T w e n t y S i d e d

This is a Star Wars: The Old Republic post for two reasons: one is the continued home improvement, which is going well. No pics, at least not for now…you don’t want to look at my bathroom renovation and I don’t particularly want to share it. I reserve the right to change my mind; as I started out thinking “sure, I can do plumbing repair and replacement, right?” to having accomplished “most” of the repairs and replacements over the past week. There is certainly a difference between knowing how to do something in your mind and actually having the experience of doing it. The biggest challenge remains: I need to replace the bathtub/shower handle and valve, which will require shutting off the water supply to the house. I actually wasn’t too worried about it until I tested, or tried to test, the new shower head and faucet. The connection to the valve for the faucet leaked horribly. Like, spraying water. I don’t know if it was leaking already; I don’t think so. I am guessing I damaged it during the installation of the new faucet. And now I’m worried the connection is actually damaged. I should find out tomorrow.

I spent the entire week in Tropico experimenting with strategies to increase my citizen’s happiness level as I grow my population. In my previous scenario successes, the average happiness of my Tropicans usually wound up between 35 and 40. If you remember, there was one training scenario that required you to finish with an average “Housing” happiness of 60. The solution there was to build a large amount of luxury Housing and Condominiums. As there was only one completion requirement, the moment you reached 60 the scenario was finished. You could hyper-focus on meeting that criteria at the expense of everything else. (NOTE: only to an extent. Even in the training scenarios, if you go into debt over $10,000, you will be get a College-educated wage cap. If you stay $10,000 in debt for another year, you will receive a High School-educated wage cap. If you stay in debt for ANOTHER year, you will receive a global wage cap. And if you STILL don’t fix it, you will be kicked off your island. So, you know, you can’t *completely* ignore your economy.)

But back in the present, the “Born Again” scenario requires both 300 Tropicans *and* an average overall (not just housing) happiness of 300. Last week I determined this would require learning a new strategy. As of Saturday, I can reliably reach 200+ citizens with 50 overall happiness. This should indicate I am on the right path and just need to optimize my building order and timing. Each play-through of the scenario reaches new experimental ground, which also introduces some new error in my thinking. I thought I had the problems licked yesterday, but once I hit 54 happiness I found myself scrambling to get the last 50 immigrants on my island while maintaining happiness. To address this, I have two possibilities to explore: I have been using an immigration office to help boost…well, immigration. I use this early on to get some skilled workers specifically, but I also noticed I’m not attracting many people to my high school. I will still use the immigration office to increase overall immigration, but I’m going to try a Presidential Edict I’ve never used before: the Contraception Ban. This will hopefully increase home-grown (heh) Tropicans, and also increase home-EDUCATED Tropicans.

I have created *not* my first SWTOR Republic character, but the first one I’m actually playing:

This was primarily driven by my long-standing urge to create a Nautolan character. In fact, I have created many, but none of them felt right. Nuleen seems to finally scratch the itch. I finished Ord Mantel, the starting planet for Republic Smugglers and Troopers (it’s the counterpart to starting on Hutta for Imperial Agents and Bounty Hunters.)  You already know I generally prefer what are called “the Tech classes,” so this probably isn’t a surprise. Smugglers’ default play styles mirror the Imperial Agent but the story is thematically more like the Bounty Hunter: an independent player that doesn’t necessarily have a strong allegiance to their professed faction. Many dialogue choices emphasize their pay-to-play availability. Similarly, when you get to the Trooper, they share play styles with the Bounty Hunter but have story options much more like the Imperial Agent: loyal and duty-bound to their faction. Both stories include a loyalty-challenging plot point that opens up more dialogue options to express dissatisfaction with your government. In both cases, this is *interesting,* occasionally gives you some great dialogue and encounters, but is ultimately meaningless outside of your personal head-canon.

I have spent about half my time playing Star Wars: The Old Republic leveling Nuleen and my Sith Inquisitor, Trada Visi. The other half is just doing dailies for Galactic Seasons 7. So I thought I would give a general glimpse of my current status by showing what my average task-list is. While a Galactic Season is active, there will be an additional tab on your “Login Rewards” status page for Galactic Seasons objectives. GS objectives come in two flavors:

1. Go Do This Specific Thing. Or really, go do *these* specific things that are similar. Like, “Go kill THIS World Boss and THAT World Boss.” As a reward, you receive 8 Galactic Seasons points, a special currency only used to unlock tiers of Galactic Seasons rewards.
2. There is a daily and a weekly objective to just “Earn XXX Conquest Points.” The daily is 25,000 Points; the weekly is 200,000. Achieving these goals also reward GS points.

I have mentioned before that you get Conquest Points just for doing things you do playing the game. If you are, for instance, leveling a Nautolan Smuggler, you’re going to get Conquest Points non-stop, because you get them for gaining a level, and for killing a number of enemies, and for killing enemies in specific locations, and for killing Elite enemies; etc., etc. In fact, most of the things of the nature of #1 above will *also* grant Conquest Points. The only limitation is that a lot of those challenges are either multi-player or tied to end-game content. However, there are also specified daily tasks also tied to secondary parts of the game. I don’t do every single one, but there is a list I follow that generally grants about 28,500 Points per day. Which, if you do the math, will put you just over the 200,000 Point weekly goal. Of course, combined with just regular leveling and the Conquest Points you may get from other tasks, I usually exceed the weekly requirement within 2 days. But while the Conquest Points are a reward themselves, the point of the Galactic Seasons challenges is receiving the GS points to use on the GS Rewards screen. That’s were most of the special stuff is, other than the Galactic Seasons Vendors. Usually.

Step One: Raise the Influence Level of one companion. I have already related that each companion has 50 Influence Levels. Once per day, increasing that level will grant Conquest Points. In fact, it will grant about half the Points you need to meet the daily goal of 25,000. I am currently raising the level of some rare companions of Rix’larril’an to get this reward. I suspect the CP reward is so high because most people, including me, will just buy the necessary Companion Gifts to do this once per day. From Influence Level 30 to Influence Level 50, this is 100,000+ credits per day. Depending on which companion you are leveling, you can actually accomplish *two* Conquests when you do this. There is a separate challenge to simply gain *any* influence with a companion, but this only works with certain companions. I haven’t actually found the rules that govern this, but I *think* it has to be a story-related companion rather than a Galactic Seasons reward companion or a store-purchased companion. I also believe I discovered if you have completed a companion’s story, you can no longer complete this achievement with them. There does appear to be two exceptions: two of the earliest reward companions *do* still work with this (there are others from the base game era that I haven’t tested yet). So, at the moment, my Step Two is to log in to Khundast Zeele and hand a cheap gift to Nico Okarr, one of these non-story early companions:

This doesn’t add too many points, but every little bit helps, especially when it’s so easy. Step Three can be accomplished with *any* character that has a Stronghold, so I return to Rix’larril’an and visit the “Underground Docks” of her Copero Stronghold:

The third challenge is simply to place 5 decorative objects in a room in your Stronghold. Here’s what the decorating screen looks like when you activate it:

I don’t really have anything appropriate to put into the Underground Docks yet, so as usual I just drop some lights, plants, or even place some companions. I get the reward after placing the fifth, and then pick them up again. You don’t have to leave them there, even.

Step Four: Complete five Crew Skill resource-gathering missions. Not crafting; that has it’s own daily achievement that is a bit harder to get. But just doing five only take a few minutes, especially if you have many max-influence companions. I switch to Mikan Sixteen for this, as I know they are particularly short on some resources. I reached level 52 with Trada Visi yesterday, and subsequently sent her back to Vaiken Station to gather upgraded crafted gear from all my other characters. The default gear recipes are usually very cheap to manufacture. BUT, if you make an item using this recipe, then deconstruct it, you have a chance to learn an *advanced* version of that gear. These advanced versions usually take rare crafting materials, sometimes *very* rare and *expensive.* Most you can still get as a rare drop on other resource-gathering missions; and this is what I try to do. There are some that have such a low drop rate that purchasing them on the Galactic Trade Market (the auction house) is preferable; and if not cheaper, not really any more expensive in the long run. The advanced recipes also tend to use *more* of the same resources the base recipes use, so when I do a complete gear change, it can drain resources fast. Bottom line; I know Mikan is low (as are some other characters) so I run her companions on some Grade 7 resource missions:

Step Five: Complete a Space Mission. This is somewhat misleading, and I only recently figured it out. It’s *not* wrong, to be clear. Background: Galactic Starfighter is a PvP expansion by nature. It added customizable Star Fighters accessed through a separate component of the game. But it also added single-player Space Missions. These missions are rail shooters using the characters’ story-assigned transport ship. I find them easy-to-play and fun. The Heroic-tier requires rare equipment, and are harder. In fact, I’m not entirely sure I’ve ever beat one, TBH. I only have one character’s ship fully equipped with the standard upgrade anyone can do; Trada Visi’s. So all I have to do is run the very first lowest-level mission, Jablim Space Escort, right? I mean, yes…but that’s not actually what the Conquest challenge is talking about. Jablim Space Escort has a win condition: escort another ship to the end point. The mission only lasts a few minutes of real-time, by the way. There is one given “mission,” and yes it’s called a “mission:” destroy 25 enemy fighters. You will receive a “bonus mission” when you attack one of the many Republic frigates that appear: destroy 20 gun turrets. The frigates will disappear from the mission about half-way through, so focus on shooting turrets first to complete the bonus mission. And you know what happens when you complete the “bonus mission?”

That’s right! The Daily Conquest to “Complete one Space Mission” is referring to the missions you receive *after starting* a “Space Mission,” not the “Space Mission” itself. As you can see in the pic, you also get Conquest Points for completing a “Bonus Mission” once per day. Bonus!

Despite that, completing *both* of those Conquests still only gets you just short of the 25,000-point requirement for the Galactic Seasons objective. Unless you coincidentally completed some other Conquest during any of the steps so far, which happens to me at least once per week. You know, leveling up, defeating a certain number of enemies, crafting a certain number of objects, etc. So, for Step Six, I engage in one subset of crafting Conquests: the War Supplies challenges.

“War Supplies” were/are a game feature added in a later expansion. You can craft them or earn them as rewards and drops in certain areas, and then turn them in for other rewards. There are several different “types” of War Supplies tied to different crafting professions. I suspect they were added to give another use to crafting professions, but I haven’t looked into that. You create any given War Supply by gathering multiple grades of particular professions basic Assembly Components, which sometimes goes by a different name. Let me give an example: an Armstech makes several kinds of weapons. A particular recipe for a Grade 5 Blaster requires four Grade 5 Metals, four Grade 5 Compounds, and two Grade 5 Assembly Components. The Grade 5 Assembly Component likely requires two Grade 5 Metals, two Grade 5 Compounds, and four Grade 5 Supplies; so there’s a bit of doubling-up on resources. But that’s just the way it works, get used to this Inception feeling. So that’s how crafting any device on any Grade works. War Supplies are something you really shouldn’t approach until you have reached max level in your crafting and gathering skills. This is because your skills’ War Supplies will require the same Assembly Components, but usually four to eight of them from usually five or six different Grades. But that gives you your profession’s War Supply. You can either turn them in if you are playing that part of the game, *or* you can combine War Supplies from multiple professions into a War Supplies: Invasion Force. There are things you can do with an Invasion Force as well, including sell it, turn it in for certain things, or combine several of them along with some very rare components to make the Dark Project. Remember the Dark Project? You can turn in multiple Dark Projects with a few million credits to obtain a Commander’s Compendium, which you can give to a Companion to raise their Influence Level to 50 all in one go. Or you can sell them; a little under a million credits each at the moment.

The important part is you get Conquest Points for making a War Supply once per day. You get Conquest Points for making an Invasion Force once per day. And you get Conquest Points for making a Dark Project once per day. Occasionally you will also receive Galactic Seasons objectives to make multiple Invasion Forces and Dark Projects. In those weeks, you can wrap up your weeks’ objectives quickly *and* make a lot of money, although it does require a lot of input to get there. Point being, though, this is usually the final step in my dailies: make one of any of the above.

You can see in the upper-right-hand corner the “1/1 Daily” and the “4/7 Weekly,” and that’s pretty normal for me. This will typically give me enough Galactic Seasons Points to unlock 4 of the 100 tiers of the season. Do some quick math, you can see that’s 25 necessary weeks, or 175 days. A Galactic Season typically lasts about 150 days. You may spot a discrepancy. Not a problem. Unless Bioware EA Broadsword changes things, some weeks have some *really easy* objectives instead of multiplayer or end-game. Things like “visit another player’s Stronghold” or defeating certain collections of base-game Elites instead of end-game bosses. Of course, crafting challenges are always simple for even minimally-experienced players. Those objectives usually make up enough extra Tiers to guarantee 100% completion. And if not, there’s always the nuclear option: you can purchase one tier per day for Cartel Coins. The sharp-minded among you will notice that the “once-per-day” limitation means you *can not* just buy every tier, for the reasons mentioned above. *Some* game-play will be required. Incredibly easy game-play, but still…

And that’s my currently Daily Experience. Now on to install a new faucet and drain in the bathroom sink.

See you next week!

Paige Francis He/him