When you reach the Republic Fleet after leaving Ord Mantel/Tython, and you obtain the quest to learn your crew skills, if you talk to all of the crew skill trainers, you will earn xp for each trainer that you talk to. You don’t have to learn each crew skill, you just have to talk to each NPC trainer. It’s a very quick way to earn some much needed XP!
SWTOR Tip of the Day: Reduce Lag By Tweaking Your Graphics Options
Have you been lagging while playing SWTOR? I haven’t experienced any yet, but I’ve seen some people talking about it in general chat. One of the easiest things to do in order to reduce lag is to change the graphics settings in SWTOR. To do this click on Options and then Preferences. In this section, you will see your graphics options. Here are the graphics options to turn off in order to reduce lag:
- Shadows
- Anisotropy
- Grass (turn down or off)
- Ground clutter (turn down or off)
- Bloom
Try fiddling around with these options to see if your lag improves. If that doesn’t help, then you may want to look at upgrading your graphics card.
List of Security Key Vendor Items
AskaJedi has compiled a list of all of the items available from the Security Key vendor. This is the vendor that becomes available to you if you tie a security authentication key to your account. I’ve already written about why everyone needs to have one. Now, Bioware has given us even more of an incentive to get one by offering in game items.
Right now, they appear to be mostly cosmetic, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t add anything new in the future. Yet another great job Bioware!
SWTOR Tip of the Day: Get Rest XP in a Cantina
One of the little known features of SWTOR is “Rest XP.” This is an XP bonus that is automatically accumulated by your character while you are logged out of the game. How does one get this magical rest XP you ask? By logging out while you are in a cantina! Here is how Rest XP works in SWTOR:
- If you log out of the game in a cantina, you will accumulate a XP bonus while you are out of game. The XP bonus is designated as a green bar next to your normal XP bar.
- This rest XP will earn you double the amount of normal XP you would receive for killing creatures. The Rest XP bonus does not contribute to XP earned from completing missions, codex discovery, or exploration.
- Rest XP is capped at approximately a one level’s worth of normal XP. You can’t log one of your characters out for a month and expect to have accumulated several levels worth of rested XP.
Most cantinas have a quick travel point located in them as well. So, if you know that you are done playing SWTOR for the day because you have to go to work, school, an “occupy” movement or whatever, quick travel to your friendly neighborhood cantina and start earning your XP bonus!
SWTOR Tip of the Day: Create Your Alts Early
If you are fortunate enough to be playing SWTOR early, you may want to take some time and create your alternate characters before the game is opened up to the masses. That way, you will have a better chance of getting the character names that you want.
It’s simple math: the more people that are on the server, the less likely you will be able to create a character named “Minas” or “Bob” or “LeetStalkerUnderpants.” They will already have been taken. So, take a few minutes and create your class and reserve your name.
SWTOR Tip of the Day: Use Auto-Loot and Area-Loot
There are two settings in SWTOR that are disabled by default that if enabled, can save you a lot of time as you roam around the galaxy: auto-loot and area-loot. Auto-loot will automatically place all loot that you obtain from right-clicking a corpse in your inventory, instead of clicking on each individual item. Area-loot will loot multiple corpses in an area.
Say you have both of these options enabled and you just took out several baddies. All you would have to do is right-click on one corpse and you will automatically get all of the loot that they drop. Sweet!
Both auto-loot and area-loot options can be found under Preferences > Controls.
How To Copy SWTOR to Another Computer
Are you planning on playing SWTOR on multiple PCs? You don’t need to download the Huuuuuuuuuuuuuge game client each time! Simply copy the installation files from one computer to another. Here’s how:
1. Obtain access to a PC that has SWTOR fully installed and patched. It is highly advised that you do this legally.
2. Obtain an external hard drive with at least 30 gigabytes of free space. It is also highly advised that you do this legally.
3. Navigate to C:/Program Files (x86)/Electronic Arts/Bioware/) and copy the folder “Star Wars – The Old Republic” folder to the external hard drive that you obtained in step 2.
4. Download the SWTOR installer from http://www.swtor.com/download to the second PC that you would like to play SWTOR on and install the game.
5. Copy the “Star Wars – The Old Republic” folder from the external hard drive into the same installation directory (C:/Program Files (x86)/Electronic Arts/Bioware) on the second computer. This will overwrite the existing Star Wars – The Old Republic folder.
6. Spin around three times and then yell, “Yahtzee!” Hey, it might help.
7. Launch SWTOR. The updater will scan your system. It should see that all of the files are up to date and allow you to start playing the game.
8. If the launcher begins to download additional files or gives you an error, exit the game and launch SWTOR again. This time, click the options icon on the game client. Select the Repair option. Once the repair is finished, you should be able to start playing SWTOR.
That’s all there is to it. No need to spend a day (or more) downloading the installation files on another PC.
10 SWTOR Tips for WoW Players
If you’re a WoW player that is about to enter the world of SWTOR, SWTORHub has written a helpful article just for you! Although I’ve never played WoW (yes, I’m the one person), I can see how this article would be helpful as it relays some of the terminology in WoW to the equivalent in SWTOR. Check it out!
Space Combat Preview
MMORPG.com has a post on space combat in SWTOR. From what little we’ve seen of space combat, it appears to be fairly underwhelming compared to the rest of the game. That is confirmed by this article as well:
“All things considered, space combat is a fun, but shallow experience. It basically amounts to nothing more than a minigame, and for a Star Wars game, this is a bit of a disappointment.”
I am hoping that Bioware further develops space combat and transforms it into a fully functional and immerse experience within the game just like space combat in Star Wars Galaxies. Right now, there are other irons in the fire at Bioware but I’m hoping these features get expanded sometime in late 2012.
An Introduction to the Jedi Consular
Jae Onasi at TORWars has written a “Newbie’s Guide to the Jedi Consular” article. This post got my attention since this is going to be the class that I play at launch (which may be as early as December 13, if you haven’t heard by now).
The article does contain some minor spoilers (such as which planet you start out on and where you progress to), but nothing in explicit detail that would make you feel the urge to take a shower in order to get the tainted feeling off of your skin after reading. I found the article quite helpful. For example, he states which trait you should look for on gear in order to best enhance your Consular. WILL you be able to guess what it is? Read Jae’s article and find out for yourself!
http://torsyndicate.com/
