Gorth

@Raithe: I'm only halfway through upgrading the old 66 mods to 69 mods, nevermind anything that starts with the number '7' I think my Powertech may have run his course (for now). Finished the Ilum story, such as it was. A very disjointed impression. Going from a struggle over some crystals (whose purpose I must have missed in the convos) to the final bit: Just felt so detached from the rest of the Ilum story. Then I went on to Makeb and I suppose boredom set in. Endless hordes of high hp mobs packed so densely you can't kick your way through them. Even full speed on a speeder trying to ignore them is a chore. A shame, as the setting is drop dead gorgeous and I enjoyed the visuals, but the encounter "designs" just aren't my cup of tea. What's the point of endless grind? It's not like people go there to hunt XP??? Not to mention silly respawn rates, sometimes getting attacked from the rear by new spawns that you had just killed. I wish they had just added a handful of unique encounters and put in effort to make them memorable instead. I suppose I had a bit of the same feeling way back when playing the BG2 expansion, maybe "high level" play just isn't for me. Putting him on the back burner (in the moth ball bag), I think I'll finish chapter 3 of my Commando and then focus a bit on my Smuggler and Sith Warrior (level 47 and 45 respectively). I.e. just play through their 3 main story chapters. The old guy can come out an play whenever I need a new batch of armour and modification mods

Yeah, you should stay away from the Bioware forums (and just tell *us* everything you know)

Not sure why, but I think Republic Taris is a contender for my favourite place in the game (fighting it out with Hutta for top spot). Something about the mood and atmosphere just manages to captivate my imagination. I think Google is going to have to help me out with the water. I don't do PVP anymore, but I do have the purple crystal schematics (taught to my artifice guy), but never found Adegan (pristine or otherwise) crystals anywhere. I remember the word 'Adegan' being mentioned on Ilum when the officers discussed crystals, so I would have guessed it being the place to find them. Really? I might just give the Tatooine one a go to test it. I seem to remember that bot putting up quite a spirited fight though (we were 3 man and a companion at the time, so it wasn't a challenge).

Same here (7/9). I've got a way more bleak outlook on population numbers and wealth distribution. It doesn't help that population numbers may flatline if it's way beyond the point of sustainability. Scarce resources has always been a great source of aggression.

Yeah, I think in order to complete them, I need to get up at 5am on a Saturday morning and start shouting out for a handful of hours (in Apac prime time, there will be a total of 40-50 people on the fleet, so it's unlikely that a large proportion of them are inclined to do so). Not going to happen anytime soon. But as mentioned, I managed to control myself enough to not abandon either quest outright. Not sure I'm going to bother with the toons following in his footsteps though, just sticking to GSI and treasure hunting missions. Heck, even the GSI missions you can get lucky and find people for (being of the repeatable nature). At least with the daily stuff, like say The Black Hole, you are told up front by the mission terminal that in order to complete the weekly, you'll have to do the Heroics4 thing. Not so bad when 1) the game is up front about it and don't pull a "Gotcha, developers screwed you over Malak fight style" by changing the rules of engagement and 2) you can be reasonably certain that the one or two people being there (The Black Hole) at the same time as you are on the same missions and open to suggestions when calling out for somebody to join you. Of course, sometimes it will be only me and myself being online at the time. Edit: Tried the ingame cartel coin purchase... keep getting an error code 9. I tried to contact customer support and got a reply back that it was a periodic thing error and should try again later. Tried again 24 hours later and still same error. Not a good first impression. Edit2: Any idea what the purpose of "shock frozen water" is? I seem to have picked it up on Hoth, although now idea how (going treasure digging)

*Sigh* I wonder what these guys were thinking. Spotted all Shrouds transmitters all over the galaxy... then bang, another Heroics 4 required. Quest came to a screeching halt with no ETA. At least I've cleared out enough old quests, so I don't need to abandon it right away. Same as with the Dread seed stuff, you now need to find another 3 level 55 guys at the same time and same place on the same quest to proceed. Awful design. Just bloody awful.

"Gear hauling"? Scandinavian litigation is weird. Heavy laptop, paperwork and overnight kit I had to haul around in a "city" with invisible cabs. And here I was thinking of battleaxes, chainmail armour, the usual accoutrements for Finnish legal proceedings

I like that the heroic space missions are generally short. In 4 minutes you can get more rewards (credits, xp and commendations or various kinds) than in 30-60 minutes of the easy space missions. Yeah, I worked out the first part of this one alright, damaging the frigate severely and taking out 3 merc ships plus one of the objective ships. That's when I do the french kissing with an asteroid Also, completely unrelated, something had been bugging my mind for a while... if you die on board your ship, where do you respawn? Well, I found it out. My ship(s) seems to have a little med bay of its own where you respawn *ticks off one item of list*

Oh, I know where I'm going wrong... it's just that I keep doing it You have to fly through a minefield, chasing a Mandalorian shuttle and its escort. What kills me is a particular maneuver you have to pull off at the end, flying over an asteroid and under the next (i.e. sort of a dive). I either "belly flop" on the first rock or "hit my head" against the one straight after, as I keep getting the timing wrong. You really need hair fine precision to fit in the gap between them. Edit: Google says the equivalent is "Thanium Disruption"

Bloody horses got it all wrong... Nope, didn't win anything in the office sweepstake. Ah well, there is a Melbourne Cup next year too

Sounds a bit like the end fight in 'The Foundry'. Nobody actually "dies" (just fades away) and the long monologue implies HK can be rebuilt. Managed to get proficient in all but one heroic space mission. Still can't handle Cha Rabaat (sp?) Assault and it's republic equivalent. Slightly less exciting now, but the 4-5 minutes spent is usually decently rewarded with credits, basic coms and fleet coms (which I now use to buy grade 6-8 exotic crafting materials for, got a large stock pile of molecular stabilisers and whatstheirname purple matrix things for my cybertech crafting). Replaced most of HK's equipment with DT-12 (and DT-13) assassin droid parts, cores etc. boosting him quite a bit over the starting gear he came with.

What a wonderfully bizarre concept. Looks like it could be fun

The Pitt was very decent (and I loved the DLC taking place in the swamp lands, I just can't remember it's name) If somebody could patch out Little Lamplight and more importantly, the need for GFWL (or whatever that thing is called), I might have reinstalled Fallout 3 and given it a second go. Never did complete it.

Not funny as in "Haha!" funny, just amusing in it's own way (I was browsing the travel section of the BBC website)... The candy striped mountains (from northern China). Unlike some peoples hair colours, those colours are real, no fakes and no additives

I don't think so, I only just started there. I do remember a bit of confusion the first time I played the FP's though, wondering what the heck was going on

If you want to experience the story Illum isn't long at all, after that it's the two Malgus Flashpoints. Already done the FP's several times through group finder

From the diary of the itinerant Bounty Hunter... Corellia wasn't so bad. I hated the lack of quick travel points and the road layout seems to be deliberately obnoxious. I really loved the visual style though (what I would imagine a 3D version of the old 'Syndicate' game would look like) and the quests were simple enough. The 4 daily Black Hole quests are quick and simple and allows you to get a bit of fast cash if you for whatever reason are low on that (I'm not). As briefly hinted at previously, Ilum is/was up next. Visited the place and solved the first minor tasks. Nothing exciting seems to happen, but then I guess that was to be expected after the class quest finished. Beautiful scenery though, especially the sky. Wondering if it's worth going through what it has to offer or take shortcuts and move ahead to Makeb and Oricon? Funny thing, accidentally started on the Battle for Ilum FP. It just looked like your average quest giver in the cantina Sad thing: Having pursued the binocular quest following the trail of the dread guys from planet to planet and investing a lot of time and effort fighting through battles (patient zero was nasty when you are a tank and don't do much damage), I thought I was coming to a conclusion. Like lightning from a blue sky *Boom!* I got slammed with a Heroic4 for level 55's. I was like WTF? Having been strung along all this while on a single player quest and now this??? Talk about *&^%$#@# effin bait and switch tactics. Took me 3 seconds of extreme effort of will to not just hit the 'Abandon' button in disappointment over the quest design Edit: I think I found out where at least some of my basic coms came from. You get 3 for each heroic space mission. Since I grind them regularly, it adds up over time.

Halo the pool playing dog... http://youtu.be/yHiiG3-yU7k

Heh, I checked my character sheet and my Powertech bought those relics a long time ago. Just didn't add them to the shortcuts as they had no "use". I.e. being automatically triggered when equipped and certain criteria are met (boosting absorption rating etc.). Played a bit with my smuggler today. Made it to Hoth and met what I suspect is the last companion. Languss Tuno... seriously Bioware, how bad can the puns be? I honestly read that as Langouste Tuna (and he looks like a hybrid fish/crustacean no less)

I farm them for the weekly bit and to send a bit of better gear to toons that may level up some day (the drops being level late 20 to early 30 gear). It takes less than 10 minutes per boss and a fringe benefit of my timezone... nobody is around to have already killed the bosses Not kidding though, for whatever reason, the drops are truly random in whether they are bound or not. I've had the same item drop twice from same boss and once being bound and once unbound. Implants and ear pieces are serial offenders (and not transferable through above legacy gear trick). Maybe it's a bug? One thing I did notice about purple armour mods though, once bound to an armour piece, you can only use it in a "same" piece. I.e. chest -> chest, legs -> legs etc. Edit: About selling WB loot, the only loot sold for credits so far has been stuff that was bound and unusable (will and strength impants/pieces). It got sold for a handful credits to my repair droid vendor...

Not sure about Section X. I should have paid better attention, just finished the "weekly" there today >_ I'm a bit "slow", so I haven't really started on the Makeb, Oricon and Czerka stuff yet. Remember, main guy only just finished class story (for which he was way, way over leveled) I just thought it better to use the basic coms on "something". Didn't see any must have schematics, relics or anything, so might as well splurge a bit. It's not like I can send the coms to alts. That being said, I did try the bind to legacy "cheat" though a few times. For some reason, some of the world boss drops are bind on pick up and some are bind on equip (seemingly random and inconsistent). Quite a nifty way of smuggling mods between toons, even if the mod claims to be bound to character (when ripped from a bind on pickup piece)

I hope you're right. It cost me around 100K credits to "refurbish" the armour mods. The modification mods didn't have better alternatives as no "letter" versions of the agility mods seems generally available. I think I remember seeing them for lower level tiers though. I hope Tanno Vik appreciates his shiny new purple armour mods (he is my main travel companion, so I guess it's not a complete waste, he *is* doing the tanking for me when playing). Also started upgrading my Powertechs mods. I hadn't thought about it previously, but those bucketloads of basic commendations I've accumulated could actually be traded for something, so I started buying armour pieces to rip mods out of and move into his favourite armour. It's only marginally better, but it's a quick and dirty way to give a companion some good "hand me down" mods and equip my tank in (69) mods. Still several armour pieces to go though, so time to go basic commendation hunting I guess (not that I really remember where the 400 or so I had came from). Even managed to find a few people to team up with this afternoon to complete Section X and Black Hole weekly (and finally get rid of them from my outstanding class quest priority mission stuff).

My tank *is* level 55 and has been for a while (successfully completed a few HM flashpoints too, if nothing else, just to get HK) My healer is level 53, just a few xp from level 54, so he's getting there way too fast too... Interesting thing about aim, didn't know that. I shouldn't have given my Commando commando mods then, who would have thought (not me, that's for sure, not knowing any better I would leave him in commando mods and then try to boost power)? Nothing that can't be undone as I craft them myself. A companion can get the old mods. Is alacrity worth getting at all then? Edit: It's a strange thing with the level progression, the late 40's feels like they take forever, then you hit the "magic" level 50 and so many more avenues for xp opens up (GSI, binocular, dreadseed, heroic space missions etc.) and you almost get catapulted to level 55 whether you want it or not.

Begeren Colony, sadly. It was the non-choice choice, the default if you didn't chose a destination for your characters (which I didn't for most of my characters at the time). I have a few characters on Harbinger, but nothing above level 12, although I do intend to play there more in the future, just to see if there are more Apac people around. The population seems much larger than Begeren in general, so who knows? More of the Apac locals here may have chosen that as a destination (and in a pinch, that one *is* actually an option for character transfers if I want to cut corners and transfer one or two level 50+ characters). Since I've mostly geared (and specced) my two main characters as healer and tank respectively, I still haven't added a single augment (added the slots, but not the augments yet). There seems to be some kind of science behind the proportions between the various mod types. I.e. for a Powertech tank, what is the desirable distribution into defense, shield and absorption and for a Commando healer, what should I be aiming for in critical, surge and alacrity? I sort of intend to acquire augments to fine tune those values where possible. They are otherwise equipped in the best you can get without having done end game raids or cheating by buying them ready made from GTN (i.e. purple 66 mods/barrels), to provide a decent starting point for the easy mode/beginner ops stuff.

The Glenfiddich 12 year old is excellent for Irish Coffee. Get some decent brewed coffee from fresh ground beans, some real cream (not whipped) and some light brown sugar (a bit of molasses, but not too much)