Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 6

Week 6's objectives excited me for two reasons: It was the first week without a flashpoint objective, and it was the first week with not just one, but two PvP objectives. I don't like that it took six weeks to get any overlap between PvP Season 5 and GS6, and looking at the PvP track made me realise that after my initial excitement about the new PvP season, with plans to do at least the basic reward track on multiple servers, too much time had passed already for me to still complete the PvP track on Star Forge and Shae Vizla without buyouts, due to how focused I'd been on Galactic Seasons instead.

Anyway, in detail, the weekly objectives were:

• Earn 200k Conquest points: As usual.
  
• Visit another player's Rishi stronghold: Easy enough to do.
  
• Craft war supplies and two invasion forces: Once again something I was likely going to do on Darth Malgus but nowhere else, due to the lack of skilled crafters in my stable of alts.
  
• Dig up 3 treasures at a seeker droid dig site: Probably something I was going to do at least on some servers.
  
• Complete 15 missions as a trooper or agent: I was definitely going to aim for this one everywhere, as I usually do with the origin story objectives.
  
• Kill four named champion mobs on Corellia (2 Republic, 2 Imperial): Once again, not my favourite but one I was likely going to do at least on some servers to get the numbers.
  
• Kill both Taris world bosses: Easy and fast to do, I was counting on getting this one done on most servers again.
  
• Play 5-10 arenas (wins count double): I was definitely going to do that one on Darth Malgus, and maybe on other servers depending on whether I could get pops in the sub-80 brackets.
  
• Heroic space missions: I've never been good at space missions, to the point that I haven't even completed all the normal ones, so this was a definite no.
  
• Play 4-8 warzone matches (wins count double): I was probably going to aim to do that one on all servers, even if it's a bit time-consuming, but I do love warzones.
  
• Do dailies on Ruhnuk or Kessan's Landing: I figured I might do that one on Darth Malgus with Mr Commando, but nowhere else as I don't have that much story progression on any of the other servers.
  

Day 1 - Tuesday

I had another surprise working from home day after it turned out that the previous night's heavy winds had caused damage on my usual train line and I couldn't get into London. I was also feeling a bit tired and unwell though, so instead of using the time saved not commuting for gaming, I ended up napping instead.

In the evening I did ops with my guild, and then expanded my Copero stronghold to hit the daily seasons objective (I'd been saving up the unlocks for this kind of thing instead of using them the moment I got them).

I then logged over to Leviathan, where I had weird server lag problems when trying to transition between areas. It didn't just seem to be me either, as I played a warzone match and everyone else seemed to have issues leaving at the end as well, though it did eventually resolve itself. I then killed the Taris world bosses on both factions, which was nice and easy as lots of people were doing it and it basically took no time at all to find an impromptu group. I did the same circuit (one warzone plus both world bosses) on Tulak Hord, Star Forge and Satele Shan.

On Shae Vizla, I had no luck with warzone pops or world boss groups at this time of night, so I just parked two characters at their locations, visited a Rishi stronghold and did a couple of missions on my trooper.

Day 2 - Wednesday

In the morning I logged into Shae Vizla since I figured that was a better time for group content with the Aussies. I got both world boss kills done, and since level 80 warzones were popping instantly for me, I also played enough matches to complete the weekly. 

After the reset at lunch time, I returned to Shae Vizla to do some questing on my trooper, followed by a Black Talon run with my agent on Leviathan, which counted as 7/15 missions completed.

Later I was supposed to help out with an ops run on Star Forge, but it kinda ended up being cancelled, so the four of us that actually showed up ran a couple of master mode flashpoints instead (in the one week where this wasn't a seasons objective - typical! Still, it counted as ten missions done as a trooper.)

In the evening I first logged into Tulak Hord, where I did a warzone and a couple of missions on my trooper over there. I then spent some time PvPing on Darth Malgus, and finally I did exactly one warzone again on Satele Shan; plus I paid a visit to a Rishi stronghold.

Day 3 - Thursday

I was back in the office so didn't get any play time until relatively late in the evening.

On Leviathan, I visited a Rishi stronghold, did some warzones and killed the Imperial named champions on Corellia. Logging over to Tulak Hord, a single warzone there was enough to get my daily Conquest done, so I left it at that.

I then did some more PvP on Darth Malgus (both warzones and arenas), followed by a few warzones on Star Forge. While in the queue there, I also went around and killed the Republic champion mobs on Corellia. I started doing a couple of missions on my agent on Satele Shan, but it was late and I was tired, so I decided to leave any additional action for the next morning.

Day 4 - Friday

In the morning I logged back into Satele Shan and did an Esseles run on my little trooper there. Because of the Galactic Rampage Conquest objective, this completed her personal Conquest immediately, while also giving me several missions worth of credit towards questing as a trooper or agent. I then logged onto Shae Vizla and continued my trooper's class storyline on Belsavis for a bit.

In the evening I did more PvP on Darth Malgus, which resulted in me completing the arena weekly before it was time for ops. After that I logged into Leviathan where I played exactly one more warzone for the weekly mission (it was a Vandin Huttball in which I rocked by the way). Then I did the same thing on Tulak Hord, except that the match I played there was a Voidstar where we got properly spanked but still won on objectives.

On Star Forge I queued for a few midbie arenas (since this was the only other server where I could get them to pop without too much of a wait), followed by a couple of level 80 warzones on Satele Shan. Finally I did some PvP on Shae Vizla as well, even though I didn't need any more games for seasons there, but the guild I'm in was organising some level 80 warzones and I wanted to take part, so I completed another warzone weekly mission while killing some champion mobs and digging up treasure between matches.

Day 5 - Saturday

I didn't play until after reset, and then I started by going to Leviathan, where I dug up some treasures on my knight and did a few missions on my agent. Later on Tulak Hord, I visited a Rishi stronghold, and since that was my fourth weekly objective, I was immediately close to being done with the daily, so I just hopped over to Corellia and killed the named champs there to get myself over the finish line.

On Satele Shan I did some more missions on my agent, before logging into Shae Vizla to kill the champion mobs on Republic side. I was surprised by how tough this was on my level 74 Sage (my highest level Republic character on the server). I basically spent five minutes kiting Lord Rashal around a nearby pillar, whittling down his health one DoT at a time, until finally someone else showed up and helped to kill him. This was relevant in so far as I'd kind of forgotten at the start of the week that the reason I never did this objective on all servers before was that I never had a high-enough level Imperial character to kill stuff on Corellia. Now my Imps on Leviathan and Satele Shan were in their low forties, which is high enough to go to Corellia, but still low when it comes to killing level 48 champions. I'd been optimistic about my chances since I previously had pretty good experiences while doing the equivalent objective under-levelled on Taris, but my level 74's struggles made me seriously doubt myself.

I wanted to put the matter to the test right away, so I returned to Leviathan and took my level 42 bounty hunter to the first Republic champion on Corellia. Killing any mobs that dismounted me during the trip was definitely a lot slower than usual, but perfectly doable. I was happy when I got to the droid's spawn spot and saw someone else already waiting there. Unfortunately it turned out that person was also in their low forties and clearly waiting for help! Fortunately an 80 came by and took charge, so we were able to leech off their success easily. Unfortunately the trip to the next champion took a while since I didn't have any of the quick travel points unlocked yet, so I arrived just in time to see the 80 port away from the second champion's corpse. Fortunately another 80 was right there when he respawned.

I then re-did the same tour on Tulak Hord, where I'd forgotten that I actually got my Sorc up to 51 already. She killed the droid by herself with no problems whatsoever and would have done the same with Jimmy Weasle if someone else hadn't shown up to contribute some damage near the end. Are the Imperial champions just that much harder than the Republic ones? Let me know your experiences in the comments!

Emboldened by my success, I was going to try my luck soloing the champs on my level 42 Sniper on Satele Shan, but it just so happened that there were always other players present to support her anyway.

In the evening it was time for social ops with my guild on Darth Malgus, and doing Scum and Villainy on 16-man counted as completing four missions as a trooper. I finished the evening by completing the arena weekly in the midbie bracket on Star Forge.

Day 6 - Sunday

In the morning I logged into Shae Vizla and did a few missions on my trooper there, since I hadn't quite hit the Conquest target before getting distracted by the whole thing with the Corellia champions the previous day. This also took me to 7/7 weeklies completed.

In the evening I did a round of Kessan's Landing dailies with Mr Commando, which got me to 7/7 on Darth Malgus as well. On Leviathan, I did some questing on my bounty hunter for the daily - I still needed a few more missions on my agent as well but wanted to work towards my bounty hunter's personal Conquest target first. This was followed by a round of freeing Sobrik on Tulak Hord to get credit towards 15 missions completed as a trooper.

On Star Forge, I continued my trooper's class story on Corellia until I hit 15 missions completed there too, and swung by the remaining two champions as well since I was already in the neighbourhood, taking me to 6/7. Similarly, I did two warzones on my consular on Satele Shan and killed the champions during the wait time between matches, which took me to 5/7 weekly objectives completed.

Day 7 - Monday

In the morning I wanted to quickly catch up on what I had been a bit too tired to finish the previous evening. I did some quests on Shae Vizla for the daily and visited a Rishi stronghold on Star Forge. On Satele Shan I wanted to "quickly" dig up three treasures on Hoth but had the worst luck. The first dig site I visited was inactive, and the second had a guy already there who found the special treasure and depleted it just as I was honing in on my first target (and this was middle of the night for the west coast, FFS). I went to the last remaining site on Hoth in the Glacial Fissure and eventually got my objective done there, but for some reason every single treasure I found was inside a lava flow, which made it a pain to hone in on it without getting my poor guy set on fire. 

In the evening I logged into Leviathan to finish off my last few agent missions, though since I also had some juicy Conquest objectives close to completion, I also played other alts for a bit to easily reach their personal targets for extra rewards. On Tulak Hord I dug up some treasure (less painful in the Outlaw's Den this time) and then did some questing on my inquisitor for the daily Conquest.

On Satele Shan I completed my agent's class story on Tatooine to tick off my daily and last weekly objective, and on the other servers I only needed to do a bit more stuff on alts to finish off the daily objective there too.

Week 6 Thoughts

I had weirdly mixed feelings about this week. On the one hand I was happy to finally see a PvP objective pop back up as part of the regular season, but on the other hand they take ages to complete across all servers (and I was actually quite lucky with wins vs. losses). I think I completed a total of seven warzone weeklies and two arena weeklies this week, which is similar to the kind of craziness I would usually only engage in during a Total Galactic War.

In general there was little overlap between objectives, so getting to 7/7 felt quite time-consuming, no matter which route you decided to take - though again, this is in the context of doing it all on multiple servers. If I had only focused on a single one, it still would've been a breeze.

Liabilities of Taris

Last week I wrote a post about my experiences with the Hotblooded on Hoth seasons objective. There was actually another weekly objective that week that I wanted to talk about, namely the "Liabilities of Taris" one.

I'm generally fond of the "Liabilities" objectives that ask you to kill named champion mobs across the galaxy. I remember back when I was new to the game, I always got excited when I encountered a named champion mob out in the world. There were no achievements yet back then, but even so I was always intrigued. Was it going to have any special abilities? Would it drop anything unusual? Sadly, the answer was almost always no to both of these questions. And while I don't think that everything in the game world has to serve some deep purpose, I did kind of wonder sometimes just what the point of giving these unique mobs names was if that was all they had.

The devs did add achievements for some of them later, but still... you can only get those once, so it's been nice to have a reason to seek these named mobs out again every now and then. One champion I particularly enjoyed revisiting last week was Maltok, a named rakghoul on Imperial Taris that had been memorable to me for actually having a couple of unique abilities, such as repeatedly summoning swarms of small adds. I found him so challenging and interesting when I first encountered him back in 2014 that I recorded myself soloing him on my bounty hunter Powertech and uploaded the video to YouTube.

At least one of the multiple times I killed him last week was interesting in a similar way, namely when I fought him on my Vanguard bounty hunter on Leviathan. Imperial Taris is recommended for levels 32-36 but said character had only just hit 31 that week (and I didn't have an Imp any higher on that server). With how quickly you level nowadays, it had been ages since I found myself going up against any mobs actually higher level than me, so I wasn't even sure how viable that was nowadays. I tried my hand at a pack of level 33 flappers and they died easily enough, just a bit more slowly than usual. Nothing like Classic WoW where taking on an opponent several levels above you would result in an endless series of missed attacks.

I was still a bit nervous when I charged Maltok, as he was level 36 and nobody else was around at the time, but I did it! I blew all my cooldowns including multiple adrenals and my heroic moment, and after seven minutes or so he was down. I hadn't felt that excited to be soloing a champion in a while.

Coming up against one of the featured champions on my own turned out to be a rare occurrence however, as pretty much everywhere else they were being hunted to extinction. It wasn't unusual for me to arrive at a spawn location and find no mob, but three or four other players already waiting for it to respawn. These little parties could actually be quite amusing, as people would start emoting or cracking jokes about why the mob wasn't there after a while.

"He's scared because he can see us waiting!"
"Must have been patched out by accident."
"I think he overslept!"

It was just a silly little thing that reminded me that "down time" in an MMO doesn't always have to be a bad thing, even when some of the respawns took a bit too long for my liking.

Finally, it also highlighted to me that I'm glad that SWTOR Spy is still around (even though the site appears to not have been updated in almost a decade), simply because it's still the only fan site that has a full list of all the named champions with detailed directions. The site's age is really starting to show by now though, as the thumbnails display at about the size of a stamp on a modern monitor.

Addendum: While double-checking the above to make sure I wasn't missing anything, I realised that Illeva actually does also have a more "modern" guide to all these champions' locations, it's just that the pages are all named after their associated achievements, so they never come up as the top result when googling for a specific mob by name.

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).

Planets I'd like to revisit

With 7.3's return to Voss, it's natural to wonder what other existing planets might be interesting to revisit as part of the ongoing storyline. Calphy shared his thoughts on this back in May, and in this reddit discussion thread on the subject people were offering up a lot of differing opinions a few months ago. Doesn't mean that I don't still want to add my own thoughts on the matter though! So without further ado, my personal top picks for planets I hope we'll get to revisit in the story at some point:

1. Alderaan

This was Calphy's first choice and the second most upvoted option on reddit, and it's my first pick as well. Now, it obviously helps that Alderaan is already my second favourite planet in the entire game, but it's not just about that. The lore surrounding the different houses in the base game is pretty complex, and I was not best pleased with the way the Star Fortress dialogue for Alderaan seemed to want to mostly brush that under the rug. I want to know how all those different nobles that we worked with in the class stories fared over the years! What happened after Bouris Ulgo was brought down in the planetary storyline?

I don't necessarily expect to get an update on every single story thread here, but I don't think it would be unreasonably complicated to have us visit a new house on a small new map (assuming a similar approach as was taken with the Interpreter's Retreat) and have some people there chat with us about at least some of the things that have been happening on Alderaan in the last few years.

2. Taris and Balmorra

I'm putting these two together because I want to return to both of them for the same reason, though I think the case for Taris is somewhat stronger than for Balmorra. Basically, what both of these planets have in common is that in the base game, they are in the unique position of existing in two different states at different points in time.

Republic players help with the reconstruction of Taris around level 20 and things seem to be going well, but then the Empire invades the planet and Imperial players get to beat the Republic back around level 40. For Balmorra it's the opposite, with Imperials seeing it firmly under Imperial control around level 20 (though they have to fight off rebels), until Republic players show up around level 40 and push the Imps back off the planet.

I always thought this was an interesting concept as it allows territory to change hands without making either side feel like a loser... though it is a bit weird that there's basically a whole story there that you wouldn't know anything about if you didn't play both factions. If you only ever played Empire for example, you might well think that your faction still owns Balmorra, because you're never told that it's been lost.

So the reason I think either of these planets would be interesting to revisit is that it would give us a chance to "canonically" get caught up with the current state of affairs, with Republic players having to deal with the loss of Taris and Imperials having to stomach being pushed off Balmorra. The reason I think Taris would be slightly more interesting is that we don't really know what happened there after the Imperial victory - how much did the Imps care about rebuilding there, and did they even have the resources after Fallen Empire? With Balmorra, we at least have a vague notion that it continued to support the Republic later.

3. Korriban and Tython

It's easy to see why there's a certain appeal to going back to the old starter worlds. I think most players have pretty fond memories of these (less so of Ord Mantell and Hutta, I suppose) and we know that they've been razed both during the prelude to Shadow of Revan and then again when the Fallen Empire invaded. We want to see them rebuilt and know how things have changed since our own Jedi and Sith were little! Have the Sith changed in any way in terms of the cruelty of their training? Whatever happened to those Twi'lek settlers on Tython?

I do think those are interesting questions, but the main reason I rank these two planets somewhat lower is that in practical terms, I can't see us going back to a fully rebuilt version of the exact same area of Tython and Korriban that we already know (as in, the Jedi Temple and the Sith Academy respectively). Assuming we'd follow the Interpreter's Retreat model of going to a different part of the planet that's set further in the future, it's just hard to image that being quite as interesting here. Still, I guess it would be nostalgic if nothing else.

How do you feel about revisiting older planets in new storylines?

Day 6: Environments #IntPiPoMo

I'm taking part in IntPiPoMo, and this is the sixth of ten screenshot posts I'm making this month, each one themed around a certain topic. Today's topic is environments, which is honestly always the easiest one to find images for (though it can be hard to choose my favourites) as pretty environments are something I love taking screenshots of!

First off some more views from the original set of planets... I've said before that I don't tend to think of Taris as pretty, but look at it in the right light and from the right angle and it absolutely can be!

My Mercenary speeding across the dunes on Tatooine looking snazzy.

Another shot of a speeder ride, though this one is my Marauder on Ossus. Being one of the newer planets, it's perhaps somewhat less iconic, but I do like the increased graphical detail.

Alderaan is one of those classically beautiful places, but I hadn't really taken many screenshots of just the scenery until recently, when Swtorista asked for some submissions for a screenshot contest, which is when I took this (though it wasn't my submission).

Swtorista's contest was inspired by the official Best View in SWTOR screenshot contest, whose winners were announced today. Some amazing shots there! I did not win anything myself, but I did go around taking some pictures to submit at the time that made me appreciate the landscape in whole new ways, like the above two shots of Mek-Sha, a planet of which I don't traditionally think as good-looking. Loved those bizzare container building towers and the reflections on the tepid pool!

On the subject of strangely mesmerising environments, here we have the lair of the Mountain Queen on Ossus, a place not many people visit with any regularity or have seen at all I reckon, and yet the artists worked hard on nailing that alien feel of a giant insect hive.

Another indoor location, a simple Ilum crystal cave... but what's ever simple if you've got crystals that are glowing like lightbulbs spicing up the scenery?

IntPiPoMo count: 45

Shintar's Galactic Seasons Diary, Week 9

Day 1

This was the closest I've actually come to missing a day, and to explain why, I need to share a bit of personal information. Basically what happened was that I came down with a horrendous toothache out of nowhere in the late afternoon, so that I spent all evening desperately trying to get some sort of emergency dental treatment, though I did not succeed at this. In the end I could only take a lot of painkillers and go to sleep, meaning that I was in no state to play at any point.

The next morning I felt a bit better and managed to get a dentist appointment, at which point I finally remembered to log into SWTOR to check on my Seasons objectives. My weeklies were GSF and flashpoints, but I re-rolled the latter and happily, it turned into warzones. My daily objectives were Oricon and Yavin dailies - both activities I didn't mind, and in fact Yavin had never come up for me as an objective before so I appreciated the novelty, but I was a bit disappointed by the complete lack of synergy. Looking at the time, I had about an hour left until I had to leave for the dentist, and I knew I wouldn't be back before the daily reset. Could I try to squeeze both sets of dailies in before then? Should I even try? Wasn't the very fact that I was having an urgent dental issue reminding me that there are more important things in life than video games? I decided to give it a go anyway just to see if I could... and I did manage to complete both sets of dailies just in the nick of time.

(Just in case you're wondering, the dentist identified the issue and I'm receiving medication now, plus further treatment has been arranged. I'm still in some pain but at least it's being worked on.)

Day 2

I logged on late in the evening to find that my daily objectives were to kill insectoids across the galaxy and 75 opponents across "Seat of the Empire" planets. I paused for a moment to think whether these could overlap somehow, but I don't think there are any kind of bugs on Oricon, Taris, Yavin or Dantooine, so I ended up re-rolling the insectoids once again and the associated daily turned into the warzone objective.

For the latter I played a late-night Huttball on my Sage, which was one of the rare matches that really frustrated me, not because it was a 1-5 loss but because it felt like it was due to a single player on the enemy team: This one Shadow scored most of their goals and repeatedly pushed or pulled our ball carrier into fire traps when we were close to scoring. (He finished the match with more than twice the objective score of the next person down the list.) I mean, on the one hand... respect! But on the other... damn it, a single guy shouldn't be able to run circles around an entire team like that.

For the mob killing I consulted my quest spreadsheet and decided to continue my DvL Commando's class story on Taris. Only when I logged in, I realised that the step in the story she was on was literally the last bit of talking on Taris before leaving the planet. I mean, I did do that while I was there, but it didn't help me with my mob kill counter. I moved on to my Scoundrel that I once created for lowbie PvP. To be honest, what she had left of her class story on Taris didn't require that much mob killing either, even more so with a stealther, but I just made sure to aggro and kill every single pack of rakghouls and scavengers I encountered on the way, so that completing my objective and finishing the planetary class story ended up aligning quite nicely.

Day 3

Like on day one, I ended up with two non-overlapping PvE objectives, Yavin dailies and heroics on Taris. For Yavin I ended up completing the weekly on my Marauder, who had done her first four quests there for Tuesday's daily objective (and I also found out - very much to my surprise - that based on the codex entries she received while doing them, I'd apparently never done the Yavin weekly on her before), and for the Taris heroics I returned to my DvL Shadow, whom I recalled having a pretty chill time stealthing through them last time. It worked out well.

Day 4

More Yavin dailies and insectoids across the galaxy. I re-rolled the latter and it turned into Ziost. I gritted my teeth a bit, as three out of four days up to that point being dailies was not exactly my favourite combo, but it was alright. I did half the Yavin weekly on my Sniper, fully expecting to have to do the other half later in the week, and a round of Ziost on my Operative healer - after all, it's not like there's anything that requires killing on there.

Day 5

Finally a GSF daily, which brought my weekly counter to one out of four, even if it was another somewhat depressing domination loss. (You know it's bad when you're fighting at satellite B, and when you get the message that the enemy has captured A and C, your team is only on a single point... then someone on the enemy team self-destructed and we went to two.)

The other objective was Taris heroics again... I decided to risk a re-roll to insectoids since I really needed more warzones for my weekly, but it landed on Oricon dailies again. Sigh, more dailies. I decided to start the Oricon storyline on my dps Juggernaut since I knew that the one-time story quests also counted as "dailies" for Conquest - but apparently Seasons are programmed differently, since I soon noticed that my objective tracker was not moving as I was progressing through the story. So I abandoned that angle and logged onto my dps Powertech to do the dailies the "normal" way instead.

Day 6

Since my daily objectives were to do more Yavin dailies (as expected... sigh) and to play a warzone, I started off by playing two rounds of GSF. No, really, that made sense! With my weekly still sitting at one out of four and the week being on its sixth day, the opportunities for synergetic dailies had mostly passed. I played both matches on my Powertech tank: The first one was a loss during which I still had a good time since I had the highest score on my team (not that this was any sign of me actually being good at GSF, mind you), and the second one was a solid win in domination mode for once.

For the dailies I first took to Vandin Huttball on my Sorc healer, and it was one of those frustrating matches that started out feeling relatively even but then quickly devolved into a 0-6 beatdown. Also, my mind boggled when I saw at the end of the match that I had the lowest objective score on my team despite of constantly chasing the ball and feeling very much alone in that. I guess you don't get points for healing nearby team mates and vainly trying to stop the enemy ball carrier without succeeding.

Completing the Yavin weekly on my Sniper ticked off the other daily objective. She too, got codex entries that indicated that she'd apparently never done it before.

Day 7

On the last day of the week, the game presented me with generic mob killing and Ziost dailies as my daily objectives. I was fine with the mob killing as I had an Oricon weekly to finish off anyway, but I eyed the Ziost dailies thoughtfully. Checking back with the official post about Season one, I figured I'd have a one in three chance of re-rolling to something more synergetic with what remained of my weeklies, and a one in six chance of making things worse by getting the insectoids - everything else would be a wash. Those odds seemed good to me, so I decided to risk it... and got the bloody insects of course, prompting Mr Commando to ask why I was swearing so loudly (something that's not usually my wont).

I decided to start off with finishing the weeklies. The GSF match I got into on my Assassin tank was an easy ride for once, as I spent most of the game squatting on the middle satellite (owned by us) while the rest of the team laid waste to the opposition for a quick and easy win. When I played my regular PvP match on my healing Sage a bit later, things looked a lot less promising as I loaded into an arena with horrible lag (I've been having recurring connection issues in the evening lately). I figured it was bound to be a loss but somehow the rest of the team carried us to victory regardless of me only getting a heal off every three seconds or so.

This just left the two rounds of daily slaughter. For the generic mob killing on a Seat of the Empire planet I finished off my Oricon weekly on my main (she'd still had the heroic mission left after doing the regular dailies on day one), and for the insectoids I decided to go slaughter Geonosians in Jundland on Tatooine on my DvL Shadow. While running around the area I noticed that I'd never done the local side mission to kill Geonosians (the one that used to be an [Area] mission), so I picked that up too while I was there.

Week 9 thoughts:

What a week, with personal emergencies, connection issues and other mishaps! I can't say that was as fun as it could have been. And yet I persisted, bringing my Seasons level up to 83 (or in other words, 660 out of 800 points earned). I'm in the final stretch now, with only one full week and a bit left to go to max out.

I'm definitely feeling somewhat ambivalent about the whole system at this point. I can't deny that it's worked to somewhat revitalise my interest in the game and made me play more - I'm a sucker for a good fill-the-bar routine. On the other hand though, it's also been somewhat exhausting and with both raiding and completing Seasons objectives, I feel like I haven't really had any time left to just log on and do something random for fun, if you get what I mean. So I'm very much looking forward to being able to say that I'm done with this Season thing, at least for a while.

Shintar's Galactic Seasons Diary, Week 4

Day 1:

The first thing I did upon logging in was check whether I had two weeklies this week. Check! Flashpoints and warzones, represent! However, the flashpoint weekly showed as completed for some reason, even though the counter was (naturally) on 0/3. I checked and I hadn't accidentally been awarded points for it either. I had a look at the forums to see whether there was a bug report about this by somebody else, but there was nothing. Just as I was contemplating taking a screenshot and submitting it myself... it reverted back to (correctly) showing as incomplete. I really wish I had taken that screenshot earlier now, just to prove to you all that I'm not going insane.

Anyway, I dithered a bit about whether to keep the flashpoints, as I do like flashpoints in principle and the bug with not receiving credit for them was supposed to be fixed by now, but eventually I decided that I just don't like how limited this objective is. I'm fine with only certain flashpoints counting, but only on veteran mode and only through the group finder? Meh... I re-rolled and it turned into operations, which was just as well as I was signed up to do the two Oricon operations with some guildies later in the week. Mind you, some of them tried to do Dread Palace that evening already, and hey, it turns out it was bugged and didn't give credit for the objective even though it said it should! What a shocker!

My dailies were once again the welcome combo of GSF and playing a warzone. I returned to doing GSF on my Assassin tank and she got into a domination match that started really well, but then we somehow ended up losing all three satellites and it turned into a loss. My warzone of the day on my Sage healer wasn't much better - I guess it was a nice change to not get into Huttball yet again, but instead it was Hypergates, which is probably my least favourite warzone. The match was an annoyingly close loss, an experience that was not improved by one guy constantly whining in chat.

Day 2:

My daily POs were doing a warzone and heroics on Taris. The latter would have been alright I guess, but I didn't really fancy heroics that evening so I dared a re-roll anyway and got Ziost dailies instead. At least something different!

I did the warzone on my lowbie Merc and got into an Alderaan Civil War which ended with a close win for my team. What was surprising to me was that everyone was very communicative and friendly, rather unlike your average PvP match. I took my Gunslinger to do the rounds on Ziost and that was very nice and chill as well.

Day 3:

Same dailies as the day before, but this time I decided not to re-roll the heroics.

I once again did the warzone on my lowbie Merc and got into an arena, in which I was the lowest level by quite a margin (the next lowest level character was 19 levels above me). It felt like the system had made some sort of attempt at balance, as my team had the higher level characters aside from me, but I still got slaughtered within seconds and we lost. It felt vaguely bad, but once again I'm not quite sure I can really blame the level disparity as I've been in similarly lop-sided matches before this whole merging of brackets thing. At least this completed both the daily and weekly objective for me.

Fortunately the heroics on Taris went well for a change, as I did remember for once which ones to pick for quick completion with my DvL Shadow. I think it helped that Republic Taris was more freshly on my mind from when my pacifist character came through there and I was checking whether any of the heroics were doable with her specific limitations in mind.

Day 4:

As mentioned previously, a story mode run of the two Oricon operations was scheduled by the guild, and Dread Fortress completed my second weekly.

My dailies were completely PvP-free for once, asking me to do another round of Ziost and to kill 75 mobs of any kind on a "Seat of the Empire" planet (Taris, Oricon, Yavin or Dantooine). I was OK with this and did the Ziost weekly on my Guardian and started the Oricon story on my dps Sage, while only going as far as I needed to in order to get all my mob kills.

Day 5:

The 75 generic mob kills made a return, this time accompanied by 75 kills worth of insecticide. While bugs from all over the galaxy were eligible for the latter, making it less annoying than the objectives from previous weeks, I still re-rolled it and got the warzone one again.

My PvP match of the day was a Voidstar I played on my Sage healer, which was a really good match that we won. For the kills I returned to my dps Sage and continued her Oricon story until she'd achieved another 75 kills.

Day 6:

My favourite combo of warzone and GSF returned, so there was no need to re-roll anything. I got exceptionally lucky with both as well: The PvP match took my Assassin tank into Odessen Proving Grounds, a long-time favourite of mine which I hadn't actually got into in ages. It was a tight match that we ended up winning, not least because of yours truly topping the team's scoreboard for objective points.

When I queued my Powertech tank for GSF, I got into a death match in progress with my team already up by 40 points. I conveyed this to a couple of guildies on voice chat and one of them commented: "So basically, some poor bastard disconnected and you're reaping the benefits!" Indeed I did. I still managed to shoot a couple of things, but the whole thing must have been over within less than two minutes.

Day 7:

The last day of the SWTOR week presented me with Oricon dailies and Taris heroics as my objectives again. I didn't really mind either of those, but seeing how it was the last day of the week, I tried re-rolling the heroics anyway just to see if could get something more synergetic or that I hadn't done before and got warzones again.

For this PvP match I selected my Nautolan Shadow and she got into a Voidstar which was a close loss. Considering how close it was, I can't really complain, and my team did fight hard until the end, but at the same time it was one of those losses that felt like it would have been entirely avoidable if the two people guarding the left door hadn't decided to chase some random to the other side of the map...

For the dailies I returned to my dps Sage, who had handily just reached the point in the Oricon story when you unlock the dailies, so I did a round of the area to complete the weekly and to unlock the one-time story quest for the two Dread operations.

Week 4 thoughts:

Once again I was reasonably happy with my objectives for the week, though I also have to admit that four weeks into this Season, things are starting to feel a bit same-y. In Bioware's detailed article about Seasons on the website, there seemed to be more generic objectives every week than I've personally encountered - has anyone actually got the ones for the low-level planets? Or are those limited to players with only low-level characters on their account?

After doing every single objective for four consecutive weeks now, I've also completed 37 out of the 100 Seasons levels, meaning that if I can keep up this cadence, I've got less than two months to go. Alternatively, I guess I could afford to slack off and slow down a bit without missing out on any rewards. We'll see how I feel about it in two weeks time.

Peaceful Exploration on Taris

Has it really been four months since my last post about my pacifist Jedi? I guess I was too busy with the expansion to worry too much about that particular project. So she's been spending all her time lurking next to a bench on Coruscant to retrieve Luran Gonthor's deed every so often whenever I felt like it.

The other week however, I decided that it was finally time to get back to "regular" questing (as far as that term applies to a character who refuses to do any missions that require killing or even attacking anything or anyone) by getting started on the storyline on Taris.

I was very pleasantly surprised by the first area, as I could literally do all the things (bar the heroic, as I already established last time that none of them are pacifist-friendly): I threw stuff into a bunch of pipes, met up with some settlers, and retrieved a load of junk from an abandoned settlement - all without a fight, even if everyone in the dialogue of one of the quests kept talking about me destroying some droids, which I totally hadn't done.

Mostly this good luck continued in the second area, as I retrieved a rakghoul vaccine, some medical data, and exposed a thief. I did have to decline the follow-up mission to the latter as it would have also required me to kill some rakghouls. And yes, I know nobody likes them, but if I'm refusing to attack droids and animals, then rakghouls are out too. Mind you, I did accept one quest that required me to get beaten up by rakghouls, but there was nothing in Pacis' personal code of honour to prohibit that. She just ran away once her health got low.

There was this one quest that I took somewhat hesitantly, to look for a missing team, since I thought I recalled it requiring some fighting, but I wasn't 100% sure. It turned out that I was correct, and after I'd found the NPCs and they nearly fell over themselves with joy upon seeing me, the next step would have required me to fight some scavengers, which I of course wasn't going to do, so I noped right out of there and abandoned the whole thing. I did feel pretty bad leaving the lost team behind after how excited they'd got by the idea of being rescued by me, mind you.

Finally I did some sneaking around among rakghouls in an abandoned factory and some tunnels - in both places Mind Maze came in handy as it allowed me to manipulate items next to packs of rakghouls without drawing their attention.

By the end of my tour I'd made it from level 33 to 35, which I thought was pretty good for pure quest XP with some exploration sprinkled in. The bonus series wasn't available to me yet by the way - I guess they never did fix the bug that locked most of these to level 60 for some reason. I guess I'll be moving on to Nar Shaddaa next.

After all the time that I've already spent levelling by doing repetitive content like the Dantooine peace time dailies and that one heroic on Coruscant, I kind of like the idea of seeing how far I can get at this point before I run out of one-time content to do again. I can visit at least four more planets at my current level, and I'm sure that the XP gained on those will in turn unlock even more. That should be interesting.

Peaceful on Coruscant

Another Pirate Incursion meant another round of peaceful adventures in places other than Dantooine for my pacifist Jedi Pacis.

She had pretty good luck with the side missions in Black Sun territory - deliver some information here, disarm some bombs there: all of it possible without killing anyone and therefore available for her to complete!

In the Justicar sector she hit the ultimate jackpot: a repeatable heroic that could be done without fighting. I vaguely recalled hearing before that "Trouble in Deed" was soloable by stealth, but I couldn't remember whether you had to fight the guy at the end or not. Fortunately it was not necessary! I could just stealth my way up to the vault, grab the deed and then hit Force Cloak when the mobs next to it inevitably aggroed. Job done!

The greatest thing about finding a heroic that I could repeat was that heroics reward two random gear pieces appropriate for your level. I haven't really mentioned it yet, but as it turns out it's kind of hard to come by new gear organically when you refuse to fight anyone and therefore get no loot drops and only the occasional quest reward here and there.

I suppose you could argue that a pacifist doesn't really need gear since she doesn't want to fight anyway, but a bit of extra endurance and such still come in handy whenever you aggro something by accident and have to run away. Repeating the heroic every day of the week soon saw Pacis kitted out in a set of level-appropriate blues.

I had somewhat less luck with the side missions in Coruscant's remaining areas. There were a couple more that I could do, but there were just as many if not more that I had to abandon because they asked me to fight things. Sorry, creepy girl child, your brother will just have to stay in jail if the only way to free him involves beating up thugs.

I even started the heroic in the Jedi temple, vaguely recalling that it "only" involved retrieving some astrogation charts, but of course a Sith jumps out of the shadows at the very end and demands that you fight him. I noped right out of that one in front of the Sith's eyes (he didn't seem to care) and abandoned that quest too.

By the time I'd finished my tour of Coruscant the event was pretty much over again, so I only visited Taris very briefly to have a peek at a couple of heroics that looked like they might be doable without fighting. Again, I don't do these often enough and am so used to just killing everything anyway that I often wasn't sure what exactly was required to progress each objective.

In most of them it became clear pretty quickly that there was no progressing without a fight, whether because trying to click on a shiny would be interrupted as soon as you got into combat or there were just too many mobs too close by. In one heroic I got tantalisingly close to completing the thing without a fight just to get a rude awakening when the final step demanded I kill an elite mob to finish. So that one went into the bin as well.

One interesting side effect of these failed heroic attempts was that there were several occasions when I got into combat with multiple mobs and had to run for my life. I'd excitedly filled my bar with various utility abilities that I'd got from levelling up such as slows and stuns, anticipating that I'd still get a good amount of use out of those, just to find that most of them couldn't be executed without a main hand weapon equipped. I'll admit that this made sense for some of them, such as Deflection, but why I couldn't Force Lift anyone without a saber in my hand for example mystified me. I guess I'll have to consider re-equipping HK's vibroblade purely to be able to use some abilities, but then I'd worry about accidentally hitting things with it. Decisions, decisions.

Either way I intend to explore more of Taris next time around.

Pirate Incursion Conquest

After I expressed some concerns about the idea of Conquest points being awarded based on a percentage of regular XP in my last post, I actually felt vaguely vindicated when this change went live on Tuesday and literally crashed the servers - it was causing them to lag so badly that this particular part of the patch had to be reverted during an emergency maintenance to make the game playable again. It vaguely reminded me of the time when the automated group finder for operations was meant to be changed to 16-man. Whatever happened to that anyway?

But I digress. According to those who were actually able to play a little during the big lag fest, Conquest points for straight-up XP were ridiculously overpowered. If I understood it correctly, some of my guildies were doing an operation at the time and everyone in the group basically hit their personal target just from killing trash. While the change has been reverted for now, Eric said on the forums that they're still planning to bring it back eventually - but I hope that if they do, they'll at least consider tweaking the numbers a bit, because as I said in my last post, I don't really want Conquest to become another bar that you just fill mindlessly and automatically.

Anyway, the patch also gave us Dantooine and I have thoughts on it, but I want to spend some more time playing there before I actually write anything down. (I've had a limited amount of time to play over the last couple of days.) In the meantime I'd simply like to express some love for the Conquest event that this new planet is tied to, "Pirate Incursion", because this event feels like it was designed specifically to address some issues with the current Conquest meta.

First off, there's the fact that it features seven planets instead of the usual three (nine if you count Balmorra and Taris twice for being split into separate Republic and Imperial versions). Actually winning first place on any planet still remains a challenge largely due to the fact that no more than three or four guilds on the whole server can do so in an average week. That's why I love Total Galactic War so much, and I'm sure I'm not the only one: With more than twenty planets up for grabs at once, it's a whole different (and much more inclusive) game.

Pirate Incursion isn't quite Total Galactic War, but more than doubling the available number of planets is still a big deal, and since this is going to be a recurring event along the lines of Relics of the Gree and the Rakghoul Resurgence, it should happen reasonably often as well, giving a whole number of guilds additional opportunities to call themselves Conquerors for once.

The planets featured in the event seem to have been chosen with care as well. Dantooine was a given of course, but Taris as the other large option was clearly not a coincidence either: out of the previously existing seven large planets, it was the only one that had only been available during a single event (apart from Total Galactic War), and a not particularly frequent one at that (Flashpoint Havoc).

A similar pattern can be seen among the medium and small yield additions. Like Taris, Balmorra had previously only been available during Flashpoint Havoc, and Ossus had only been a target during the Rakghoul Resurgence on Alderaan. Likewise, the Black Hole had only been available to be conquered during the Rakghoul Resurgence on Corellia, and Ziost could only be invaded during the Balance of Power Conquest. The choice of Rishi is the only one that isn't entirely obvious to me, as it was already featured in three other Conquests outside of Total Galactic War, but who knows - Bioware's internal metrics might well have shown more players still missing the Conqueror of Rishi title than the ones for other planets.

The objectives are also noteworthy because at last we have planetary objectives for Balmorra and Taris! Until now they were the only two planets that didn't have any Conquest objectives associated with them to kill mobs or do quests (aside from Quesh, but there's little to do on Quesh). This was noticeable to me as I like to kill two birds with one stone whenever possible and would sometimes use rampage or daily objectives as inspiration for which alt to play in a given week - e.g. if Alderaan Rampage was an objective during an event, I would choose to play a character who's currently doing her class mission on Alderaan. So it was very noticeable to me that Taris and Balmorra were effectively dead ends with that approach because they never featured - until now that is.

Finally, this event is just crazy generous in general. Just doing the Dantooine weekly on any character is enough to hit your personal target and then some, because for some reason all the daily quests on Dantooine grant more than three times as many Conquest points as you would usually get for different dailies during other Conquest events.

So thanks for paying attention and showing some love to your planetary conquerors, Bioware!

Day 6: Environments #IntPiPoMo

My 10 themed days of SWTOR screenshots in celebration of International Picture Posting Month continue. If you want to see a list of all the themes I'm using, you can find it here.

Let's start the environments theme with this shot of Pugette cruising around Taris while waiting in the group finder queue. I always think of Taris as an ugly and unwelcoming place, but when I looked up that day it struck me as strangely beautiful despite of the devastation.

Similar thoughts went through my head here, as my Sage was meditating in Section X while waiting for everyone to get dready to pull Dreadtooth. I never actually realised that the big cannon that you're sent to sabotage in the heroic mission actually looms above the area quite so majestically.

Here's my Guardian regenerating some health on Copero. I noted in one of my initial posts about the Traitor Among the Chiss flashpoint that it was stunningly beautiful, and so far the effect hasn't lessened yet whenever I rerun it. It boggles the mind a bit that they made the Umbaran freight train into a stronghold but nothing on this world... I guess the Chiss aren't very welcoming to strangers.

SWTOR's environmental designers really do get to shine in all areas if they are only allowed to design something other than spaceship interiors or barren wastelands. Here we have the trash run between Nahut and Scyva in Gods from the Machine. The screenshot doesn't really do it justice, but the area is vast and has a certain eerie beauty to it. It's just kind of hard to take a break to really appreciate it and find good screenshot angles when you're also supposed to keep people alive at the same time... maybe one of these days I should go back into a cleared out version of the instance and just do a tour of the area to get a better look at it.

Speaking of taking a moment to appreciate the landscape in unusual places, here's my Sentinel admiring the view during the pre-match timer in Novare Coast.

With the addition of the Battle over Iokath map, even GSF got its chance to look pretty! Easily my favourite of all the death match maps (and not just for its looks).

Finally, a screencap I took of my Commando main harvesting some crystals in her stronghold. Ever since I upgraded my PC two years ago, crystals have turned from just another resource to harvest into pretty good-looking environmental props, so this scene filled with them struck me as strangely beautiful.

IntPiPoMo count: 39

Day 5: NPCs #IntPiPoMo

Wondering what the hashtag in the title is all about? Click here. Want to know all the themes that I have used and will be using for my 10 Days of SWTOR Screenshots? You can find the full list here.

Paring down the number of screenshots for this one was extremely hard because a) SWTOR features a lot of interesting non-player characters, and b) I've taken even more screenshots of them in the past year. In the end I just accepted that this would be a big one with lots of pictures.

Okay, this is neither a great screenshot nor are these great characters, but I just felt like including it anyway as a reminder of just how creepy the few child characters in SWTOR are. Rav made a whole post about this once. Why does a boy who's apparently meant to be about eight have half his head shaved (not to mention that the rest of the haircut is terrible)? Why does a girl of presumably the same age have an adult figure and boobs? Yikes.

I really like the subtle ways in which the original class stories are intertwined with the world story arcs, meaning that while they work perfectly fine as self-contained tales there are plenty of "Easter Eggs" to be found for those in the know. For example Doctor Ianna Cel here, whom you encounter on Imperial Taris as an Imperial agent, is a quest giver for all Republic players on Republic Taris.

For me it's quite rare that I meet an NPC that makes me go "huh, this guy/girl is quite good-looking" but this Sith Pureblood was a rare exception. His name is Lord Torius and he features in the trooper class story on Voss.

Another interesting connection between class and world stories is the fact that while "The Three", the rulers of Voss, are mentioned pretty much all over the place, the Imperial agent is the only one who actually gets to meet them in person during their class story... and in the process finds out just why the Voss have been so stubbornly neutral for a long time.

 

Captain Hanthor on Makeb is an NPC that I found quite memorable, what with being the first Cathar we see in the service of the Empire. He serves to illustrate the somewhat increasing Imperial tolerance for aliens after the whole Malgus debacle. I also think it's quite clever that while he's only a very minor character in the main story, you have the option to talk to him and get a bit more background in at least one of the side missions.

 

I just love this screenshot of Revan and every time I look at it I feel the urge to turn it into a meme saying "Sad Revan is sad".

That sad face totally runs in the family by the way.

I'm really proud of this shot of Master Surro because it took me several playthroughs of Ziost to actually capture this split-second frame of her Force-pushing someone away (I think it was Lana). Master Surro in general is quite a striking and memorable character, but if you think about it properly, we actually know virtually nothing about her as she spends 99% of the Ziost story being possessed by the Emperor.

 

I really loved the looks of these two Jedi you meet in the People's Tower on Ziost. I think I may have subconsciously modelled my Guardian Starberry after the Mirialan here because I just love the contrast of the sassy pink hair against the green skin.

This screenshot may superficially appear to be centred on everyone's favourite cranky engineer Tora, but the real reason I saved it was that it made me notice the diversity of Vik's stable of thugs! First we have that lady to the left who appears to be a Bothan, making her the... what, third one in the entire game? And to the right of Tora there's that walrus guy... I don't know what they are called, but I know they exist in KOTOR as well and I had never seen one in SWTOR until then.

While I think that Vaylin's character in KotFE is quite underdeveloped for someone with this much screen time, she seriously has the best facial expressions.

IntPiPoMo count: 43