Mittwoch, 7. März 2012

Patch 1.2 is near!

Yawn, it's 5:02am way too early to be up but as my printer is currently busy I thought I would sit down and write a blog post. And yes, the entry will show up at 9am my time because I usually write them and let blogger post it at midnight their time. Love this feature it's so handy. I can write 5 posts a day and have them show up on the 5 following days.

Anyway... have this:

The trailer for patch 1.2... I WANT! I WANT! I WANT!
Loooove the baby tauntaun.... NEEED! ;D
Bioware sure got me hooked with the trailer and I can't wait for April when the patch is supposed to come out!

And yesterday they released patch 1.1.5 which had new color crystals for everyone. Now you can wear red without having to be dark 1. They removed all restrictions, which in a way I find sad. It was amazing to meet a Sith in game that was wearing a blue light saber. But oh well, changes happen so we have to live with it. And since we can wear purple on the Republic side (used to be Imperial only) I bought Khalisha a new crystal. I'm definitely not spending 2.5 MILLION (yes, million!) credits for a white color crystal. Money sink much?

They also changed some stuff in the pvp system. No more lottery with the bags, you can buy t3 pvp gear for wz commendations now. And the whole pvp ranking system is much faster now. I went from rank 25 to rank 31 in 5 hours with Khalindora yesterday. And I LOST most warzones. Oh well, such is life in game, but at least some did appreciate my healing. ;)

Going back a bit to the release of patch 1.2, damn, with the legacy system coming and providing new races I might have to delete a character or two. Because if it's true that I can play a Sith pureblood jedi... Shae has to go. ;D Can't wait to check the heritance feature out. Making your own family tree, I really love the idea, my chars get to have kids, how cool is that! And then have a trooper use force choke because she had a might user somewhere in her family line... love it! I know the lore freaks will flip because of that... but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the feature in the game. ;)

And I get daily quests on my beloved Corellia! Yes! I can't wait for that, just recently I was complaining that there aren't enough quests on Corellia. *does a little happy dance*

Oh and Martin was right, I love the English client, I just need to write down a translation for the stats because I got confused at first and I don't want to run around with the wrong stats on my gear just because I was too stupid to figure out what is what. Other than that... LOVE IT!

Dienstag, 6. März 2012

The newest member of the family...

Since I have 3 more slots to create characters I thought I would try out the trooper class as I didn't like the smuggler at all. It's been confusing so far but still fun in a way. And I love her attitude. ;D
Name: Chanelle
Race: Cyborg
Class: Commando (Trooper)
Level: 15
Orientation: Light II
Social rank: I
PvP rank: 1
Crew skills: Armormech, Scavenging, Slicing
Romance: None (we will see ^^)

Need to add her to my character entry:
http://shakhali.blogspot.com/2012/02/my-characters-so-far.html

And I finally downloaded the English client of the game. I've been told I will enjoy it. Can't wait to try it out later after the server maintenance has ended. ;D

Montag, 5. März 2012

Social Gear

Right, this post is such a waste of time, but I wanted to do it.
So I went to each planet took screenshots of the social gear and put them into those little pictures.
For those who don't know what social gear is about. If you do quests as a group you get social points during the quest dialog. And like you gain levels you gain social ranks.
The current social gear in the game is all light armor, which means every class can wear it but only consular/inquisitors can mod it and use it as "real" gear.
[Like my shadow does, she wears the social gear from Voss].
And on a smaller note, in most screenshots my char wears her own belt and bracers.













I'm sorry it's all Republic side. If I feel the need to waste another 10 hours of my life I might do it for the Empire too.

As I had to use Nadja Grell for the screenshot on the set card here is Khalisha in the slave outfit. Eye candy? She does have some meat on her bones. :)

Samstag, 3. März 2012

Favorite Screenshots

As I don't have much time to post on the weekend, too busy with playing, I will at least share some of my favorite screenshots.
Kaela on her way to a datacron on Voss.

This is my current desktop wallpaper. Shae on Quesh, near the strength datacron.

Little Sha'khali with her tank companion Khem Val.

Kaela on Dromund Kaas, during her last class quest.

Khalisha on Belsavis, obviously gathering more datacrons.

Khalindora on Alderaan, still need to do a panorama photo of my favorite planet.

Freitag, 2. März 2012

On credits and difficulty...


Two things which seem to come up quite often are sentences like:
"How am I supposed to get that many credits for my first speeder?"
"It's not that much fun because it's so difficult!"


Sentences like that make me cringe or roll my eyes because both issues are easily solved in SW:ToR.

While I won't give you a detailed walk-through on how to get a gazillion credits, I will tell you how to make enough money to buy your first speeder license and not having to worry about in game money.

Primary credit goal 48000 credits at level 25 (if you don't have the collectors edition):
- DO NOT SPEND MONEY ON THE GALACTIC TRADE MARKET (auction house)!
- DO NOT BUY BLUE/ORANGE GEAR FOR CREDITS!
- SELL BLUE/ORANGE/EPIC GEAR AT THE GALACTIC TRADE MARKET (obviously only stuff you can't use) AND DON'T SELL THEM UNDER THEIR VALUE!
- SELL EVERYTHING ELSE AT THE VENDOR (grey, white, green items [though you should keep some medikits ^^])
- Get two gathering crew skills at first (Bioanalysis, Slicing, Scavenging etc).
You can drop one of them as soon as you get your spaceship but before that you only have one companion, so in terms of making money it makes sense to have 2 gathering skills.
- Kill every mob which is on your way, especially golden ones.
- Do your spaceship missions, the first escort mission gives you a level 1 armor for your spaceship buy the other upgrades at a vendor. Reason for this those missions are easy credits.
- If you don't need the gear on the planet you are currently questing (too low, too bad, whatever) buy blue/epic boxes for the planet commendations and sell the stuff.
- Don't overdo your crew skills, it's a money sink, if your short on credits only buy the stuff you need for your class. You can always go back and buy the rest later.

Wow, unspectacular tips however there are still way too many people who can't follow those simple rules and then whine on how they don't have enough money.

If you are into trading check up on the prices for specific items at your galactic trade market. I can't really give you many tips there because every server has different prices. But what always works for me for example is, I craft level 11 orange items and sell them for around 5000-6000 credits. Works well with my synthweaving stuff.

And if you are level 50 and don't have money... go hide in a corner because you are just too lazy. Do your dailys... they give you over 100000 credits a day and take around 90 minutes to do. What, you don't have 90 minutes or would rather do a flashpoint or operation... well, then don't whine around that you don't have enough money! Simple as that!

In case someone wonders, when my first character turned 50 I had 500000 credits which wasn't much but I could afford the 110% speeder license and still had enough to get by. And no I'm not telling how much credits my chars have right now. ;p

So let's come to the "THIS GAME IS SO DIFFICULT" complaints. It certainly is not difficult... especially the levelling phase. Yes, there might be a couple of quests that are harder for certain classes but oh well, everything is do-able.

- USE YOUR CROWD CONTROL ABILITIES! (You know those things that disable mobs to do anything for 60 seconds. And yes, I know tanks don't have them but as a tank you won't get killed that easily.)
- DISABLE AOE SKILLS OF YOUR COMPANION IF YOU USE CROWD CONTROL (If you don't disable for example EMP-STRIKE your CC is useless as this ability will break the CC)
- USE THE RIGHT COMPANION FOR YOU (Depends on the situation, so sometimes it works better if both are damage dealers or maybe you don't have a companion that can heal yet. Just try around you will figure out quite easily what works best.)
- MAKE SURE YOUR GEAR AND THAT OF YOUR COMPANION IS UP TO DATE (Don't run around with level 20 gear if you go to Alderaan for example. Buy gear for the planet commendations, use your crew skills, etc.)
- MAKE SURE YOU AREN'T ON A HEROIC 2+/4+ QUEST ALONE! (Don't roll your eyes at me, I have seen people do that then die and complain. Some classes can do those quests... others need a group!)
- DON'T PULL A GAZILLION MOBS IF YOU HAVEN'T BEEN IN THAT AREA BEFORE! (Doesn't matter that you could kill 8 mobs on Tatooine... you might not be able to do that on Alderaan anymore. So check how much and how easily you can kill a group before adding another one.)
- GREEN QUESTS AREN'T WORTHLESS (A common misconception, you still get enough experience and if anything they are a lot easier and done a lot faster. So don't skip them! I've heard people do this and then wonder why they end up on a planet that is too hard for them.)
- GO TO YOUR TRAINER AND LEARN YOUR NEW SKILLS! (If you have trouble do it every level! And yes, I have seen this, someone who hasn't been to his trainer for 10 levels!)

Again nothing exciting most of us who have played MMO's before know the drill. And newbies should not be afraid to ask others or accept useful hints. Not every helpful tip from someone is an attack on the way you play. (I remember a druid tank in WoW who wiped us 8 times in Shadowfang Keep hc because he simply refused to try what we suggested... e.g. not tank the mobs with autohit. In the end we had to kick him after 2 hours and a lot of patience. We really tried but all we got as answers were things like: "Don't tell me what to do, you bastards!")

Anyway as for "this quest is too difficult, I can't do this on my own", yes, you can... just because you can't faceroll on your keyboard and kill everything does not mean the quest is too hard. As I said try a different approach, kill mobs in a different order. Use medikits, stims, crowd control... etc. Everything is do-able, I only encountered one quest that gave me a headache. It was a class quest on Quesh for my Jedi-shadow... I died 2 times till I figured out I could get a buff to get less damage. Wasn't easy with the buff but at least I didn't die anymore. I finished it and who cares if it took me a bit longer than 5 minutes... this isn't a race... it's a game. You will get to level 50 sooner than you might think. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Donnerstag, 1. März 2012

Fear of heights...


The day after my holiday on Hoth I went to Corellia to finally gather the remaining datacrons I was still missing.
Corellia confuses me... just take a look at the map!

In real life I have no trouble with heights but oh boy... the way to the "presence" datacron had me wibble. One false step and it's a long way down. :>

I nearly glued my character to the wall. While my guildmate had fun jumping around and daring death.

If someone wonders what the blue thing in the screenshot is. Well, since my guildmates character was too "fat" we had to duel half the time to get him to certain spots. His character didn't fit through all the gaps. :>

Standing in the air! :> Yes, I have no idea what the developer team took when they messed up the terrain. So you have a floating datacron and sort of have to "believe" and do a little jump on an invisible platform.

As I said it's a loooong way down. I must have amused my guildies with my constant worrying of falling down. But I didn't. :>


This video from Ninjalooters shows the whole way to the datacron. I was really worried if I could get to that one. Jump 'n run is not my thing.

Bonus screenshot from a different datacron on Corellia. I do love this planet.

Mittwoch, 29. Februar 2012

SW:ToR - Panoramas

Following my own tradition of panorama pictures I tried my hand on some in the SWTOR universe.

They aren't as easy to create as they were in WoW because you can't "fly" so basically I have to find a wide open space or high up to get a good view. I did more than those 5 but I'm not quite satisfied with the others, so I share only those.

And sadly they are quite small because of picasa which stores the pictures of my blog. In real size some of them are over 8000 pixels wide. :>





More to come if I find good places for the actual screenshots which I need to create them.