Romance Review: Base Game Guys for Gals

A couple of months ago (wow, this has been sitting in my drafts for a while!), Intisar wrote a blog post in defence of the romances with Doc and Corso, after they'd been panned pretty hard in one of Swtorista's livestreams. I had thoughts on this that I wanted to share in reply, but I figured that I might as well do so in a blog post of my own. It just took longer than expected to get it out...

I'll open by saying that I'm far from the most knowledgeable person when it comes to the in-game romances. Unlike many players, I'm not tempted to hit absolutely every flirt option I see, and in general the concept of romancing an NPC in a video game has less appeal to me nowadays than it might have had maybe fifteen years ago. I've also just been really inept at virtual romance in the past. My first post about companion romances on this blog talked about this at some length, including mention of my akward attempts at romance in Dragon Age. However, that doesn't mean that I don't have opinions on the stuff I have seen, and I thought I might as well compile them all in a single post.

This will only talk about romanceable companions by the way - flirting with random NPCs you encounter along the way can still be fun and memorable, but it just doesn't quite have the same weight in my opinion. I'll also limit myself to the base game companions, and more specifically to those available to female player characters, because almost all my characters are female. It's only more recently that I've dabbled a bit in also trying to level a couple of male characters, but none of them have made it far enough in the story to see their major romances. Something to explore over the next decade I guess. Anyway, here's what I've got to say now:

Republic

Trooper - Aric Jorgan

My main is a trooper and she's never kissed anyone. As I mentioned in the post linked two paragraphs ago, I wasn't instantly sold on Jorgan, and by the time he kind of started to grow on me and I might've considered a romance, I had missed my chance. So all she's done is flirt relentlessly with Jonas Balkar, and I could see something developing with Rass Ordo depending on how things go with him in the future... we'll see.

Anyway, on the subject of Aric: I obviously made alts later and have romanced him since then, though it's been a while since I played through those conversations, and I've got to admit they haven't been particularly memorable. In this post from 2016 I wrote that Jorgan kind of acts like a clichéd action hero in the sense that he likes to let the tough guy hang out most of the time, only confessing his feelings under certain amounts of pressure. It's hard to picture him in a proper committed relationship where he'd actually have to act like a normal person most of the time. And yeah, I don't really have much more to add to that. I kind of want to get my Vanguard through Fallen Empire at some point, to see whether the reunion with Aric in chapter eleven adds any more depth to the relationship.

Smuggler - Corso Riggs

Ah, the frequently maligned Corso. I'll come out right away and say that I like him. Honestly, even if you don't want to romance him, taking him along everywhere and watching him squirm by intentionally pushing all his buttons is hilarious. However, even as a romance he's got some things going for him. Like Intisar says, he's the kind of guy who'll always have your back no matter what's going on. He's kind of old-fashioned in his protectiveness and ideas about loyalty... and yes, this is where the problem with the sexism comes in.

I can't really blame anyone for being put off by this, but to me it ultimately wasn't that big a deal because unlike many sexist ideas in real life, Corso's sexism is utterly toothless. He'll always pipe up about how he thinks that a lady shouldn't do this or that... but ultimately he never tries to stop you, ignoring his objections doesn't diminish his affection for you, and if you push back on any of his silly complaints, he never has a good comeback. His ideas about ladies don't come from some deep conviction, but rather from a place of being a young bumpkin growing up on a backwater planet who just repeats what he's been told growing up, which ultimately just means that he's kind of naive, which I don't find that big of a deal personally. Plus he does show some growth over time.

Jedi Knight - Doc

Next we have Doc, the other guy Intisar went to bat for, and I agree with him, though for different reasons. I get why people might find him unappealing if they're looking for a character who'll be their one true love - but I always loved Doc for offering a more casual romance option. Doc flirts with every woman he meets from the moment you first encounter him, so you know exactly what kind of guy he is. And that can still be fun! There's something attractive about a man who finds something nice to say about absolutely every woman he meets, as long as you don't let yourself get dragged in too deep.

Ultimately, Doc's brave, easygoing and optimistic, and some days that's just the kind of pick-me-up you need after a hard day of saving the galaxy. I think he might also be the only companion who's actually happy if you turn down his marriage proposal. I just think he's a fantastic buddy with benefits.

Jedi Consular - Lieutenant Iresso

My first impressions of the consular romance were not very positive (again I refer you to the old blog post linked at the beginning), as I apparently flirted with both Tharan and Felix without meaning to and it all got very weird. I still don't really care for flirting with Tharan, but Lieutenant Iresso was really charming when I entered a relationship with him intentionally on an alt consular. He's probably got the most mature of all companion romances, with no major tension or drama, just two adults that really like each other and slide into being more than friends really easily.

Empire

Sith Warrior - Malavai Quinn

Quinn is another companion that is hated by many, though he didn't do badly on Swtorista's romance tier list. His betrayal in the main class story makes many people's dislike understandable I think, though if you can look past that, he's got another pretty unique experience to offer. I actually never forgave him on my own Sith warrior - she didn't hold a grudge on Iokath but also came to realise that she was kind of over him and that she preferred casually shacking up with Lieutenant Pierce.

Either way, in the earlier part of the class story, Quinn is pretty delightful to romance as he's basically the male equivalent of a blushing schoolgirl. He's super turned on by the Sith warrior's power and confidence but doesn't quite know how to deal with it at first, which makes for many a fun opportunity to make him squirm. It's an entertaining dynamic that you don't see this way round in media very often - more commonly it's the strong man whose appealing qualities make the woman blush.

Sith Inquisitor - Andronikos Revel

Andronikos is the classic "bad boy". He even gifts you a knife at one point! I remember the thing I enjoyed the most about romancing him was that he starts out very chill and views the relationship as pretty casual. I'll never forget how much I cracked up when I flirted with a guy on Alderaan and Andronikos' reaction was to approve and tell me that he was gonna go off to entertain himself with some girl from house staff in the meantime. He does get more possessive later on from what I remember, but it's still an interesting dynamic. He's easily the fiercest of the male love interests.

Imperial Agent - Vector Hyllus

Vector is the one romance that worked for me from the beginning and that I've never changed my mind about. I find it hard to make a female agent without romancing him. I just love how he's this calm, dedicated geek, and how the early flirtations with him are very low-key and playful. His love is deep but he doesn't want to make any drama about it. What's not to love?

Bounty Hunter - Torian Cadera

Torian is superficially attractive, but I've got to admit I never found his romance terribly compelling. I'll always remember the various conversations where he just says something to you in Mando'a with no subtitles and I was simply like: "Huh?" How am I supposed to judge whether that's romantic or not? His voice actor also uses a pretty flat affect most of the time, which to me comes across as Torian being "too cool to care", which I in turn don't care for myself.

On replaying his romace more recently I found it a bit more appealing, as I think it actually works better if your own bounty hunter isn't too weighed down by morals and approaches things with a colder "just in it for the thrill/money" kind of attitude. (My first hunter who romanced Torian was very light side and e.g. letting a potential target go for "moral" reasons didn't generally sit well with him.)

Overall Verdict

All in all, I've got to say I rank the base game romances for female characters pretty highly - even if they don't all appeal to me personally, I think it's really impressive what a wide range of love interests the writers managed to come up with for these: from shy to boisterous, from loyal to promiscuous, from goodie-two-shoes to bad boy, they offer quite a wide variety of experiences.

In fact, just writing this has made me want to do some romancing on alts just to see the ones again that I haven't played through in a while...

The New Character Experience in LotS

I'm kind of at a point in SWTOR where I feel that my several dozen alts are enough to experience what I primarily want out of the game and that I don't really "need" any more, but that doesn't prevent me from occasionally rolling up a new alt for a specific purpose anyway. For example I've been very curious about how the 7.0 class and UI changes feel on a brand-new character. Long-time players like me complaining about losing their 29th ability button are one thing, but I was under the impression that a lot of these changes were primarily targeted at new and returning players anyway, in order to make things more appealing and less complicated for them.

While I can't un-know everything I know about the game after ten years of playing, I could roll up a new character on a server where I don't usually play very much and where I have no notable legacy unlocks, to see what that experience felt like. I already mentioned in a previous post that I created a new Jedi knight on Star Forge, but with the Shadow combat style, which was previously reserved for consulars.

First off: character creation. My opinion on the new character creation screen has largely stayed the same since I first saw Swtorista tweet a screenshot of it during LotS PTS testing. It looks good, but the overall look is just very generic. Obviously changing the first half to accommodate the decoupling of base and advance class was needed, and I also like that gender is simply a toggle now instead of a separate "step", which always felt unnecessary to me. But I do miss some of the flavour that was lost, such as having information about the different species. Also, before this change I'd never really thought about it, but the previous way of having character creation take place on a space station was actually a nice story tie-in, as each class story starts with your character taking a shuttle down from orbit to the planet. Now your character's simply "born" in a black void like in some generic shooter game.

Some problems are still the same old, same old, such as finding a name. They really need to do another round of freeing up the names of unplayed characters some time, because none of the suggestions the game itself provides are ever available. Also, I found myself wishing for a back button when I accidentally overwrote all my initial choices by hitting "random". (I thought it was for randomising the name, not the appearance...)

Anyway, enough about character creation. Once you get into the game properly, the traditional scrolling Star Wars intro is notably absent, but this has been acknowledged as a bug. I know many people still hold up the class stories as the best SWTOR has to offer, but I've got to say that going back to the starter worlds it always strikes me how far the game's come in terms of its storytelling. Sure, the original class stories are still engaging, but everything from the writing to the cut scenes to the quest flow has come a long way in my opinion and is actually a lot more enjoyable in newer story installments. It's just the fact that you've got those eight completely different stories to choose from at the start that makes going back there so appealing I think.

Gameplay-wise things immediately felt a little off though. No, I don't expect the starter planets to be a huge challenge, but that's not what I mean. For example, one of the first abilities a Shadow is given is Force Breach, which starts as a damage-over-time ability. It immediately struck me what a terrible choice that was in terms of fun, because every enemy in those early levels dies within literally one or two hits, so that applying a DoT is utterly pointless.

New abilities now appear on your bar automatically whenever you level up, which is something I grumbled about when WoW first started doing it and I'm still not convinced it's an entirely good move for SWTOR either. Mostly because I think there's value in making a conscious choice to see a trainer at a time that's convenient for you, so you can actually take the time to read your new skills and acquaint yourself with them at your leisure. A new button just appearing on your quickbar in the middle of combat is easy to overlook... admittedly less so during the earlier levels when there isn't much on there yet, but it becomes more of an issue as things fill up and become visually busy.

I also found the lack of AoE for the first few levels very noticeable, as all the mobs come in groups so you're just running up to them and then whacking them to death one by one. I don't remember when you got your first AoE under the old system, maybe it took just as long, but I don't recall it feeling quite so bad... maybe because you generally got more abilities sooner. This time around, I only had enough combat abilities to fill up a little over half a bar by level ten - again, I don't have exact numbers, but I remember those skills coming in much faster during the early levels within the old system.

At level ten I also went to look for some sort of prompt to choose a specialisation and was surprised to find that the game had just put my Shadow into Infiltration spec by default. I guess I can see why the devs would do that, to avoid players accidentally gimping themselves by potentially never even choosing a spec at all. If you do discover it later, the game now let's you change specialisation with the push of a button anyway, without requiring a special legacy perk or that you visit a guy on the fleet. On the other hand though, it makes specialisation a very passive thing to begin with, and I suspect that might lead to casual players being even more likely to remain completely unaware of the concept.

For the Shadow in specific, I also found it interesting that I gained stealth at level ten, but not a single ability that only works from stealth or that behaves differently from stealth, which means it's kind of introduced as just a way of avoiding mobs instead of something that affects the way you do combat. Again, my memory may not be 100% on point here, but I seem to recall that stealth pretty much used to come combined with things that you could actually do from stealth.

On a totally unrelated note, "Introduction to Conquests" is now granted automatically when hitting level ten, which I did think was neat, as it was too easy to miss on the fleet terminal previously.

In the area leading to the Forge on Tython, there's an optional champion droid which used to be quite tough back in the day when you couldn't have a healer companion at this level, and who became utterly trivial to solo after 4.0. I thought I'd give him a go to use him as a sort of measuring stick and was kind of pleasantly surprised to find that while T7 kept healing me, without legacy buffs or anything he couldn't entirely keep up with the damage, so that my health started to slowly but surely decline. In the end I ran away and had to start kiting the droid around a pillar for the last part of the fight in order not to die, which was quite satisfying actually.

Another thing I liked was that upon finishing up my class quest at the Forge, I actually received a dual-saber right away. That may not be a brand-new change actually, but I do remember how awkward it used to be to forge yourself a special one-handed lightsaber, just to then instantly have to replace it with some green that was actually suitable for your advanced class/combat style.

After finishing Tython, the first thing I did on the fleet was to queue for a PvP match, which was a stark reminder that you really shouldn't do that at level 13. I mean, it's always been a bad idea at such a low level, but now it was even worse because I had even fewer abilities than I would have had previously. I could stealth but had no crowd control, so literally all I did for most of the Voidstar match I got into was put my single DoT on every enemy and spend the rest of the time saber/double striking. Unsurprisingly we lost, though at least the Introduction to Warzones quest gave me a few nice pieces of starter gear.

I also thought it was quite noteworthy that I didn't gain any skills at levels 11, 13 or 14, but then when I dinged 15 in the middle of a Coruscant heroic I suddenly got four new actives and a new passive at once - and worse: the passive was the one that completely morphs the way Force Breach works. I was just getting the hang of putting my DoT on every mob, then I dinged, and suddenly my DoT wasn't a DoT anymore, and couldn't be used at all unless I used other abilities to build buff stacks first... not the best experience to have while buried under a pile of mobs in the middle of a heroic. Again, this is why trainers are a good thing in my opinion.

At the end of the day, I'm not a truly new player though, so who can say how they perceive this kind of thing? To me personally it doesn't seem like a significant improvement, at least not in these early levels. For my taste, you spend too much time spamming your most basic attack simply because nothing else is available yet, and the pacing of new abilities feels awkward. I may keep experimenting with it some more though, to see how it feels as you go up in levels or when you play a combat style other than Shadow.

LotS PTS Day 1 - WTF Is Going On?

So here I was, making a post full of happy musings about what combat styles will mean for me... and a few hours later the PTS went up. Great, I thought, maybe that can answer some of the questions we have! Me and some of my guildies were on there in a flash to check out what exactly Bioware had meant when they said that this first phase was going to be about Guardian combat styles only. Does that mean that all the Force classes will be able to play as Guardians only or...?

I was not prepared for what I found. Nothing on the PTS right now has anything to do with the whole "switching advanced classes" thing... instead it seems that Bioware is actually also planning to revamp all the classes, by pruning a lot of abilities and re-introducing something similar to the old skill trees, yet different. I was just like... WTF? Why wasn't there a peep about this on the livestream?

On the forums we're being urged not to panic, that this is all early stages and likely not final. Which is fine, but I'm still somewhat alarmed that they were planning to change up the class system that much and didn't even care to mention that when announcing the expansion.

I'm kind of glad now that they started the PTS with Guardian since that's not my main, so it's a bit easier not to freak out entirely. But it's still very bewildering. I went to see the special PTS trainer and the abilities it gave me at level 75 weren't even enough to fill out two action bars. I queued for a warzone and got into an all-Guardian arena where I flailed around very ineffectively, struggling to find buttons that I could push that weren't on cooldown. Later I found out that there was a known issue with the PTS training droid and it only gave out half of your intended abilities.

As a bit of a contrast, I then did a veteran mode Mandalorian Raiders with my guildies and we absolutely destroyed everything, even with half of our abilities missing. The final boss only had about twice the health of a normal player. Then we read that content scaling's apparently broken on the PTS as well. How do we know what's a bug and what's a feature?

Speaking to the training droid multiple times afterwards did fill up my bars a little more, but not a lot. A lot of basic abilities were still missing, such as our interrupt, stun breaker, or Saber Throw (a Guardian's only ranged ability). Others were present but suddenly limited to a single spec when they used to be available to all Guardians. There was a very long post explaining the specs on the forums but to be honest with you I still found that very confusing. This kind of skill tree really needs some sort of visual to be easily understandable. Swtorista made a valiant attempt at creating a graphic for the Focus path and posting it on reddit, but honestly I was still confused because when actually playing I found that not everything was actually working as laid out by Bioware either. Again, what's a bug and what's a feature?

My initial thoughts on ability pruning are this: I don't like it much, but I can see the logic behind it. There are probably a few abilities that they could remove and we'd all be fine. I was a bit sad when my Commando lost Pulse Cannon and Stockstrike back in the day, but I got over it. And if I'm being honest, part of the appeal of doing things like playing in the lowbie PvP bracket is that things are simpler there, without classes having 27 different cooldowns. But the current iteration of the PTS feels like it's taking it too far.

As for returning to some sort of skill tree... mweurgh. I liked the game's original skill trees and was a bit sad when they turned into a mere line with Shadow of Revan. But the reason Bioware did that was to make things more straightforward for new players, and this feels... more complicated than what we started out with? The whole "taking away abilities and making you choose between them" thing reminds me of modern World of Warcraft and I don't like it there either. Suddenly there'll be right and wrong ways to spec again, and we'll likely lose access to some abilities that add a lot of flavour to each advanced class. A Guardian without Saber Reflect sounds pretty sad to me to be honest! Plus do we really need advanced classes and specialisations and these combat styles on top of each other? It feels like they're taking away some of the complexity of "choosing the right buttons on your action bar while playing" and simply shifting it towards "choosing the right abilities while speccing your character" - is that really more fun?

I'm not sure Bioware will be doing themselves a favour with this added complexity either. They just added all these set bonuses in Onslaught... how confident are they really in being able to adjust everything so that nothing clashes or becomes unbalanced or outright weird? As an extremely simple example (which I'm sure will be fixed in time, but there'll be lots of these), I started my session on the PTS by buying the gear set from the vendor that my Guardian also uses on live... and then realised that it buffs an ability that doesn't actually exist on the PTS right now. I'm also thinking of how my guild's current master mode progression relies on characters being able to chain every single cooldown they have - so that means all those fights will need re-turning. You're creating a lot of work for yourselves by having to straighten that all out, Bioware.

I really want to have faith in them here, but at the same time I'm struggling to get on board with this particular vision. I'm really curious about what Commando and Sage testing will be like now, since those are the classes I know best and where I'll feel any changes most sharply. I'm just kind of taken aback by how unnecessary all this feels. The ability to swap between advanced classes as announced on the stream was going to be enough to change things up and people's reactions to that seemed to be largely positive. This... not so much.

What Will Combat Styles Mean for Me?

As mentioned in my post about the expansion announcement, there's still a lot about the new combat styles feature that we don't know, especially relating to how changing between different styles will work and whether there'll be any sort of limitations on when and how often you can do it, but it does seem pretty clear that you'll be able to swap between the existing advanced classes with everything that entails - including both their weapons and abilities - and I see no reason to assume that e.g. older characters will be excluded from this feature (though I did see that line of thought floating around on Twitter as well).

With that said, what is this going to mean for my stable of alts?

The thought of Shintar the Commando being anything other than, well, a Commando seems kind of absurd. I mean, it's in the blog name! And I've always had a giant assault cannon on my banner! That said... no, I don't think I'll change her play style, though depending on the ease of swapping, I might experiment with using Mercenary style some time. Same basic gameplay, but two blasters. Plus I mean, all tech-using classes have canonically always had at least one blaster anyway, considering the ever-present oddity of wielders of big guns and rifles suddenly holstering their weapons in cut scenes to threaten their enemies with a small blaster instead.

Looking at my alts, I honestly can't see myself making a lot of changes to them either, because I've never been fussed about weapon choice and if I made them one specific advanced class over another, there was usually a reason for that. Still, I could imagine some use cases for swapping combat styles:

One is for Force users whose alignment doesn't match their faction. I have thought occasionally that it's a bit weird that my Sith Sorcerer is still shooting lightning all the time, considering how much of a goodie-two-shoes she is. So I could see myself changing her to Sage for the more appropriate visuals. I think on a low-level character it would feel a bit strange to use opposite-faction Force powers, because you'd think that would be very alarming to your fellow Sith or Jedi, but if you're already the Commander of your own Alliance, I reckon you don't have to worry about hiding your true nature anymore if you don't want to. The same would apply to my light-sided Juggernaut tank.

I've said before that I'm terrible at playing dark-sided characters, so there aren't many contenders for a transition the opposite way among my Republic alts. The closest is probably my somewhat ruthless Sentinel, but I'm not sure she's evil enough.

Speaking of my Sentinel though, that does bring up another interesting line of thought. I've made alts of every single advanced class over the years because I simply wanted to know what they played like, but I can't say I actually enjoyed them all. Sentinels and Marauders look cool with their two lightsabers, but the play style has never appealed to me at all. My second least favourite is probably Sniper/Gunslinger.

So the question here is: Would it be worth speccing out of the advanced classes that I don't like very much? It has sometimes struck me as a bit of a shame that I find myself avoiding playing these characters purely because I don't enjoy the way they play very much, even if their story choices would make for some interesting content to experience. But at the same time, I specifically created them because I wanted to have a Sentinel, a Sniper and so on. Is that still going to be that meaningful when we can all swap combat styles though? Something to think about at least.

And of course there is always the option of new alts. As if I need even more of those! But then, there could be synergies with other things I want to do. For example I've talked about how I like to play healers in lowbie PvP, but just how many times do I really want to start over as a consular or inquisitor? Now I could level up through the knight and warrior stories to add more alts to the stable while having a bit more variety in my story content.

Do you see yourself making use of the new combat styles feature?

The Best Classes to Take into Onslaught

With the recent Steam launch having brought many new and returning players (back) to SWTOR, there's been a resurgence of curiosity about many basic aspects of the game. One question that returning players with a stable of multiple characters might have is which class they should pick up first to get the most out of the new story additions since they last played.

My post about the best classes to take into the "Knights of..." expansions is one of the most popular posts on this blog, but we've had a fair amount of new story since then, with the arc about Valkorion and his family more or less wrapped up and abandoned. I think it's fair to wonder whether the storylines that have come after are better suited for a different set of classes, or if there is one class that's just best for everything, meaning KotFE/KotET and everything that comes after. My answer to the latter is "yes, and it's the Sith inquisitor", but I'd really like to go into a bit more detail than that. So get ready for some minor content spoilers and mention of companion returns post-KotET, but I'm not giving away any major plot points or anything.

First off I think that on the whole, the post-KotET content has been much more neutral in terms of which classes it's suitable for. Your character is now the commander of the Eternal Alliance (whatever you may think of how they ended up there) and they are back to dealing with the two big factions, which is easily justifiable in my opinion, whether you originally started out as a Sith or a Republic trooper.

When Bioware first eased their way back into this style of writing they seemed to struggle a bit, and the Iokath storyline that followed KotET was pretty bland and awkward as a result. This was followed by what has been dubbed the "traitor arc" since then, which again started poorly but got better as it went along. It's also probably the single most class-neutral storyline we've had since KotET, simply because it focuses very much on your personal relationship with the traitor, which depends more on how you feel about that particular character than your class choice. That said, the last flashpoint in the series, The Nathema Conspiracy, features a nice callback to your class story with a lot of different permutations based on your choices there.

From there it's off to Jedi Under Siege, which takes place on the planet Ossus, and where the current ongoing storyline kicks off. While this is still fairly class-neutral content as a whole, Bioware started to include a lot more references to the original class stories from this point onwards, which is what I will use to justify most of my rankings. Also noteworthy is that from Iokath onwards you're given the option to start sabotaging your old faction, which is something that might be greatly suited for characters that were played as never having been that attached to their original faction to begin with.

With all that out of the way, I would recommend prioritising the classes as follows if you're uncertain:

1. Sith Inquisitor

The Sith inquisitor is in the lucky position that they were a great fit for KotET/KotFE but the new content fits them like a glove as well. They basically enjoy ruling their own little faction, and whether you decide to go back and help the old Sith Empire or would rather scheme against them because it's the Sithy thing to do, opportunities for intrigue abound.

Jedi Under Siege starts with a call from your old friend Moff Pyron (who remembers you of course), and if you sided with Khem Val over Darth Zash at the end of his companion arc in the base game, you'll get to reunite with Khem on Ossus. Even better, you get to romance him too if you're into that kind of thing!

In Onslaught you're also given the opportunity to reclaim your old seat on the Dark Council if you wish (and in an appropriately Sithy manner as well).

Oh, and Andronikos and Ashara also come back in post-KotET Alliance alerts but that's really just the icing on the cake.

2. Jedi Knight

The Jedi Knight is another character that gets along well with the KotFE/KotET storyline and manages to continue into the new content quite seamlessly. You'll get recognised both as an important Jedi and a military commander, and no fewer than three of the original knight companions make their return as part of the storyline from Ossus onwards: Doc, Kira and Scourge. The latter two haven't had that much to do yet (that'll be in the content drop we're anticipating towards the end of the year), but all three are fully integrated into the storyline and reuniting with them is quite interesting. Kira can now also be romanced by female knights and Scourge is open to either gender. I haven't been able to find confirmation whether Doc swings both ways as well now...

3. Imperial Agent

The reason I rank the Imperial agent highly is mostly because of the saboteur option. You don't have to take it if you don't want to, but of all classes the agent was the one for whom it could (potentially) make the most sense to want to betray the Empire by the end of their class story. This was the sort of story thread that I think most of us didn't expect to ever get picked up again once Bioware said that there weren't going to be any more class stories, but the saboteur option has effectively revived it and even made it more "mainstream" so to speak.

Vector returns in a post-KotET Alliance alert, which is nice enough if you like him or even romanced him, and agents also get an exclusive little chat with him after the Task at Hand interlude that serves to remind you that he's still there and involved in the agent's life and decisions.

4. Jedi Consular

Similar to the knight, the consular is recognised for previous achievements on Ossus, and there are opportunities to both fight and be diplomatic.

In terms of companion returns, the consular was a bit of a black sheep during the KotFE/KotET era as no consular companions were involved in the main storyline and Qyzen was the only one that could be re-acquired via an Alliance alert. Post-KotET however, Lieutenant Iresso returns in an alert, you reunite with Nadia as part of the Ossus storyline, and Tharan comes back during Onslaught. Good times!

5. Sith Warrior

I ranked the Sith warrior as fairly high in terms of its suitability for KotFE/KotET, but to be honest I never pictured the warrior as someone who wants to sit on a throne and rule - better to leave that to someone with an interest in politics while they go out and smash faces. Ossus and Onslaught offer some nice opportunities here as you get back onto the front lines of the war and get the option to leave all that pesky planning to other people if that's more up your alley.

Quinn returns on Iokath and you get the option to finally get closure in regards to "that thing" he did during your class story. Jaesa returns in an Alliance alert after Ossus too, both her light and dark side versions. The former can now also be romanced, and the latter can also be killed if, like me, you always found her pretty annoying.

6. Bounty Hunter

You finally get Mako back in post-KotET Alliance alert, but it's a bit lacklustre to be honest. There is an interesting moment in Onslaught where bounty hunters get a slightly different reaction from an NPC than other classes, but other than that it doesn't offer anything particularly exciting for the class. The main reason I still rank it above trooper and smuggler is that bounty hunter is another class for whom the option of wanting to change sides in the war makes more sense than for most others.

7. Smuggler

Corso, Risha and Akaavi come back in two post-KotET Alliance alerts but they are short and not that great in my opinion. And while part of Onslaught takes place on a planetoid where a smuggler could feel right at home, nothing much is made of how this might make for a different experience for this class.

8. Trooper

Elara Dorne makes her comeback during Iokath but it's not very exciting. In the aftermath of Onslaught you get another little scene with her though (like the agent does with Vector), which is nice. Other than that there isn't anything going on that feels particularly tailored towards troopers.

Looking back at the final ranking, I'm kind of surprised by how similar it is to my KotFE/KotET ranking, with knight and inquisitor coming out on top once again, and smuggler trailing behind yet again. That said, I think it's important to repeat that overall, the newer content doesn't feel nearly as badly suited for some classes as KotFE/KotET did, and that there's much less of a difference between how much you'll enjoy playing through it as an inquisitor vs. a smuggler.

Got a different take on how different classes experience the current expansion and the content leading up to it? Feel free to leave it in the comments!

That Other Patch Notes Post

I said in my last post that there were random parts of the patch notes for 6.1.2 that I wanted to comment on before the issues with the welcome window distracted me... I decided that I'm still going to make that post, and this is it. Note that I'm not reproducing the patch notes in full - if you're looking for the full notes, you can find them posted here on Vulkk or here on MMO Bits.

Nar Shaddaa Nightlife - The Nightlife event returns with new Missions and rewards! Get your credits ready for July 14th - August 11th.

At last, maybe I'll finally get to spend those casino chips that I forgot to use last year! Then again, it's only a month - requiring me to remember to spend my chips within such a short time frame is asking quite a lot, you know...

The following set bonus has been added to the game at level 75, available for all Guardians:
Fulminating Defense
(2) +2% Endurance
(4) Challenging Call gets two charges.
(6) Enure increases Elemental and Internal damage reduction by 75% for 3 seconds.
Source: The Nature of Progress Operation on Master Mode difficulty, and a small chance from Unidentified items on the Spoils of War vendors.

That four-piece set bonus looks mighty sweet for flashpoint tanking... but of course the main source of this is Dxun master mode, which I'm unlikely to ever clear. I do wish there was more of a connection between where you get certain sets and what they're good for - then again, having no clue what the encounters look like in Dxun master mode, maybe having two stacks of your AoE taunt is really vital in there.

The following set bonus has been added to the game at level 75, available for all Sages:
Undying Protector
(2) +2% Mastery
(4) Activating Force Barrier heals all allies around you.
(6) Activating Force Barrier puts a barrier on nearby allies, absorbing damage for up to 8 seconds and granting them an additional 25% elemental damage reduction while active.
Source: The Nature of Progress Operation on Master Mode difficulty, and a small chance from Unidentified items on the Spoils of War vendors.

This is a very odd-sounding set bonus to me, in that I could imagine it being quite useful in a small number of specific fights where you can already use Force Barrier in a calculated manner instead of as an emergency cooldown (such as Dread Guards in TFB). Or it could be useful in PvP as well, where you use Force Barrier more than anywhere else after all. I wonder how useful that set bonus will be in master mode Dxun...

The following set bonus has been added to the game at level 75, available for all Shadows:
Ballast Point
(2) +2% Endurance
(4) Deflection grants Ballistic immunity for 6 seconds, giving you immunity to movement impairing effects, knockdowns, and physics.
(6) Increases Elemental, Internal, Kinetic and Energy damage reduction by 3%.
Source: The Nature of Progress Operation on Master Mode difficulty, and a small chance from Unidentified items on the Spoils of War vendors.

Did Shadows really need another way of making themselves immune to things? (Insert PvP-inspired sigh here.) Again, this sounds more like something that would be useful in PvP more than anywhere else.

The following set bonus has been added to the game at level 75, available for all Gunslingers:
Ballistic Concentration
(2) +2% Mastery
(4) When you deploy Scrambling Field, each group member within it grants a stack of Ballistic Concentration, increasing your energy regeneration rate by 1 for 20 seconds. Max 8 stacks.
(6) Each stack of Ballistic Concentration also increases the damage you deal by 5%.
Source: The Nature of Progress Operation on Master Mode difficulty, and a small chance from Unidentified items on the Spoils of War vendors.

This set continues a trend Bioware started in 6.0 of giving defensive cooldowns a damage-increasing effect. Personally I find these a bit annoying because they kind of encourage you to make these defensives part of your dps rotation instead of saving them for when you might actually need them to survive, but this particular example is one case I don't mind too much if it actually encourages Gunslingers to use their domes more often. (In my experience they rarely do unless you actively yell at them to do it.) Then again, once again this would only apply to Gunslingers doing Dxun master mode anyway (so nobody that I play with on a regular basis).

The following set bonus has been added to the game at level 75, available for all Commandos:
Rapid Response
(2) +2% Mastery
(4) Activating a healing ability has a 15% chance to cause your next Medical Probe to be critical.
(6) Healing an ally with Medical Probe applies a buff to them for 10 seconds. Each enemy defeated by this ally increases your healing by a 2%, stacking up to 5 times.
Source: The Nature of Progress Operation on Master Mode difficulty, and a small chance from Unidentified items on the Spoils of War vendors.

I don't know how good this is numbers-wise, I just know that there's already another set called Rapid Response (and it's still there, unchanged - I checked), which is unnecessarily confusing if you ask me.

The Rocket Fuel Vapors tactical item has been redesigned:
Kolto Pods heal for an additional 5% and last a second longer, gaining an extra tick of healing.
The HP-5 Dart Device tactical item has been redesigned and renamed to SC-4 Treatment Scanner:
Successive Treatment heals for an additional 5% and generates Supercharge stacks while channeled, up to 4 stacks for a completed channel.

The Running Rapid Restoration tactical item has been redesigned and renamed to Running Restoration:
Increases the healing output of Advanced Medical Probe by 15% and allows it to be activated while moving.

This just highlights again that I'm not a fan of Bioware redesigning what Tacticals and set bonuses do after the fact. I freaking loved the old Rocket Fuel Vapors and it significantly changed my rotation... now that they changed it I feel I need to re-learn how to best do AoE healing all over again. Plus the new functionality just sounds incredibly boring and lacklustre, even if I'm not yet sure how it works out numbers-wise.

Running Rapid Restoration was my Tactical of choice in more single target focused fights, but they changed it so that the "cast while moving" now only works on a different ability with a cooldown. Also a nerf if you ask me.

Finally, the HP-5 Dart Device was complete rubbish and people basically binned it all the time if they got it, but now it sounds like it might actually be somewhat decent? Made me glad that I had left one lying around in my legacy bank, but at the same time "make sure to save one of every Tactical and set bonus item just in case Bioware ever decides to make it good" frankly doesn't sound like the greatest system to me (and very casual-unfriendly).

The Unidentified Boxes from the Spoils of War Vendor now grant the correct Set Bonuses based on the player’s Class.

I had a guildie report that he got things like gear for knights when shopping there on his trooper... while funny, it wasn't very productive.

Corrected an issue where the entire Rapid Response Set was available from the Unidentified Helmet Box.

So they do know that there's already another Rapid Response set! Come on, Bioware!

If a character is at the weekly or global cap for a reputation, reputation items will no longer be auto-consumed. Instead, they will be granted as normal items that can be used later or vendored.

Yes! I was not a fan of the tokens just not being granted if you're already at the reputation cap, so I'm pleased to see this.

The Plasma Emitters in the Iokath Daily Mission “Systems Go” have been fixed. They will now appear in an inactive state, allowing players to complete the Mission.

I only ran into this bug fairly recently - I thought I was just having bad luck with someone else already having used all the emitters and them being super slow to respawn. Glad they fixed that.

Players who choose to flirt with Elara Dorne in the “Squared Away” Mission no longer find themselves on top of a table in the cantina when the scene ends.

I have no idea what this is about but it sounds hilarious. Must have been quite a racy flirt to end with you waking up on top of a cantina table afterwards!

Corrected an issue where the Conquest timer showed too many digits in the seconds section.

Haven't seen that in a while, but when I did it was rather funny to see that a Conquest event had exactly 12.93882374842792932692736 seconds left to go.

The “Makeb: Defeat Enemies 2” Conquest Objective now properly appears in the Objectives list after players complete the “Makeb: Defeat Enemies 1” Conquest Objective.

Oh! I was wondering why there was only one for Makeb!

Increased the requirement of planetary Mission Complete Conquest Objectives to require 2 Mission completions (up from 1).

That... seems fair. It should cause my class missions to advance a little faster too.

Conquest Objective point Decreases:
Credits for Junk – Daily Repeatable, decrease from 2000 to 1750
Amp Reroll – Daily Repeatable, decrease from 2000 to 1750
Take a Taxi – Daily Repeatable, decrease from 2000 to 1750
Harvesting Pinnacle – Weekly Repeatable, decrease from 9750 to 5800
Utility Point – Daily Repeatable, decrease 2000 to 1750

Again, that seems quite fair. I don't mind having these objectives, but they probably shouldn't be quite so lucrative compared to others that require actual gameplay.

New Conquest Objectives:
Play PvP 2 – Daily Repeatable, 2000 points
Play PvP 3 – Daily Repeatable, 3000 points
Win Arenas 2 – Daily Repeatable, 3000 points
Win Arenas 3 – Daily Repeatable, 4000 points

More objectives for PvP = win.

Reduced the amount of lower rating items players can receive from Ranked and Unranked Warzone Lockboxes while at an overall item rating of 306.

Finally! That only took them... what, eight months? I hope nobody's tried to actually gear up via PvP in that time, because it basically didn't work.

Players are able to modify their Utility Point selections and swap out pieces of equipment (which includes Tactical items) while waiting in the queue for a Warzone or Arena.

Yes! Another good change, as the fact that this was locked the moment you entered the queue used to drive many of my guildies who change their utilities a lot to distraction whenever we did PvP as a group.

All in all, lots of good/interesting stuff in there. There's already another patch queued up for tomorrow, but that one's only small and simply meant to fix a few bugs. More importantly, we'll see the start of the new swoop racing event! I'm sure I'll have things to say about that.

Musings on Onslaught's Story, Part 3: Corellia & Beyond

After either helping or sabotaging the Republic fleets on Onderon and Mek-Sha, it's time for the big battle for the Meridian Complex on Corellia. Once again, spoilers abound!

On both factions, the briefing before the battle includes a lot of exposition about ships and battle plans. I couldn't help but think that to the type of player who just wants to jump straight into the action to get up close and personal, this could be a bit boring, but personally I appreciated the call-backs to weaponry developed in previous storylines such as the Isotope-5 powered ships of the Empire, and just the general effort to convey that both sides have competent leadership with an actual plan. Also, your involvement in these briefings emphasises that though the Alliance may have lost a lot of its power, it and by extension you are still considered very important to the war.

However, since you are also known for being good at kicking arse in person, you get asked to assist the ground troops, which leads to you doing the new Objective Meridian flashpoint. I think the flashpoint will deserve a post of its own later on... for the purposes of this one, it's enough to know that you spend some time fighting either Republic defenders or Imperial invaders in the streets of Corellia, until you get into the Meridian Complex itself, where it comes down to either shutting down or protecting the installation's shields.

The first place where you expect to do this turns out to have been rendered useless as controls have been rerouted to another level... by none other than Tharan Cedrax, yay! That leaves only one consular companion unaccounted for now. I'm really pleased that Bioware managed to weave his return into the main story here, and it fits well too. The encounter with him also features some pretty funny lines depending on your choices - I have to admit that I had to chuckle when I ordered him killed on my Marauder, and his last words "Holiday, I'm sorry" prompted Major Anri to go: "Holiday? What a weirdo." Also, my Sage looked hilariously put out when she recognised him.

On Imperial side you also get the option to flirt with Darth Malgus himself around this point! His response is a character-appropriate "ugh" before moving on. I just loved this.

Finally you have the big showdown between either you, Tau and Arn vs. Malgus or you and Malgus vs. Tau and some unnamed Republic soldiers/Jedi. These are both pretty well done and the fights quite interesting - though I swear the first time I did them they either bugged out in some way or I was completely zoned out because I came away thinking that they were really boring and the boss(es) had seemingly no interesting abilities.

Then I heard others talk about the fight and was confused when they mentioned all kinds of stuff happening of which I had absolutely no memory. The second time around I definitely noticed the actual mechanics too, so I have no idea what was going on there. (EDIT: On replaying the fight again last night, I think at least the first instance of me failing to notice any mechanics may have been simply due to the fact that if you have both Tau and Arn set to dps, they burn everything down very quickly, even Malgus.)

The one bit I found a bit wonky is what happens immediately after the fight, as your big feat of heroism basically consists of making a superhuman jump in a cut scene to get to the crucial console in time, which... didn't feel very heroic to me personally. Even worse, both your wounded opponent(s) and allies roll off the platform in the final moments and you just run off without as much as a: "Gosh, I hope he is/they are alright!" At least to me it didn't feel right for my character (any of them!) to have zero concern for the people that just fought by her side only two minutes ago.

On the plus side, everyone does definitely survive, and I do highlight this as a positive thing because I went into the final fight actively worrying about Malgus or Tau dying, which would have felt like a colossal waste to me considering how little time we've had with these characters so far. I didn't even want to have the option to kill either of them, not yet! So I'm glad to say that they lived to fight another day. Some enemies are just too much fun to have around for me to want to defeat them too quickly.

After securing victory for your faction in the final battle (from what I understand this is one place where you can't sabotage/betray anyone), you get a lot of honours bestowed on you. Regardless of your class, you get asked to integrate fully into the Empire or Republic or to make a conscious choice to maintain your independence. I thought that was actually an interesting question even for a loyalist, because while my trooper was instantly on board with simply serving the Republic again for example, my loyalist agent never liked being under the heel of Sith who had a 50-50 chance at best to be either competent or capricious. So while she's still definitely loyal to the Empire, it's because she cares about the people of the Empire. She definitely had no interest in going back to subjecting herself to the direct authority of the Dark Council again.

Then there are some neat rewards for you depending on your class: troopers get promoted to the rank of Colonel for example, while Jedi get offered a seat on Master Gnost-Dural's newly reinstated Jedi council. My warrior was basically offered her old job back (yes!) and I haven't played through the story on my inquisitor yet, but I heard that you get the option to go as far as to claim your old Dark Council seat back. All of this is simply awesome, period. I don't know how they are going to keep this much class specific detail straight if the story is going to stay generic, but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth here.

Also worth noting is that Republic characters finally get to meet the new Supreme Chancellor Galena Rans, and she seems pleasant enough to deal with, which is nice. Republic leadership has not been painted in the best light for the last few years, and we really needed someone actually embodying the Republic's values at the helm again.

Anyway, you won and got your just rewards, time to roll the credits and do dailies, right? Not so fast!

For the first time in an expansion story, Bioware decided to not just wrap things up, but to also make it very clear where we'll be going next. (At the end of KotET Lana was worrying about trouble brewing ahead, but that was all very vague.) Back on the fleet, Tau or Anri introduce you to two people who want to meet you and who helped them out of the rubble after the battle: Kira and Lord Scourge! Finally! Now people can stop spamming each and every one of SWTOR's social media posts with "When's Kira coming back?", regardless of the post's actual subject...

Also, it turns out that Scourge was the mysterious Sith that attacked you on Mek-Sha, to test whether there was anything of Vitiate left in you. Also, it turns out that these two were the "mysterious observers" you could see in the distance from your base on Odessen just before the expansion. I remember someone on Twitter calling it (unfortunately I don't remember who it was) and me thinking that this was a weird theory, but they were completely right! Good on you, whoever you were!

For the Jedi knight, it's a great little reunion and involves some romance too: Kira is now open for some same-sex loving and Scourge can be romanced too! I was really hesitant about how to react to the latter on my knight because I wanted to romance him so badly back in the base game, but that was seven years ago at this point... since then my Guardian's gone through a lot of story and ended up with Arcann. I chose some of the flirt options anyway, just to see where they would go, and then pulled out at the last moment. I kind of thought there'd be an "I can't, there's somebody else" dialogue option or something, but since there wasn't, my knight basically just ended up saying that she thought it wasn't wise to rush into anything and that they'd talk about it again later. Cheeky minx likes to keep her options open!

Anyway, the big question with Kira and Scourge was always going to be why they hadn't shown up any earlier, considering everything you went through with Valkorion and that destroying the Emperor was literally Scourge's entire purpose in life. Surprisingly, they have a good excuse! They were busy destroying the Emperor's original body, which he had still stowed away somewhere as a sort of life insurance. (I did remember hearing/reading about that before at some point, so it didn't come out of left field for me.) Afterwards they were afflicted with some kind of disease caused by Vitiate's decaying body that knocked them out for more than a year until they were rescued by Master Satele and her new students, but then it afflicted them and they are currently stowed away on a distant transport ship, more or less comatose until someone comes to rescue them. Kira and Scourge want your help in saving them and destroying the Emperor's last legacy.

I thought it was a very interesting choice to finish on such a... not cliffhanger exactly, but obvious plot hook for the next story update, whenever that's going to come. I guess the folks at Bioware felt that making players feel too obviously "done" at the end of the story wasn't good for long term engagement. I can't say I minded though; the main story still feels like it wrapped up in a satisfying manner, and this is more of a tease of what's to come next. That said, I thought that going back to the old Emperor in any way, shape or form was the last thing I really wanted from the story, but Kira and Scourge kinda sold it to me. Of course, it also sounds very much like this next story update is then going to be the same for both factions again, which I'm less keen on, but I guess we'll see.

Bonus for Imperials only: They also get a scene that shows Darth Malgus strapped to a medical table while a doctor and a droid talk about what a nuisance it is to have to repair all those cybernetics again. The droid remarks that even the explosive device was damaged and needed taking out (forget subtlety, apparently Acina just decided to plant a bomb inside Malgus' body, dang), though the damage doesn't seem to have been caused by the debris under which he was buried... we have a brief moment of the doc going "oh noes" as he puts two and two together before we switch to a view of Malgus having set the lab on fire and demanding to be off with the medical droid. Exciting! So he's going to be on the loose as well now, another potential future plot thread. I guess we'll find out where he really stands on the subject of Republic vs. Empire when he isn't being kept on a leash by Acina or Vowrawn.

All in all, Onslaught's story has been very enjoyable to me, ramping up nicely after a bit of a weak start and finishing with an ending that once again has me excited about whatever's going to happen next. It has it all: class-specific dialogue options, companion returns, hanging out with entertaining NPCs - I couldn't really have asked for more!

Once Upon a DvL Event

Can you believe that it's been three years since Bioware announced SWTOR's big Dark vs. Light event? Two days ago Dr. SWTOR polled people on Twitter about what they ended up doing with all the characters they had to create for this event, and the poll results seem to indicate that most players either abandoned or outright deleted them. However, I wasn't the only one who chimed up about missing an option to state that I simply treat them as normal alts now.

This made me think that it would be fun to look back in more detail on what happened to my DvL alts. As a reminder, I took two of the eight through their class story at the time, with the other six levelling purely through flashpoints, PvP and GSF, only doing their class story up to the end of Coruscant/Dromund Kaas in order to get their ship and acquire mobility. As a general rule, the ones on Republic side have received more attention since, simply because I spend much more time playing there, but even there not all alts are equally loved.

My DvL "main" back in the day, Shilu the Scoundrel, on whom I did all the story content achievements such as completing Shadow of Revan and KotFE, as well as all the major group content objectives such as hardmode flashpoints and world bosses, has actually ended up becoming one of only five alts that are all caught up on current content and ready to jump into Onslaught when the time comes.

It's funny because I already had two smugglers that I was quite attached to when I created her, but the fact that I knuckled down and got her through KotFE for the DvL achievement (something I consider a bit of a chore at this point) gave her an edge over the other smugglers from then on in terms of being used for story progression, because I didn't have it in me at the time to go through the whole thing on a second smuggler.

That said, even though she's been my "smuggler story main" for several years now, it's interesting that I still struggle to think of her as my primary smuggler. Checking my /played time, both my old Gunslinger and my first Scoundrel (neither of whom have started KotFE) still have considerably more play time. I do think that the slower levelling process pre-4.0 allowed me to get more attached to characters than the current way of flying through the levels.

Also on Republic side, we have Starberry the Guardian, who was the second to last character I created for the event, but who quickly became a bit of a favourite of mine. I just think that she looks really cute, and playing Guardian tank is super fun. Unfortunately I don't get to tank very often, and even when I do, my Vanguard is still better geared and I'm more comfortable playing her, which forever leads to poor Starberry being sidelined. Though hey, at least I progressed her class story up to Tatooine/Alderaan by now. (Only took me three years...)

The other two Republic characters, Zeresa the Commando and Shin-dow the Shadow, aren't quite as well off. Zeresa still hasn't progressed past Coruscant, while Shin-dow is halfway through both Taris and Nar Shaddaa. Mostly they come out on the rare occasion when a guild run is short on dps for some easy piece of group content, or when I fancy a bit of PvP as a damage dealer.

For the latter I actually prefer playing Commando, as it's quite fun! It's weird to look back at my post about Zeresa's creation and see me complaining about Commando survivability, but that was before the big buff they received in 5.0. As it stands, she's the only dps character I have that makes me feel like I can actually make a dent in an enemy's health in PvP. Shadow is fun for the stealth aspect but I don't like Balance Serenity spec much while not really wanting to respec her either.

A good way to highlight the differences in engagement between Republic and Empire side is (Command) level. All four of the above are level 70 and have been Command rank 300 for a while (if with the help of CXP packs earned by other characters, but it's still telling that I prioritised them as recipients), but on Imperial side none of my four old DvL characters have maxed out their GC ranks, and Cheriza the Juggernaut isn't even level 70 yet.

My favourite over there is undoubtedly my Sniper Corfette, because even though I don't like Sniper gameplay, I loved secretly siding with the Republic at the end of her class story, and ever since this whole loyalist/saboteur thing came into focus on Ossus I've been meaning to make some progress with her as she'd be the perfect candidate to become an Imperial saboteur. I haven't actually got her any further than Rishi yet though.

I'm also quite fond of Shinister the Assassin. Deception is the more fun dps spec for Shadow/Assassin in my opinion, so doing some PvP on her is better for that particular fun fix than using Shin-dow. Only the other day I decided to finally play through her class story on Balmorra and I'd forgotten just how fun some of the inquisitor's lines are... "How do you know I'm not a Colicoid?" Now that I think about it, it's been a long time since I last played through the inquisitor story, so maybe I should give her some more love on that front.

Shi-rah the Merc and Cheriza the Jugg are honestly the least loved of the lot. Shi-rah only hit level 70 last week when I took her to Dantooine on a whim, and Cheriza hasn't had anything to do since 2016 other than a handful of PvP matches and that one time I took her along to a casual guild operation on Imp side. Still, I don't see that as a sign of not caring - after all there are only so many hours in the day, even fewer of them are free time, and I have so many alts to play!

The point is that I do not value these alts any less for having been created during the DvL event. That said, I think that the ease and speed of levelling since 4.0 has generally made it harder for me to get attached to any alts created since then. You just don't spend enough time getting a feel for what you'd like their characters to be or how to play them, and there are fewer opportunities for memorable moments to occur that would make you feel more invested in them.

Day 2: Class Stories #IntPiPoMo

Want to know what the hashtag is all about? Read all about International Picture Posting Month here. Want to see the full list of themes I'm following while posting screenshots throughout the month? You can find it here.

The class stories I replayed this year were Jedi knight, Sith warrior and Imperial agent, so this post might feature some spoilers for events occurring in those three. Yes, I still give spoiler warnings for the basic class stories six years later. They are enjoyable, why risk ruining a good thing for somebody for no reason?

I was always curious whether you had to accept the sham wedding to one of Bas-Ton's children on Voss as an agent, but my agents were never nasty enough to find out - until this year! The answer is no, you can just force them to give you what you want at gunpoint. I was still kind enough to not shoot them at the end though. (I think?! Now that I'm thinking about it, I don't remember for certain...)

I've written about how it took me ages to level a second Jedi knight, but to be honest my second Sith warrior was sitting there with an unfinished class story for quite a long time as well. The problem was that she was part of a levelling duo that my pet tank had lost interest in. It was only this year that I finally pushed him towards at least finishing up our class stories. There were so many things I had forgotten! Such as how you get to team up with this Jedi master on Belsavis. Truth be told, he is actually more fun if you're dark side because at least then you get to banter. If you're light side he's just kind of pompous and condescending, never quite believing your good intentions.

Worse, I had forgotten about this too! So many great screenshot opportunities that were wasted back in the day because Print Screen never worked...

 

Now this I remembered well, but damn was it still a cool moment. Makes me want to roll up another Sith warrior right away just to do get to do it all over again.

I've said before that the Jedi knight story has too many ups and downs for me, oscillating between boring and cliché and twists that evoke genuine emotion. The moment you reach Uphrades always struck me as one of the story's early highs, having your character reach the scene too late and being confronted with just how bad things can get if the baddies get their way.

I'll never forget this random gold guy near the end of Act I. I even mentioned him in my original summary post for the Jedi knight class story. He kicked my arse so badly back in the day, underlevelled as I was and with no companion healer. I felt kind of saddened by how easily he fell over this time.

Finally, I always love scenes where someone flies through the air and I successfully manage to capture it. Just makes for great screenshots.

IntPiPoMo count: 14