not, turns grey (outleveled it), you only get 5xp for completing it. Only thing I can think of is if for some reason you wanted to farm mission rewards (like commendations), but then again you'll have outleveled the gear that you can buy with those commendations anyway.

I was expecting something similar to the Skyrim thread when this game launched (cool finds, pics, funny stories), but all I'm seeing is FAQ on MMO mechanics.

I didn't get into the beta and there's no trial, so it's... disappointing.

Yeah sorry, we meant to do that with this thread, but then the thread took an arrow to the knee. :biggrin:

 

[RebelCapitalist]

You are correct sir. 50s will dominate lower lvls...unless they get outnumbered.

The 1.1 patch will be adding a lvl 50 bracket.

Yeah, and then we can hear about lvl 49s dominating lowbies.

I've pvped a ton and it looks like there's a big gap around lvl 30ish. They should do three brackets: 10-34, 35-49, 50.

There's no crying in Huttball.