The Dantooine Farmstead is SWTOR’s newest Stronghold. It’s coming with Update 7.8 “Pursuit of Ruin” in December, but it’s now on the PTS and is mostly finished.
Table of contents
Size
With nearly 1600 placeable decos, the Dantooine Farmstead is gigantic, up there with Alderaan Noble Estate and Rishi Hideout.
The Alderaan Stronghold (SH) is actually significantly smaller than the ones on Rishi and Dantooine, but the Dantooine Stronghold feels a lot bigger because it’s basically one monolithic region instead of being broken up into very distinct areas like the ship and apartment.
This place will take ages for an individual to decorate. It’s definitely more practical to use this as a Guild Headquarters alongside the Flagship.
Regions
Despite being so massive, the Dantooine Farmstead only has 6 different regions to unlock, each obtainable by improving your Reputation rank with the Galactic Sustainability Institute at the Jannimak Crash Site on Dantooine, including:
| Icon | Item Name | Item Type | Reputation | Price | Effect: |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Barn Key | Stronghold Area Unlock | Newcommer |  500,000 | Unlocks the Barn area of your Dantooine Farmstead Stronghold. |
| Cave Key | Stronghold Area Unlock | Friend | 500,000 | Unlocks the Cave area of your Dantooine Farmstead Stronghold. |
| East Farmhouse Key | Stronghold Area Unlock | Hero | 650,000 | Unlocks the East Farmhouse area of your Dantooine Farmstead Stronghold. |
| Greenhouse Key | Stronghold Area Unlock | Legend | 1,000,000 | Unlocks the Greenhouse area of your Dantooine Farmstead Stronghold. |
| Landing Area Key | Stronghold Area Unlock | Friend | 500,000 | Unlocks the Landing area of your Dantooine Farmstead Stronghold. |
| West Farmhouse Key | Stronghold Area Unlock | Champion | 750,000 | Unlocks the West Farmhouse area of your Dantooine Farmstead Stronghold. |
The map below is interactive. For best experience, we recommend opening it on full screen, so you can take a good look at every room and region.
Initial Unlock Area
None of the buildings actually come with the base stronghold purchase. You just get this sprawling wide-open space out in front of the complex.
The most tantalizing part of this open space is this depressed lake with a flat rock in the middle that has a single medium hook. It’s quite the cookie-cutter space, but I can’t wait to decorate it.
There are a pair of giant fields that each can fit 3-4 Starship hooks. One is right out in front of the main buildings, while the other is nestled at the eastern edge of the estate.
At the time of publishing, there are no Starship hook-sized crop field decos. The only alternatives are the Tall Fruit Crops and Melon Crops, which fit on Centerpiece Hooks.
A Starship hook covers the same space as 9 Centerpiece hooks, so if you want to turn this into a farm field with those decos, you’d need 36 decos per field, assuming there was a 9-Centerpiece layout (there isn’t).
You can only buy those “Crops” decos from the Dantooine Pirate Incursion Reputation Vendor. Each costs 8 of the Dantooine Surveyor’s Notes event currency, and you can only get 16 currency per full weekly per toon.
You’d need to do the weekly ~20 times to just to get enough Dantooine Surveyor’s Notes to outfit a single Starship Hook quad with Tall Fruit Crops and Melon Crops, but this is a microcosm of a larger issue. All decos are insanely overpriced when they cost anything other than credits.
Barn
Nestled to the west of the main complex is a small barn surrounded by a ton of Centerpiece hooks.
Oddly, there’s no connection to the Greenhouse right next to it or a way for anything large enough to fit on a centerpiece hook to get through the tiny door that serves as the expansion unlock point.
Cave
There’s a semi-secret large cave concealed behind a waterfall on the property. Like the barn, there’s an unnatural barricade solely to prevent access by those who didn’t pay for it.
The inside cave reminds me a lot of the one at the back of the Yavin 4 Stronghold, though there are a lot more hooks to work with. The main cavern is pretty much a blank slate with every floor surface coated with hooks.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t show the natural oculus poking through the roof of the cave. Sadly, it doesn’t align with any of the centerpiece hooks below, so you can’t have anything poking back at it.
Landing Area
There is another cave right next to the Barn that houses the entrance to the official Landing Area. This one is brighter and has a bunch of crystals, so you can have a Dark Side and Light Side-themed areas if you like.
There’s a doorway that prevents unauthorized access to the Landing Area, and the spot reminds me of the secret Owl Statue passage beneath the shaman’s home in Kakariko Village in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
If you thought 7 Starship hooks spread across two fields wasn’t enough, the Landing Area is yet another quad of Starship hooks, this time overlooked by the ruins of the Jedi Enclave.
East Farmhouse
The East Farmhouse is just a giant room that connects to the Greenhouse and outdoor regions of the farm. This is the one you’ll be able to buy first from the Reputation Vendor and it has a single Centerpiece hook in the middle of the room.
West Farmhouse
The West Farmhouse is very similar to the one on the East, though it has a decorative rounded corner and 3 Centerpiece hooks instead.
Both Farmhouses have this weird dividing wall near the greenhouse entrance that feels too cramped.
Greenhouse
The Greenhouse is giant chunk of land behind the Farmhouses covered with a geodesic dome. The main door in the middle of the stronghold unlocks it.
The area is expansive, featuring a litany of Centerpiece hooks and a Starship Hook near the nonexistent connection to the Barn. There’s also a stream inside and several mandatory large trees, making it feel more like some sort of terrarium rather than a place for cultivation.
Also, it’s weird, there’s a stone staircase no proper door, like the dome is just bolted to the Farmhouses, letting air escape.
It will look fine with the new Diorama decos from Wreckage on Dantooine, but it feels too purpose-built, not your own space to decorate.
The fact that there are larger versions of existing decos placed inside rather than large hooks is particularly egregious because it prevents the area from working as a proper separated environment that greenhouses facilitate.
To my further dismay, the Voss Tree (Giant) and a few other XL decos like the Adrenal Vaporator Platform also clip through the roof. That hook area should be depressed a bit to fix this and also facilitate a door to the Barn.
Overall Impressions
The Dantooine Stronghold is beautiful and overwhelming. It’s so much bigger than you’d expect, making it a good project for a large guild at the unavoidable expense of being far less accessible to the individual.
There are also some places that are pre-decorated, notably the resized Dantooine Trees and sconces next to the Farmhouse entrances.
It’s in okay shape for LIVE, and the individual areas look pretty, but the interconnections between regions feel like an afterthought.
I think there’s a chance the pre-decorating could get fixed, but Broadsword usually doesn’t make any changes to the environment or layout, so we might be stuck with the nonsensical connections.
I am a bit concerned about the sheer number of Centerpiece hooks relative to the number of appropriately sized decos we have, but at least the general hook alignment with respect to the environment is good.
It’s important to put all this in the broader context of the entire stronghold. A lot of my concerns are minor, and I remain cautiously optimistic about the decorating experience. As one of the most requested strongholds, I know this place will make a lot of players happy.
