SWTOR's newest expansion, Knights of the Eternal Throne, is almost there! I'll be joining the early access mass tomorrow; those that are not eligible will Friday. Along with KOTET a lot of changes will be implemented. Here are the things I'm doing to prepare. Let's exchange tips! If I missed anything, let me know in the comments.
Commendations
The most noteworthy change is that all commendations will be changed into credits. If you missed this, here's the official conversion info:"1 Warzone Commendation = 50 Credits
1 Common Crystal = 500 credits
1 Glowing Crystal = 1,000 credits
1 Radiant Crystal = 1,500 credits
Upon logging in on 11/29 each of these currencies will be completely removed from the game and the appropriate credits will have been granted to each character on your account. Note that there is a 2 million credit per character limit on this conversion."
You probably won't hit the 2 million credit cap on most of your toons, unless you have a ton of both data crystals and warzone/fleet commendations. However, most people are spending their commendations anyway, because they don't feel like spending credits in the future. What can you spend them on?
Silas Fleetfire on Odessen exchanges basic commendations for companion gifts
Companion gifts
A lot of people, me among them, are exchanging all their basic commendations for companion gifts. This is because high tier companion gifts will be expensive in KOTET. The devs have confirmed you are still able to buy them for credits instead of commendations, but they will be costly. This is because the main source of companion gifts is intended to be random drops from galactic command crates. If you want to increase your influence with a specific companion, the time is now.
Basic commendations can be exchanged for companion gifts at Silas Fleetfire on Odessen (in the corner near C2-N2) by any character of level 55 or higher. If you haven't reached Odessen in the Knights of the Fallen Empire, or haven't started the KOTFE story alltogether, you can travel there in the ship of a friend who has or buy the skill to travel there in the legacy system for 200,000 credits or 125 cartel coins.
Estah Kloy on the Fleet exchanges basic commendations for decorations
If you have characters below level 55 that you want to spend basic commendations on, gear or stronghold decorations are a good alternative. A vendor in the Strongholds & Crew Skills section of the fleet sells Rakata themed decorations.
Warzone commendations
The warzone commendation to credit ratio is quite low, so I would recommend spending these as well. You can get some cool decorations at the Starfighter & PvP Decorations vendor in the Strongholds & Crew Skills section of the fleet. Note that some are dependent on your faction. For instance, on a Republic character you can buy a Republic Guardsman; on an Imperial one a Imperial Guardsman.
Another thing to consider is that warzone stims and medpacs will cost credits in the future as well. Saving up on those certainly doesn't hurt.
Captain Nitch on the Fleet exchanges warzone commendations for decorations
Buying expertise crystals
This one is totally optional, but it's something to consider. Expertise crystals are usually very cheap on the GTN, often half the price of their eviscerating, hawkeye or versatile versions. In KOTET, expertise crystals will be transformed into mastery crystals. So buying a crystal to your liking now is basically getting it for half the price. I would also recommend unlocking it in your collections while you're at it, as that's currently 50% off.
Voss Star Fortress
This is
something a lot of people may have missed if they haven't been carefully
following SWTOR's livestreams. In one, a dev gave the tip of doing
Voss' star fortress before starting Knights of the Eternal Throne. Why?
(This is a mild spoiler, so if you want to remain completely spoiler
free, skip the rest of this paragraph.) He mentioned Voss is one of the
first places you visit in KOTET, and implied that whether you've taken
out its star fortress or not will affect the story in some way or
another. I will be completing it on the KOTFE characters I care about,
and will intentionally skip it on at least one to see what happens.
I think that's everything that needed explaining; however, there are some other things to quicky check. I recommend logging each of your characters to check the following:
Checklist per character
- Check if you're going over the 2 million credit cap (per character) with commendations.
- Get all the companion gifts, decorations and gear you want with commendations. Once KOTET is live, they will cost credits instead.
- Exchange any unclaimed armour or jewellery tokens (the ones that you win in operations). They will be sold for credits if you don't.
- Sell obsolete items. Every expansion comes with a ton of new stuff, so it's nice to clean up your inventory and vaults in advance. PvP armour shells can be vendored (expertise armour will be removed in KOTET); try to sell raid drop crafting items (exotic isotope stabilizer & dark matter catalyst) on the GTN if you still can.
- Optional: buy good looking expertise crystals on the GTN and unlock them in your collection. They will be changed to mastery crystals in KOTET.
- Finish the Voss star fortress on KOTFE characters that you care about.
- Turn in any uncompleted missions. They will reset if you don't.
See you in Knights of the Eternal Throne!
Just one small nitpick, I'm afraid..!
ReplyDeleteWar Hero crystals are still staying instead of being turned into another type; they will only be converted into a 'new' Mastery crystal instead of Crit or Power, so really purchasing them now will do nothing in the long-term. Heck, they may even become cheaper in 5.0 (except the really rare ones) since not many players use anything other than Crit or Power in PvE.
However, it will definitely be interesting to see whether any classes will actually benefit from a WH Crystal in PvE now...
Cheers for being sharp eyed! Actually, assuming the amount of mastery is the same as crit or power on those crystals, mastery crystals might be better for some classes and specs. They would be now. Still think it's definitely worth unlocking some cheap war hero crystals (especially since collection unlocking is 50% off) to have awesome colours available for PvP alts and companions in the future.
DeleteAh, that explains the conflicting info in the post (you made another mention of it in the "buying expertise crystals" paragraph and didn't edit that).
DeleteErrr, oops. Thanks for catching that. Forgot I talk about crystals in two places.
DeleteVery good post, but a bit late I'm afraid... I know if I hadn't got all this stuff done over the weekend and had only just now found out about it, it would have been too late for me to do anything, what with work and the servers going down later today.
ReplyDeleteI didn't even know/think about the common crystal furniture vendor. On my lowbies I spent their crystals on rank 5 companion gifts on the fleet - at 5-10 crystals a pop they were still a good deal. On the ones high enough to go to Odessen, I actually invested in Alliance crates, as I'm uncertain what's going to happen to those. As one of the few who hasn't been too happy with what they did to heroics in 4.0, most of my crates have come from giving spare common crystals to the vendor, but it would be kind of weird if in the future you'd be able to just buy them with credits and get to Alliance rank 20 without any actual gameplay? So I wouldn't be surprised if Bioware took them out, though they haven't said anything about it.
I also spent some radiant crystals on rounding out the 220 gear of some of my alts, mostly because I'm paranoid about just how hard it will be to gear them up in 5.0.
Wait, what, you don't stalk Ravalation 24/7 to keep on top of the latest SWTOR tips? /disappointed :P
DeleteThe lowbie companion gifts would've been a good tip as well. I thought those still cost credits! I'm not too worried about the alliance crates myself, as it looks like doing heroics will be an efficient way to improve your command rank. Granted, I never know which specific crate I'm going to end up with, but we'll probably end up with a lot nevertheless. I just hope operations will grant sufficiently more so there is still an incentive to do them (other than the fun factor and decorations).
I didnt know about the Voss Star Fortress tho, hmm i never bothered doing them.
ReplyDeleteIf you do it before starting the new KOTET story, you won't miss out on anything. :)
DeleteWaited till last time and last night was up untill 3AM trading comms (could not resist to guild lowbie pvp fun :p ).
ReplyDeleteWhat I did with my wz comms was to trade them for pvp set bonus to gear some alts, since I do not decorate.
Murder
The Senate Guard
Oof, I'm not the only one who pulled a late night exchanging comms then (took me until 2.30 AM - too many alts)! It was funny to see how these vendors were surrounded with people, whereas they usually stand around in a deserted corner.
DeleteThe PvP set bonus gear would've been a good tip in this post as well. Assuming just the stats are changed, it's a nice initial boost to start leveling characters that wear set bonus gear.
Afraid that I'm another one that doesn't follow you 24/7 and also failed to work out the clever things that you did. Didn't help that yesterday was first day for two months that I had the computer capable of logging into games. (Took 2 months to get from UK to US plus get re-set up). So focused on my Dark v Light character that needed to level up = waste of time). If I get right DvL companion - the Chiss one - then gifts will cost me.
ReplyDeleteFootnote: In LOTRO my wife got to new housing area in Gondor and bought a new guild/kin house. Will email you the info.
Ah, don't worry about these preparation things. They're just tips and suggestions, nothing obligatory or anything. If you didn't spend your commendations, you just got some extra pocket money on all your characters. The important news is that you're able to play SWTOR again, yay! I hope you made your DvL target. The light side won (just about), so we'll be getting the Chiss companion tomorrow. Looking forward to it! :)
DeleteCan't wait for my Chiss companion. Hoping that pocket money is substantial as the companion givts at 250,000 are ridiculous. Not keen on changes so far as spent time getting PvP and PvE 216 armor sets that were interchangeable between characters. Now seem under-stated for some reason, and seems harder to replace. [Might be spending more time in LOTRO.........on the beach at Belfalas.]
DeleteMaster Ranos is in game! I still need to do the recruitment mission (I wanted to finish Knights of the Eternal Throne first), but I've already heard that there at least is more to her than just summoning her and that's it. :)
DeletePerhaps it will cheer you up to know that you will still get 'free' companion gifts from increasing your galactic command rank on level 70 characters - you just won't know which specific one. Unfortunately you do need to be subbed for GC. If you're not, you can still get them from diplomacy missions, which is cheaper than directly buying them.