What rewards you get for testing SWTOR 7.0 on PTS

BioWare revealed the unique rewards you can earn by helping them test the new SWTOR 7.0 expansion Legacy of the Sith on PTS!

As of two days ago BioWare patched the SWTOR PTS with what I assume will very likely be the final update for the year. As Endonae said earlier, we believe that everything new coming with SWTOR 7.0 in February is now available for testing on the Public Test Server.

The developers brought PTS back up earlier this month after they announced the delay of the expansion. Legacy of the Sith will now launch on February 15th, 2022.

This gives both you and me plenty of time to help the developers test the new gameplay features, mechanics, and systems.

What is on PTS currently is far from finished and polished, but BioWare is asking for help to do that. And to spice things up and encourage more players to participate in the tests during the Holidays, they offer rewards!

SWTOR PTS is a unique server, only accessible to players who are currently subscribed to SWTOR. You need to literally install the whole game a second time.

If you opt to copy a live character onto PTS for this phase, you will bring over all of your Legacy level, items, money, titles, and so on, but you will not have your achievements transferred.

This is on purpose as BioWare wants you to help them test the new character creator tool, which is still not working properly, sometimes. They want you to experience the new leveling game using the new Combat Styles and see how the gameplay feels for your favorite class(es) with the new skill trees, pruned abilities and all the other changes we have been telling you about since late Summer.

List of rewards you can earn by playing on PTS

There are six titles and two mounts available for you to earn by completing various activities on PTS until they bring it down.

Here’s the list:

Activity	Rewards
Log into PTS	New “Led the Charge” Title
Complete the Class Story on any class	“First Line of Defense” Title
Complete all expansion Story content	“The Cutting Edge” Title
Reach item rating 322 with one of your characters and complete the PvP, Heroic, and Flashpoint Weekly Missions	“Strike Team Specialist” Title, “Strike Team Commander” Title, and Kai Zykken’s MK-85 Log Mount
Complete all the above	New “Strike Team Hero” Title and New Kai Zykken’s MK-90 Holo-Log Mount

source: swtor.com

New Kai Zykken’s MK-90 Holo-Log Mount - swtor 7.0 pts rewards — Kai Zykken’s MK-90 Holo-Log Mount

The MK-90 edition of the mount actually has real mount speeds, relative to your character’s speeder piloting skill level:

“Wanted to clarify some info about the mount reward. Unlike its original predecessor, the MK-90 Holo-Log Mount will run at regular speed.” – Jackie confirmed.

swtor 7.0 pts rewards — Kai Zykken’s MK-85 Log Mount

The MK-85 mount is the same version as the previous time they granted this reward to players. It’s still going to run slow. More for show-off and role-play than for actually mount usage.

I personally like reading the weirdly funny role-playing tidbits that the devs do sometimes. Usually, they put some in patch notes, but today we got a larger chunk as part of the SWTOR 7.0 PTS rewards announcement:

We reached out to Kai Zykken, noted interplanetary adventurer/entrepreneur, for a description of the MK-90 Holo-Log Mount:
“Well, so many people came to me after we released the old MK-85 Log Mount, and said ‘Wow! So impressive and ingenious!’ and I said ‘Of course, I’m the one who made it!”
But everyone knows Kai Zykken doesn’t settle for perfection. So I scoured the galaxy for a new breed of log: a log that would be sleeker and faster; a log that wouldn’t give you splinters every time you sat on it or grow mold in the rain; a log that was constantly glowing so that no one could possibly look at anything but me… I mean, you, as you ride by!
I never found that log, but I did find a state-of-the-art shipment of holoprojectors!** Mix in a secondhand swoop engine and a few dabs of Corellian industrial adhesive and boom, the MK-90 Holo-Log Mount was born!”
*Kai Zykken may not have actually made any components in the original MK-85 Log Mount.
**Any similarity between the holoprojectors used in the MK-90 Holo-log Mount and those reported stolen from a storage facility on Carrick Station are coincidental until proven otherwise in a court of law.”

All of the above-mentioned rewards will be granted to you on all of your existing and new characters on the live servers of the game when the expansion launches.

If you have been with SWTOR long enough you may remember two of these titles. “The First Line of Defense” and “The Cutting Edge” are not exactly new, but it has been a very very long time since they were last granted to players, so it’s highly likely that a large chunk of today’s SWTOR population has not yet earned them and BioWare wants to give them away again!

Clarifications on how to complete the objectives

All of the listed activities must be performed on the Public Test Server. If you need a hand, I have a helpful guide to show you how to access SWTOR PTS and how to transfer a copy of your characters to it.

SWTOR PTS How to Enable, Instal land Access It - swtor 7.0 pts rewards — Enable PTS on the SWTOR launcher or install it separately if you are on Steam.

BioWare did specify a few things, just in case, someone is not certain. The progress towards these achievements has been tracked since the PTS came back up, which was on 8th of December.

To get the “First Line of Defense” Title, you will need to completer Story Acts I, II, and III of the origin story of any class, but all three on the same character.

To get the title “The Cutting Edge”, you will need to complete every major story mission up until the new and still unreleased expansion, this means everything up to and including 6.0 Onslaught.

Here is a list of achievements BioWare provided for you to track:

“Revenge of the Archon” or “Taking on Toborro”
“Facing the Shadow” or “Confronting the Shadow”
“Complete Chapter XVI of KOTFE”
“Complete Chapter IX of Eternal Throne”
“The Race to Refuel” or “The Failsafe

The mount has a great “shimmer” animation effect and semi-disappears from time to time.

If you would like to help the developers by tracking issues and bugs, you could do that with or without the extra rewards. The SWTOR team needs any help players can provide with QA and bug-hunting, because this way we will get the most polished and fluent experience when 7.0 launched.

You can do the activities on any number of characters. There’s no requirement to do it all on one character, except for the Origin Story Acts I, II, and III.

JackieKo’s wording on the forums suggested that the devs want you to complete Acts I, II, and III on one character:

“Completing the class story is measured by having the “Complete Act 1, 2, and 3”. Achievements of the same class Complete all expansion Story content means all expansions currently existing (pre-7.0).”

I suggest you complete all of the story on the same character, just to be sure that you avoid accidents with the progress tracking.

UPDATE: JackieKo brought some more clarity into how and what you need to do to earn the rewards on PTS:

Log in once into PTS to obtain that reward
Only one character is needed to obtain the Acts achievement. You do not have to play both factions.
Using character copy of characters that have not completed Act 1 yet is fine.
Using the Master Datacron would also work
Completing the final missions of the expansion story content is what will earn you the expansions achievements as listed.
Regarding the weeklies, completing any of each of the PvP, Heroic, and Flashpoint Weekly Missions will suffice. You don’t have to worry about ranked vs unranked, mode, or playing with both factions.
The PTS server will remain up until early January

The getting to IR 322 object will be tricky, because SWTOR’s PTS doesn’t have a great reputation among players, and not a huge amount actually do play regularly on it. I am hoping that BioWare steps up to organize something around mid-January after they come back from their Holidays.

They have done organized test sessions in the past. There’s a possibility they would do it once again. If not, your only option will be to call upon your friends to install PTS and farm some gear that will later be taken away from them as their PTS characters get deleted.

In a forum post community manager JackieKo listed two windows that they register higher activity. One for EU and one for NA:

EU playtime window: 12:00pm – 2:00pm CT / 6:00pm – 8:00pm UTC
NA playtime window: 6:00pm – 8:00pm CT / 12:00am – 2:00am UTC

If you want to PUG your way from 318 (available at a special PTS vendor on the Fleet, to help you get started with Endgame), to 322, you may want to monitor Activities in or around those time frames.

The new Weekly Missions are available on the Terminals on the Fleet.

Weekly Missions on Terminals on the Fleet

My thoughts on the rewards quality

What do you think of the rewards? Let me tell you what I think….

The rewards are not really worth all of that trouble. I have begun doing it because I am silly and stubborn like that, but in general six titles (four of which are not really new), a holo version of a mount that I already have from previous PTS rewards cycle, and… nothing else.

There is no doubt that the holo mount is super cool, but it’s got to be an incredibly low effort to get the old log mount and add a holo effect to it. If we are to spend upwards of fifty hours claiming and deserving these rewards, BioWare needs to spend a bit more time on creating something truly exclusive. Something that will make every other player on the live servers turns their head as we stroll past them.

They should have offered more. A lot more.

The log that Kai Zykken used for his mount design isn’t even unique. This is a generic asset piece that BioWare has used a bunch of times before in the game.

Kai Zykken's log - swtor 7.0 pts rewards

To make things even worse, they are asking us to do this during a Double XP event on the live servers (thanks to Tor-Erik Hafnor for reminding me to mention that). Come on, BioWare, I know you can do better!

Tips on how to improve your journey and shorten your time spent farming the objectives

Go in prepared and spend less time on PTS to get these achievements completed sooner. Provided you are up for farming them at all.

If you copy an existing character, your Legacy Level will copy with them. Most of you are probably Legacy Level 50 already. This will allow you to benefit from your Legacy perks on PTS.

You can boost any character by interacting with the special PTS booster terminal located just outside the “landing area” on Odessen.

If you prefer to take out the leveling experience from the equation, you can go through the narrative as a level 80. Not ideal for testing purposes. That terminal does give you money too, which is helpful, of course.

For some reason, BioWare decided to delete the handy droid in the origin planet/fleet that used to level you up.

There’s a terminal for that on Odessen at the moment on PTS, but I can’t find the quick travel to there. It’s gone. You will need a ship to be able to travel to this planet, which means that you can’t get to 80 first and then start the story.

Travel directly to the Fleet — Near the starting location on your origin planet, you will find this PTS exclusive droid that will be willing to teleport you to the Fleet right away.

A possible alternative solution is to purchase a Master’s Datacron on the live server and transfer a character that is already level 70. This will cost you money, of course.

If you decide to level up a new character directly on PTS, I still suggest you copy a live character to bring over some credits, items, and – yes – the Legacy level and get all those sweet perks!

While playing on PTS be mindful that this is a test environment and there are no guarantees that your gameplay will be smooth.

Leveling through the origin story feels like a breeze now, but the most time-consuming will probably be the twenty-five chapters of KOTFE and the nine of KOTET. If you have done them as many times as I have, you probably feel a bit disgusted in doing them again on a temp character.

When you reach the Chapters, also known as KOTFE and KOTET, I suggest you swap to your favorite of the two Combat Styles you have selected. During the Origin Story you are best off playing a Stealth class, because of how much you can skip.

In KOTFE (and KOTET, but to a lesser extend), there are a lot of unavoidable fights, thanks to the spawning-on-top-of-you Skytroopers and the quicker you clear them off, the better. I found for myself years ago that I do these much faster with my favorite Sentinel/Marauder than with Shadow/Assassin, for example.

It would have been great if BioWare found a way to allow us to keep the character(s) we create for this test phase over to the live servers. This way we can enjoy the leveling and gear farm knowing we will not lose them at the end.

SWTOR Dromund Kaas — Vulkkfarmer is on the path already and progressing through the story. Don’t forget to /wave if you cross paths. BTW SWTOR looks great with AutoHDR on Windows 11. Have you tried it yet?

Catch up on latest SWTOR 7.0 news and PTS releases

As I said at the beginning of this article, we strongly believe that everything that is coming with SWTOR 7.0 is actually now available on PTS. This is a great opportunity to check out the new features yourself. Of course, the new story is now on PTS. The Flashpoint is, but it’s in its generic version, with all of the story scenes excluded.

If you can’t install PTS and play yourself, but still want to know what is coming up with the expansion, check out the detailed coverage we have done over the past few months on every single patch and announcement related to 7.0: