Exactly. They took away the credit boom over (overblown imo) concerns of abuse. Fine. But give endgame players something they can use. Even a vanity item. Just something. Throw us a bone. Otherwise we're just paying for minor story content.

Double XP is back so I suggest you guys take advantage and get an alt up to Korriban/Coruscant. It really doesn't take that long and even less so with double XP which you can stack with boosts on top. *Edit: I mean Dromand Kaas/Coruscant. Can you tell I don't play the Imperial side much?

The TL;DR (TL;DW?) version of the datacube story is: The Hutt Cartel is (was) Rising

FWIW on Makeb alone I can almost fill up the 25 missions. You've got Makeb Dailies, GSI Dailies, GSI Weekly, Makeb Heroics, Makeb Staged Weekly Weekly Quest. Makeb Staged Weekly Stage 1/2/interlude, Toborro's Courtyard Weekly. Then if you've got some other quests you are working on and some you are keeping around long term, like the speeder quests where you have to run multiple Ops or kill multiple world bosses which probably isn't going to happen all at once, then it can easily run up to 25. I've had it happen to me multiple times without really trying to hit the limit I just did and needed to ditch some stuff. It usually happens to me on Makeb since that is where there's just a ton of quests and usually I don't want to run back to the Avesta Plantation after every quest but would rather just keep going on to the next Mesa.

I second this. For Armstech endgame most stuff doesn't sell and the basic comms schematics are bugged as bind on pickup so you couldn't sell those even if you wanted to. Basically endgame is barrels, augments (mostly Overkill the Power augment) and then MK-9 kits that sell. Orange gear to a lesser extent but I have a hard time moving even that lately no matter how low I go. I've had some moderate luck selling low to mid level items as far crafted weapons go. Those items are slower to sell though, but there also is less competition there. Lower level augments sell reasonably well for me too but you do have to buy the schematics for them first which may cost you a little bit on the gtn since you can't get those from the crafting npc only from Slicing randomly or else the GTN.

I was going to say this too. At least on my server (Harbinger) those race unlocks are relatively cheap ~ 80k-150k depending on the time of the week. Worth noting because there's probably other things you can spend CCs on and buy the race unlock with credits instead.

Another thing I thought about on this is that while the no credit boom is going to discourage level 55s from getting this, at least until we know what the 'prize' is for collecting all 8 (would it hurt to tell us what that might be?) these cubes won't make any sense to lower level players. All this stuff about The Shroud and the Hutts and Makeb is going to have no context for them, but you are setting it up so that the rewards from the cubes are really only of benefit to lower level players. It makes no sense. This fix needs a fix.

As for the whole 'exploit'. I think it was a very small subset of people doing it and I don't see it as a huge deal because you are paying 60 cartel coins just to get ONE CREDIT BOOM PER CHARACTER so it's not unlimited. Yes people can delete and make new characters but it takes a lot of time and effort to level a character to be able to get to Nar Shadda and there are WAY better and quicker ways to get 30-80k than that. I really don't see many people doing that at all. It's more effort than it is worth. That being said, if they are that worried the better fix would have been to just remove unlocking them from collections. Do they really NEED to be unlocked? On my sever they sell for like 50-80k anyway so it's not any huge deal to buy them again on another character if I need to.

Without the credit boom it's completely useless to a level 55 player. Most people who get these cubes will be 55s since lower level players will not be able to afford them on the GTN. They need to find some other means of giving a player at max level something back that they can use. To just take the credit boom away as a quick fix without considering what that does and trying to replace it with something else useful to a level 55 player is just lazy. Now these cubes are literally just paying for minor story content since there's nothing else useful from them.

Very useful guide. Lots of information. Thank you for this. The one question that immediately came time mind when I was reading it is that given what was said about the relatively uselessness of Alacrity, is it really worth spending 2 points on Black Market mods in the Dirty Fighting tree or might those 2 points be better spent somewhere else?

Does someone have a good picture of this Derelict Lightsaber in game depicting its hugeness? The shot on Dulfy is at an odd angle and I'm not really seeing the humongousness in it.

Except that you can't sell Contraband Rep Certificates on the GTN which goes back again to my question, why do we need the timer on something that can't be sold or traded? There are other items in those packs that don't have the timers on them so I don't see why the certificates do. It makes about as much sense as putting a timer on the rep tokens. Why would you?

I too noticed the clipping. Maybe this is letting them off easy, but the skirt is cute and I still like it so I just try to ignore the clipping. Still, I have done some meshing myself in the past for mods for other games and I have to say that's pretty sloppy to leave it like that.

I would like to know at least if these trophies will be completely worthless forever and thus I can toss them or not. Right now I have stacks of them taking up valuable inventory space. Since I've been opening hypercrates of cartel packs lately I really don't have the inventory slots to spare for something that is worthless and won't ever have a use.

It's obviously a bug. I reported it a long time ago shortly after 2.0 when I first noticed it but nothing ever came of it. The only thing I can say is people need to keep reporting it in game and posting about it on the forums and hopefully sooner or later someone at Bioware will notice and fix it.

I reported the Bind on Pickup bug for the Armstech basic comms schematic weapons a long time ago in game and also on the forums but no one cares about armstech. Also these weapons are showing up under barrels category for me when they should show up under blasters.

I second this. Not that the dyes DO apply in the preview window so the armor looks fine with the dyes. I actually had never bothered with the CE armors until very recently. I tried previewing it with different dyes until I found a combination that I liked and then I bought the armor. Well imagine my disappointment when I realized there was no dye slot. I am sure this is extremely low on their list of priorities but on the other hand it should also be a fairly simple fix so I really hope dye slots get added to the CE armor someday.

Female Togrutas in general lately seem to be buggy with missing textures and showing up bright pink. The same thing happens with some enemies on Nar Shadda. See the thread here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=6346701 I have personally seen these bright pink enemy Togruta npcs on Nar Shaddaa myself.

There's also the issue that what Bioware considers "rare" and what players do may well be two different things. There are Jawagrams that Bioware considers rare but does it really matter if there's no significant demand for it? They can't arbitrarily create a demand for something that the players aren't interested in just by making it scarce or tagging it as 'rare'. On my server it's pretty much just black/black, black/white, white/black, white/white, black/purple and to a lesser extent pink/purple that go for high prices. The rest are under 100k with most being well under 100k.

It's not the hugest deal in the world for me but it was just easier being able to buy them and send them to alts and so forth without having to have one of them run to the security key vendor or for the new characters level them up to get to fleet and mail them 5K to buy it. Again it's doable but it's a bit more hassle this way. There's always the 'I don't have a smartphone' crowd too I guess. Anyway, to my recollection I remember Eric's comments about those dyes being made unbound by mistake but that they would keep them this way since it was already done now referring to both the CE and the SK vendors. At least that was my interpretation, that they weren't going to go back on anything they already did. Then whoops! They did anyway but that was a mistake and they would fix it.

re: Cartel Certificates not stacking Is there a reason they have a bound timer on them in the first place? Aren't they still bound to the character once the timer expires? It's not like we can trade or sell them so I don't see the reason they need to put a timer on these certificates. It just makes it annoying that each single one takes up a slot. I have 17 now sitting in my inventory and not like I really have the space for that after opening up two hypercrates worth of packs.

I noticed this too. When they made a big announcement that the CE ones that accidentally were made bind on pickup after they were originally accidentally made unbound were back to being unbound again as (sort of) intended I thought 'I bet they forgot to do it for the Security Key vendor too' and sure enough...

re: Primoral Blaster only able to be equipped in the main hand It's going to be fixed in the next patch.

FWIW the Cartel Market Certificates in the last set of packs didn't stack either I have 7 of them in 7 separate slots in my inventory. If it's a bug that they don't stack it's not a new bug.

This is what I think too. A scam requires intent to deceive. I think it just didn't occur to them. While I do understand people's frustrations with seemingly getting something they have wanted for so long only to find out it doesn't work at all the way they thought it would, I also think it would be more constructive to politely suggest a change be made to have the item work they way they would like to use it rather than starting flame wars and making exaggerated inflammatory accusations. There's a suggestions forum so why not utilize it?