I've been confused about this as well. Initially, I was under the impression that the Dark Spores would only be available during the season, which made the whole "fixing rep item drop rate" when the season ends a little perplexing. Although, looking back, I believe the primary source of Dark Spores was the daily/weekly objectives. Other than that, they were dropping from OPs bosses regularly. I got quite accustomed to the "YOU GOT ENOUGH DAMN SPORES THIS WEEK!" message on the screen. Followed by "I KNOW IT LOOKS LIKE PURPLE LOOT BUT IT'S NOTHING. JUST THESE SPORES THAT YOU ARE NOT PICKING UP SO PLEASE CHILL!!" 😅

It really is disappointing for a game that celebrated hitting a $Bil in revenue back in 2019. Apparently, it takes a lot of extra time and development to create headgear that works with each hair style to prevent the hair from clipping through the headgear. As a general workaround, studios just click the "don't show hair" option to avoid any issues. In doing so, they create some even worse issues. Ugly ones! And, because it's an aesthetic issue, it has never been a priority, although many people refer to "Space Barbie" being endgame. With the outstanding number of cosmetics, especially those in the Cartel Market which serve the purpose of making money for the game, one would think that further development, worthy of a game in 2024, would continue to improve the game in this manner versus leaving it in maintenance mode. Bioware did this previously in Dragon Age Origins (2009), and again in Dragon Age Inquisition (2014), but Bethesda, Zenimax, and Blizzard have used this practice as well in the Fallout series, Elder Scrolls Online (2014), and WoW (2004). Are there newer mmo's doing this as well? Are there actually any new mmo's? lolll On the other hand, Final Fantasy XIV does it correctly. Black Desert Online also does it correctly. Even Phantasy Star Online 2/New Genesis does it correctly. PSO2/NGS even allows you to adjust how the headgear sits on your head, its angle, size, position, rotation, but that's a little different and, of course, excessive. I'm curious why Square-Enix, Pearl Abyss, and Sega seem to appreciate their products and their customers more in this regard than the aforementioned companies. Perhaps higher quality products, greater standards, and superior integrity => higher levels of customer satisfaction and overall experience => customers more willing to spend money, customer retention, and new customers => larger revenues => more money for development AND developers. Seems cyclical. Of course, I still enjoy SWTOR and often find workarounds that I enjoy. With the limited character customization in the game, gear really plays a huge role. I really wish I could enjoy some of the outfits I've obtained over the years, and even new ones I find that could be awesome --because there are some really nice ones that someone spent a lot of time working on, but making your character bald to wear them is never acceptable and, at least to me, is essentially game breaking for every single outfit that does it. If I had to make a choice between wearing an outfit that does this and not playing SWTOR, I would not play. I suppose I could be talking about numerous other quality of life issues or actual bugs, but this is something that, to me, is LITERALLY WORSE THAN ANYTHING ELSE 😆 jk jk but seriously tho.

I've been waiting for this for so long. I'll be utterly speechless if it ever happens 😅

Oh yea, definitely! And they're already a pain to craft if you're also crafting the war supplies (as I am). Having more available access to refined isotope stabilizers is really a small fraction of the process when you consider the different war supplies needing three separate crafting crew skills and grades 4 through 11 crafting components each being made from a combination of gathered materials, mission materials, and crew skill vendor materials. Out of all of them, only the RIS aren't readily available through 'normal' means loll. I know you know all this...I'm just leaving it here for...posterity. xD

Yes!! Using the 10,000-credit artifact/purple gifts from the companion gift vendor on the fleet (in the GTN quadrant) it should take 461 gifts to go from 1-50 according to @Drenovade's post from 2021 https://forums.swtor.com/topic/905507-companion-gift-efficiency-guide-1-50-influence/ assuming nothing has changed since 6.0. It sounds about right, since I typically buy 450 if I use this method, and then a few more to top em off. Note that it can be tricky because the in-game tooltip uses "Large Influence Gain" rather loosely. For example, just tested on an unloved Broonmark 3 items that said "Large..." with each item giving a different amount of influence at the same level: Mil Gear +200; Tech +449; Weapon +799. If you don't want to deal with figuring that out by trial and error you can just check swtorista's companion guide which, of course, tells you which gifts they LOVE https://swtorista.com/companions At 461 gifts, assuming you've unlocked the 3x10% gift influence perks (Character Perks>Legacy of Altruism) which initially cost some number of creds, that would be 4,610,000 creds...and 461 clicks lol. As @TrixxieTriss mentioned above, it's great to keybind them, or what I do is put them on an empty quickbar slot and use whatever keybind might already be attached to said slot--based on slot availability of course lolll. Cheers!

That was simply my estimate based on 1.2s gifting time (from legacy perks) x 450 purple gifts (the best gifts that start out at 1099 influence) lolll. I don't remember the exact amount, but I believe it has to add up to ~250k. I agree it's quite tedious and the commander's compendiums are very much a boon when you have the resources. It's pretty much how I level any companion these days. Whereas years ago, I really only bothered with HK-51 when black hole/sect-x was endgame and he was OP (assassination protocol!). Now it's become more necessary to have at least 8 comps for crafting/mission efficiency, and then the random forced companion missions that started back in SoR/KOTFE. Oh no...a tangent! I digress. /rant The real reason I'm here, the Refined Isotope Stabilizers are missing without any patch notes/updates stating that they were being removed. Other items, and many other things, have been removed/altered and Bioware made it clear when said changes were made, but I believe that the RIS are missing in error.

True. it takes about 9 minutes per companion. Which can get a little time consuming unless you're sitting around doing nothing anyways lol.

Ahh true. But it costs less money to just buy purple companion gifts from the gift npc and a few minutes to get a companion to 50. Would Bioware do something so malicious? Remove them from the game without mention in patch notes just to incentivize people into buying the item from the cartel market, even though they were still available in-game and one could simply use the aforementioned method?

I don't remember the specifics now loll. I'm sorry. I think he was doing it in random groups. And he was saying all his gear is 340 so he was getting 340 drops.

Ah, thank you! I knew that looked wrong but I had lost my train of thought by then. Lol. I meant to expand on the command deck example, so it would take 50 people 5 weeks to get the frameworks to open a single door!

Well, my point with the Refined Isotope Stabilizers is that, while you can obtain them through the jawa vendor, it's not exactly feasible or sustainable for the vast amounts required. Check my math above. That's actually how I initially noticed the issue. Saw that they came from certain content, ran certain content, didn't get anything. After running a dozen or more ops, I checked, and was still at 0. I did notice that with the Matrices as well, bc some time ago, I used to look forward to getting those as weekly drops on multiple characters for some extra funds.

Just now, talking to a friend, he's just doing *wait for it* hammer station *sigh* and he's been getting blue 340's on veteran. So they do drop! Lol

It seems they did specify the removal of the Solid Resource Matrix from conquest rewards here: https://www.swtor.com/patchnotes/02152022/game-update-7.0-legacy-sith Not entirely sure why though.

Ohh, hmm. Now that's a good question. I'm honestly not sure if you can get a 340 to drop that way. 340 pieces are very common drops in ops, but I can't recall if that high of a item rating ever drops in vet fps. I know you can still get prototype that way, but it seems they're usually 326/328. The method I used was to get said prototype pieces then break them down for 10 FP-1 Stabilizers each. Then use those to upgrade fp prototype items further. But I use(d) this method primarily for getting a single piece to 340 for the hyde/zeek quest. I can safely say that by specifically using a 258 masterwork ear piece, I have done runs wherein I received nothing but blue ear pieces as drops. Due to the importance and power of legendary implants I have never considered using anything other than legendary implants. I often run ops in pugs or with friends, so if you're ever interested and are on SF, add me in-game: Fermioff

I spent some time looking for Refined Isotope Stabilizers (RIS) and found out that they apparently no longer drop from the sources stated in the tooltip, "Found in Master Flashpoints and Story, Veteran and Master Operations". After searching through all of the patch notes I found a single reference to Refined Isotope Stabilizer from game update 5.4 patch notes: "Refined Isotope Stabilizers no longer drop from Veteran Mode Flashpoints. They do still drop from Master Mode Flashpoints and Operations of all difficulties as intended." There does not seem to be an update since 5.4 to suggest its removal from the previously mentioned instances. Thus, it can only be surmised that the removal of these drops was unintentional. While the particular material in question is useful for a great many schematics only obtained through certain instances and drops, the products of these materials have limited usefulness today with the exception of producing Dark Projects. For perspective, it takes 8 RIS to craft a Dark Project (DP) and 1 DP for a single Flagship Plan: Encryption and 50 those for a Framework, and, for example, 5 Command Frameworks to open one door on the command deck, so 20 Command Frameworks to unlock all command deck doors. The only way to get RIS at the moment seems to be through the blue/prototype jawa scrap trader, and they cost 12 Scrap: Assorted Droid Parts each. Therefore, at 96 Refined Isotope Stabilizers to make a single Dark Project, it would take 96000 blue scrap to get the 8000 RIS to make the 1000 DP to get the 20 Frameworks to unlock the 4 Command Deck doors. Or, it could take a guild of 50 people/characters 5 weeks of completing planetary invasions to get enough encryptions (thus frameworks) to open a single Command Deck door! Please look into this, because at those numbers, there clearly must be a problem or discrepancy somewhere. Thanks!