Group Finder almost all of us were happy to see more options in group finder, and finally some love for mini Operations that were Orphaned before before. Unfortunately the bonuses and schedules exposed 3 absolutely necessary changes. Problem: Full group are forced into random content to recieve rewards, despite no benift to them or anyone else working around this silly restriction has not only been a massive headache for full groups but also disheartening for for partial groups that get repeatedly rejected while in queue due to it. Solution: Allow full groups to queue for specific content to take advantage of transport and cyclic offerings and credit them for doing the cyclic content of their choice. [*]Problem: Conversion to Operations groups requires all members to be outside of a phased instance, including strongholds Solution: only check that group leader is outside of a phase. normal transport rules apply. [*]Problem: Group memebers randomly assigned to different instances when moving to new locations This is especially problematic for Veteran Flashpoints, which require turn ins, but also applies to other groups such as world bosses. This used to work.... now it absolutely does not. Solution: find a way to reinstate the block logic for groups to end up at the same instance. Conquest / Renown Many of us are disappointed by the grind this has become, the impossibility of attaining achievements from it, and it's absolute necessity on an economic level..... it truly is a gordian knot of despairing complexity with at least 3 major problems Problem: Achievents are not obtained by "whoever puts in the most effort, but by whether or not you can get a character into one of the handful of sweatshop guilds that ALWAYS win it. it made a little more sense back when the system was new, and it let guilds compete to improve themselves faster. unfortunately it's also a system that rewards mindless zerging. With turn over rates being what they are in large guilds there is NEVER an incentive not to chase the achievement for newer members, leaveing the same groups to win it every single time Solution: it's imperfect, but opening up the achievement to the entire leader board, and adding more planets to some of the conquest weeks would definitely relax the pressure for the top hanful to always take the crown, and would offer a chance for some of the lower rung guild to actually get something out of it. leave the perks to first place, but at least let people have a chance to make the achievement. [*]Problem: Conquest is a mind numbing grind Some people found KP Farm and they believed it'd change who was in top spot for CQ (hint: nope). But most of us found it and thought "great, I can knock this out quick and then play what I actually want to". Conquest has been great at reintroducing some under utilized content, but it's limits has been that it's cyclically static, and too slow to finish, leaving little time for things people enjoy. It's populated lower tier planets, but not in a good way as new and old players are ofte competing for the same resources. Solution: make conquest faster.... MUCH faster. repeatable big point objectives aren't the way, that just funnels people into doing the same things, instead, massively increase points (or decrease required caps). this has the follow on effect of allowing small guilds to effectively hit larger yields if they want to put the effort into it. which leads us to our final... [*]Problem: Player Financial resources should not be dependent on guild size. Yes, I'm absolutely talking about crafting materials being less abundant for lower yield guilds, and absent completely for the unguilded. this is entirely backwards, and essentially punishes players for not being part of a large guild Solution: Flip the materials rewards around, put a fixed (low) number on guild reward provided materials, and the higher number on personal rewards. as a bonus this would also reduce the boom / bust cycle of prices currently being abused by resellers, since rewards would come to people all week instead of one huge dump. and finally we have... Crafting 0MFG where to begin here? it's become clear through the years that BW both hates crafting and despises crafters... why else would they create for us the only system in the game that not only gets harder every expac, but also more expensive, and more time consuming, while everything else remains relatively the same? Ignoring for the moment numerous bugs that have gone unaddressed over time, Onslaught has engendered a whole new type of hell. It has not only ignored the lessons of the past, but revived old horrors, and invented entirely new ones. Here are 4 core changes that might restore some semblance of sanity (assuming bugs are fixed) Problem: there is no sane combination of missions that results in a ratio of materials to make artifact level base components without massive excesses of either prototype or premiums. No, really... and it mostly comes down to needing more artifact mats to feed to crafting, but even at the highest levels, Prototype mats are too numerous by comparison, and premiums too low. it gets worse if you look at the sheer number of required mats, and the time from collection to production for a single crafted item. Solution: realign the materials received on missions (starting with higher artifact values), so that users aren't collecting piles of junk for absolutely no reason. [*]Problem: Commodity Crafted items cost more than Exclusive Luxury crafted items to craft, to the point of uselessness (Item crafting costs are determined by stat totals, not availability) Med units, Stims, Adrenals, Reusables, Augments.... what doe all these things have in common? they're all exclussive to crafting (can't be generated by any of means) and they're all cheaper to produce than a single armoring mod that is too low level tot even drop for 306 geared character... meaning it costs more to make TRASH, than it does to make these items. Likewise it would take more than a years worth of materials just to lean to make this same TRASH. it shouldn't take a genius to see what's wrong here. Solution: raise crafting costs on reusables, Drastically lower costs on Commodity (eg world/boss drop comparative) items. modifications should cost less than equipment pieces, which should cost less than exclusive items. [*]Problem: Documentation and bug fixes are nonexistant We've still got completely broken items (+crit amps), conflicting mislableing of items (synth components), missions that only return partial rewards, undocumented changes to failure (increased) and critical (reduced) rates, items for which criticals do absolutely nothing (tacticals / set boxes), etc ad nauseam Solution:: If you can find time to workshop names for monsters and dialog for characters, you can at least show the same care and do the same for mission names, item labels, and write down what things affect and how. [*]Problem: Crafting has become exceedingly grinding. every crafter knows it. before onslaught I could craft 3 batches of finished goods a day across 6 toons, 6 days a weeks and still have time for other content. now I get 1 batch a day, over 3 days, across 3 toons.... and I require 15 other toons in support of that.... in business terms, my output is now 1/12 of what it was in a week, and my workforce has tripled in size.... seriously I have a dozen extra toons that all I do is log in, collect mats, assign missions, and lgg out.... ~30mins per pass Solution: Easy solution? go back to the old non-teired system.... because the rquired fixes for this are so wide sweeping as to be more work. all costs would have to be radically reduced, all mat reutrns would need increased and stabilized, times would need to be reduced as well. I could continue on about the absurdity of amplifiers, paying an extra 1.5m fee per character to continue crafting, whilst simultaneously being robbedd of success and critical which I can only partially buy back via gear that's useless in general content, but honestly, what's the point? I do not expect any of these things to be addressed beyond a cursory pass, if even that. it's absolutely why my sub is going into hiatus soon.

it's a Drop item..... it *May* be in all the drop tables, but AFAIK it has only been seen dropping from Swarm Lord, and pretty rarely at that..... there's 2 others that are known to drop from him that are also absurdly rare

Was never a thing Is still a thing, for all equipment types, see L/D vendors ... I'm still waiting on Grey to have mattered (more than jjust one classes never actually usable title, and anothers ability to choose a light or dark outcome). Ok, no true; I gave up waiting long ago.

happens to the best of us. for anyone else stuck and unsure what the answer means, make sure the items you are crafting don't have grey numbers.... green(1), yellow(2-3),and orange(4) are the ones that raise your skill (same applies to crew missions)

Probably should have mentioned that calculation (95% ^ Attempts) only works for dominant odds over 50%, otherwise you have to calculate it as (1000% - [100% - non_dominant] ^ Attempts) which isn't very intuitive, but does give the right answer.

requires Biochem (at the proper level) to use.

Random (all selections to get the extra box) VM / MM FP's on repeat for farming... melt the stuff you don't use instenad of vendoring it for the extra TF and burn spare TF at the gamble vendor. otherwise, if it's the righ stat item, set a roll limit and stick to it. I roll up to the 40k bracket (total of ~.5mil) for items that are worth keeping, an take whatever gold amp will work for any of my toons, even if it's not the one I'm on. if it doesn't gold, I toss it.

depends on which conquest event is up.... there really isn't a set schedule for most of them (other than Rhakghol / Gree / Bounty / Pirates).... you can see the objjectives for different conquest events in the Conquest Calculator tab of this spreadsheet You'll need to take a personal copy to change the control settings.

^ fixing it requires a major change to the physics engine... not gonna happen

make basic green bonded attachments, then deconstruct them. you will receive 1 slot component for each deconstructed bonded attachment along with ~25% of the materials back WARNING! do not place those bonded components in materials storage before deconstructing them, nor buy them from the GTN. either will cause them to not to give slot components. you can "fix" ones you've accidentally placed in materials storage, by removing them to your inventory, crafting some more of the same, so that they go on the same stack.

For those still looking for this, you should know that it NEVER spawns if you have not completed the macrobinoculars questline on that character

No.... that's totally right. Allies chat is not for recruiting, it's for filling groups cross instance.... and is generally used by people in guilds already, so obviously recruitment is not welcome.

The only "guide" you need for gearing if you are below 306 item rating is: Equip whatever has a higher item rating, and ignore all other stats and class specifics until you get to 306 why? because the "Veteran's Edge" buff is directly tied to your item rating, and is worth more than whatever stats are on your gear. the preferred fast way to increase item rating is VMFPs until you hit high 290's item rating average, and MMFPs afterwards.... ... AFTER all that, then look up a guide for your class

if you know what causes the bugg, you can almost completely avoid it..... so what causes the bug? intersection with terrain/objects, and a bit of code that tries to push you out of terrain/objects so you don't get trapped in them (combined with the frame time length of the physics engine) what happens: The server sees your initial position You stride to an opponent, which makes the server move you directly nexxt to the opponent the server checks you position during the stride (or at the end) and finds you are intersecting with something... to prevent you being stuck, it gives you a little push the physics engine sees the push sees that you are moving, and calculates how fast you should be moving from your initial position, and where the little push is supposed to put you..... turning into a very BIG push The server then dutififully obeys your speed and sends you flying.... sometimes forward, sometimes back the way you came TL;DR so how do you avoid that stupidity? easy.... don't try to stride to opponents when there is something directly between you.... this includes when they are on ledges above you, because you have to pass through the edge on your way up.. for small ground obstacles you can stride while jumping to get around the problem most times.

slight correcntion to the above... 6.0 RAISED the failure rate by 5% across the board, and later reduced it again for grey difficulty. companion level has absolutely no effect on failure rates, only crit. AFAIK the current failure rates are 15% Orange 10% Yellow 6% Green ?? Grey I'm pretty certain of these values, based on the rare failures of orange missions at max amplifiers (+13.5% Success) these are based on the old rates of 10% Orange 5% Yellow 1% Green 0% Grey PS Failure rate is a separate stat that only applies to crew skill missions, and is rolled first as a pass/fail check, BEFORE rolling for crit / success. Rolls For Failure IF Fail, give failure rewards (nothing / jawa junk) IF Pass give basic rewards, Roll for Crit IF Crit, add Crit Rewards As you can see from the above, there is no roll for crit if you hit a failure, and even if you somehow had 100%+ crit, you could still fail. So, if you ever try to calculate whether you crit rate matches what is expected, remeber to throw out all failures or you will get a value lower than expected.

short answer, yes.

If Blizzard jumped off a bridge (again)....

the looting preferences are good tips..... ... however I'll tel you why I stopped looting white and green (and even blue in most areas). the rewards are so small, and the time and space of dealing with vendor trash is so cumulatively high that by ignoring it you get to more rewarding drops and content faster, and with less hassle. it's a matter of preference of course, but it boils down to "do I stop and bend over to pick up every penny, or do I keep going and only stop for higher amounts". in a system like SWTOR where you aren't competing with everyone else for what's dropped (unlike real life), it comes down to time and effort vs reward. sure the pennies can add up, but so does the time and hassle.

oh wow, I wasn't aware anything besides full helmets replaced Miraluka masks, good to know.

sounds like a bug accountwide unlocks, rocket boost, quick travel and fleet cooldown reductions, acount wide storage increases. these can be found in the legacy pane (Y) and in your storage windows.... also at least one eviserating crystal and the collections unlock for it... pick a color you like. after that you might want to focus on account unlocks for subscriber only perks like artifact equipment, crew skills, and apearance customizations, should you even go back to preferred status. most everything else is cosmetic or easily available in game with a few exceptions (HK-55 bonus chapter for example) all can. in order they are: no marker = standar/weak, silver = strong, gold = elite, white/gold star = champion/boss... higher level, better loot tables you can pretty much ignore the bluish-white, and green loot indicators, and only grab deep blue, purple, orange.... except on ossues where there are decorations that drop in the green and blue range.

my bad, I misunderstood the assumption there. AFAIK the 280-ish appearance variants for those gear have been around for the entire time, but they may be seeded in the drop tables differently depending on content... I wasn't paying much attention to it when I was originally gearing. I want to say a saw some of it dropping from bosses in SM FP (I was farming for decos this last week, and saw a high proportion of under-leveled drops, including in that range)

free sub time from referral links does NOT grant expansion access after it runs out (nor does it give you preferred status).... you MUST have subbed when the expansion was available to keep access to it as a preferred player. ETA Assuming that's a full sub, and not more free time, I'd saya you're account is bugged and you need to contact support.

I'll be honest, I stopped reading halfway into the first paragraph.... you seem to want to grind, and for every footstep to be a hard-won battle..... I personally think that's silly, but if you want that, you can absolutely have that experience.... and THAT is the incentive. you do not have to usee maxed out companions, the best gear, or even the fastest methods. Instead of complaining about how easy it is for you, take control of your experience, and remove the training wheels.if you can't be bothered to do that, then how can you claim things are too easy when you make no effort of your own to increase the challenge to your liking?

gear drops for bosses are generally in the range of -4 to +2 of the item rating you are at. trash drops tend to be much lower, and may even be capped (or floored) depending on content typ* this and the fact that veterans edge buf is directly tied to worn item rating average leads to the prefered gearing method being "equio whatever has the higher irating, regardless of stats, until 306" since those stats whill make only a nominal difference compared to the buff. *as an example, SM FPs drop items well below my current 306 gear rating, even from bosses, all the way down to 270)