SW: The Old Republic - Episode VIII (May RNG Be With You)

[ShadySands]

The tier 2 (rank 90-179) stuff should be a definite improvement but the tier 1 stuff isn't really, not enough to be worth it anyway. It seems pretty badly designed or rather badly designed and with people with 190-208 rating gear in mind as even the random drops are like 210. But yeah, since it's all random I feel like it's just better to try to get to the tier 3 gear as fast as possible and not even bother with the middle tier either.

 

Edit - though if it takes long enough to move from t2 to t3 I may just try to get the crafted gear if I haven't stopped playing because of the grind

 

Anyway, finished all the chapters now and ran a few heroics to test and it's going to be painful for a solo player like me with mostly off hour play times. I'm hearing that Ops with tons of elite and /or champion trash mobs and ranked PvP are the way to go right now. Going to try uprisings tomorrow and see how that goes.

Edited November 30, 2016 by ShadySands

[ShadySands]

Update!

 

I've been running around the heroic areas on Dromund Kaas, especially the areas around the world boss and the Mandalorians, because there are a lot of elites and champions that respawn quickly and go down without much effort. I've been able to really grind out a lot of easy but very boring command XP this way.

 

Also, following Gromnir's lead and stacking gifts for the Chiss Jedi for Friday. 

[Gorth]

5.0 is so completely the utter cluster**** I feared. Utter and completely mind numbing grind of the most frustrating and unfun kind just to try to hide that this game will have gone 2 effin years with nothing but a wz and an arena map as New content. This is going to end badly. No, a series of disjointed cutscenens for an uninteresting story broken up by skytrooper grinding is not "content" in my book.

[ShadySands]

I finally made my way over to check out the new gift shop on the fleet now that you can buy all levels of gifts for credits

 

Blue rank 5 gifts 5k

Purple rank 5 gifts 10k

Orange rank 6 gifts 250k

 

Unless you just have money to blow and hate having it why wouldn't you just get the purple rank 5 gifts???

[Gorth]

Rank 6 gifts are a blessing if you don't want to spend 30 minutes just right clicking on a pile of rank 5 gifts... now you only have to spend 10 minutes

 

I would be surprised if it isn't one of the first things to get "fixed" taking priority over any game breaking bugs.

[ShadySands]

I agree that they are great and were the only reason I had for doing heroics before 5.0 dropped... but 25 times the costs?

[Gromnir]

I finally made my way over to check out the new gift shop on the fleet now that you can buy all levels of gifts for credits

 

Blue rank 5 gifts 5k

Purple rank 5 gifts 10k

Orange rank 6 gifts 250k

 

Unless you just have money to blow and hate having it why wouldn't you just get the purple rank 5 gifts???

no idea why there is such a dramatic gulf 'tween 5 and 6.  am gonna need see if such gifts have the same influence pay-off as pre-5.0, 'cause even post level 40, the influence gain from a purple 5 and the current orange 6 were 'bout 1:4... which were only a bit different than their basic comm costs (1:3).

 

with how little we play swtor, am glad we used esseles/bt to get at least one companion per character to influence 50, 'cause it clear got more expensive to do so in 5.0.  am also relieved we managed to get so many basic comm gift purchases stockpiled pre 5.0.  got something approaching 500 blue and purple (each) 5s and ~200 orange 6 for republic memorabilia.  given the fact we frequent stop playing swtor for 4-6 months at a time, getting even a couple additional companions per character to max influence were gonna be a chore.  excepting the pet comp gifts such as delicacies, the cultural artifact, technology and republic memorabilia were the gift categories we observed providing the most juice per squeeze-- could get love reaction with better than 3/4 o' all comps with the aforementioned.  am well stocked, but am also knowing the stockpile is gonna disappear extreme fast. 

 

oh well.  perhaps it is time to take another break.

 

we do recommend buying the blue rank 5s at 5k per as those are (edit: blue 5s were great pre 5.0. we ain't tested post 5.0) an ideal choice to get you from 20 influence to 40 influence. am suspecting cost changes forthcoming, so might be worth buying a goodly number o' blue 5s before changes is made. is still very expensive to go from 20 to 40 with 5k credits per gift, but...

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited November 30, 2016 by Gromnir

[ShadySands]

Did my first uprising, Inferno, and it wasn't very interesting as we just blew through waves of standard mobs with a few strong mobs mixed in between zerging from boss to boss. It was on story difficulty and I can see how this would be soloable once I get better gear. Maybe I'll try a veteran one next

 

Speaking of gear, I just went ahead and upgraded my 220/224 mixed stuff for 228 crafted gear and am now working on augmenting it all. Got a few crafted 230 items in my implant and ear slots. I figured that I might as well since I'm not going up to the next tier of gear for several months unless they drastically lower the CXP requirements. Barely hit rank 10 and every level has a higher requirement than the previous one

 

 

Edit- Running the Done and Dusted uprising solo and so far so good but the second boss is giving me a bit of trouble because since it's just me and my healing companion and she's got a lot of stuns and knockbacks. I've only really died twice, once because I replaced Arcann with Lana and didn't notice she was in tank stance and another time because Arcann forgot he was healing after we moved into a new area so he just stood there on the threshold navel gazing. I've had this fight reset on me three times as well, twice due to knockbacks (me once when the boss was at 63%, Lana once when the boss was at 38%) and once just randomly. I'm sure I can beat this fight but it's going to take a while due to the mechanics and bloated health.

 

I'm going to stop and try another one with less bosses

 

PS you can't stealth around any mobs because there are barriers that only come down when all are defeated

 

Edit2 - was able to solo Fractured in story mode with no problem

Edited December 1, 2016 by ShadySands

[Gorth]

HM EV is perfectly doable in a mix of 216/220 gear with set bonuses. A few of the dps guys in my regular group were dying to try out starparse with the class changes. My poor assassin girl getting rushed to 70 so they had a tank on voice chat (I assume to use my countdown for optimal openers). It was as easy as ever. Did chapter I on an alt. Not sure what to think of the story yet, but I did like stomping the pesky little skytroopers with my big walker feet. The command point system has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

[ShadySands]

Supposedly someone hit the weekly CXP cap already and is at rank 100. The claim is that they did it grinding elites and champions for something like 15 hours the first day nonstop to rank 43 then got the rest the following two days. The math seems a little off even with botting so I dunno. Even with disintegrating every RNG item I'm not sure where to find a place that densely packed with elites and champs to net 318k CXP in 3 days, an OP or HM FP maybe? But would that be soloable?

Grinding mobs the most steady stream of CXP I've found so far even after running a dozen uprisings. But I'm so bored with it now that I'm thinking of unsubbing for a while

 

Edit - I take it back, I can totally see it now that I have more details

 

Edit2 - it was just open world nonstop grinding in a raid. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=901598&page=10

Edited December 3, 2016 by ShadySands

[Hurlshort]

I've never understood the rush.  The next expansion won't come out for at least a year, shouldn't people try and pace themselves?

[ShadySands]

I don't know if he's even done any of the new content. Whatever he was grinding was old content because the only new content is the 9 chapters and uprisings and neither offer that much CXP.

 

He's just crazy about getting new gear I guess

 

I just hope that they don't cut CXP for kills because that would really hurt those of us who can't grind mobs like it's a full time job. If they want to limit it further then I think the should just lower the weekly cap

Edited December 3, 2016 by ShadySands

[ShadySands]

Ugh they did exactly that, nerfed the CXP from mobs rather than lower the weekly cap

 

Brilliant

 

Time to take another long break from this game

[Gromnir]

*sigh*

 

black talon tactical is, once again, gonna be our grind. get something close to 700 cxp in 20 minutes and can be done solo and need not wait for uprisings.  have had terrible luck with crates thus far, but have only reached rank 7 with limited play. a significant portion o' time on-server were nothing other than giving gifts to the new comp on two characters.  

 

we kinda hate bt and esseles, but bt, in particular, looks like a good option for pre rank 31 cxp.  rush through and kill as little as possible other than champs and bosses.  1800(esseles) to 2100 (bt) cxp in an hour ain't bad.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I've never understood the rush.  The next expansion won't come out for at least a year, shouldn't people try and pace themselves?

If you've got a lot of alts it's a pain in the ass to get geared for each one, more so than it was for PVP at least.

 

Tried a few uprisings, pretty much shorter flashpoints without cinematics or koltostations. Doing them without a healer is a bitch and what (non payer or companion) healing there is doesn't reset between boss fights. Looks like I now have a reason to keep medpacs.

 

 

And I really miss ravage.

Edited December 4, 2016 by KaineParker

[Gorth]

Someone somewhere dubbed it the NGE (New Grind Experience). A play on the fate of SWG which apparently didn't survive some bad decisions either. Curious about how this affect current subscriber numbers.

 

 

In any case, bored to tears grinding Bestia adds. It's just the fastest way to level up alts. Usually from 65 to 70 in about 20-25 minutes and then the real grind starts

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Yeah, Knights of the Eternal Grind does not look alt friendly and I've got too much stuff to do to get fully geared. I mean if this was something like Legacy and we got tokens or commendations that would be one thing but it's a huge amount of work to gear 1 toon in full 242(?) with set bonus.

[Hurlshort]

Is it necessary to get fully geared though?  

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Is it necessary to get fully geared though?

For end-game PVP and Ops I would assume so.

[ShadySands]

Is it necessary to get fully geared though?  

It definitely makes the hardest content easier... or doable if you suck like me

[Gromnir]

am admitting that we haven't been grinding all that hard, but am at command rank 12 and we ain't even got a single piece o' gear with a set bonus.  two pieces o' blue 230, a bunch o' green 228 (which is worse than our current gear) and then scrap and schematics and ugly shells. am knowing rng can be a fickle mistress, but this is exact why we don't bother with those cartel market crates.  the grind is bad enough, but when rng is working 'gainst us, it makes things double frustrating.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps am gonna go crafting route and not sweat the 230 stuff, but is gonna kinda suck if we gotta fight rng all the way to command rank 300.

Edited December 5, 2016 by Gromnir

[ShadySands]

You've caught up to me already as I just hit rank 12 today. So far I've gotten one piece of 230 gear with a set bonus but I don't use it because it's worse than my 228 crafted gear and since I only have the one item I get no bonus to make up for it.

 

Got

Arcann

and Ranos to 50 influence now too. Need to work on Mandalore

 

PS getting good crafting mats running Black Talon. Getting faster runs now that I know what to skip, like the first bonus mission since it doesn't seem to give anything at all maybe it did give 20 CXP. I wonder if the generic Dashade guy counts as Val Kilmer in BT, maybe I can get some influence with him

 

PPS Nope on Val Kilmer

 

PPPS going to go back to nope on rewards for the first bonus mission Drive Them Back

Edited December 5, 2016 by ShadySands

[Hurlshort]

Arcann is a companion?  Thanks for the spoiler.  

[ShadySands]

Arcann is a companion?  Thanks for the spoiler.  

Huh? Nope

 

fixed

Edited December 5, 2016 by ShadySands

[Gorth]

Apparently the blue chiss girl was supposed to have an alliance alert. Guess what? Never saw the shadow of such an alert. She is now another generic companion with no backstory and no personality. Thank you for letting us grind to the second highest DvL tier for nothing Bioware.