Recently a fellow bounty hunter was having trouble with his class mission, to kill a few waves of droids. Normally, when he passes through the green doorway into his class story area, I cannot follow. So, I change this setting, so I could run in to help him:
When you are then helping someone of the same class, the game field looks like this, with a red border up the top so it’s obvious you are progressing someone else’s story.
I had a massive omfg whoa when I first ran out to see Nar Shaddaa.
The design is magnificent. Colour palette, neons and Neo Tokyo references is absolutely perfect. Evocative of sci-fi films like the Fifth Element, Judge Dredd and Blade Runner.
I was so taken by this next image – which communicates standing on the edge of a great discovery, anticipation and epic scale – that I chose it for my website header too. Darhjedi.com is about my experience of those feelings, which being a geek, also includes stats and theory (coming soon).
The system of hearths and binding used in SWTOR is improved from how WoW does it.
You can ‘hearth’ to any location you have visited and bound yourself too. The binding locations are usually right next to flight paths, but in bigger planets they may be elsewhere too.
You’ll see the location on your minimap. Make sure you bind on it.
The icon above shows I haven't bound to it yet.
Every time you arrive in a new mission hub, get the binding and the flight path. You need to go and click both of them. It’s called the Imperial Transport Service for us bad guys.
Click both the flight path guy and the binding point
Thereafter, you can fly from place to place as you can in WoW, but you can also teleport yourself to any of the binding points you have come across.
As a healer, I like to see my own health as a panel amongst the others of my party. By default in SWTOR this is not shown. You just see the other party members’ health.
The setting to fix this, is by using the operations frame (ie. like raid frames) for the party (ie. like a 5-man).
Here is the preference to fix it:
Once done, you get frames which show everyone, including you, so it’s easier to heal in SWTOR.
I happily stole my new ship a few days ago. I was grinning as I flew out of the dock – it’s great to see the animation – and not long after tried my first space ship mission. Lots of fun! Good exp too. Those I’ve completed so far gave 10K exp each, plus a fleet commendation token.
The ship gives you a new companion, a brown-nosing annoying droid who you can summon to act as a healer. I found that the ‘parts’ and ‘core’ equipment drops I’d sometimes seen in mission rewards are for him. He doesn’t wear boots like we do, as a Droid, he equips parts, core, and a few other odd items. If you summon him as companion (from crew window), you can check him out. He starts with no gear.
Cybertech crew skill lets you craft new gear for your Droid. Probably more important for a Jedi Knight since their first companion is like R2D2.
I failed my second space mission because I hadn’t upgraded my ship. I didn’t know you could, actually. The ship has slots for gear upgrades just like you and your Droid do. I only have one upgrade installed in this image:
On the Imperial Fleet, this is where the ship upgrades vendor is located. The speeder vendor is in the same bay as the ship upgrades vendor, for when you get them at L25, but remember to get the speeder skill first from your class trainer (switch to his vehicle tab to train).
This is what that ship vendor looks like, and you can see some speeders behind me:
There is also a vendor who sells items which cost Fleet Commendations, including a fancy set of pilot’s armour (the bounty hunter gear makes me look like a deep sea diver, so I don’t think I’ll get it) or fancy weapon slot upgrades. I believe the gear – tooltip shows light armour – automatically scales up to meet your armour type, which is heavy for Hunters.
Then today I came across a great guide for missions, thanks to SWTORoz who publish a #swtor Daily twitter paper.
That guide gives more detail on ship upgrade choices, plus how to complete a few early missions.
If I’m an armourmech, are my outputs actually useful upgrades? Or, are they of marginal or no additional value when compared to gear freely available in raids (or whatever they’re called in swtor, flashpoints maybe).
For comparison, in WoW for the first five years or so the crafting professions were a money sink. I remember having our guild craft the hammer of ragnaros, which cost a fortune, and some other epic items in WoW v1, which lasted until we were in blackwing lair (or whatever it was called, with the original dragon changing guy boss at the end, in 40-man days). So, professions made money (like enchanting did) but the crafting wasn’t particularly useful.
Eventually it got fixed up, but what I don’t know about swtor is whether the items will be useful for just the v1 of the game, then can they be upgraded or are they vendor trash, whether the v1 materials are any good to use or not, or whether you might as well just hit up some 5-mans (or is it 4-mans).
So, will crafting professions create useful upgrades at L50? What about when we’re doing tier 2 raids in L50?
From chat on twitter, Keith said that the mission-skill crew skills are designed to feed crafting skills.
They don’t generate money as directly, except that Satorri says treasure hunting is pretty solid earner. He also mentioned that all mission crewskills earn you gifts for your companions, to earn their love, which in turn lets them do faster assignments for you (and maybe heal/dps more when solo).
Pavelmorgy reminded me that at least your companions might be able to use the crafted items. That’d be true for my companion Mako, if I was a weaponsmith, but not if I was an armoursmith since she’s medium and I’m in heavy.
So it all leaves me undecided, for my third skill (first two are slicing and scavening, for credits), whether I should go armour/weapon smith, or maybe cybertech. I know mission skill won’t be useful, since they’re designed to feed a craft. Or perhaps a third gathering skill, and make my companions the swtor version of sweat-shop farmers.
My bounty hunter is now L16, and was able to pick up a new upgradeable blaster from the Dromund Kaas commendations. I was a few short of the 16 required to buy a second one, though, and had just completed all the missions on the planet.
I was being sent to a dock to steal my new spaceship. I figured, I should find a way to get more Commendations and buy a second blaster before leaving the planet. See, the Commendations won’t be useful on the next planet.
Apparently you can grind them, as mobs can drop the commendations if they’re a challenge. Really easy L11 mobs didn’t drop any for me. But then I found a heroic quest, back near the starting area to kill Kregg, which rewards a blue item or a commendation. So, off I go and pwn him. At L16 it can be done solo if you use every cooldown and a medpack. I also had armour penetration support pack enabled, since the opponent had armour on. Figured it’d help.
All done, I get my reward and buy my second blaster. I love how they come fully kitted with your level-appropriate mods such as aim and endurance.
With the commendation blaster, a bounty hunter should buy the N315 Elite Marksman Interceptor. Don’t buy the alternative blaster, the Sonic Needler, it’s designed for Agents since their primary stat is cunning whilst we need aim.
The Dromund Kaas commendations vendors are located here on the map:
One of the best quality-of-life features added in SWTOR is “loot area”. After you’ve killed several mobs, each who dropped treasure, you simply loot one of them to get all of their treasure.
It’s a great time-saver and should be enabled by default.
Datacrons are free, permanent stat boosts found in hidden locations throughout the world. I found my first one inadvertently, and couldn’t work out how to get to the second one. There are walk-throughs to help you navigate to the Datacrons, listed on this very helpful site.
One of the neat things about tanking classes in SWTOR is the Jedi Consular (Shadow) / Sith Inquisitor tank spec. They wear light armour, but tank. Mechanically, they’re similar to how druids tank in WoW, by gaining armour or dodge buffs.
Here’s a video of a Jedi Consular, Shadow spec, tanking Trapjaw in beta. It’s from the POV of a Trooper healer, which is also damn cool; they heal with a massive assault rife!