Frivolous Expenditures: Companion Customization

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

So, everyone has their thing.  Some people want the coolest mount, others want some sort of glowy glowstick that is a different color, some like minipets, etc.  I’ve decided my thing.

Each companion will receive a customization.  It doesn’t matter that the companion looks fine now.  Or if I almost never use that companion.  Or even if it’s a wookiee.  Each companion gets customized.1

Now, this seemed expensive at first, but it’s actually quite reasonable if I have my main fund my alts.  Even with the more expensive kits, it’s under 100k per toon, spread out over 50 levels.  And the first companion gets a freebie, so if I’m satisfied with that, I’m set.

It can get a little awkward.  Like… I’ve known Risha as an NPC for 15 levels and then she became my companion.  We’ve had extensive interactions while she had her “default face.”  So it’s going to take some adjusting to think of this new look as “Risha.”

Why?  Well I’ve noticed that many people, maybe most people, aren’t bothering with it.  and I really want to have a “unique” experience, so what better way than surrounding myself with customized companions.  Plus, if I end up rolling another toon of the same base class, I can customize my entire crew in a completely different manner.  Funsies.

Where to Get Customizations

OK, here’s a great list.  I know for a fact that the Taris, Balmorra, and Belsavis vendors are in “safe” places in the intro towns when you first arrive on the planet.  Once you have a ship, you can trot out to a planet that might be well above your level in order to get a customization  kit for a companion you just acquired.  I went to Belsavis at a way lower level than I should (to get Akaavi’s customization), and the customization vendor is right in the starting area and accessible without running into any nasties.

About Freebie Kits

For some first companions, you get a freebie kit as a quest reward.  You choose 1 of 3.  However, do not fear if you choose the wrong one!  The others that you did not choose ARE still available at the appropriate vendor.

Previewing Customizations

You can preview customizations for your companion regardless of which companion you have out.  Control-left-click on the companion customization (as the tooltip says) and your preview window will pop up.  Then switch to the “companion” tab.  At the top of the preview screen, there are arrows.  Use those to scroll through your companions until you find the right one.  (You will probably have to control-left-click again to toggle the preview if you don’t see it.)

Yes, the preview is crappily small and there’s no way to zoom.

Pictures of them all?

I know it would be so convenient to have screenies of all the customizations rather than squinting at the preview.  SWTOR Spy is gathering pictures of all the companion customizations, but it’s not filled out completely.

Continue reading »

  1. Ok, if the customizations are truly all foul, I will not do it… but that hasn’t happened. ↩

That New Trailer and the UI

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

SWTOR released a new trailer about upcoming features including (these are the high points for me) guild bank and UI customization.

While I’m thrilled with UI customization, it’s… a start.

What it addresses:

  • Resizing all the things.  IDEALLY this will include buffs/debuffs in ops frames, but there’s no way to tell.
  • Moving all the things (YES!)

What it (probably) does not address.  At least from what I can tell…

  • Mouseover macros
  • Targeting companions (i.e. putting companions in ops frames)

So… yeah… I think these improvements are great for the general playerbase and will probably deal with a lot of the issues for DPS and Tanks, the UI still needs more work to be healer-friendly.

Yes, I Backtracked To Get A New Jacket. Don’t Judge Me.

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

With every jacket uglier than the last, I was stuck in my weird jacket with the doodads on the back and the horrendous neck roll…

A stylish neck roll. I have whiplash, officer, make that other starship captain pay for my pain and suffering.
I mean, what is that? A mini-backpack? We're gonna party like it's 1995!

Which, I might remind you, is still better than the higher level crap that I keep looting:

Metallic boobs are srs bzns.
A cape! Here I come to save the daaaay...

Then, as luck would have it, my sentinel finished a level 15 quest that I had skipped on my smuggler and the reward was a fully moddable chestpiece.  Hrm… brain connecting dots… fully moddable chest… from level 15 quest, probably not too ornate.

I have never logged back to my main so fast ever.  I abandoned my sentinel in the senate building and hauled my smuggly-butt back to Coruscant, picked up the quest, and got my very plain looking level 15 jacket.

Very normal...
No backpack included.

Sometimes the simplest low-level items do look the best.

Bad Fashion: Companion Edition

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

There are at least 2 things wrong with this outfit.

Yes, that’s Corso’s butt.

(1) Green & Red?  It’s the Corso Holiday Edition, available for a limited time only.  If you pull the string on his back, he sings carols from Space-Georgia. I mean Ord Mantell.  Totally…

(2) Um, red butt?  Like a monkey.

I’m going to have to farm commendations so he doesn’t look like a festive holiday primate with a bucket on his head.

Edit: Ok yes, after posting this I realized today is SOPA day and I was intending to go dark or do something, but then Little Jedi got sick, and I mean up all night puking sick, and it completely skipped my mind, so I ended up posting random fluff as I sit here in my up-all-night-with-sick-kid stupor.  She’s fine now, by the way, and chipper, which is more than I can say for me.

Upper Hand: How the Eff Does That Work?

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

Upper hand1 is difficult.  I’m having trouble wrapping my brain around it and it will take even longer for it to be second nature.  But I’m assuming that everyone else is having the same problem, right?

The “Build and Consume” Model

Simple premise.  You build up stacks of upper hand (up to 2) with certain abilities and consume upper hand with others.  Upper hand also provides passive bonuses with certain talents just for being up.  More on this later.

How You Build Stacks

For purposes of this article, I’m only including heals that build, not offensive abilities.

What You Spend It On

Well, all sorts of fun things!  Remember each of these eats one charge of Upper Hand, not 2.

How Do I Know That It’s Up?

Now, when it was only put up by Underworld Medicine, you knew it was up because you had just cast… Underworld Medicine.  Not rocket science.  But now that it can proc off slow release medpack, it’s less predictable and you have to pay more attention.

Buff Icon

There’s a teeny weeny buff icon that appears on your character’s buff bar with all the other buffs.  It’s frightfully small and annoying.  I rarely notice it.

Oh hay, 2 stacks
Just 1 stack

Abilities Lit Up

This is the “ghetto Power Aura” so to speak.  If your Kolto Pack/Emergency Medpac is available, you have upper hand.  If it’s grayed out, you don’t.  This won’t tell you how many stacks you have or how long it will remain up.

Now it’s up

Now it’s not

Sound

This is crazy but… there’s a giggle or a snicker.  A little titter when you proc upper hand off slow release medpac.  Listen for it!  It helps me know that I have a stack to spend, even if I’m focusing on health bars at the moment.

Keeping Up Versus Spending ASAP

You get passive bonuses for having upper hand up.  Healing Hand gives you a boost to healing which is the same regardless of whether you have 1 stack or 2 stacks up.  So it’s good to always have a stack up.

But if you don’t spend it, it’s a waste and a drain on energy.  What is the best course of action, but might be difficult, is to spend a stack only if you are at 2 stacks.  So you always have 1 remaining stack of upper hand up for the bonuses but you can still use it.  Once you get the second stack, feel free to spend it again.

Another reason you might want to keep 2 stacks active is that it takes time for the game to register that it’s up.  If you have zero stacks, then hit underworld medicine and then try to cast Kolto Pack at the end of it, there will be a delay where the game insists that you do NOT have upper hand active at all.

  1. For you Imperial Scum, it’s “Tactical Advantage” and should be basically the same deal. ↩

Fashion Police Officers Are Knocking At My Door As We Speak

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

Yay a new orange fully moddable chest piece.

Wait.

That’s right.  The cape is part of the chestpiece.  It’s attached.  One guildie says “that looks like Dark Helmet.”  If Corso could have given me the -1 of shame for wardrobe, he would have.

And with that, I stripped out the mods and stuck em in my old jacket.  A cyborg’s gotta do what a cyborg’s gotta do.

Companion Gifts Explained: A Tale of Trial and Error

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

If you want to bumble around and figure things out for yourself, best you stop reading now.  Otherwise, carry on.

Companion gifts have 3 major aspects:

  1. Type of gift (i.e. Military, Republic Memorabilia, etc)
  2. Rank of gift (Ranks 1-5 I think)
  3. Quality of gift (green, blue, purple)

We’re going to go through these in order…

Type of Gift

Your companion likes certain types of gifts, and it’s definitely a hierarchy.1  If you want to be efficient, you will look it up on one of those fan sites.  The hierarchy goes:

  • Love
  • Favorite 2
  • Like
  • Indifferent

Usually each companion has 1-2 “love” gifts.3  These are the ones you want to focus on.  This is because the drops from tier to tier are, generally speaking, by half.

Example: Presuming Rank 1 Gifts on a low-affection companion (more on this later) I found out that it would be +96 affection for a “love” gift, +48 affection for a “favorite” gift, and +24 affection for a “like” gift.  Give or take.  An “indifferent” gift will get you 0.  Waste of money.

Conclusion: For the most bang for your buck on gift type,

  • give the “love” gifts
  • give the “favorite” gifts if you happen to come across them (do not buy them).  Or sell them if you prefer.
  • sell the rest (or give them to your alts)

Rank of Gift

Gift rank is appropriate based on the current affection of that companion, not your level.  In general, you should give Rank 1 gifts until they start dropping in affection rating (i.e. something that used to give you +96 now gives you +54) at which point you move on to the next rank.

As with the above, the effectiveness of a gift rank drops by about half.  If your companion “needs” a rank 3 gift, the rank 3 gift might give +96, a rank 2 gift of the same type would be +48, and a rank 1 gift +24.

If you give too high a rank of gift, it’s overkill and you will waste points.  For example: If I give a “love” gift, Rank 1, to a companion with 1000 affection, I get +96 affection.  If I give that same companion a Rank 2 “love” gift, I will get +106.  Since the prices of the gifts go up non-linearly, this is a huge waste.

Again, pay attention to affection gains and once you start experiencing diminishing returns, bump up the rank of gift.  If I had to guess, I’d say you have to move up a rank every 2000 or 2500 affection points.4

Quality of Gift

If you give a blue or purple gift, you will get way more brownie points than a green gift.  However, the above rules still apply.  If your companion feels lukewarm (“like”) toward a certain gift type, a better quality gift won’t change that.  It is definitely not worth the expense.  Also, as much as you might like to surprise your companion with a huge Rank 3 gift, wait until your affection is around 5000 to present it (give or take).

How many more brownie points are we talking about here?  I would say that, compared to a green gift of the same type and rank, you get double for a blue and quadruple for a purple.5  Again, this is based on trial and error so I could be way off.

  1. To make things even more infuriating, some gifts are appreciated if they come from a female, and not so much if they come from a male – or vice versa.  This is mostly for courting and luxury gifts. ↩
  2. Some sites have “Love” and “Favorite” swapped.  I’m not sure which is correct and this is quite confusing. ↩
  3. Where to find companion gift lists: Swtor Things, Swtor Spy ↩
  4. According to SWTOR Things, the thresholds are at 2000.  I haven’t been paying as close attention, so I defer to them. ↩
  5. I got around 390 affection from giving Corso one purple weapon of the appropriate rank. ↩

Do I Really Need To Explain This?

Hawtpants of the Old Republic Posted on by

OK, I saw an inappropriate name in general chat the other day and I took it upon myself to report it.  I got back this response via email:

Greetings Njessi,

I am Protocol Droid [REDACTED] of Human-Cyborg Relations…

I have received your transmission regarding the player name “Cuhnt”. I just want to know what particularly is your issue with the name for us to verify if this is really something we should investigate.

Looking forward for your immediate response.

Please do not hesitate to contact us again if there is anything further we can help you with.

Galactic Support is our specialty…
Sincerely,

Protocol Droid [REDACTED] Star Wars: The Old Republic Customer Service

Really?  I have to explain this one?  Can’t Captain Obvious fly down from the sky and bean someone on the head?

So I wrote back to explain exactly how this one is trying to get around the name filter.

This is what I SHOULD have written though.

Greeting Protocol Droid,

Nothing is wrong.  Carry on.

Sincerely,

Pehnis and my alts Twaht, Cohck, and Anahlprobe.

/fahcepalm