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Guide on farming the Overheated Life Day Droids

Jerba

By Jerba
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Jerba

Jerba

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Not everyone knows that there is more to this year's Lifeday's event than the two new decorations at the vendor , so I figured I should write a small guide on how to best farm the four new decorations from the overheated droids.

I've been doing the Lifeday event ever since the servers came up yesterday, and finally collected 50 each of the four new holotrees (plus a few for our guildship), and it was much fun to do it as a group! :)

Here's a small video on how it looked like: http://www.twitch.tv/theeho/c/5700549

Read below for details on what you have to do for it.

 

First, some details about the droids:

  • There are new Life Day Droids spawning on Coruscant (near Galactic Senate), Dromund Kaas (in Kaas City) and Nar Shaddaa (on the promenade). I recommend going to Nar Shaddaa since it has the most droids.
  • Each droid has a chance to spawn as a Overheated Life Day Droid, then he'll also have a small overheated buff. Otherwise, he'll just be a regular Life Day Droid.
  • After five minutes, the droids automatically despawn and will reappear ~4 minutes later; it will be random if they are overheated or not.
  • The overheated droids are level 10 enemies when they spawn and will turn green as soon as you throw the first snowball at them. If you attack them, they will do a crazy snowball attack, very fun to watch, but be careful to not kill them since they don't have too much HP. They don't drop any loot, so there's no point in killing them, except to annoy other players who want to farm the decorations.
  • Once an instance newly opens, all droids will spawn/despawn at the same time. Only after some players killed a few of the droids will the interval change, since now some of the droids will spawn differently. My recommendation is to go the first instance that has been open since Tuesday, because there the spawntimes will vary the most.
  • Depending on RNG, you may have five overheated droids up at the same time, or not a single one. There's nothing you can do about it, except to choose an instance that has been open for a long time. Otherwise, you'll have to wait the 4 minutes for all droids to reappear at the same time and can do nothing in between.

Here's what you need to do:

  • Like all players and NPCs, you can receive the Snow-Covered Parcels from throwing snowballs at the droids (15% chance). But when you throw a snowball at an overheated droid, you have an additional 15% chance to receive the Holiday Hero achievement and one of four holotrees.
  • You will not receive any reward when the target already has the snowflakes buff from you. However, when other players throw a snowball at it, the buff will be renewed and you can once again get a reward from it. With the new changes to the interface editor, you can turn on that your own buffs are highlighted, that way you'll know if you yourself applied the buff or someone else did it.
  • The important thing to note is: Even after an overheated droid is green, you can still get the decorations from it, as long as the buff on it was not applied by your character. So if you have at least two players, you can constantly throw snowballs at the same droid to farm the decorations.

How to organize a group:

  • While you only need two players to farm the decorations, I recommend to take along more players. The more players you have, the faster you'll find the overheated droids and the more fun it will be. I took along up to 24 players since that is the maximum group limit, but you can take even more players!
  • If your server has a global LFG channel, make sure to advertise it, and write it in fleet chat as well! Many players don't know about the droids and will be happy to learn they can get the decorations from it.
  • We created new abbreviations to refer to the droid spawnpoints, because just writing "droid is here" does not help anyone. Here are some examples: upstairs, northern/southern ramp, GSI room, cantina, GTN, stage, statue head/tail etc.
  • Don't worry if players leave the group. Not everyone wants to farm the droids for hours, some only want one of each of the trees, and they'll still be grateful to you. Just make sure to continue advertising in chat so that there'll always be new players to invite.

How long it takes:

  • In order to get 2x50 of the new decorations from the vendor, you need 2,000 parcels, which translates to 55 hours of non-stop farming.
  • To get all 4x50 decorations from the droids, you need to throw snowballs for roughly 5 and a half hours. But since droids will constantly despawn and reappear, you'll always have to wait a few minutes in between, so the actual time is more like 7 to 10 hours, depending on RNG.
  • Once you get all those decorations, you should have received around 200 parcels for free just from throwing snowballs at the droids. So in order to get the remaining 1800 parcels, you only need to farm your companion for around 50 additional hours.

IMO, Bioware did a great job with this event. It is always fun when you can create large groups and do something together. Like farming the world bosses during the Gree and Rakghoul event, doing mass pvp, porting the whole server to the Rishi datacrons or the Yavin world boss. This event was no exception, and it is the reason why SWTOR has a much better community than other MMOs in my opinion.

I hope this guide helps you in how to farm the droids the most efficient way, even though it is a lot of text. Happy Life Day everyone!

Edited by Jerba
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Jerba

Jerba

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I had no idea that this even existed....why does Bioware never make posts about these types of things / events..?

To be fair, they mentioned the droids in both the news post and on the events page, but those went up hours after maintenance when everyone already saw the updated vendor and thought "There's nothing new to the Lifeday event except for the two new decorations on the vendor."

Not even Dulfy mentioned the droids in her guide, she even commented that there's nothing new to the event except for the decorations on the vendor. Only after a few hours did she update her guide, and by then most players already lost interest in the event.

But given that we'll still have three more weeks of the event, I hope more players will take notice of the droids. :)

Edited by Jerba
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danielearley

danielearley

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Thank you, Thank you, this was worth reading purely for this Quote

"With the new changes to the interface editor, you can turn on that your own buffs are highlighted, that way you'll know if you yourself applied the buff or someone else did it."

 

I was not aware this had been added, so once again thank you. and nice guide. :)

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TUXs

TUXs

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I had no idea that this even existed....why does Bioware never make posts about these types of things / events..?

 

I didn't either. I was on Coruscant last night looking at Legacy gear and saw a droid spawn, killed it (which has been my reaction to red for 3+ years now) then read the reaction of players in General chat and realized they needed to stay alive...

 

Bioware did a VERY poor job of explaining what was going on with these.

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Jerba

Jerba

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"With the new changes to the interface editor, you can turn on that your own buffs are highlighted, "

How to do that? I only find Highlight Buffs but that's for general and Sort Personal Buff which is not highlight...

You need to go to the target frame, not your own buffs/debuffs. On the target frame, you have the option to highlight both the buffs and debuffs, and to sort them.

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PLynkes

PLynkes

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I had no idea that this even existed....why does Bioware never make posts about these types of things / events..?

 

They did. It isn't their fault if you didn't read it.

 

 

 

Bioware did a VERY poor job of explaining what was going on with these.

 

I think the idea was that we figure it out for ourselves. There is some satisfaction to be had in that, rather than running headlong to Dulfy the second there is something new in the game.

Edited by PLynkes
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TUXs

TUXs

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I think the idea was that we figure it out for ourselves. There is some satisfaction to be had in that, rather than running headlong to Dulfy the second there is something new in the game.

I don't disagree...but dropping red droids that anyone is able to attack, wasn't the brightest idea. Obviously players DID figure it out, but I wish they'd drop as yellow.

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Jerba

Jerba

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Sounds fun! Where do I get snowballs to throw at the droids?

You can use the same Snowball Bomb from last year. You can purchase it at the Life Day vendor on fleet for 1,000 credits; it is standing near the GTN terminals.

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Gwena

Gwena

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What a fun addition, thanks for the guide! :)

 

Did some of this tree-farming on Coruscant yesterday afternoon. There were tons of people, but since this isn't an event where you compete for spawns, it was great. I didn't see any tree-farming groups forming, but people were still helpful (and I think I prefer seeing "droid by the senate tower" to the usual capitol world chat anyway, lol).

 

The drop rate for the decorations seems quite good too, so if you only want one of each tree, it should be quick. I got seven trees from my first droid!

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Jerba

Jerba

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I may be missing something here but why exactly is a group needed for this (especially an op group of 24 people)?

 

People on DK have just been using general chat to point out OH droids.

Yes, it's not needed, but by being in a group, you don't disturb the players who are leveling on the planet and don't care about the event. Also, while in a group, you can see where everyone is and it is faster to find the droids, while having to follow the chat directions. But it works either way. :)

 

Just an addition: Green NPCs like the patrolling droids on Dromund Kaas, or even the legacy vendors will also attack the hostile overheated droids, this ensures that they won't spawn all at the same time even if no player kills them.

Very interesting, thanks for sharing this! I've seen the same thing happening on Corellia, where two Imperial droids would attack each other because some faction flag is set wrong. Not really worth reporting since they won't fix it, but always funny to discover it. :rak_01:

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Eillack

Eillack

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I didn't either. I was on Coruscant last night looking at Legacy gear and saw a droid spawn, killed it (which has been my reaction to red for 3+ years now) then read the reaction of players in General chat and realized they needed to stay alive...

 

Bioware did a VERY poor job of explaining what was going on with these.

 

I don't think they've ever explained event properly...well the first one wasn't even acknowledge on this site or the launch until 3 days after it started an a ton of people got screwed over because of the 1-day-only gear pieces.

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