In patch 1.3 augments are getting some love thanks to "kits" that will allow augments to be added to any item. My question is - are these kits exclusive? If I crit-craft an item with an augment slot, does the kit "overwrite" that slot if it is applied, or does that kit stack, providing me with an item that has two augment slots? This is a big issue for crafters - if the slots stack then there will continue to be a huge market for the best-in-class crit-crafted augment gear. If augment slots are overwritten by the kits then there will no longer be any incentive to burn materials trying to crit-craft augmented gear, and in short order everyone will be wearing min-level oranges with augment slots via kits. As an aside, I'm still on the lookout for orange wrists and belts that I can acquire for my companions. So far there's been no joy - are we ever going to see orange companion gear for these slots?

Actually IkeBohm it seems that virtually everyone knows a TROLL when they encounter one, and you qualify handsomely. Go and spread your discord elsewhere - your negative attitude is not welcome here.

@primediusx As stated previously - it's very unlikely that you'll be penalized for earning an additional level or two. The folks who are going to get hammered are the ones who spent many hours camped within AOE range of repub spawn points grinding massive valor.

Meh... I won't argue that BioWare has implemented some pretty messed up mechanics. Illum is definitely broken in its current form. I'm fairly certain that we all know they need to implement diminishing returns on PvP kills, isolate individual/group objectives, remove enemy location spam, etc. Give them time to do so. There are a few hundred "power-leveled-to-fifty" folks out there who are determined to proclaim the game broken-for-ever because it hasn't been tweaked to accommodate for their playstyles yet... Get over it. It's going to be months before solid balance between classes is achieved - players are clever and are *not* willing to expose their advantages to developers if they believe they have an edge over other competitors. Nobody is going to come out publicly and say "it's OK to nerf me". In time, the Devs will recognize the issues, address them, and balance gameplay appropriately. It's not going to happen overnight. Be patient.

@IkeBohm Yep. Troll. Bye.

@IkeBohm Actually, as to your comment about your *entitlement* in the manner that you respond... Yes, you *do* have to respond in a civilized, mature and reasonable manner to issues you take umbrage with. That's pretty much how we do things out here in the real world. Failure to do so labels you as a troll.

@IkeBohm I was *not* responding to you or your posts, hence the @. Why the hate?

@ LouisArmstrong Well I used a wallet analogy... Does that count? Look, what you are experiencing is a series of near identical analogies that are based on "how you are expected to behave in a civilized society". You are absolutely entitled to choose to disregard those expectations and do whatever the hell you want. But don't expect to be rewarded/accepted/respected for those decisions. It ain't gonna happen. If you choose to do things that others regard as unacceptable *social* behavior then you must accept the inevitable consequence of being unwelcome as a member of civilized society. You are *not* entitled to be a jerk. You are *not* entitled to be rewarded for taking advantage of an exploit that others chose to disregard as an error by the developers. You don't get a "get out of jail free" card by choosing to avoid taking responsibility for your actions. Proclaiming innocence after admitting culpability falls on deaf ears.

@gankatron I'm pretty sure that if you didn't actually make it to within AOE spamming of the rez/spawn point (and subsequently spent the next ten hours insta-ganking repubs the moment they arrived) then you're not going to be unfairly punished. Maybe lose a bit of that easy valor, but nothing more. I doubt anyone is raging against folks who gained a level or two while engaging in what could be honestly assumed to be "operating as expected" mechanics. Given the level of detail that BioWare logs events at, it's very likely that they'll be able to precisely target the individuals who were obviously taking advantage of exploitable mechanics. If, however, you do end up feeling that you've been penalized unfairly, I hope that you open a CS ticket with the same calm and well stated position you've taken here. Love the handle, BTW

@LouisArmstrong Theft as a consequence of opportunity is still theft. Saying "I took the wallet because it was there" doesn't make the act any less reprehensible. Proclaiming that this is "just a game" and that human ethical values do therefore not apply ignores the fact that you *are* interacting with other humans. This is RL, just mediated by a game. You are still subject to judgement by others for the choices you make.

@Loekii Please provide specific examples - a generalized proclamation is not a fact. It's just a troll.

@Loekii And you know for certain that these remedies were available because [a] you are a developer working on the game and understand how easy it would have been enact these changes or you are making broad assumptions based on absolutely no factual information from a position of complete ignorance? I vote for on this one.

So in an ideal world this is what's going to happen... SCRIPT - Check player data logs Total Valor Reduction = 0 --- for the period of time during which exploiting was possible check player events... ------ If the Player gained valor --------- And was within a fixed distance of opposition spawn point ------------ Add awarded valor to "Total Valor Reduction" Reduce Valor by "Total Valor Reduction" amount If amount of valor gained was above "X" then... --- Apply 24 hour ban-hammer If amount of valor gained was above "X" + "Y" and the total number of offenders is small then... --- Manually review player inventory and remove any awards/gear that are inappropriate But if there were a LOT of offenders... --- Write another script that can figure out what stuff was ill-gotten and wipe it This won't happen overnight. It might even take many weeks before these consequences are felt. That's because the scripts will need to be written, reviewed, tested, test run on the ENTIRE database for that period for EVERY server, the results of the test run scrutinized, authorization to take action based on those results approved, and then finally enacted. And even then, there will likely be some unfairly penalized players who will make polite requests for CS to review their cases, and where those players state their case calmly and rationally, it's likely that CS will actually pay attention to them. At any rate, that's how I'd handle it. For those folks out there who are whinging that it's BioWare's fault that the mechanics allowed them to take advantage of what was clearly NOT an intended mechanic, let me sum this up as an ethical situation in more concrete RL terms... If you were to discover that typing a special code into the keypad of a bank machine would dispense twenty dollars every time you enter it, would you do so? Would you do so KNOWING that a camera is recording you every time you do it? Would you do so if you had to insert you bank card (thus identifying yourself, with those photos of you confirming your actions)? Would you try to convince the police officers who would then come to your house that it's the bank's fault for letting you take that money from them? That you *deserved* to keep the money because you'd put in the time to acquire it? Get real. Spawn camping for valor farming is, in my mind, clearly an exploit, and a rather egregious one given that there were actual human victims who were unable to extricate themselves from the area without abandoning their characters until the situation could be brought under control. Saying "They should have shut down the servers/applied a patch/whatever vague assertion attempting to make the developer culpable" is a statement made from ignorance regarding the complexity of the server system and the fact that the MAJORITY of players were entirely unaffected - yes, folks, in reality the population of level 50 hardcore PvPers is pretty tiny compared to the vast majority of folks who are casually crawling their way to endgame. And by the way, it still doesn't justify patently unethical activities. So, for everyone who's going to see that big-chunk-o-valor vanish "real soon now", just suck it up. You'll still be able to brag to the newbies in a few years that you were there when the Valor-Vending-Machine incident happened, and maybe you'll have the screenshots to prove it. Meanwhile, let's cut the developers some slack - I lived through WoW from launch, and it was a much bumpier ride than this has been.

@Reaper Blue and green crystals are only usable by light 1 and above, and more powerful crystals also require a suitable character level. The same is true for reds, but they require darkside alignment rather than light. Check the tool-tip info on the crystals. You may be crafting crystals that are wrong-aligned or too high level for you to use. I've noticed that the light/dark requirements can be a bit confusing - sabers use "requires light/dark N or above" while crystals use "forbidden to light/dark N or above". This likely means that players who are trying for "neutral" alignment, while being able to use virtually any color crystal, are limited to a very small number of moddable hilts - all the hilts I've come across on the GTN seem to have light/dark minimums on them. Not necessarily a bug, but crafters would benefit from more non-aligned hilts for the market.

The r/g/b rare node spawns are fairly evenly distributed in my experience. It may be that red is just much easier to spot amidst the predominantly g/b worlds. I've got stacks of all three and they're within 10% of each other quantity wise, but I'm also an obsessive/compulsive gatherer so play with one-eye glued to the minimap. My guess is that the RNG gods are, entirely by coincidence, spawning red nodes with unfortunate frequency in your vicinity.

Why would you stop at a single lvl 50? Collect the entire set! With eight max-level chars you have a completely self-sustaining ecosystem - a toon for every occasion, and maxed out crafting professions that will keep you grinding mats for years to come (must... have... every... recipe). And that's just sticking to one faction. If you really want to rock then you'll roll all eight advanced classes for both sides on separate servers, which should keep you completely booked until the next major expansion. Maxed out your companion affections yet? What about your light/dark alignment? Have you finished *all* of your class quests? What about those flashpoints you skipped? Played them at hard mode? Oh, and how high is your PvP rank? Just sayin'... If all that's not working for you, well there's not much anyone can suggest other than to go hang out in Dal and do your JC dailies. Personally I've gotten pretty tired of frostbolting elementals. Explosive darts, on the other hand, never get old

OK, so I finally clued in and realized that I had a PvE option - just walk away from Alderaan for a bit, head over to Tarris and do all the side-quests and bonus missions. That bumped my Juggernaut from 32 to 35 in one day of play, and between drops and local commendations geared me up sufficiently to compensate for my not-so-amazing reflexes. Level 30 class quest... Done! Doing warzones was never really an option for me personally. One of the things that I can see being very hard for devs to deal with is that they need to tweak game play for the majority of players (which ends up being those damn kids who dice me into little itty bitty pieces in PvP). Consequently I'm not a big PvP fan just because, even with the field leveled in terms of gear/power, I just can't compete with someone twenty-five years younger than myself in an arena that doesn't provide ways to take advantage of wisdom and guile vs. speed and reaction-time --- and it's unfortunate that many players feel free to be disparaging towards folks who can't match their expectations. It's frustrating to be slammed with L2Ps when you *do* know your class, and just can't keep up with the speed at which things are happening. So, for anyone out there trying to solo their way through the really tough content who stumbles upon this thread, don't get so caught up in the storyline that you forget that there *are* missions available on the next planet, and it now seems likely to me that it's an intentional/viable path to out-level the intended "this will be a huge challenge" class quests by side stepping them for a bit. Luck to all, and may the Force be with you.

OK, I know this is an MMO and we're supposed to conscript others to help us out when things get tough but... I've been stuck soloing the "Choke Point" class quest. I've probably done it 20 times now, and failed every one. I've max leveled my character and run out of PvE content to move forward, but I still get killed every time I try to do this objective. I've read several threads on the net that describe how to micro manage the event - unfortunately I'm not frackin' fifteen years old and don't have the reflexes/dexterity to keep up with the speed of the encounter. Every progression event until now has been manageable - sure I've had to replay a few several times to nail them, but I managed. This one is frankly impossible at my current level and physical ability. And that's what's got me frustrated. I'm OK with an event/mission that is designed for a specific level, so long as there is an alternative which allows me to side-step it until I'm sufficiently over-leveled to compensate for my age/lack-of-teenage-reflexes. But this sucker has utterly blocked my forward progress. At this point, it seems that my only alternative is to grind off a couple of levels killing random mobs (I'm guessing that the Alderaan bonus missions won't unlock until I nail this infuriating class quest). Don't get me wrong here - my frustration is a consequence of how much I have been enjoying the game. The previous Tatooine class quest was tough, but ultimately manageable, and I felt pretty darned good completing it. However, getting killed over and over again on the Choke Point quest, and having to re-grind the same tunnel every time before I can even restart the encounter, is just making me angry. Please fix this - for the love of all that is holy put a medical droid in the instance so us less-nimble folks can restart at the beginning of each phase rather than having to re-run the entire encounter over and over again. Give us enough bonus missions to over-level this sucker, or just nerf it a bit so that, after twenty tries, we're not getting killed on stage 2 with one droid left at 5% health. I cant face grinding off two levels on random mobs, so I'm gonna go play alts for a while and pray that something changes. Otherwise, I suspect my Sith Juggernaut may well never progress past level 31.

Well, personally I've been running as a 3x gatherer (scavenge/bio/arch), haven't sold a single resource on the GTN, and either equipped the BoE gear I've picked up or mailed it to an alt. The only stuff I've sold was either vendor junk or previously bound (not usable by companions) gear. At lvl 25 I had over 80K in the bank (which got gouged by speeder training) and had max level mods for all of my orange gear (paid for with commendations, not cash). No PvP, no Flashpoint creds, just doing the regular + bonus missions. So, while slicing may provide a nice credit buffer, it's absolutely unnecessary, and I'm figuring I'll either sell the mats I've farmed for a nice profit in a few weeks when folks start aggressively purchasing them to power-level their lvl 50 chars, or I'll use them myself to lvl my primary/alt professions. Win either way. Sure, slicing looks like the go-to prof in these early days, but in the long run those credit bags aren't going to scale with the general economy, and eventually they'll become trivial. While I hate to point at WoW as an example, it's fairly representative of MMO economics - GTN prices will ultimately appear to be stratospheric vs. vendor product, but the value of gathered mats will balance out those prices. I really like that SWTOR has the alternative BoP currency for purchasing level-appropriate gear/mods. You'll always be able to side-step the mainstream economy if doing GTN isn't your thing. If you want to min/max while leveling, then just take gathering profs and buy the gear you need with the profit from selling the mats. The dedicated crafters will love you. Meanwhile, I'm just waiting for some enterprising Artifice crafter to figure out that I'd like to spend a hefty chunk of cash for a decent blue +End crystal to replace my horribly obsolete DDE yellow/black one. Seriously, as a light-side Sith I am just aching to *show my color*!