Now excuse me while I hunt this person down…we certainly can’t have ergonomic chairs threatening the Sith Empire!

The updates were rather overwhelming for me to catch up on so I thought hey, what better way to get back into a game than roll a new character. I am currently exploring the journey of a pureblood Sith Inquisitor and it’s been a blast thus far. And ofcourse, I couldn’t keep my eyes off the beautiful architecture and landscape of Korriban.

The Korriban wallpapers are all 1920 x 1200. Enjoy!

Korriban shall be as it always was. A graveyard for the darkest of the Sith Lords, still whispering within their tombs. It shall always be a source of evil, spawning threats throughout the millennia. It, like Malachor, brushes the edges of the empire that waits in the dark. And like Malachor, the Sith have forgotten it … for a time. They will remember.

―Darth Traya

Two of the Seven Moons of Korriban

Sun Rising over Korriban

The Empire Returns

Secrets of the Sith

Galactic Map

An Ancient Slave

Tomb of the Sith Lords

Sage Changes

There was a bit of a change with how Resplendance works. The earlier version of Resplendance took away the health cost and the debuff of Noble Sacrifice when it was active. The new version just takes away the debuff portion that reduces Force regen. I know many are screaming nerf but I think this is perfectly acceptable. I think it’s not terribly big a change and that Resplendance is still a key part of our healing mechanics. The only change is that perhaps healers won’t be taking advantage of it and overhealing someone with Healing Trance just to proc the free Noble Sacrifice to gain back Force from Resplendance.

Interface Options

The first time I opened this one up I went Woaaaaaah! It looks slightly overwhelming to begin with but its really a huge leap from what we had before. I mean, we’ve seriously gone from zero customisation to customising every single visible thing on the UI. That’s not all….the Interface Editor starts out with three premade profiles for the overall UI. The first is the default UI you see above there. The other is an option with extended quickbars for more buttons. The third, which I found most interesting, is the UI fashioned after what we see in World of Warcraft (in terms of positioning that is). So if you’re used to portraits up top and the chat window down below like the way it is in WoW, you can now have it!

Appearance Customisation

The most interesting part about this one is the ability to customise how your gear looks. This isn’t just choosing which slots display either  – the coolest part here is the “Unify Colours” option. Looking like you’re wearing a clown type outfit fashion-wise is no fun while levelling and this is the answer to it. Hitting that button with unify the colour scheme of your gear so you don’t have to wince at your toon while killing the baddies. It’s fantastic. My gloves were green and completely out of place with the rest of my gear – one click, and its all better!

Legacy System

I suppose this one has the biggest change because it actually exists now hehe. The cool thing about legacy systems is that you can unlock otherwise inaccessible races for different classes the more you play. I’m not entirely sure how much alting I’ll be doing but I thought that was a cool feature. The things that really stood out to me were the legacy rewards you could get right from emotes to spending social points to getting things of convenience and even a mailbox in your own ship. Happy Day!

I’m particularly happy with those because it gives those of us who aren’t currently raiding a good way to spend our time. Yes, I’m still on the fence about that whole raiding thing…but that’s another blog post! There are other things with this patch too – the new flashpoint, the new op and the fact that we should be able to gain affection with our ship’s droid. I haven’t tried any of these yet but there will certainly be an update when I do!

I’ll end with something quite interesting that happened that made me go “oh patch day….”

I logged in only to find that my chest piece all of a sudden had defence on it? On further inspection, I didn’t recognise any of the mods that went into it either. I haven’t yet figured out what’s going on here but I’m sure glad I didn’t heal with all that defence I’m currently rocking

Here is my rendition of a popular Zelda theme, “Serenade of Water” on the piano. I’ve personally never played the game, but the music is simply beautiful. The original composer is Koji Kondo and the version I’m playing on the piano is an improvisation by Brett Moulton.

Sight reading is, unfortunately, not one of my strengths. I did my hardest to stick to the music on the page but as it often happens, I’m sure some of my improvisations have made their way into the piece. Enjoy!

1. Companions. 

I was used to the idea of companions before, but not quite the SWTOR has them in the game. I love the fact that these companions have personalities and quirks, and aren’t afraid to chime in during conversations to express them. It’s funny how I began to see the various personality types in them too – the tough guy, the honourable guy, the sensitive type etc :).

"Scorekeeper smiles. Is great work we do. Come."

It certainly eases the monotony of solo play and I found myself looking forward to the next conversation with my companions.

2. Crew Skills

I was surprisingly thrilled bout these. I’ve always loved dabbling in professions but having my companions do the work for me is truly awesome. It makes for some interesting logistical planning and for the longest time, I went broke sending them on missions… it was just so fun. This is was probably the biggest reason why I got into crew skills in the first place – there is nothing more mind numbing to me watching my character craft scores of bolts of cloth over the span of who knows how long. *Cough*

I like how crew skills have shaped up thus far – reverse engineering is an interesting mechanic that I had never seen before and the factor of luck thrown in makes it more fun (for me – I can certainly see the frustrating side of this one). The idea of critting on a crafted item is another interesting aspect. The little things like being able to use crafting materials from the cargo hold and such go a long way in making it more convenient and fun.

3. Romance Options

This one really caught me surprise initially. I had no idea stuff like this even existed but boy is it fun! Despite not knowing much about Jedi lore, it was a dilemma for me when faced with the option of romance. The early quests in Tython do a fantastic job of planting the seeding of “To love or not to love” for Jedi, and make no secret of the Jedi Order’s disapproval of love. This kind of grey-area-food-for-thought stuff is what makes it interesting for me.

"People wonder why Jedi are forbidden to marry or have families. They don't see how attachments always lead to suffering."

Ofcourse, the cute guys don’t hurt either! I now find most of my alt decisions driven by the romance options!

4. Class Quests

I think the class quests are really the driving force for a lot of my experience in SWTOR. I was constantly impressed with how well the story was written (for Consulars) and like a good novel, a lot of times I couldn’t go to bed simply because I wanted to know what happens next. That to me, is always the mark of a good story. I don’t know how they did it but they instilled a sense of urgency in their quests that had me completely wrapped up in the world. A lot of times, things would go something like this:

Hubby: “Come to bed dear, its past 3 am!”

Me: “Oh is it? But but … we just received news that so-and-so has been attacked and they need to my help there!!”

*Cough*

5. Flashpoints, Hardmodes and More

I’ve already talked bout this one in previous posts so I’ll just touch on this briefly. As a healer, I enjoy the challenge and difficulty that many of the fights. It makes it much more interesting to tackle and once we have it down, it feels good. The fact that getting the strategy down gives me a feeling of accomplishment rather than “let’s not do that ever again” tells me that, in my opinion, they hit the right note with these fights.

I also really enjoyed the gradual introduction to endgame skills throughout the entire level range rather than putting them off until level cap. I think it made for a much smoother experience overall. Given how much I’ve been having a blast in hardmodes has made me consider exploring raiding for a bit too. We’ll see how that works out!

These are the big things that made the game really enjoyable for me from the get-go and continue to do so! Is there any particular aspect in SWTOR that you really enjoyed?

I have a story. A couple weeks ago, I decided that maybe it was time for me to get my own piano to practice on. I’ve been working on two etudes and I felt like I hit a wall with my digital piano. I looked into renting studios for practice time but they turned to be expensive enough that I might as well buy my own instrument instead. So I had the grand idea to look for a real piano for myself. Simple enough, I thought.

Over the course of various visits to piano stores, I realised I preferred the actions of grand pianos over upright pianos. (Apparently hammer actions on grand pianos are gravity based whereas the design of upright pianos requires a spring in the hammer actions). So, I began to look at small grands or baby grands as they’re sometimes called. Over the course of playing on who knows how many pianos, I found a piano that simply did it for me.

It’s hard to describe the experience but it was epic. It responded well to my touch, and the notes were well balanced – not too mellow and not obnoxiously bright. It had a deep sound that enveloped the room. I played on it for a good forty minutes and went through my memorised repetoire. I played everything from an etude with contrasting dynamics to a nocturne with trills to a quiet Debussy piece, and somehow despite my nubery they all flowed like a smooth wine on the instrument.

I found myself thinking to myself as I played, “I wish I could play more” ,”I’d love to play so-and-so piece on this” , “I have to get better to play on this”. It was inspiring.

As expected, the piano costs about an arm and a leg with my soul served up on the side. Le sigh. But that’s not even the hardest part about this story. Oh no, there’s more. One of the biggest reasons I’m apprehensive about getting such an awesome instrument right now is my living situation. I live in a city apartment – and while it has the space for a piano this size, I’m afraid that the lack of decent soundproofing will have people complaining.

That thought, coupled with the fact that I wouldn’t want to constantly move such an expensive instrument around all the time led us to consider buying a place. And, yeah….that’s scary. Super scary actually. One part of me screams “Nuuuuuuu I’m not ready to grow up” while the other part goes “But but but I want a piano!!” I have to admit that when I went into this search I didn’t think I’d walk out seriously considering buying a place…which to start with is infinitely more scary and more expensive than a piano. I just wanted the awesome piano. Honestly!

So that’s the story of the last two weeks. I’ve been all tied up with inner dilemmas and whatnot. I considered getting the vastly cheaper upright for now while I start my search for a piano-friendly place, but no matter what the cost it just feels “meh” and I usually don’t like to spend my precious money on “meh” things.

At some point in the future I’ll meet with a realtor and I foresee the most hilarious of conversations. Most of their clients would probably go “I’d like an updated kitchen with granite countertops, hardwood floors, fireplace etc” and then there’s me who with a dead serious face will go “I need the place to have concrete floors capable of holding a baby grand piano, walls that are soundproofed to the highest code…..”. Lol.

So it’s limbo at the moment right now and while I’m sure it’ll work out eventually, limbo still sucks. In the meantime, I’m working on Chopin’s Funeral March. What.

Here’s my wishlist for things that would make a huge quality of life difference while playing the game, and I hope they get some well needed attention!

1. Profiles

I’m an altoholic and I love having my little army of alts everywhere. Many of them often get rerolled because I decide the nose isn’t quite right, or I’d rather have them with red hair than brown. I don’t use the default keybindings in my gameplay and it’s become increasingly annoying and tedious to keep re-binding everything all because I had to change the hair. I recall RIFT having the functionality where you could copy keybindings from different characters when you rolled an alt and I would dearly love to see something like that in SWTOR.

Import UI in RIFT

2. Adding Friends Who Are Offline

I’m surprised this one hasn’t been changed yet. Often we add friends not just when we play with them but when we need to talk to them about guilds, ops etc. It’s somewhat of a catch 22 since we add them so we know when they come online … and yet the only time we can add them at present is when they’re online.

3. Headgear

This one doesn’t even need an introduction…the screenie below says it all….

Seriously?

And how it should look:

Why does my companion look better than me? -_-

4. Focus Target for Bosses

I really felt this one on a recent run of hardmode Esseles during Ironfist. Our group had two commandos as damage dealers and so the interrupts on Ironfist were left to my Jedi Knight tank and myself. I’m happy I have an interrupt as a healer but it really does suck that I can’t use it effectively when I can’t keep track of what the boss is casting!

I’m going to end my list here for now. I considered throwing in Op frames customisation in there but its certainly not on the top of my list yet since I haven’t yet begun to raid. It would however, be fantastic not to have the health frames be in raging red…my poor eyes.

Are there any little things that you’d like to see changed in the near future?

There’s something eerily beautiful about them that inspired me as I adventured through various planets and fifty levels later, I ended up with a visual collection of caves. I hope you find them as inspiring as I did!

Abyss of Flesh-Raiders

 1920 x 1200

1600 x 1200

Ruins

 1920 x 1200

1600 x 1200

The Forgotten Path

1920 x 1200

1600 x 1200

Hope

1920 x 1200

1600 x 1200 

Luminescence

1920 x 1200

1600 x 1200

Floating Through Time

1920 x 1600

1600 x 1200

Endless Ice

1920 x 1200

1600 x 1200

Shimmering Icicles

1920 x 1200

1600 x 1200

Light and Dark

1920 x 1200

1600 x 1200 

Brilliance

1920 x 1200

1600 x 1200

Thank you, BioWare, for making such an inspiring landscape.

– Go to your images folder

– Go to your sixth subfolder

– Publish your sixth image

– Challenge and tag six fellow bloggers

It’s time for a confession. I’m not a very organised person. I barely have a second subfolder for all my pictures let alone a sixth. So, I decided to bend the rules a little with a Star Wars-y spin, and post the sixth screenshot from my SWTOR screenshots folder.

Ah memories of levelling! This shot of a fleshraider’s cave was taken during my consular adventures way back on Tython.

Time to tag….

Lightsaber Latte

A Lovely Starwar!

 A New Dope

Star Wars: Tanking the Old Republic

Inquisitor’s Roadhouse

Consular’s Codex

]]> https://forcemocha.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/sixes/feed/ 5 468 Screenshot_2011-12-30_23_34_39_075707 forcemocha Screenshot_2011-12-30_23_34_39_075707 https://forcemocha.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/artificing-know-your-shinies/ https://forcemocha.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/artificing-know-your-shinies/#respond Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:37:45 +0000 http://forcemocha.wordpress.com/?p=443 Working on crew skills in SWTOR is one of my favourite things to do. Anything that has your minions do the work instead of yourself can’t be bad afterall… and in SWTOR, wrapping my head around the different materials really kept it interesting for me. It took me a little bit to figure out how different crystals fit in and the various categories of our craft. Read on for an overview of what this crew skill has to offer!

Artificing is a fantastic profession for Force users although non-Force users can reap the benefits of it just as well by selling what they craft.

What do Artificers craft?

There are four categories of items we make:

Colour Crystals: Can be used by everyone – they change the colours of lightsabers and blasters. (In the interests of avoiding confusion, I’ll be calling these lightsabers crystals from now on).

Enhancements: These are item modifications that give you endurance and a secondary stat (like crit or alacrity or shield rating etc).

Lightsaber Hilts: It’s all about the Force here – hilts come in two flavours in addition to having endurance – the willpower kind and the strength kind.

Wieldable: Offhands of all shapes and sizes – we’re talking shields, generators, and focii.

The Materials:

The two gathering skills that support Artificing are Archaeology and Treasure Hunting. Materials for Artificing can be broadly classified into Artifact Fragments, Crafting Supplies (which may be bought from the vendor) and various Crystals. Crystals is where it begins to get interesting.

Crystals come in three main flavours for us: Colour Crystals, Power Crystals and Gemstones. Colour Crystals and Power Crystals are obtained through Archaeology missions while Gemstones rely on Treasure Hunting missions. While most of our materials are used in all things we craft, there are a few exceptions. Here’s a look at how colour crystals and gemstones work.

Colour crystals we obtain from Archaeology missions such as Red and Blue Polychromic crystals are exclusively used in crafting crystals for lightsabers and blasters. This holds true for red, blue and green colour crystals.

Example of a lightsaber crystal that uses a colour crystal from archaeology

The lightsaber crystals that make lightsabers/blasters shoot out yellow, and later on orange, use certain gemstones rather than colour crystals. Gemstones are of two kinds: the ones that we use across all things we craft, and the other that are specifically used in crafting Colour crystals for lightsabers and blasters. The latter is a blue quality crystal that is called “Perfect Orange Crystal” or “Immaculate Yellow Crystal” and such like.

Example of a lightsaber crystal that uses a gemstone from treasure hunting.

Reverse Engineering:

Reverse engineering is probably my favourite part of crew skills. In artificing, reverse engineering works slightly differently than other crafting skills. For (lightsaber/blaster) Colour Crystals, Lightsaber Hilts, and Enhancements, we can reverse engineer a green quality item to find a blue quality version of it and then on to its artifact quality counterpart. There is however, only one artifact counterpart for it and once you discover it, that’s that. This is somewhat different from other crew skills like Synthweaving where you can discover different versions of an artifact quality with different stats on them. So once you discovered Advance Insight Enhancement 22 or Advanced Yellow Resolution Crystal, you’re good.

Reverse engineering in wieldables, however, is a return to the norm. They reverse engineer like the other crew skills with the possibility of discovering different artifact versions from the blue quality item. Below is an example where I discovered two different artifact version from the same blue quality Reflex Enhancement Generator. I first got a “Commander’s” version which added Presence as a secondary stat to the generator – yech. So I tried again and got the much better Hawkeye version.

Perks of the Trade:

Despite being the profession that had me broke while levelling, Artificing did offer some lovely perks at level 50. The first of these is the series of Rakata relics you can make that have Endurance as their primary stat and a chunky bit of secondary stats as an on-use boost. These relics, like other crafted wieldables, have the possibility to crit while being crafted. If you do get lucky on that, they come with an added augment slot that make them very desirable indeed. In addition to crafting these beauties, Artificers at skill cap can also craft a variety of lightsabers which have a chance of critting with that extra augment slot. Unlike the relics, lightsabers are BoE and tradeable.

Final Thoughts:

Artificing is a really fun crew skill to have and I’m really enjoying it thus far. My most recent endeavour was to discover all the purple versions of lightsaber crystals so I could change the colour of my lightsaber, depending on my outfit. Don’t judge me!

Finally, there’s also the awesome Magenta Colour Crystal to be had. Its schematic drops from a world boss and is definitely something any artificer would love to have!