SWTOR's Top Five Worst Planets to Navigate

Thanks to commenter sootnsweep for giving me the idea for this post. I don't think they actually meant to encourage me to make this particular post, but creativity works in weird ways. Thanks for the inspiration anyway.

#5 - Zakuul

Some of you might be raising your eyebrows at this one, thinking something along the lines: "Zakuul barely even qualifies as a planet, how confusing can it be?" Not that confusing, which is why it's only in fifth place, but considering how few open areas it consists of, it's still quite impressive how awkward Bioware managed to make those to navigate.

Look at this screenshot of the landing zone. Do you know where any of those arrows lead to? I've taken the wrong elevator while attempting to get to the last area I was still missing to uncover the full map on more than one occasion. There's also this area near the tram station where I swear I've gone up and down the stairs repeatedly just to watch the quest indicator change its mind about whether I should be going up or down. And despite of having done "To Find A Findsman" on multiple characters by now, there's still always that one part where I initially go the wrong way because the seemingly obvious route ends in a dead end and you actually have to go round the long way.

#4 - Iokath

I bet some of you were waiting for this one. It seems everyone loves to bash Iokath! And I agree that it's pretty underwhelming as a daily area and awkward to navigate.

Still, I couldn't justify placing it any higher on this list because as I expected when it came out, the confusion about where to go for your quests diminishes greatly once you've done the dailies a couple of times, and what with the various teleporters it doesn't take you too long to get to any of the parts of the map that you need to visit to complete your daily round. There's just this one area in the south-east part of the map where you have to follow a pretty annoyingly serpentine path to get to an objective, but at least the related mission is easy to avoid.

#3 - Balmorra

Good old Balmorra. I'm sure everyone will immediately know what I'm referring to with this one. Most of the map isn't too bad, but this planet's problem are the lifts, which are mostly located in and around the Gorinth Canyon. Their problem is that a) they are located in annoying places that never allow you to just go straight from one objective to the next, and b) for some reason some of them aren't in the same places on Imperial and Republic side, so if you switch between factions a lot this can be extra confusing.

The Republic also has this one quest hub for the bonus series in the lower part of the canyon called Moraine Outpost which for some reason still doesn't have a quick travel point to this day, so the fastest way to get there is to QT somewhere else and then take a speeder. Why, Bioware?

Also, there are a bunch of broken bridges that tease you with the idea that you could be getting over there much faster if only the bridge wasn't missing a big chunk in the middle. I guess this teaches us that war is bad because broken infrastructure sucks.

#2 - Corellia

Corellia has two simple but persistent problems. The first and minor one is that all its areas look and feel extremely same-y. Except for the park, which I know has the zoo and Lucky in the middle, I couldn't tell you what's where. I still get confused about where to go every time we want to kill the Commander in the Imperial base or whenever I try to find one of the datacrons again. I know how they all work, but just finding the right general area they are in is more of a challenge to me these days than anything else and I usually quickly resign myself to consulting a guide rather than running in circles.

This is because of the second and larger problem, which is that Corellia's roads seem to have been designed with the intent to make the journey between any given points A and B as long as possible. It's pretty much a straight-up labyrinth. The worst thing is that the map can be very deceptive too, showing a path where actually the road leads to the dead end of a building wall or some collapsed bit of masonry prevents you from going any further.

I don't usually like to quote myself but I think I summed it up quite well in this post in which I was talking about levelling my Sniper: "[...] the maps are confusing and you constantly end up being lured into dead ends. There was one point where it took me something like fifteen minutes to find the right way to access one of my quest objectives... and I've been playing this game for nearly five years. FFS, Corellia."

#1 - Nar Shaddaa

I was somewhat torn whether Corellia or Nar Shaddaa should get first place, but I decided to give the award to Nar Shadaa for one simple reason: the Industrial Sector. I'll concede that most of Nar Shaddaa isn't too bad to find your way around, unless you're on a mission that tells you to go from one sector to the next and for some reason the quest indicator keeps telling you to go to the promenade first every time instead of simply pointing at your final destination. The smugglers' moon also suffers from a similar degree of "samey-ness" as Corellia, which always causes me to struggle to remember the datacron locations.

However, the Industrial Sector is the big one simply because it's three-dimensional, which is to say that there isn't a single overview map but that there are various ramps and lifts you have to take in order to navigate between different floors and which will spit you out in surprising locations.

If you know off the top of your head where each of these buttons takes you, I'll call you a liar. In fact, while trying to take this screenshot I initially quick travelled to the wrong place because of course I did, because who can remember what's where down there? And that's with me having gotten a lot better at navigating the area ever since the world boss that's located in a remote corner of the area became a Conquest objective, encouraging frequent visits.

Still, at the end of the day I think I can actually view it as a good thing that this list was relatively easy to come up with. While thinking about it I concluded that most of SWTOR's planets are actually fairly easy to get around on, which made the few exceptions to the rule easy to single out.

Day 6: Environments #IntPiPoMo

Want to know what the hashtag is all about? Read all about International Picture Posting Month here. Want to see the full list of themes I'm following while posting screenshots throughout the month? You can find it here.

While we spend relatively little time in space in SWTOR, I always find the view from space, usually showing our ship(s) approaching a planet, absolutely gorgeous. Here we have the Gravestone and the Eternal Fleet approaching the Dyson Sphere of Iokath for the first time.

I really love the overgrown parts of Iokath you get to explore in KotET chapter four. It's a shame that there isn't more of that later on; it's all so pretty. (Also, only tangentially related: While I don't consider my Marauder very photogenic in general, she has a way of looking great in shots like this that focus on her silhouette. Or is it just me?)

Also on Iokath, but inside the Gods from the Machine operation. Despite of having said it many times, I'm still bad at following my own advice to look up more often. The first time I noticed this massive contraption on the ceiling of Tyth's room, I went "whoaaa" and drew the whole group's attention to it, leading to a discussion of what exactly Tyth needs a giant extractor fan for.

The ceiling in Esne and Aivela's room is similarly impressive.

Everyone knows that Alderaan is easily one of the most gorgeous planets in the game, but here, too, you can be surprised by looking up occasionally. Even if flying space whale/ray hybrids are ridiculous.

Sticking with the theme of looking up, here's my Cathar agent pausing on her way to confront her chapter three baddies for the final time to take in the chandeliers. I think that's the same or at least a similar style to what they use in the Shrine of Healing on Voss...

This was taken on Balmorra. It looks eerily pretty in a way, doesn't it? As long as you don't start thinking about the fact that the green stuff dripping from the ceiling is Colicoid goo...

Finally, it was Rav who highlighted last year that many places on Zakuul have a certain beauty to them that most people probably don't even notice while rushing through the story chapters. So I took a break during KotET chapter nine to appreciate this "indoor park" before continuing on my way to save the planet.

IntPiPoMo count: 46

Day 6: Environments #IntPiPoMo

Wondering what the hashtag in the title is all about? Click here. Want to know all the themes that I have used and will be using for my 10 Days of SWTOR Screenshots? You can find the full list here.

Let's start with another picture that I originally took for my Flashpoint Friday series and then never used: lightning on Taral V. I had to spam print screen a lot to actually catch a strike!

Makeb is mostly known for its beautiful mesas, but this volcano base is on Makeb too and I think it looks impressive in its own right.

Every time I get to this day in this series I mention how I don't look up enough and all the amazing sights I miss out on due to this. This year, exhibit A of this is the Rishi Maze a.k.a. an entire galaxy visible in the night sky! I wasn't even aware of it until someone told me to look up into the sky while on the northern island on Rishi - which was well after I had already run through Shadow of Revan multiple times without ever doing so.

Can you guess where this is? It actually took me a moment to remember myself: It's part of the caves in Temple of Sacrifice, around where the Underlurker... lurks. Pretty scenic, don't you think?

Even though what happens on Ziost is terrible, the lifeless black-and-white world that it becomes retains a strange beauty of its own.

Even though it might be hard, I ask you not to focus on my knight's mighty bust in this picture, as that wasn't the point - it's the funny glowing creature on the ceiling! This was in KotFE chapter seven when you enter Zakuul's old world, and I just thought it was funny that someone put in the effort to place that little creature there, inside a phase you can't go back to and where few people will even look up and notice it. Though apparently Darkbrew noticed it too! Before reading his post I didn't know that there were even more of them.

This was taken on the Tatooine Star Fortress and just fascinated me because it seemed like an odd result of the Star Fortresses' modular nature. They do tend to have some wildlife from the planet they are guarding situated behind glass panels somewhere, but slotting sand people in the same place comes across as a bit strange. They just kind of appear to have been plopped into the middle of some sort of animal nest here.

Finally, I think I've said it before, but I was quite pleased that KotFE chapter fourteen allowed us to return to Darvannis. I generally like desert planets, and I like how Darvannis manages to capture a different "flavour" of desert than Tatooine, what with the strong sandstorms, palm trees and perpetual dusk.

IntPiPoMo count: 51 - that's the target hit, but I will continue!

More Eternal Championship Lessons

As predicted in my first post about the Eternal Championship, I've felt inspired to come back to it a couple of times to get a better grip on its mechanics. It's been interesting.

Of course, what I really want to do is take my Guardian and her amazing cooldowns through it, mainly to saber-reflect the last boss's laser of doom back into his face, but sadly she's kind of stuck. I never bothered to start the Alliance alerts with her during or after KotFE chapter nine, so now she's sitting there, ready to provide step-by-step reminders for my next chapter discussion, which has the side effect that whenever I try to go near an Alliance NPC the next chapter starts, but if I escape out of it I get evicted from the phase. This makes it impossible to work on the Alliance in any way without playing through more story chapters first. Sadness.

Anyway, this more or less left me with my Marauder to see things from a dps perspective. This didn't go as well as expected, though in hindsight I really shouldn't have been that surprised, considering that I'm not good at playing Marauder, she has about twenty item levels less than my main, her highest level influence companion was only level fifteen or so, and did I mention yet that I'm really not good at playing Marauder?! I did eventually muddle my way through, but not without dying a lot on the way.

If nothing else however, this finally inspired me to go and work on fixing the one issue I was having that was relatively easy to address: companion influence. I have two legacy bank tabs full of companion gifts, always saving them for a rainy day, but really: Is there ever going to be another piece of content where companion influence will matter as much? So I took out what appropriate gifts I had and got Pierce up to the mid-thirties, while Shintar got Bowdaar up to nearly fourty. (In hindsight I probably should have chosen Yuun though... I like that wookiee, but where's the trooper pride?!)

The difference this made on my next run-through with Shin was amazing. Things were still relatively slow of course, but all the fights went down so much more smoothly. I even got the achievement for completing the whole thing without dying, which I'm quite proud of. The speed run must be really hard by the way; I've only seen one guy in my guild mention that he's got it - he's one of our top dpsers and even he said that it was quite challenging as he had to learn to make it through most fights with a dps companion.

Anyway, back to humble old me: On my Marauder, oddly enough, the improved companion influence seemed to make little to no difference and I still died a whole bunch of times on my next runthrough. I will keep working on that.

I suspect that the bosses that keep giving me trouble are the same ones that most people struggle with. The first five fights are pretty breezy, but the Breaktown Brawler in round six is a major stumbling block. On Shin it's pretty smooth now because I set Bowdaar on one of the adds and then just kite the other two around the room with healing aggro until my companion has killed everything off, but on my Marauder it's complete mayhem. I'm just still not sure what's the best way of handling this fight, as the requirements of staying in melee range while always trying to kite one or more of the mobs are somewhat contradictory.

Nocturno and Drake Raven are probably the ones that caused me the most deaths in total, though it helped a lot once I found out that you're best off killing Drake first and stealing his utility belt. In hindsight I have no idea how I made it through Nocturno's enrage the first time without even knowing about this! Again, what I find challenging about this fight is that dpsing Drake and kiting Nocturno at the same time can be somewhat at odds with each other. On Shintar it eventually became easy because I would just have Bowdaar chase Drake around while I could focus on standing in the right place to stun Nocturno over and over. On my Marauder things would often get messy while I tried to stay in melee with Drake at the same time as repositioning Nocturno. Nothing like clipping a stun mine just as you get targeted by the next one and remaining stunned for ages while Nocturno whales on you!

Little Gut and the Doom Droid aren't so bad in my opinion, but the last fight is once again quite challenging, though this is the one where I found that it really helps to figure out certain "tricks". I feel like this fight really punishes you for having low dps as there is so much going on that if your damage output isn't very good, it's way too easy to fall behind on some mechanic or other, which only makes the fight even harder, which gets worse and worse until you wipe. I already mentioned the drones in my last post, and how it's really helpful to get as many of them as possible killed without having to directly divert your damage to them. In the last phase, the boss can also be interrupted and stunned! Holy cow, was that a revelation to me or what? Certainly helped a lot with keeping him controlled while I did my best to burst him down.

Have you figured out any great tips for how to handle these bosses? Feel free to share them in the comments!

My Eternal Championship Impressions

Along with a new story chapter, last Tuesday's patch introduced the Eternal Championship, a feature that had been hyped up for months, just to be postponed over and over again due to issues with bugs.

Now it's finally here and... I'm not sure what to think of it.

On the plus side, apparently they were able to iron out most of the bugs after all. I had to relog once during the story quest because Bowdaar didn't appear where he was supposed to be, but other than that that was it. The only other issue I had was not a bug per se, but simply bad design: there are several quests for the Eternal Championship that come from a terminal, but for some reason they were designed in such a manner that you have to pick them up in the opposite order in which they are listed... or you will end up with all your weeklies saying "pick up the main quest" (which you already have) and not actually progressing when you kill bosses. (This happened to me, prompting me to re-run the whole thing soon afterwards just to get the quest done. I suppose it's at least partially my fault for not paying closer attention to the mission instructions - but it's still unintuitive and daft to have it work that way.)

Since the sales pitch was that the Eternal Championship (which, somewhat annoyingly, can be shortened to EC, causing confusion with Explosive Conflict) was going to be content that would give solo players a chance to challenge themselves, similar to WoW's Proving Grounds or Brawler's Guild, I guessed (correctly) that it would be tuned for people playing dps characters... but I still decided to go in as a healer anyway, because that's just how I am.

I found the whole thing surprisingly challenging and died several times, despite of being in full 224 gear. Lack of dps was simply a problem. Even with my most faithful companion I only have an influence rank in the twenties, and even more importantly, some fights require an annoying amount of companion micro-management (if that's where your dps is coming from), with bosses temporarily becoming immune to damage, numerous add spawns, and all kinds of crap that you're supposed to move out of. As far as the latter goes, you can compensate somewhat as a healer, but making sure that your companion stands in the right place and attacks the right thing can be quite a nuisance. During my first run I used M1-4X (my highest influence companion), who is ranged... and he repeatedly nuked himself to death on bosses that had mechanics that meant that they could only be damaged in melee and would reflect everything outside of a small circle around them. On the brawler with two adds, I constantly had to change him from active to passive and back again to make him run into melee range of the constantly moving combatants. During my second run I used Choza Raabat, a melee companion, instead - this went a bit better in terms of control, but with an influence rank of only ten things felt very slow and he didn't always do enough damage to out-aggro my healing, forcing me to tank as well.

The weird thing is, I couldn't even tell you if I find the whole thing fun or not. Sometimes I got pretty frustrated by dying. "This is bull, how are you supposed to survive him hitting that hard when I can't even keep up with the damage as a healer in full 224? It's impossible to deal with all those adds at the same time!" And so on. But then I'd realise that there was some sort of trick that I'd been missing and then I felt kind of clever for sussing it out. For example on the last boss, when he summons the drones that shoot lasers, if you stand in exactly the right spot, they will all take each other out and you won't even have to lift a finger to get rid of them. It's just not that easy to get it exactly right.

I think I could see myself going back there on alts, especially of the dps variety, to see if I can do better, maybe get to understand the mechanics a bit more and learn from that. But not too often, to avoid frustration when I mess up. It also finally provides me with an incentive to raise my companion influence - on regular, run of the mill content I just didn't see it making that much of a difference. The fifteen minute run achievement however is certainly far out of my reach at the moment, and not just because simply loading in and out of the instance already takes a minute or so on my ageing PC.