Deltia Posted March 1, 2014 Share Posted March 1, 2014 SWTOR Leveling Guide I originally posted this on my website, deltiasgaming.com, but figured the community might like this information in the forms. Let me know what you think! With only a few weeks until SWTOR’s double experience weekend return, I thought I’d create a power leveling guide. This is a good time to start prepping your characters for the leveling experience to get the most out of the weekend. With these suggestions, I’ve leveled a character from 10-55 in under 24 hours during double xp and hopefully you can too! Table of Contents Leveling in SWTOR Types of Leveling Gear Companions Legacy Unlocks Guild Perks Setting Out Quick Tips Additional Tips Resources Version Please note this guide assumes you know little to nothing about SWTOR leveling. If you’re looking for quick tips and help, scroll down to “Quick Tips.” Otherwise read below for a step-by-step guide with detailed explanation. Leveling in SWTOR SWTOR, like many other MMOs, uses a somewhat linear system to leveling by obtaining experience points through killing enemies, questing, and exploration. The leveling experiences scales the higher your level, thus needing more and more experience to reach higher levels. For instance, going from level 8 to 9 takes 15,000 experience points, while 49 to 50 takes near 450,000. Starting off, you are limited to only a few possible ways to gain experience. As your levels increase, you’ll find more things to do, more travel, and an easier leveling process. For example, levels 1 to 10 are the starter planet and do not allow many dailies or quests or travel to another planet/fleet. At levels 11 to 49, you can start doing dailies, weeklies, and planetary quest. 50 to 55 is the easiest allowing for major quests, operations, and nearly all the parts of the game. Below is a list of quests/dailies I try to complete in order to gain as much experience as fast as possible. Following this method, I average a level once per hour. Make sure you’re completing your quest near or as close to your level as possible. Meaning, if you’re level 30, don’t do quests at level 25 or at level 35. It will take too much time or provide very little experience. Around + or – 1 level is ideal. Types of Leveling Class Quest – Your bread and butter standard story quest, rotating through various planets depending on your advanced class. These flow through certain planets, but give a lot of experience points and are very rewarding. I usually make sure to complete these first. Space PvE Daily/Weekly – Some people don’t like the “on rails” space mission, but they only take 5 to 10 minutes each mission and offer an enormous amount of experience points. Keep doing these daily and you’ll see a huge gain in experience points. Flashpoint Daily/Weekly – An instance PvE mission that is completed with other players. These take more time (30-60 minutes), but offer experience points for individual kills, plus a daily and mission completion reward. Flashpoints also give great gear, planetary commendations, and other items to help leveling. PvP Daily/Weekly – These are your standard ground PvP missions that give good experience for daily/weekly, but don’t offer individual kill experience so they’re less important than a flashpoints. I only complete the daily and move on since they don’t offer per kill experience. Space PvP Daily/Weekly – Similar to warzones in concept, no kill experience but good value in the dailies/weeklies. Planetary Quest – I usually don’t do any of these planetary quests because I’ve out leveled my planet by the time I’ve completed my dailies and class quests. Bonus Quest – These are given once a particular planet’s story arc has been completed. Same concept as Planetary Quest, most likely you’ve already leveled past that planet. Exploration – This counts by exploring each planet’s map. I don’t go out of my way to explore, but with various character bonuses, exploration adds up over time. Companion Affection Quest – Giving leveling your companions affection is a great way to offer some extra experience. These scale with your level, so I often wait until I’m near 50 or so before completing. Codex – These are given as a type of exploration by clicking various items in the world. Once again, I don’t go out of my way to find them, but I click on them when available. Datacrons – These are a permanent stat increase that are scattered throughout the world. Since they are hard to get and time consuming, I generally collect these once I reach endgame. Gear When it comes to gearing during the leveling process, I don’t get too concerned with my appearance or level of gear. You want have gear somewhat equivalent with your level, but you can complete quests with a very low level if need be. An effective way of gearing is picking out a mod-able orange gear set and using that from level 10 on. I then pick up cybertech, scavenaging, and slicing as my crafting skills. I level them up equally making armorings, mods, and enhancements as needed. I’ll supplement my crafting with planetary commendations or PvP commendations to buy hilts, barrels, or missing pieces. I’ll use my money gained from slicing to buy ear pieces, relics, and implants. Just keep the same outfit and swap items in and out and it should be easy. Companions Since you can only fulfil one role while leveling (tank, healer, DPS), companions play an important part by complementing your unfulfilled role. In my experience, Trek is the best companion by far. He can heal effectively, tank, and do consistent damage. You can unlock Trek through the cartel market bizarre or cartel coins. Once you get him, I recommend unlocking him for all your characters and getting a legacy set of gear. I pass around the set from character to character while leveling. Companion affection also provides experience and a bonus to crafting. So near end game, I buy 99 level 2 gifts companion gifts with the highest level of affection (love) . In between quest, I bind the gift to a key and just repeatedly give them. This will give you around 6,000 affection. If you want to finish it by gaining 10,000, either buy higher level gifts, more rare quality, or craft them yourself. TOR Head has a great guide HERE for companion affection. Legacy Unlocks Since patch 1.3, SWTOR has added some character specific unlocks and some universal unlocks via legacy. Each rank cost credits or cartel coins and are cumulative. I get the entire experience boost, both companion perks, and some travel convenience features. Dulfy has a more detailed guide HERE, but my recommendations are below: XP Perks I II III IV V Total 275k Warzone Experience 20k 30k 50k 75k 100k Total 275k Flashpoint Experience 20k 30k 50k 75k 100k Total 150k Space Mission Experience 10k 20k 30k 40k 50k Total 275k Class Mission Experience 20k 30k 50k 75k 100k Total 150k Exploration Experience 10k 20k 30k 40k 50k Total 275k Starfighter Experience 20k 30k 50k 75k 100k Grand Total 1.4 million credits Convenience Perks I II III Total - 90k Altruism (companion gifts) 10k 30k 50k Total - 90k Persuasion (conversations) 10k 30k 50k Field Respec - 200k Capital World Travel - 20k Outlaws Den - 50k Personal Ship - 50k CZ - 150k Speeder Piloting 1 - 40k Field Repair Droid 1 - 50k Field Mail Droid 1 - 50k Grand Total 790k credits Now, combine the experience and convenience for a whopping 2.19 million credits! Or you can use a combination of credits and cartel coins, but either way it’s not cheap to level fast. Guild Perks In spring of 2013, SWTOR released its Guild Reward Program giving all players in a guild an automatic 5% bonus to gaining experience. You can earn an additional 5% (10% max) for having 25 or more accounts within your guild. Best way to join one of these guilds is to simply ask in fleet or start your own and build one. Setting Out I’ve described the general concepts to leveling, now I’m going to describe how I maximize my time to level. I always make sure to log out the previous day in the fleet standing at the Supply Mission Terminal. I grab all the quests from the various quest terminals and queue up for everything I can (space PvP, ground PvP, and flashpoints). I queue up for everything at once. While waiting on the queue, I’ll travel to my class mission planet and complete missions in between my queues. Once I finish a planet and my dailies, I return to the fleet for a massive turn in, and pickup anything new, set out and do it all over again. It’s important to check the fleet for new missions because so many are unlock at different levels. The flashpoints are separated at or around every four levels. If you do all these dailies and your class quests, you’ll be almost ready for a new flashpoint quest. So just keep setting out, coming in and doing turn-ins, and watch the levels fly by. Quick Tips Buy all experience legacy unlocks Buy travel unlocks (personal ship, Tatooine, and capital world) Get in 10% experience Guild Get Trek Get full set of mod-able orange gear Pick up all the quests at the fleet and prioritize by: Class > Space PvE > Flashpoints > Ground PvP > Space PvP Return to fleet, turn in, pick up new quests, and set out again Additional Tips account unlocks Buy account unlocks for your ship to help with convenience (GTN, guild bank, and droid) Pick up crafting: slicing, cybertech, and scavenging Level slicing for profit, scavenging and cybertech to make items for your mod-able gear Make sure to log off in a rested area (fleet or cantina) The more presence you have from completing other stories, the better your companions will be Personally, I love double experience weekends. I usually pick a class I know little to nothing about and set out on an adventure. I hope you enjoyed this post and wonder what your leveling secrets are. Feel free to level a comment! Resources Dulfy’s Legacy Perks – dulfy.net/2012/06/06/patch-1-3-legacy-character-perks/ Guild Rewards – http://www.swtor.com/guildrewardsLegacy Information – http://www.swtor.com/info/legacy TOR Head Companion Gift Guide – http://www.torhead.com/companions Version 1.0 – Complete initial guide – on February 17, 2014 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phalczen Posted March 1, 2014 Share Posted March 1, 2014 On first read through, nice guide. a few of your links are broken, and Treek is female. I would say that buying orange moddable gear is a very effective way to level in terms of how easily it allows you to kill stuff, but it is certainly not very cheap. Using moddable orange gear for yourself would require 7 planetary comms per armoring, 2 per mod, and 2 per enhancement. That adds up to 84 comms, 95 if you include the offhand. The storage cap is only 100. The recommendations are to replace gear ROUGHLY every four levels, and if you are using Treek as recommended in your guide she has all moddable items as well meaning you actually need approximately 190 planetary comms every 4 levels. That's pretty hard to do. I could't do it on my fourth character who had a complete set of reputation armor, were it not for the fact that my third toon was a cybertech. I think expecting a brand new player to get a full set of orange gear and mod it completely all the way through to end game is a pretty big hurdle for a new player starting off on their first character. Only if they choose cybertech or armormech/synthweaver would they be able to cut down on that commendation requirement, at the cost of credits running mission skills for prototype materials. Most players can probably get through the leveling grind reasonably well in just green premium gear, acquiring orange pieces as they go along and occasionally outfitting them with commendation-purchased modifications. Flashpoints (possibly heroics too) will admittedly be harder in just premium gear unless the player is over leveled for the content. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fidelicatessen Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 I would say that, although this guide is helpful, it is much less helpful to new players. This guide is for players who have already leveled at least one toon to 55, and possibly several more than that. It assumes you have access to all sorts of resources you might not have access to. Rest XP is also never mentioned (or at least I didn't see it--I did skim through the 2nd half of the guide, however), though it seems like it would be a good thing to bring up for new players. I do not agree with spending any credits on exp boosts--the exp already comes in ridiculously quickly, and these just strike me as a waste of money. I don't ever get any of these and I already overlevel planets just by doing dailies. Rest XP=double-edged sword. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toha Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 I would say that, although this guide is helpful, it is much less helpful to new players. This guide is for players who have already leveled at least one toon to 55, and possibly several more than that. It assumes you have access to all sorts of resources you might not have access to. Rest XP is also never mentioned (or at least I didn't see it--I did skim through the 2nd half of the guide, however), though it seems like it would be a good thing to bring up for new players. I do not agree with spending any credits on exp boosts--the exp already comes in ridiculously quickly, and these just strike me as a waste of money. I don't ever get any of these and I already overlevel planets just by doing dailies. Rest XP=double-edged sword. Agreed, this guide looks more aimed at players with one 55 already. On the subject of exp boost: I generally level by using FPs. The legacy xp upgrade gives you 30% bonus(?). Add that to the rested xp + major/minor xp boost (only taking in to account the ones you get from class missions), And im pretty sure you're totaling in the 165% range(not sure on the math, to busy right now to check) Add in the 10% from guild and... well you see where im going with this. This totals in money spent : 275k Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Knight_Launcelot Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 How do I get Legacy Gear? I am fairly new to this game so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toha Posted March 4, 2014 Share Posted March 4, 2014 How do I get Legacy Gear? I am fairly new to this game so. Legacy vendors are on DK for the Imps and Corasant for the Reps, keep in mind you need a certain legacy level for each set (10,25 and 35 if I'm not mistaken). There are also reputation vendors that sell gear that's bound to legacy as well, and there are vendors on most planets(check the cantina for the most part for these) that sell customizable gear but I'm not sure if it's legacy bound. Hope that helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Essence_of_Light Posted March 4, 2014 Share Posted March 4, 2014 Agreed, this guide looks more aimed at players with one 55 already. On the subject of exp boost: I generally level by using FPs. The legacy xp upgrade gives you 30% bonus(?). Add that to the rested xp + major/minor xp boost (only taking in to account the ones you get from class missions), And im pretty sure you're totaling in the 165% range(not sure on the math, to busy right now to check) Add in the 10% from guild and... well you see where im going with this. This totals in money spent : 275k ^ this Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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