Drop In: Manaan

When the weekly seasons objectives for weeks 5-9 were posted the other day, part of me was hoping there would be one week without a stronghold drop-in objective soon to make it easier for me to get caught up with my posts about these, but it seems the devs are keen on keeping us visiting these public strongholds, so I just have to be better at getting my summaries out in a timely manner! With that said, let's talk about what I saw in various Manaan strongholds during week four.

For some reason I had it in my head that Manaan was another really big stronghold, which was why I was quite surprised when I first visited one and was reminded of how small it actually was. In fact, it's one of the smaller options out there... I think I somehow must have conflated size and price in my head, because it's quite pricey for what it is.

Also, I once again didn't visit a stronghold on every server, with Tulak Hord being left out this time, though this was due to accident more than intention. I didn't make it a priority to do the stronghold visits early in the week, so I somehow got to 7/7 on Tulak Hord without even realising I'd skipped that objective. Could have saved myself a lot of work if I'd realised that earlier!

Anyway, on all the other servers I did visit one public Manaan stronghold each, and the first one I checked out was Koqh'rotzhim'evoss' Temple of Light on Shae Vizla. I would have loved to choose a stronghold with any other name considering how much of a pain that character name was to type out every time, but there were only two public strongholds available at the time I checked and the other one was at 2% completion, while this one was at 37%, so...

I still expected 37% to look pretty barren to be honest, so I was quite surprised when I zoned in and saw rows and rows of NPCs, palm trees and holocron decorations at the entrance. The holocron decorations in particular surprised me because they are quite rare nowadays, so accumulating that many would require you to keep an eye on the GTN for a long time. I can only guess that the owner acquired at least the bulk of them back in the day when they were much more common as drops.

When I entered the hallway leading to the rest of the stronghold, my immediate first impression was "whoa, these planters are kind of big for such a narrow hallway". I had no idea what was still to come in other strongholds.

In one of the underwater chambers they had this weird swirly statue that intrigued me and that I didn't recognise. Also, I didn't know you could have huggable wookiees as a deco in your stronghold (pictured to the left). Does hugging one of these count towards the achievement?

On Leviathan, I visited Zayn Dora's Chamber of Truth, and was surprised to see a similar arrangement of palm trees and rows of holocrons at the entrance. The holocrons in particular caught me out, because like I said... they are rare. I did like the HK statue though.

Inside, I was intrigued by this room with the strange purple glowy things in big jars. From a distance they look a bit like brains, though I don't think that's what they actually are. It all looks a bit ominous either way.

I also liked the way this giant Revan statue was positioned to poke its head through the skylight, creating the impression of Revan being surrounded by a bit of a halo when looked at from below.

On Darth Malgus, I was surprised to find that the top listing in the Manaan directory at the time of me checking it out was actually someone I knew. It's not someone I particularly like though, so I opted for the next stronghold down the list instead, Leah Clarke's Jedi Academy.

I zoned in and... immediately those rows of holocrons again! What is going on with that? Is there some meme I'm not aware of?

Turning around, the other half of the outdoor area was really nicely decorated with trees, shrubs and statues though. I feel like plants make more of an impact in this stronghold than in others because it's so stark and white by default. It really invites you to inject some life and colour.

In the underwater area I always looked out the window to see whether anything had been placed on the big hook outside the stronghold itself, and this was the first place where I noticed someone actually doing something with that, which pleased me.

This room really lived up to the Jedi Academy theme, what with the Jedi NPCs, the crystals and the giant holocron. I really liked that.

On Satele Shan I ended up visiting Endonae's Pursuit of Peace at 69% completion. I think this might be the same Endonae that writes for Vulkk.com? 

Uh-oh, a hypergate at the door seems like bad news!

I really liked this arrangement with the statues, Onderonian palm trees and plants. I appreciated how things were intentionally somewhat spaced out and not every hook filled, in order to let things breathe.

This room in the underwater area made me doubt the "Pursuit of Peace" in this stronghold for a bit because that sure looks like some dark side shenanigans going on in this scene! I was quite fascinated by the weird lava sarcophagus and fire floor tile though, neither of which were decos I recognised.

Now this room definitely looked very serene and inviting, once again making good use of empty space to make it feel more welcoming and less crowded. It was this room in fact that made me think that it's the closest one among all the strongholds I've visited so far that actually looks somewhat like the kinds of environments the devs themselves tend to build, both in its use of space and thematic coherence.

Finally, on Star Forge I must have done this objective I think at what was the middle of the night for the Americans, because there were only four public listings available, with the highest one at 56% completion, which is pretty dead by that server's standards. I ended up visiting said 56% completed stronghold, called Dathayde's Galactic Stronghold.

Right at the entrance, I was greeted by a giant Revan statue and, like, all the companions, even if they were all just holograms to me. I imagine it looks better when you actually own them.

So remember what I said about that first hallway feeling crowded to me with the big planters in the first stronghold I visited? I didn't take screenshots of it everywhere I went, but I soon found that this was pretty standard in a lot of Manaan strongholds - until I got to this one, where the owner had decided for some reason to put the biggest possible ceiling decorations in this hallway, to the point that they almost block it entirely. I don't know why they did that, but I thought it was funny and weird.

Also, someone was really proud of doing the first boss in Eternity Vault on all three difficulties (back in the day...)

Did you notice anything of interest in these or other Manaan strongholds you visited last week?

Republic Saboteur, Part 3

It's been a while and a half since I last wrote about my Republic saboteur character. I think I put her on ice for a bit since she's a smuggler and at the time I felt that I should prioritise getting my "main" smuggler fully caught up with the story first before taking this one any further. Also, she'd just hit Echoes of Oblivion, which is an excellent piece of story content but not the most appealing in terms of replayability. 

Anyway, to mirror my series about my Imperial saboteur, I still wanted to write a third post about her journey through the rest of the Onslaught story after Objective Meridian, up to the Legacy of the Sith launch content. There've been a few additional saboteur choices in the updates that have been released since then, but I haven't decided yet what I'm going to do about those, if anything at all. Maybe I'll make a sort of summary post at some point to talk about how 7.2 and beyond have treated both Imperial and Republic saboteurs.

Anyway, I'd actually like to start with a comment on the Dantooine pirate event, whose little story tidbit strictly speaking takes place before Onslaught, but which I often do whenever, since it's not really important to the main storyline and only accessible once every couple of months. I didn't mention it at all when writing about my Imperial saboteur, so I was quite surprised and perplexed when I did the Dantooine dailies on my Republic saboteur and noticed differences! For example the mission to "take back" supplies from Imperial Pillagers has you delivering them right back to the Imps at the end, which I thought was hilarious but also kind of blatant? And the one with the Republic traitor has you warning him so that he can get away instead of being killed. So much detail for saboteurs in a daily area that isn't even active most of the time! I was most pleasantly surprised. In hindsight I do seem to vaguely remember that for Imperial saboteurs, at least the mission where you sabotage the farms also may have had some sort of choice and I simply forgot to write about it? I'd have to go back and double-check some time when the event is active again.

Anyway, to get back to the main storyline, in "The Task at Hand", the immediate follow-up to Objective Meridian, saboteurs are told that things are not going well for the Republic. There's a conversation choice where you can recommend fighting Hutts that are demanding bribes.

When Lana brings up Balmorra and Zenith, the saboteur option is once again to ask her to not even bother. I just find it kind of amusing that regardless of which faction you're on, "don't bother with weapon shipments on Balmorra" is sabotage either way.

When I started Secrets of the Enclave, I was surprised by dialogue that had Arn stating in an insecure tone that Tau was away on another assignment on Balmorra that he didn't know the details of, something I didn't remember encountering in any of my other playthroughs, but I'm not sure whether that was actually related to being a saboteur, as I seem to remember reading that there are some conversation choices - regardless of your overall loyalties - that drive Tau and Arn apart somewhat? It's not something I've researched in great detail.

Like on Imperial side, I had the option after the initial briefing to tip off the opposite faction in regards to our impending Dantooine trip, and I was amused that NR-02 thanks you but tells you that Imperial Intelligence already knew about it anyway. I thought that was an interesting touch and shows them being a step ahead of the SIS. After landing on the planet and seeing the Empire there, you can further complain to your companions about how the Republic is always too slow and therfore frequently loses to the Empire's ruthlessness.

The big thing that caught me by surprise in this flashpoint though was that after the fight with Lord Ziliss, I had the option to send the others away, implying that I was going to "take care" of her by killing her, just to then hand her a kolto pack and send her on her way. That was another delightfully overt act of sabotage that I hadn't expected - I guess because Imperials get no such option due to Rivix always killing the Republic Captain, even if you want to spare him.

Finally, while doing Manaan, the main thing that struck me was that it was funny how unimpressed I found myself by Gallo's rants about the Republic as a saboteur. It's not as if I'm here to work for them either, you know! When it comes to blowing up the ion cannon, the saboteur option was to weaken the blast so that some ships would be able to escape, which I didn't think was too impressive.

However, what I didn't anticipate that when it comes to choosing between saving Gallo or the kolto, the saboteur option is to save neither! For all the scummy things I've done in the name of sabotage (still haunted by shooting Narlock in the back), this one was a bit too much for me. It just had too much of a "watching the whole world burn" vibe, which I didn't think suited my smuggler, so I just decided to sacrifice Gallo in order to save the kolto. I don't think this is saboteur-specific, but I was surprised to hear Admiral Rava actually reveal why Gallo had beef with him at the end, something I'd always wondered about. Did I really never choose the kolto over her before? Huh.

Anyway, I was still curious how that saboteur option of saving neither would have played out and specifically how you'd justify such an action to Arn, so I looked it up on YouTube and was surprised to find that if you choose that option, your character pretends to save Gallo and her men but then sabotages the pod so that they die anyway? Cold, man.

Once everything's said and done, Darth Xarion himself gives you a holo call to congratulate you on your good work, and like on Imp side I wasn't really convinced. Sure, I did some sabotage, but more than anything I still helped the Republic drive the Empire off, which seems like it should've been the bigger deal...

And that's it for Republic saboteur options up to 7.1 - oh, except for one more bit that doesn't really have anything to do with the main story but that I noticed when I picked up the one-time story mission for R-4 Anomaly: I thought it was very odd that it's given by Jonas Balkar even if you're a Republic saboteur, because as a smuggler my character had never actually met him! And he doesn't introduce himself either. That seems like an oversight to me (and a problem that Imp side doesn't have, because while Imperial saboteurs don't really interact with Darth Xarion, they've at least met him during Onslaught so getting a call from him doesn't seem completely random).

Still, all in all I've got to say these saboteur playthroughts have only increased my appreciation of the Onslaught story content - I think that short of the original class stories, Ossus to Manaan is probably the series of updates with the most complexities and variations influencing different outcomes in the game. It's not entirely bug-free and there are some bits and pieces where certain choices feel like a bit of a stretch, but still, it must've been a humongous piece of work to script all of that, and in a manner that still mostly makes sense for so many different choices.

The Hunt for the Best View Returns... Again!

Last year, I mentioned that the "Best View in SWTOR" contest, first held in 2021 for the game's tenth anniversary, made an unexpected return. I was even more surprised when I saw the announcement yesterday that it was coming back for a third round this year. If the SWTOR team wants to make a habit out of this, they'll have to give us a lot of new planets this year or else start repeating some of them on the featured planet list next year.

Anyway, I immediately felt inspired and spent some time traipsing around the galaxy and taking screenshots - none of which I'm going to show here yet of course. Instead, I'll share my submissions from last year. Back in 2021, I only submitted shots for three out of ten possible planets, but last year I actually entered nine out of ten possible screenshots, with Odessen being the one planet I left out since I just couldn't find an angle I was happy with there. Anyway, these were my submissions - you can compare them to the actual winners here.

Coruscant will always have a special place in my heart, and the quintessential experience of the Republic home world is stepping out of the spaceport into that perpetual dusk while the music swells and sky cars roar past overhead. There was no question that this was going to be the focus of my screenshot, and it was for the winner as well, but they basically faced the other way. It's a worthy shot, but I'll admit I still prefer my own submission in this case.

The winning shot of Quesh shows grass, water, trees and part of a Hutt Palace, and it's interesting to me that I took some similarly-themed shots during my own exploration of Quesh, but ultimately I opted for submitting the refineries blowing smoke into the sky, since to me, the toxic air is what defines Quesh more than anything else.

I had a hunch that this one wasn't going to be winning shot material, since I noticed that while NPCs are technically allowed to be featured in your submission, no winner has ever included one in the foreground. However, to me it was perfect since swamp and rakghouls are what defines Taris above all else. The winning shot was of the wreck of the Endar Spire instead (I think?) which is of course a KOTOR reference but never meant much to me personally.

There's something to be said for the stark beauty of driven snow, but while taking shots of Hoth I struggled with how empty it always looked, which is why I opted to include these tauntauns in my submission. Same problem as with the rakghoul I guess... though I also notice now that perhaps I've been using the full width of the screen too much, seeing how the winning submissions get cropped down to 4:3 for the in-game decorations. Half of that tauntaun wouldn't even be in the shot then.

Alderaan is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful planets in the game, but I find that this beauty can be a bit challenging to capture accurately in screenshots, so I was quite pleased with myself for managing to take this wide shot of the Glarus Valley. The winning shot ended up being one of Castle Panteer however, which I guess was kind of the more obvious choice. I had taken pictures of it myself as well, but opted against submitting them.

Dromund Kaas is an interesting mix of rain-swept jungles contrasted against the stark, futuristic spires of Kaas City, and I simply decided to submit this rather old screenshot I took of the city since I really liked it. The winner shows both the jungle and parts of the city in the background, which I really can't fault.

With Manaan there was the question of whether to screenshot the new invasion zone or the serenity of the old entrance area. For me it was an obvious choice since I really don't like the visuals of the invasion zone all that much. This particular shot was actually taken inside the Depths of Manaan flashpoint. The contest winner was from the new area though.

Iokath was a challenging place to frame, since it's incredibly cluttered visually, in a way that I honestly find kind of ugly. I eventually found this view at the edge of the expanse, which looked much cleaner and more serene, with just the Eternal Fleet ships taking to the sky in the background. I will admit that this isn't very "typically" Iokath though. The winner managed to take a much better shot of just outside the Republic (?) base that manages to be visually busy but still look good.

Rishi was a tough one because I couldn't decide whether the Rishi Maze or Raider's Cove were more iconic for the planet. I eventually opted for the former, with a grophet in the foreground because I love grophets, OK? I was quite surprised that the chosen winner actually included neither.

Anyway, I'm off to take more pictures of this year's featured planets! If you want to take part, you can find all the details here, and you have until the 29th of September to make your submission(s).

Imperial Saboteur, Part 3

It's been a few months since I wrote about my decision to make my Chiss Sniper an Imperial saboteur and how that changed the story from Jedi Under Siege onwards. Part one, which covered the story content up to Onderon, could largely be summed up as "these saboteur options are pretty neat and interesting", while part two was still fun but veered a bit into the ridiculous with how obvious my character's sabotage was at times.

Last week I finally got the character caught up with the latest content - at the time of writing this, that's the "Digging Deeper" story update, though I can already tell you that I won't have anything to say about that one as I didn't encounter any saboteur-specific options in it; it seemed to be exactly the same as for all my loyalist characters. As far as everything else goes however, there'll be post-Onslaught spoilers in this post; you've been warned.

I previously covered up to the end of the main Onslaught story, so I had to pick things up with The Task at Hand and the introduction of Darth Rivix. Your sabotage is shown to have had consequences here as unlike the briefing for loyalists, the one saboteurs get from Rivix describes the Empire as being in deep trouble after the loss of the Meridian complex.

There's also a little section where Rivix asks your opinion on something that's specific to your origin story, which I don't actually remember catching on to before... for agents he notes that Darth Xarion appears to have planted some spies among the Hand's prospective staff and as a saboteur you can get him in trouble with the Emperor or Empress for that, though I didn't choose this option. I was also a bit confused why Rivix called me "Keeper" as I don't remember my agent attaining that rank (not that this is something that's specific to saboteurs).

Echoes of Oblivion and Spirit of Vengeance unsurprisingly had no saboteur options, seeing how they're not about the Republic/Empire conflict. In the "intermission" after that I didn't really note any saboteur options either, other than being able to dismiss going after Zenith as not worth your time, which I liked.

Secrets of the Enclave felt like the saboteur option was given some more thought again here. Krovos justifies her delayed arrival with Imperial forces facing "heavy resistance", which is not the case for loyalists. Before you set out, you also have the option to contact Jonas Balkar to give him a heads-up about where you're going.

With that in mind, I kind of enjoyed the bit where you land on Dantooine and are shocked that the Republic is already there. I mean, I know that's how the story goes regardless and that it has nothing to do with being a saboteur, but considering I'd literally tipped them off personally, it just made so much more sense, you know? Just like the complete abandonment of Malgus at the end of Objective Meridian makes more sense when you have reason to dislike him for being suspicious of you.

When you rescue the medical droid inside the caves, you've got the option to instruct her to also transmit her data to Jonas/Odessen, which I thought was a bit blatantly suspicious with Krovos and Rivix just around the corner, but whatever it takes I guess...

After the mission I got a mail from Jonas which initially confused me and I was actually going to ask my readers whether they could tell me what the encoded message in it was, but as I was looking at the screenshot again while editing this post, I suddenly noticed it myself: "Got message from droid. Good. Talk soon."

Again, the "intermission" style updates leading up to Legacy of the Sith didn't contain anything relevant to saboteurs other than that there was obviously no Zenith follow-up.

Now, Manaan was a weird one. I immediately noted that it was lacking the sorts of small touches I'd really enjoyed during Onslaught, where you let a Republic fighter escape after doing some damage if you're a saboteur instead of destroying them completely as a loyalist. On Manaan, our saboteur is shown to have no such reservations and seems perfectly happy to blow up the Republic pilots that are chasing Major Anri at the start. Also, I felt kind of bad about the bonus missions to kill what felt like a million Republic forces... couldn't they have thought of something more appropriate for saboteurs? Maybe to complete the mission while only killing less than a certain number of Republic NPCs...

I don't think it had anything to do with my saboteur status, but at one point while Anri was telling me who Darth Norok was, she also commented that "Darth Shaar's retired to some frilly palace on Dromund Kaas" and I was like, "What?". I actually had to pause and go back through the text in the conversation window to make sure I'd heard that right, because I didn't remember encountering that comment before.

Anyway, as far as Manaan goes, I'd actually exposed myself to some spoilers about the saboteur path by accident so I knew that something was going to happen at the end with Colonel Korrd, but I wasn't really sure how it was going to play out. I chose to cover for him in front of Darth Krovos, and then went with the saboteur-specific option to say something about how you protected him because you still have a use for him and you'd like him to report for debrief with your people on Odessen.

I honestly found that kind of confusing, because while Korrd is fed up with a certain kind of Sith, he still seems deeply loyal to the Empire, so I'm not sure what the angle is supposed to be here. The spoiler I'd read seemed to interpret it as him being recruited into the Alliance, but that doesn't really make sense to me. My best guess is that the implication is that you'll mine him for Imperial secrets since he owes you and has no reason to distrust you, but if so, that's not made very clear.

The conversation at the end where you have the option to flirt with Anri and where she tells you how amazing you are reminded me of my comment in an earlier post about how nonsensical her admiration feels when you've been playing a saboteur who's messed up one mission after another.

At the end I got a call from Jonas about the Republic weapons platform being destroyed, and there was no option to say that you feel bad about it. You can say something about how you've gained new intel through Colonel Korrd (somehow...) and how you secured some kolto for the Republic, but I mean... they were already doing well on that front before you came in to help the Empire beat them. It just didn't feel like a very satisfying exchange and like I didn't really help the Republic, considering how many of their people I mowed down.

Ruins of Nul didn't have any saboteur-specific options again, except that during the intro conversation, after Rivix asks you to come to Elom, you can say to Lana: "Let Malgus tear the Empire down. What do we care?"

All in all, the saboteur role still provides some interesting variations on content but I've got to admit that the post-Onslaught stuff has generally felt more muddled and less impactful to me. I know the story is progressing very slowly, but at some point you've got to wonder where we're going with this whole saboteur thing and how much longer it makes sense to maintain it. More than three years ago I wrote a post called "Will we ever get to change sides?" and my answer to that question back then was that it seemed very unlikely.

However, I've got to admit that since Bioware has gone through all the hassle of decoupling origin story from combat style since then, it seems... less far-fetched now that they could do the same thing for faction one day, though this would actually increase the amount of work required from the voice actors, as they'd now have to account for every base class being able to play through Republic or Imperial story. Whichever way they go, my main hope is that they didn't just add this whole saboteur thing with no real plan for where it should go in the long run.

Manaan: Dailies With a Story

I've said many times that I'm not a huge fan of dailies - and 7.0's new gearing system has forced me to do way more of them than I usually would, to be honest - but I was still looking forward to the new daily zone on Manaan. It's always nice to get new content, and dailies are one of those things that Mr Commando and I can still do together in these days of all main story updates being pure solo content / personal to your character.

After one full round of the new area on both Republic and Imperial side, I'd say the jury is still out on whether this is going to be a place I visit more regularly or not. Cal was surprised that the new dailies offer neither daily currency nor tech fragments, but I think that's intentional - at this point, people are going to do the area for its sheer novelty and the new reputation anyway. I'd expect Bioware to rebalance the rewards to make them more equal to other, existing daily areas eventually, but for now I get it if they don't want to over-incentivise this new content.

Just in terms of general feel I got the impression that I had to do a fair amount of running around, but I wouldn't be surprised if we all came up with our own, more efficient ways of going about things after a while. On the first night, Mr Commando and I started by fighting our way into a cave for a heroic and back out again, ran around the little "island" doing other missions and then found that we had to go back into the exact same cave at the end. There's definitely ways that can be planned out better.

What was most interesting though was that Bioware decided to add a little story to Manaan. The overall feel of the narrative reminded me a bit of the old planetary storylines - less personalised and centred on your character, but adding some life to the planet and context for what it is you're doing in each area. The dailies are immediately available without doing the story, but if you pick all of them up at the beginning, you'll be able to complete them relatively synergetically alongside each step of the storyline.

Bioware also did something that I've seen in WoW before (and I wouldn't be surprised if other MMOs did this too) by having the story reward you with extra abilities that only work on Manaan. After each step you're allowed to choose between two types of gadgets, including different AoE damage abilities, a reflective shield, a self-heal, a speed boost and even a stealth field generator, if you haven't already picked a stealth class as one of your two combat styles. These should make subsequent runs of the daily area a lot easier without otherwise unbalancing the game. Very neat.

I'd say the only downside is that the production values for this side story were clearly very limited, because not only does it use the KOTOR-style dialogue in which your character stays silent (which I'm fine with for side quests), but every single character speaks some form of alien gibberish, which I'm less keen on. It's particularly annoying when they radio you updates out in the field - this is something that makes perfect sense when characters speak Basic, as you can just listen to what's being said without disrupting your gameplay, but when it's all Huttese or Selkath or whatever, you've got to stop what you're doing to bring up the right chat window and scroll back to read the translation of what they said, which is a lot less fun.

There are also some small oddities in the flow of the dialogue which make me think that Bioware originally intended for story progress to be gated by time or reputation. On Republic side this is reflected in your two contacts standing right next to each other in the same room, while occasionally conversations end with something like "No idea where X is right now" just for the immediate next step to be to talk to X two steps to the right. The Imperial story is even more obvious about it as your contact will tell you to come back later because he needs time to do something or other, but then the conversation just continues after a brief fadeout anyway.

Anyway, overall I consider this little story addition a win, and the dailies seem alright, with nothing sticking out as particularly efficient or awkward at first blush - we'll see how they hold up over time.

Legacy of the Sith Story Review: Manaan

I said in my first impressions post that I found the story of LotS somewhat lacking both in length and content, but I've got to admit that I'd only played through the Republic story once at the time of writing that. When I went on to play through the Imperial storyline afterwards and started sorting through my screenshots, I felt that I'd perhaps judged things a bit harshly, because I kept thinking "yeah, that was actually pretty cool" as I recalled various moments.

The first half of the expansion narrative, which is set on Manaan, is a peculiar beast because the overall plot doesn't really have strong ties to anything that came before, and it doesn't feel like it's setting up a follow-up story either (though you never know, I suppose), which makes it a very odd fit for an expansion called Legacy of the Sith. It makes me imagine a Bioware road map from long ago that perhaps had this story update slotted as the last patch of Onslaught, with Legacy of the Sith instead being supposed to launch with a bundle consisting of the Elom flashpoint and whatever story update(s) are meant to come after. But then the pandemic hit, everything got delayed and they had to reshuffle things to still be able to launch an expansion for the tenth anniversary... this is 100% blind speculation on my part, but it would certainly explain a few things.

Anyway, let's talk about this oddball of a story that makes up half of 7.0. I'll discuss the other half in a separate post. There will be spoilers for all things Manaan after the next screenshot, so if you're not ready for that and don't want to know what happens there, feel free to skip this one.

Even though we've established at least since KotFE that Republic and Imperial stories can't both be true at the same time (anymore), events from the Republic Manaan storyline are referenced in the Imperial one, so I guess at least some version of events is meant to take place in both continuities.

We start things on Republic side by witnessing Arn captaining a ship watching over the Manaan system as part of Task Force Nova, which gets shot down by a mysterious weapon that is later identified as an Imperial ion cannon. The player character shows up to the rescue and you descend onto the planet to take the cannon out. You meet some Selkath, who are not best pleased to have you there, but grudgingly help you out because they like the Empire even less. And that's really the gist of the Republic story, which is why I found it a bit underwhelming to be honest.

The two main character threads throughout are Arn struggling to get to grips with what it means to be in command, now that he's been promoted from padawan to knight, and the player character interacting with a grouchy Selkath colonel called Gallo. The former is only really interesting if you like Arn a lot as a character (and he's not really one of my personal faves - sorry, Arn fans), and the latter is fairly by the numbers: she helps you, you help her, you grudgingly grow to respect each other etc. About the most interesting aspect of it is that you learn a lot of strange new expressions involving water or fish...

The big choice at the end is also a classic Star Wars trolley problem, where you have to choose between saving some people now, or sacrificing them for a presumed greater good later, which is the sort of thing that always gets people arguing about whether Bioware flagged the wrong option as light side but which isn't really particularly compelling to me.

None of this is badly done, but neither does it do anything particularly new or exciting, and the characters that got the main focus just weren't that interesting to me. I was reminded a lot of how the Republic story on Onderon didn't exactly wow me at first either. I do have some sympathy for the writers and for how hard it must be to write an interesting "good guy" story in this game, because when Republic characters are supposed to live up to their ideals, it's easy for them to end up simply being nice to everyone, not arguing (much) and being thoroughly bland. The last time Republic-specific stories had some spice (in my opinion) was pre-KotFE, when Satele decided to team up with Darth Marr against official policy, and Theron as a spy was at least occasionally doing questionable things. Things were generally more exciting back when Saresh was Supreme Chancellor... because she was on your side but she was also an annoying politician and that was always good for drama. Sadly that also meant that most people hated her and the devs eventually wrote her out by just making her outright evil and therefore safe to dispose of.

I digress a bit, but basically I was thinking about this because the Imperial story manages to be much more interesting due to focusing on internal conflict. It starts with your character saving Major Anri's ship from being chased by Republic fighters, after which we learn that the events of the Republic story just happened, but the Empire is still trying to hold on to some kolto extraction facilities, which is where you come in to help them.

You rescue and make the acquaintance of a certain Colonel Korrd who gives you various tasks to shore up local defenses and fight back against the Republic, supposedly relayed from the real person in charge, a Sith called Darth Norok. Korrd is cagey about letting you talk to Norok directly because he's worried his Sith superior will be annoyed by being bothered unnecessarily, which seems sensible enough if you've ever dealt with any Sith in this game, but the snippets of holocalls between them that you do catch seem ever so slightly off in some way.

Eventually you take over a Republic transport and find none other than Darth Norok himself in a prison cell there - apparently he was shot down at the start of the invasion and has been imprisoned ever since, meaning that Korrd has been using his name as a front to issue his own orders. You free Norok and he accompanies you to destroy the Republic's biggest, baddest gun... but when you get there he orders you to hijack it instead to sow chaos, even if it means being unable to accurately choose your targets and risking friendly fire. If you defy his orders, he'll draw his lightsaber on you and you have to kill him. He's flagged as both a champion mob and a tank by the way and therefore takes forever to die!

When you return to base, you and Anri confront Korrd about his lies, and he's unrepentant as he thinks Norok was a fool anyway and he (Korrd) only did what was best for the Empire. If Norok is alive, he comes in at this point to start choking Korrd, which is when Darth Krovos calls in to ask how it's going (she also does this if Norok is dead) and tells Norok to stop choking one of her direct underlings. During this conversation you can decide to rat Korrd out to Krovos or cover for him when Norok raises his accusations.

I killed Norok in one of my playthroughs and covered for Korrd there, and in another I left Norok alive and spoke up against Korrd, but didn't act against Krovos' follow-up request to have him arrested so that she could deal with him personally, which oddly enough, still left Norok angry with me for some reason. I don't know if he actually likes you if you ignore Krovos' orders and just murder Korrd on the spot, which is also an option. Apparently it's also possible to turn against Norok in front of Krovos at the very end if you prefer that. Lots of choices!

I really liked this story because while clashes between nutty Sith and the interests of ordinary Imperials are not a new theme, this was a unique take on it that I honestly didn't see coming. I also mentioned in my review of Onslaught that many of the newly introduced Sith in recent updates have seemed almost too nice to me, so I enjoyed seeing a violent brute like Norok again (as strange as that may sound) - yet at the same time he wasn't so over the top insane that it made you wonder why anybody put up with him at all.

So, looked at in isolation, the story on Manaan is a solid enough content update (though I've got to confess I found the constant rain and darkness somewhat off-putting in terms of environments I like to spend time in); it just feels a bit disjointed in the way it drops you in medias res, with no connection to anything, and then ends just as abruptly when either Tau or Darth Rivix show up to whisk you away to Elom.

Legacy of the Sith Expansion Announcement

I didn't watch last night's livestream while it was happening (though I do want to say to Bioware's credit that they've got much better at scheduling their streams at times when it's actually reasonable for Europeans to tune in too), but I did watch the recording as soon as I was able to. And once again I have to say that I found it very engaging and enjoyable to watch. I feel they've really found their groove with these streams recently - they may not be very high budget, but Charles and Eric have a great dynamic and are fantastic ambassadors for the game with their unending and infectious enthusiasm.

The intro with various devs talking about what ten years of SWTOR meant to them and how much they love their jobs could be considered a bit cheesy I guess, but it all sounded very genuine and to be honest it's nice to see some of the same faces making repeat appearances (proving that they're still around). Plus who doesn't like the idea of a game's devs actually enjoying their jobs?

And then we jumped right in: new expansion at the end of the year, called Legacy of the Sith (cue lots of "LOTS" puns, and Musco promised many more) to celebrate ten years of SWTOR! You can find the official run-down here, but here are my own thoughts on each item:

Five new levels, new story and locations

Not that much to say about this one, because while it's nice to see, it's also par for the course for a new expansion. All we know about the story is that it'll continue to focus on Republic vs. Empire, which I'm happy about, and they wouldn't say any more in order not to spoil us and I think that's how we as players like it.

In terms of new locations it sounds a bit less ambitious than Onslaught was, as instead of two new open world planets and a flashpoint, we'll only get one new place to hang out plus a flashpoint. The latter will also take place on a new planet called Elom though instead of being set on an existing one like Objective Meridian was.

The main "new" planet will be a battle-ravaged Manaan. I have to say while the concept art looks cool, I'm not sure I like it being all messed up! Seeing beautiful and serene locations torn up by war is always a bit sad. And it's one thing if it's only in a flashpoint like it happened for Tython and Korriban, but to have the "permanent" open world version of the planet be a mess is less appealing I think. Who wants to hang out on a rainy battlefield all day?

New operation

I like to call this one out separately because while you could argue that a new operation should also simply be an "expected" part of a new expansion, SWTOR's fraught history with this type of content has taught me to be careful with my expectations - so I'm happy to see that they are planning to deliver another operation soon!

Story-wise it sounds like the new ops might have a tie-in with Nature of Progress - it's teased at the end of the Dxun story mission (if you can resist the subtle pressure to kill Trey) that something dangerous has gone missing from another Czerka facility. Though again based on the concept art for the new operation, the overall flavour of this one seems very different, with more of a horror vibe similar to what we saw from the Dread Masters. I'm looking forward to it either way!

Combat styles

This was the main expansion feature aside from new content and to be honest it fried my brain a bit. Basically, after re-doing gearing in Onslaught, it seems that Bioware has targeted basic class gameplay as the thing that needs an update next. I have to admit I froze for a second when they started talking about that, as I wondered whether they were going to do something silly like pivot the game more towards action combat, but fortunately Bioware knows their player base better than that. What they did announce sounded a bit confusing though, and depending on the exact details has the potential to be a huge game changer or to make no difference to many players at all.

In a nutshell, based on the slides they showed, they want to disconnect base class (what defines your story content) from advanced class (what defines your gameplay), except for the divide between Force and tech users, which remains intact. What this means is that you could for example create a trooper but instead of playing her as a Commando with a big assault cannon or a Vanguard with a blaster rifle, you could choose to use a Sniper rifle and have access to all the abilities that a Sniper would usually have... I think?!

On a surface level this seems fine, logic-wise, because why wouldn't a trooper be able to use a different weapon? And many of the abilities are generic enough that seeing them used by a different base class wouldn't feel "wrong" - e.g. my Commando heals with different medical probes, and I see no reason why a bounty hunter, agent or smuggler couldn't also use medical probes. But some abilities are a bit more... flavourful, and there I struggle to wrap my head around the idea of all of them simply being available to every class. Would an agent tanking things with a flamethrower like a Powertech really feel "right"? Or how about a trooper running around kicking people in the nuts Scoundrel-style? Assuming that this is indeed how it's supposed to work, I'd hope that they're at least planning to tweak the animations/flavour of some of the abilities for different base classes.

That said, even if I understood all of that correctly, there are lots of question marks in the air about other details and how this is going to affect players in group content. Considering how big of a deal they made about it, it seems safe to assume that this "choosing a different play style" thing won't just be for new characters, but then how easy will it be to switch? If you could do it on the fly it could lead to weird gameplay expectations ("Everybody switch to a stealth style so we can skip the trash!") but then what would the restrictions be? Based on the fact that they said they'd also be introducing loadouts to go along with this (an easy way to save different specs/styles/gear sets and switch between them) it sounded to me like they do want players to be able to swap with relative ease.

And what will all of this mean for alts? If you want to see all the different gameplay options on both factions, you currently have an incentive to have sixteen alts, eight for each advanced class on both factions (though I'm sure most long-time players have more, haha). With this announcement, it sounds like you'd only really need two going forward: one Force and one tech user, who would then potentially have access to the full toolkit of all advanced classes on both factions. Does this mean there's less of a reason to have alts? I don't think so, though it does make things easier for people who want to avoid them for some reason. If you like having lots of alts though, there'll be even more class story/gameplay permutations for you to try though, as you could have e.g. eight different troopers that all level with a different play style.

Anyway, based on how many unanswered questions there still are about this new feature, a lot of this is really speculation more than anything else. We'll all have to hear more details first before deciding what it means for the way we play going forward.

Any other business

The expansion's launch, which is supposed to happen around the end-of-year holiday season (though we don't have a fixed date) will also mark the start of the second Galactic Season - so from the sounds of it there'll be a couple of months break between the end of the first and the beginning of the second Season, which is something I'd welcome. Season two will be centred around a new Duros companion.

There was also talk about improving a lot of the user interface, and I have to admit that was the part of the livestream that filled me with the least happiness... not that I'm against the idea in principle, but to be honest a lot of their UI "improvements" of the last couple of years haven't really felt like such (new windows that can't be modified in the UI editor etc.) - so you'll excuse me if I feel some trepidation around this.

On a general level, I liked how much optimism was expressed about SWTOR's future, considering how much doomsaying SWTOR players have had to put up with over the years. Apparently it's the longest-running Star Wars game at this point (I wouldn't expect them to count Star Wars Galaxies rogue servers for obvious reasons), and they have plans for more content for years to come. Eric even went as far as to say that this is just the start of the game's next ten years. I mean, obviously you never know when the corporate overlords might end up having different ideas - but still, seeing the team be so happy and confident does bode well.

If you made it to the end of this post and haven't heard about this yet, they also gave out a code that you can redeem in your account for a free stronghold deco poster of rebellious Mandalorian Heta Kol. The code LOTSofSWTOR (easy to remember!) is valid until July 15th.

What are your thoughts about everything that's been announced?

More Patchy Goodness

Another Tuesday, another patch. I had somehow gotten it into my head that this one would be the one with the new flashpoint, but actually that one is slated for 5.4 it seems, so my disappointment with its absence was entirely of my own making.

For now, the theme of handing out goodies to different parts of the player base that have felt neglected for a while continues.

First off, there were some class balance changes. I have some guildies that keep asking me for opinions on these things and all I can respond with are blank stares. As someone who plays healers for life I pay remarkably little attention to numbers, so as long as I can do my job in ops and don't get focused too hard in PvP, I'm happy. I'm not even too worried about the Commando survival nerfs that people keep crying about (though nothing has been implemented yet), because I don't actually take most of those "OP utilities" as a healer anyway. As long as they don't take away the wonder that is Echoing Deterrence (the survival cooldown with the built-in reflect), which has increased my survivability in warzones tenfold compared to how things were before its introduction, I'm good.

I jumped into a warzone and ended up in an arena where the person who did the most damage by far was a Juggernaut tank. I didn't think that was a thing Bioware was balancing for?

There is also a new stronghold on Manaan. I bought it because I had the complimentary Cartel Coins to spare but I haven't placed a single decoration in it so far. I was quite curious about Galactic Strongholds when it first launched but never really turned into a true housing aficionado. But honestly, it looks pretty even while empty, and the lighting in the outside area looks good for taking screenshots.

... which is something I did with Lana and Koth, who've now also been given the honour of becoming customisable. I was initially surprised that I couldn't see any change, but basically they come with a "customisation" by default which retains their current look, but you can take it off and they'll suddenly lose a lot of muscle and acquire a slightly sickly complexion to allow you to dress them however you want. I can't get over Koth's forehead without those goggles there! I think I'll just leave them both as they are.

Though I have been doubting myself a bit, based on the amount of chatter I've picked up from people who are over the moon about being able to put them in different clothes. I'm somewhat reminded of how I felt when Galactic Starfighter launched and I didn't really care about it, but since it was all everyone was talking about I felt that I should give it a try because I didn't want to miss out. Is playing space barbie really where it's at? I don't know.

My guild also had a brief look at the new operations encounter on story mode, but I really want to see more of it before giving my opinion on that!

KOTOR Adventures: Manaan Manaan

Last time on Knights of the Old Republic, I had finished my Jedi trials on Dantooine and was being set loose upon the galaxy to find the pieces of an ancient star map, which supposedly hides a very important secret.

I had literally bankrupted myself buying enough medpacks for the last fight on Dantooine and was looking forward to now being able to explore the galaxy and extract money from it. I flew to Tatooine first because to me that one sounded like the most appealing out of all the available planets, however on exiting my ship I was immediately accosted by some Czerka officials who demanded a one hundred credit docking fee to even let me out of the spaceport. Since I didn't have that of course, I thought "screw you, guys" and took off again, intending to find a planet first that wasn't ruled by greedy Czerka scum.

I picked Manaan next, and did indeed manage to get off my ship and talk to a couple of NPCs there. However, as soon as I wanted to access Ahto City proper, there was the hundred credit docking fee again. It dawned on me that this was probably a requirement on every planet and that you're basically screwed if you're out of money at this point. Since on Manaan there was at least a vendor nearby, I grudgingly sold him a couple of bits and pieces that I had been hoping to keep, in order to be able to cover the fee. The Selkath gatekeeper told me that a map of the city was included in the fee, but apparently it wasn't, because unlike on previous occasions when I was given a map, the area was not revealed to me.

When Manaan was added in SWTOR, even without offering anything but the staging point for the Depths of Manaan flashpoint, a lot of KOTOR fans seemed very pleased, so I figured that they had fond memories of the place Sadly my own experiences did not reflect this at all. While the "flying in" cut scene looked gorgeous despite its age (taking screenshots of specific things is really hard on the tablet by the way, as tapping it to bring up the screenshot button also registers as "skip this please"), actually walking around Ahto City just felt kind of... boring. There was no "outside" to explore, and relatively few NPCs wanted to talk to me. The peaceful music actually managed to make me doze off once while I was trying to sort out my inventory...

Eventually it became apparent that my only avenue for progress was to do a job for the local Republic representative which involved breaking into a nearby Sith base to retrieve some stolen data. Funnily enough, they made a big deal out of how I had several different options to break in there, a problem that was solved easily enough, but I didn't even know where the damn base was and nobody deigned to tell me that. Eventually I googled it and realised that I had missed the exit to an entire part of the city that I hadn't even discovered yet... if only they'd given me that map...

So I broke into the Sith base and had a horrible time. I cleared the first two or three rooms, but soon ran into problems. One way was blocked by some sort of door puzzle, which - even though I had found a datapad with instructions - made zero sense to me. I decided to go another way instead, and found a room with a couple of uber powerful droids that I once again couldn't even scratch. After reloading (they killed me of course), I tried a different door and ended up being massacred by a bunch of Dark Jedi for a change. "I hate this place, I'm going home," I thought, and exited through the front door... just to be arrested by the Selkath for trespassing in the Sith base for no good reason and getting sentenced to death.

After moping for a bit about having got myself stuck in situation with no pleasant way out of it, I gave in and googled a guide. Fortunately the killer droids didn't really matter, and the Dark Jedi weren't as bad as they had seemed at first, going down relatively easily on my second attempt. The guide explained to me how to get past the door puzzle, and revealed that at the very end, I would be able to find proof there that the Sith were up to no good which I would then be able to use to exonerate myself when the Selkath came to arrest me on my exit.

But first I ran into Shasa, a young Selkath whose father had asked me to look for her as she had gone missing. Turns out that she and her friends had been lured in by the Sith with false promises. I was easily able to prove the Sith's duplicity to them though - apparently a friend of theirs had been tortured to death literally in the room next to them and they never noticed. Suckers. They all went home after that, but clearly nothing good came of Shasa, considering that she later went on to found her own flavour of the Revanite cult on Manaan.

Then came the final room with the datapad I would need for my trial later. It was guarded by another Dark Jedi and his two Selkath apprentices. They killed me, but this time I wasn't going to give up so easily, so I tried again, and again. I pumped my party full of stims, had them all activate personal shields, saved and tried again. Following simple logic, I had them burn down the apprentices first before focusing on the big guy, but once I finally got that far, I once again ran into the problem of none of my characters being able to actually hurt him, and eventually he whittled down my party to nothing yet again. This was weird because a chunk of his health was already missing, and when I paid closer attention on the next try I realised that my group was able to hit him pretty hard whenever he was stunned - so I switched my strategy to focusing on the big guy first, with all three party members rotating through their stuns while they still had Force, which finally resulted in a hard-earned victory.

The whole encounter made me realise that clearly my biggest problem with some of the fights so far has been me "doing it wrong" in some way, whether by using the wrong abilities or the wrong weapons. The problem is that I'm pretty lazy when it comes to the numbers part of roleplaying. This was actually what led me to eventually quit my pen and paper roleplaying group, because the other players were all the exact opposite. The GM would frequently kill off characters, but everyone else was almost happy about that since it allowed them to whip out their rulebooks and try to build a new combination of feats and abilities that would hopefully turn out to be OP. Meanwhile I was always crushed when yet another budding character arc came to an abrupt end and I had to deal with the tedium of distributing stats again.

Because of this I had been happy to let KOTOR's "auto level up" feature do all the work for me and hadn't bothered too much with reading gear tooltips and the like. Only after this did I finally sit down and take a slightly closer look at my character's numbers, only to realise that whatever the auto-level had been doing, it was the exact opposite of what I wanted. Why did I have so many points in demolitions, which I never used? And no wonder my persuasion attempts always failed, considering I had almost no points in it! I immediately switched to adding any newly earned points manually, but for the moment the damage was done. I've also been told that lightsabers are kind of weak against certain droids... but of course I vendored all my vibroblades once I'd got my saber, thinking that surely lightsabers would be superior against everything. (Maybe that vendor at the spaceport still has them...)

Anyway, I successfully escaped the Sith base at last, proved to the Selkath that they were evil and retrieved the stolen Republic data. Because nothing is ever easy, the Republic now wanted me to investigate a secret underwater base they were building and where something had apparently gone horribly wrong as everyone who was sent down to check on it had just disappeared.

After the struggle in the Sith base I decided to try a different party composition and took my little astromech droid T3-M4 (like the German SWTOR server!) down to the underwater base with me. I was delighted by his slicing ability, but when it came to fighting a giant battle droid things were once again touch and go, making me swap companions once again. I think it was only around then that I realised how easy that actually was... for some reason I thought that I'd have to walk back to the Ebon Hawk every time.

As it turned out, the Selkath in the underwater base had all gone mad and torn everything to bits, leaving only a couple of panicked survivors behind. Apparently this madness was induced by a giant sea beast that got woken up by the base's pumps. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, turns out to be to either poison said beast or to try to calm it down by getting rid of the noisy machinery. This has you walking around on the ocean floor in a special environmental suit for a bit, which clearly served as inspiration for the underwater part of the HK bonus chapter. It was a neat change of pace I suppose... except for the part where I was forced to take down several groups of mad Selkath without any companions (since you only have one suit to cross over to that part of the base). Seeing how I had trouble with certain fights with a full group before, this bit was just painful. I died sooo many times... eventually I even turned the option to pause after every combat round back on because I simply couldn't afford a single round to go to waste with an accidental auto attack or anything like that. Somehow I managed to muddle through in the end. (It involved a lot of grenades and a breath mask that made me immune to the Selkath's poison.)

As for the big beastie, I decided to go with destroying the machinery since that sounded more light side, though I temporarily regretted my choice when I was then faced with a small puzzle to actually get things blown up, which took me way longer to figure out than it should have. It wasn't actually hard at all, I'm just getting dumber with age I think. With the machinery gone, the giant fish withdrew and conveniently revealed some ruins with the next piece of my star map. Wahey.

Of course, as soon as I was back on the surface, the Selkath insisted on arresting me yet again. They spoke with awe of the giant sea monster, referring to it as the Progenitor (another server!) - I can only guess that if they really think of it as their ancestor, taking the option to poison it can't go over well. As it was, I was absolved of everything and finally allowed to leave the planet of the fish people behind. I still don't know why people talk so fondly of this place. Onwards to nicer planets (I hope)!