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Thursday 17 October 2013

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!


9 comments :

  1. I just want to congratulate you for naming your Twi'lek "Y-u'no". You win some internets.

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    1. Haha, and you won some cookies. I wanted to call her Juno, but the name was taken, and with all the server merges I decided to go all the way. ;-)

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  2. It's so great when BF's can be useful! :D

    Meanwhile... since it IS Newbie Blogger Initiative month, I've launched another website! (can you have too many??)

    Well, this one's not really a "new" website, it's a new "section." I think you already know about the very NBI friendly site AvatarBlogger.Info, and now we're launching "Single Frame" which is an attempt to do something the richness & chaos of the web aren't always so good at: appreciate one big, fantastic photograph! The site is here:
    http://singleframe.avatarblogger.info

    As you'll notice it's started with 2 great shots from an awesome & famous photographer! (and of course if she'd rather not be there, just say the word & we'll adjust, no problem!) If you'd like to contribute more, or can suggest peeps, we'd love to have a great frame from as many worlds as possible.

    Happy Sunday Rav! Have a great week ahead!

    xx

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  3. Ah yes, datacron hunting, the one thing I have neglected on all of my characters, no exceptions. I've always been intending to do it, and at least on the low level planets I also did it thoroughly, even the ones not specific to the class. I really should make a list of the ones I still need (in fact, already have that) and make some time to go find them all.

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    1. I found it is much more fun when doing it together with friends, if that helps. Somehow, running around while chatting to friends over voice chat with a glass of whatever-it-is-you-like makes it a lot more bearable, making it an evening well-spent instead of a boring one full of grind.

      That said, I must confess that my sorcerer (with whom I do progression raiding) still doesn't have all the willpower datacrons. I think she might even miss the fleet one, which could prove a problem as I think the rest of my guild does already have it. There's so much to do, somehow I just haven't gotten around it.

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  4. Interestingly, I've never felt the need to grind out all the datacrons on my main (or anywhere really) to min-max. Usually I do try to make my character the best she can be, but the datacrons somehow don't quite register and are mentally exempt because they are such a hassle. :P

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    Replies
    1. I think the seed for me grew from a few weeks of wiping on Kel'sara in TfB nightmare mode with two sorcerer healers and four melee DPS... but that's a long story that could occupy a whole new blog post.

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