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SWTOR Tip of the Day: Buy a Power Converter Module for Your Ship

February 29, 2012 by Leave a Comment

If you have any interest in doing space missions at all, an essential upgrade to get for your ship is a power converter module.  It costs 30 commendations and is available for use at Level 25.  The power conversion module allows you to either switch between more firepower (and slower shield generation) or faster shield generation (and less firepower) for your ship.

This upgrade has saved my ship numerous times from destruction.  If I’m flying into a barrage of enemies, I hit number 2 on my keypad, stop firing, and watch my shield reach full strength in just a few seconds.  Once I’m fully charged, I hit number 1 and continue blasting enemy ships.

Power converter FTW!

Filed Under: Space, Tip of the Day Tagged With: , , ,

SWTOR Tip of the Day: Use Presence Stims With Your Companions

February 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Companions greatly benefit from the presence stat.  If you find yourself in a tough fight, try using a stim that adds presence (command stims).  Your character will gain extra health, power, and possibly do extra damage.

Using the same logic, companions also benefit from wearing gear that increases presence, however you may not want to seek out high presence gear for your companions.  Typically, gear that is higher in presence is lower in other stats.  So, you must ask yourself if you are willing to sacrifice presence for something else such as cunning, aim, or endurance.

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3 Tips for Leveling Faster

February 27, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Can’t wait to get to 50?  Would you rather gulp down SWTOR rather than sip and savor the journey?  Here are 3 tips proven to help you level your SWTOR character faster:

Quest with a Friend.  Yes, companions are great but questing with another live player is awesome.  Having another person with you enables you to take out enemies much faster and as a result, complete quests at a rapid rate.  On my server, there were players who hit Level 50 within a week of the SWTOR launch (the early access launch).  How did they do it?  A lot of Red Bull and group questing.

Complete All Daily Missions.  Do all of your daily missions….ummm….daily.  Daily missions such as Heroric Quests and Space Missions give you great XP.  The XP from these missions is greater than the amount given from “regular” questing.  But most notably, they are repeatable which allows you to accumulate a higher rate of XP more often.

PvP.  Much has been said about the current state of PvP in SWTOR.  Regardless of your opinion on the matter, PvP gives you a lot of XP.  You don’t even have to be a great PvP player to reap the benefits of the copious amount XP.  Participants get a great deal just by engaging in a warzone.  If you happen to get MVP status on your PvP match, then your XP total will go through the roof.

Compared to PvE questing, the amount of XP you earn in PvP is far greater.  I’m not a big PvP fan, but the few times that I’ve tried it, I got a good deal of XP in a relatively short amount of time.  If you are stuck in a PvE rut, PvP is a good way of breaking up the monotony and making some singnificant progress on your way to Level 50.

Filed Under: Game Play, PvP, Tips Tagged With: , , , ,

SWTOR Tip of the Day: Find Out Who is Looking For a Group on Your Planet

February 27, 2012 by Leave a Comment

In chat, type in /who to find everyone who has the “Looking for Group” (LFG) flag set.  Once the list returns send them a private message asking them to quest with you.

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SWTOR Tip of the Day: Prepare Yourself For a Battle Before a Dialogue Screen

February 23, 2012 by Leave a Comment

If you think that you are going to start a battle as soon as a conversation ends, activate your defensive abilities before you engage in the conversation.  Ability timers are paused when you are in conversation, so the abilities that you activated before you started talking will be active when you are finished.

For example, it is pretty safe to say that when you reach the goal of a class story line, you are going to enter into a conversation with someone and then fight.  Before I enter into conversation, I activate my Force Armor and occasionally Channel the Force.  That way when the conversation is over and the lightsabers come out, I won’t have to waste any precious seconds activating these abilities.

Filed Under: Game Play, Tip of the Day Tagged With: , ,

SWTOR Tip of the Day: Use a Med Pack to Rez Your Companion In Battle

February 22, 2012 by 2 Comments

If you use a med pack that heals both you and your companion, and your companion happens to be “dead” at the time, the med pack will rez them.  When they return to life, they will have the amount of health that the med pack healed them for.  This comes in very handy during a tough battle!

I know that I’ve had several battles where I wasn’t able to heal my companion soon enough and they ended up dying a long time before I was hoping they would.  Fortunately, the med pack “trick” has saved me on more than one occasion.

Filed Under: Companions, Tip of the Day Tagged With: , , ,

SWTOR Character Stuck In Slow Motion? Try This

February 21, 2012 by 3 Comments

I had something weird happen to my character today.  I logged in this morning to find that he was moving in slow motion.  I wasn’t experiencing lag.  All of my character actions were just running extremely slow.  I even asked in chat if anyone else was experiencing the same thing.  It turns out that I was the only one.

I logged into one of my alts and the same thing was happening.  I even quit the game, logged back in, and still the same thing.  It was like my Jedi was running through water.

The fix was to update my video drivers (I’m running a NVIDIA GeForce GT 550M).  It turns out that the latest driver update came out today (to “optimize” my system for Mass Effect 3….download the Demo now!)  After I installed the drivers and rebooted my system, everything in SWTOR was running perfectly fine.

I haven’t found the cause of the issue.  There was some talk on the official forums about the game client causing a memory leak, but I don’t think that is it.  The game played fine for me the day before and then all of a sudden it was like every character was hit with a massive wave of “Force Slow.”

It was probably time to update my drivers anyway.  Hopefully you won’t run into this issue, but if you every do, the fix is really simple.

Filed Under: Game Play Tagged With: , ,

SWTOR Tip of the Day: Use Right Click to Fire Your Slot 1 Ability

February 21, 2012 by 2 Comments

When targeting an opponent, it you use right click, it will use whatever ability you have assigned in Slot 1.  So, if you typically start combat with a certain ability (I like to use an ability like Mind Crush that takes a second or two to cast), then this can come in handy.

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SWTOR Tip of the Day: Quickly Target Your Companion

February 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment

You can quickly target your companion by hitting F1 twice.  This comes in handy if you’re a healer (raises hand) and need to change your focus to your companion quickly.

Filed Under: Companions Tagged With: , , ,

SWTOR Tip of the Day: Reload the UI

February 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Having UI issues?  No need to try to enter a new zone or log out of the game.  Press CTRL + U twice to reset the User Interface to see if that clears things up.  If you are still having UI or any other weird problem, try logging out and then back in again.

Bonus Tip:  Press CTRL + Z to hide the UI altogether for taking screenshots, especially if you are looking to use the screenshot as a custom avatar or other piece of artwork where the UI would look a little ugly.

Filed Under: Tip of the Day, UI Tagged With: , , ,
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