T w e n t y S i d e d

I don’t normally partake of “dailies” in MMORPGs. For those who don’t know, “dailies” are a traditional component of MMORPGs that USUALLY aren’t included in the initial release of the game. Or at least, that’s the way it started; newer games frequently have this repeatable content included from the beginning. Dailies are most often repeatable quests using assets already in the game. A good example would be adding a repeatable quest that is nothing more than doing the basic parts of a story quest once per day. For instance, if you had to fight through a bunch of enemies to reach an NPC you needed to talk to in order to advance the story; the “daily” version would just be having to go kill 10 of those enemies again. The reward, instead of moving the story along (since you’ve already done that) will usually be some of the game’s primary currency, PLUS some “reputation” currency. The “reputation” will be assigned to a faction connected to that area of the game, or to some kind of bigger faction…it can be as general or highly specific as you want. The IMPORTANT part isn’t the additional XP and money that you may or may not receive. The REPUTATION currency can be saved up and then spent with a new vendor added that will sell items UNIQUE to that reputation faction. I never did dailies in World of Warcraft until I started collecting mounts, and I found that dozens of factions in WoW offered a special mount. For FREE, you just had to play the game a lot. In Star Wars: The Old Republic, I only recently started looking into the reputation awards available from different vendors and found not only MOUNTS/VEHICLES, but ARMOR DYES. So, I started doing dailies with Rix’larril’an.

Once a game gets big enough, it can be difficult to keep track of all the daily missions available. In WoW, most factions would have certain re-spawning enemies that gave particular reputation currency as a reward drop, so even if the regular daily quests were locked out until the next day, you could always just camp a respawn area and grind. Not necessarily fun, but back when I was grinding reputation mounts I could reach the max reputation level in a few days. SWTOR seems to have less of this, but I haven’t strictly examined every single encounter. A bigger difference with The Old Republic is the location of Dailies; many are located in completely new areas with their own story. A big reason I ignored SWTOR’s daily areas was this story structure; actually. The story missions, most of which can be repeated as daily missions, are straightforward. And just as with most of the game, there will be a couple of Heroic2+ missions available. But beyond this, EA/BioWare usually ended the story with a Flashpoint…a MANDATORY GROUPING Flashpoint. Some Flashpoints (remember, Flashpoints are The Old Republic‘s version of Dungeon Instances) are able to be soloed easily. In fact, many are actually meant to be played as part of the storyline; these have a “Story Mode” available. None of the daily areas that end in a Flashpoint have this option (at least that I can think of). Some actually end with an “Operation,” SWTOR’s version of “Raids.”

But considering I want the rare dye schematics, I’m currently running all the reputation dailies that are available before the Shadow of Revan expansion. First on the list is The Black Hole, which is a return to the final class story planet of Corellia. (Right quick, I should note that most of the base story planets have a “Bonus Series” quest line available after you finish that planet’s story. These WORK like dailies, at least now…they used to be just a one-time short additional story; but don’t grant reputation and don’t have a vendor for unique rewards. They are useful for OTHER things, though.) In the base story, the Corellia quests can end with your faction winning the planet. The daily story is about the Empire withdrawing from Corellia because of concerns elsewhere in the galaxy. (This is true for both Republic and Imperial players…considering YOU WON the planet for the Empire, this is can be a bit of a kick in the pants and the dialogue reflects this.)

NOW…here’s the embarrassing part. I did one run-through of the The Black Hole and started writing this, then went to check my reputation and find the reputation vendor…they are usually pretty obvious but I couldn’t find one. Welllll, that’s because The Black Hole doesn’t offer a specific faction reputation gain, nor does it offer specific cosmetic awards. That’s on me; I didn’t check first. In the end, though; considering the story is pretty important to the status of the game, I certainly recommend playing it. You can do the whole thing in about thirty-five minutes. Just pay attention to the quest where you have to inject yourself with a mission-only item to survive a particular room. It’s a bit buggy, especially if you screw it up once.

Next up is Section X. Just as The Black Hole is a new area of Corellia, Section X is a new area on the planet you likely visited just before visiting Corellia for the first time: Belsavis. Belsavis is a bizarre ancient techno-prison world that predates the Republic AND the Sith Empire. It was actually a prison built by the Rakatta, the galaxy-spanning force-attuned empire introduced in Knights of the Old Republic. The Rakatta used Belsavis to imprison an entire race of beings THEY deemed too big of a threat, and the occasional rogue Rakatta warlord, i.e. “The Imprisoned One” from KotOR and TOR. Also, dangerous or rare technology…which included the PLANET ITSELF, which is apparently some kind of self-aware Starkiller Base (note that the Belsavis storyline was written well-before The Force Awakens.) The Republic discovered the world and decided to use part of it as their OWN secret prison; kind of a super-max facility for the most dangerous criminals, Sith when they can capture them, and dangerous insurgents that need to be silenced but may be useful in the future.

The core story for the new IMPERIAL player on Belsavis is to free “The Dread Masters,” a group of six Sith Lords that worked together to master fear as a weapon. They were fiercely loyal to the silent Sith Emperor and were presumed to be killed by Jedi before the current Cold War started. The Imperial investigation into Belsavis has revealed The Dread Masters were taken here, and the player’s primary task is to find them and free them. You do that, of course; it’s the story for this planet…but The Dread Masters will return soon after the base story ends and provide a TON of content in the game. Mostly in Operations(Raids) that require large groups. Which is fine from a story point-of-view, I guess; The Dread Masters are some of the very few force users shown to be more powerful than the player from the start. As much as I HATE “you lose the fight in the cut-scene,” there are times that it is appropriate when done correctly. Anyway, a month or two later The Dread Masters realize The Emperor seems to ACTUALLY be absent from the throne, and as they have zero respect for anyone on the Dark Council, they go rogue. Who could have seen THAT possibility, amirite? This storyline, which as I mentioned, is going to go on for quite a bit…well beyond just these daily missions, starts here at Section X on Belsavis. In addition to a selection of Stronghold rewards, the primary gets for me are the armor set, the pet, and the Primary Deep Red/Secondary Black armor dye.

I mentioned last week doing the Macrobinocular and Seeker Droid quests, at least in passing. The macrobinocular quests are part of their own storyline that ends in the uncommon Heroic4+ instance. I have heard this CAN be soloed, but I haven’t been able to complete it yet. But the macrobinocular quests that lead up to it, and the “bonus” achievement you can get using the macrobinoculars to spot recon droids all over the galaxy are good exploration content. The Seeker Droid quests eventually feed into The Dread Masters storyline, which of course involves a LOT of multiplayer content. But as with the macrobinocular content, the seeker droid can continue to be used in the open world to basically grab random drops. I don’t do this very much because it involves a lot of trial-and-error, but the extra content is neat.

Those missions were introduced in The Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion. But the planet introduced for RotHC, Makeb, comes with its own set of dailies.

The Hutt Cartel has so extensively mined the planet Makeb for a rare isotope that can be used for extremely energy-dense fuel that the planet is falling apart. The Republic and the Empire rush in to do whatever needs to be done to achieve control of the situation and prevent the other side from doing it instead. The storyline can be done in a couple of days…even playing leisurely it would be hard to take more than a week. Makeb is divided into a number of isolated areas, and the dailies are comprised of a story mission associated with that area. The Empire’s missions are centered around trying to drive the Cartel off of Makeb by convincing the Hutts that the planet is in danger of imminent collapse. I don’t think I’ve ever played Rise of the Hutt Cartel from the Republic side, but it’s quite possible their missions are identical…the Hutts are the enemy, not the other main faction.

The Makeb dailies don’t have a pet reward, but you can get two different armors: Core Miner and Makeb Assault. The dye available here is Primary Deep Red/Secondary Light Gray. Not as valuable as the Section X Red and Black, but Gray can do for white in many situations.

The next daily area introduced in Rise of the Hutt Cartel is the first that feels like a “fully-featured” reputation area. Ironically, while the story-ending is still locked behind two non-soloable Flashpoints, the actual daily content for reputation currency can be completed in about fifteen minutes. You can gain one pet just by completing a hide-and-seek mission with your macrobinoculars (like I said, you get a lot of extra content from those). It’s kind of WEIRD that you use your macrobinoculars to scan personal data pads left laying around the Czerka offices on planet CZ-198, but you have to keep in mind how this process was envisioned. You were supposed to enter a huge room, probably at the top of some stairs, then whip out your macrobinoculars and scan the room from distance. The macrobinoculars would indicate when you passed over something interesting, then you can “zoom in” and electronically scan the device. Of course, this suspension of disbelief fails when you find one of the pads in a dark, confined corner that you couldn’t see until you were right on top of it…but hey, I got a CZ-W4 Observer mini-battle droid pet out of it. You can see it in the Section X screenshot.

Along with many stronghold decorations and a vehicle mount, there is another pet, a dye, and once again two armors. On the left is the “Czerka Executive Outfit” which comes off much more as a mad scientist look, along with a mind probe droid to complete the appearance. Actually some good armor that I might actually use with a companion. On the right is the Czerka Security armor, and for some reason the vibrosword weapon “Sword of the Vigilant,” which makes no sense as a Czerka rep reward but IS part of a rare weapon achievement if you have it. So I guess we’re going with “Czerka found it in the desert.” In Star Wars roleplaying games, that’s just as good as “a wizard did it.” The dye reward on CZ-198 is Primary Black/Secondary Deep Blue, which is used on both armors here.

The final daily area in Rise of the Hutt Cartel is the planet Oricon, the next and last location in The Dread Masters storyline. This is the place from which The Dread Masters are seeking to establish their own Sith Empire. As the person who freed them in the first place, you are brought in to end them, as they are presenting just as big a problem for the Empire as the Republic. The story ends in two Operations, but the dailies to earn reputation currency take about 45 minutes. The only difficult part is a Heroic2+ quest to kill two named enemy commanders (the origin quest was all three enemy commanders.) These are elites that patrol a mob-heavy, higher-difficulty area. Technically the Elite Named enemies aren’t actually that hard…but you can engage them too close to certain non-named elites that have a very-high burst damage skill which could cause problems. Additionally, the Named Elites can overlap, and if you aren’t paying attention you may be in the middle of battling one and a SECOND one shows up. This is manageable unless the two force-powered enemies are the two you get. One commander has a stun ability that can take you out-of-action for 10 to 15 seconds. If you get both of the force users, you’ll spend a lot of time with your interrupts on cooldown and unable to counter these stuns, which can lead to having to make a second try.

The reputation rewards on Oricon feature a new mount, although it’s just a re-color of an old vehicle. The color combination seems to be quite popular, though; I see this particular speeder on the Fleet Station a lot. There’s a new pet, although it’s just a recolor of the Section X pet. Gotta catch ’em all! There are two good armors, however. The Dread Host battle armor on the left has some really nice default coloring and lighting, so I didn’t preview the dye on this one. Likewise, the Hallowed Gothic armor on the right has a very nice red and purple design, plus a lot of attention to detail in the folds of the cloth and highlight/shadow areas. Not so much a fan of the MASK helmet, but just as with a big-budget-big-star movie except for the Judge Dredd remake, you NEVER let your star wear a helmet…you need to see that pretty face. Despite the nice default coloring, I did preview the Oricon custom dye: Primary Black/Secondary Deep Red. Primary blacks and whites are usually some of the most-sought-after dyes, and they were in SWTOR…until pearlescent and metallic dyes were released.

That’s it for this week, thanks for reading!

Paige Francis He/him