The icons for the three "new" debuffs for helping to track which roles stay out of the circle are: Sampled: DPS: Sampled: Healer: Sampled: Tank: They have the description of: "The Propagator Core XR-53 has consumed a sample from a [role]! It probably can't do that again..." DPS should appear after a Rampaging Construct is spawned, Healer after a Supplicant Construct, and Tank after a Defender Construct.

As my group understood it, the mechanic in VM works as follows: Every time Prime Directive is cast, one of the characters in the AOE is randomly selected. Based on the role of the character selected the following will spawn: Target is Tank: Defender Construct Target is Healer: Supplicant Construct Target is DPS: Rampaging Construct No target or repeat role: Mistaken Construct Each of these three adds can only spawn once. Using one of our runs as an example, during the first Prime Directive we spawned a Rampaging Construct. During the second we spawned a Defender Construct. During the third Prime Directive, we only had our tank and DPS in the circle, so the only options were Rampaging or Defender. Since both of those had already spawned, we instead got a Mistaken Construct. So what you have to do is have people stay out of the AOE once their role has spawned its corresponding add. Or do what we did and just predetermine the order that you'll spawn the three adds and only have people of the correct role in the circle for each cast. This differs from SM where the only construct that can spawn is the Powerful Construct, which does not have any role requirements so you just need anyone in the circle.

Mechanic as my group came to understand it was that the boss can only spawn one of each of the three role mobs per fight. If it would spawn a second mob of the same type then it will spawn a mistaken instead. Since there are only 3 roles, it will always spawn a mistaken on the fourth use, which is also present in SM. Once we figured this out, we didn't really both experimenting on its logic for choosing the role. We just had one of the roles exclusively stand in the circle. I think we went with T->H->D. Not sure whether it is possible to have a mistaken spawn if everyone is standing in the area or not since we didn't experiment with that.

Did you enjoy fighting the Propagator Core XR-53 on Veteran? I've said it before that I am just not much of a group content person, so this generally isn't my idea of fun. I will say that there were no deaths that felt like they were cheap once my group had figured out the mechanics. What was your operation comp by role? First run was 2H, 1T, and 5D. Subsequent runs were 1H, 1T, and 5D after one of the healers just left. Final run was 1H, 1T, and 6D. Knowing that the art is still WIP, did you find that an ability was confusing after you had seen it multiple times? Put another way, did you find what the boss was doing to be intuitive? There was no issue with the art. I broadly understood what was happening. Did you find the phase transitions clear? Assuming the "phases" are meant to be the role based adds, then yeah they were clear. How did you feel about the clear time of the fight? Seemed fine. Once we actually knew the fight and decided to fill up the last slot, we cleared it before the third role add spawned. Did you find that the Digestive Enzyme debuff was manageable? Yes and no. I knew what to do and when I did it, everything was fine. Sometimes though, there would just be long periods in the fight where so much was going on on screen that I didn't notice the orange cone. I'm pretty sure he was using the move, and I just wasn't noticing it because I'm not used to all the stuff popping up on screen. There were however occasions where I noticed the orange cone, got into it and then just didn't seem to lose any stacks. I'm not sure what was happening in these cases, maybe the people in the cone were determined before the cone disappeared so it looked like I should be hit but I wasn't? Did you find pool management reasonable? Not entirely sure what you mean here. We never ran out of space and I think we only had recovery protocol on a pool once. I was using a Vengeance Juggernaut and I'm pretty sure one other person was using an AOE focused DPS, so while we didn't get all of them we were able to kill off a large number of the imperfects before they could make a pool and our tank was able to effectively move the boss to a manageable location when things got hairy. Did any of the role specific adds have an outsized level of difficulty or lack thereof? They seemed to all be around the same level of difficulty. We were always able to kill them and still have time to wail on the boss before he got back up. Were there any abilities that felt too strong or too weak in damage output? Not that I noticed. Please mention any bugs that you encountered, and please include any steps required to reproduce that bug. Only bug that I'm aware of was one of the party members mentioning getting over 100 of the corrupted processors. Do you have any other thoughts, comments, concerns, or criticisms about the Propagator Core XR-53 fight? Nothing that comes to mind. Not one of those two groups, but my group used a similar setup. And honestly that standard group comp would probably have made things harder for us. Or at the very least slower without any actual benefit. As far as I am aware, our tank never had any issues solo tanking. The only time our single healer had issues was when one of us (aka me) got 20+ stacks as they said they had to tunnel heal anyone with that many stacks. In our second to last run with 7 people, we triggered a mistaken add by accident while the boss was at 10%. We absolutely would have won that round had we not messed up the mechanics. Only reason we got our group size up to 8 was to reduce the odds of us messing it up again by killing it before it got to that point. I am not a VM player, so I imagine my DPS was holding the group back somewhat. It is probably possible to do with 4 competent DPS, but unless I randomly pugged with a top tier tank and healer (not impossible), it seems to me like an extra tank or healer would just slow things down compared to a team with 6 DPS and 1 competent Tank and 1 competent Heal.

So answering for revised version. Previously did runs on the first day of testing, which did not include any clears. Did you enjoy fighting the Propagator Core XR-53? Not particularly, but this time I think that is just the standard "don't care for group stuff" issues more so than any aspects of the fight itself. What was your operation comp by role? I think we were 6 Damage and 2 Heals. I didn't double check though. Pretty sure we were only using off-tanks though. Knowing that the art is still WIP, did you find that an ability was confusing after you had seen it multiple times? Put another way, did you find what the boss was doing to be intuitive? This time I was playing at range, so I mostly just ignored his abilities unless there was a red circle around me. Did you find the phase transitions clear? Still not sure what you mean by phase transitions. I guess the difference between summoning the small ads and the powerful construct? If so then yes, but I was also trying to camp near the spawn point to keep an eye on everything that spawned. How did you feel about the clear time of the fight? In the run that we succeeded, it it was fine. I didn't measure, but assuming it is 2 min per cycle then we were likely between 6-7 min. But it took us a few more runs than I would like before we finally pulled it off. Did you find that the small skulls effectively communicated an increasing sense of danger? Did you notice them during the fight? Were they helpful or distracting? Was playing at range and killing the imperfects, so I barely encountered any digestive acid. I guess they were sort of useful for telling me that I needed to move because the range for the green pools is still slightly off. Were there any abilities that felt too strong or too weak in damage output? Depends on the intent for Mistaken Construct. It is described as a soft enrage in the update notes, but in practice it is a near instant wipe when it spawns. This was really annoying because the two times it spawned for my group we were at 5% and 3% left, so we were on the verge of killing it. If it is meant as a hard time limit, then okay whatever. But calling it a "soft enrage" feels like there is supposed to still be some time left to finish things off. Were there any abilities that you felt were too complex, specifically for a Story difficulty encounter? Nothing comes to mind. Did you feel that the Propagator Core XR-53 was sufficiently difficult for Story difficulty? Did you find it significantly more or less challenging than other Story mode Operations? If it is meant to be clearable by balanced PUGs then it probably needs to be tuned down a little still. As I said, my group had 6 DPS and we still failed to kill it under the time limit twice. Now it is very possible that we just had some bad DPS in the group (I certainly would not consider myself to be great), but with 4 DPS of random skill level, I could certainly see a group struggling to clear this even more than we did. I think it is probably in the right ballpark now though. Did you feel that the difficulty of the Powerful Construct and Imperfect Construct were appropriate for Story mode? Did you have difficulty dealing with either enemy? Seemed fine. Please mention any bugs that you encountered, and please include any steps required to reproduce that bug. Still had the issue of visually being outside of the green puddle and getting damaged. There was a lot less green this time around, so it was less of an issue, but still annoying. Do you have any other thoughts, comments, concerns, or criticisms about the Propagator Core XR-53 fight? Nothing particular comes to mind.

So I just took a look at the boss's abilities on Jedipedia, and it looks to me like the ability Recovery Protocol is the phase change? If that is the case, then my group triggered the phase change and I don't believe anyone realized it was a phase change. The only thing I noticed was that it was an unusually long ability, but I was busy with other stuff so I thought it was just healing or something. As you stand in the green stuff, you gain stacks of a DoT. The more stacks you get the more damage you take. As the number of stacks go up, the number of skulls above your character increase. I was playing melee, so it was something that I noticed a lot. I want to say the highest I saw was five.

Did you enjoy fighting the Propagator Core XR-53? Nope. We did at least five runs, and I felt like they were just a waste of everyone's time. What was your operation comp by role? 4 DPS, 2 Heal, 2 Tank Knowing that the art is still WIP, did you find that an ability was confusing after you had seen it multiple times? Put another way, did you find what the boss was doing to be intuitive? I guess it was intuitive? I don't know because we never beat it, so I don't know if we were doing things wrong or not. Our tank commented that they didn't get the boss's movement though. Did you find the phase transitions clear? It has phases? We got it down to 35% on our best run and it didn't seem like it ever changed what it was doing. How did you feel about the clear time of the fight? Never cleared it, but it felt like it was taking too long. Did you find that the small skulls effectively communicated an increasing sense of danger? Did you notice them during the fight? Were they helpful or distracting? I mean I noticed them and I understood they meant danger, but I didn't find them helpful or distracting. Were there any abilities that felt too strong or too weak in damage output? I wasn't paying attention to specific damage by specific abilities, so no idea. Were there any abilities that you felt were too complex, specifically for a Story difficulty encounter? Again, group never cleared it, and I can't tell you what went wrong for sure so I don't know if it was because something was too complex or not. Did you feel that the Propagator Core XR-53 was sufficiently difficult for Story difficulty? Did you find it significantly more or less challenging than other Story mode Operations? Significantly harder than any other Story Mode Operation that I've run (have not run R-4). Part of that is just that we didn't know how to run it, but it also just seemed a lot more punishing (and tedious) than most story mode operations. Did you feel that the difficulty of the Powerful Construct and Imperfect Construct were appropriate for Story mode? Did you have difficulty dealing with either enemy? Powerful construct was fine? Imperfect Constructs had way too much HP. We tried to kill them on a few of our runs, but the idea never stuck because you needed 3 DPS (maybe 2 if they both notice it fast enough?) to kill them and having DPS constantly killing them would just mean we weren't doing anything to the boss because they were constantly spawning. This is probably the mechanic we failed on, but I don't see a PUG pulling that off regularly. Organized group with voice chat probably could do it, but that level of coordination feels too high for Story Please mention any bugs that you encountered, and please include any steps required to reproduce that bug. *shrug* Nothing jumped out as a bug, but I was mostly focused on not stepping in the digestive acid. Do you have any other thoughts, comments, concerns, or criticisms about the Propagator Core XR-53 fight? I'm sure experienced raiders will be able to pull this off, but as a story mode lair raid, it is way too difficult for PUGs that include people that don't do serious raiding. Also, I was playing as melee, and the boss just didn't feel good to me because I had to constantly run out of range of the boss because of the digestive acid while I was at 14 or something stacks. Probably did not help our group at all that melee DPS had the choices of dying or doing nothing.

You don't have to do them all in one day. The trackers for your progress are under achievements. I don't remember what category they were under (Events maybe?), but they have names like "Hoth Encounters: Empire." Also you need to complete 25 on each planet to complete them, not 15.

Finished up Imp side this morning. No changes to my previous answers, but some additional thoughts on missions that I ran today. Maintaining Order - The respawn timer is way too slow. I walked into the area with nothing there and spent three minutes trying to figure out what to do. I'd think it was bugged, but a single group respawned while I was trying to figure out what was going on. Also there was one group of two units that didn't cause the temporary ability to trigger. Whitefang Woes - Tissue sample drop rate felt too low. I had to kill something like twice the number of cats that the mission required to get enough samples. Under Fire - I entered the area, and I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Unnecessary Repairs - I could not find the interactables. I don't know if I was looking in the wrong place or they were on respawn and the timer is too long, but after a few min I just gave up. (Ice Fishing) - Sometimes while doing the ice fishing, I just didn't get the item. I heard the sound for a successful pick up, I got 250 conquest points, but when the probe returned I had no fish. I don't know what triggered this. Might be that I moved too far away while the probe was doing its thing? I don't know if that could do it, but it is the only thing I can think of. (The Wolf) - This boss fight feels a bit overpowered. Or perhaps more accurately, a bit too bullet spongey. Random Thought - Strong and elite enemies should count for more in the kill missions. As it is, there is no incentive to bother with them because you gain as much as a normal enemy but take a decent amount longer. The jawas on the hill have three explosive fuel tanks (or something) with them. Pick one of them up, move it to the green arrow, and then get the boss to walk over the explosive to set it off and temporarily stun it disabling the shield.

So for context, I just finished the two Republic achievements, so I've completed 50 at the moment. Was it easy to locate Dynamic Encounters? Yes very easy to find. Were you able to spend your play session going from Encounter to Encounter with little or no downtime? Yes. I do feel like Tatooine might be in need of a few more active encounters at a time though as I was able to completely exhaust the map. This didn't cause me downtime though as the last one I completed was my 25th one. Was there enough variety in Encounter objectives? Hoth, absolutely. Tatooine...it is close. I enjoyed the stupid ones on Hoth like taking Taun Fawns up a sheet of ice so they can slide. While Tatooine did have some of those, it felt a little more combat focused. I wouldn't say the mix is wrong, but it is right on the edge of it. Did it take a reasonable amount of time to complete Encounters? I would say yes for the non-combat ones. For the combat ones, some of them felt like they were dragging. These might have been ones that were meant as group effort, but I can't always tell whether they are meant to be or not. Respawn timers for some things like unique enemies or interactable objects felt a little long due to the number of people going after some of them at the same time. I remember there is mission to destroy spice on the SE part of the Dune Sea. Had four people running around in circles waiting from the spice to respawn. For unique enemy bosses, might make sense to add an interactable to spawn them in case someone from the other faction was fighting it the moment you showed up. Did the travel time between Encounters feel reasonable? Yes. Was it clear what you needed to do in Encounters? Generally yes. The only one that I'm still sort of confused on is the treasure hunting one where you have to buy items. I assume the intent is to guess the right one with a 20% chance, but sometime when I used an item no snow pile formed, and I don't know if that means the item glitched, the pile formed and I don't see it, or if it is how it is supposed to work. Did you generally understand what your character was being asked to do and why? Yes for every mission that have VO. There were some that just didn't have any, but I assume that falls under the unfinished assets part. I should note that some of the VOs were alien speech, which would be a problem on Live since I don't have NPC chatter on on my Live setup. Also normally have my chat minimized. XD What was your favorite Encounter and why? Helping Taun Fawns get to slide because that was adorable. Second place goes to ice fishing. Third place goes to the lava suit. Reall just put all of the silly non-combat ones at the top of the list. What was your least favorite Encounter and why? That is a tough one. I don't know if I had a single specific one that I disliked more than any other. I would say that the class of "kill 40+ mobs" was my least favorite with none of the ones in that class particularly standing out. The one where everyone in the area shares progress are fine, but I know there were some of those that didn't share progress. Please mention any bugs you encountered. On Hoth I had one of the three Brother quests active on Pub side. When I went to the location, there two copies of one of the three Brothers as both an enemy and a green NPC. I think what happened here is that a different Brother quest was active Imp side? I'm not 100% sure, but I fought the guy who was there initially, then the guy that I needed to kill respawned (as he was dead when I arrived), I killed the first guy, and then the fight took so long that the first guy respawned while I was fighting the guy I needed. Whole thing was a mess. They should either be moved to different locations or have logic that prevents them from triggering at the same time even from different factions. Also on Hoth, I was following active dynamic encounters, and ended up in the Imp starting area. I had two active Dynamic Encounters there, and both of them had me fighting Pubs (even got the achievement for killing 50 Pubs on Hoth from the two encounters). I don't think I was supposed to be able to get those. XD I'm not sure if progress sharing with everyone in an area is working on any of the Hoth quests. I did both Imperial Attack (on the Pub starting zone) and the Hidden Chain quest with other people in the area, and I didn't notice anything going up. I actually I was remembering the introduction video wrong and that just wasn't a thing till I came across it on Tatooine pretty quickly. There is one mission on Hoth (I think Hidden Chain?) where you can call in reinforcements. This is does not help. When the NPC reinforcements did too much damage to an enemy then I noticed that I wasn't getting credit. So it looked to me like I was actually making things longer by calling them in. Non-Bug Thoughts I'm not a fan of the percentage completion on a lot of the quests. Even less of a fan of how the quests just randomly switched between them. I liked percentage when it was a shared quest since I won't in theory need to get all of the kills. But I know the percentages were used in some quests that are solely soloable, and they made it hard to judge how much I had left to do since the percentage for each kill changed between each mission. So 80% could mean 2 kills left or 12. Also might make sense to add a tag to Dynamic Event names to indicate when a mission shares progress with people in an area. Probably not [Shared], but I'm sure there is something that can be used.

Any idea on when it will be available? I am currently getting this when I try: Edit: Working now.

Eh, I got all 40 killed on the first day of the season, so it isn't really an issue for me personally. The intent is probably for you to do the Ancient Enemies objective each week (2 bosses per week x 20 weeks = 40 bosses), and that just got easier with the season being extended. But if hunting them down isn't something you enjoy, then just don't do it. Whole point of playing the game is to have fun after all. *shrug* That's in tomorrow's patch.

The follow up line you are freaking out over is completely consistent with the line that I quoted. "After the update, if you have over 100 tokens you will still have your tokens but be unable to earn more until you spend enough to be below the cap." (emphasis added) It says directly in there that if you are over the cap, you have to spend to get below the cap before you can earn any more. That means you can go above the cap during the currency merge. The reason they are encouraging you to spend now is because if people don't do it before hand and then kill a DvL boss then they won't be able to claim their reward due to being over the cap without quickly running to the fleet buying a bunch of stuff and then running back to the corpse that may or may not still be there.

It does exactly that? (emphasis added) You can? You just can't earn anymore until you get it below 100 just like you would if you were at 100.

On the first day there was a group on SS that was grinding up to 40 kills and just constantly grabbing new people who wanted the objective as other people cycled out. So there are at least a few people on SS that already have the 40 kills for the achievement.