Game Guides Archive

I began with SWG about three days after it went live and stayed with it until around November of last year. I've seen that there have been plenty of changes, and that JTL is coming up.
I've been searching the board trying to find info on some of the bigger changes but I'm not having much luck. I've read the update notes but it doesn't flesh things out very much.

How well are vehicles working? What is their availability for new players? I couldn't find a guide that explained the basics.

Are creature mounts still in the game or has vehicles made them unimportant? I left just after they went live but had alot of fun with them on Test.

Are homes still out of reach of casual players?

Also I did an awful lot of grinding (and I had a ton of alts) and it burned me out. Can anyone suggest a career choice that minimizes grinding?

thanks for any assistance. I enjoyed SWG the first time round and think that taking a year off might've helped bring the spark back.

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Rob_Banzai wrote:
I began with SWG about three days after it went live and stayed with it until around November of last year. I've seen that there have been plenty of changes, and that JTL is coming up.
I've been searching the board trying to find info on some of the bigger changes but I'm not having much luck. I've read the update notes but it doesn't flesh things out very much.

What's new:

1. Geonosian Lab on Yavin (great spot for loot, xp, or just a fun adventure
2. Deathwatch Bunker on Endor (you'll need a HUGE group that knows what their doing to take this place, but you can get some REALLY SWEET loot there, and it's a helluva lot of fun)
3. Corellian Corvette (an instanced spaceship you and your group can go up on to complete a mission objective)
4. Jedi Revamp - you no longer must grind professions that holocrons tell you to become a jedi, you follow a series of missions instead
5. PvP in the game is over-run with Jedi, who are far too powerful, and thus most of the time dominate PvP battles
6. Battlefields are still broken
7. Currently most POI locations' spawn rates are broken and only spawn once at server restart (they are looking into this now)
8. Smugglers still can't smuggle stuff
9. Melee profs are still superior to Ranged profs (which shouldn't be that way)

Those are just some of the highlights. I have been playing since Feb of this year, so i'm not sure what the state of the game was in Nov. when you left.

How well are vehicles working? What is their availability for new players? I couldn't find a guide that explained the basics.

Vehcles work great. they fixed a bug that caused you to jump 100's of meters away from bike when dismounting. The various vehciles in game sell anywhere from 5000 to 25000 credits for the standard crafted ones.

Are creature mounts still in the game or has vehicles made them unimportant? I left just after they went live but had alot of fun with them on Test.

Creature mounts are still in the game, but are not used very much. Personally, i love my Dewback and Kaadu, but most poeple use Swoop bikes instead

Are homes still out of reach of casual players?

You can buy small houses in the Bazaars of larger cities for roughly 6k. Also, lots of mayors give poeple free houses if they move to their city.

Also I did an awful lot of grinding (and I had a ton of alts) and it burned me out. Can anyone suggest a career choice that minimizes grinding?

Most professions require a lot of grinding. The thing about it though, is to have fun with it, don't think of it as work. if you're trying to become a droid engineer, and you are trying to get the artisan skills to qualify for it, craft things that people will want to buy, don't just craft things in practice mode to get it over with fast.

thanks for any assistance. I enjoyed SWG the first time round and think that taking a year off might've helped bring the spark back.

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Rob_Banzai wrote:
I began with SWG about three days after it went live and stayed with it until around November of last year. I've seen that there have been plenty of changes, and that JTL is coming up.
I've been searching the board trying to find info on some of the bigger changes but I'm not having much luck. I've read the update notes but it doesn't flesh things out very much.

How well are vehicles working? What is their availability for new players? I couldn't find a guide that explained the basics.Vehicles are working fine, Swoops are the standard mode of transportation. A special speeder called an AV 21 is a little better and cooler looking, but will run you about 2-3 mil because the components are looted.

Are creature mounts still in the game or has vehicles made them unimportant? I left just after they went live but had alot of fun with them on Test.Creature Mounts are still in the game, but not really used, dueto vehicles, except for group hunting maybe and for novelty. You can also mount banthas now and cu pas.

Are homes still out of reach of casual players?def not, u can find a house for 8k on most servers and even on the bazaar in some cases(6k max on bazaar now)

Also I did an awful lot of grinding (and I had a ton of alts) and it burned me out. Can anyone suggest a career choice that minimizes grinding?sorry, my reccomendation is to find a grind u actually enjoy

thanks for any assistance. I enjoyed SWG the first time round and think that taking a year off might've helped bring the spark back.

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Rob_Banzai wrote:
I began with SWG about three days after it went live and stayed with it until around November of last year. I've seen that there have been plenty of changes, and that JTL is coming up.
I've been searching the board trying to find info on some of the bigger changes but I'm not having much luck. I've read the update notes but it doesn't flesh things out very much.

How well are vehicles working? What is their availability for new players? I couldn't find a guide that explained the basics.

Vehicles make this game 100x better. Everything comes much quicker and there's less dead time. They are also easy to find for new players from plenty of player vendors. The fastest vehicle (other than the AR-71, which is a rare quest item for the "Corvette Mission") is the swoop, which you can get for 20k. The other vehicles are cheaper, but a bit slower.

Are creature mounts still in the game or has vehicles made them unimportant? I left just after they went live but had alot of fun with them on Test.

They are still in the game, but not many people use them. They are much slower than vehicles, but you can shoot from them (no special attacks) and they have a cool factor.

Are homes still out of reach of casual players?

I would say no. They are cheaper than they were at launch.

Also I did an awful lot of grinding (and I had a ton of alts) and it burned me out. Can anyone suggest a career choice that minimizes grinding?

Hmmm...I would go with a combat profession like bounty hunter. They removed the Master Scout requirement (you just need one tree I believe from scout) so it comes much faster. Plus you can hunt Jedi players.

thanks for any assistance. I enjoyed SWG the first time round and think that taking a year off might've helped bring the spark back.

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Vehicles work. Omnipresent. Vehicle warping bug was patched in September 2004. ($20K)

Creature mounts are in the game, but are mostly unimportant.

Everyone has homes. ($10K)

Economy has shifted from resource-based to loot-based. (Grind to good combat template, loot the DWB, Geo caves, or Corvette, or hunt humanoids for random drops).

Non-master crafting professions still useless. Master crafting professions highly dependent on resource quality.

Doctor buffs and composite armor enable a "god-mode" effect. $10K buys you 3 hours of 2500 on all six stats. Composite armor costs $200-300K per suit, or Ubese for $75-125K per suit, will give you 80% resists to kinetic and (composite) 60% resists to everything else.

Food is also useful now.

Solo-grouping, in which 20 strangers group long enough to enable the group to pull $35K missions from terminals, is the money spigot in the economy. 3 hours of soloing rancor missions in God-mode is about $500K=$1M in cash.

Theme parks are unbugged, and loot has improved from the "25 credits" insults to a 50/50 chance at having something neat. Theme park missions are still boring. Many static POI missions/storylines that were bugged since release are still bugged.

Story arcs were cancelled. Too much content. Not enough grind.

There is no career choice to minimize grinding. Obtaining a Jedi used to be "master 8 professions out of 32, 4 of which you find out from holocrons, and 4 of which are randomly distributed out through the remaining 28". Obtaining a Jedi now is "Find a profession you like, and grind enough xp to remaster that one profession 30 times."

The game works better than it did when you left, but there's still relatively little content (the "quest-based system" for Jedi is basically one night's mission to unlock one of six XP grinding trees) other than PVP. You can probably do half the new PVE content during your 10-day trial. (Be sure to try the Corvette. It's unlike anything else in the game, and that's a feature, not a bug.

/left last March, halfway through the Jedi grind, hating the game. Came back a month or two ago, and to my great surprise, I got my $15 worth.

Message Edited by AngryHoopJumper on 10-08-2004 10:13 AM

Thank you very much for the info. It's exactly what I needed to know.

I didn't do any PvP because I simply couldn't keep up with the players who specialize in it. I preferred enjoying the environment, traveling, building my character. I know I will die instantly if I get in a fight with another player.

The news about vehicles and homes is great. I really, really wanted a home but could never scrape up enough dough. And an end to all the walking would be great. I remember some epic runs to Wayfar with my medic/entertainer that almost made my brain boil.

I will have a new PC soon and I look forward to giving SWG another chance. Thanks again for all the info.