Patch Notes and Other Upcoming Stuff

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

Oh hey, communication.  Where?  A wild dev has appeared.

So the mini patch Wednesday, I’m pretty flippin pleased about this little tidbit:

Group Finder now retains a character’s role selections when joining or leaving a group.

YES.  This THING (was it a bug?) was really annoying when you got into an instance and discovered that the person assigned as a “healer” didn’t heal and the person assigned as a “tank” didn’t do that either.  Not their fault that the instance finder kept checking the unchecked box.

And with server mergers – I mean “optional transfers” – to the new mega servers sporting a good 300+ people on the fleet during prime time, I sort of expected this one:

Legacy names are no longer unique. New Legacies that are created are now able to use a name that is already in use on the server. All players will be able to rename their Legacies once, at no cost, in a future update.

Now some people are annoyed about this because something something DAY 1 something something worked hard blah blah unique special snowflake.  To those people I say… SHUT UP.  It’s all well and good to get on your high horse about early access, power leveling, and picking your name early… if you weren’t forced to change your name in the merger – I mean “optional transfer.”  A name that might have already been taken on your new destination server, and reserved until the end of time, by someone no longer even playing.

As for renaming, I have to figure out whether I want to change the Pretentious Legacy to the Hawtpants Legacy.  You guys have an opinion on that?

Finally, there’s the dev blog from this week containing this little gem for Patch 1.4:

Mercenaries and Commandos now have a 30-meter interrupt, Disabling Shot. This ability interrupts the target’s current action and prevents that ability from being used for the next 4 seconds. This ability can be trained at level 18.

About flippin time!  Seriously, I have a baby merc, now level 33, and there is nothing more annoying than watching a baddie channeling a big spray of bullets at my face and being unable to do anything about it except pop a shield (if available) and apologize to Mako. Yeah, there are other things that CAN interrupt, I know, but the electric stun thingy has a long cooldown and you have to be in melee range to use the knockbacks.  And some things that incapacitate an enemy don’t work on strong mobs, you know, the ones that you actually would worry about kicking your ass if not interrupted… but I digress.

Also, when rostering a raid or doing a group finder, you don’t have to worry about “how do we interrupt all the things if we have 2 commando dps?”  Not that it’s a problem in our sage-heavy guild, but there are other guilds out there, I’m sure, that have this issue.

All in all, these are the things that stick out for me and will improve my quality of life because, of course, it’s all about me.  Anything else awesome that I missed?

Crafting Insanity: The Things I Do For Fashion

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

When 1.3 hit, I vowed to gather all the recipes.  Or at least to try.

I made a spreadsheet.

I searched the GTN every day.

I did generally stupid things in pursuit of those elusive recipes.

And now, check out how my spreadsheets look now, after all that hard work.  Green is recipes I have, red is a missing recipe, and gray means it doesn’t exist.

Synthweaving List
Armormech List

Don’t pretend you’re not impressed.

Black Hole Gear For Sentinels And DPS Guardians

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

When I first saw the black hole gear, I was pretty damn disappointed.  Some items were an upgrade, a SLIGHT upgrade, over my Rakata stuff.  But in most cases I’d actually LOSE a hefty chunk of strength.  No. Way.

Whilst perusing the black hole stuff over the weekend, trying to see if I was mistaken about the total suckitude, I noticed that the heavy armor DPS set’s chestpiece had significantly better-itemized stats for my class.

Well, as everyone knows, you can just strip the hell out of the mods etc and plop em in a medium armor shell.  HAHA, I thought, I will just buy the heavy armor set.

But no!  Some of the medium armor items are better than their heavy armor counterparts.

TL;DR – For the best armoring, mods, and enhancements for your stuff, you will probably want to mix and match between the foestopper (medium) and pummeler (heavy) sets – and obviously strip the mods on the pieces that aren’t the right armor class.  And then, after you’re all geared up, and just ROLLING in BH comms, you can buy specific pieces just for one mod or enhancement to further tweak your set.

Now, I should warn you, I’ve been trying like a fiend to find an actual GUIDE on the mixing-matching for sentinels.  A friend in-game mentioned such a guide for sages, but I can’t seem to google up a specific BH/Rakata gearing strategy.  So I’m using my own personal judgment here which, of course, is a dangerous thing.

The (Poorly Itemized) Pieces

Foestopper Has Higher Strength

Gloves
Boots.  The foestopper boots are so awesome, I just want to clone all the components and use them for all the slots.  I will have to buy a LOT of these and rip the mods and enhancements out.  Sigh.

Continue reading »

Search Terms: People Out There Are Weirdos

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

People do these search term show-and-tell all the time, and well, I wrestled with Analytics a few days ago, and it tried to bite me.  But today I have better luck.

Unsurprising Terms

First, variations of the blog name.

“bsock“ – well DUH.  I’m surprised that there weren’t more searches for that.

About Companions

Akaavi Spar, Akaavi Spar Customization, Akaavi Spar Outfit (and variations thereof)

Doc Customization, Doc Customization Pictures (+variations)

Aric Jorgen Romance, Female Trooper Romance,  etc (A lot of these, I guess we have cat lovers in the crowd)

“am i going to get aric jorgan back” Man… they love that cat.

Various companion names + romance.  OK, I do tend to talk about this a lot.

“can you romance raina and kaliyo and stay with kaliyo” – pig

Searches for specific companion customizations (Scourge, Bowdaar, Risha, but not Corso!)

“C2-N2 customization vendor” – don’t I wish

Fashion

Swtor Fashion, “aesthetics pants” – Hell yeah, aesthetics pants!

Synthweaving/Armormech Recipes/Schematics, Craftable List, Spreadsheet etc

Searches for various specific schematics (i.e. “reinforced phobium”)

Augment recipes, etc about augments (Yes, I wrote about this, but the article is on Snark Side)

Raiding/Gear/SRS BZNS

Columi/Rakata set bonuses

Sentinel, Watchman, Juyo Form, rotations, and variations thereof.  Sorry, folks, I don’t actually tell you HOW to do this.  I’m a combat sentinel!  (And I don’t tell you how to be a combat sentinel either.)

“how to know if you have upperhand active” – AHA!  I actually had the answer to this one.  See, I’m useful!

Star Wars Galaxies

I expected a bit of this because I talk about my SWG background on my “about” page.

“swg tailor pictures” – ok, this makes total sense

“how to set up a tailor shop in star wars galaxies” – In case you didn’t get the memo, that shut down in December.

“was sw galaxies bight than tor” – um, yes? no? what’s a bight?

Lolwut?

“sentinel watchman spec is horseshit” – yes, yes it is.

“swtor dark side starved njessi” – I don’t know what this means, but I’m disturbed

“kidz nd thair dresiz” – are these words?

“snoo snoo” and “death by snoo snoo” and “shnoo shnoo” – I can just imagine google helpfully asking “did you mean ‘snoo snoo’?” for the person who spelled it wrong.

“governor saresh flirt” – because, I don’t know about you, but I totally wanted to spend more time on Taris.

“elara escort” – yeah, in your dreams, buddy

“akaavi spar naked” – seriously, PERVS! She was in a bikini.

“pictures of gay cabana boy in speedo” and “pool boy dressing up for owner” – right now I really regret that almost a year ago I joked that I wanted to name my companions “pool boy” and “cabana boy” and make them hang out on the ship in speedos whilst crafting.

“the old republic how to turn off the morality” – How do I turn off morality in real life?

Getting Back The Raiding Mojo. I Mean Ops. Totally Ops.

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

After a month – yes, you read that right, a MONTH – of being unable to raid due to family obligations, I am putting back on my big girl (hawt) pants, and my new shiny sand people shirt from the world event, and going back into… wherever we’re raiding this weekend (TBD).

Yes, this picture again. It’s a seriously badass shirt!

Guys, I’m a little nervous.  But, as you know, nothing helps a case of nerves more than excessive and obsessive preparation.  It’s true.  I read it in a fortune cookie.  So here’s the agenda for the rest of the week:

  • Re-watch all the videos and re-read the strategies so I don’t forget some major thing and insta-kill myself and/or wipe the raid.
  • Do some dailies or flashpoints to remember where all my buttons are… so I don’t do something derpy and insta-kill myself and/or wipe the raid.
  • Try to avoid insta-killing myself and/or wiping the raid, generally.

But, of course, the above takes discipline.  The devil on my shoulder wants to procrastinate and go fiddle around on my mercenary.  You know, put on the headphones, tune out the world, and just focus on the story (this is my first imp toon, so it really is a new-new story).  But, as I remind myself, if I want to be a vaguely competent raider, and raid with my awesome team, I can’t just give in to my id.  It will be a miserable raid for everyone, especially me, if I’m making us wipe right and left.

Maybe I’ll find some more videos narrated by dudes with hot accents because I totally learn better from them.  It’s science.

Still Waiting for Real Server Transfers

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

Let’s translate from Bioware Bullshit into English.  We never had true “server transfers.” They were mergers.  Phased mergers, to be sure, but mergers nonetheless.  Now, the population problem has been fixed, enough dicking around, I want real transfers.

The whole damn point of server transfers (as opposed to mergers) is to have the option to play with certain specific friends of your choosing, not to join a bunch of random other people who are also transferred to the same place.  I’m mid recruiting for Snark Side, all the while thinking that it would be damn easier if we weren’t limited by the population of our server.  True, it’s a very large server, but that is irrelevant to any given person who is not currently on the server and would have to level up from scratch.  Some of our guildmates who had high level toons on other servers (pre-merger) and were hoping to bring them all together when we got “server transfers” – they’re shit out of luck because those toons ended up transferred (merged) to other servers.

Recruiting is hard.  Lack of server transfers makes it harder.  Being a GM super sucks.

Did I mention we’re recruiting?  (Seriously!)

A Very Limited Window

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

I thought I’d be really happy with the world event.  After all, it was a non-grinding non-dailies sort of affair that was fairly short.  And I was enjoying the hell out of the quests.

But I’m not happy because I couldn’t finish.

It’s a 7-day event.  And, a person might say, can you not get online once during that 7-day period? After all, it is not a long event.  Well yes, I managed to get online on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday… but, you see, that’s not good enough.  Because the last 3 quests had a staggered release.  So essentially I needed to get online at least once during a specific 4-day period to finish the last quest.  I really thought I could make it, since I could probably squeeze in an hour or two Friday night or Saturday, right?

That didn’t happen.  What did happen is that my washing machine gave up the ghost in a dramatic fashion a day before I was scheduled to leave on vacation.  There was the repair guy to call out (on the weekend), there were soggy clothes to remove.  Saturday afternoon, my last chance to finish, was spent at the fucking laundromat.  And then, after all that, there was packing.

A week-long event is not acceptable to a casual player, even if the event doesn’t take that much in-game time to complete.  What is even more unacceptable is the extremely crunched window to finish up that last quest to complete the event.

It’s not the rewards.  Fuck the rewards.  It’s that it’s new content!  We haven’t had new content in a while, seriously.  And I don’t get to complete all the new content that I am paying for because I missed a 4-day window.

For a game that is going F2P to appeal to a more casual audience, they are really alienating casual players right about now.

Timing Fail

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

Man, this sucks.  I mean, I’m going on vacation so YAY… but…

The world event!  It’s only a week long!  I’m not going to finish it!

And, more importantly, Snark Side is recruiting but I’m going to be totally out of game for a week!  I’ll be answering recruit questions from my phone…

… from the pool…

… with a beer…

Oh wait, those were my vacations before I had a kid.  Now it’s MOMMY SPLASH.

See you guys on the other side.

Scavenger Hunting. FYI, I Fail.

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

Unlike last time, I’m actually doing this world event.  Well as much as I can before I go on vacation.  I’m a little pissed off that it’s gated because then I definitely won’t finish by the time I’m leaving – and it will probably be over when I get back in a week.

Anyway, Dulfy’s guide in hand, I set out to find all the things.

The intrepid Zabrak does… something.

The most fun was when I was following some dude… people who spacebar through the cut scenes would be totally screwed in trying to find this guy.  Oh, wait, there are guides.  And I used them because, let’s be honest, I suck at directions.

So there he goes… UP…

Um… crap.  I alt tab out to Dulfy’s guide which cheerfully says:

So the bounty hunter climbed up..See those crates there? Take a climb!

Take a CLIMB?  As if it’s that easy for someone so jumping-impaired as myself.  Gulp…

Yes, there are 5 jumps. The horror.

I did manage to vault up there and while it was not on my first… or seventh… try, I didn’t have to yell downstairs “Hey Honey, can you make this jump for me?” so I was not too embarrassed.  Until I saw some chirpy asshole scoot up there on his first try like he was a monkey.  Haet.

As for rewards, I wasn’t too impressed.  I don’t need bowcastthingys, I don’t give a crap about mounts or pets, and fashion-wise I already have a sand people outfit.

I was so wrong to dismiss the sand people outfit!  It may be the same model as the original, but it color matches so much better.  Less chiquita banana, more badassery.  And on the republic side, seeing a color, a real color that isn’t brown or tan or brownish tan, is pretty nice.

Totally badass, amirite?

The main thing I got to do during this event that I don’t normally do is that, whilst searching for random crates, I wandered around on my speeder through various levels and eventually bumped into the imperial side of things.  “Bumped into” being code for “ahhhh holy shit they are AFTER ME!!”

How are you liking the world event?