SWTOR 7.7.1 Announced: GS9, F2P Changes, Character Improvements, DirecX12 News, new Subscriber Event

Broadsword announced Game Update 7.7.1 via livestream on July 30th, 2025 with concrete details on the next story update, GS9, activity finder improvements, and more!

Twitch Drops

These are the current and future Twitch Drop rewards available for SWTOR players. Only 1 reward is obtainable at a time, coinciding with the update livestream and eventual release.

Poster: Coruscant (Purple Frame)

The Poster: Coruscant (Purple Frame) is a Sign deco reward that will be given to players who watch 1 hour of SWTOR streams within 2 weeks after the 7.7.1 livestream, from July 30th to August 13th, 2025.

TF-6 Striker Mount

The TF-6 Striker is a vehicle mount reward that will be given to players who watch 5 hours of SWTOR streams in the month after 7.7.1 is released, from sometime in August to September. It’s a purple recolor of the TF-4 Rampage mount, a previous subscriber reward now available from the GS Vendor with rotating rewards, Ki’at Thavo.

Check out our SWTOR Twitch Drops Guide for more details.

Concrete Details on Next Story Update

Now that the SAG-AFTRA Video Game Voice Actor Strike is over, new story content that was meant to release alongside recent major updates can get finished and finally release. The intended schedule was:

Desperate Defiance (7.5) ▶ Galactic Threads (7.6) ▶ Master’s Enigma (7.7)

Broadsword still has some work to do, like recording the voice performances and animating the faces, so they don’t have enough time to get anything out with 7.7.1, but they have shared their intended schedule:

• Desperate Defiance (7.5, May 2024)
• Galactic Threads (7.8, Holiday 2025)
• Master’s Enigma (7.8.1, Spring 2026)
• Date Night resumes (7.8.1, Spring 2026)

It’s essentially double-time; starting with 7.8, we’ll be getting story content every 3 months instead of every 6 months, which will probably carry us through to the end of the 7.0 expansion. While unconfirmed, given the extent of the modernizations taking place, I am certain we will get an 8.0 expansion, likely in the second half of 2026.

Desperate Defiance (7.5, Released May 2024)

The most recent story we got was Desperate Defiance in 7.5, which was released in May 2024. We went to the Minboosa District on Hutta and participated in a climactic moment involving Twi’lek siblings Sa’har and Ri’kan Kateen and a fight for Darth Nul’s holocron.

Galactic Threads (7.8, Coming Holiday 2025)

On the heels of Desperate Defiance, Broadsword wants to release Galactic Threads with 7.8. It will follow multiple stories featuring different characters including:

• Pursuing Darth Malgus
• Darth Nul’s Holocron
• Hidden Chain threat
• Darth Malgus’ plans for the galaxy

Check out our coverage of the 7.6 Livestream for more details on the characters, but the devs also shared a small teaser during the 7.7 Livestream featuring the Rakata Mind Trap on Ilum with a warning from Lana Beniko.

We don’t know who is inside the Mind Trap, but all my money is still on Darth Nul. There’s no way Vitiate would just throw such a prize away. I wonder if she knew of a path to A World Between Worlds…

Master’s Enigma (7.8.1, Coming Spring 2026)

Master’s Enigma will take place and release after Galactic Threads. It was meant to come with 7.7, though Broadsword is now shooting for a non-standard 7.8.1 release.

We don’t have much info yet, but Narrative Director Ashely Ruhl explained in the 7.7 Livestream that we’ll be further investigating Darth Nul’s Holocron and learn of a “mysterious figure” pulling the strings.

It’s definitely Darth Jadus, as seen in the Star Wars Celebration Featurette. Given his chest armor, it’s possible he had something to do with the R-4 Anomaly as well…

Date Night (7.8.1, Resuming Spring 2026)

If you’re into Date Nights, sadly, you’ll have to wait almost a year. They are coming back in 7.8.1 and will feature Torian Cadera and Kira Carsen!

Galactic Season 9

Bryant Wood, SWTOR Senior Systems Designer and Eric Musco, SWTOR Game Director came on stage to explain Galactic Season 9 “Flashpoint Resurgence” is themed around Andor Season 2. Rewards include:

• Legacy Title: Ancient
• Legacy Title: Ambitious
• Character Title: The Rebel
• Character Title: Resurged
• SH Label: Headquarters
• SH Label: Inner Sanctum
• Weapon Set Inspired By Andor™
• Commandant’s Armor Set
• Ascendant Admiral Armor Set
• Verdier Econex P1, B1 Mounts
• Verdier Luxline Mount
• Minas Stinger Mount
• Minas Bee Mount
• Minas Mud Dauber Mount
• F4-RM Agriculture Droid Mini
• CAM-RON Survey Probe Minipet
• Various Yavin-themed Decos
• T7-01 Rugged Customization (meta achievement)

They shared some previews of the mounts and meta achievement reward, which you can see below.

Interestingly, there are no creature mounts this time around, only vehicles, though the ones on the track come from a new manufacturer, Verdier.

The meta achievement is a unique T7-01 Companion Customization that makes him look like he just got back from the Minboosa District.

Just like with Uprisings in 7.7, it seems Flashpoints are getting the Kai Zykken-Czerka cooperative treatment this time around, so be prepared to fight more angry trash with new Czerka Combat Enhancers!

The V2 Czerka Combat Enhancers include all of the abilities you could get in Uprisings along with 2 new ones, Experimental Repulsor Field Lift ▶Throw and Projectile Probes.

Experimental Repulsor Field grants 2 abilities on your Temporary Ability Bar. The first lifts an enemy up just like Whirlwind | Force Lift and the second throws the lifted enemy at another enemy.

Projectile Probes summons 2 probes that shoot lasers at enemies while in combat.

Activity Finder QoL Update

Bryant and Eric continued, explaining some game system QoL (quality-of-life) updates coming to the PvE Activity Finder.

PvE Activity finder is getting revamped to let you queue as another role than what you have active, offer blackout votes while still getting full GF rewards, and a rotating priority queue.

Role Selection is Back!

You can once again effectively queue for multiple roles and respec in the field while queued! This was a thing prior to 7.0 but the shift to loadouts and introduction of a second combat style broke it.

Now, you can queue for any and all role(s) you want from both combat styles at the same time. The system will just make you switch to the correct role before accepting the queue pop.

Flashpoint Resurgence Priority Queue

A new queue category is getting added called Priority Queue. Each week, this queue will have 1-2 VM FPs that match the Weekly Objective(s) so you can knock them out quickly.

Hopefully, we’ll see this expanded to other season objectives that require a group in the future.

Blacklist Options

You now can filter out some specific pieces of a given type of content while still being able to earn GF rewards and get credit for Weeklies. It seems you can blacklist ~20% of the content and still qualify for rewards and Weekly progress.

For example, if you really don’t want to do A Traitor Among The Chiss, Spammer Station, Black Talon, or Ruins of Nul, you can uncheck those 4 (out of 29 available) and still get the GF rewards.

It seems all Operations will be available to queue for at the same time, though the shift to cycling through 1 Operation per day was done to mitigate long queue times, so it’s unclear if this will be sustainable.

Auto-Skipping Cutscenes

Cutscenes will no longer play inside VM/MM FPs formed via Activity Finder. The screen will briefly fade to black instead of initiating a cutscene, so you might not need to keep Black Talon filtered out anymore.

Choices are made automatically and do not grant DS/LS points, to you won’t need to yell at group members to Spacebar!

Please note that this automatic feature is exclusive to non-SM versions of FPs and only in Activity Finder, so if you want to watch the cutscenes, you have to do the Solo/SM version or group up and walk in manually.

I wonder if they’ll add Collicoid Wargame and Kuat Drive Yards back to the queue now that players can filter it out.

Flashpoint Leveling Loot

Loot drops from Flashpoint bosses are getting improved for sub-75 toons. Currently, you only get 1 piece of loot per boss. Once 7.7.1 drops, you’ll get 2-4 pieces of loot per boss while leveling.

Balance Changes

There are more balance changes coming 7.7.1. They will focus on finishing tweaks to the default choices in ability trees for ultra casual players, which pertain to Mercenary | Commando, Operative | Scoundrel, and Sorcerer | Sage. We don’t have a full list yet, but below you can see a couple of (bonkers) examples of additional balance changes they shared along with brief analysis from me.

Assassin | Shadow

• Avoidance | Celerity (lvl 73 talent) now reduces the cooldown of Force Speed by 7s (up from 5s)

They’re trying to nudge Avoidance | Celerity into being a balanced choice alongside Shroud of Madness | Cloak of Resilience and Reaper’s Rush | Stalker’s Swiftness. This will likely have ramifications for similar talents offered by other specs, like Iron Will and Payback | Second Wind (not the implant).

Operative | Scoundrel

• Reduced the cooldown of Exfiltrate | Scamper to 7s (down from 8s)

This is pure lunacy, especially for Concealment | Scrapper with its immunity roll. It’s possible this is an attempt to compensate for the ability not benefitting from alacrity, but why not just do that instead?

Regardless, everyone would benefit more from a stacking movement speed buff on Tactical Critical | Upper Critical similar to what Carnage | Combat gets on Quickness, and maybe a 5m range buff to Corrosive Assault | Brutal Shots and Toxic Blast | Sanguinary Shot for Lethality | Ruffian.

Security Key Changes

Currently, you get 100 CC every month (and access to the Security Key Vendor) for having a Security Key linked to your account.

Starting with 7.7.1, Cartel Coins will be granted only if the account was active in SWTOR in the previous 30 days, meaning you gotta log in that month to get your 100 CC.

Broadsword is most likely doing this to stop players coming back to the game after a decade with tens of thousands of CC and take the opportunity to inform active players that they might be leaving free money on the tablet.

If the battery in your official SWTOR Security Key has run out or your phone no longer supports the app, SWTOR now supports most Authenticator Apps, so just use whatever else you’ve probably been using for other accounts that require 2FA.

F2P Improvements

In a complete reversal of the initial design over a decade ago, Broadsword is looking to reduce added friction in the F2P experience and have already made some changes to that end. Previous improvements in 7.0 include things like all players now getting Sprint at lvl 1 and Speeder Piloting at lvl 10.

They also added a new Tutorial mission to guide new players to the speeder vendor and some mounts no longer have speeder piloting requirements at all.

Coming in 7.7.1, F2P players will be able to do the following:

• Equip Companion Customizations
• Use and display Legacy Titles
• Earn Rested XP (log out in cantina or ship)
• Use the first Cargo Bay tab for free
• Use Hide Head Slot
• Receive increased Escrow payouts
• Use all Quickbars
• Equip non-Endgame Artifact gear

That last one pertains to Artifact Authorization, which was only ever intended to apply to endgame gear, not the purple pieces you get while leveling.

This was likely far less of a concern back in the day. I remember I didn’t get my first purple piece of gear until I made it to Alderaan, but it now drops a lot more regularly.

Subscriber Only Login Event

Coming after 7.7.1 proper launches, there will also be a one-time subscriber-only event that sounds kind of similar to the Dark vs Light event from many, many moons ago.

The weekly subscriber reward you get for logging in on the 4th day that week will grant a special currency that you can spend at a temporary event vendor to receive gameplay-related perks, such as:

• Endgame Gear
• Augment Materials
• Unique XP Boosts
• Crafting Boosts
• And more!

There will also be a K-2SO Companion Customization for your Ship Droid (2V-R8 | C2-N2) Inspired By Andor™.

Eric was vague with the dates, but it sounds like it will take place from the end of summer to the beginning of winter. The mission objectives sound reminiscent of what you needed to do to unlock legendary implants.

This is very much a one-time event, and once it ends, the vendor and the currency will be removed (you’ll get to keep the items), so use it or lose it!

Feast of Prosperity

The Feast of Prosperity is SWTOR’s annual fall event. This year, it will run from October 7th – November 4th and feature more new, still tiny deco rewards including:

• Banquet Hanging Light
• Grand Feast Mantle
• Regal Wall Shelf
• Banquet Sculpture
• Regal Banquet Side Table
• Grand Feast Carpet (Red)
• Grand Feast Carpet (Green)
• Drinking Banquet Guest (Standing)
• Human Banquet Guest (Sitting)
• Human Banquet Guest (Standing)
• Bothan Banquet Guest (Sitting)

There are also a couple of new armor pieces, though they didn’t mention anything about adding some OVEN MITTS to the Feast Thermalguard armor set added last year.

• Feast Attendee Robe
• Feast Attendee Robe (with Scarf)
• Feast Attendee Headwrap

Stay tuned for updates to our Feast of Prosperity Event Guide and Rewards Catalog.

New Cartel Market Items

Eric Musco returned to the stage with Brad Lewis, SWTOR’s Art Director and Forgemaster, to talk about Cartel Market Items and more!

Brushback Hairstyle

The Brushback Hairstyle is based on Cassian Andor’s fashionista disguise on Gorman in Andor S2. Mon Mothma’s attaché, Erskin Semaj, also wore a similar hairstyle, though his hair wasn’t as long.

Nightfall Operative Glasses

Nightfall Operative Glasses are also based on Cassian’s fashionista disguise on Gorman, and the frames are dyeable!

Test Pilot Outfit

There is a new Test Pilot outfit that is not ready to be shown just yet. It’s inspired by Cassian’s disguise on Sienar at the very beginning of Season 2.

PAV-11 Imperial Scout Mount

The PAV-11 Imperial Scout is just the Imperial taxi submarine on Manaan to complement the Republic one added to the CM recently.

Cartel Market Summer Sale

There will be an end of summer Cartel Market sale happening now until mid-September. Every ~2 weeks will cycle in a new category of items on sale for 30-90% off. The dates below are estimates:

• Mounts • July 30
• Tunings, Toys, and Crystals • August 11
• Weapons • August 23
• Armor • September 4
• Decos • September 16

Character Select Screen Modernization

Visual modernization efforts continue into the future across the game, including in 7.7.1, but the Character Select Screen is also getting modernized to get vastly superior lighting, idle animation, and a focused depth of field.

Below, you’ll see before and after shots for Sith and Jedi toons, though all of the origin stories are getting updated screens.

Brad pointed out that this is one of the few places where your toon is displayed as a high quality close up and everyone has to look at this screen when they log in, and more notably, that a lot of players use it for screenshots, so they wanted to make it look good.

I would put this sort of thing in the same bucket as cutscene lightning, which tends to be better than non-cutscene lighting because there is a higher performance budget in such a tightly controlled environment and you’re doing character close-ups, but it doesn’t look this good even on the newer planets.

I wonder how these visuals compares to what they intend for the rest of the game to look like. Throw in a little chromatic abberation and film grain (with checkboxes to turn them off!), and we’re getting close to the original CGI trailers for this game.

Regardless, they ought to expand this further for even better photo shoots. At the very least, we should be able to zoom out on the character select screen, but imagine if you could flip through different backgrounds and outfits, do different poses, and even bring in your companions.

Character Appearance Modernizations

There are evermore character appearance modernizations. The ones coming in 7.7.1 offer improvements and fixes to Rattataki, Dark Side Corruption fixes, and a whole lot more hair color choices.

Rattataki Improvements and Fixes

Rattataki are receiving the same improvements to skin definition and reduction of the neck seam and skin splotchiness that other races received in 7.7.

Dark Side Corruption

Dark Side Corruption has been bugged for as long as Vitiate has ruled the Sith Empire. It turns out that the effect was just turning everyone’s skin white instead of applying a proper desaturation curve, which doesn’t make sense for darker skin tones.

The bottom row that shows the WIP for 7.7 looks like a fantastic improvement that might finally make me want to turn it on.

I think they still ought to tweak the effect on the non-human skin tones. The red skin of the Sith Pureblood and the Zabrak ends up looking shrimpy rather than Sithy.

Vastly Expanded Hair Color and Montral Color Options

Just like with the additional skin color options we got with the last update, we’re getting a whole rainbow of new hair colors in 7.7.1. These new colors will also apply to the montrals on Togruta heads.

The hair colors unlocked through the Cartel Market will continue to function as they do now. Most of those colors tend to be more wild and wacky, so there is less likely to be significant overlap.

Below, you can see the full amount of new hair colors being added to each species.

Race	LIVE Count	7.7.1 Count
Cathar	11	73
Chiss	9	71
Cyborg	22	74
Human	22	74
Miraluka	16	74
Mirialan	14	72
Togruta	19	78
Zabrak (Republic)	16	73
Zabrak (Empire)	7	73

Updates on DirectX 12

At the end of the stream, Eric and Brad shared an update on SWTOR’s migration to DirectX 12. This is an oversimplification, but DirectX is a graphics API (application programming interface), which relays instructions from the game (programmed abstractly by developers) to the graphics card driver, which interprets those abstract instructions into something the GPU can actually use.

For those of you who aren’t familiar or interested in looking under the hood, Broadsword shared their goals for upgrading from DX9, which came out in 2002, to the current version, DX12.. Their goals are:

• Continue modernization efforts
• Have the game run on new tech
• Open up the opportunities for visual improvements

With DX12, they’ll be able to do more lighting, shadows, reflections, VFX, more particle effects, etc. Brad also offered the following comment, and I imagine he was only referring to rendering capabilities.

“Our current engine is very capable, but there are a few rendering things we’re really lacking.”

Brad Lewis on SWTOR’s engine, 7.7.1 livestream

They also joked about upgrading to DirectX 13, which does not exist. DirectX 12 has been around since 2015 with little indication that Microsoft wants to bump up the version number.

Broadsword has a funcitoning version of the game running on DX12, but it is not ready for players.

The next steps are getting UI and baseline shaders and working toward a Technical Alpha on PTS. They will communicate further details on timeline based on development progress.

Recap and Release Date

To recap, Update 7.7.1 is releasing with the following features:

• GS9 “Flashpoint Resurgence”
• Activity Finder Updates
• F2P Improvements
• Balance Changes
• Feast of Prosperity
• Cartel Market Items
• Character Modernization
• DX12 Status

They’re still nailing down a final release date, but are shooting for later in August 2025. The new story will start flowing again starting this holiday 2025 with 7.8.