If you haven’t played through Chapter 1 AND you didn’t watch the livestream AND you haven’t heard anything about Zakuul other than it starts with a “Z”, then you want to skip this spoiler. Otherwise, it’s nothing you don’t know.
Righty then? Last chance to stop reading.
***OBLIGATORY CHAPTER 1 SPOILER WARNING*** Last chance to turn back. Spoilers ahead »
Last night, I continued my trek in Inventory Management of the Old Republic. Yeah, no stories yet, still getting my shit in order.
Ship droid is still AWOL.
Andronikos refuses to dual wield, even in DPS spec. Boooo.
Idiots are coming back faster from crew skill missions. So that’s good.
Level 6 crew skill missions still blow. Even with the full list of them, there are maybe 6, and none with bountiful or rich rewards. Why do I care about level 6? Crafted DYES. Duh. And there is only ONE level 6 mission for color crystals. Ever.
I can’t figure out the best way to humiliate Quinn and Skadge with bad fashion.
Decisions, decisions.
I should probably get down to brass tacks and just level but my biggest dilemma, aside from companion garb, is which toon to level first as my raiding toon. Now that they’ve nerfed sorc, I’m not sure how it will shake out and whether I should just swap over to merc healing (my co-healer is an op, and an op/op team would be dumb). I’m hoping that someone will do some hard numbers and give me some useful information – lest I have to level both and then test-drive them both in raids.
I had maybe 40 minutes of play time after all the patching was done. Didn’t even get into story. But here’s what I noticed:
“B” is no longer your inventory. It’s your companion crafting interface. Not to be confused with your companion summoning interface, still “N”.
Where the fuck is my ship droid? Seriously. I sent out my idiots crafting and he wasn’t one of them. I can’t find him, I can’t summon him.
Stealth nerfs to healing sorcs. Undocumented changes make me a little stabby. From my brief inspection of my skills, it appears that:
Force speed CD increased from 20 to 30. Hey, the mercs also got their hydraulic overrides increased from 30 to 45, but that was in the notes. I’m not sure if that teleport doodad that is now baseline will be a decent substitute for force speed. This will likely vary fight to fight.
More insidiously, it appears that the cost of heals is decreased (yes!) but the amount of healing is also decreased (boo). Also the amount of force regained from force tapping is lower. On a macro level, presuming that the reduction of healing is proportional to the reduction in cost, this would mean that the heals-per-force ratio may remain constant but the potential heals-per-time would decrease.
I am going to have to investigate whether this matters in the “real world” of actually healing an encounter. And by that I mean wait until someone else tests it out and gives a reliable report of it because, seriously. Lazy.
Wow, that’s depressing. The rest of the expansion looks kinda awesome and I can’t wait to try it. To cheer you up, here’s a picture of Quinn being humiliated by bad fashion while Njessie goes about her business. Because mocking Quinn never gets old.
I am SO going to kill him if given the slightest chance.
I know you’re jonesing to marathon game right freakin now because KOTFE just launched, but you need to save some of that drive for November 7, 2015, for the Extra Life Charity Gaming Marathon.
Do it because you want to have an excuse to game for so long that you have to pee in a bucket. Do it because you secretly want to hang with the awesome people on the Harbinger server. Do it because you don’t hate children (although they really need to get off your lawn).
OK, fine, you got me, there will also be prizes. Do you want a BB-8 droid? I sure as shit do.
And here’s my personal promise to you. If you participate in this thing, you have a Get Out Of Hall Of Shame Free card for life. I’ll delete any pictures of your horrible garb that I currently have or obtain in the future.1 You can dress up like Santa-with-underboob and do the chicken dance in front of me on the fleet and I can’t do shit about it. You can create a character on the Harbinger server for the event named “Ilikeboobs” or “Scrotumjedi”, post the pictures on Twitter, and laugh at me while I gnash my teeth in dismay.
Rest of the details are here:
Extra Life is part of the Children’s Miracle Network charity which is a highly rated organization for hospitalized kids. Participants choose which hospital to sponsor by playing for either a full 24-hour marathon or a 12-hour half marathon. They ask their friends and family to sponsor them like a bikeathon or 5k. There are some prizes to be won this year, including a Sphero BB-8 droid, SWTOR Cartel Coin Cards, Cartel Packs, rare in-game items and other Star Wars related prizes that will be announced as the event draws near. Portions of the event will be streamed by Vulkk. Some of the player events this year will be:
- Group tauntaun mount hunt (everyone gets a tauntaun mount by the end!)
- Taunlet Pet quest to get the vanity pet
- HK Quest Chain (Pub side only this time, we did it on Imp side during our May Extra Life Preseason event)
- Fleet Datacron (10+ to each stat)
- Leveling Race (1-15 on new toon)
- Parade of Homes (Stronghold tours)
- Hide & Seek/ Scavenger Hunt
- World Bosses to get achieves and titles such as “Lucky”
- Live DJ Dance Party at Shai Tenna’s Pleasure Den on Hoth
- Lots of giveaways just for showing up and playing!
The event runs from 8am November 7 until 8am November 8, 2015. Players can also opt for the 12-hour option from 8am – 8pm Nov 7.
The team is hosted by the guilds Unholy Alliance (Imperial) and Wookiee Mistake (Republic) on the Harbinger server but ANYONE is welcome to join the team or sponsor a member no guild membership required at all. To sign up, go to unholyalliance.org/extralife.
Lately when I go to Yavin 4, I see fashion victims prancing about. Apparently the usual miscreants have escaped from the fleet and are befouling the wilderness with tackiness.
As always, you can send me screenies of any fashion offenders you come across.
Last night I hear some intense giggling, after which a note is dropped on me:
How can you resist that, right? So I opened it! The picture below has been annotated by me for your convenience since many of you don’t speak second-grader.
Making fun of Quinn never gets old.
So the livestream… I totally did not watch it. If you were reading my grumping on Twitter, you’d see that I don’t have time for that shit, and my guess is that nobody else does either. I was at work, then in the car, then picking up the Little Jedi, then ferrying Little Jedi to after school activities… and somewhere in there the stream ended and I was able to (finally) read a concise bullet point list of what the eff was going on. That took me 20 minutes.
In general, people are excited and hyped, and there is very little QQ. Because I have no patience for QQ unless it’s very well-written.
Here is my take on it.
Level Scaling. My first thought on this is Little Jedi. I no longer have to keep a toon in lock-step with her to help her with her leveling and class missions. Which is good because I fell behind, and she and thehusband outleveled me. OK I guess I can’t run around roflstomping things, but now that I think about it, I really never do that.
Streamlined Leveling. I think that doing the planetary missions along with the class missions has value. Again, this comes back to Little Jedi. 12x XP is fine when you already know what you’re doing, but when you’re learning to play, you need to do more missions and get your abilities slowly. I’m very concerned that her little jaunt with 12x XP has given her a false sense of pacing and difficulty. If we can just distract her with shinies for a few more weeks, then we can continue at a more reasonable pace. I will not have the child who gets to 50 and still needs to L2P. Also, everyone should meet Thana. Because duh.
Collections Search. OMFG FINALLY. (Mooooom, I can’t find my pink crystal…)
Temporary Ability Bars. Can any of you find a good spot for stowing your heroic moment abilities? I can’t. They’re either in my way all the time or impossible to find when I need them.
Gathering at any level. How many times has this happened to you: You fall behind in your gathering and then the nodes on your current planet are red to you, so you’re not mining them, not getting skill ups, and consequently fall more behind in gathering. I’m more likely to benefit from gathering nodes while leveling under this new system.
No more crafting mission RNG. Nothing more annoying than needing some luxury cloth and discovering that there are zero cloth missions available. And this will result in Little Jedi getting her prefab kits faster and not QQing that it takes SO long to craft them, GOSH MOM.
I can’t begin to cover all of it, so go read it for yourself. Or, if you are into that sort of thing, I suppose you could watch the recording of the livestream.
Several loyal imperial subjects have reported dissidents who have been observed violating Imperial Edict P4N75. Let this shameful display be a warning to troublemakers who threaten order and decency.
OK… so… remember how I said that I was totally romancing Lana on my next trip through Shadow of Revan after that disaster with Theron? Welp I am and I did.
Because Fraps magically turned itself off at crucial moments, you will have to make do with my proxy Lana “screenie.”
Spoilers below! Continue reading »