Noob questions

[Ironwood]

Fair enough, but it hasn't applied to me yet.

I've got enough commendations thus far to keep myself 'current' at the start of every new area and that seems to do me until the next one.  The drops are usually worse, similar or not actually a huge upgrade.  So it's a balancing act between being uber and juggling tons of shite.

But I take your point - It might become a larger issue later.

[Lantyssa]

Replace what you can with rewards (oh, wait...) and commendations.  You really don't need the latest and greatest at every level.  You will want to upgrade as much as possible when you start fighting level 30 mobs (Alderan for Imps), because there's a huge jump in mob difficulty then.  You can start stepping as you get mods again soon after though.

[Ironwood]

 

[Merusk]

What is the point of any equipment that's not orange ?

I'm serious.

There isn't one.  It was one of the huge design fails that they never grokked this point and all equipment should have been "Orange."

[Ingmar]

As Koro says, through most of Act 1 you just won't have the resources to keep a full set of oranges full of mods unless you're supporting the character from an alt, so blues and even some greens that drop tend to be useful. I tend to find that in Acts 2-3 I rarely touch anything that isn't moddable, but I have massive presence bonuses on my companions at this point and they pretty much paper over any weaknesses in my gear.

You *will* be able to keep a handful of oranges going even from the start without hardship, like 3-4 of them should be OK, and I think you're expected to; as such I am not sure why they reward green weapons ever, since everyone gets an orange weapon at the end of noobworld.

[Nevermore]

Don't forget you'll want to upgrade the gear on your companions as well.  At least the one you use the most.  I took the orange route on my PC as well, so most of my rewards and drops went to my companions, iirc.  I eventually upgraded my companions to oranges as well, but trying to keep PC *and* companion gear all oranges while leveling would be awfully hard.

[Raguel]

I have a cybertech and artificer. Since I didn't level the skills while I leveled those chars, it's hella expensive to keep my other alts going (had to pay for rare underworld metals and such). One thing about FPs is that the daily also gives you comms, and in the 20s or so I was getting comms for planets I hadn't gone to, so I was able to make armor and mods and use the coms for barrels and augs (for some reason I have blue or better hilts but never bothered to improve my augs)

[Merusk]

Don't forget you'll want to upgrade the gear on your companions as well.  At least the one you use the most.  I took the orange route on my PC as well, so most of my rewards and drops went to my companions, iirc.  I eventually upgraded my companions to oranges as well, but trying to keep PC *and* companion gear all oranges while leveling would be awfully hard.

I had a cybertech so keeping myself and a companion in full orange ubergear was easy. There really wasn't a reason to be anything but that and a slicer early on. No idea about now.

[Ingmar]

I still feel that bio is the only main craft that adds any particular value for solo gameplay at all, as it has been since the beginning of the game. Although it is a lot easier to get biometric alloys to make your BOP Rakata belts and bracers with armor and synth now, so that's something.

[koro]

Biochem's still really good even at level 50 in raids, though I don't know how long that'll be the case come the "expansion", since Bioware's been on record saying that they don't like all the reusable stuff at max level for biochems.

[eldaec]

Those tokens you use to buy raid gear pieces should be components that crafters use to make gear. Otherwise why bother having crafting in the game?

[Fordel]

Non-Orange gear is for alts you level up that you never intend to play after you finish their story. Low hassle outfitting.


It's otherwise just something you vendor or breakdown for crafting bits. Maybe part of a RP suit if that is your thing.

[Raguel]

Speaking of roleplay I finished a quest on Corellia that gave me an Imperial uniform but was WHITE. I already had better (tionese) but hey I loved the look  so why not?

I do kind of wish everything was moddable because I don't think every set piece is moddable. I can't remember what it looked like but I remember getting myself an all black outfit for my sniper and having to reluctantly part ways with it because it was low level.

[Sjofn]

I remember in beta, you could mod everything, but they took that out for reasons I cannot remember and probably thought were bullshit at the time. There are definitely armor models out there that need orange versions still, and it kills me when I come across something pretty and neat that's a shitty ol' green.

[koro]

I remember in beta, you could mod everything, but they took that out for reasons I cannot remember and probably thought were bullshit at the time. There are definitely armor models out there that need orange versions still, and it kills me when I come across something pretty and neat that's a shitty ol' green.

Edit: You probably know all this, but for the benefit of those who weren't in beta...

Back in beta that stuff was ostensibly removed/changed due to inconsistencies with the modification system they had at the time. Rather than the Armoring/Mod/Enhancement/Augment system we have now, it was something like... Armoring/Overlay/Underlay/Enhancement/Augment. Weapons were similar, in that blasters used blaster-specific mod/enhancement equivalents; same with lightsabers and other weapons. Back then, Armstech made all weapon-related mods, Artifice made all force-user armor mods and lightsaber mods, Cybertech made all non-force-user armor mods, and so on.

The big problem with the weapon side of the system was that it caused a lot of bloat in the databases and made Artifice too powerful as a crafting skill, which they eventually addressed by moving all Mods and Armorings into Cybertech. I wish they'd kept the weapon-specific mods in Armstech and Artifice and just made Cybertech the general armor mod skill.

As far as armor went, it was a different problem: there was no consistency in modification slots. Some armors had swappable Armorings and Overlays. Some had swappable Overlays and Underlays but no Armorings. Some had Enhancements, but nothing else. No single piece of gear had all of those slots available for use.

So, rather than just make every piece of gear "orange", they kept select major quest rewards and Flashpoint drops moddable and turned the rest into the greens and blues we see (and never use) today.

[Tannhauser]

Orange is the way to go, but it's a chore to keep current mods on them.  My first toon was a cybertech so it wasn't too bad, this was before augments.  But with my alt, I only have two on him and a max of one per companion.  Just not that needed when leveling up and does become annoying.

With my leveling hero using only two oranges, life is a lot easier and I can continue the story instead of stopping every level and sitting at the AH.

[Zetor]

Yep. You have to upgrade 3 things in each orange every few levels, and it's a huge chore - I just used oranges as I got them from flashpoints, and maybe kept one or two of them (+ weapon) up-to-date. My other rule of thumb was to upgrade orange gear once per planet (Quesh isn't a planet ). For the rest of the gear I just used greens from drops / quest rewards. Ditto companions, especially since for most of the game my companion was using heavy armor with +aim while I was using medium armor with +cunning; hand-me-downs weren't possible.

You typically get one armoring / barrel reward per planet, and maybe 1-2 enhancements or mods; the commendations you get from doing every quest outside the bonus series will typically only be enough to buy 2 full sets of armorings / enhancements / mods for your orange gear.

[Phred]

Freebos get 2 slots, Preferred get 6, and Subscibers get 12.

If you happened to have more than 12 before F2P hit (thanks to server merges), subscribers get a one-time grandfathering in, letting them keep those extra characters.

Actually that's not how it looks to work. I have "Activate" buttons beside each of my characters. At the bottom of the list it says I currently have 1/6 characters activated.
So unless I get another 6 characters on another server there is no grandfathering. The reason I'm not 100% sure about all this is I have only activated 1 character so far. Oh ok I just checked another server I had an alt on and I don't have to activate it to play it so it looks like I do get a few more characters as preferred.
So, if you had max characters on your main server you will be boned for 2 of them from what it looks like, but if you have a bunch of characters spread over multiple servers it looks like you can have 12.

[Sjofn]

They upped the number of characters you can create on a server to 12 at the same time they did the Big Mandatory Merges, so one may be even MORE boned than you thought! I assume non-subs can't create over their personal cap any more, though. That it's per-server for the non-subscribers is interesting to me, I had wondered if that would be the case or not.

[koro]

Freebos get 2 slots, Preferred get 6, and Subscibers get 12.

If you happened to have more than 12 before F2P hit (thanks to server merges), subscribers get a one-time grandfathering in, letting them keep those extra characters.

Actually that's not how it looks to work. I have "Activate" buttons beside each of my characters. At the bottom of the list it says I currently have 1/6 characters activated.
So unless I get another 6 characters on another server there is no grandfathering. The reason I'm not 100% sure about all this is I have only activated 1 character so far. Oh ok I just checked another server I had an alt on and I don't have to activate it to play it so it looks like I do get a few more characters as preferred.
So, if you had max characters on your main server you will be boned for 2 of them from what it looks like, but if you have a bunch of characters spread over multiple servers it looks like you can have 12.

For grandfathering, I was talking solely about actual current subscribers (and not preferred/F2P) who had 13+ characters on a server due to server merges. Originally, Bioware was going to make even subscribers lock out a few characters beyond those 12 and have you unlock new character slots to play them again, but they decided not to this one time.

[Phred]

Originally, Bioware was going to make even subscribers lock out a few characters beyond those 12 and have you unlock new character slots to play them again, but they decided not to this one time.

It's nice to see them occasionally get something right. Shame it's like the broken clock though. That said I still haven't worked out how the current system works as it keeps resetting my character selections.

[Raguel]

OT but I found it interesting that on the same day I'm in a FP with a level 35 Master jedi a level 21 trooper begs me to help him finish Act 2.

[Fordel]

Can you even finish act 2 at that level? I thought the Act quests had a hard level requirement.

[Raguel]

Can you even finish act 2 at that level? I thought the Act quests had a hard level requirement.

If by "hard level requirement" you mean unable to complete (or enter a zone)  at all, I don't know. I just assumed one could do them at any level, but the npcs would be at a certain level range for everyone.

[Sjofn]

As far as I can tell, the act quests don't have a hard level requirement, no.

[Ironwood]

Bounty Hunter is just Awesome.

So much more fun than my Inquisitor, though Mako is really, really hard to fucking please.

[koro]

My super-neutral money-grubbing Merc's found Mako plenty easy to please. She doesn't mind hands getting dirty, isn't completely skittish about killing folks, and no matter which way you swing with your character's priorities and motivations (money vs. rah-rah Mando honor bullshit), she's pretty chill with it.

I mean it's not like she's goddamn Corso or something.

I guess if you're all-dark, all the time Mako'll probably hate you, but neh.

[Merusk]

Yeah, Mako only gets pissed if you:

1) Break the BH code.   i.e. You were paid to complete a job but you backstab the client by setting the target free or gunning them down when it turns out they're the dick.  That fucks your rep as a hunter.
2) You do shit for free.

If you simply don't give two fucks beyond the money, she'll be in your pants in no time.

[Ironwood]

Hmmm.

[rattran]

Bounty Hunter is the best damn class in the game solely because of Blizz. Sure, he's not effective to roll with unless you're a healy merc. But worth gimping yourself or respecing to have as a companion.

[koro]

Blizz is also adorable as hell. I mean come on, he's so tiny he has to hold a blaster pistol like a rifle!

All of the Bounty Hunter companions are interesting, at the very least. Even dull-as-dirt Torian and the thoroughly unlikeable Skadge.

[Ingmar]

I always get +rep with Mako when I let people go, as far as I can remember. Maybe that was more evident in the planet missions than the story ones, though, can't quite remember.

[Merusk]

Yeah planet missions don't seem to affect her as much because you're not hired to take those folks out.  She was wonky on a few there, IIRC.  It's been over a year, though.

[Tannhauser]

Blizz is also adorable as hell. I mean come on, he's so tiny he has to hold a blaster pistol like a rifle!

All of the Bounty Hunter companions are interesting, at the very least. Even dull-as-dirt Torian and the thoroughly unlikeable Skadge.

My main reason to make a BH was for Blizz.  He rocks!  But most companions come too late in the game so Torian and Skadge might be interesting, but not when I've already go Mako, Blizz and Gault.  I love Gault cause he takes it to the next level.

Me:  "OK, looks like we've encased our bounty in carbonite."
Gault: "Awesome.  Hey, for extra credits, lets sell his kids into slavery!"
Me:  ....

[Sjofn]

You get Torian before Blizz, though! Although I agree on Gault, I can't see Torian replacing him for my dude BH. Gault is magical.

(I find Mako kinda meh, sorry!)