SWTOR: The obligatory trek

Whoa! What is happening to my master?

Well, Treek, you've got a lot of planets ahead of you to figure this one out...

Not even a couch surfer?

While I spend a lot of time in 'real life' enjoying movies wherein people's largest dreams are to 'explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations', my own exploratory desires leave something to wish for. It had been a month since Y-u'no reached level cap, but I still hadn't been able to get myself to travel to all those planets and collect some datacrons.

Time to deploy The Boyfriend! Since Tiger's slinger had recently hit level 55 as well, I could drag him along to show me how to get them (I SUCK at jumping!). We went for all the Cunning and Endurance datacrons per planet, using this list from SWTOR-Spy.

Got a clue already, Treek?

It's a grind

Many games have some sort of optional mechanic to get permanent stat boosts for you character. This is always some sort of grind to keep your characters busy and it's not really all that 'optional' in the sense that anyone doing hard challenges will never pass on them because not doing so will be gimping yourself in a way. I have a deep detest for any kind of grind, so the prospect of having to do this stuff already made me groan.

Then again, the deed system in LotRO is waaaay worse ("kill so-many-hundred of this type of mob in this region" or "find all these locations in this region" x 16 x 5 = a total of 80 times performing such a boring task per character). Not only do you need to find much fewer datacrons in Star Wars than you need to finish deeds in LotRO, they are also often hidden in a clever way, sometimes requiring you to solve a small puzzle in order to get to them.

These containers, held by magnets, were slowly moving around and we had to wait and jump from one to the other to get to the glowy reward up ahead.

The endurance datacron on Voss arguably took the most time, because we had to do the whole planetary quest line in order to get access. From now on I'm going to do that on any character that lands on Voss.

Also, I just looked at the picture above and it struck me how much Treek looks like a teletubbie with that antenna on her head (it's not actually on the head, but it looks like that from afar).

We managed to get all Cunning and Endurance datacrons done in one evening. Still, I wish you had to find all datacrons only once for all your characters. That would be the appropriate fun level for me: now it still feels like a grind.

So when we found our last datacron, on Makeb, it was time for a little party. With appropriate music, of course!

SWTOR: I float and gain stats

University has started again and I'm very busy, but luckily I've been able to play some SWTOR in between things. Crafting and trying to discover nice recipes is perfect for when you don't have much time to play, or I just play a few warzones during a study break. 

Last week, I finally went to get the fleet datacrons on my main character Ravanel. It was the first time I did it, and man, it was annoying! We tried to pull people up with Rescue for the last part, but we kept *just* not making it and falling down, and then we could start all over again, trying to get in. I was so happy when all six of us finally made it! 

For those who don't know: the fleet datacrons give a permanent +10 boost to all your stats. You need at least four people and special items to be able to get it. Gamefront has a guide written out here.

More

Ravalation on datacrons:

• A holocron discovered
• Kneeling, exploration and more tauntauns
• Pursuing the matrix

SWTOR: Pursuing the matrix

Hunt for the datacrons

I should stop writing about datacrons. Really, it starts to sound like some sort of fetish of mine. Truth to be told, datacrons are just very addictive, even though I'm extremely bad at finding them. Right after my first Star Wars raid ("operation"), I and my guildmates took the art of datacron hunting to the next level by roaming the galaxy to find a dozen of them. On Corellia, we passed through a hologram of a door that I doubtlessly had passed without noticing a thousand times... and found a datacron. On Nar Shadaa, we jumped up some crates and then some tubes... and found a matrix cube. Aargh! You know those crates I talked about when I was so determined to find at least one datacron on Nar Shadaa? I had jumped those exact same crates back then, saw the tubes and thought "Nah, that's too high, there's no way I get up there and there's nothing there". Turns out there was. Gah, so close!

Matrix cube or datacron?

So that evening, we hunted both matrix cubes and datacrons: two things that look almost the same, but have a different effect. Datacrons (from "data holocron") are easy to explain: they give you a permanent bonus to an attribute (willpower, strength, presence... etc, you know the drill). Matrix cubes are another story. I had vaguely heard about them before, but didn't really know how they worked. So, just in case you're a noob like me, here's a short explanation.

Some datacrons will not give you an attribute, but will give you a colour shard instead. A combination of three of these shards can be used to make an item (also called a "matrix cube") that fits in a relic slot. There is one matrix cube for each class/role and it will have the best stats of all relics you will encounter in the game, so it's definitely worth getting one. The level 50 matrix cubes (there are also lower level ones) require three shards of the same colour. This is what you do:

1. Find out which shard colours you need for the (level 50) matrix cube of your choice:

* Note how force users and non-force users may pick cubes with the same name, but with different stats. 

** The stats of these cubes are from various websites, I haven't checked them all myself.

2. Find out where to get shards of the colours you need:

For instance, I found a very easy red shard in a hut on the roof of a base on Illum. There might be easier and harder places depending on what colours you need. It's probably best to just look it up in this post from Gallitin on Starwarzone.net.

3. Go to the Jedi temple on Coruscant and combine your shards into a relic. (Or, if you are evil, the Sith temple on Dromund Kaas.)
Republictrooper.com has a guide in case you don't manage to do it by yourself.

Tadaa! You got a relic!

Athletic tricks

While looking for datacrons on your own can be quite frustrating, it was major fun with my guild. Some places where so horribly hard to get to! Some would no doubt have taken hours to do without mistakes, but luckily we used to some tricks:

• Rescue (Jedi sage skill): pulls the target towards you
• This was great for pulling other people up to some hard-to-reach buildings. We were with two sages, so we could pull each other up if something went wrong. Ideal!
• Guardian leap (Jedi guardian skill): jumps towards the target
• Handy for guards who accidentally jump down at the wrong spot. As presented by my boyfriend on the picture below.

My favorite place was a crawler on Tatooine, where you could only get up if one person stood in front of it and pulled you, and you jumped when you were just above that person. Once one sage was up, we used Rescue to pull the others up (this apparently was the alternative to the buggy balloon ride). A bit complicated, but so much fun.

Own discovery

While "datacron hunting" was great, finding a datacron all by yourself still is the best experience. Yesterday I was doing the Tatooine bonus quest series on my sentinel, when I noticed a pink datacron on a rock wall. It was out of reach (too high), but it looked like there was a cave leading to it. In the evening, I returned to look for the cave entrance together with my boyfriend. It was well hidden, but we did find it, hurray! It even turned out to increase my will, which is always a good thing for a sage. To the right you see the location details, just for personal future reference (spoiler). You can see the datacron from the road, but you'll have to jump down on some rocks in the gorge west of it to get to the cave entrance.

Valuable?

I don't know how much it's worth to really go find all those datacrons. Finding that will datacron yesterday gave me +3 willpower, and on the 1500+ I already got, that really isn't so much. I wonder how much of a stats boost you would get by finding all the datacrons.  Would it be something like +50 to all stats? In that case it would be a good thing to do, but finding a single one doesn't immediately make a noticable difference. Nevertheless, I'd like to get them all eventually, for completionist and fun reasons.  

Okay, that was the last time I talked (at length) about datacrons, I promise!

SWTOR: Kneeling, exploration and more tauntauns

A mystery solved

Have you ever had your character kneeling when logging in and did you wonder why? It is almost as if my smuggler Yu'no is proposing to her baby tauntaun, or is she trying to pet it? Whatever it is, the mystery has been solved: this harmless bug is caused by logging in while still having your pet summoned from your last session. With thanks to a clever poster commenting on Xhii's blog Roll one hundred.

Turning Nar Shaddaa upside down

I've told you before that I don't like spoilers. If I'm playing a game for the first time, I don't want to look locations and guides up on the internet. Small downside: I do like finding holocrons. As I've been told that every planet contains at least one holocron, I was determined to find the one on Nar Shaddaa on my jedi knight Haradwen while she was leveling there. If I would explore each obnoxious corner I could see, I should at least be able to find one, right?

I can be so naive at times. 

I'm now level 25. I have not find a single holocron on Nar Shaddaa. What I did learn, though:

• There is no holocron situated around, op top or even in the golden Hutt statue on Nar Shaddaa. Yes, I'm 100% certain. 
• There are very, very many shafts on Nar Shaddaa. None of them contains a hidden lift.
• There are also a lot of crates on Nar Shaddaa. Climbing from crate to crate also does not result in finding a holocron.

Now I heard from someone that there are actually five holocrons hidden on Nar Shaddaa. Not one, but five! How did I miss all of them? Today I learned... that I am not very talented in finding holocrons.

Athiss on alts

To cheer myself a bit up, I took Haradwen to Athiss with a friend and my boyfriend + his tanking droid. I remember that it was pretty tough on level when we did this for the first time on our mains. Me and my boyfriend were a couple of levels too high, so that's probably why it went so smooth this time. It was still much fun, though. I like how crew skills can be used to skip parts or get small group buffs. It's a original mechanic, have never seen anything like it in an MMO before. I also had to giggle at my friend's appearance: I think she is the only one around who still suffers from the Rakghoul disease. It looks so funny! Also check out our baby tauntauns. Don't they look adorable? They can't seem to take their eyes of us. I do think it's a bit creepy how they keep staring at me, though. Perhaps I should keep an eye on them, as well.

SWTOR: A holocron discovered

Holocron nostalgia

I was leveling a bit with my jedi knight Haradwen today, and found some old pictures of her on my computer. Remember these holocrons that give you a permanent stats boost? Every planet is supposed to have at least one or two of them. I'm never going to find them all, nor am I going to try hard: I don't like grinding or spoiling their location by looking them up on some wiki. If you are the same, I suggest you don't read any further. I do however love to explore and discover them myself. This happened to me while I was on Ord Mantell for a class quest.

Ord Mantell is the place where baby smugglers and troopers grow up, so the creatures roaming it were several levels below me and didn't pose much of a threat. At a certain point my mission tracker was a bit off and sent me the wrong way. I didn't really trust it, but decided to follow the directions anyway because I was curious where I would end up. It was not much later that I  saw a huge mountain with a strange red light glowing on top of it. The tracker was sending me back again, but I decided to run around the island, killing the strong enemies and trying to keep away from a huge monster that was parading in front of it (a world boss?). I kept trying to climb the steep rocks and finally found a place where I could. And then, finally on top, I found it: there was a holocron! 

Now I'm usually not into touching strange glowy objects, but my game character apparently thought differently, and luckily in games it's a good thing. +1 Aim! (Not that I think Aim actually does something for a jedi knight, but ah well...)

The holocron contained information about the history of space travel. If you discover what it has to do with aiming, I'll give you a cookie:

For centuries, safe and reliable travel through hyperspace had been the biggest obstacle to galactic exploration. Finally, Corellian scientists managed to perfect hyperdrive technology on par with that of the ancient Rakata, allowing travel between the Core Worlds in mere days. Joined by trade and renewed communication channels, the Core Worlds signed an accord and united as the first Galactic Republic. The newborn Republic began exploration of hyperspace routes in earnest, supported by daring Duros scouts and eventually established the Perlemian Trade Route. This route connected Coruscant to many worlds, including Ossus, where the Jedi Order's enclave had been established centuries before (...). 

New SWTOR UI

On another note, I watched the video the developers released on their upcoming UI element customization system, and it's looking good! I always found the UI in SWTOR very annoying: changing your skill bars is very confusing (only extensive trial and error will teach you), you have to do it all over again for each character, and you are only allowed to have two windows open at a time, without being able to drag them around (one window would always block your message box). I would describe the total as poorly designed. It was about time, but it looks like they now made a plan to fix it, and they made work of it too! All aspects I just moaned about seem to have been taken care of. You can check the official video (with background story from an interface dev who reads aloud from a screen behind you, creating the eerie illusion that he's looking through you) at:

http://www.swtor.com/news/news-article/20120404

Now we only have to wait until we actually get update 1.2, whenever that will be.

Below an unofficial vid showing all UI options. I sort of get a headache from looking at all those colours, but hopefully it will make more sense in-game.