Broadsword revealed what’s coming with SWTOR’s Update 7.9.1 and shared a lot more details about SWTOR’s 8.0 expansion including its first release on the PTS during its Summer Livestream.
Twitch Drops and Current Rewards Reminder
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: Ruhnuk (Purple Frame)
The Poster: Ruhnuk (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 7.9.1 livestream, from July 30th to August 6th, 2026.
Vectron Colette EM4 Mount
The Vectron Colette EM4 is a mount reward that will be given to players who watch 5 hours of SWTOR streams in the month after 7.9.1 is released. It’s a purple recolor of the Vectron Colette mount.
Check out our SWTOR Twitch Drops Guide for more details.
Update 7.9.1
Update 7.9.1 is likely releasing on August 11th, 2026, and brings along Galactic Season 11, Cartel Market Accessories, and Feast of Prosperity.
Galactic Season 11 “Light and Shadow”
Galactic Season 11 “Light and Shadow” begins on August 18th and combines GS2 and GS4, including the Fen Zeil and Amity companions, alongside some new rewards.
Amity New Customization and Penumbra Armor Set
There’s a single new Penumbra customization for Amity. Since you can’t customize individual pieces of his armor, it’s just a full set as a customization.
However, the model will also exist as the Penumbra armor set, which will be available for players to wear as they please. Below, you can see how it looks on different male and female body types as well as with different dyes.
The set seems to be inspired by Jedi Hunter Anda from Star Wars Visions.
Fen Zeil New Customizations
Fen Zeil is getting a pair of new customizations called Blaster Twirler (left, top) and Headhunter (right, bottom).
The Blaster Twirler set gives him rakghoulish pale skin with a modified version of the Remote Outcast’s set. The Headhunter puts Fen Zeil in Cad Bane’s Outer Rim Drifter set with darker blue skin, sadly without his signature hat.
Hovercar Mounts
We’re getting two paint jobs on a brand-new mount model that allow your humanoid companion to ride in the passenger copilot seat.
It seems to be inspired by the speeder used by Anakin and Obi-Wan to chase down Zam Wessel at the beginning of Episode II: Attack of the Clones, with some added wood-textured accents.
Sapphire City Hovercar
The Sapphire City Hovercar comes in blue with silver trim and those dark brown wood panels that fuse futuristic convertible with an ancient station wagon aesthetic.
Emeraldland Hovercar
The Emeraldland Hovercar comes in green with yellow and brown trim. This is the color scheme that’s more reminiscent of Attack of the Clones.
GS11 New Rewards Summary
Remember, GS11 is a combination of GS2 and GS4, so we’re getting all the rewards from both seasons, alongside the following new rewards:
Cartel Market Offerings
Additions to the Cartel Market will focus on customizing the finer details of your character with an emphasis on Cyborgs.
Accessories Category Filter
Broadsword is adding a new category to the Cartel Market called Accessories, which will focus on individual armor pieces that aren’t tied to an existing set. To be clear, this term does not refer to a specific equipment slot, nor does it refer to things like Earpiece, Implants, and Relics.
The initial example they gave was Cassian Andor’s Nightfall Operative Glasses, but it will likely also include things like the Enforcer’s Eyeguard, Efficiency Scanners, Rascal’s Toothpick, etc.
Cyborg Accessories
The Accessories category will also include a range of new* cybernetics that will enable alien species to look like Cyborgs. There are existing cybernetic armor sets that were some of the first additions to the CM, but one of the new options they mentioned was a cybernetic arm like Anakin and Vader and Luke have.
Of course, all of that was already a thing before 7.9.1. They’re expanding cybernetic offerings for alien species by transforming compositions from the Cybernetics slider for the Cyborg character creator into 18 regular helmets.
Cyborgs will be able to retain their identity as a “species” because they’ll be able to equip these new helmets in addition to being borg’d out through the character creator.
Based on my understanding of how this works on the backend, I’d have to think they’d be able to offer a Covert Energy Helmet that is invisible but lowers the hood on relevant outfits. That part is just speculation, though.
Oiled Bronze Dye
There will be a new oily bronze dye that will come as both a Primary/Secondary combo and individual Primary and Secondary variants, though they didn’t show it on stream.
They described it as metallic but probably more wet or lubricated looking, probably designed to work with the new cyborg accessories.
Feast of Prosperity
The Feast of Prosperity is returning on October 6th, 2026, and will feature a new Waiter Droid Companion Customization for 2V-R8 and C2-N2 (the ship droids).
We think the design is inspired by the Steward Droid from Star Wars Visions.
More Details on 8.0
Since 7.9.1 will be pretty light the devs also shared some new details about the 8.0 expansion, which is set to launch during holiday 2026. Just to recap, we already knew about the following:
- Next Era of Story
- Level 85
- Combat Balance Changes and New Abilities
- New-ish Gearing System
- New 3-Boss Operation: Children of Nul
- New Planet: Ryloth
They didn’t really talk about any of these things today, though I think it’s worth pointing out that because Ryloth is the Twi’lek homeworld, we strongly believe that the character art face modernizations for Twi’leks will arrive alongside 8.0 as well.
SWTOR’s migration to DirectX 12 is not tied to 8.0, so communication on that will be separate. Eric Musco (Game Director) said that they’re continuing to make progress on that front, and the next step is a technical alpha.
Quality of Life Improvements
There are a host of quality of life (QoL) improvements coming alongside 8.0 including putting Fitted gear in Collections, turning Toys into abilities, making interactable SH decos persistent, and redistributing XP away from main story quests.
Fitted Armor and Weapons in Collections
Fitted Armor Sets and Fitted Weapons are getting added to Collections, which includes over 500 different items. This is a pretty major step towards including all equipment in the game in Collections, with the only remaining carveout being some endgame gear sets and crafted equipment.
Prices on Fitted sets will probably skyrocket a little bit, so you probably want to get in on the GTN feeding frenzy ASAP.
Toys as Abilities
In order to reclaim precious inventory space, items classified as Toys will become consumable ability unlocks, so they’ll function like mounts and minipets where you right-click the item, it gets consumed, and then you have a permanent ability you can stick on your bar. They listed the following categories of items that are classified as Toys:
- Cosmetic effects (Jawagrams, Glowing Eyes, etc.)
- Trainer Holostatues (AKA Driving Instructors)
- Rest and Recharges (Regen Items)
It’s unclear if items Legacy Perk Droids from the recent Master the Fight: Cargo Transport Edition Bundle will get included in this as well.
Stronghold Decoration Persistence
Once 8.0 drops, interactable SH decos will remain in the state they were in when you left, which is big news for Ambient Machines and Jukeboxes, but it applies to a bunch of different types of decos as shown below:
I am a bit curious about how this will affect decos with timers on their interactions. Like Jukeboxes stop playing automatically after a set time and the hologram on the Jedi Small Council Table disappears after a short while. Hopefully, these timers are removed.
It’s also worth pointing out that there’s a Luxurious Oval Rug (Purple) in the corner of the picture. This deco has never been obtainable by the player but has existed in the deco list for as long as I can remember.
Leveling Experience
Broadsword will be making changes to the leveling experience with 8.0 so that players don’t become over-leveled so easily by exclusively doing the main story quests.
This is a problem because it reduces the incentive to do side quests, makes content easier than it should be, reduces the amount of time you have to learn and understand how to play your class, and makes gearing while leveling irrelevant.
They didn’t go into a lot of detail, but it sounds like they’re redistributing some of the XP provided by main story missions to other activities like side quests and almost certainly for defeating enemies.
Difficulty Modes in Overworld
One of the new features coming with 8.0 is difficulty modes in the overworld, like while running around on planets. There will be 3 difficulty modes you can change at will including:
- Story – current difficulty
- Veteran – similar to launch era difficulty
- Master – highest challenge, probably like MM Chapters
Difficulty will be increased by modifying your personal damage and healing received as well as XP gains. We aren’t getting single-player instances on planets. Adjusting these specific dials mean you can make your game harder while fighting the exact same enemy as somebody else who is playing on a lower difficulty.
Since you can already set your difficulty by other means, this does not directly apply to group content like Flashpoints and PvP.
It’s quite an elegant solution that links leveling pace to teaching players how to play, so you’ll have to do more reps if you want to work out with lighter weights. The only concern is stealth, but we haven’t seen what Broadsword has planned for them yet.
Ventures
Alongside these higher difficulty settings are a pair of Ventures where you get rewards for completing each origin story entirely in Veteran or Master Mode, called Classic and Expert respectively. Remember, you have to be subscribed to progress through these Ventures.
They’re also bringing back the old class icons based on popular revolt request.
Children of Nul Operation
The new Operation coming with 8.0 will feature 3 bosses and take place on Darth Nul’s ship, the Enigma, which we spent some time exploring during the Master’s Enigma story as part of Update 7.8.1.
On stream, they showed off the arena for the first boss, which seems to be a circular room divided into dark and light halves. They talked about mechanics featuring circles that make up a Venn diagram in the middle.
At the launch of 8.0, the full raid will be available in SM and VM, with MM to follow after.
I know many of you are skeptical after the devs broke their promise to make R-4 Anomaly in MM in 7.0, but I don’t think they would have announced it unless they were certain. If they weren’t sure if they could do it, I think they would have just left MM out of the announcement.
New(-ish) Abilities and Passives
Each discipline is getting a new-ish ability and passive as part of the level cap increase. The new ability is just like what they did with 7.0 with the ability offered at level 15 where they take a baseline combat style ability and transform it for each individual spec. They gave example abilities for the following specs:
- Frenzy | Valorous Call for Marauder | Sentinel
- Force Lightning | Telekinetic Throw for Sorcerer| Sage
- Shoulder Cannon for Powertech | Vanguard
I haven’t gotten a chance to look at the full extent of these changes yet on the PTS, but based on what I’ve seen, this feels very preliminary and prototypical, like it feels so minimal and tacked-on that it can’t have taken very long to make and would not be wasteful to scrap entirely.
I’m not going to get into more constructive feedback here, but I have reached out to Broadsword about this.
8.0 PTS and Future 8.0 Details
The first version of the 8.0 PTS is available now. Players can test out the new level 85 abilities for Sentinel | Marauder, Vanguard | Powertech, and Sage | Sorcerer and test the first Nul Acolyte boss in new Children of Nul Operation in SM and VM.
Only those 3 combat styles are balanced for level 85, and there is no character copy available at this time, but there is a terminal where you can get auto-boosted to level 85 and get a full set of 370 gear.
The next livestream will be a Let’s Play in late August starring Eric Musco. There will be additional changes in future phases of the PTS, like testing out Dynamic Encounters on Ryloth, but don’t expect to try the story until the expansion drops.
