BioWare Brings Ossus Daily Area to SWTOR 5.10 PTS

BioWare updated the SWTOR 5.10 PTS with new features for the upcoming December patch including the Ossus Daily Area, PvP Challenges and GFTM changes

Today the SWTOR 5.10 Public Test Server was updated with a fresh batch of content and fixes. BioWare added the Ossus Daily area with its repeatable missions for testing and the brand new PvP challenges feature. Included are also a lot of fixes to the first and second boss encounters from Gods from the Machine Operation – Tyth and Aivela and Esne.

In this article I will present before you all the changes in details. Expect very soon in-depth video demos and walkthroughs of Ossus and more!

The patch notes are listed at the bottom of this article. First, let’s focus on the highlights!

The Ossus Daily Area

The Daily Area offers a number of missions that can be repeated on daily and weekly schedule. Some of these missions, or certain objectives from them (unconfirmed yet what exactly) will be part of the main storyline of “Jedi Under Siege“. All Dailies are now accessible for all players, who can log in to PTS.

To get to Ossus, all you need to do is open your Galaxy map and find the planet. It’s located right near Voss. Once you land on the planet, if you head straight from the landing platform you will find a bounty board that has all of the Daily/Weekly Missions for you. Also, right next to the board is an unnamed droid NPC which will sell you gear if you need to upgrade your character.

I haven’t tested Ossus with a poorly geared character yet, but considering the fact that the story is accessible right after you get to level 70 (thank to the “auto-skip” feature), it is highly unlikely that you would need high tier gear to complete the dailies.

The new PvP Challenges

Here is how to use PvP Challenge on PTS

• To start a group PvP Challenge you can do it one of three ways. Note that both the sender and the receiver must be in groups.
  • There is a new sub-tab for PvP Challenges inside of the Activity Finders PvP tab.
  • You can target another player and challenge them via right clicking on their portrait.
  • Via a new chat command: /pvpchallenge [player name].
• A window will pop up and the initiator should be able to pick the PvP type (Arena, Warzone, Starfighter), map, and send the challenge.
• Available PvP types vary based on group size:
  • Arena – up to 4 players per team
  • Warzone – up to 8 players per team
  • Starfighter – up to 12 players per team
• Once the initiator sends the challenge the receiving group’s leader should now have an updated UI and the ability to accept or decline.
• If the receiving group’s leader accepts the window will close and the “Enter Match” screen will pop up.

Important reminder. The Public Test Server is a TEST ENVIRONMENT. Certain things will not work properly or be completely broken. Whenever you find a glitch or a bug, help the developers and report it on the SWTOR PTS forums.

Gods from the Machine Tyth + Aivela and Esne Changes

This patch is dedicated to the second boss encounter – Aivela and Esne. The devs have tweaked several things from all difficulty modes, but most of the focus lands on the Master and Veteran difficulties.

Tyth – the first boss, has also seen some tweaks (mostly nerfs and a few bug fixes) specifically in its Master Mode difficulty.

SWTOR 5.10 PTS Refresh #1 Full Patch Notes

Everything from here on until the end is “patch notes” as written by BioWare’s operations developer Matt Pucevich. Starting with a note from the developers:

First, sorry for the delay in getting a PTS refresh out to you all. The server gremlins came out in full force, conspiring to keep us apart… While their eventual defeat was inevitable –for love indeed conquers all –it doesn’t lessen our longing in the meanwhile.

Second, thanks a ton to everyone who’s been hopping on the PTS. We’ve had a loooot of activity. Thanks especially to those of you who have hopped on to take a moment to run through Story / Veteran modes, as it’s arguably even more important that we get those adjustments correct!

General

• The Ossus Daily Area is now ready for PTS testing, and for the first time players will be able to access the area! *pokerface*Just open the galaxy map, and you’ll find Ossus (it’s just southwest of Voss).
• Fixed an issue where players could not purchase items from some of the PTS vendors
  The 252 Gear Vendor, ED-5E, is now present in the Odessen Landing area!
• Fixed the issue where Nightmare Crystals could only be used in GotM, instead of the iintended behavior of being usable everywhere except GotM. (Checkboxes are hard!!)
• The Tyth skip button has been enabled in Master Mode, allowing thusly inclined players to bypass the encounter to test Aivela & Esne.

Tyth

Overall, Tyth seems to be playing really, really well, but it’s become clear the encounter is a tad overtuned in what it’s demanding of the DPS, given the chaos of everything else that’s going on. We’re going to attack this with a series of smaller adjustments in multiple areas (as opposed to a single large adjustment to one facet of the encounter) to get us to where we want to be without ruining the current feel.

Therefore, we’re (1) Pulling back ever so slightly on the HP of Tyth and the drones, to give just a little bit more moment-to-moment breathing room. Additionally, we’re (2) Kicking out the enrage timer by an additional 30s, and (3) Decreasing the drones per wave in Phase 2 from 5 back to 4, since that seems to be just about the survivable break point to begin with.

We’ll see how this winds up playing, and then adjust again from there.

In terms of Veteran mode, the changes to Tyth have certainly made the encounter a lot more viable, but I think we might have gotten to the correct answer in the wrong way, in that everything winds up being so thin that the structure of the encounter is coming a bit loose.

While there are no changes to Veteran mode in this refresh, as a heads up: For the next refresh we’re thinking of reducing Vet mode’s Phase 2 wave size from 5 to 4 (to match Master Mode), while walking back the cooldown increase on Phase 2 wave summoning (reducing it from 36s to 32s). We might also put some HP back on the drones, since it’s easier to DPS fewer targets. We’ll see.

Master

• Tyth HP reduced ~6%
• Drone HP reduced ~5%
• Standard Drone wave size in Phase 2 reduced to 4 drones (down from 5)
• Enrage timer increased by 30s (6:45 -> 7:15)
• Cast time of Inversion increased to 5.0s (up from 4.0s)
• Fixed an issue where the encounter would occasionally spawn a “blank” wave of drones (i.e. the spawn warning text appeared but no drones did).
• Fixed an issue where Energy Wave’s radius of effect was larger than the ground indicator (by about .75m), occasionally causing rather unfortunate outcomes.
• Reduced the maximum width of Tyth’s high rage Energy Wave by .5m (8.0m -> 7.5m) (in addition to the above correction).

Aivela & Esne

We actually did get a bit of exposure to the A&E encounter, in one case due to a fatfingered dev command, and in others through judicious application of Nightmare Crystals. This wound up being a happy accident, because it exposed a couple of things that had gone wrong in the encounter, saving us all a PTS cycle! #HappyAccidents \o/

All Modes

Players standing on any of the four pillars in the Master Repository Core will now take damage while the encounter is engaged. There are no VFX for this yet, but there will be soon.

Master

• Fixed an issue where the Nexus wasn’t going invulnerable when it should have been.
• Fixed an issue where Codex obelisks weren’t going invulnerable when they should have been.
• Increased the damage of the Codex obelisks’ secondary attack by a bunch. (You’ll know it when you see it, if you haven’t yet)
• The Nexus’s “Disco Lightshow Mode” will now fire properly (Again, you’ll know it when you see it, if you haven’t yet).
• Super Energy Burst now does what it’s supposed to, as opposed to… whatever you would call the nonsense it was doing before.
• The base damage of System Shock has increased, as it was insufficiently spicy.
  The purification sequence will now run during Phase 3.

Veteran

• Probably fixed an issue that could cause the first Purification sequence to be polarized incorrectly (3-and-1, instead of 2-and-2).