Flashpoint thoughts

As a celebratory end to her flashpoint review series, Shintar of Going Commando interviewed Michael Backus of Bioware, responsible for SWTOR's flashpoints. First off, I think it's really awesome that she did this, and that Bioware took the time to answer. Flashpoints have not gotten much attention lately - people tend to talk more about class or expansion stories and raids - but they're a beloved part of the game to me and an important part of the 'vanilla experience'. The interview fuelled passionate discussions about flashpoints, both on Shintar's blog and on Reddit. I hope that Bioware is following this valuable feedback closely. The post gives a rare insight into the current state and direction of flashpoints and prompted me to write down the following thoughts.

Womp rat ballet

I was tanking the Rakata Prime flashpoint on hardmode and was trying to reset the bonus boss by running away. Of he course he didn't feel like it and sent more and more womp rats after me. Luckily our three sages could quake them down within seconds. It was only then that I noticed how the rats had positioned themselves around me as if it were a form of synchronized dancing.

Blood Hunt HM review: hardmode flashpoint is hard

I tried the new hardmode flashpoint Blood Hunt this weekend and thought it'd be fun to post a review here. Spoiler: it wasn't easy. Above the intrepid test team that bravely endured their faces getting splat into the ground more than once.

The mystery unveiled: how I ended up playing a shadow tank

If you visit this blog regularly, you might have noticed a mysterious mirialan lady wielding a double-bladed lightsaber appearing in the top banners (I have no idea if anyone actually looks at those, but let's presume you do). Seemingly, there are barely any Ravanels around anymore. And that after 2014 was the 'year of Ravanel'. What's going on?

SWTOR: How not to do the Czerka flashpoints

Was anyone else reminded of a Mass Effect DLC here?

Yay, new flashpoints released! Tigers sentinel just hit 55 and two friends we like to PvP with were available, so this seemed as good a moment as any. Okay, I was babysitting a sentinel in crafted gear and a fully partisan geared sage and a shadow tank, but accuracy is for the weak. Besides, it's not about gear but about skill, right. So what could possibly go wrong?

Stop chuckling at the oven mitts. I wear my mitts with pride.

Okay, apparently it can go wrong like this. A lot.

The first boss was a bit painful. With a bit of bad luck, the shadow tank's health would be brought back to 20% with one hit. With a bit more back luck, I would be pulled into the middle at the same time and had to heal and run at the same time (which doesn't really work). We're talking try 4 now. After what seemed like an age we hit the enrage timer (yes he has one) and I could finally persuade Tiger to relog to his properly geared sage. It's not really fair as that fight seems to favor ranged DPS a bit, but after that the first boss was a piece of cake. An annoying piece of cake though.

Why do all the bosses have to pull us in / knock us unconscious all the time? Gaaaaaaaaah.

Yay, bioanalysis on bosses is back! (Doesn't work in Scum & Villany.)

Meanwhile, guildies were talking to each other on guild chat how the flashpoints were a bit easy.

Ah well, at least we were having a hardcore time trying to figure out the boss mechanics while people were dropping like flies. We didn't even wipe on every boss, sometimes we figured them out in time. I needed to heal like mad. It was a challenge with the feeling of a proper 'hardmode', with the word in its old fashioned meaning. I shouldn't complain, as challenging content is what players say they are looking for all the time. And we did make it in the end.

Yet I do feel I should do this again with PvE geared people soon, just to ensure for myself that I'm not an ultimate crap healer!

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: Maelstrom Prison

It's been ages since I last played Star Wars. I've been just under level 39 for about a month. Yesterday I called my friend on Skype though, and we dragged our boyfriends with us to Maelstrom Prison. It was great fun!

The flashpoint apparently featured one of my favorite enemies: Grand Moff Kilran (picture to the right). His voice actor does a great job. He sounds extremely posh and confident about killing you (even though we've already defeated him before), which is fun. It must be great to have such self-confidence, because we just killed him again.

There were also these huge high-ranked robots patrolling everywhere in the hallways, of which I wasn't sure of their function. We could just all four DPS them, I didn't even have to put a bubble on someone, and we'd all still be on full health after killing them within several seconds. Weird stuff. I was also surprised in general by how well we were doing, given the fact that we all hadn't played our characters for a month. We had no deaths whatsoever.

The most fun part about the flashpoint was that it actually contained some good Star Wars-lore. I've played the old Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (let's be honest, who hasn't?), in which you play Revan, a fallen jedi who returns to the light side. At the end of that story, Revan disappears into deep space to look for the Emperor. In this flashpoint, you find out what happened afterwards.

Apparently Revan was caught by the Emperor, being imprisoned and artificially kept alive to control his mind and learn about the light side. While being in this condition, Revan was able to influence the Emperor slightly through the bond they had, resulting in the peace treaty that stands during the story of SWTOR. Now it was time to free poor Revan from his bonds, guided by the spirit of Meetra Surik (who apparently is the protagonist of the second KotOR game, which I haven't played though). I was a bit shocked to find out that Revan had undergone a gender transformation, as I played him as a woman during KotOR, but it was awesome to play through this storyline nevertheless.