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We discuss patch 1.6.3 and the current news, including some insightful revelations about the Cartel Market from Damion Schubert.

1. Introduction

Hyp received the awesome helmet from Karagga at the end of our run through nightmare-mode Karagga’s Palace:

Meanwhile, on the Imperial side his levelling group toon (who we know fondly as “Baldy”) isn’t looking quite so dapper:

2. The Holofeed

• Patch 1.6.3 was deployed during a 5 hour maintenance on Tuesday. For the second week in a row, the maintenance was 3 hours later than usual (starting at 5am CST rather than 2am). This is certainly a better time for Australians, putting the maintenance much later in our evening rather than at prime time!
• The new items that were added to the Cartel Market have been documented by the ever-productive Dulfy. This includes the new speeder, the Czerka CR-17 Incendia, which costs 1800 Cartel Coins. Note that this adaptive speeder is per-character, and has greater knockoff protection than is granted by Speeder Piloting III.
• A fix was included for Taral V, that requires that the final boss (General Eldikar) be defeated, thus eliminating the exploit that allowed him to be skipped. Unfortunately, it seems that this fix has caused Taral V to be unfinishable under any circumstances, though hopefully that’ll be fixed in the patch being deployed on Friday morning.
• Alert players noticed that a new “PTS Character Copy” option has been added to our “My Account” page on SWTOR.com:
• We were subsequently told that while the option is functional, it will have no effect until the PTS is again active. The intention is for it to be working for when Game Update 1.7 is deployed onto the PTS.
• It was announced that anyone who pre-orders the expansion “Rise of the Hutt Cartel” will receive two in-game items and a title. Those who pre-ordered before January 7th will also get 5 days of early access.
• A short video (Rise of the Hutt Cartel: First Look Video) was released (also on YouTube), showing in-game footage from the expansion.
• It appears there was never any intention to provide scalable gear for low-level characters who have access to HK-51. The gear that he comes with was not locked to level 50 on the PTS, hence why it was able to be used by pre-50 characters; adding the level 50 restriction when Game Update 1.5 launched made it work the way it was intended. So hang onto the gear for when you reach level 50!
• Damion Schubert provides some clear and honest answers to player questions about the Cartel Market (post 1, post 2).
• Cory Kolek, a UI programmer working on SWTOR, announced a new feature coming in (it sounds like) Game Update 1.7, where the buffs and debuffs on all target frames will be scalable. Unfortunately, more sophisticated features (such as differentiating ones own buffs/debuffs from those of other players, and sharing key bindings between characters) are on the list but with no ETA.
• Dulfy’s High res gallery of SWTOR speeders and mounts and SWTOR Endgame Color Crystals guide are now up-to-date. Well worth checking out!

3. Force Feedback

We’d like to welcome our new writer Grav, whose published his debut article “I can stop whenever I want!” about Cartel Market addiction. More good stuff from him to come!

We discuss tweets from @masterbearjedi (Raz), @ForceChuckle, @tshapedvisor, @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @voyak, @Telenroidswtor, @revlo1983 (Rev. Nick Logan) and @vrodcruiser.

Chong (@EmpireDivider) provided a screenshot showing how to see the capture of a cube in Ancient Hypergate:

He also sent us the scoreboard from a warzone dominated (15/16) by Agents and Inquisitors:

Drew emailed in to ask whether we knew of any guilds that offer support for grouping on the long journey to level 50. Please email us if you know of a guild that might suit Drew, I’ll we’ll pass it on to him.

Eli Ejb asked us via Facebook about a issue that some players have been encountering when attempting to purchase Cartel Coins. We found some good information in the Cartel Coins FAQ, including the surprising revelation that there’s apparently a cap on how many Cartel Coins you can purchase in a given day.

In the words of its author (Terg Turgedson, @TheTurg), he provides a “fair and balanced take on SWTOR” in his blog post “The Real Agenda Behind Star Wars: The Old Republic”.

Also, a hearty greeting to the newest member of the SWTOR podcast community, the “Rule of Two Cast”. Best of luck to Virage and Kenzan in their podcasting adventure.

4. Outro

Next week’s Sarlacc Digest will be our second theorycrafting discussion, with Redna discussing defensive stats. We will be live-streaming the recording of the show, with details available on ootinicast.com/live.

Thanks to Redna (@RystoJ) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

You can email questions and comments about the show to ootinicast@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter via @OotiniCast. Check out our website, ootinicast.com, which has links to our presence on Google+ and Facebook. We are a proud member of the TOR Syndicate! You can subscribe to us on iTunes and Zune, and listen to us on Stitcher and Radio Paragon.