Kind of back on track

I’m back and didn’t have a lot of plans this weekend so some gaming was achieved!

Did a few weeklies, working on getting more toons towards Command Level 300. The Sage is now 173, the Scoundrel 111, and the Juggernaut 77. The Scoundrel still feels very weak. Even Black Hole takes a while and I usually get help for Section X. Maybe the class just doesn’t suit me very well, or I should try another spec, it’s probably not the gear (230 Item Rating). I also finished my Conquest for the week, Rakghoul Resurgence on Alderaan, done by the Juggernaut. All in all not bad for a few days with a lot of breaks.

I’m still pondering if I should get WoW’s BfA expansion. Before I went away I was 100% hyped on SWTOR and 75% hyped on WoW, and now I’m kinda.. I don’t know? SWTOR is fun, but I don’t feel the urge to play 12h per day right now – and I’m torn on WoW. My SWTOR sub expires on the 15th, so until I need a decision. I just know I won’t really play 2 MMOs at the same time, so unsubbing makes sense, and if WoW is not soo awesome I can just resub. Or I’ll focus on one character in SWTOR and keep the sub… Decisions, decisions!

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I’m back and I failed

As I wrote in my last post I took some Game Boy games on my work trip, but -oh surprise- I neither had a lot of spare time nor was I in the mood to play. Just a bit of idle surfing around before going to bed filled my time quite well – I didn’t even have time to read a lot of feeds. Also the lighting in the hotel room was really bad, so probably the GBA wouldn’t have worked as well anyway. Let’s see if I manage to log in to SWTOR tonight, otherwise I’m looking forward to the weekend, my posting streak is broken anyway, but it was fun while it lasted.

GameBoy and GameBoy Advanced

As I wrote yesterday I’m going to start a trip later today and I had the plan to bring my trusty old GameBoy Advanced with me. Originally I only had a handful of games, but in the last 16 years I kind of grabbed a few from GameStop (back when they still had used GBA games, but after they were sold new), or retro fairs, or eBay. I also have a few GB games left from people who lent them to me and never wanted them back (Really, I swear I offered to give them back, years later…)

Anyway, many of those I’ve only played for a few minutes or hours, so here’s a selection I might want to at least give a try (again) on this trip.

• GameBoy Advanced
  • Pokémon Ruby
    • bought not so long ago, started it, wasn’t so bad. My first Pokémon game.
  • Super Monkey Ball Jr.
    • it’s not bad, but doesn’t entertain me for long
  • Golden Sun
    • very good, guess I never finished it though
  • Columns Crown
    • well
  • Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories
    • no clue why I bought it a second time.. started a few times, liked it, never got very far though
  • Final Fantasy IV
    • I faintly remember not liking it, must rety
  • Micro Machines
    • fun, but only in short bursts
  • Pitfall
    • bought recently, didn’t play much
  • Rayman Advance
    • hard!
  • Tomb Raider – The Prophecy
    • bought recently, didn’t play much
  • Crash & Spyro
    • bought recently, didn’t play much
• GameBoy Classic
  • Kwirk
    • ok, but never got very far
  • Bad’n’Rad
    • don’t remember
  • Fortress of Fear
    • don’t remember
  • Tetris
    • no comment
  • Bubble Bobble
    • fun!
  • Parodius
    • I liked it, but I always found it too hard
  • Super Mario Land
    • good, never finished it
  • Super Mario Land 2
    • good, never finished it
  • Dr. Mario
    • always liked this better than Tetris. This might be a friend’s exact same cartridge I already played in ~1990-92
  • Mario’s Picross
    • finished this twice or more, and many offshoots on PC
  • Xenon 2
    • Megablast! Best soundtrack ever!

Yeah, I hardly finished any of those and I wrote “hard” very often. I am in general not very competitive, or stubborn enough in regards to finishing games.

Conquest fails and the end of an experiment

So, today is day 59 of daily posting and tomorrow’s might be the last one for a while, as I’m leaving for a 2 week trip tomorrow where I don’t know if time, energy and wifi will be readily available. No high hopes, but we’ll see.

This time I only prepared one post for tomorrow and only because at least it makes it 60 days, damn those love of round numbers, it was actually planned for today 😛

Just had an oddity in Conquests. I wrote I finished twice on my BH this week, but maybe I was wrong and only planned to do it. I looked at the counter today and it sat at 27.xxx of 30.000. So I quickly hopped over to Yavin 4 to do some RAMPAGE. Apparently I had done the dailies on a non-conquest character (getting complicated yet?) so my counter for Rampage III was at 94/150. So I killed a few mobs and it showed me the popup for Rampage I (yes, I, not II, sadly was too confused to screenshot) and at some point I got the popup for Rampage II, but the chat said +300 CXP which again matches Rampage III. I also didn’t get the Conquest rewards again, but apparently I just failed to read swtorista’s guide correctly. It says “You can complete your personal goal on as many characters as you want!” and not “as many times as you want”. Ah well, it’s not as if I went out of my way to get to 30.000 instead of 15.000, wouldn’t even say “bummer”. * shrug* I blame the multitude of days with strong headache in the last two weeks, no wonder you make these mistakes if you can’t really concentrate.

Observation: Mission success

What I started less than a week ago came to a conclusion today.

HK-51 <Your Companion>

I have a HK-51 companion, which is pretty awesome. What’s not so awesome is that two of the associated Achievements seem to be bugged, “General Crew” (Treek and HK-51) and “The Gang’s All Here” (all companions for all 8 classes, plus those 2) under Starfighter -> Crew. Wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t set my eye on that “Wing Commander” title. Ah well, didn’t find a lot on the web, so I made a ticket. No high hopes I’ll get an answer soon, but we’ll see.

So the list of missing companions is getting shorter, but maybe this already was the end of the line for the companion achievements. I can’t get Nico Okarr, I can’t play the HK-55 bonus chapter afaik, and the “Continuing Comfort” weekly seems horrible, doing it 10 times sounds completely nuts (Update: see comments, it doesn’t seem to be so bad if you have a few gathering crew skills at 500+ available). I’m not counting the creature and droid companions bought ingame or via the cartel market.

I also tuned the spec of my Ruffian Scoundrel (with this guide) because she felt kinda weak, for a DPS spec with 230 gear. Surely a L2P issue, but I guess some stuff in the spec/rotation are easier fixes than suddenly becoming good. Did an hour’s worth of dailies (Ziost, CZ-198, Black Hole, Yavin 4) and it seemed to go a little smoother. CL 94 is also nice.

A review of KotFE

Today I finished the second-to-last SWTOR expansion, Knights of the Fallen Empire (KotFE) for the second time. Sadly I didn’t write down when I finished it for the first time, but according to this post, it was probably the first week of January 2018. That said, while I liked it the first time, I have to say I’m not that impressed anymore. Spoilers ahead, but it’s been nearly 3 years.

• Losing all your companions suck, plain and simple
• I don’t like that you can’t meaningfully interrupt your play session during a chapter, but at least they’re reasonably short
• It’s too much on rails. Do this, do that. Sure, the original planet quest lines are also mostly linear, but it’s an open world and I can choose to stop after every non-instanced step
• Somehow I didn’t mind doing Makeb 5 times in a row, but repeating this after just 9 months was already a bit meh.

Also apparently I can’t screenshot during cutscenes anymore, missed ome of the more funny parts. But of course there’s YouTube.

• Can I have your stuff? (YouTube)
• Vette and Spewie (YouTube)
• Did you really just say that? (YouTube)
• Dretcher’s mail (local image)

So all in all, it’s not bad but I like it a lot less than the classic story line, or Makeb, or Yavin 4, or (of course, as it’s my favorite) Rishi. Except Chapter 13 (the heist) – this is hands down the best chapter of all, and one of my favorite moments in the whole game (story-wise, the gameplay isn’t too exciting).

Maybe I’m a bit unfair here though, I definitely had more problems on my first playthrough with a fresh 70 than now with a toon in 230 gear. So maybe it feels less “on rails” and is a bit more challenge than “oh, mob group, 2x force quake, done”. But I deliberately didn’t play on Veteran mode because I mostly wanted to get it done on a second char, and seeing if there are any differences between Empire and Republic (I didn’t see any).

I guess there are more things where I’m a little unfair in general:

• The alliance base on Odessen is actually pretty cool
• I like the “give 10 resources to some NPCs and get legacy-bound armor”
• I like collecting companions

But I think it hasn’t aged well in regards to outleveling it. Sure, you could always just level to 70 and ignore everything after Corellia (assuming you want all of your default companions and do your class story, I surely do). But I think you can even better ignore everything after Ziost, that’s a really handy daily zone to unlock, but KotFE/KotET only bring you new companions, but in turn may take some away. That said, content in older expansions in games like WoW is also meaningless and you’d probably skip it if you hadn’t (until BfA) needed to kinda level there to get to max level anyway unless you only ran dungeons, which I think is more the exception than the norm. Anyway, I don’t hate it but I was a little let down.

But I’m also kind of a completionist (mostly for achievements), so there’s a few TODOs, just not sure if I will do the “refuse” ones now or on a less important toon.

• Play 20 matches to recruit M1-4X
• Complete the 2 Blizz achievements I missed on the first time
• Reject Sgt. Rusk
• Reject Broonmark
• Reject Xalek
• Reject Skadge
• Reject Dr. Lokin

In other news, the current Conquest (Revenge of the Revanites) seems to be a really easy one, as I managed to complete it twice on the BH and once on the Sage. Too bad there’s actually 6 more characters, who all still have their “do a conquest” quest.

To guild or not to guild

I’ve come back to SWTOR 3 months ago (insert 3 monther MMO joke here) and my sub is due to renew tomorrow. A week or two ago I pondered whether to keep it, because I was still really pumped for WoW, a feeling which had come up during the BfA pre-launch hype and Blaugust. But now after reading a lot of first month review posts (sorry if I forgot someone) I’m not so sure I’m still hyped. The reviews aren’t at fault, most people seem to be mostly happy with the expansion. I’m still kinda curious, but the hype has died down for now.

This brings me to my original thought though, I’m playing mostly solo right now and I’m wondering if I’d be happier in a guild again. It’s not that I was actively avoiding them, I’m now GM by of two dead SWTOR guilds, just by showing up in 2018…

Can I even say I have a mixed history with guilds? I’ve always been in a clan while I was playing FPS games 15 to 20 years ago, no problems there. In my first MMO, Ragnarok Online, I wasn’t lucky at first, but then found some cool people on IRC and joined their casual guild (as in non “non-organized group content”). I wasn’t in a WoW guild until I hit 60 in vanilla, since then I was in a few guilds. I think it was only ever in 2 clusters of guilds in 8 years, if you count reforming with half of the people.

So either I’ll buy BfA and play WoW in early October, then I will either play Alliance in the guild where I’m the “returns every 2 years” guy, or go back to my Horde mains and probably have to look for a guild. A quick search on the realm forums wasn’t helpful, no recruitment posts except for hardcore raiding, which I don’t plan to do and there’s no use applying before max level anyway. Maybe my friends list will be helpful once I login. Or maybe my guild isn’t as dead as it looks on the armory, but I guess it’s only 3-4 people and 2 of those hardly talk in chat.

Anyway, if I stick to SWTOR either by not buying BfA or by playing both (haha, fat chance)… the Tulak Hord (German server) realm forums also look dead, the Darth Malgus (English server) one has like three times the current posts, maybe even more. Also somehow my fellow Germans (and the minority of people speaking German) seem to piss me off much more than the people on EU servers, I don’t know why. I saw some recruitment posts, but never seen anyone of those guilds ingame. Apparently it’s a lot more common in SWTOR to have a sister guild on the other faction than in WoW. So at least that could help, as I’m pretty much 60/40 Empire/Republic right now.

So the only thing I know is that I guess I’d like to be part of a guild again after a few years of being the lonely ranger. I just don’t know yet in which game and in which faction – and how I’ll find one. Great.

SWTOR Companions

I recently saw an interesting topic on r/swtor about ranking your companions, especially the starting companions.

So here’s a list of the eight starting companions:

Khem Val, Vette, Mako, Kira Carsen (T7), Aric Jorgan, Qyzen Fess, Corso Riggs, Kaliyo Djannis.

Which one do I dislike most?

That’s kind of easy (and reddit also seemed to agree mostly), it’s Corso. Whiny, annoying, kind of a redneck. I even had to take him as a romance for lack of options

But this brings me a more interesting list. Which companions (overall) do I like or dislike?

Favorite companions (starting with most liked)

• Trooper: Aric Jorgan, Tanno Vik (somehow fun), Elara Dorne, M1-4X (funny lines)
• Smuggler: Risha (awesome), Akaavi Spar (kinda awesome), Bowdaar (kinda ok)
• Jedi Knight: Kira (not sure why), Lord Scourge (ok)
• Jedi Consular: Nadia (fun), Qyzen (earnest, but ok), Holiday (and Tharan)
• Bounty Hunter: Mako (awesome), Gault Rennow (good interaction)
• Sith Warrior: Vette, Dark Side Jaesa Willsaam (weird but good)
• Sith Inquisitor: Khem Val, Andronikos Revel, Talos Drellik (quirky)
• Imperial Agent: Kaliyo (chaotic), SCORPIO (evil)

 

Worst companions (starting with least liked)

• Trooper: Yuun (too weird, but he’s actually mediocre, or ok. not bad)
• Smuggler: Corso, Guss (reminds me of Jar Jar)
• Jedi Knight: Rusk (too bland), T7 (too beepy), Doc (too smarmy)
• Jedi Consular: Felix Iresso (too bland), Zenith (sentences too short, not that that bad tho)
• Bounty Hunter: Skadge (annoying)
• Sith Warrior: Broonmark (annoying), Malavai Quinn (too uptight, not really bad)
• Sith Inquisitor: Xalek (not sure why)
• Imperial Agent: Doctor Lokin (boring), Ensign Temple (unremarkable), Vector (long-winded)

Overall best companions? Consular, Smuggler, BH, Inquisitor (not in order)

Worst overall companions? Jedi Knight (only Kira rocks), Trooper (somehow none of them is awesome)

Ding 300

So I made it and kinda forgot the screenshot, bah. My Bounty Hunter is CL 300 and I could finally buy that sweet +25% Command XP buff for 2m credits. Then I continued by doing all the weeklies and then Oricon (yay, first time there I guess. Or maybe second time, but I couldn’t remember anything… I don’t like it, it reminds me of… Felwood? Eastern Plaguelands? Meh.) on my Sage, which resulted in Command 134. But no, I’m not desperately rushing him towards 300 as well – just trying to finish the Conquest a 2nd time this week. My sub will renew on the 15th and I thought about letting it lapse now, not being there for 2 weeks and planning to buy BfA when I’m back, but I’ve not decided yet. I’ll probably want to play on the weekend after the 15th…

So, how does it look now for the 4 mirror classes and the potential 4x +25% CXP boosts?

• Bounty Hunter/Trooper – BH at 300, Commando is at 49
• Consular/Inquisitor – Sage at 134, Assassin is at 4
• Smuggler/Agent – Scoundrel at 74, Operative at 2
• Warrior/Knight – Juggernaut at 63, Sentinel at 5

So in terms of “wasted” levels, there’s only my Commando – but she’s fun to play. Apparently I made some correct choices, even before I thought about this. More likely it was just pure luck – the Sage is launch day char, the BH was created a week after launch I guess and the Scoundrel might be as old, or at least from 2012.

Silly number games, anyway.

So close and yet so far

Today was a weird day. As most Tuesdays in the last weeks I dutyfully waited until the 1h Conquest timer was gone, then started my dailies. The usual routine: Ziost, Black Hole, CZ-198, Yavin 4, Section X. But this week’s Conquest was the Revan one which seemed oddly easy at first glance. Yavin 4, Voss dailies, Rampage on Yavin and Voss. So I did my stuff and suddenly was already at 11k of 15k. So I started a few daily planets and queues for Warzones. Then the unbelievable happened – I won twice in a row. That was enough to hand in 3 PvP dailies, including the 20 games weekly which I had saved so far. And then I had the Conquest done. No scraping by day by day like with the Gree event – no, 4h and it was done.

So I continued with my usual easy dailies, Corellia, Dromund Kaas, Tatooine. Yeah, and now I’m at Command Level 299 and it’s half past one in the morning and I need to go to bed. But tomorrow I’ll hopefully make it. Still shaking my head over that Conquest though.