Saturday, December 17, 2011

On SW:TOR - PVP, Crafting and a smidge of Bounty Hunting

My Sith Inquisitor reached level 10 and off i hopped to the new zone eager to try out the crafting systems and PVP in this game.

Before that though, I answered the question of whether the two group quests were infact soloable, the answer being yes, just. It is also possible to skip these entirely, continue with solo quests and still reach level 10 and be on your way to the next destination if you prefer to. It definitely would have been more fun to group of course but with a companion in tow it definitely isn't 'forced' group content.

I initially picked Treasure Hunting for my first 'Crew Skill' which saw my companion bring back a companion benefit (bit suspicious that). I started to skill up Synthweaving with Archeology and realised that i also needed Shadowsilk to progress to the next recipes so I dropped Treasure Hunting for Underworld Trading which will supply it.

Reverse Engineering works similarly to disenchanting or salvaging in other MMOs, returning materials but also giving the chance for blue recipes from REing greens, and Purples from REing blues. I have only created blues so far, with each piece containing an additional stat to the green version. I don't have an excess of blues to RE yet but it seems to be well worth doing so far.

Its an interesting dynamic to have your companion(s) do your crafting for you. The early recipes take about a minute to craft and can be queued up to fuve times. The mission style material retrieving Crew Skills are taking 3 minutes which is time enough to make a cup of tea but not really much of a strategic decision as yet. Remembering to queue something before a Warzone pops being about as strat happy as I've managed so far on that. Once recipes start taking a number of hours then there will be decisions to make if you're also intending to do leveling content at the same time.

Having watched TotalBiscuit's videos of pvp in SW:TOR I have to agree that it really is a lot of fun. It did help that in my first Warzone I topped the damage and kill totals as the lowest level player on my team (smug grin), but even in the second which was more balanced and the third where i was mostly getting owned it was all great fun.

Players do seem to have more health in SW than Rift which at least at this level means no one was getting 1 or 2 shot. I was feeling rather ineffective at times. One of my key skills 'Force Lightning' barely scratching some players but i definitely prefer this to the inevitable whining about OP abilities which would be much more apparent in Rift.

There's plenty of tactics to play with. The key confrontation for me being in trying to maintain distance on a Jedi Warrior by using knockbacks, stuns and slows and yes ,the old MMO PVP run around your opponent in circles is very much alive here.

So a big thumbs up to PVP so far.

I also managed to solo the first Flashpoint all the way to the last 'boss' (yes, if i can solo anything, then i will...) My meatshield companion couldn't take the damage from one of his attacks very well and combined with adds that took a bit of killing on their own I couldn't whittle his health below about 10%. I might have to admit defeat and drag my absent friend into this, or perhaps level past it a little and come back.

I also started on a Bounty Hunter up to about level 5. Initial impressions are that the blaster combat is also good fun and the storyline took a nice early twist. There's also plenty of opportunity for 'saying you did when you didn't' until my nose got extra long and pointy.

I still logged Rift today to knock out the two Kelari Expedition dailies which took all of 10 minutes. I may perhaps be turning into a 'Raidlogger'.

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