f13.net

Just curious to know as I've already seen videos of guilds that are full swing into the end game raids already.  Highest level character I have is my lvl 26 BH but thats mostly because I've been at my parents over Christmas and using their laptop to (barely) play.  So, tell us how bad your home smells like catass and murdered time. :awesome_for_real:

My old friend and guild leader hit 50 today. He got the early game deal though. Not sure if that makes a difference. I've been playing for a week and am only level 16.

Operative Agent here...taking my time and enjoying the sights.  Level 33, but I'm still on Alderan, though I did finish my class story stuff there just so's I could get my Legacy name locked in.

My Sorcerer is only 33, but I've been putzing around with a BH, and a Marauder on Shien, and a Jedi Shadow on The Bastion.  I've seen one 50 in the BGs, and a large number of players that are 46 - 49.

Azuredream has for sure. We've got several in the 40s, including Rattran who has pulled way ahead of my plonking butt. I only really got an early lead because of hour 0 access and a few days off over the holidays. I did start a SW that hit 14, my BH is 35. I'm in no hurry.

Like luckton, I tried to make a push for 30 to get the legacy unlocked.

My highest is a JK at 28. I've got a trooper at 15 and a SW at 20 though.

Altogether that's a 50, but not a lot of poopsockage here, unless you count playing on the plane to and from California.

I was hoping to do some poopsocking of my own over the holidays since I'm off for 30 days but my trip to visit my parents ruined that plan. :heartbreak:  Still, I'm flying home tomorrow morning and I'm not back to work until 16 Jan., so that leaves about 18 days to fill the sock. :awesome_for_real:

Once I hit the 30s and finished Chapter 1, my levelling pace dropped off quite a bit.  I'm working on an alt, exploring a bit, working on trade skills, etc.  Just sorta enjoying the ride.  I'm also getting an itch to roll a sorcerer.  Assassin is fun, but sorcerer looks pretty fun too. 

Prettty sure I'd be 50 or close to it if not for the enforced week break due to visiting family in NJ. As it is I have a level 35 or 36 consular and a level 26-ish smuggler.

I alted it up a bit at 49. I'm going to make myself finish off this story though.

I really am a fan of "clean the piss out of the SunnyD bottles under your desk" in these situations.

Level 26 Marauder, didn't get to play as much as I would have liked because the wife had trouble with a root canal just before Xmas and we're leveling together. Weird side note, we've been duoing from level 1 on Korriban, and with no PVP or space battles we had outlevelled Nar Shadda before even leaving Balmorra (lvl 25). At this rate we'll ding 50 in Taris.  :grin:

I've been playing the crap out of the game and have a Sorcerer at 50. There are enough people at 50 now on Shien that I'm finding a nice circle of people to run the level 50 content with. I like to pile all my time onto one character so it'll be a while before I start leveling the Powertech that I have in the works.

I hit 50 on launch day myself.  2 other people in my guild just hit 50 today.

Jesus, man...hope you remember to change your undies once in a while. :grin:

I am all of level...24? Stupid Year End closing at work.  Stupid pregnant wife.  Stupid kids.

I think I'm in the gap between the poopsockers and the bulk of players, there's noone on the planet's I've been on. Quesh and Belsalvis are ghost towns.

Two sets of story quests will easily overlevel you. Side quests as well are going to add up fast.

How the???? Granted I've only been able to play a few hours a day and am only 13, but two of my buddies are grinding the shit outta that game and they are still only 27ish.

You people are mad! Mad I say!

(http://dhall2.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/thematrixarchitect.jpg)

 :drill: :why_so_serious:

Yeah I actually "hate" leveling.  I get OCD about it and must finish it ASAP.  Then I punish myself more as my Sniper is already 27.

I did straight questing, space missions, and pvp (only when I had to help level myself for the next area).  I did no heroics or flashpoints, I did do every bonus mission possible.

I just hit 50 earlier today. I did all planet quests (except for the heroics) in sequence... hit 50 just by finishing Corellia and Act 3 of my class quest, with some of the 'planet bonus quests' remaining along with the entirety of Ilum. I did some pvp while leveling, but didn't overdo it (pvp is pretty bad in this game in case I haven't mentioned that enough times already :awesome_for_real:). Only did the first three space missions.

Flashpoint pugs are almost nonexistent on my server, so I only run esseles (twice), and hammer station once. I also ran guildies through cademimu, taral V and maelstrom, but that doesn't count -- all mobs were grey and could barely hit me.  

I did play a healer alt off-and-on (level 16-ish) that I intend to only level through flashpoints, pvp, heroic group missions and space... that's going to be on hold for a while, though.

Taris has a nice mix, enough to do a few things. Unfortunately, most of the sith seem to be "roleplaying"  :oh_i_see: I just roll with it, but I do have a stack of heroic quests. I pretty much stopped bothering with them after Tatooine. Omw to Quesh after I clean up a few solo quests on Taris, debating the Taris bonus series.

Haven't really done any pvp this week, so looks like I won't be getting my level 40 pvp set. Hit 36 last night after staying up to finish the Taris arc of the BH story.

The only time I get close to 'grinding' is when I want to close out a story arc in a session and they do a little extended bit I didn't expect. I did laugh because I had been bitching about leveling too fast and last night found myself thinking leveling had really slowed and bitching to myself about it. Then I relaxed, looked around the amazing Taris zone and slowed back down to enjoy playing this amazing game.

The higher planets have around 3 people on them as well. I both love and hate having entire leveling zones to myself, compared to say Coruscant.

It seems the bulk of the playerbase are on the sub-30 planets still, just from playing my alt.

I'm only 34 and just hit Taris the other night.  Been obsessed with watching How to Make It in America with the wife and didn't really get to play the last two nights. 

I was more on a mission to grab up each class's ship. However, for whatever hellbent reason, I have my consular up to 27 and DS IV. The rest kinda have fallen by the wayside because I am kinda taken with my Orion girl.  :why_so_serious:

I hit 50 on the 21st I think.   Me and a friend took off work and we duoed every day.  We didn't even play all day and it didn't take that long.   At the end our /played was 4 days and a few hours.   That was consuming EVERY quest in the game though.   We only skipped 4 man heroics.

More interestingly a friend from beta got to 50 (on a jedi knight no less) in 3 days /played so if you skip the useless bonus series and space bar some stuff you can level very very fast in this game.

Talk about missing the point.

he might say the same thing about you.

The bonus series aren't useless, imo. They're gap filler content with a usually decent story (meaning you're 45, and the next planet is 46-47? There's probably a level 45-46 bonus series you should do)

My main complaint with the game actually is that a 1 level difference is HUGE in pve. Like, +1 con hostiles will drop you to half hp, and take ~2 minutes to kill a gold elite. -1 cons will die in your first volley, and gold elites will go down before you've made it through a full rotation.

How?

Perhaps the part about ignoring the story in a story game?

I like the bonus series (other than the jarring transition from "You saved the planet!" to "Ahhh the planet is almost lost!") but have to do them regardless because if I don't get a couple levels into the next planet's range I will experience a world of hurt.

How much do skills cost at 50?  I'm at 30 and they now cost 12k, that's retarded.

Skill cost appears tied to the number of skills you have to train, essentially. The jarring cost is due to the lack of a fractional money type system (gold/silver/copper), everything is listed in essentially Copper, so the numbers and scale skyrocket.

So I spent ~70k one level training 3 skills, but only spent ~90k the next level training 12 skills.

The Bonus Series on the planets seem to deliver better credits/lewts than the main lines, so seem worth doing. I've been skipping the Heroic4s, and going back to the Heroic2+ when I'm +2 to them, and cleaning them out. Though there are a few Heroic2s that are doable at even con, that may be because I can let the pet tank/dps while I just heal

Doing all the heroics+2s and the bonus stuff as I've been doing with my friend on his smuggler and my JK, you outlevel the zones by the 4th section.

Maybe you missed the part where he did all the story bits in beta?

Teaming also makes quests faster, kills more efficient, etc. So having a partner makes you outlevel stuff.

You also get extra quest XP when completing objectives/turning shit in as a group.

Doing a strict duo has finally been actually worth it for us in this one, it has been more trouble than it is worth in all the games we've played since DAOC really, but they did a nice job with it here. We get social points, and almost all the "collect X things"/"click X shinies" quests count for both of us when one person clicks a thing. And the "holocall" thing is HUGE. It really reduces the amount of time we lose to travel, which is always a big problem with trying to do a strict duo in other games.

Doing JK and Trooper in beta, there was a lot of holocall stuff.  With my Sith Warrior?  Just once so far.  Not a complaint, just an observation.  Not all classes use it the same amount, it seems.

DUO is definitely the way to roll in this game. Anything more is just gravy on top. The heroics give tons of XP and loot, and are quite fun in most cases. Most, lead to fun boss battles.

I've found there is often a big difference between "Group 2" and "Group 2+" I think Group 2+ means duo with companions (the +). Group 4 generally means a solid balanced trio + Mako and even then a couple of you better outlevel it.

I wish I could duo through, but it's almost impossible to stay in sync with anyone that long who isn't physically in the same room. No idea how anyone does it without going bonkers.

You can do the 4s up to about the 3rd planet with a duo. By the third planet, you need 4 solid people.

I don't mean the thing that pops up in your story quest, I mean the ability for people in your group to holocall in to conversations with a quest NPC so you don't all have to run to him to turn in.

I must really suck at this then, because -1 con golds still take a hell of a lot longer than one full rotation for me to kill.

Me, too...but I'm a tank spec with a healer pet so I expect it to be slow.

Funny killing the Santabot solo takes me forever just whittling him down...then Furi shows up and makes quick work of it (relatively speaking, he's got a decent bucket of hp). I try to keep things at -2 to keep it from slowing down too much.

Including buying the high level speeder license, I spent pretty much 500k at 50 to level and get that.

Well I also am using a DPS companion. Plus it's like 3 times the dps, so it does go down a lot faster. Only one person is getting shot/healed. So it's a ton more efficient. Except for loot distribution.

So how overstated were the claims of 200+ hours of content for each class from BioWare?

Well, I think that number must include the content that all classes are sharing.  But if you take that into account...maybe?  I have only leveled to 24, and have skipped a lot of content (Heroics, Flashpoints), and while I haven't checked my /played...I think I have played nearly the equivalent of a single game of KOTOR.  Were I to do all the content, I would definitely be at that point, or past it.  So there is a lot.  I think the game delivers in spades from a single player content POV.  MMO stickiness is another question entirely.

Those guys that have 4 days /played and have made it to level 50...we all scoff at how fast that is, but that is 96 goddamn hours.  Space bar all the way through, I imagine, and surely they are skipping content in order to level faster.  Anyone who doesn't think that is a lot may as well be Treasurer for the Poopsockers Club.

Does this mean you'll do it again with me once Kayce and Siala are squared away?  :drillf:

Are we still talking about the game?

Maybe.  :oh_i_see:

Depends on what you mean by content.

If you skip flashpoints, space combat, pvp and stick with just solo quests on each planet, I can see you having about 120-150 hours of content maybe.

I'm 36 and have skipped most flashpoints all the 'bonus' content and the heroics for each planet unless there was a group there when I was.   I'm at 4 days /played time total with 14 more levels to go.  I can see 200h easily.

I've been consistently able to do HEROIC4s with a random bat country partner plus companions, so long as we are both more or less the same level as the mission.

It probably does depend on at least having an effective tank (meaning able to keep aggro - Khem Val is fine) among the 2+2 characters, and having a healer if the tank's gear is crap.

50 Merc healer and a 28 Sith Assassin currently we have a total of 9 50's so far

50 merc healer here, with 17 Sith Assassin.

40+ went reasonably quickly, the key seemed to be gearing the shit out of my companion. Once I got a couple purple armor mods RE'd survivability went way up.

I can barely proc a blue on RE's. I just go with that since I seem to outlevel the mods so damn fast. Actually making mods now that I can't wear for 4 levels so I can waste mats on trying to proc purps now.

I got to level 12, got bored and quit.   :grin:

I hit 50 about a week ago on my Vanguard tank-spec Trooper. My guild has 8-10 level 50s at this point.

Easiest way to gear up at this point is through PVP. Nobody on my server attacks each other in Ilum, they just point trade.

Ding 50.  :why_so_serious:

Woulda been like a WEEK ago if it wasn't for STUPID CHRISTMAS.

I'm the other way around. Playing for an hour a night, two if I'm lucky...it's been difficult. Xmas vacation was so nice.

Yeah, we were in Jersey for Christmas, so I had no way to play. If we had been here, we would've been playing an even more embarrassing amount together.

I guess I could've had Siala at 50 earlier if I didn't have her hitched to Ingmar's jedi, but duoing is hella fun in this game, so it was an acceptable sacrifice. ;) I should probably decide (already!) who should be next. I know Kildorn votes for Kalah because of my Corso Riggs Hate, but man she is annoying to solo. My trooper has a much easier time of it!

That's a shame.  Pvp is about the only thing I enjoy at endgame.  I'm working on alts for just that reason.

NOW can we have more hot Corso on Blaster action, or do you need to gear up first? ;)

I figure I will do most of Siala's gearing when Ingmar is around, so yes, we can have more white hot Corso hate.  :awesome_for_real:

Tharan > all.

Man, Tharan is utterly harmless. He's even sort of adorable when he ultranerds, if you ask me.  :why_so_serious:

Corso, though. Fuck that guy.

I'm still on the fence on Holiday. She's both depressing/dear god what, and randomly hilarious.

Tharan just likes talking shit to wildlife animals. "Obviously you've never heard of us!" "Tharan, it's a womprat. I don't think it's heard of anything."

He also really can't remember if he's mentioned he's a pacifist lately.

I will give him credit on space missions... his lines are actually pretty funny. The escape pod one makes me laugh every time. But I still want to dump him in an airlock and get 50 DS points as I wave to him flying out the back of my ship. I'll keep the virtual cheerleader - she's a trip.

(http://i.imgur.com/9j0Ue.jpg)

With a fairly minimal amount of effort (ilum and pvp dailies/weeklies, one hardmode or so a night), I know have just about full Tier 2 PVP gear with a few PVE pieces as well.

With the supposed ease of Eternity Vault (we're trying it on normal and hard this weekend), I'm not sure what else there is to do at this point. PvP is pretty fun, I guess.

Reroll.  That's about it.  I'm at the same place that you are and it's pvp, flashpoints, or Ilum dailies at 50.  It's a very good game, but they will have trouble keeping people beyond 3 months if they can't produce a vibrant endgame environment soon. 

Nonentity, your guy looks like something out of post-apocalyptic movie/game.

Yeah, I'm kind of leveling a Scoundrel on the side, but it's nice to be able to take a break from the game after poopsocking it to 50.

And yes, very post-apoc. I have a heatsink on my shoudler and a giant coffee maker on my back.

I managed to semi-poopsock my way to 50 this morning.  I've been on vacation since 17 Dec.(not back till 16 Jan.  :raspberry:) and have played fairly regular since I got in the early access on 16 Dec.  Even pushing it a bit the past 10 days it took longer than I thought it would.  I only did the Black Talon Flashpoint and skipped a lot of content on the way, so I can easily see someone who takes their time and does everything having more than the 200 hours that was promised.  I did manage to get my crew skills (armormech, underworld trading and scavenging) to 400 along the way, which was pretty easy to do once I had a sufficient cash flow to keep all my companions running missions while I quested.  I'm going to take my time leveling my SI so I can see what I missed, esp. the group content.

Late to the party, but just got my first character, my Sorceror (healer) to level 50.

Haven't even finished Voss yet!

How do you manage to level any characters when you're spending all your time switching between them? ;D

He looks likes a 1st edition Cylon.

Haha, yeah I have alt-itis badly :p  I only switch between them when the crew skills need refreshing... I've only really been levelling 2, Tenacious and Notorious :)

Hmm, not sure which thread to ask this in, but what are the options for gearing post-50?

I popped into ilum today to see what it was like, picked up the dailies etc. I've got to get 30 of these armament things per day, 5 days a week? There were 3 of us in Ilum in total and in 30 mins I managed to find 5 armaments. So, that's not gonna happen.

I assume finishing off my class questline and Corellia is a good idea but will that give me decent enough gear to try HM FPs (I'm a healer) and/or not get roflstomped in WZs?

You can ignore the ilum pvp daily, but you need to do the pve ones.  Also belsavis dailies. 

Cool, thank you, and thank god for that!  :awesome_for_real:

Working on the Corellia quest now, then will do the Belsavis bonus series. I had a go at the Ilum pve quests and got wtf'd so I think I need some better gear to make them a bit easier.

As soon as you hit 8 daily commendations, either from ilum or belsavis bonus series, head to ilum and buy a level 50 hilt/barrel.  That should make things quite a bit easier.

Ilum reeally slowed down ttk with my powertech tank to the point of tedium, more or less. I guess a new barrel would be a nice boost, but I think I have 3 comms and playing my alt is just more fun than pushing through quests so I can get better gear to grind dailies, unless there's a lot of interest in HM FPs in BC at some point in the nearish future...

My Powertech BH got to 50 maybe two weeks ago and is waiting for a dungeon finder.
Unsubbed while they patch in the game.

Honestly, with zero expertise you will get waffle-stomped in WZs.  Freshly minted 50s have a pretty brutal gearing curve in WZs these days.

There is very little difference between wearing pve and pvp gear actually.  Expertise is on the armoring, meaning it takes away from your main stat and from endurance.  Using pve gear you will have several thousand more hit points and quite a bit more damage, a full suit of champion gear only gives me around 14% pvp bonus and the diminishing returns on it are quite severe.  Obviously without anyway to track it we can't know for sure which is better, but i know several pvpers who swear by their raid gear and seem to do quite well.

I agree.  The powertech in my guild wears his pve gear and tops the charts in dps all the time.  I asked him if he felt that his survivability suffered and he stated that the extra end more than made up for the lack of mitigation. 

Probably makes a bigger difference for healer classes. 

Yeah, for someone that can heal having "stronger" hit points is better.  But for something like a marauder, who heal 2% of their total hps each time their dots crit and 10% when they use their break free ability the much higher total hps of the pve gear leads to higher survival.

14% is a huge number in this regard.

You get more than 14% more damage wearing pve gear and a bit more than 14% more hit points.

If you're getting healed by any healer that doesn't operate off of %health, 14% DR should be better than 14% more hp.