Darth Hater

http://tor-fashion.com/

Actually TOR's cinematic trailers are done by Blur studio in Venice, CA. You can check out some of their other amazing work at http://www.blur.com/.

Well I kept RE'ing new sabers so I can't say for sure, but I got the impression that the appearance of the hilt was related to the stat-less named lightsaber shell.

Hate on!

I was a tester on the 11-11-11 weekend. I started writing this as a guide to myself, as a reminder of how to maximize my game time during the head start. Now that the NDA has been lifted, I can share my observations with the whole Hater community.

My main will be a 5/31/5 Marauder. I wanted to check out as many applicable game mechanics as possible without spoiling any of the Sith Warrior story for myself, so I rolled a Sentinel.  I grinded out story until I could craft lightsaber parts, grinded out lightsaber parts until I was dual-wielding purples, then grinded out story until they kicked me off of the servers. Good times.

TYTHON

As a Jedi Knight, this world was awesome. All of the quests here were very Jedi-esqe; there was a clear “good guy” answer, and a clear “bad guy” answer. When I had occasion to use the fully dark-side option it felt like that moment in the movies where a record scratches and the whole room stares at the hero in wide-eyed silent disbelief. Even small things, like over-confidence, would cause your Jedi Masters to scold you. They make it difficult to play against type.

Every once in a while a mob or a quest would drop a commendation or token unique to the planet. There was one vendor who sold armor for tokens; later on I found a currency exchange that would change tokens of one planet into one token of another planet. The armor from the token vendor lasted me for all of Tython most of Coruscant.

The spawn areas are pretty well spread out. Make sure you hit the bind location and the taxi in each new zone, and you should be able to do turn-ins and look for new quests with very little back and forth. The bind system works a little differently from WoW’s, you click the skill and a map opens. From here you may jump to any bind point on the entire planet, provided it was activated by you.

The companion system is mostly fun. The astromech droid has a taunt and a tether that both suck if you play melee. To manage your companion’s abilities you must click on the arrow icon around the companion’s face in the bottom left corner. This will change your bottom ability tray to the companion tray. All toggle-able abilities will have a square in the top left corner. Green is on, clear is off. Pressing the arrow icon again closes the companion ability tray. I’m pretty sure everyone’s first companion has skills that some players don’t want active, and turning them off is part of the first lesson.

By now everyone’s seen the “Jedi’s first saber” video so I’ll spare you.

With my companion, and my lightsaber I finished all of the Tython content, it was time to move on to…

THE REPUBLIC FLEET

Here I picked my AC, picked my Crew skills, visited vendors, that currency exchange guy I told you about, and ran my first flashpoint the Esseles (although I didn’t run the flashpoint until after I had conquered Coruscant).

There’s only one thing I want from a Star Wars game: let me dual-wield lightsabers that I built myself. TOR hits pretty close to that mark. I picked my AC and was just given my second saber.

I sure hope someone explains the Crew skill system better than I. Here I will attempt to wrap my head around my experience for my own benefit, if I accidentally help someone else then gravy.

1-      YOU CANNOT CRAFT A LIGHTSABER

Instead, you craft the four components that go into a lightsaber. Lightsabers themselves are quest rewards or vendor items or mob drops. The saber has no stats, only the components do. When you receive a new saber from any source, it will already be slotted with four level appropriate components.

2-      YOU CANNOT CRAFT ALL FOUR PARTS YOURSELF

Color crystal – Power crystal/Hilt - Overlay – I forget the name of the fourth

The Artifice skill alone makes 3 of the four components (YAY!), but you can only have gathering skills for 2 out of 3 (BOO!). I picked Artifice, Archeology, and Treasure Hunting. The first recipe to which I had access required that I drop one of my carefully selected crew skills for Underworld Trading. Then I never needed Underworld trading again. Ever.

 I hear this is no longer the case, but I can only report what I have seen with mine own eyes.

CORUSCANT (CREW SKILLS)

As mind bogglingly gigantic as Coruscant is, I got lost on the 200 ft. stretch between the Senate taxi hub and the doors of the Senate. I found my next Artifice Crew skill trainer. I spent a great long while crafting.

I sent my droid out on archaeology gathering missions, I received raw uncut crystals. I had my droid return to the ship to cut the crystals. Initially I’d make three of an item: main hand, off-hand, and one to reverse engineer. I was learning new recipes so quickly that I shifted to a new model: make a bunch, reverse engineer them all. I found that REing a stack of 4 or 5 components was enough to learn the next progressive step of the part. I grinded until the parts I was making were so high a level that I couldn’t use them. Then I made myself a set of parts for my current level, a set of parts for next level, and continued on my merry. This is what that experience taught me:

Let’s say you make 5 green color crystals, all are quality green and grant +1 fortitude.

Reverse engineer them all.

You’ll get most of the mats back and learn to make green color crystal, quality blue, +2 fort.

Make 5, RE them all. You’ll get most of the mats back and learn to make green color crystal, quality purple, +3 fort.

Make 5, RE them all. You’ll get most of the components back and learn to make green color crystal, quality green, +2 fort.

Make 5. RE. Learn green color, blue quality, +3 fort.

Make 5. RE. Learn green color, purple quality, +4 fort

Make 5. RE. Learn green color, green quality, +3 fort.

As you can see, if one were to continue crafting newer and newer versions of the same parts over and over as they level, they will never need a new saber. The newer and newer versions of the same part eventually required new mats; gems come from treasure hunting and underworld metals come from underworld trading.

The quality of the saber is an average of the qualities of it’s components. Four green (quality) components make a lightsaber green (in quality). 2 green and 2 purple make it blue. 3 purples and it’s purple.

I reverse engineered whole lightsabers whenever I found them, hoping that RE’ing a complete saber was the equivalent of RE’ing all four parts individually. I found that this is not the case. I received a +1 Artifice and an insultingly small pile of mats. If you find a saber as a drop or reward, I recommend trying it on to see if you like the appearance. You can always remake the component you were using in the old saber for use in the new saber.

Crew skill missions were on a timer. If I had a bunch of mats and only needed 5 first tier color crystals from archeology. I would send the droid on the appropriate mission. The droid would return with 1, and the mission would be locked for approx. 5 minutes.

To gather directly from a node in the world you can do it yourself, or, if you have a companion with you, shift right click and you companion will do it for you. (That took a while to figure out!)

CORUSCANT

In size, Coruscant felt like Diablo!

I’m afraid around this time my brain decided that it was not testing, but playing. I don’t have any notes on Coruscant, but I do have a giant grin on my face when I think of it.

ESSELES (REPUBLIC FLEET)

I had roughly 3 hours of beta until the servers went down when I finished Coruscant, I wanted to see a flashpoint. Most people here were level 12, I was 17. Finding a group was really easy; there were tons of other people that hoped to see a flashpoint before they were kicked out.

There was one bug that detracted from my enjoyment: if any of your party is in combat, none of your party can use elevators. The first one through an elevator would start combat, and the rest of us could not come help (nor could they run to us) until the combat was over.

One of our four DC’d pretty early on. When we got to the boss, she came back. We decided to wait for our fourth by downing the optional mini bosses. Little did we know that she couldn’t catch up with us BECAUSE we were in combat. Eventually we got it together.

That’s all for now. If anyone has questions, go ahead and post here. I’ll try to answer them.

XANE

P.S.Competitive dialog is awesome.