I make no secret of the fact that I was only interested in Star Wars: The Old Republic as a greatly expanded and improved sequel to the Knights of the Old Republic games, not as an MMO attempting to grab the (at the time) market share from Warcraft. I have NO interest in shared anything, and if I could play the dumb game offline completely by myself and still get all of the content, I absolutely would. So when BioWare toned down the multiplayer and subscription requirements, made the game free to play, and made the character stories a part of the full free to play experience, that's when I got interested in it. Curiously, in order to play it, I went ahead and got a subscription, and I may well keep it as long as I'm actively playing.
But there is still tension between the developers attempts to create a really great, big, CRPG and the business side that said to make it an MMO because that was where all the money was (supposedly) in the late 2000s and early 2010s while it was under development. One such side effect of this tension is that the story can get screwed up if you do things out of order, and it's not hard to do things out of order because of the online multiplayer need to have kick-offs always available. I accidentally kicked off the Oricon missions, which are from the latest expansion Onslaught, on my Bounty Hunter story, even though I'd only finished chapter one (because I had maxed out the level on the character.) What does that mean? It means that all of my relationship stories and companion missions got locked out where I was and I can't seem to engage them anymore. Grrr!
It seems that in order to actually play the game properly, you have to do some research and not get ahead of yourself, accidentally kicking off the wrong quest by talking to the wrong quest giver. Sigh. My bounty hunter was my oldest character, kicking around from many years ago, but left on Balmorra untouched for the better part of two or even three years, and it's disappointing to have him now locked out of being able to finish all of his story content. So disappointing that I actually created a new character to replace him so I can do it again. He doesn't look exactly the same, but he's very similar, and I'm going to do all of the planets that he's done so far again with him. Sigh.
Anyway, I created a tracker on Google docs that you can see, just in case you ever feel the need to have one of these too. The gray boxes are the ones that I've done. In a few cases the order isn't exactly right; the bonus story missions can be (and probably should be) come back to and done later. I also didn't put any of the exploration or heroic missions on them. I'm now picking up all of the heroics at the Fleet right as I start a planet, but let's be honest; I'm mostly doing those to farm for XP and gold and equipment drops. Because combat is actually a bit tedious in this game sometimes, I hardly would be interested in doing them for fun. And most of the exploration missions are kinda dumb, honestly. And there aren't really that many anyway. I keep those turned off on my map and ignore any icons when they pop up; exploration missions I don't want to do and heroics I'm already grabbing at the fleet anyway.
I also marked the bounty hunter stuff that I did already in yellow, for now, although eventually I'll replace those with gray too.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HizeXpP5FMex40lWvKg_aKtfDr5u6xae3iJw-CzRc7c/edit?usp=sharing
It's a little funny to think that back in the day, the game topped out at level 50. With my bounty hunter, I was at the new max of 75 while on Alderaan, near the end of the first chapter. I finished to the same place in the story with my Jedi Knight in the lower 70s range, and I've since topped him off with a few heroics. I'll start chapter 2 soon with him already maxed out level-wise. My Sith Warrior is now in the mid-60s in Alderaan, but I'll be close to 70 if not over it by the time I finish. I suspect that as I play more and more classes, my level at that same point will drop, because I'll skip or handwave my way through certain quests that aren't class specific that I would have already done several times by then. And there's only so much farming I can do before it's too tedious to be endured, so I'll probably do less as time goes on. That said, there's certainly something to be said for going through stuff overleveled. Sure, you have level syncing, but if your equipment drops are appropriate for your level, then you've got great equipment which makes your character breeze through (relatively speaking) Flashpoints and Heroics. I don't have a problem with that myself, since I think, like I said earlier, that combat in the game is pretty tedious and overly long and time consuming anyway. Anything I can do to keep it breezy is a good thing.
2 comments:
Having a guide really helped, but it also kept me more focused. I did much less exploration missions (if I indeed even did any) although I did play around with some Heroics, mostly to farm XP, credits and equipment drops. But I'm pretty sure I did fewer Heroics than I did on either my bounty hunter run or my Jedi guardian run. That shows too; my bounty hunter hit level 75 about halfway through clearing out the stuff that's on Alderaan. The Jedi hit level 75 after I finished Chapter 1 entirely and did a few Heroics specifically to bump him up. My Sith went slightly beyond the Jedi's position in the story (I finished the transition into Chapter 2 and went to the first chapter 2 planet proper, although I haven't done anything there yet) and was only about level 62.
Because that planet was Taris, I was able to buy a Jaesa custuomization so I don't have that weird mystery meat version of Jaesa but a freckly red-head. I like the blonde available on Ilum even more, but I'm not willing to go to Ilum out of order and potentially screw up my game, so that will have to wait. Or maybe I won't even bother because I've already started using her and talking to her through her dialogue as my romance option (I shut down Vette by playing dumb and ignoring all of the flirt options when she made it obvious that she was flirting with me.) I recognize that the light Jaesa romance is pretty weak in the main story, but it has one of the best payoffs at the real endgame after Eternal Throne.
Anyway, I did a few Heroics and got up to level 64, but clearly I'm considerably lower level using this format than with the other characters that I've run through so far. Which I think is OK; hitting max level at the end of Chapter 1 when there are 3 chapters before we get to the expansions is a bit extreme. I think I'll probably stick with this format in the future; no exploration missions anymore, fewer Heroics, and I won't max level until somewhere into Chapter 2.
Oh, also I need to figure out what I'm doing. My original plan was to let my original bounty hunter sit to the side, do some Heroics with him on occasion to farm credits, and have him just be the armormech for everyone. The Jedi knight and Sith warrior were the first wave of an actually managed approach, and what I was going to do was get to the end of Chapter 1 with them and then do the smuggler and the agent (or my more managed bounty hunter) to the same point before I decided what I wanted to do with them. Of course, at the time, I expected that I'd be max level. And I also hadn't figured out that I need to get to a point halfway through Eternal Throne in order to unlock my Heroic drops. I'm now seriously considering popping back to the Jedi knight and doing at least Hutt Cartel and Reven with him before doing the same with the Sith, and then so on until I've actually finished the full story, including expansions, with the two of them, before I do anyone else.
It's not likely that I'll go through the expansions more than twice, at least for now--maybe I'll come back to it at some point later and do them again (after all, I'm pretty sure I played Knights of the Old Republic all the way through three or four times before I decided I was done with that game. And I still have a copy and still occasionally think that I'll do it again sometimes soon.) So for the other characters after I do the Jedi and Sith, I'm probably just going to do the class stories and then stop. I'll mail locked boxes to the Jedi and/or Sith, who'll open them and mail the best equipment back, and the characters I already have will be my crafting experts (I do need one more, though, for blasters.)
Anyway, that's my plan right now, anyway.
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