Obilam Posted October 31, 2014 Author Share Posted October 31, 2014 All, Once again, thank you for the fantastic responses.... and again, the detail. I've just run my first Makeb weekly. Apart from the time, it was really easy, which is great. Just wondering now if any of the other weeklies are as easy. Just landed in Oricon and am finding it tough. Though I am seriously undergeared. L49/50 green mods...... Though I just spent 300k on gear that should see me okay seeing as am barely just losing out. I've taken the advice and sent all my toons out to collect and will do so again until I run out of credits, which I think I have around 500k across my characters. Not sure this x12 XP is helping me much as I have no credits and no comms Again, thank you for the terrific response and I'll have to have a read through my own notes (taken from the advice here) again tomorrow.......... TONS to think about. Regards LAM ps. If there is a relevant guild on Tomb of Freedon Nadd willing to accept me and my alts, please send me a message in game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obilam Posted October 31, 2014 Author Share Posted October 31, 2014 Just for clarity, can anyone please advise if ANY flashpoints or Operations are soloable? If so, are they relevant/worth it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clarian Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 The easiest way is Warzones. They are fast, you get loads of comms and converting them to planetary - YES! Wait, you can convert warzone comms to planetary? I had no idea. How do you do that? I've never once queued for a warzone, but that could get me to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cernow Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 Just for clarity, can anyone please advise if ANY flashpoints or Operations are soloable? If so, are they relevant/worth it? If you mean appropriate level content, then essentially the answer to this is no, particularly if you are undergeared. If you have decent gear and a well geared companion then some of the Tacticals are solo-able. But they made some changes a few patches ago to make this less viable and it's not really worth the time invested to achieve it, other than as some kind of personal challenge. You can solo some of the level 50 Flashpoints, but this is only worth doing if you want the gear for cosmetic reasons or a chance to drop certain Stronghold decorations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkDisturbed Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 Do the Oricon quest lines.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuriDogshin Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 I have done this a few times with success however the concern I have is not for me but whatever group I land with. Can you imagine how you'd feel if you have queued for 10 minutes only to have your tank leave 10 minutes in to change a nappy! (It's happened more than once ) I do not have to imagine. We had a group member in a FP leave, with no warning or notice, in the middle of the Security Chief fight in HM Czerka Corporate Labs: seems his dog started throwing up in the middle of the fight. We wiped, although just barely: our lone DPS could only get the boss down to 2 percent, and our healer kept spending time on our AFK player, all the time wondering: "why does he keep standing in stupid?" Well, the AFK player came back, explained, we pulled again and easily cleared the rest of the FP. Lots of laughing, and no one was upset. None of us can guarantee we will be able to finish a SWTOR fight, much less a FP or Op, that we start. Real life, with it's illnesses, bugs, outages, and unexpected demands, doesn't always give you the option. I expect most players to understand this. Any who don't need to get a clue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuriDogshin Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 Just for clarity, can anyone please advise if ANY flashpoints or Operations are soloable? If so, are they relevant/worth it? Even if you could solo a FP, the reward for doing an FP through Group Finder is substantially better than what you'd get from soloing it. Plus, doing it in a group is much faster (once the queue pops for you), so if you have a lot of demands on your time ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
light_senshi Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 What I'd suggest is that you get a guild mate to assist you on the Oricon quests. Once you finish that, you'll be well enough set for gear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obilam Posted November 1, 2014 Author Share Posted November 1, 2014 Under 3.0 planetary = classic= basic = L186 gear.. Some of my older characters have a decent amount of comms stacked up, so again, for clarity, my planetary comms will be usuable as the current basic comm for basic gear? Do you know if this will be L60 basic gear or the current L55 basic stuff? (not sure I know what I'm talking about to ask the right question, but i think that is there) Regards Lee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScarletBlaze Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 (edited) Some of my older characters have a decent amount of comms stacked up, so again, for clarity, my planetary comms will be usuable as the current basic comm for basic gear? Do you know if this will be L60 basic gear or the current L55 basic stuff? (not sure I know what I'm talking about to ask the right question, but i think that is there) Regards Lee Gear right now: Basic-162 Elite-168 Ultimate-180 Gear Drops in Nightmare Ops (not 100% sure) 186 Gear is supposed to change in 3.0 (estimate) http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=772203&page=26 Basic-180 Elite-186 Ultimate-192 Gear Drops in Nightmare Ops - 198 In 3.0 there will be no more plantetary comms or classic comms. They will be converted to Basic. Edited November 1, 2014 by ScarletBlaze Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DomiSotto Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 (edited) Just landed in Oricon and am finding it tough. Though I am seriously undergeared. L49/50 green mods..... You can get purple 140'ies with planetary commendations from Makeb vendor or move to Makeb to get bolstered. You only need to do like 1 PvP Weekly on L55 to get enough comms to do so! they are 40 to 1 transfer. Some of my older characters have a decent amount of comms stacked up, so again, for clarity, my planetary comms will be usuable as the current basic comm for basic gear? Yes. Edited November 1, 2014 by DomiSotto Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxjam Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 I mostly solo and have my main char fully geared with Elite Comms - it takes time but it can be done. Like you I have a young family and only occasionally group, generally late at night when everyones asleep, including my guildies! Anyway... I usually start on Makeb and do the dailies/weekly and GSI missions. I think its around 13 basic comms per day and 40 per week (plus 12 elite) usually taking around 30-40 mins per day, 90 on Tuesday for the weekly. Then its off to Czerka, 8 basic comms in 15 minutes, after that its off to Oricon - 16 basic comms in 30 mins with an extra 20 plus 12 elite for the weekly. I can solo the weekly now but to begin with I used head to Oricon first on a Tuesday so I could pick up a group quickly after the weekly reset to do the heroic (10 mins). Pull those in everyday on more than 1 character if possible (you can buy basic gear with alts and send to your main) and you'll soon have 1 character geared in full basic with a smattering of elite. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heezdedjim Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 (edited) I'll say two things generally, then get into specifics: (1) as a purely solo player, your easiest and best method over time will be to max out all your crafting skills, and (2) always target whatever is the current "entry level" for "endgame" or "group" content as the level at which you feel "geared." If you're really not doing group content at all, and you are just playing through all of the solo game on one alt after another, then the "entry level to endgame" level of gear for you and at least one primary companion will have you well set to do everything you actually want to do. It's also a level that is very easy and affordable to achieve without a lot of time spent grinding, assuming you have your crafting skills. First, as others mentioned, you need a full seven-piece set of your favorite orange shells for you and your companion. I like to get Cartel Market sets I like the look of, then unlock them in Collections so that I always will have them for free on any of my alts. Once you have five or eight different looks you really like, or however many you want to spend for, you can have an infinite supply of them through Collections pretty cheaply. You can do the same with one or two of each category of weapon that you can find a nice looking CM shell for. Second, max out Cybertech, Armstech, and Artifice. This will give you all the armorings, mods, enhancements, and barrels + hilts that you need. It doesn't cost all that much to max these out, and you do not need anything beyond the highest standard vendor bought patterns (currently the 28s). It will take a bit to farm the mats and RE your purple 28 patterns, and after that it's just a matter of farming what you need to make 156 rated gear for you, your companion, and your alts. Once you have the patterns, this is really the simplest and most economical way for a solo player to gear up one or more characters, and you don't have to group or grind for anything. You also will need to level up Armormech and Synthweaving to make your mainstat augments, if you want to fully augment your gear. Augmenting is worth it if you feel like doing it, and it's affordable if you farm all your own mats and make everything yourself, including the kits. It only gets super expensive if you're buying everything. When a new expac hits, just bump your target "geared" level up to whatever is the next "entry level." So for 3.0, you would just look for the new highest craftable level of vendor patterns, which it appears will be 186. You can make green or blue gear for yourself between 55 and 60, or just take whatever you get from leveling, which should work fine. Once you get to 60, get your new 186 rating purple patterns ready, then proceed to farm mats and re-gear as you level your alts up. If you do this, then you'll always have a simple and easy path to getting as geared as you need to be for the things that you actually do, and you won't need to waste time doing things you don't like or have time for. You could readily buy all of the pieces off the GTN, but as others have mentioned, this gets expensive really fast, and you'll spend far more time grinding credits on boring dailies than you would grinding out your standard purple patterns and farming mats, to get the same result. Also, the credit farming is something you have to do over every time for each new alt, but crafting gets easier, cheaper, and quicker as you go, because you'll already have a lot of the patterns you need for future alts after you do a few of them. The one thing you may want to grind dailies for, assuming you like doing that, is the relics. The ones you buy with Daily comms typically are BiS for PvE and far better than anything you can craft from standard patterns. At the moment the standard 156 rating crafted earpieces and implants actually are considered better than many of the high end ones you can buy with Daily comms, due to the better stat allocation (at least they were a while ago; I haven't looked recently). The implants and earpieces are also some of the more annoying bits to reverse engineer to purples, because of the way the RE branching works with them. But you can make perfectly good ones yourself. So it's up to you which way you want to go with those. Edited November 1, 2014 by Heezdedjim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DomiSotto Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 (edited) At the moment the standard 156 rating crafted earpieces and implants actually are considered better than many of the high end ones you can buy with Daily comms, due to the better stat allocation (at least they were a while ago; I haven't looked recently). The implants and earpieces are also some of the more annoying bits to reverse engineer to purples, because of the way the RE branching works with them. But you can make perfectly good ones yourself. So it's up to you which way you want to go with those. Generally, I found that the amount of work that goes into RE them + cost of L9 mats and uncertainty of purples mats supply = cheaper to buy off GTN or win in PvP. Honestly, I am yet to see one single Thermal Generator (or whatever it's called, slicing L9) on my Legacy, and if I get one, well, I'd rather sell for 15K then wait til I have a few more to get L28 augments done, cause by the time I get 28 of them, it would be my great-grandchildren's wedding... I have a feeling the situation will be no different with Mk-10/new augments. Purple mats accumulation is just too slow for mass production of pieces for the entire Legacy. It's easier to raise credits and milk low level missions to sell raw mats, I find. Edited November 1, 2014 by DomiSotto Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScarletBlaze Posted November 2, 2014 Share Posted November 2, 2014 Sorry but I disagree with you. I was able to make augments for all 3 of my level 55 characters, my boyfriends character and even people in the guild. I have not had that much trouble getting the thermal regulators. I only had one augment that took me a little time to get to purple. I have also been able to RE the elite mods to get the schematics for those and am making my boyfriend 168 mods for his character. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DomiSotto Posted November 2, 2014 Share Posted November 2, 2014 Hmm, maybe it is my really bad luck with critting. It takes a long time ot run a L9 mission, and I basically critted to date for 14 Beryllium .... and no Thermal regs. Maybe when I finally get Andronicus and combine his crit with Treek's it will go better than Treek and Mako. Which reminds me. Gotta reload those L9 missions! Fingers crossed! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dras_Keto Posted November 2, 2014 Share Posted November 2, 2014 (edited) If you basically never group, what do you need the gear for? The only reason to gear up is to participate in the harder, group content. Edited November 2, 2014 by Dras_Keto Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heezdedjim Posted November 2, 2014 Share Posted November 2, 2014 Hmm, maybe it is my really bad luck with critting. It takes a long time ot run a L9 mission, and I basically critted to date for 14 Beryllium .... and no Thermal regs. Maybe when I finally get Andronicus and combine his crit with Treek's it will go better than Treek and Mako. Which reminds me. Gotta reload those L9 missions! Fingers crossed! Max out your companions' affection, and just run lots of missions. You'll tend to get tons of blue stuff and you will, over time, get adequate amounts of purple. You also can run slicing lockbox missions which give you crafting mission items for all the gathering and mission skills. When you use the purple varieties of those, the mission is guaranteed to return at least some purple mats, and will return more if it crits. Always use a companion that has a +crit bonus for the gathering or mission skill on those if you can. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damask_Rose Posted November 2, 2014 Share Posted November 2, 2014 If you basically never group, what do you need the gear for? The only reason to gear up is to participate in the harder, group content. There are two reasons I can think of off the top of my head that a strictly solo player would want to continue gearing up for. 1. The better geared you are the faster you can run dailies/weeklies to make money. Everyone likes credits, and everyone wants to rip through those dailies as fast as possible! 2. Since there is no "official" solo endgame, many solo players pit themselves against group content. That is where the challenges are. Very few flashppoints or heroics have mechanics that require a group. Gear makes a huge difference in how far you can get soloing hardmode flashpoints. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fantazm Posted November 2, 2014 Share Posted November 2, 2014 If you basically never group, what do you need the gear for? The only reason to gear up is to participate in the harder, group content. Why need it? Perhaps he just wants it because it's there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aaramis Posted November 2, 2014 Share Posted November 2, 2014 Just an update to my previous post, as I've just finished levelling a Merc to 55 and have (mostly) geared him up to be useful. Here's how I did it, and hopefully this works for you: 1-47 main story, then 47-55 Makeb with the GSI bolster. Finish Makeb and you should have a good amount of basic comms already. Good stuff. I then headed to fleet and outfitted a belt and bracers with Makeb commendations (24 planetary comms, which you or an alt should have). I then purchased 2 barrels to bring my weapons up to scratch - the cheapest I could find were 156s which were 20k each (your mileage may vary based on your server), and had an alt craft some +41 power crystals for them as I hadn't had any yet. If you need to buy some, they're pretty cheap, depending on the colour you want. You can alternatively get the Rakghoul ones with a bit of grinding for free essentially. After that, I headed to Oricon and advertised in General that I was a newly-levelled 55 looking for a partner to tackle the story missions. I instantly had 2 others join, and together we tackled everything. Once finished, we were able to instantly start the Weekly missions (which is essentially the same thing over again), which we did. We all finished about 50 basic comms richer, and with a full set of 156 armour. As I had some THORN reputation, I was able to purchase a relic (Antiviral Mk-3) for 20k credits, and I plan to do a bit of PvP to quickly obtain a second relic. The THORN relic also comes with presence which, as the OP is a soloer, is quite valuable. That leaves my Ear and Implants. Fortunately, I had a few already saved from other chars to instantly wear, but you can either buy some reasonable ones from the market or have an alt make you some if that's an option as well. And there you have it. You're now at a level where you should be able to solo all current content except perhaps the Oricon Heroic 2 mission and potentially also that Oricon mission with the subteroth. Although if you have the time and patience, you can just burn your 20minute cooldown Heroic button and take those out slowly. From here, I'd farm the heck out of comms so that come 3.0 you can instantly jump to 186 gear. Oh, and I'd work on outfitting your companion of choice (whether it's a tank, healer, or dps). GL, and happy hunting! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obilam Posted November 3, 2014 Author Share Posted November 3, 2014 some fantastic responses in there. Thank you all for your continued support. On a separate note.... I found a guild.....after... guess what??? Grouping with someone ......... these MMO's eh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heat-Wave Posted November 3, 2014 Share Posted November 3, 2014 If you basically never group, what do you need the gear for? The only reason to gear up is to participate in the harder, group content. ^ This... The hardest solo content in the game is Oricon, and that can be run with 148 blues... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts