While there were some great moments, most of my time spent training the Basilisk Prototype, B3-S1, was marred by artificial limitations and pointless encumbrances.
I’ve updated my review to reflect Broadsword’s 7.6.1 improvements.
Training and repairing the Basilisk Prototype, B3-S1 (AKA Bessie) is SWTOR’s first Venture, a new type of long-form Legacywide mission system released with Game Update 7.5 “Desperate Defiance” at the end of May 2024.
This review is coming out late because I didn’t start the Basilisk Prototype Venture until November 2024, long after some of the kinks had been ironed out. My colleague, Siow, wrote the guide for the Basilisk Prototype Venture.
Ventures are meant to take a long time with the end reward meant to be prestigious. In this case, B3-S1 is a droid companion that looks like a dog with a gatling gun for a face. She’s built from parts of the Basilisk War Droids used by the Mandalorian Neo-Crusaders in the centuries preceding the Sacking of Coruscant.
When the new system was announced, the devs compared it to the journey needed to earn the Wings of the Architect, the coveted mount you can get for defeating Dread Master Brontes in Master Mode/NiM Dread Fortress.
Training Bessie was never meant to be skill intensive like earning the Wings is, but it is still a time investment. The Basilisk Prototype Venture takes a minimum of 9 weeks to complete.
Unlike the Wings of the Architect, Broadsword decided to install aggravating and arbitrary time gates at every turn. The only reason it takes so long is because Broadsword places strict caps on the amount of data you can collect on B3-S1 each week.
Encumbrance after Encumbrance
The main loop involves taking Bessie out in a specific role to complete dailies on an assigned planet. Broadsword determined that a whopping 5 currencies were necessary to corral players for this basic task.
 | Memory Core | Restricts how long you can have B3-S1 out |
 | Combat Systems Data | Restricts how frequently you can upgrade DPS mode |
 | Support Systems Data | Restricts how frequently you can upgrade healer mode |
 | Defense Systems Data | Restricts how frequently you can upgrade tank mode |
 | Prototype Data | Screws you over if you spend it wrong |
The weekly limits on each currency typically only allow you to perform 1 upgrade per role per week, with the initial upgrades being quicker at the expense of the final upgrade taking way longer.
Upgrading B3-S1’s systems requires you to complete 10 dailies with B3-S1 in the assigned role, practically, without skipping trash mobs in the way. You only have an hour before you have to make the trek back down to Lane’s basement on Ruhnuk to spend a Memory Core that buys you another hour with your droid doggo.
In my experience, you get plenty of Memory Cores, far more than you need, but you have to drop everything, head back to Ruhnuk, go down an elevator at the end of a hallway that’s longer than we deserve it to be, give her another Memory Core, go back up the elevator, and then travel back to where you were.
The way to complete 10 missions is by doing 5 Training Modules. Each one asks you to 2 dailies on a specific planet with Bessie in a specific role. For example, you may have to 2 dailies on CZ-198 with Bessie in DPS mode.
Since weeklies for each daily area require you to complete 6 missions, you have an incentive to knock out 3 of the 5 back-to-back. On some planets, you can even get all 5 done in the same day.
Perhaps because the devs are catering to more casual players, they put a whole bunch of guardrails in place to ensure that you aren’t wasting Training Modules. After all, they are a precious commodity that you get via pointless RNG or wasting Prototype Data with HK-24.
These protections aren’t your garden variety handholding. Broadsword is grabbing hold of your hand and dragging you away from completing a Weekly in one day, even though such a thing is easy to accomplish in the 60 mins you get for a single Memory Core.
Broadsword railroads you by preventing you from activating a Training Module if there aren’t enough missions at the mission terminal, completely ignoring the ones in your Mission Log, so you can’t pick up all of the missions you want to do at the same time.
If you want to get the weekly done, you have to strategize which pair you want to leave on the terminal so you can minimize the number of route interruptions and activate multiple Training Modules back-to-back.
Even then, you’ll almost always need to do the dailies in an inefficient order because they autocomplete on you, and sometimes, there’s one daily that’s right on the way to multiple in a cave or building at the edge of the map.
It’s easy to get stuck with a Training Module on 1/2 completed or be unable to activate one without resetting your progress on one you picked up too soon or complete the weekly without completing as many Training Modules as you could have if not for Broadsword’s railroad.
This doesn’t make a dramatic difference for less experienced players who don’t know the route, but it does incentivize everyone to just do the 2 quickest missions as they reset every day and farm enemies separately to complete the weekly.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s fine to protect inexperienced players from making mistakes, but those protections should not punish experienced players by making something they’ve done dozens upon dozens of times take much longer.
I can’t fathom why Broadsword couldn’t have just made each upgrade require you to complete a weekly in a specific daily area with Bessie in a specific role.
It’s fewer missions, but that’s easy to fix by just adding a 4th “Holistic Research” objective that gives Prototype Data for a 4th assigned weekly without a role requirement.
Oh wait, there’s no need for any Systems Data or Training Modules with this approach. Without them, how will Broadsword cripple your progress without obnoxiously small weekly caps on convoluted currencies and consumables?
They don’t need to.
The Basilisk Prototype Venture is clearly designed for casual players from the ground up, to the extent that they expect the cadence to be 2 dailies per hour per day. They aren’t going to devour 4 entire daily areas a week for 9 weeks, not even close!
The caps only penalize players who have as strong a grasp on the game as Broadsword has on the player’s hand, but punishing knowledge and skill is not the way to keep players around.
Unfinished Animations, Limited Customizations
HK-24 is hilarious, Lane is endearing, and Bessie is formidable, but is this train ride aboard the Broadsword Express even worth it? I’m not so sure. The characters in the story are interesting, but it’s far less engaging when my characters aren’t really a part of it thanks to exclusive use of KOTOR cutscenes.
Bessie excels at dealing damage thanks to a devastating Sub-Orbital Strike channeled attack, but healing and tanking aren’t anything to write home about, especially considering how rough and unfinished the animations are.
In trying to resurrect the Basilisk War Droids, Lane Vizla effectively cloned her cousin Shae, so combat value is contingent on you wanting a DPS companion and not having purchased her yet.
Numbers-wise, Bessie’s healing is average, but the visuals are horrendous. Kolto Barrage, the channeled heal, is literally just the Diagnostic Scan animation. You can see the handheld scanner sticking out of one of Bessie’s shoulder cannons!
Is it really so much work just to reuse the Alleviating Armaments animation from Z0-0M, or what about the old, unused Kolto Shot animation for Mercenaries? In fact, why is her entire healing animation set based on probes and scanning when she has a gatling gun for a face? Those barels should be firing kolto!
Tank mode isn’t quite as egregious, and some VFX like Reactive Plating (not Energy Shield?) and the AoE Taunt howl look really cool. But then, you have attacks like Overcharged Boosters, which applies an incredibly lame fire effect to the ground in a circle that somehow follows Bessie.
DPS mode is more cohesive, though it still suffers from a bug with the sub 30% attack, Pulse Wave Cannon, which has a massive delay between when the damage is committed and projectile flying out to deal that damage, resulting in the target standing there with 0 HP for a couple seconds.
The hard stun ability in DPS mode also has a different icon with the same name as the Mercenary’s mez and the same projectile animation as the mez in healer mode.
Across the board, there are just so many animation issues and ability names that don’t remotely match the visuals that it makes me feel like they had other, custom attacks in mind but ran out of time to even pull together better animations from SWTOR’s existing VFX library.
Based on timing and sheer volume, I’d wager proper cutscenes and animations for this Venture and companion were sacrificed to give us the Date Night missions. Do you think that’s a fair trade? I certainly don’t, especially considering how much money Broadsword is trying to claw in.
Blatant Money-Grab
Ventures are a legacy-based system available to subscribers only. You get to train Bessie on any and all toons, but she gets ripped away from all but the toon you happened to be on when you finished her mission.
The only way to get her back on other toons is by paying 600 CC to unlock her in Collections. It just so happens that 600 CC is the exact same amount you get for being subscribed and having a security key.
Broadsword is either clawing back the pittance it just gave you or making you wait (and subscribe) for another month, unless you want to pony up another USD$10 ($5 only gets you 450 CC) to get the thing you’ve already been slogging towards for at least 2 months.
The most negligent (or insidious) part is that the game doesn’t even warn you that you’re about to lose the companion on all other toons, not that a warning is an adequate solution in the first place.
It’s easy to spend real money on a Commander’s Compendium to improve B3-S1 and get rug pulled into spending more money to get the companion back.
Don’t forget, since she starts out with a weakened version of a single ability, the Venture incentivizes you to upgrade Bessie’s influence using gifts or a Compendium!
Given the other issues and the more flagrant than usual money-grabbing on display, I’m willing to give Broadsword the benefit of the doubt that it was just negligence, but this must be fixed either way.
Broadsword needs to refund 1200 CC to all players who unlocked Bessie and her in Collections and turn her into a Legacy Perk like HK-51 and Treek. Additional customizations are also a must. There isn’t even a paint job for each Origin Story!
Venturing into the Future
My problems with the Basilisk Prototype aside, the Ventures system has a lot of promise.
With so many expansions and storylines, many new players aren’t sure what to do next, and Ventures can show them the way and keep them engaged with the game for a longer period.
Legacywide story missions could offer a solution to Broadsword’s post-launch Force vs Tech story problem. If they were to repackage the expansion storylines and chapters with your Legacy all joining the Alliance, we could have an experience where you could choose which Origin Story comes along for each mission. For some lore- appropriate examples,
- Bounty Hunters would deal with the current Mandalorian Civil War.
- Agents and Troopers would handle Makeb and Manaan.
- Force users get most of KotFE, KotET, Ziost, Yavin IV, and the Dread Masters.
- Smugglers get Rishi.
Since Broadsword compared Ventures to earning the Wings of the Architect, it seems plausible that all of the NiM mounts could be migrated to Ventures involving those NiM Operations, or at least one to take players through the Dread Masters arc.
Ventures may be the eventual home for Seasons, too, or could at least serve as a way to complete past seasons should Broadsword ever allow players to play old seasons like many other games enable.
We’ll have a clearer idea of what Ventures are when Broadsword eventually releases another one, hopefully after finishing up the Basilisk Prototype.
7.6.1 Update
With Game Update 7.6.1, Broadsword has addressed a few of the concerns I raised in this article, including giving us 4 sleek, new paint jobs for Bessie’s chassis, functionally eliminating the Legacy unlock costs for those customizations, and fixing the desync on her Pulse Wave Cannon attack.
These new role-based skins do require you to spend additional time training Bessie, but at least you can do so while hunting for the belated Dynamic Encounter achievements on Hoth and Tatooine.
More Broadly, Dynamic Encounters are a far better fit for Bessie’s Training Modules. I would support her initial training levels being changed to require Weekly completion on a specific planet in a specified role and restrict the Training Data nonsense to customization collection.
Beyond that, the biggest issues that remain are the obscene 1200 CC rugpull required to unlock Bessie and her first customization for your Legacy, and the pointlessly abysmal animations/VFX on some of her abilities, like Kolto Barrage.
