SWTOR’s 8.0 expansion is called “Masters of the Force”. Broadsword will be drip feeding us information about it until it drops this holiday 2026. We’ll continue to consolidate those sweet deets here.
New Planet: Ryloth
Ryloth is the rocky Twi’lek homeworld located in the Outer Rim. It will be the main area to explore during the new “Galaxy in Chaos” storyline, which picks up right after the events of Legacy Reborn.
This unforgiving planet is marked by brutal terrain, dangerous factions, and a proud people fighting to endure. Confront the Hutt Cartel, uncover new threats, and take part in a wide range of Dynamic Encounters across Ryloth’s hostile landscape.
We haven’t seen a whole lot of Ryloth in Star Wars movies or TV shows, but it seems like Broadsword is taking inspiration from the planet’s depiction in Star Wars: Clone Wars.
Initially, I was concerned that Ryloth might just end up being Ruhnuk 2 because their environments are so similar. Both are cavernous with limited greenery, but after seeing the concept art, I think they’ll feel sufficiently distinct.
I’m most intrigued by all the different fabric in the shot. It could very well be all static or rely on SWTOR’s existing cloth physics, but there have been significant breakthroughs in efficient fabric simulation in the past few years.
The devs are well aware of the rampant clipping with capes and such, but perhaps SWTOR’s migration to DX12 will enable them to take advantage of these advancements. I’m no expert on graphics APIs, so take that with a grain of salt.
While this hasn’t been confirmed, either, we can say with far greater confidence that Twi’lek faces will probably receive the modernization treatment that other races got earlier in 7.0. After all, they’re making fancy new planet full of Twi’leks. They wouldn’t just skip the facelift.
Alongside story content featuring Force-sensitive Twi’lek siblings Sa’har and Ri’kan Kateen, Ryloth will offer a smattering of Dynamic Encounters.
It’s safe to say that these will likely exist in lieu of dailies, but at this point, it’s unclear whether Dynamic Encounter gameplay will be organized into a larger structure à la Wreckage on Dantooine, or if they’ll just follow the original style with separate missions popping up everywhere.
Level 85 and Balance Changes
As is customary with a new expansion, we’ll get a level cap increase (and gearing changes), so once 8.0 drops, the new max level will be 85 and gear will be around iRating 370+ (compared to the current 344).
There will also be combat style balance changes, which currently means a baseline ability for the combat style will get transformed to have a new discipline-specific effect.
We can see the preliminary changes for the following classes on the PTS:
In short, they have some neat ideas for some of the specs, but I don’t think their one-size-fits-all standardized approach is going to work. I hope the focus on refining the ability tree choices rather than trying to shoehorn another ability into the spec and rolling the core 3 discipline-specific tactical items into a choice in the ability tree.
New Operation: Children of Nul
There will be a new 3-boss operation called Children of Nul. At launch, CoN will be available in SM/VM, but they have announced that a MM (NiM) difficulty will arrive later, likely as part of Update 8.1 or 8.1.1 based on their past release timings.
The new operation takes place on Darth Nul’s flagship, the Enigma, where she conducted experiments and examined the idiosyncrasies of the dark and light sides of the Force.
Currently, the first boss, Nul Acolyte, is available on the PTS in both SM and VM with consoles players can use to adjust the balance of the fight and provide better test data to the devs.
Will there be a NiM CoN?
The devs did break their promise to make R-4 Anomaly MM, so raiders are justifiably skeptical about the Broadsword staying true to their word, but I don’t think they will make the same mistake twice.
The new operation is shorter, so MM will require fewer resources, and it would be much safer for Broadsword not to announce the highest difficulty for the operation if they weren’t certain. It’s not like they’ve abandoned MM, either. Relentless Replication, SWTOR’s most recent lair boss, has a MM version.
Open World Difficulty Settings
All players will get to set their difficulty mode in the open world. Options match the rest of the game’s difficulty settings and include Story, Veteran, and Master mode.
- Story difficulty is the same game experience we have now
- Veteran reverts the game difficulty to what it was like a launch
- Master will offer a more challenging experience likely akin to MM Chapters.
The difficulty setting works by increasing the damage you (and your companion) take from enemies, reducing your healing received, and reducing the XP you earn. It does not affect enemy health or your damage dealt.
This approach means that it can apply seamlessly to the open world and allow two players fighting the same enemy to experience separate difficulties without directly reducing their contribution to shared objectives.
Please note that these difficulty settings do not apply to group content like Flashpoints, Operations, or PvP because difficulty settings there already exist.
New Ventures: Classic and Expert
Ventures are subscriber-only prestige-oriented endeavors designed for solo players. They are meant to take quite a bit of time and effort and cannot be progressed unless you are subscribed.
The only one we’ve had so far is the Basilisk Prototype Venture that gives you the Bessie companion.
Coming alongside the open world difficulty settings are a pair of Ventures that reward you for playing through the game exclusively in either Veteran or Master Mode.
To be clear, you can play through the game in any difficulty regardless of whether you are subscribed, but you can only progress through Ventures if you are subscribed.
You’ll need to create new toons to progress through the venture and those toons will be locked into the associated difficulty (unless you choose to hit the irreversible “eject button”).
Classic Venture
The Classic Venture will reward you for playing through each origin story in the original Era (Acts 1-3 taking place from level 1-50) on Veteran difficulty. You’ll also need to do the planetary story arcs, level up crew skills, and complete the original story FPs.
The name of the venture is a nod to the difficulty of the game at launch. The point is to play the game like it was back in the day.
Expert Venture
The Expert Venture will reward you for completing heroics and dailies, defeating rare enemies, and exploring the galaxy, all on Master difficulty. It has a completely separate set of objectives focused on different content than the Classic Venture.
It seems that the Expert Venture is more oriented to completing side-content in MM, but the details are a bit hazy. On the 7.9.1 livestream, they mentioned that you’d have to play through it with all 8 origins as well, but that sounds like it will be extremely repetitive.
We expect more details in a future livestream.
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.
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.
8.0 Release Date and Other Tidbits
The 8.0 Masters of the Force expansion is due out this holiday season, most likely either December 15th or 22nd, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it had to be delayed until the new year like they did for 7.0.
Gladiopodling Minipet Code
You can redeem the code GETREDY4MOTF at https://www.swtor.com/redeem-code to get your very own Gladiopodling minipet. This code is available until December 26th, 2026. They’re almost certainly going to get 8.0
PvP Season 11, Life Day, SWTOR’s 15th Anniversary
We expect Life Day, SWTOR’s 15th Anniversary, and PvP Season 11 as part of the 8.0 update, though we have no details on Broadsword plans yet.
DirectX 12 Migration (Not 8.0)
DirectX 12 migration is not part of 8.0, but Broadsword is working towards bringing a technical alpha to players. The current hurdle is the game UI.
Broadsword has been working on migrating SWTOR from the ancient DirectX 9 to the modern DirectX 12 version of the graphics API for a couple years now.
Game developers rely on APIs like DirectX as a standardized language to communicate with GPU drivers without needing to worry as much about specific hardware configurations.
DirectX 9 was released all the way back in 2002, and DirectX 12, the modern standard, was released in 2015.
DirectX 10 was released in 2006, around the time that development on SWTOR likely began, but it required Windows Vista or later to run, and Windows 7 didn’t surpass Windows XP in market share until late 2011, when the game came out.
We don’t know if this was the reason, but if I was making an MMO, I wouldn’t want to exclude a third of the market from being able to run my game.
We expect DX12 to enable improved game performance and provide access to new rendering techniques like ray tracing, but we’ll have to wait and see what Broadsword does.
