SWTOR: Space Combat or how do I fly this thing?

Yup, Mako and I are doing a pre-flight check before trying to complete a space mission again. I need all the help I can get so I want to make sure the ship is in tip-top condition.

I’m going to try to post this under the radar. Maybe I won’t tweet about it. I read a post by Gladly at The Ready Check about how SWTOR has affected her WoW raiding. I felt really bad about it. She’s not the only one feeling the effects of SWTOR, it seems many guilds have been touched by the SWTOR flu.

Someone was recruiting in Tatooine the other day and they gave me the address of their guild’s application form. I was thinking about it, but when I read the apps of people applying it put me off. Almost everyone seemed to think saying something negative about WoW was required. What’s up with that? I’m a WoW player too; I don’t want to be in a guild of WoW haters.

In my case absolutely no WoW raids have been affected by my vacation in SWTOR. No raiders died in the making of this post. I’m not even really gone from WoW, never happen unless Blizzard locks me out. I am not a butterfly who flaps her wings and causes a butterfly effect across the face of Azeroth. So if you are causing a WoW butterfly effect, shoo … go on … get back to your raid.

I really just wanted to let you know I put up a link on the SWTOR resources page about space combat. I was having a lot of trouble with space missions and this helped a lot. First, I thought I was in control of the ship. I kept trying to wrestle control of my path from the ship. You have no control, stop trying to turn around. You can’t. And thank you so much Star Wars: The Old Republic, all that time I thought I was firing my missiles I was really just shooting measly bullets at them.

Just one more thing, how do you say SWTOR when speaking? Someone pointed out that if you sound it out you get sweator, yeah, I’m not sure whether I like that. Maybe I’ll just drop the SW and refer to it in conversation as TOR. I’ll have to alert my son-in-law as he’s the only one I’d be likely to be conversating with about TOR.

Anyway, if you have something better than TOR, let me know. We need to all vote on this or something.

SWTOR: Bounty Hunter Music and the Womp Rat Blues

Bounty Hunter Music

Okay just humor me for a minute. There’s not much to watch in the video and it’s short, it’s all about the sound. I have at least one of each SWTOR class, although I think I might have three Smugglers, not sure how that happened. But my Bounty Hunter undoubtedly is my favorite and I’m pretty sure the sound of her missiles is why.

Poor girl is trying to save money. Her gear is whatever she finds for the most part, but she doesn’t care how long it takes to kill something, she is just getting down with that Bounty Hunter music. There is such a visceral feeling of power with that sound, I’m a literal killing machine, aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggghhhhhhhh … oh God, somebody stop me before I kill again. What? I’m a Bounty Hunter, I don’t have to stop? Yesssss!

Yeah, I know I shouldn’t be using skills based on the sound they make but I just can’t help it!

The sound of a Bounty Hunter echoes for a fair distance. When I hear it echo through the hills, I think … Oh, my homies are near … I’m rolling with my homies … my brethren in arms, killing things with giant missiles, flamethrowers, two blasters … sigh, life is good.

I think the last sound that affected me to this extend was the THX Sound Effect. I love that thing, but this is better.

Womp Rat Blues

So last time I talked about SWTOR I think I promised I’d go out and find some information that was at least as exciting as speeders for you swtorers … swtorians? Do we have a name yet? This is proving harder than I thought. I have some info but it’s no where near as exciting as speeders are, but I’m trying okay.

I was speeding around Tatooine questing and killing things to level my bioanalysis when I noticed I had an extra … what … buff? On further investigation I found that I had contracted Womp Rat Fever and I mean it’s serious, you can die from that stuff. I was understandably nervous. Since I’m a big tough Bounty Hunter I refrained from running around screaming, “Help me! OH NO, somebody help me!”

I thought I’d better hurry and seek medical attention and found every Medical Droid I checked had the cure for sale, the Czerka VX-736 Injector. Buy that baby and you’re good to go, right as rain again.

Security Chests

Yeah I know, not as good as speeder info but in case you haven’t seen these yet, there are Security Chests that can be found almost anywhere. I’ve started checking any empty building I come across because I’ve made a few thousand credits from Security Chests in vacant buildings. I’m not going to farm for them but I do keep an eye out, free credits are a good thing.

I’m afraid that’s all I’ve got right now. Since the thrill is not gone from WoW for me, be patient, I’m working double shifts here. I need to get out there with my missiles, and AAARGH, burn baby burn … oh, sorry. I meant I need to get back to my class quest and hopefully find more new and interesting news. Yeah, that’s what I meant to say. You might want to check out Psynister’s Notebook, long a source for solid WoW information, he’s now sharing SWTOR tips with leveling guides soon to follow!

I think Joan Jett is a perfect accompaniment to the sound of missiles and blasters, don’t you?

SWTOR — Cyborg Companion Pet

Horrifying isn’t he, yike! Oh hey, it could happen, I mean there are cyborgs in SWTOR why not cyborg companion pets? Okay so there aren’t really cyborg dog pets yet in SWTOR, I may have fudged that a little. This picture was actually therapy for me. When one of our dogs was a mere pup he was as destructive as a platoon of bounty hunters, chewing through our house at an alarming rate. I think after he chewed the leg off the dining room table I went upstairs and did this to vent. The part of the cyborg that’s actually my dog is the lovely brown eye.

I really hadn’t planned on saying anything today but I woke up this morning and checked my blog stats and I was ecstatic! 510 page views yesterday! Unbelievable! Yay! Thank you kind readers! Hey, this is exciting to me. I’m not a cool kid. I’m never going to be featured on WoW Insider, so to me this is one big whoop!

I was somewhat bemused by the traffic, I mean even I wondered what the hell they were doing but I finally got to the bottom of it. SWTOR speeder vendor. The magic keyword. So I can’t give you fine writing but I have decided to become the SWTOR Faxzinator! Your one-stop shop for SWTOR facts. So I admit the whole cyborg pet thingy was a scam the following facts are not. I went and got them for you just to say thank you for yesterday.

Smuggler Fact

Sometimes I don’t know how I manage to level in game. I tend to run around looking at all the sights and I’m totally oblivious to the really important things like my skills. Emergency Fleet Pass! How cool is that! I have another Smuggler on another server who is about level 15 and I didn’t know she had this. I accidentally found it when clicking the general tab instead of smuggler. A free get out of jail card. I used it just so I could let you know it is indeed on an 18 hour cooldown but still, great to have.

Since I was there thanks to my Emergency Fleet Pass, I ran around and found the location of the Republic speeder vendor too, out of gratitude to those 510 people. Pretty much same location as on the Imperial Fleet.

So there, some SWTOR facts for my precious, precious, 510. Okay, one scam companion pet but two true things so it kinda balances out. I love you guys, you are my BFFs!

XOXOXO!

Come back again, I’ll serve virtual cookies!

SWTOR/WoW — Credits, Gold, Coinage, Dinero

AAARRRGGGHHH! We can’t afford the gorram gas to get this heap to … oh, didn’t see you there. Yeah, my bounty hunter is starting to feel like Captain Mal trying to keep Serenity flying. She’s having a money flow problem. It’s flowing out but not in. I am not getting a handle on the Galactic Trade Network at all. I haven’t found anything that sells. She’s Biochem but no matter how low I price things, no one’s buying.

She’s a little concerned since she’s almost level 22 and speeder training is looming just over the horizon at level 25. 40k credits for the training and another 8k for the speeder. I remember my first WoW character grinding mobs at about level 42 or 43 still trying to get enough money for her mount but I thought it would be different in SWTOR, I mean this time I actually knew there was a GTN but so far it’s been no help.

My last brilliant plan to become a SWTOR mogul failed horribly. I placed my sith warrior who has slicing on the Imperial Fleet and had her run slicing missions thinking I could succeed that way. Now this was before the nerf to slicing and it didn’t make me money, it cost me about 1k. Thankfully I saw a tweet by Vrykerion of The Land of Odd mentioning that to save money leveling slicing you should not do the missions, do the nodes. Nodes? What nodes! Didn’t know slicing had nodes, embarrassing. Hmmm. Maybe instead of leveling crew skills I should be out gathering the mats to sell to others who are leveling crew skills. Worth a try.

So yeah … feeling depressed I headed to the Shattrath City bank to cheer myself up. My druid rolled around in her piles of gold for a while and then tried once again to obtain Lumpy, no, no luck. She didn’t feel all that bad about it though cause in Azeroth we’re filthy rich.

A few posts back I was enthusing about everything being shiny and new in SWTOR, how did I forget about the pain of being poor. Ah well, time to leave the bank and suck it up and learn how to make credits. If I find out I’ll be sure to let you know.

In other SWTOR news, I have FINALLY got a character with a bad attitude. This girl really hates everyone. As soon as she got to the Sith Academy on Korriban everyone was, well, talking shit to her. Pathetic slave this and pathetic slave that. It was too much for her. She just snapped. It possibly could also have something to do with her incredible ineptitude with her class, I mean that’s got to make her mad. At one point I though she wouldn’t even be able to complete her companion quest at level 10 when the smarty pants bounty hunter got her companion at level 6. I seem to be a complete fail as an Inquisitor. But on the bright side her companion seems to be on the same page with her, Khem Val would just as soon kill everything, which is fine with her as soon as she learns how to inquisite properly. She even fed that one-eyed monster thingy on Korriban so it could eat everyone at the Sith Academy after she shipped out.

Frankly I’m not sure how any of my characters are surviving. Playing four different classes in SWTOR and WoW simultaneously is probably not the way to become skilled at any of them, but alas that’s the life of an altoholic. It seems more like a superb plan for guaranteed mediocrity. I need to focus, pick a character, go with it. But who? Okay, that’s it, it’s the bounty hunter … really … just an soon as I get the Imperial Agent to level 10. Then I’ll stop. Or not. Or I’ll send her back to Balmorra to pick flowers and make some credits. Oh, the life of a bounty hunter/sith warrior/imperial agent/sith inquisitor. So much to do, so little time. And yes, those are only my Empire characters. What! I said I was an altoholic!

One Small Wrapped SWTOR Present

There are two things that have been driving me crazy in SWTOR. I have a Razer Diamondback mouse that’s not working with SWTOR. I can use it, but none of the programmable buttons function. I’ve still found no cure for that one. Apparently running the .exe files for your mouse software as administrator is working for some but not for me.

The other annoying problem is that I rarely have a reverse engineer button. I finally decided to pay attention to what I was doing and where I was when it does appear and it seems if you open a trade window with a vendor, hooray, it appears. It seems to stay around after that.

I am exceedingly pleased now; it’s like a SWTOR early Christmas present. I’m quite taken with reverse engineering. I make stuff so I can destroy it in the hope of discovering an even better recipe. I seem to be hooked on crew skills at the moment, I really have to get back to killing all the things but for now I want to decimate the contents of my inventory.

If anyone knows the secret to convincing a Razer Diamond to talk to SWTOR I would be eternally grateful if you could share it!

The Joy of Noob

OMG! For the love of all that is holy don’t do what I did. Warning! There are these itty bitty icons on the lower left of the SWTOR loading screen. You use them to select things like Preferences, Servers, etc. I got up this morning early and logged in sneakily and quietly, hoping to avoid dog detection. I myopically stared at the icons and selected what I thought was the server icon … it was not, it was the freaking credits. Are they serious, it went on and on, I couldn’t find any way to end it. I think I waited until they started listing the guys that drive the snack trucks and finally had to Alt F4 out of the game. So beware and don’t get stuck in the scrolling credits of unending doom.

Wait, what? Is this yet another character? Well yes it is; a smuggler. I felt my Republic side was under-represented so I thought I’d try one. This is not a class I thought I’d like, but hey, got to try them all, right? I was questing in the starting area and was having the best time ever. I’m running and jumping and taking cover all over the place. I finally notice that I’m hitting keys and nothing’s happening, what’s up with that … I continue on, killing and running and ducking behind boulders. FINALLY, I notice that my quickslot bar CHANGES when I take cover, kind of like shifting forms in WoW. Oh my, L2P STWOR noob. She’s only level 6 but so far I really like her, while the Inquisitor who I had high hopes for, at this point at least, I’m not feeling her.

My Juggernaut tanked her first flashpoint. I’ve done Black Talon twice now with rag-tag groups, one all dps and a pet tanked (he did it much better than my juggernaut), the second time me as a noob tank, again no healer. My tanking debut was fraught with hangs at the cut scenes, I stood in the fire and died on one boss, we all died on another and the thing is it was incredibly fun.

I spend a half an hour running around Kaas City trying to find the Dromund Kaas Commendation vendor. You can’t imagine the thrill on finding her, a shiny new gun, what every Bounty Hunter wants.

I’m having an amazing time in SWTOR. This is the time that long time WoW players miss. Doing instances with whatever group you can get together. Being lost, discovering new places, Npcs, game mechanics. It’s all new and wonderful. WoW is my long time relationship, I’m not leaving the humor, the beautiful world I love, but I can’t get back that noob feeling, I know WoW too well. It’s not WoW’s fault it’s just life and WoW will always be my home. Have I found a second home? I don’t know, time will tell. I’ve done this before and no second home has lasted more than a few months.

Right now though, I’m going to enjoy the hell out of being a noob again. I don’t know how long this will last. I hope it’s a while. I’m kind of worried. I saw a LFG who was insisting on having a competent healer, not in exactly those words though. If they allow addons at some point I think things will go downhill fast. Give people the ability to measure things and the my … Dps is bigger than yours will start, but for now I’m just going to revel in being totally clueless.

SWTOR: Lost in Space … port

Stuck on Dromund Kaas

In her hurry to see everything, my bounty hunter rushed off to Dromund Kaas without seeing the quest for the first flashpoint, Black Talon. After looking around town she headed back to Dromund Kaas Spaceport to try to get a shuttle back to the Imperial Fleet.  She wandered around forever; she took the elevation to the docking bay and unsuccessfully tried to board a shuttle. I logged out and back in. I looked it up in-game and out of game. All I got was, go to the docking bay and click on the shuttle door to leave planet. Hmmm, I finally decided to look for other elevators, although I was SURE I was where I had arrived. Not. There was another docking bay with a functioning shuttle. So if you’re ever stuck there, look for another elevator, docking Bay 0-17 is the correct one.

I picked up the quest for Black Talon. I responded to a LFG, and then we got two more. Ready to go. The LFG originator then dropped group, they didn’t say why and the rest of us were off.  I don’t know much about the talents of companions other than the bounty hunter’s Mako, but one of the other two in the group had a pet that did the tanking. I was trying to pay attention to the flashpoint but it was hard. The companion tank kept melting to the group and leaping back up. Kind of like a melty feign death. I don’t know if this was some kind of a glitch or he was working as intended but I was mesmerized by it and had a hard time taking my eyes off him.

The Black Talon was a lot of fun. And I’m saying that totally without being influenced by my bounty hunter’s luck in getting some lovely new boots. I wish I could tell you more about it; I’ll have to do it again on my Sith Warrior and hopefully not get distracted by any companion antics.

Light/Dark

Okay, I’ve given up on my bounty hunter; she’s just a big Pollyanna. She’s one mean killing machine … apparently with a heart of gold. So in my quest for pure evil I created a Sith Warrior, yeah, now she’s GOT to be evil, right? Not really, I am trying but she’s sitting smack in the middle. I know, I know, she shouldn’t have taken off her companion’s shock collar. I’m really enjoying the character choices between right/wrong/indifference. Although I don’t RP, I definitely want my character to have a personality. I have a clear sense of my character’s personality in SWTOR, and I have it very early on in game.

Classes

I was hesitant to create a warrior, I’ve never gotten one past level 20 but I think I will this time. This Sith is turning out to be a lot of fun. I went Sith Juggernaut but I’m going down the Vengeance tree so she seems to be more of a Tank/DPS hybrid than a pure tank.  I haven’t figured her out yet, she can kick butt, she’s incredibly hardy in spite of not having a full set of heavy armor yet but she can’t hold aggro, her companion keeps pulling mobs off her, how embarrassing.

My bounty hunter is wonderfully fun to play; I live for the cooldown to be off Death from Above, the absolute best ability ever, the damage is awesome and the animation even better. I think if they nerf it I would have a senior nerd rage it’s that fun.

A Jedi Knight and Jedi Consular were also created as a result of the peak hours queue. I tried to find another server that wasn’t as popular, as my backup. So in true altoholic fashion I already have 4 characters.  Neither Jedi has gotten to level ten yet so I don’t have much of a feel for either class. Hopefully I’ll stop jumping around long enough to learn at least one class well. Oh hey, it could happen, really, maybe.

SWTOR Early Access Vacation

Cyborg Bounty Hunter, yeah, I am a badass. I am badass personified; I am all that bad and more. As it turns out not so much, but more about that later. This is the lovely Zorah of Shadow Hand. I got my early access email yesterday morning and the whole rest of the day went out the window. We had to eat fried shoe leather for dinner as I skipped going to the grocery store. I’m sure I’ll calm down in a day or two.

It’s such a strange and sometimes wonderful feeling not to know what the heck is going on. While there is a lot of information out there if you get stuck, it’s not always easily accessible. When trying to google for information the guide sellers are the ones who prepared, so you get a lot of useless links coming up first.

I had read that you should stick to your class main quest line and I think I took that too seriously. I COULD NOT find the bounty hunter trainer anywhere. I think I probably missed a quest that would have sent me to them, in my dedication to only doing my main quest line. So for anyone like me, who had to do most of the early quests without training, the trainer is Zinny. If you were to come out of the Poison Pit where you start and run straight across, you will come to an area with armor merchants, Zinny is in the back of this area waiting to train you in the fine art of contract killing. At the time I wrote down the coordinates, but unfortunately I wrote a bunch down so hopefully these are the correct ones, -446,520.

At level six I got my companion Mako, who is wonderful. She heals me while I run around like a witless gerbil killing all the things. I am so bad. Um … my bounty hunter is level 7 now and the only points she’s received are for the light side. Absolutely no dark points. What kind of a bounty hunter is she anyway. She don’t need no stinking light points! Sigh … so like any true altoholic I made a Jedi Consular to see if she’d rack up dark points or light. She’s only level 3 so I can’t say yet.

My first impression is that I will pay for a subscription for both WoW and SWTOR for a while. Is it a WoW killer? Pssshaw, not for me, it’s new and fun and I’m going to be vacationing there for a while but I’m not leaving my crew in Azeroth. I’m just having a fling, I hope they understand.