GS9 Week 14: Flashpoints, Flashpoints, Flashpoints!

A little over a month ago I wrote about how much I've been enjoying the current Galactic Season, and how I'd been thinking about setting myself the stretch goal of completing the full meta achievement on all servers this time (instead of the basic 100 levels). I'm not here to tell you that I've achieved that, but at this point I can say that it's definitely happening. I've reached season level 100 and defeated my 250 enhanced enemies on all servers, with the only boxes left to tick being a couple more Flashpoint Frenzy objectives and about 20 more weekly objectives in total.

It's been really surprising to me how energised I've felt for this season. I always say that this whole "doing seasons on multiple servers" thing means walking a fine line between a fun challenge and burning myself out with too many digital chores, and usually I tend to start losing steam after around eight weeks. This time though, I've kept going all the way to level hundred, to the point that my secondary legacies were only slightly behind my main one, and even after that I've just kept going... and going... and going.

The weekly flashpoint objective has been a big part of that, and I've written about my fascination with seeing the flashpoint scene on different servers. This week was particularly amazing for that as there were a total of three weekly flashpoint objectives: Korriban Incursion and Assault on Tython were both featured veteran flashpoints for the week, and the objective to do any random master mode flashpoint was also up. I ended up doing all three of these on all servers (minus the master mode on Shae Vizla since I couldn't get that to pop), for a total of 17 flashpoint runs throughout the week, and it was thoroughly enjoyable for the most part. Sure, not every single run was amazing, but I'd say the majority were at least funny or interesting in some way.

Tython and Korriban were good flashpoints to do repeatedly because they are relatively short and have maps that are slightly more open than the average instance, meaning people can take different routes. There are a number of skips of varying difficulties, which I all saw done at some point, but I also saw every single one of those trash pulls taken down the old-fashioned way and more. Some groups pulled mob groups I didn't even know existed, even after all these years, such as when someone in Korriban Incursion accidentally hurled their sabers over a ridge and a bunch of angry tuk'atas descended upon us. I had no idea those were even there!

As far as skipping goes, on Tulak Hord, Assault on Tython popped up as my random master mode and the tank was very careful to skip as much trash as possible while we took out the artillery targeting arrays in the first part of the flashpoint, just to then randomly charge into several groups of enemies just before Major Travik while commenting that he wanted to do the bonus (which requires you to kill a certain minimum number of trash mobs). "Why did we just do all that sneaking then?!" I exclaimed, to which he replied that he wasn't sure either; it was just a habit. That cracked me up.

My favourite experience of the week - and perhaps of the season so far - was this week's master mode flashpoint on Satele Shan though. I'm still never quite sure on that server whether I'm better off queueing late in the evening or waiting until the weekend and trying early in the morning my time. This week I tried in the evening again, and even while queueing as both dps and tank the wait was long. I decided for once to spend my time doing something that was neither good for seasons nor Conquest and simply drove around Belsavis, doing the Macrobinocular mission step there, uncovering the map and picking up some datacrons. After what felt like nearly an hour's wait I was about to give up when I finally got a pop.

The group finder made me the tank in a master mode Cademimu run. When nobody gives me "bat out of hell" vibes I usually ask whether people want to do the bonus, and there was enough support to do it. The Cademimu bonus boss is called Garold the Dark One, which always makes me laugh because Garold sounds like a hybrid of Gary and Harold, neither of which are good Sith names. Anyway, we tried to fight him and promptly wiped. The healer immediately apologised, saying it was their first time and they had mistakenly rolled right into a red circle.

As I always love an opportunity to teach people when it arises naturally, I gave the tip that all ranged could just stand behind the railing by the elevator to avoid being pulled in by the boss, in order to stay safely outside of his AoE. On the next attempt we tried that, but someone fell down the lift shaft, two people died and we hit the enrage. I just thought it was entertaining and perfectly natural progression! On the third attempt we got him down and I think everyone was very pleased.

After dispatching General Ortol, one person in the group asked whether we were up for running another flashpoint for the weekly. I had only really queued for the seasons objective, didn't need the weekly mission and was tired... but that group had such great vibes, I did want to run with them again, so I did. The second flashpoint we got was Mando Raiders, and this time there were no wipes, just some minor shenanigans that got me musing about how nice it was to be the tank when you have a group that genuinely wants to be led and learn, and for whom you sometimes do have to work a bit to keep them safe if they accidentally butt-pull some extra turrets.

It was just a good vibes week all around, and I'm getting to the point where I think I can ease up on most of the other seasons objectives and just keep running the weekly flashpoints until (close to) the end of the season. 

GS9, Week 4 Thoughts

This week was probably the least fun week of Galactic Season 9 for me so far, though I can't tell for sure whether the objectives were just less fun by themselves or whether my "new season enthusiasm" was slowly starting to wear off. That isn't to say that it was a bad week, just one that felt like it required more effort.

The dynamic encounter planet of the week was Dromund Kaas, which was weirdly enough quite a mixed bag. First off, it required 25 instead of 15 encounter completions again, which I found off-putting, though that didn't prevent me from doing the objective anyway, at least not this early in the season.

More strikingly though, Dromund Kaas was a weird inverse of Ilum last week - as mentioned then, I think the dynamic encounters on the latter are usually somewhat less fun due to the high mob density, so having more people around who were constantly clearing things out actually made everything more pleasant. Dromund Kaas on the other hand has a lot of encounters that are usually quite fun in my opinion... but they just don't scale with large crowds at all. Watching a dozen people all try to be the first to click that one terminal in "Rogue Droid Uprising" would have been funny if it hadn't also been very frustrating. The cherry on top was that this particular encounter has an achievement for clicking the terminal really quickly after getting to that stage of progression - not this week, bucko!

The veteran flashpoint of the week was the first part of the Jedi Prisoner storyline on each faction, which meant running either Taral V or Boarding Party and was another objective I wasn't too thrilled about. The Jedi Prisoner is an interesting storyline, but all the flashpoints involved in it are definitely in the bottom half of my list if I had to rank all flashpoints from best to worst. Gameplay-wise, they're all kind of long and boring, and while there are a lot of mobs that can be skipped, that just makes the whole experience feel a bit unsatisfying in a different way (to me anyway). Also, what's the point of doing Boarding Party if you don't get to confront Captain Yelto at the end?!

Unsurprisingly, my favourite run of this objective was the one I did with Mr Commando, who - despite not having run any flashpoints in what felt like forever - still remembered his exact pulling routine to unlock the Taral V bonus boss in what he felt was the most efficient way possible, which I thought was quite beautiful to behold. As it happened, we also had to pug one dps in that run, and I was a bit worried that we might get someone who'd be annoyed at us not skipping everything to finish the run as quickly as possible. However, we got lucky and got a level 15 who actually seemed quite delighted by the experience, gained six levels throughout the flashpoint and asked us at the end whether we wanted to do another one, which I thought was cute.

Running a master mode flashpoint was also an objective once again, and I was happy to do so on five servers (Shae Vizla is only being left out because I can't get the queue to pop there, even while queueing as tank or healer). My random pops this week were Blood Hunt, Cademimu, Mandalorian Raiders and Assault on Tython times two, which took me up to four runs of the latter this season already.

I'm curious whether that was just pure RNG or whether this is a side effect of the new exclusion rules. I have this theory that people primarily choose to exclude flashpoints from their random queue for three reasons:

1. They're perceived as too hard (e.g. Ruins of Nul, Shrine of Silence).
2. They're perceived as too long (e.g. The Esseles, Directive 7).
3. They're perceived as easy and overfarmed to an annoying degree (e.g. Hammer Station, Athiss).

If all four people that are up next in the queue have excluded five flashpoints for different reasons, that narrows the selection down by quite a lot - and I reckon Assault on Tython may simply be one of those that slips through the net either way, as it's neither faceroll easy nor particularly hard, and not terribly long either (especially if you skip some of the early trash). Has anyone else been seeing more of this one than usual? My hypothesis will need further testing for sure.

As for the other flashpoints, Blood Hunt was largely unremarkable, and Cademimu was the one I did with Mr Commando, which once again meant doing the bonus and just dragging a pug along whether they liked it or not, though they didn't complain about it. It was funny though when the guildie who was our fourth accidentally took the elevator downstairs in the middle of the bonus boss fight. 

That said, the weirdest/most amusing run was probably the Mandalorian Raiders I did on Satele Shan. I noted last week that I'm not a fan of dps running ahead and pulling when I'm the tank, right? Well, in this one there was a Guardian dps who took off like a bat out of hell the moment we zoned in and then kept pulling non-stop. I considered saying something like "you know this is master mode, right" but decided that this would've been too passive-aggressive - but also, I was honestly kind of confused more than anything because of how he kept getting away with it, in the sense that none of the trash seemed to hurt him too badly even when he got all the aggro. I was even starting to wonder whether I'd accidentally queued for veteran mode by mistake.

It wasn't until we killed Braxx the Bloodhound with the healer dead and everyone else on about ten percent health that the Guardian paused and said something along the lines of "I only just realised this is master mode since there were no kolto stations". So that was kind of humorous. He did stop pulling after that, we had a few more mishaps anyway, but ultimately it was all good.

Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 4

After the madness of trying to push for a win in Total Galactic War while also doing seasons across all servers at once, week four looked like it was going to be positively chill. There was some oddness in the weekly objectives though, as there were two origin story objectives as well as two flashpoint objectives. Here's how I viewed the lot of them:

• Earn 200k Conquest points: Yes, easy, no problem.
  
• Visit another player's Manaan stronghold: Sure, of course.
  
• Complete 8 repeatable or side missions and kill 100 mobs on the capital worlds Coruscant or Dromund Kaas: I was definitely going to do this one, as I had plenty of alts in that level range across all servers.
  
• Complete 15 missions as a Jedi knight or Sith warrior: Another definitive yes.
• Complete 15 missions as a Jedi consular or Sith inquisitor: While the doubling up seemed weird to me, I saw no reason not to do both.
  
• Dig up 3 treasures at a seeker droid dig site: So, I generally like this one and there's a reason I made sure to unlock the seeker droid on at least one character on all servers. It's very chill and can be done while queueing for something else, but it can be kind of time-consuming as well if you're unlucky with your digs, so I figured I was going to do it on some servers, but not all.
  
• Complete 2 out of 4 selected "Underworld" flashpoints (Mandalorian Raiders, Cademimu, Directive 7, Spirit of Vengeance): I figured I might do this on a couple of servers, but not all.
  
• Complete 2 out of the 4 Revan flashpoints (Taral V, Maelstrom Prison, Boarding Party, The Foundry): Now this was super odd to me and I figured I might do either one flashpoint objective or the other, but there was no way I was going to do four flashpoints on each server.
  
• Earn 25 medals in Galactic Starfighter: I'm not a huge fan of this objective as I'm not great at GSF, so this one takes me at least three times as long as the regular "play matches" one. Still, I figured I might maybe do it on Darth Malgus.
  
• KotET chapter 7 on veteran mode or higher: As usual, no.
  
• Colossal Monolith on any difficulty: Like other lair bosses, I figured this was a given with my guild on Darth Malgus, but unlikely (though not impossible) to happen anywhere else.
  

Day 1 - Tuesday

I slept very little that night, followed by a long day in the office (where I was biting my nails around lunch time waiting for the results of Conquest to come in). As soon as I got home, it was time for our usual Tuesday raid, where we all (somewhat unusually) played like muppets. I had a brief look at the Conquest results that our... "Conquest accountant" sent me but was otherwise happy to go to bed early, not doing anything for seasons that day at all.

Day 2 - Wednesday

I decided to do a quick round of all the servers around lunch time, but before the reset. On Leviathan and Tulak Hord, doing few missions on Dromund Kaas on my inquisitors there got the daily objective done quickly (and offered nice synergy for the weeklies).

On Satele Shan, my knight still had a bunch of completed side missions from Coruscant in her log from god knows how many months ago, so I started by running around and handing all of them in. I was somewhat dismayed to find that only one of them counted as an exploration mission for the Coruscant seasons objective, but nonetheless I picked up some more where I had left off. As Conquest gains for low-level missions were much lower on a higher-level character, I eventually relogged my consular to finish off the seasons daily with a quick companion level-up.

On Star Forge, I logged into my lowbie consular and did some more missions on Tython. I smashed some flesh raiders and levelled up a couple of times until the daily objective was done.

Since it was getting close to reset at this point, I just expanded my Coruscant stronghold on Shae Vizla and ranked up a crew skill. On Darth Malgus I gave a companion gift to push me over the daily requirement (the previous night's ops had earned me some points already).

It was a busy day for me and I didn't get to play more until relatively late in the evening. I started by playing two GSF matches on Darth Malgus, before switching to Leviathan to continue questing on Dromund Kaas on my inquisitor. I only had to hand in two missions before hitting the daily objective.

On Tulak Hord, I decided to mix things up a bit by queueing for a random veteran mode flashpoint on my inquisitor. She was only eligible for nine of them, and five were featured seasons objectives, so I figured what were the odds? Of course I then got Black Talon, which was one of the not featured ones. Someone expressed annoyance as soon as we zoned in and quit the group the moment not everyone space-barred on the first cut scene. Ironically it went much faster after that person had left... at least the run completed my daily objective and counted as my inquisitor completing several missions.

On Satele Shan, I did a few more missions with my knight until I hit the Taskmaster Conquest objective and with that also my seasons daily. On Star Forge, I continued on Tython with my baby consular, and it didn't take long until she achieved Taskmaster and the daily objective too.

On Shae Vizla, I was about to continue my consular's class story for the missions as a consular when I realised I'd never done the Coruscant or Dromund Kaas side missions on this server. So I returned to Coruscant, hoovered up all the exploration missions and killed Migrant Merchants Guild members until I saw that lovely "influencing the galaxy" pop-up. I was ready for bed by then.

Day 3 - Thursday

After another long day at the office, I logged into Darth Malgus and just played a GSF match there. We won and this completed my 200k Conquest points objective, but only advanced me towards the 25 medals for GSF by one.

On Leviathan I did some more Dromund Kaas missions on my inquisitor, and on Tulak Hord I decided to spin the wheel in the group finder again. This time I got Cademimu and had a smooth enough run. The lowest-level person got a bit lost at one point after dying and having to run back, but I'm happy to say that we backtracked to rescue them and no unfriendly words were said. Apparently this counted as having completed 15 missions as an inquisitor already.

On Star Forge I continued on my baby consular on Tython, until she too hit the 15 missions completed objective. On Satele Shan, my knight handed in one mission on Coruscant, which completed her business there - since I still needed to complete more missions as a knight, however, I then continued with her class story on Alderaan until the daily objective was complete too. My consular on Shae Vizla also finished the objective on Coruscant before getting her daily done.

Day 4 - Friday

I did a bit of PvP on Darth Malgus around lunch time, and got put into four Voidstars in a row, three of which were losses. Thanks, game!

Later, I logged through all the servers to do a bit of tidying up - one side-effect of last week's Conquest mania was that while I had found time for some seasons objectives, I'd neglected to clear out my bags and they were full of junk everywhere. On Leviathan I followed this up with a few more Dromund Kaas missions on my inquisitor, and on Tulak Hord I decided that my inqusitor there might as well finish her "Searching for Allies" weekly mission by queueing for one more random flashpoint. I got the Foundry this time, which was also on the list of featured flashpoints. I also liked this run because we actually had a polite conversation about whether to do the bonus or not - we ultimately decided not to, but only after talking about it!

On Star Forge I decided to try my luck with the random queue on my knight, but unfortunately she just got a Hammer Station. At least that completed the daily objective, and somehow counted as no fewer than six missions completed as a Jedi knight. On Satele Shan, I completed my knight's class story on Alderaan, which ticked her over the 15 missions completed there.

On Shae Vizla, I decided to queue for a random veteran flashpoint on my consular. After a few minutes of waiting I realised that since it was still relatively early in the evening for me, most APAC players were probably still asleep, but just as I thought about going to do something else I got a pop after all. After a quick Taral V run with lots of trash skipping, I was halfway towards another flashpoint objective and had 15 missions as a consular ticked off on this server as well.

Later in the evening, I returned to Tulak Hord and did 15 missions on Tython on my littlest Jedi knight who is too low-level to do Conquest as of yet. By the time he completed the objective, he was level 9.

Day 5 - Saturday

In the morning I decided to log into Shae Vizla and queue for all the featured flashpoints on both veteran and master mode on my warrior. I got into a vet mode Boarding Party with a level 80 Sorc healer who used their knockback on cooldown to scatter trash mobs to the four winds. After one particularly egregious example where one of my smashes went into thin air after they'd knocked three mobs away from me a half-second before I would've hit them, I politely asked if they could stop doing that. They didn't respond and continued doing their thing, so I put them on ignore at the end of the run. Kind of petty, I know, but Boarding Party is a long flashpoint, and being trolled on every single trash pull was getting pretty damn aggravating. At some point I don't care anymore whether they were doing it intentionally or just a complete newbie who doesn't know their abilities and doesn't read chat, I just didn't want to get grouped with them again. At least this completed one of my flashpoint seasons objectives, plus it counted as completing five missions on my warrior.

I queued again for the remaining four flashpoints and got Mandalorian Raiders this time. I had a brief sweat drop moment when on the second pull the Sniper in the group catapulted a group of mobs away from me, but he was actually trying to defend himself and it was just a one-time thing. I enjoyed this run otherwise.

In the afternoon I mostly played GSF and did PvP on Darth Malgus. The GSF matches went a bit better than before and got me to 20/25 medals for the seasons objective.

In the evening I used our social night to kill the Colossal Monolith and get both flashpoint objectives done with Mr Commando. We chain-ran master mode Boarding Party, Spirit of Vengeance, the Foundry and Mandalorian Raiders in a single session. It felt long. On the plus side, since I made a point of asking to do this on Imp side (where we usually spend less time), we also got a bunch of achievement progress.

On the other servers I did the following things in the evening:

On Leviathan, I did a couple more Dromund Kaas missions on my inquisitor. The daily was done after only two of them and I was starting to realise that, since I usually switched servers after hitting the 25k Conquest for the daily and for some reason that was happening really quickly while playing my inquisitor, I had completed zero weeklies on Leviathan yet. I made a mental note to push myself a bit more on Sunday.

On Tulak Hord, I did a Dromund Kaas heroic on my inquisitor since I had run out of exploration missions for her to do. Interestingly, when you do this objective via the optional one-time quests, you'll usually get your kills way before you've completed enough missions, but the heroics seemed to be shaping up the opposite, though she did hit the 200k Conquest points earned objective. Logging over to Republic side, I put my trooper into the queue for all the featured flashpoints on master mode, though it was kind of late and nothing popped. I went and did a heroic on Coruscant to pad my kill count on the capital worlds and push myself over the 25k required for the daily objective.

On Satele Shan, I thought I'd queue for some seasonal flashpoints while digging for treasure on my consular, but I got a pop before I even made it to the dig site. I got into a vet mode Taral V that was... stressfully fast. Look, I've resigned myself to people wanting to skip and rush to some degree, and at times I even welcome it! But there are degrees, and the guy who took the lead in this run was just driving on and pulling more while completely ignoring the rest of the group, whether anyone got dismounted or aggroed a group we were trying to skip... the vibe was definitely "I can solo this so the rest of you don't matter to me". We completed the run smoothly enough but I felt unhappy and wished that people weren't like that.

Since I was now halfway done with one flashpoint objective and I wasn't sure I wanted to do both on this server, I queued again for Taral V and Maelstrom Prison only. And I got Taral V again! With the same guy! This time I managed to fall off a bridge at one point, something that hasn't happened to me in ages, though I was fortunate enough to not die... I landed safely further down the path we had originally taken, so just had to loop back around while the rest of the group continued on. To the guy's credit, they did give me a moment to catch up eventually... or maybe they were just slowed down by the unskippable mobs on the bridge... Either way: so not necessary.

On Star Forge I braved the random veteran queue on my Jedi knight again and got a Cademimu run this time, which counted for one of the flashpoint objectives. Nothing remarkable about that one other than that General Ortol almost forgot about his rockets... he only fired a single one towards the end, just before he was about to die.

On Shae Vizla, I queued for the set of four featured flashpoints again and went to visit a Manaan stronghold in the meantime (fortunately a public one was available). This gave me a bunch of Conquest for completing four weekly objectives, so when nothing popped after ten minutes or so, I just used a rep token to push me the last bit of the way to the daily requirement and called it a night.

Day 6 - Sunday

Around lunch time before reset, I logged into Leviathan to play a bit of catch-up. I queued for the featured underworld flashpoints and got into a vet mode Mandalorian Raiders that was interesting in a couple of ways. First off, we killed Braxx before his hounds and the world didn't end... I thought they had an enrage or something! But then on the last boss, most of us were still killing the turrets outside his room when one guy charged in and pulled the boss, and by the time we joined him, the boss was almost dead while only having spawned a single set of turrets? I have no idea how that went down. Anyway, the guy /stucked because of course the remaining turrets kept us in combat and he told us to do the same, but we just killed them instead. Afterwards I dug up some treasure with my seeker droid. While I was still only on one weekly completed at that point, I was partially done with a lot of others and felt like I was in a much better place.

I then logged over to Tulak Hord and queued for all the featured flashpoints on master mode again. I got into a Cademimu run where we even did the bonus boss and I was happy with that.

After reset I logged into Shae Vizla and queued for the underworld flashpoints first and got an instant pop for Mandalorian Raiders vet mode. This run completed both that flashpoint objective plus 15 missions as a Sith warrior, taking me to 7/7 weeklies completed on this server.

A bit later I logged into Leviathan and queued for the underworld flashpoints on my knight again. I got an instant pop and was pleasantly surprised to find myself in Spirit of Vengeance. Having four flashpoints to pick from for variety is less effective when a lot of people specifically avoid certain ones - I was fully expecting to see nothing but Cademimu and Mando Raiders in the public queue all week. It went fine and completed that flashpoint weekly objective for me.

Afterwards I visited a Manaan stronghold and since I was still short a few missions as a knight, I took her to Balmorra (where she's currently in her class story) and cleared out Sobrik to get that done as well. This put me at 5/7 weeklies completed on Leviathan, with two more almost complete and easy to finish off the next day.

I visited Star Forge next and decided to complete my knight's vet mode flashpoint weekly by queueing for one more random. I continued to have bad luck and got into a Hammer Station. The group had a level 80 Sage healer who took point. When we expected them to make the first corner pull, they just kept running... and running... all the way to the drill, where they then stood and spammed heals on themselves. We eventually caught up and AoE-d everything down that they had pulled, but I was glad I wasn't the only one who expressed confusion about this strat in chat. When we got to the retractable bridge, they raced across just before it turned off, and then slowly soloed the next pull on the other side while the rest of us actually killed the turrets. I got the feeling they quietly cursed our "inefficiency" as they didn't say another word the entire run and quit instantly the moment the completion message came up. While I'd now completed 15 missions as a Jedi knight, I was only on 3/7 weeklies otherwise and not too happy about that, but I wasn't sure whether I could be bothered with a push for much more.

I decided to log over to Darth Malgus for the time being, where I did a GSF weekly on one of my Sith warriors, pushing me over the 15 missions completed as a knight or warrior and earning the last medals I needed. Then I visited a Manaan stronghold to take me to 7/7.

I logged into Tulak Hord while eating dinner and put myself in the queue for master mode Taral V and Maelstrom Prison, but nothing popped. I ended up just doing a couple of Coruscant heroics and logging off to do something else for a while.

Late in the evening I hopped onto Satele Shan, dug up some relics, visited a Manaan stronghold and did a few missions on my consular until I hit 200k Conquest points.

Day 7 - Monday

I logged into Star Forge shortly before reset, visited a Manaan stronghold and knocked out a couple of Coruscant heroics on my trooper main. After the reset, I knocked out the last couple of missions on Dromund Kaas on my inquisitor on Leviathan, to get that server to 7/7.

I then put myself in the master mode queue for the Revan flashpoints on Tulak Hord again, even though I knew it was a bad time and ultimately nothing popped, but I was able to also do the seeker droid objective while waiting.

In the evening I logged back into my trooper on Tulak Hord again and put myself back in the queue while questing, but I barely lasted ten minutes before also listing myself for the veteran versions. I just wanted to get that last objective done! I was surprised that it then still took another ten minutes to get a pop, considering this was German prime time. The actual Taral V run then only took another ten minutes too, though this time I was quite grateful for that. Also, the guy leading the skips in this one would instantly turn back and help kill any extra mobs that were aggroed, which I thought made a world of a difference. I guess it's less about skipping or not skipping and more about working together and with the other members of your group. Anyway, this brought me to 7/7 on Tulak Hord as well.

Hopping over to Star Forge, I put my trooper into the master mode flashpoint queue for the underworld flashpoints and did more heroics on Coruscant until the related seasons objective was ticked off. Just as I was about to start digging for treasure, I got a pop for master mode Mandalorian Raiders. This was a smooth and pleasant run that stood out to me for the tank's perfect calculation of number of mobs needed for the bonus boss, as we killed exactly 80 and not one more (and the reason I could tell this was calculated was that he was a Shadow, which allowed us to skip some pulls, but he got just the right number for us to unlock the bonus boss too). Once done, I dug up three treasures on Alderaan and with that, was 7/7 on Star Forge as well.

On Satele Shan I just had to complete a couple more story missions on Belsavis with my consular to go 7/7, which just left me to earn 25k Conquest points for the daily objective done on Darth Malgus and Shae Vizla, which was achieved easily enough. (Incidentally, one of the random master mode flashpoints I decided to run on Darth Malgus ended up being Ruins of Nul, but that has nothing to do with seasons... let's just say it was still a pain but we got there in the end.)

Week 4 - Thoughts

I was kind of surprised by how much effort this week took. By Sunday I was definitely considering forfeiting full credit for the week on some servers, but then I was pretty close already, so giving up so close to the finish line would've been annoying as well. In hindsight I think the problem was that this week was one that greatly benefitted from synergies between different objectives (such as doing the planetary missions or flashpoints on one of the featured origin stories) but I didn't always min-max that aspect and when I didn't, it actually increased the time required by a lot. I also wasted some time on the random queue without getting into the flashpoints I actually needed, clearly overestimating my odds with a total of eight flashpoints eligible for seasons objectives. I need to learn to resist the lure of that, even if it's much easier than trying to find the correct boxes to tick in the unsorted jumble that is the full flashpoint list in the group finder panel nowadays.

Some of the objectives also highlighted to me the differences between the "efficient" way to do them and what I find fun, and again, they didn't always align. Doing four flashpoints on master mode with my guildies, including all the bonuses, was certainly interesting and enjoyable, but it also took us more than two hours. Comparatively, veteran mode Taral V with a pug that just rushes to the end barely takes ten minutes, but is also quite boring. Same with doing exploration missions on Coruscant or Dromund Kaas on a lowbie that's levelling (which includes watching all the cut scenes) vs. just blasting through the heroic circuit on a level 80.

Hammer Station No More

Let's ring in the new year with an update on my Nautolan Shadow's progress levelling through flashpoints.

Hammer Sta... Kuat Drive Yards!
I levelled: 38-40

As it was the start of a new week I queued for the full selection of available flashpoints once again, expecting to be thrown into Hammer Station for this transgression (when the queue popped I could see that we had a level 17 in the group so it couldn't have been anything other than that, Kuat or Athiss), but I got Kuat again! Yay!

In this one I was actually the highest level, grouped with two Sentinels and another Shadow below me. The Shadow was the lowest level and admitted that it was her first time in a flashpoint of any kind. Poor thing got lost at the very beginning as she couldn't even find the elevator but I showed her the way.

We got the Starship Assembly first and things went well enough, except for one or two deaths, which I consider fairly normal in a low-level group with no healer. But one of the Sentinels clearly wasn't happy, as (from what I could tell) he started swearing in Polish after dying once. Then he jumped into another big pull all on his own while the rest of the group was still low on health from the previous fight, died shortly thereafter and finally quit the group.

I re-queued us for a replacement unfazed and tried to actually do the puzzle properly since neither of the two lowbies seemed to know what to do and were therefore unlikely to interfere, but I messed it up and picked the wrong options anyway. D'oh! A level 75 Shadow joined the group just as we finished the section.

The second part was the hangar, and I'm happy to say that for once we completed all the bonuses in that one!

The final boss was Lieutenant Krupp again. I explained what to do and everyone executed things perfectly so that we got him down on the first try. Afterwards I stayed grouped with the newbie Shadow for a bit longer and she told me that she played other MMOs but had only just got started on SWTOR. She also said that she'd had fun in the flashpoint and added me as a friend. Warm fuzzies all around!

Hammer Sta... Taral V!
I levelled: 40-42

My initial enthusiasm for these runs diminished a lot after the first week, which made me log in to work on this project more infrequently, but being ill for a few days caused me to take a break for a full week, so that I soon found myself with the weekly quest yet again. Again I braved the full random selection and did not get Hammer Station - instead I found myself getting sent to Taral V, which was handy as I had the story quest for it too.

Taral V is one of those places where I always struggle with the majority's desire to skip as much as possible, but this time around I decided to take it easy and go with the flow. The other dps was a Nautolan Sage, and we had a level 75 tank and healer, so I let the tank lead us past most trash and bonus objectives, just doing their thing. The only skip that stung a bit was Doctor Zharan, whom I consider a very fun boss and I always expect him to drop loot (though I later verified that he doesn't), but I didn't say anything either way. At least with full restedness I still gained two levels despite all the skips.

Ha... Mandalorian Raiders
I levelled: 42-43

Third time in a row that I queued for everything and didn't get Hammer Station! Is the madness finally over? Even better, I got another flashpoint that Nautalie hadn't done yet.

This was another all-dps group, consisting of me, a level 75 Guardian and Commando, and a level 41 Sage. Contrary to expectations, the 75s didn't seem entirely sure what to do and were initially very hesitant to make the pulls, despite of it being the most sensible thing for them to do considering our level distribution. The Commando also ran off into completely the wrong direction (which is to say backwards) after we took the shortcut involving the elevator. Meanwhile the Sage seemed to be the one person who knew what they were doing... never judge your pugs by their level!

The first boss was the usual crazy mess (though nobody died) and it was once again mostly down to me to click kolto stations. I'm coming to appreciate that it really is an art, knowing when to click these, in particular that you need to start thinking about doing it before you're almost dead.

The Boarding Party was interesting in so far as I swear that I've killed its members in the same order pretty much since the dawn of time (warrior, inquisitor, then agent and bounty hunter more or less simultaneously), but as usual pugs are great at providing new experiences. I didn't actually know what would happen if you changed the order... as it was, the group actually left Rotham for last and he promptly one-shot the Sage with a Force choke from hell the moment all his friends were dead. Good thing I had been hitting him at least, so he didn't have that much health left.

Considering how it had been going I made sure to highlight the rule not to attack the final boss while turrets are up, and fortunately everyone was compliant in that regard so that we downed Mavrix Varad himself with no problems.

Ha... Cademimu
I levelled: 43-45

This was a run with three level 75s, two Sentinels and a healing Sage. Considering that, it was still harder than expected. The Sage was one of those odd healers where I'm never quite sure what they are doing, because he was obviously healing specced and I could see him cast healing spells, but somehow we were still all on half health even on the most mundane of pulls. On two of the bosses I had to click a kolto station because I was about to die from a complete lack of any incoming heals, just to get yanked away from it right afterwards by the very same Sage as if I he as annoyed at me daring to keep myself alive. Very odd.

I learned two new trash-skipping tricks, both of which failed and generally (as these things so often are) seemed way more hassle than simple killing the mobs we were trying to bypass. But I guess it's still interesting to know to what lengths people will go to in places to avoid killing one more mob.

Finally, on the last boss the healer died to rocket fire and then tried to tell us what to do while lying dead on the floor. One of the Sentinels died as well, but me and the other Sent finished the boss off just fine with just the two of us. It was just one of those groups that kind of grated on me despite of nothing going terribly wrong - I just didn't really like the juxtaposition of the dps being in a hurry and wanting to skip everything with a healer who came across as having a pretty high opinion of himself while doing very little healing.

Ha... Kuat Drive Yards again
I levelled: 45-46

And fifth time in a row that I didn't get Hammer Station! Though it was Kuat again, but then I'm not really tired of that one yet. This run was already in progress and halfway through the Starship Assembly when I joined. It didn't look to me like they were going for any of the bonuses, but when I saw the elite defender just sitting in a corner I asked whether we should kill it, and while I got no verbal reply someone else immediately charged it, so yay for communication I guess? As there was some dithering about the actual starship assembly I started to wonder whether they were actually trying to solve it, but the prototype turned out to be a failure as usual.

The second half was the prison wing, which we also blasted through in short order. This time the elite defender just kind of sat in the way of one of our objectives anyway, so I didn't even ask before charging it. I was happy to get all three bonus missions done for once!

We finished up with Lord Modo and I defaulted to clicking the kolto stations again, but this time it was more out of habit than due to a feeling that we were all going to die if I wasn't looking after our health. I haven't mentioned it yet, but this party also consisted of three level 75 damage dealers (two geared, one not) but for once the effect was actually as expected, which is to say that everything melted in short order.

I'm up to having nine flashpoints unlocked and not far off unlocking more at this point, so hopefully I'll be able to keep queuing for a random without being put into Hammer Station all the time anymore. It's certainly more fun to see some variety.

Kuat Drive Yards Can Be... Fun?

Last time on "levelling through flashpoints" I decided that I'd had enough of Hammer Station and that going forward, I was going to exclude it from my flashpoint selection before queueing. Somewhat to my surprise, queue times with Hammer Station unselected really were longer, though it was mostly a difference between mere seconds and waiting a couple of minutes. Things really are more dire than I had thought if that many people are queueing for nothing but Hammer Station in specific.

Also, fun fact: When I went to unselect Hammer Station, I noticed that what inspired this whole project, to find out at which level each flashpoint unlocks now, is actually a pointless exercise since it says right there in the tooltip of the group finder interface what each flashpoint's level range is! D'oh!

Cademimu
I levelled: 30-31

Ahh, Cademimu, an old favourite. My team for this one consisted of two other Shadows and a Sentinel, which led to a lot of sneaking. Mostly we were successful in skipping the pulls we tried to, though other times we did end up aggroing things by accident and once, just before the first boss, this even led to a wipe. Oops!

Order 66 executed successfully.

We were mostly carried by the level 75 in full 306 gear, while the poor lowbie tank seemed a bit lost. I took it as final confirmation of his newness when he died to General Ortol's very first rocket firing - you know the one, where only one of the four quadrants is dangerous and the other three are safe, yet he managed to run right into the one that killed him.

Maelstrom Prison
I levelled: 31-33

I briefly considered unticking Cademimu from the list on my next run to avoid getting it again, but then decided against it because after all those Hammer Stations two Cademimus in a row would have been nothing anyway. As it turned out the question was moot in any case as I ended up in Maelstrom Prison. I've always considered this one a pretty nice flashpoint to pug, as it's one of the easier ones overall but has a couple of tricky bits that prevent it from being a snore-fest.

My party this time around consisted of three Guardians, one level 75 tank, and two labelled as dps, level 60 and 45 respectively. While everyone said hi at the beginning, there was virtually no conversation after that, so I didn't bother bringing up the question of the bonus boss when it became obvious that some people were keen on quickly running past anything that was skippable.

Our tank had a clear understanding of the basics of tanking, as he was taunting and using his cooldowns appropriately, but displayed a surprising lack of tactical knowledge when he attempted to face-tank Colonel Daksh, which eventually resulted in a wipe. The next time around we got him down okay, and the level 60 revealed himself to be the most experienced by using his taunt to take over kiting duty.

The level 45 was a funny one in so far as he kept running ahead to be the first to jump into as many pulls as possible and died multiple times from that. However, every time he was revived he went straight ahead and did the same thing again, undeterred by the obvious negative consequences. Some people play this game in (to me) very strange ways.

At one point he also accidentally pushed a gold mob into a patrol and then said "mb" in chat. After my recent adventures in WoW Classic my brain immediately went to "mana break", which obviously made no sense, until I realised that he was apologising for the bad pull: "my bad"!

Kuat Drive Yards
I levelled: 33-36

Kuat at last! I never thought I'd say that, considering that this used to occupy a similar position as Hammer Station does now, as in: the easy place to spam for rewards (though it used to be more of a levelling thing than about max-level gear).

The group I got for this one was fairly low-level, with the highest character a level 51 Guardian, and the other two slots being filled by a level 16 Gunslinger and a level 21 Sentinel.

I got a bit worried when the Guardian started the introductory convo before the Sentinel had even loaded in and asked people to skip if they'd already seen the cut scene, but then he aborted the conversation when he realised that we were still missing someone and didn't actually complain when we did watch the cut scene. He was sporting the title "Friendly" and I was curious to see whether he'd live up to it. (He did.)

Remembering how rush-rush people used to be in this flashpoint it felt odd to go through it as slowly as we did, but at our level every pull was a challenge and we had to heal up in-between. We got the armoury and the gun emplacements as our random segments. We even did the bonus once! The second time the Guardian completed the final objective before we'd found the Elite Defender, but oh well.

The final boss was Lieutenant Krupp, and of course we wiped the first time due to the two lowbies being completely oblivious to the grenade mechanic. I explained. On the next try the group split and activated both degaussing stations at the same time, so that we were unable to cleanse the second round of grenades and wiped on that one. Friendly Guardian put a star over my head and told everyone to follow me whenever the grenades were thrown.

We continued in that vein but wiped about another half dozen times without much progress, barely shaving twenty percent of the boss's health off before dying. I was getting increasingly worried that someone was going to get angry/frustrated and leave, but that didn't happen. Friendly Guardian and I just kept trying to come up with additional advice to improve our performance, such as to kill the adds as soon as they appeared, while the two lowbies did their best to execute it (though with limited success).

As survivability was our biggest problem, I eventually took it upon myself to personally run back and forth between the kolto stations - I had expected our Guardian to heal himself there since he was the one with boss aggro most of the time, but after a few tries of that not working I decided to just do what I could myself. I also taunted the boss every now and then to spread out the damage a bit, and the Guardian let me take some hits, then taunted back when I got low. We were obviously on the same page on that point.

I think it must have taken us ten or twelve attempts until we finally got the boss down. On that final successful try the Sentinel died early on too, so that we three-manned most of the fight. I was doing very little actual damage, mostly just running back and forth between the kolto and degaussing stations, but eventually we got him down. I checked the time and the fight that finally led to the kill had taken us a full seven minutes. Quite hardcore for a group of lowbies fighting a flashpoint boss - and easily the most satisfying run Nautalie has been in so far. (EDIT: I actually uploaded a video of that fight to YouTube in the end, you can see it here.)

I don't mind showing these guys' character names because they were all goddamn heroes.

Cademimu
I levelled: 36-37

I guess after the positive excitement of the previous run, karma decided that I was due for a train wreck. I got put into a Cademimu run in progress, though they were only on the second trash pull. I saw two level 75s still in levelling gear designated as tanks, a Vanguard and a Shadow, and another dps Shadow a few levels below me.

When we got to the bit at the bottom of the first elevator where you can run past a lot of mobs, one of the other Shadows charged right in and pulled half the area, causing us to wipe. The Vanguard yelled some expletives. We re-grouped and the Shadows (or one of them, I couldn't quite see) ran right back in to pull the same group again. The Vanguard left as soon as that happened and we wiped again.

We re-grouped for a third time and someone was obsessed with getting revenge on that Champion drone now as they unnecessarily pulled it yet again... but we got two at once and wiped yet again (well, I stealthed out just beforehand). That resulted in the level 75 Shadow leaving as well.

The lowbie Shadow had been passed group lead for some reason and I told him that he had to re-queue us if we wanted replacements but he was completely non-responsive and just seemed confused. I summoned my crappy influence level four Qyzen Fess and tried to gently guide him onwards. He did follow me for a bit, which got us past the cantina and to that bit where you can take a shortcut through the fenced area. We both snuck up to the next pull right outside it in stealth and I was pondering whether we should just bypass it entirely, when the Shadow decided to jump out of stealth with an AoE, dying a few seconds later. I still tried to help him but died as well.

We started running back once again, and I watched him jump to his death while the elevator wasn't there, just like that. I didn't know what to say. Suddenly he seemed to have found the queue button as the prompt for getting replacements popped up... but before we could actually get any, he left the group, causing it to disband. I returned to the fleet, somewhat bewildered by what had just happened.

Kuat Drive Yards
I levelled: 37-38

I re-selected Hammer Station just so I could get the weekly Searching For Allies quest done, fully expecting to get thrown into it right away, but the instant pop I got actually took me to Kuat Drive Yards again!

This time the group consisted of three other dpsers just below max level, two Shadows and a Commando. There was a bit of confusion at the beginning as one of the Shadows lagged behind and eventually asked us to kick her. I was glad that the other two didn't immediately oblige but rather asked why. She said that she couldn't see her UI, which prompted the other Shadow to explain how to reset your UI. I imagined the Commando rolling his eyes as he announced that he was going for a bio in the meantime.

Eventually we got everyone onto the station though, and this time around we got the hangar and starship assembly scenarios. Nice variety! My attempts to get people to do the bonuses before completing the main objectives were once again only moderately successful. I did grit my teeth a bit when people didn't want to do the Elite Defender in the hangar even though he was right next to the exit, so that when we eventually had to kill him anyway, we didn't get anything for it since the bonus quest had disappeared. On the starship assembly someone customarily mashed all the buttons before I'd even had a chance to figure out the puzzle and the prototype exploded. Nice to see that some things haven't changed.

The final boss was Station Guardian One, whom we dispatched easily enough as everyone used the two kolto stations responsibly (thankfully). I just found it amusing that I was once again the lowest level by far yet ended up tanking the boss for most of the fight - until I got caught in a tight spot with no kolto station in reach and stealthed out to avoid dying.

It does still feel a bit strange to get this much satisfaction out of running Kuat Drive Yards of all places, but right now anything that's not Hammer Station is a win.

Pugging with Shintar: Venturing Into Master Modes

I've managed to continue to upload an episode of my pugging video series pretty much every week, despite of being worried at some point that I might not be able to keep it up. I'm kind of amazed by my own ability to maintain a routine sometimes. Too bad it's not really a very highly-valued skill (though handier in everyday life than you might think).

Somehow I've also ended up with one hundred subscribers on YouTube! Thanks, everyone! I hope the fame doesn't go to my head. Anyway, here are the new episodes I uploaded over the last six weeks:

Episode 13: Falling Off Lifts in Cademimu - Long-time readers may know that Cademimu is an old favourite of mine, and I was pleased to get it as my random that day. Following the age-old tradition, someone fell to their death off a lift, including me. You'd think I'd really know better by now.

Episode 14: Confusion, Chaos & Naked Anti-Bob - This episode started with me ending up in Cademimu again because apparently I had failed to unselect it from the group finder menu - still, what were the odds of getting the exact same thing again? Like back in Episode 7, I powered through quickly and then queued again. This time I ended up in Mandalorian Raiders, in a run that included a Commando who wore virtually no gear and needed on everything. Strange times!

Episode 15: Splitting the Party in Legacy of the Rakata & Pugette's First MM! - In a relatively unremarkable Legacy of the Rakata run Pugette reached the milestone of hitting level 50, which allowed her to queue for master mode flashpoints for the first time. I put myself in the queue right away, expecting nothing to happen, but got a pop almost instantly and therefore decided to turn the episode into another double feature. I got into master mode Athiss as my first of its kind, which was fortunately a relative softball, especially as my group consisted of pretty good players.

Episode 16: Trash Skipping Gone Wrong in MM Cademimu - With master modes unlocked in the group finder, I decided to queue for both veteran and master modes simultaneously, fully expecting the veteran mode to pop first... just to get into another master mode run instantly. Back to Cademimu I went once again, though this time in its harder iteration. No deaths from fall damage in this one, though I made a complete fool out of myself on the first boss. The ending was also a good demonstration of how badly (or not at all) communicated trash skipping attempts can go horribly wrong and just end up delaying everything.

Episode 17: Bad Chemistry in MM Assault on Tython - The instant master mode pops continued. This one was off to what I felt was a super awkward start, with the tank asking to be kicked, me causing a wipe by obliviously running into a group of mobs the others had skipped, and a strangely passive-aggressive exchange ensuing between the dps when we got a replacement tank. The run continued fine after that, but my good mood was shot, because that's what this sort of behaviour does to me unfortunately. I also found the last boss quite tough to heal!

Episode 18: Interesting Times in MM Maelstrom Prison - This late-night visit to hardmode Maelstrom Prison ended up being one of my favourite kinds of pugs: We actually did both the bonus missions for maximum XP, people were chill, and while some mistakes were made, they were amusing and/or simply shrugged off, so a good time was had by all (I hope).

Visiting The Ebon Hawk

Last year I wrote a series of posts about establishing a new legacy on the Progenitor. That project kind of came to an end when KotFE came out, since I haven't really been back to that server since then. I think I left my agent just as she was supposed to go to Hoth. Need to get back to that some time, if for no other reason than to finish the agent story a second time!

Either way this didn't stop me from founding yet another legacy on another server last week, this time on the US East Coast RP server The Ebon Hawk. While PvPing with Traitine he mentioned that he'd like to show me his fully kitted out GSF ships some time (since he had rolled a new alt with nothing to his name on the Red Eclipse to play with me), and when I asked where he kept his main it turned out to be the Ebon Hawk. It only seemed fair to roll up an alt there too.

I decided to make another Commando, like my main, but I made her a Cathar since I don't have enough of those yet. I was both pleased and shocked to find that the name "Shintar" wasn't taken yet after more than four years... it seems to be available pretty much everywhere except on my home server.

I quickly found myself familiarising myself with the outfit designer - I wasn't keen on it at all on release, and on all my high-level characters that were already at a high level before its introduction I've stuck to wearing orange shells, but on a lowbie that starts with nothing, even I have to admit that the outfit designer offers a cheap and simple alternative for maintaining a good look, especially while levelling. I still think it's kinda clunky in some ways though - for example I keep trying to save items into an outfit while I'm wearing them, but apparently you can't do that so I keep having to take things off and putting them on again whenever I want to make changes. Once I got Aric, I also stole his clothes since they don't make for a bad outfit and are not actually bound to him anymore.

I decided that it had been way too long since I last did all the side quests on Republic side and had a go at them. Unsurprisingly, I was once again too high for the Esseles before I even got to the fleet so that I soloed it for the fun of it (on tactical mode that is, the actual solo mode is kinda boring). I spent a lot of time on the fleet in general and mused on how that is the place where you really "set up" a new character or legacy: buying a stronghold, choosing crew skills, picking up the various quests that introduce you to group content and PvP, and so on and so forth.

Initially I was a bit taken aback by how dead the server seemed, but then I realised that I was playing at something like 3 am local server time, which was hardly fair. Eventually I still managed to get into one of each "play mode" to complete the various introduction quests: one PvP match (a Voidstar, which we won), one GSF match (which we lost and during which I played terribly, failing to get a single kill) and one random flashpoint (for which I got Cademimu, which pleased me, and everyone was polite and competent).

In general my impression of the server has been a positive one so far, living up to the good old mantra of RP servers being better places in terms of community... even if there was some unnecessary discussion of American politics in general chat. I kind of wanted to go "stop talking about American politics already" but then I realised, well... this is a US server. Politics are always a bit annoying when people feel the need to discuss them in MMOs, but I find it particularly grating when people are way more focused on other countries than on their own. Couldn't really accuse anyone of that here though.

Since I'm doing all the quests as well as group content on top of it, my character hit level thirty before I'd even finished Coruscant. Level sync for the win! I need to write a post about the side quests on Coruscant some time; they gave me a lot of food for thought. The only thing I didn't like is the lack of quality control (what a surprise) that was performed when they made changes to lowbie quests for KotFE. For example there is this mission which has two senators talking and which used to be in a somewhat remote room where it was easy to miss. This was moved into the main hall to be more obvious, which I approve of in principle, however nobody seemed to check what moving them to a different room would do the cut scene animations! So now one of the senators walks off into a wall and then floats around in space for a while. WTF.

I also joined a pug for the Coruscant world boss and learned that apparently you can't be summoned by a guild ship if you don't have your own ship yet. Who knew?

My Mercenary's Grand Finale

In what's probably going to be my last post of the year, I'm proud to announce that my flashpoint-levelling Mercenary has hit level 65! The arrival of double XP provided a boost for the last couple of levels that I actually welcomed for a change, and her last few runs were all good. I'll make another post in a couple of days to talk about what I feel I've learned from this experiment, but for now, let me summarise my last couple of flashpoint pugs:

Cademimu
I levelled: 58-59

Cademimu, old friend, we meet again. This was a run with no Sith: just three Mercenaries (including me) and one Sniper. It made me feel like I was part of a proper strike team - I love it when random groups come together like that. Also, with three Mercs we had so much fun with knockbacks!

Team Tech Users

For all the Cademimu runs I've done on this character, this was actually the first one where people trapped the first boss's droid companion correctly and didn't get themselves trapped instead. The Wookiee boss got burned down so quickly that we got absolutely swarmed by Ugnaughts, though we survived. And nobody died on Ortol either, which I believe was a first for me as well (though one guy ate a lot of fire and came close).

In what may well have been the most hilarious moment of this character's pugging career, someone unexpectedly aborted the little conversation at the end for the whole group because he "made the wrong choice", as he had trouble remembering which of his alts were supposed to be good and which ones evil. Hardcore RP on The Red Eclipse, guys!

Czerka Core Meltdown
I levelled: 59-61

Just what I needed to complete the CZ-198 story quest! My companions for this flashpoint were a level 40 and two lowbies who were only 16 and 17 respectively. The latter two gave the impression that they were at least new to the flashpoint, but at the same time they seemed reasonably skilled and learned quickly, even if the Vrblther boss was a bit of a pain until they took note that he needed to be pulled towards the spores.

The Duneclaw had me a bit worried as I had heard unpleasant things about it, and they were certainly true. The AoE damage from the sandstorm generators is absolutely insane considering that groups are supposed to be able to do this without a healer! Even with my heals and constant console clicking we barely stayed alive. In fact, we did wipe twice: first because at least the lowbies didn't seem to know what to do, and then because while I was effectively tanking through heal aggro, I had trouble clicking the consoles at the same time as the giant boss in my face sometimes made it literally impossible to click on them. However, after I complained about this the rest of the group made a point of clicking them for me and we eventually came away successful.

Boarding Party
I levelled: 61-62

This was my first run with three players who were all from the same guild - in this case, the amusingly named "Howling Teapot Gang". We did the bonus boss because someone was hoping for a furniture drop; the boss didn't oblige however.

Blood Hunt
I levelled: 62-63

I'll be honest: I swallowed when I saw that it was Blood Hunt again. Was this going to be another one of those runs where we are fine until Jos and Valk and then everything falls apart?

In an amusing twist, I was actually the one being backfilled this time, with the rest of the group already waiting at the Mandalorian Couple of Doom. Everyone was amused when I immediately knew what was going on and I was told that three people had already quit before me.

You could tell that the three remaining players had had time to practice, because they were absolutely ace at staying alive via kiting and using defensive cooldowns and self heals. The only problem were deaths to knockbacks, which still occurred, especially in the second phase. We wiped two or three times and had one near-wipe where the bosses suddenly reset. In the end we finally managed to get Jos down in phase two and then it was just me and the level 50 Operative left alive, with me spending most of my time healing myself through Valk's sweeping gunfire and the Operative doing desperate dps. I eventually got the killing blow, dinged 63 in the process and the crowd went wild. I'm not kidding, one guy was yelling in all caps that we were gods among men, haha! It was pretty epic, and just like the last time I bested these guys in a pug group, everyone was ridiculously happy at the end.

BOOM!

Hammer Station
I levelled: 63-64

In this run we had a legendary level 65 Marauder who seemed to be suffering from Twitchy Sentinel Syndrome at first, which annoyed me initially, however I soon saw that he was actually pretty mindful of the rest of the group - he respected crowd control and in places where we snuck past bits of trash he waited for everyone to make it past safely before continuing. He also did pretty good dps, which prompted me to inspect him. I was almost disappointed that he was "only" wearing 208 gear. Still, even with that our enemies pretty much melted... on the last boss, one of the lower level dps got knocked to his death right at the start, and by the time he had managed to run back in the boss was already dead.

Boarding Party
I levelled: 64-65

This run was slightly annoying in that we had a level 65 Sniper who kept breaking my CC and the level 29 Mercenary who was marked as a damage dealer appeared to actually be a healer - at least I didn't see him use any actual dps spec abilities and he seemed to spend a lot of time throwing extra heals around. This made everything a bit slow and painful - basically the sort of run I would have declined to join if I had known that there was another healer in the group. Still, in the end it wasn't too bad and we did both bonuses, which is always a big plus in my book. And of course I hit max level!

... while being pebbled in the face by a Jedi consular.

Now I feel I should really do my class story on Dromund Kaas to at least get my ship - it wouldn't do to be asked to join an ops run on Oricon and be unable to actually get there...

I Have The Power (to carry these pugs)

My Merc's journey to the level cap continues and she's getting quite close by now. However, XP gains have also dropped to "only" about one level per flashpoint. I'm wondering how much better one might do if one were to make full use of all available XP boosts (which I didn't) by joining a guild, waiting for full restedness, buying all the increased flashpoint XP perks and using XP-boosting consumables.

Cademimu
I levelled: 45-46

As I mentioned in my last Flashpoint Friday post, my Cademimu hat-trick from last time was immediately followed up by a fourth pop of this instance. The most notable thing about this run was that it contained the most "gogogo"-like player I've encountered yet, a level 65 Juggernaught who took off like a bat straight out of hell the moment we zoned in and kept pulling as fast as he could, even if it led to bad things such as us getting two groups at once (which meant even more heal-tanking for me). In hindsight it's a mircale that I only died once, on the first boss. At the same time, even this rushing was still positively sedate compared to the sort of behaviour I experienced in WoW a couple of years ago.

After this flashpoint I fully upgraded my gear again even though it didn't seem to make much of a difference, purely because I was getting close to the cap for how many common data crystals you can have. Sadly the mods from the vendors are so cheap now that even buying a whole new kit barely made a dent in my crystal pile. I also picked up the story quest for Directive 7, just in case it comes up again, as I was now high enough level to do so.

Blood Hunt
I levelled: 46-46

Oh hey, another failed Blood Hunt pug! Same story as always: Everything was fine until Jos and Valk, then the group disbanded after two wipes (even though they had been pretty good tries and we'd made it to the second phase each time).

Korriban Incursion
I levelled: 46-47

Another rare group with a tank, though he seemed unfamiliar with the flashpoint and didn't know that we needed to kill the four commanders to get access to the first boss, so the rest of the group had to gently herd him into the right direction first. After the first boss he DCed and was replaced by a level 45 dps. Even with three dps our damage seemed very low, and I couldn't help but wonder whether the dps Juggernaught wasn't actually secretly a tank as well. (He had zoned in in Soresu form, though he did switch when I pointed that out.) On the last fight my heals were once again enough to out-aggro all the dps and I was effectively tanking most of the time. The dps also didn't know that they were supposed to kill the probes - thank Bioware that they die on their own after a while or we would have been in trouble.

It was after this flashpoint that I noticed that all my Republic characters, even the really low-level ones, have access to a quest called [Daily] Group Finder Tactical Flashpoint! I wonder why the Imps don't get that one? Looking at the TORCommunity database, it looks like it might be some sort of flagging error, as it lists the same quest twice, but both are tagged as only accessible to Republic classes. That would have been another nice source of XP to speed up the process.

The Foundry
I levelled: 47-49

This late-night run was easily the most fun pug I've had in a while, as it contained a tank and dps that were in the same guild, very laid back, and happy to banter. The tank died on the first boss and just laughed about her silliness when I pointed out that even tanks had to move out of melee whenever he does his fire attack. We also did both bonuses, which is probably why I gained two levels in this one.

At the end I had to laugh when the last boss exploded into a box - another 4.0 change that Bioware made is that they got rid of all those security chests that used to spawn on bosses that don't leave a body behind or that leave multiple bodies. They were always a bit of a pain in places like ops, as they could only be looted by one person at a time and you had to form an orderly queue so everyone could get their commendations. This new system is much better, it's just kind of humorous when the body's supposed to mysteriously disappear and instead a glowy box appears out of thin air.

False Emperor
I levelled: 49-50

We meet again, False Emperor! In this run I was joined by three melee dps of levels 41, 47 and 49 respectively. Any attempts of mine to use crowd control were foiled instantly, but at least they seemed to be aware that I was getting all the aggro and tried to reduce the impact that had. (I fully expect to do a lot of tanking when there is no proper tank, but you can tell the difference between groups that notice and try to help you and those that are completely oblivious... usually the latter are busy piling on a single gold mob while I get shot by five weak enemies for the entire fight.) I also worked on improving my heal-tanking by doing the line-of-sight dance around various corners and pillars.

On the two prototype droids, my three "pets" were sadly completely focused on trying to kill the one that was immune to damage and needed some prompting to start attacking the right one. Still, I was growing oddly fond of them. At exactly eight o'clock, one of them suddenly went "oops, I have to leave" and I couldn't help but picture him as a little kid who had reached his bedtime.

Having hit level 50 in this flashpoint, I did some running around to pick up more quests, such as the storyline for Kaon Under Siege and Lost Island. I was kind of shocked by how Darth Nurin casually dropped a massive spoiler for the end of my class story in that conversation... I was like: "I haven't even been to Dromund Kaas, woman!" In all seriousness though, I had been under the impression that they had markers for some of these lines so they wouldn't come up if you hadn't already completed that content. It was a bit jarring.

I was now also able to pick up the weekly mission to do five tactical flashpoints, which should add another chunk of experience to my remaining runs. When I opened up the group finder, it had now selected operations and hardmode flashpoints by default, which I had to uncheck, as I don't think that I would have a very good time in there right now.

Assault on Tython
I levelled: 50-52 (this included the random flashpoint weekly)

For this flashpoint I was joined by three dps, two of whom were only level 23 and 24 respectively, so I expected things to be slow. It wasn't that noticeable on the first boss, but by the time we got to Master Liam I was a bit worried that we might run into trouble with our group being unable to kill each set of droid adds before the next one spawned. Fortunately that wasn't the case, though we got very little dps time on the boss himself. We were lucky in so far as he seemed to get bored after a while and stopped bothering to vanish and summon adds.

We also wiped on Master Oric, which was simply an amazing experience for me because I don't think I'd ever had it happen to me before. I mean, I'd always known that it would be bad to let him draw power from those holocrons, but since no group of mine actually ever let him get away with it, I'd never seen what it actually does. The answer is that it increases his damage output, and after two or three stacks I simply wasn't able to keep up with it anymore, not to mention that we'd already lost another group member to his "purple circle phase". Fortunately everyone listened to me when I explained what had gone wrong, and on the next attempt they executed the mechanics nearly perfectly, even if our dps was still low.

After this flashpoint I was pleased to find my combat res and Electro Net on the trainer - now I've got pretty much everything except for whatever Successive Treatment is called for Mercenaries.

I also had too many crystals again and was pleased to discover (after some running around on the fleet) that you don't actually have to wait until Odessen to be able to buy companion gifts with them - you can already get rank 5 gifts on the fleet, which should help prevent any more crystal overflow in the future.

Mandalorian Raiders
I levelled: 52-53

This run was a bit of an emotional roller-coaster ride. I got teamed up with three dps of level 20, 21 and 27, so I knew that things were going to be even slower than in Assault on Tython the day before. But I didn't mind at first - I was kind of looking at myself as the benevolent high-level player carrying them through the experience. I asked them if they knew each other, since they were close in level and none of them were in a guild, but they never responded. They also did not pay much attention to me getting mauled by mobs and never bothered to regenerate any health themselves in-between fights.

In hindsight I really wish that I'd thought of recording the first boss fight because it was pretty comical. I was healing everyone and kite-tanking the boss around the room, only getting the occasional break whenever he did his aggro drop and jumped on somebody else for few seconds. I was really grateful for Hydraulic Overrides there, because getting caught in his slowing aura was not nice. Meanwhile the dps took absolutely forever to kill his pets. After that I thought that surely the worst was over now, just to have that fight be followed up by that big pull with a bunch of hounds. They did not get frozen by the exploding barrel and I barely clung on to life tanking all the dogs while hitting every single cooldown that I had.

Slowly my attitude started to shift. When I sliced the lift and called people over, they ignored me in favour of going the long way round. When I marked a focus target on the Republic boarding party, they ignored that as well. I was getting rather annoyed with them all and their seeming lack of interest in what was going on. I pictured them zoning into their next flashpoint, without a healer, and dying on every single pull.

I was convinced that the last boss would go horribly wrong, but tried to give instructions before the fight anyway. On the first jump we were left with both turrets still up and alive, but at least they then seemed to get it and started dpsing them down before continuing to chase the boss. In the end that fight wasn't nearly as bad as everything that had come before, but I still felt a bit burnt out on my role as the "carrier" of clueless pugs after that run.

Flashpoint Friday: Cademimu

In honour of the group finder putting my little Merc into Cademimu four times in a row (yes, there was a fourth run after the three I mentioned in my last post) I decided to make it the subject of this week's Flashpoint Friday.

General Facts

Cademimu was originally a levelling flashpoint accessible to both factions, designed for levels 27-33, and is now accessible to levels 15-65 as a tactical. It's one of those "story-light" flashpoints from launch, alongside others like Hammer Station and Red Reaper, which I already talked about. It didn't have a hardmode version at launch but received one with the release of Rise of the Hutt Cartel.

Cademimu V is a Republic city world similar to Coruscant, distinguished by skyscrapers and high walkways without safety rails. Unlike Coruscant (for all its problems), it's in the grip of an outright rebellion.

Fights

You spend the flashpoint fighting separatists, who are mostly humanoid soldiers, though they are also supported by droids and some hounds. Some of the larger pulls can be pretty tough, especially those containing hounds. The larger droids are often near the edge of a platform and can be insta-killed by knocking them to their death (which is a lot of fun).

Of course the lack of safety measures means that players also have to watch out for deaths by falling themselves, and there is an infamous "lift boss" near the end, though it has been nerfed since launch as its speed used to be much more annoying. My fifth post on this blog ever was about encountering this lift boss and being greatly amused by it.

Once upon a time...

Like in the other flashpoints of this "story-light" style, there are a bunch of gathering nodes for various crew skills that allow you to unlock shortcuts or temporary combat pets to assist you.

The boss encounters in Cademimu are all fairly interesting. The first fight is against a corrupt police officer who tries to arrest you with his droid. Traps will be placed on the ground that incapacitate and damage players if they stand in them, but they can also be used to stun the droid if the person he's currently targeting lures him into it. It's interesting to note that this fight can be tackled more than one way: some groups burn down the droid first, others the officer. The important thing is that the players themselves don't get caught in the traps and don't let the droid catch them, as he hits pretty hard.

The second fight is against a Wookiee spacer with a flame thrower and a bunch of Ugnaught mechanics as adds. It's a bit random, but I guess the separatists hired him or something? This fight poses the challenge of dealing with adds that are not too easily killed (as they are all silvers), however with some skill they can be pulled into the boss's flame thrower so that his own ability helps with killing them.

Finally there's General Ortol, the last boss. He's, again, one of the game's more memorable encounters in terms of mechanics, as it takes place underneath a bunch of rockets, and the boss keeps instructing his troops to fire them. If you're underneath a rocket when it ignites, you're toast! I'm pretty sure that nearly everyone who's ever done this flashpoint has died to this mechanic at least once initially (as it's not very obvious just how far the rockets' reach is).

This fight requires an unusual amount of spacial awareness of players, as they need to look up every time Ortol's audio cue warns them to make sure that they are not in a danger zone. The boss also has a knockback, and in hardmode it comes with the added challenge that he occasionally roots people with magnetic shackles. These can be broken with any ability that removes movement impairing effects or by another player running over and touching the shackled character. This requires both situational awareness and teamwork, as people constantly need to free each other to not get trapped underneath a rocket about to fire.

Story

Depending on your faction, either Master Satele or Darth Malgus inform you that there is unrest on the Republic world of Cademimu V. Governor Chornarov has declared independence and martial law - Master Satele assures you that the planet's people do not approve of this but are being oppressed by  a bunch of war criminals, as Chornarov has built a private army consisting of former separatists from Ord Mantell. In addition to this, Cademimu is known as the "war chest of the Outer Rim", as it stocks missiles to defend at least three other planets in the region, which makes its sudden secession both dangerous for the Republic and an interesting opportunity for the Empire.

You are supposed to land a small strike team near the planetary missile control centre to deprive the Governor of his power and take over. You spend the entirety of the flashpoint fighting your way to this building, but when you arrive you find that the launch sequence for the main missile battery can't be aborted anymore - you can redirect them however. The light side option is to aim them at an uninhabited moon, while the dark side option lets you target the enemy faction's fleet in orbit.

Once upon a slightly later time...

At the end you face off against General Ortol, the leader of Chornarov's private army and a major war criminal from Ord Mantell. Once you've beaten him and taken control, the flashpoint ends, and you only hear about the aftermath in the debriefing, where you are told that the corrupt governor will be taken care of.

Conclusion

For a flashpoint that doesn't present you with a lot of story in the actual instance itself, Cademimu still has a pretty deep background. It's interesting that you never actually meet the main antagonist, Governor Chornarov - as you make your way through the instance you just keep hearing him make announcements about how everything is peachy while you fight his troops.

Cademimu's lifts and chasms make for an interesting environment that allows you to speed up some encounters by knocking things to their deaths, which is immensely satisfying if you play a class that can do so. At the same time this also offers plenty of opportunity for hilarious player death.

Finally, all the boss encounters are fun and engaging, as they feature interesting twists such as being able to use boss abilities to your advantage and having to pay attention to the third dimension (without requiring any jumping craziness).

For all these reasons combined Cademimu is probably my favourite of this set of six flashpoints from launch - even after running it four times in a row recently I only got mildly tired of it, something I don't think I would have been able to say about many other instances.