Today Bioware hosted another live stream to show and tell more details about the upcoming Game Update 5.8, which is scheduled for release on 20th March.
Hosts: Eric Musco – community manager, Charles Boyd – creative director, Matt Pucevich – lead operations designer. Not much was said outside of what was already revealed, though. We got to see two new screenshots from the revamped Conquest UI, confirmation of the returning companions and a bit of a background of Izax and the Gods from the Machine from Charles and Matt.
Everything About SWTOR Patch 5.8 Command Autority
CONQUEST REVAMP
- Brief overview of the announcement from last week + a new screenshot!
- Rebalancing on objectives and rewards
- Each week 3 different Invasion Targets will be available for Guild Conquests with Large, Medium and Small Yield.
COMPANIONS
- Ashara and Vector are returning – Ashara’s mission is on Voss, not much about Vector’s background story in the last few years yet.
- Both companions are class specific and the requirement for the character is to have KOTET completed.
- Charles said he’s got a special idea of how to bring back Kai Zykken. It wasn’t very clear if he’s joking or was serious about this.
IZAX AND GODS FROM THE MACHINE WRAP-UP
- Lore update from Charles – Players were drawn to Iokath by a mysterious intelligence – Tyth – the first boss – an incredible superweapon droid. As Tyth was defeated, it was revealed that more of these machine Gods were around. From a fight to the next the background story of the bosses and their relations to each other was revealed. The final boss – Izax – is also the most powerful among the five gods.
- Izax is a huge step up in challenge compared to all previous bosses. perhaps even harder than any other boss in the game.
- Izax talk from Matt – The first thing he thought when designing this boss was Scale. This is the God of Destruction, he had to be very threatening. Izax has a lot higher base damage than all other bosses. The boss fight has been on PTS for a while. The fourth phase seems to be the most challenging for testers from what Matt could reveal live on the stream without saying too much.
- Good news is that the “Walk of Shame” (aka “Corpse Run”) after a wipe on Izax is ~13 seconds only. A lot of wipes are expected.
- Nobody has defeated Izax on PTS in Veteran Mode. Story Mode has been cleared lots of times.
- Between 5.8 and 5.9 a special Izax event will run – players, who beat the boss in VM during this time will receive a unique title and a guaranteed special legacy reward. This same reward will be a very (very!) rare drop from the boss after 5.9.
- Matt thinks Gods from the Machine is the “shoot for the Moon”. He doesn’t believe that the next group encounters and content will be that tough. This Operation and Izax in particular was one of a kind. At least for now.
MISC
- No major class balancing in 5.9, but some numbers changes are coming as well as the already announced Utility fixes”.
- 5.9 is coming on 1st of May 2018.
- News about the new tier of Augments will be posted after 5.8 launches
