Now that the release date of SWTOR’s newest expansion “Onslaught” has been pushed back to October 22, there is time for BioWare to do a more proper testing. Better late than never! BioWare has opened up Phase 2 of the game’s Update 6.0 testing on PTS! The launch of this phase introduces a ton of new features and systems that are brand new for the game and are expected to arrive with the DLC. The Participation rewards are also available and the item you will earn for helping BioWare prepare for Update 6.0 is really cool!
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PTS PHASE 2: SPOILS OF WAR ACQUISITION
There truly are a lot of things to do and see on PTS right now. Most of them, however, are either not finished or placeholders. BioWare’s main goal with the launch of this phase yesterday (August 29) is to test the loot acquisition.
All Republic Classes with their armor sets and set bonuses have been added to PTS with this phase. The only one still missing is the Republic Trooper. It will appear later in Phase 2.
A FEW OPENING WORDS
What is Loot Acquisition? The methods you use to obtain new gear. On the recent live stream community manager Eric Musco ran a solo Hammer Station Flashpoint. During it we got to see a few random items drop and the places or ways they drop.
The truth is RNG is once again king in Star Wars: The Old Republic. There are a few “bad luck prevention systems” in place to assure you get decent loot at least once in a while. In fact, the game is doing its best to increase your gear score all the time. The loot drops from random mobs and boss encounters are now personal to your character and are based on your currently equipped gear and used discipline (more or less – some randomness is still in place).
The items that will provide you with better stats are now marked with a green arrow, pointing up in the corner of the item’s icon when placed in your inventory.The way you acquire new gear currently on PTS is the main thing BioWare is testing. The items that drop may not work properly. The bonuses they provide may not be balanced or completely broken. The only goal right now is to gather feedback if you, as a player, are happy with the mount of loot you get and the ways you get it.
BioWare wants you to gear up fast, so you can spend more time on tweaking your EndGame build to make it the way you like. This results in you acquiring gear for your character a lot faster than in previous expansions. Because of the random element introduced in 6.0’s Spoils of War, you will worry less about the tier of your gear, but more about the special new perks and bonuses attached to it.
Now that the lyrical part is over, let me get down to serious business.
CRAFTING CHANGES
The new Crafting system is not yet fully implemented and changes to what is currently on PTS will happen in future phases leading up to the release of 6.0.
The Crew Skills specific items have been expanded into three categories – Premium, Prototype and Artifact with latest one being the highest tier. You can take a lower tier item, add a few other crafting materials and combine them all into a higher tier item of the same type.
These crafting materials can be obtained from playing the game like Operations, Flashpoints and PvP. The newly revamped Conquest will also offer their own Crafting Materials.
You can acquire all crafting materials from various places (game modes). Coinciding with this, a new Profession-wide Legendary Component can be attainable from either broken down Legendary items or Wealthy Yield Profession Missions.
CRAFTING GEAR AND REVERSE ENGINEERING
Because of the increased amount of gear loot and drops, you will likely find yourself asking BioWare for more inventory space way more often than you should. Since this doesn’t seem to be happening any time soon, here’s what the developers have decided to do to help provide you with an incentive to destroy the stuff you loot, but do not want:
“Thanks to our new deconstruction system, players will now be able to break down items into either crafting components or Jawa Junk depending on the item type. If a broken-down item was crafted, and you have the required Crewskill to reverse engineer that item, crafting materials will be gained. If the item is either a world-drop or you don’t have the needed Crewskill, Jawa Junk will be granted instead. Jawa Junk can be turned into a special vendor, granting either crafting materials or randomized gear for a specific slot. You can throw as much Jawa Junk at the vendor until you get a piece that meets your needs, allowing you to really hone-in on what item you’re trying to get”
GALACTIC COMMAND… I MEAN RENOWN
As I stated at the top of the article, many things in this version of the game on PTS today are not yet finished. The Galactic Renown is meant to give you an additional way to earn gear and money. Oh, you will need a lot of credits to create your build, but more on that later.
The Galactic Command system remains in the game, but is now called Galactic Renown. It is still going to provide you with your favorite *cough* RNG Crates with loot.
By earning Renown Experience (from playing the game in any way you want) you will still be gaining Renown levels. They are purely cosmetic now and will reset from time to time as the Galactic Renown will be turned into a Seasonal feature.
AS opposed to what we had in 5.0, Galactic Renown is now a completely sidelines (supplementary) gearing system.
AMPLIFIERS AND RE-ROLLING
Yes, if it does sound a bit harsh, it is intended. I am not a fan of this credit sink system and I doubt I will like it more if the credits required for re-rolling are “nerfed”.
The current version of the re-rolling system is in a very early stage. It doesn’t even have a finished UI. This means a lot can and will change by the time it releases with the expansion.
All new gear pieces will have attached special perks to them, called “amplifiers”. These will be selected from a random pool of items, based on the item they are rolled for.
Not all tiers of gear will have amplifiers. As it stands right now, you need at least Premium Quality item for an Amplifier to be rolled on it when you obtain the item.
If you are not happy with the Amplifier attached to a certain gear piece, you can re-roll for a different one using Credits. Each time you roll, the cost will be increased by a small amount. When you re-roll, new amplifiers will be shown and you will be able to pick one of them to be attached to that gear piece.
Pricing of the re-rolling feature is not yet finalized, I suppose, but this quote from BioWare may sound an alarm in some players: “The cost for rerolling an amp increases each time you reroll in succession on the same item, so it may be more effective to go find some more gear in the world rather than burning all your credits on a single item!”
Need some good news after this? The Amplifiers are NOT taken into account for balancing. This means that the content you play through is only balanced for the regular gear and character builds. Amplifier (amp for short) bonuses are on top of that. They are small enough to not have a huge impact on your performance, but every EndGame player knows that for optimizing purposes even the tiniest boost may make the difference between a wipe and a boss kill or a win or lose in a duel.
Another good decision BioWare made is to allow every single piece of gear to be transferred across your whole Legacy. That’s right! Even if you find something right now that is not bound to Legacy, for the release of Onslaught BioWare is aiming to have all of your gear bound to your Legacy, not to one character.
YOU CAN ALSO GET GEAR FROM THE NEW FLEET VENDORS
To lessen all of this RNG in Spoils of War, BioWare has added new vendors on the fleet that will allow you to purchase specific items for a new currency – Tech Fragments. You can learn more about them in the video below!
ONDERON IS ON PTS
Onderon is a well-known planet in the Star Wars lore. It makes its debut to Star Wars: The Old Republic in Onslaught and will offer a ton of story content, a new daily area and a lot of new secrets to discover.
The Main Storyline from Onslaught will never be released to PTS. Even if someone finds a way to break the locks, this will lead to immediate shut-down of the server. BioWare does not want us to get spoiled while testing.
The second new planet is Mek-Sha – a brand new world, introduced for the first time to the Star Wars fans with Onslaught. It will most likely not be available on PTS. From what Musco and Boyd said on the live stream from August 28, it seems that this will be a smaller world, mostly put there for story purposes and it would be hard for the team to prevent any spoilers from appearing while you explore it.
Right now Onderon is waiting for you on PTS, but it does not offer much in terms of content. If you follow the travel-droid from Odessen, it will bring you to the Daily Area of Onderon, which is available for testing.
The clip below will show you how to start the Daily Missions on the Public Test Server. There will most likely be some official requirements once this is released officially.
THE NEW DXUN OPERATION
While BioWare urges you to play Hammer Station (which you have likely done about 123890 times on the live servers already) and the Karagga’s Palace Operation (which you may have done slightly less number of times compared to the Flashpoint, but sill… D’OH!), a new gem is available for testing!
For PTS veterans the newly formed “energy bridge” on Odessen’s landing platform, that leads to nowhere, will not be a surprise. This in fact is a quick travel portal to the new Operation, coming wihth Game Update 6.0.
The Dxun Ops is currently available in both Story Mode and Veteran Mode – the two difficulties it will ship with in October. Nightmare, I mean Master Mode, is expected with a follow-up patch some time later.
The devs made it clear that because this phase of PTS is not testing gear balance, the Veteran Mode of the Dxun Ops may be too hard for your characters. It is available, but not recommended to run through. The Story Mode is also not completely finished yet in terms of balancing, but is ready to welcome you. It is meant to be “easier than Gods from the Machine”.
“Ideally, the team is looking for Story Mode to be significantly easier than the Gods from the Machine Operation. We strongly encourage players to try a variety of Set Bonus and Tactical combinations to really push the boundaries of these encounters! We will encourage Veteran Mode testing and feedback as we get closer to PTS Round Three.”
WHAT FEEDBACK IS BIOWARE LOOKING FOR
It is most important to remember that even if you are not vocal on the forums, you playing the game is a good enough metric for the devs to see how your gameplay performance is affected by certain aspects of the encounters and the content available for testing over all.
With that said, here is a list of things the devs would love to hear your thoughts on:
- How do the Set Bonuses look and feel while playing?
- How do the Tactical Items look and feel while playing?
- How easy or hard is it to understand what certain Set Bonuses, Tactical Items, or Amplifiers do?
- Which Set Bonuses, Tactical Items, or Amplifiers seem underpowered or overpowered, and why?
- What are your thoughts on the Amplifier system and how to reroll them?
- How do the gear drops feel? Are they rewarding, is there too little gear, or too much etc.?
- How do Flashpoints and Operations (especially Karagga’s Palace/Eternity Vault) feel? What needs adjustment in these areas?
- How does Dxun feel? Is it too easy or too hard? Do certain aspects need further balancing?
HOW TO GET STARTED ON SWTOR PTS IN PHASE 2
For Phase 2 you may find that your previous characters from older testing phases have been removed. This is normal for a test server and is likely going to happen again soon. Don’t get too attached to your characters.
The video above is from Phase 1 of PTS, but it should still give you a good idea of where and what to do. It has been confirmed that some of the terminals may not work properly and some of the vendors are no longer available (the ones offering you free gear, for example), but the rest is still there!Right now there are two options for you to get to PTS – create a new character or copy one from a live server. In both cases you will need to first install or update it. Reminder: PTS is a separate instance of the game, meaning you will have a lot to download to play it. And the only requirement to access it is to be a SWTOR Subscriber. I also have a handy Guide to help you access SWTOR PTS and copy your characters there.
SWTOR 6.0 PTS PARTICIPATION REWARDS
I am a subscriber and I am on PTS. I knew will get this reward regardless if I like it or not. Once BioWare actually revealed it, I am now asking myself, is it really cool enough to make me Subscribe just to get to PTS and earn it. In my opinion the answer is YES!
The rewards for participating in Phases 2 achievement tasks you to complete 5 group content runs and grants you two titles to use on the live servers if you wish to. The Phase 3 reward asks of you to complete 10 runs and grants you an insanely cool mount
- Complete the first PTS achievement – The Strike Team Specialist and Strike Team Commander Character Titles.
- Complete the second PTS achievement (available in a future PTS update) – The new Kai Zykken MK-85 Test Log Mount. Warning – Mount may move at the speed of an actual log.
To clarify, this mount is purely decorative as it is unbelievably slow and dysfunctional. I cannot remember what was the year when BioWare introduced a similar mount as an April 1st joke (I looked it up and could not find info and my memory failed me too, damn!). In my memory the first log-mount was simply that – a magically flying log. This one, the real reward for PTS participation, is an improved and upgraded version of the joke-one.
A FEW MORE PERSONAL THOUGHTS
For a finale – I am very aware that BioWare is currently hard at work to bring as many of the Spoils of War and Onslaught features to PTS. I am very unhappy with the direction they have taken on regarding loot and the re-introduction of heavy RNG to the gearing process. It is up to me and you, however, to help the studio bring this bad system into a functional tool that will not frustrate us this Holiday, but will instead somehow enjoy it.
Believe me, I am doing my best not to judge the Spoils of War before I actually get to play its fully released and functional version. I doubt the credit sink issue will remain only in my head, but BioWare desperately wants to convince us all that they are listening to our feedback. With less than two months before the Expansion’s release (October 22, 2019) it is highly unlikely that we will be able to change the studio’s opinion on how they want this system to work, but we can do out best to help them shape it into something that does function and reward us for our time spent farming our new gear.
Galactic Command took nearly a year to bring it into a tolerable shape – one which does not frustrate players, if not reward them for their time spent. The Spoils of War is such a drastic turn from everything traditional for SWTOR in its nearly eight years of existence. I am amazed at BioWare’s bravery to attempt to make it and in such a short time span.
As usual, stay close and check regularly VULKK.com for more updates! There will be a lot more news from SWTOR 6.0’s PTS and you will always be able to learn them here as soon as they are revealed!
