What to DO and NOT DO as a new player (or a returning veteran) in SWTOR to make sure you are not missing out on great content and to have a great experience!
Use the Table of Contents, located in the left panel (top left button on the mobile menu) to navigate through this long guide more easily and quickly.
With nearly fifteen years of experience and with the help and support from the SWTOR Community, we are happy to share these tips and tricks to help and guide your first steps in SWTOR.
It is important to note that this is not a speed-leveling guide. Every single piece of advice you will read here is aimed at creating the perfect and smoothest possible experience for you, the player – to allow you to fully enjoy the adventure and gain as much out of your investment, be it time, money or both.
Character Creation and Story Progression
As with every RPG, you’ll want to start with the perfect character from the perfect spt that suits your gamepalay style. In SWTOR, you get to play not one, but 8 major storylines. And you can tune them to match your character perfectly.
Take Your Time Designing Your Character
When you are creating a new character in SWTOR, don’t rush through the initial character creation process. You can customize your outfits later on, but if you want to change their physical appearance or species, this will cost you a lot. We have a fantastic guide to help you design a unique and original outfit for your character.
If you do end up desiring an entirely new look and feel for your character, you can still do it by using the Appearance Designer kiosk.
Origin Stories vs Expansion Storylines
SWTOR’s classic storylines for each of the 8 available main classes are incredible and very deep. The game’s narrative continues into a single path for all of them after the origin stories, but you will always find unique elements in almost every mission and story. Sometimes planted by the developers, other times by your past decisions.
The characters we meet, the companions we take in and push away, and the unique dialogues, all bring a unique level of personal attachment and experience of playing the game as a whole.
Sometimes it may seem like it doesn’t make any difference if you destroy or save a secondary character for the main plot of the storyline, but the developers direct the narrative of the game in a way that these decisions will matter to you at some point, sooner or later. And that’s something not easily achievable.
The Dark vs Light choices in this game have a lasting impact not only on your character, but on the player as well!
Every time you are about to cast someone off, reject someone, or make an important decision, you should stop for a moment and think, how will I feel after I click 1, 2 or 3 and make my choice?
Not every class has the same experience in the expansions’ storylines. Some stories are clearly designed to fit better a Force wielder, while others may favor a Tech class, such as an Imperial Agent or Trooper.
Best Classes to Play for Each Expansion Storyline in SWTORShould you start at Level 1 or Level 70?
This game has a beginning (which is long in the past now), a present and a future. don’t start from level 70. Don’t skip the most important part.
Start your adventure from level 1, save yourself the money for that token (if you got it for free with your Subscription, save it for later usage). Starting from 1 will help you learn better the world of SWTOR. It will teach you what the game is about, it will allow you to fully experience the real power of this MMO – its story aspect.
What to do if you don’t enjoy the combat style you chose?
If you start a class and realize you are not enjoying it, DON’T give up on the entire game, try another class and story. Not all stories are equally dramatic, engaging and entertaining. Each class has its own individuality and gameplay style. You may think you enjoy ranged gunplay the most, but end up loving the melee or vice versa.
UI Customizations
A few tweaks to the SWTOR UI will help you achieve better immersion with your character, which will lead to a deeper and more emotional decision-making process when you have to make a tough choice.
Tweak your UI, clean it up
After you gain some awareness how the SWTOR HUD and UI work, go ahead and DO customize your UI to best fit your screen and personal preference.
Chances are you have played another MMO, RPG, or a third-person action game before and you should have at least a vague knowledge of how and where certain elements should appear on your screen.
I have a tutorial on how to install a custom SWTOR UI, but you don’t have to use my specific UI. Design your own and enjoy the game at your own pace.
A minimalist UI will help you to immerse yourself in the story and environment you go through better than, say, sticking to the standard (rather large) default UI.
This is especially true if you are a returning veteran, who knows the game already at least a bit. If you prefer to click abilities with the mouse, a minimalist UI is not a good choice for you.
How to choose the perfect Camera Distance
Move the camera closer to your character to help with immersion. If you are wearing a relatively new outfit, designed and released in the recent years, chances are this outfit will feature higher quality textures and details to look at and enjoy.
This will also help keep your focus on your character and the action rather than allow your eyes to wonder around too much.
SWTOR is an old game, and its age is showing in a lot of places. The devs are constantly revamping, upgrading and improving various elements of the game, but they do it at a slow-ish pace.
Broadsword tweaks and updates the game’s user interface often. Pay attention to new, moved, or changed elements as you play more and more and get better organize.
Advance through the story and take your time to learn how to use the many in-game instruments and tools at your disposal.
When you are doing more challenging group (or solo) content, consider moving the camera further away. Having a clear overview of a larger portion of your surroundings is crucial for PvP as well.
Don’t overwhelm yourself with Game Systems
Don’t spend too much time early on trying to learn all the different game systems SWTOR throws at you. When you first arrive on the Fleet, circle it once or twice, but don’t waste time trying to explore everything.
A lot of the vendors and even entire areas on the Fleet are for high level players and endgame content. Focus on your story and progress.
Things like Crafting and Ability choosing may seem like a constant, but Expansions always change them among many other elements of the UI.
Gearing and Crafting
The leveling process in SWTOR is not complex and difficult. But if you want to max out your performance, we have just the right tips here!
How to upgrade your gear while leveling
Visit the Supplies section and vendors on the Fleet every 4-8 levels to upgrade your gear. You can purchase a set of mod-able leveling gear and insert mods for these pieces.
Companions don’t require gear. They scale automatically with your character’s level. You can further improve their performance by giving them gifts, but this isn’t something you not focus on as a new player
Should you Augment your gear?
Don’t Augment your gear at low levels. Getting individual Mods to put into your gear is the best and cheapest method to upgrade your character. You will not need anything else. Augmenting is helpful in SWTOR’s Endgame.
Crafting and Gathering Skills
There’s this classic appeal and satisfaction to craft your own gear when playing RPGs. You can do that in SWTOR as well. However, it is better to gather just enough crafting materials to progress through the crafting tiers and start saving materials when you reach higher levels and tiers.
Don’t bother crafting gear while leveling. What the vendors on the Fleet offer, is often more than decent. If you are not in a rush or that aforementioned “classic appeal” is strong within you, by all means, spend all the time you want and make your own crafted gear.
When you clear up your mind as to what type of career you want to pursue in the Endgame, then you can choose your Crafting and Gathering skills.
The gathering skills scale up every time you pick up a crafting resource from the ground, making the farming process much quicker and simpler. All nodes on all planets will now give you an adequate level of experience and help you grind through the tiers.
Appearance and Economy
These tips will help you customize the outfit of your character and look stylish while still wearing the most powerful gear you have access to.
Curating Your Outfits
If you care about your character’s appearance look at planet vendors and GTN for outfits. These NPCs sell unique items for credits or special tokens, which you can acquire through quests (such as the Bounty Hunter vendor, attached to the Bounty Hunter Recurring Event).
A new outfit could be the thing you need to push forward if you are feeling bored or uninspired to play further.
If you only rely on the items you loot or earn as you play and level up, your character will often look like a clown. You can always purchase something from the GTN, but prices there might be out of your range as a new player.
Another alternative is the Cartel Market – this is the in-game cash shop, which sells all kinds of decorations, outfits and non-power-boosting items. You pay real money for all items this store offers.
There is a difference between an Outfit and a Gear Set in SWTOR. You can use every single gear piece in the game both for its visual appearance or for its stats.
Veteran players, check your stash!
Veteran players, who are returning to the game after a long break, check your stashes. You may have some old gems that you never used after you quickly out leveled them.
Everything can be used as an outfit today. You can even include weapons in your outfits. This feature is known as “transmog” in old classic RPGs. There are some limitations to that system, of course. You can’t use weapons in the Outfitter that your class isn’t proficient with.
Account Security and Cartel Coins
Don’t spend all your Cartel Coins, just because you have them. You never know when Broadsword might release the next best outfit that perfectly fits your character.
Register a 2FA token to your SWTOR account. This will not only increase the security of your account and personal data it holds but also grant you 100 Cartel Coins every month. A subscription grants you 500-600 Cartel Coins each month while it’s active.
Leveling Strategies and Available Content Paths
While the topic of this guide is not how to level up fast, there are several methods and strategies we will explain to give you the full picture so you can choose what activities suit you best and pick the most fun path to level cap.
Prioritize Quests and Side Missions
Quests are the best way to level up, not because they are the quickest, but because they are the most entertaining ones. Level up primarily through quests to get the maximum out of your playtime and efforts.
It won’t hurt if you do the Daily PvP missions and, of course, it can only help if you do the Flashpoints, especially now that most of them have a “solo” mode.
If you are a Subscriber, the game will make your leveling and overall experience a lot easier, but a Subscription is optional and will not hurt your experience if you only care about creating and living in your own Star Wars adventure.
If you are a returning veteran, consider doing some side missions. With the amount of Double XP events we have been getting each year and the quick leveling through main missions alone, you may be surprised how much of the planetary content and other optional missions you have completely forgotten existed.
If it’s been a long time, it may even feel like they are new missions while you are replaying them. Give them a go.
Combat Styles and Builds
As a subscriber, you gain the ability to choose a second combat style for your character. With Update 7.0 the devs detached the class stories from the classes. Advanced classes are now called Combat Styles and you can play, for example, through the Jedi Knight story as a Shadow.
If you struggle to come up with a build, check out our full catalog of the best solo build guides for all classes and disciplines.
If you are a new player, play a traditional class story with its “default” combat style. On the character creation screen, after you select your class origin story (top left), the first two combat style options are always the “default” ones that used to be attached to this story from launch until Update 7.0.
How to avoid Burnouts
Level Sync is something great, but it is designed for the more experienced players, those who have already played through most of the content years ago. Don’t level only through Heroics, Flashpoints or PvP.
Leveling through PvP exclusively can be frustrating, because it will take you much longer to level up relying only on PvP.
It’s so much fun playing the lowbies, though. I strongly recommend you not completely avoid PvP at low levels but also avoid Warzones before you reach a reasonable level. Entering the battlefield at a very low level is no fun. You lack many of the abilities, perks and boosts for your class.
Start participating in PvP games after level ~40 or so. It is a lot more fun when you earn a few extra abilities, so you don’t have to spam the basic attacks like a mad monkey all the time.
The best experience you will have with PvP is at level cap. This is the true competitive scene. Broadsword created the classes in a way that no matter how much balancing they do for PvP, one class or spec will always have an advantage over another and a weakness against a third one. This is the way!
A few words about Heroics next. They are efficient. But can get depressingly boring to farm. Even if you do them with a team. You will have more reasons to farm Heroics when you reach the Endgame.
Heroics become incredibly boring very quickly and the last thing I’d like to see is a new player getting bored of the game, because they approached the leveling process the wrong way.
SWTOR is not about farming. There are only a few of us left now who truly care about collecting everything everywhere all the time. And even we started out slowly, just enjoying the vast worlds full of NPCs and all kinds of characters and companions that you do not wish to skip or avoid.
Make Use of Quick Travel and Strongholds
You would want a Stronghold. So, get a Stronghold. Get one of the neutral strongholds first as that will allow you and your future alts to travel to it freely any time you want to.
If you find the use of a Stronghold as early as possible appealing to your style and gameplay, you can purchase a faction-specific Stronghold at a much lower price compared to the neutral ones.
SWTOR offers a variety of methods to travel from one place to another quick and easy. When the game launched, we had to go “on foot” everywhere. Today you can simply quick travel from and to your Stronghold and Ship in no time.
You can also use the handy quick travel icons available in the quest tracker next to the mission objectives. Make good use of the quick traveling opportunities around you.
Several times during the main storyline you will have to go to your Starship and the quickest way to get there would often be to travel to your Stronghold first and from there exit to your Starship.
Companions and Lore
Your loyal companions don’t just help you in combat. They are part of your conversations, they help you make decisions, and shape your personal story.
Boost Companion Influence
Your companions can fill any role and since Game Update 4.0 they are no longer locked to one role. They also don’t require any gear.
Influence is a powerful Companion-specific stat that will make them stronger in any aspect. This stat is personal for each companion and if you want to make your first steps in the game easier – focus on one companion first and get their influence higher. This will make them perform better in combat as well as do their Crew Skill duties more efficiently.
Of course, with the game lacking challenges at lower levels these days, this is not a must-do, merely a suggestion if you experience tough times while exploring the worlds as you level up.
Companion Roles Guide and Performance AnalysisEngage with Your Companions
Speak to your companions as often as possible. Their personal stories, struggles and adventures will allow you to immerse yourself even better into the world you play in.
And as a Star Wars fan, I assume, this is what you want. It certainly was what I wanted when I played all of these stories for the first time myself.
Sometimes they will just want to share something with you. Other times they may invite you to join them on a quest.
Every time you talk to your companion and they reveal something new about themselves through a new quest or just a conversation, you increase your Influence with them as well.
Hunting Datacrons
What are Datacrons? You will surely hear about them at some point or you may stumble one by accident. Datacrons are cubic items that contain knowledge.
Finding Datacrons will grant you stats that will help improve your performance in combat. Each Datacron also contains what I would call “a lore patch” – information about events from the Star Wars Legends (SWTOR itself is considered Legends as well).
You can skip the Datacrons on your first character while you are playing the main story. I would recommend you pick up as many Datacrons as you can when you are near level cap or after you reach it.
As you level up the story of your class is what you should pay the most attention to, if you want to fully experience SWTOR as a Star Wars game.
You can opt to leave the datacron hunt for later or do them while expling each planet for the first time. In any case, they will be more important for you in the Endgame and the stats gain you will receive from each individual Datacron, are nothing to be excited for. In the Endgame, though, everything matters.
Final Thoughts: Play Your Way
Play the class you enjoy the most and don’t listen to people telling you that your choice is bad for Endgame PvE, PvP or something else. It’s your game, your time, your decision.
I’m sure I didn’t exhaust all the possible tips I could or (perhaps) SHOULD have shared. But, well… one day we may come to a “Version 3” of this guide.
There are a lot more things I could add. No matter how much I share here, there will always be new and cool tips and suggestions useful to a new SWTOR player. If you believe there is something that a beginner player should absolutely know, share it in the comments and I will add it to the guide.
I would like to extend my gratitude to the SWTOR Community for providing more and interesting tips that I have, am and will be including in this guide to expand upon it as time goes.
Thanks to:
