Exactly. I gathered enough mats for two alts in about thirty minutes just doing a large circle on Yavin 4 in the very first zone outside the Base Camp. What's nice is that in the Rakghoul tunnels you can get credit for someone elses droid, so even that part is easy as well. Ok, the event gating stinks, but other than that...

Ralph McQuarrie said that the designs of the Maschinenmensch as being one of the prime building blocks for droids in the SW universe. I was really glad to see it pop up again in TOR as I feel a lot of other movies, cartoons, and games have really drifted from the feel of Star Wars that (IMO, personally, etc.., etc..) made me fall in love with it.

My chat is turned off for 95% of the game just for this. I talk to people in Discord constantly while I am playing, but it's very rare that game chat lasts for more than a minute before I'm shutting it off. Sometimes it's good, and sometimes I go to the fleet just to try to help newbies, but a lot of the times my game experience is just better with it turned off.

Using those data crystals for companions instead of gear seems to be way more effective. The difference between Ziost/KOTFE quest rewards and 208 is meh, the difference in companion levels is huge.

Edit: Whoops, sometimes I should check previous comments before I post.

Interrupt them. If you have interrupts on your heroic moment like the smugglers dirty kick or the sith warriors force choke, he will never get a single one of them off when combined with your own interrupts (If even needed based on how well your class can DPS). Since he can be stunned and seems to just be a gold mob, you can burn him down SUPER quickly while taking very little damage whatsoever. It's like the old WoW Rogue stunlock. You should give it another go, I'm sure you'll rock it.

One thing to note is that the TEC gear is actually optimized way better than crystal gear, It's a lot less endurance heavy from what I've seen. I will have to look next time I'm in game to know for certain, but I wouldn't be surprised if from a pure DPS standpoint it's at least equal to 220 radiant vendor stuff. However, If you are making use of the set bonuses in your PvP gear then I'd stick with what you have. At least for the classes I've played, those bonuses are better than the marginal statistical upgrades you get from crystal gear.

It's gambling. Everyone knows this going into it. Gambling. I personally do not gamble unless it's something that I at least have some small part in the outcome of, like cards. I don't play roulette, I don't play slot machines, and I for the most part don't buy crates. That's just me though. If you like to gamble then buy away, doesn't hurt me a bit, I just don't like it. If they advertised it as 'One Platinum item guaranteed per crate!' and you didn't get one, sure, let's yell at some people. If it's 'Hey, anythings possible, you could get none, you could get five' then don't complain when it goes south. You knew what you were getting into.

Wasn't that hard to be honest (I've raided in other games for years, so nothing in this caught me by surprise), and no my companion wasn't 50. JK made it a lot easier being in a dps spec but using tank form in some fights, putting guard on companion, using defensive cooldowns, heroic moments (Which pretty much insta wins the final fight in EC once you hit stage 2), taunts, and somewhat knowing how to micro companions for Breaktown.

Are force entities like this a thing in Star Wars that could actually show up? Asking honestly, I used to read some of Dark Horses comics when I was younger, and a few of the Zahn books, but was never a gigantic EU guy.

Class probably means more than gear when it comes to EC as well. My JK breezed through it in subpar gear the first time I did it (JK had Ziost and KOTFE quest reward gear on which is 190-200), yet my Smuggler who is infinitely better geared had to work more to complete it.

I have about half of my characters through KOTFE, the other half are just sitting max level with all stories up to Ziost done but nothing for KOTFE. KOTFE just really sputters for me after Chapter 9 - I really lose a lot of steam for characters at that point unless there is something (Like EC farming, or I need a new character to turn in heroic boxes) that pushes me forward. Anarchy in Paradise is a screeching halt for me as well - I'm not sure what it is about that chapter, but I'd rather just shut the game off then play it. The fact that the game forces you (sometimes) to just keep doing chapters instead of other stuff is another thing that stops me bringing in new characters. Having a new chapter auto-start, exiting out of it, but really still being locked in because all of my NPC's are 'unavailable for current story mission' just makes me want to play it less as well.

I wouldn't say so. Vitiate crosses over perfectly from Knight into SoR and Rise of the Emperor. Ok, so he's in SoR for about all of five seconds, but he's the same ***** in SoR as he was in the final quest for JK. Same for RotE, he acts in a way that fits with everything you have seen from him before, and he tells you he realizes it's time to finally take you seriously at the end of RotE, explaining why he'd be less stabby-stabby towards you the next time you meet, even though he had just been hunting down people in the streets for sport and laughing about how he was going to break you, then kill you. It's in KOTFE that his character makes you stop and go 'Um, who are you?'. He went from Chaotic Evil to Lawful Evil on a dime, and it's kind of whiplash inducing. I really like the character of Valkorian a lot, but he doesn't remind me of Vitiate one bit.

Basically it's all about reverse engineering. The link the above poster provided is good, but the gist is you either make the 208 stuff and then work your way up the tiers by making more costly upgrades, or you buy higher end stuff and break it down (Like buying the 220 offhand, and using the hilt/barrel in it to try to learn the 220 recipe.) That said, as someone who has a crafter of every profession it's just really not worth it to craft these unless you are in an Ops guild. You don't need it, and it's more work than it gives in gains. Buy stuff from the crystal vendors and crush all the content you do normally. Crafting is just for novelty gains at the moment.