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We discuss the latest news, including some more tantalizing hints about what’s coming in the Summer of SWTOR, and a few tidbits from the last Community Cantina. Redna then rounds out his coverage of offensive stats with accuracy and alacrity.

1. Introduction

Redna recommends the achievement guides on SWTOR Spy, such as the SWTOR Tyrant of Dromund Kaas Achievement Guide.

2. Tip of the week

Congratulations to this week’s winners, Izaak and Thross!

Our guildmate Socordia provides the following elaboration on last week’s tip, having overthought the gifts. He believes that stackable companion gifts were the best feature that BioWare have added.

1. Not only are level 1 gifts cheaper than 2s from 2000-4000, they are cheaper from 4000-6000 (19/200 > 48/600)
2. Dulfy also lists the affection which will trigger a conversation
3. When to give gifts is a tradeoff:  A level one gift to a companion with 0 gives the same 96 affection that a level 5 gift to a 8100 companion, so if you are going to max out a companion with 6000 in gifts and 4000 in conversation, 0-6000 might be a third the price as 4000-10000 with gifts.  The downside is every 2000 affection adds 1% to crit chance.  The extreme case is if a max level slicing mission crit is worth 100,000 extra, then 2000 companion affectation raises the expected value of each slicing mission by 1,000 credits (.01*100000)  It depends on how much you send out your companions while leveling.
4. Don’t forget your ship droid’s affection since he should be running for profit missions non-stop as you level.
5. Love ’em early – courting gifts are the cheapest gifts so the sooner you get that trigger, the sooner you can give them the cheap stuff.
6. The gree rep trick works – give your best gift at the end of a level. I.e. if you have a blue 4, give it at 7999 not 6000.
7. At least the first legacy unlock is cost-effective – if you give all your companions over 100,000 credits worth of gifts combined, then a 10% or so discount is worth 10,000 credits.
8. People don’t understand the math, you tend to better off selling any purple, non-courting gifts you get even if you then buy cheaper.grades
9. I use to try to send all gifts to the alt that will need it: say I know BH will get gault who takes luxury.  But it was easier to just send all gifts to a single toon so I don’t have to think about who needs what on my leveling toon. I tend to have diplo on alts these days since I can make the conversation choice I want without worrying about LS/DS so that means a lot of gifts while leveling.
10. My guess is fewer level 5 companion gifts are being generated in ROTHC since the max level 51-55 UT, TH, Diplo, Inv don’t offer  companion gift missions the way previous max level gifts did.

3. Trivia question

This week’s question is in regards to that most famous opening sentence—so much a part of Star Wars that it precedes EVERY episode, and is so iconic that it is thoroughly associated with it: “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” Well, as it turns out, to borrow an idea from Hannibal Lecter and from Shakespeare, when you have someone put forward a fact so boldly without even being asked, perhaps that person is lying. Perhaps Star Wars is not so long ago, nor so far away. The question is: What movie did George Lucas work on but later drop, which was made later by another filmmaker—and what does that have to do with the famous Star Wars opening phrase?

Please send your answer to ootinicast@gmail.com by next Wednesday. Winners will be put in a draw to win a Taun Fawn code courtesy of BioWare and one of the latest full-size Cartel Packs (or if you’re on The Harbinger, the second of Moff Chong’s Hutt Skiffs!).

4. Holofeed

• Patch 2.2.0a was deployed during regular maintenance on Tuesday, with the only change being an exploit fix.
• There is a known issue with story mode Terror from Beyond’s last encounter, which will be fixed in Game Update 2.2.1.
• Coming in Game Update 2.2.1, which is still on track for next Tuesday (25 June):
  • paid character transfers
  • training dummies will scale to your level (again!)
  • crafted Arkanian and Underworld relics should not be BoP, will be changed to be BoE
  • fix for a bug (Tantrum at 33%) in story mode Terror from Beyond’s last encounter
• The first double XP weekend in the Summer of SWTOR is nearly here!
• Bruce Maclean, Senior Producer, has once again taken to the forums to provide some more detail (though not much!) about what else is coming up for us in the next few months:
  • It was confirmed that the new Flashpoints would not cost extra, and are entirely new.
  • The new live event coming in Game Update 2.3 is called Bounty Contract Week. Images for the event were given to participants in last week’s Community Cantina, summarised by Dulfy.
  • The graphical upgrades coming in Game Update 2.3 are a “game-wide colour vibrancy improvement”, though we were subsequently assured that the game’s art style will remain the same.
  • While he wasn’t saying much about what’s coming in the PvP-focussed Game Update 2.4, he gave us the following key phrases to ponder: “Oricon. Warzone Arenas. Dread Masters.” Oricon may refer to an adventure idea (or “hook”) described in Behind the Threat: The Sith (Part 5), a roleplaying supplement from Wizards of the Coast for their now defunct Star Wars RPG (the license was taken over by Fantasy Flight Games).
• Our guildmate Terg attended the Community Cantina last week, and provided us with a recording of the Q&A that was held.
  • PvP bolster issues (2 known) fixed in Game Update 2.2.1
  • No guild calendar coming anytime soon (though it’s in the plan, as part of their version of guild progression), described by Damion Schubert as a “GUI nightmare”, attempting to reproduce the functionality of Microsoft Outlook in the game.
  • Neutral alignment rewards: not imminent, but coming.
  • Damion: Cross-server queuing is really (really!) hard (Jeff: we’re not going to do that). Different solutions to solve the same problem in Game Update 2.4 (primarily oriented to hardcore PvPers). Servers hold four times the number players as WoW realms. Ranked queue times are on average shorter at all times of day compared to non-ranked queue times.
  • Open world PvP: hard to do rewards that aren’t exploitable. Instead more achievements and bragging rights. Jeff: Never going to be PvP primary, good balanced PvP, some open world stuff (rewards, accolades, achievements). Most PvP will be in warzones.
  • Warhero gear change with 2.0: had to choose between working in open world PvP and working in warzones, so they chose warzones.
  • No plans for a “legendary” mission series to get a rare weapon, but they liked the idea and are going to think about doing it.
  • Asked about free players ninjaing loot in Flashpoints. Damion: they want to ensure free players can’t disrupt preferred/subscribers. They haven’t heard much, but if it’s happening to players, they encourage them to report it.
  • Increase guild cap beyond 500 characters. Damion: limit based on number of players that can co-exist in a guild chat channel (more than that causes server performance issues).
• Terg also had the opportunity to put some questions directly to Damion Schubert and Eric Musco:
  • Account-wide legacy: would be nice, but technical difficulties make it really hard.
  • Healer Specific UI improvements: Wall of Crazy, like to incorporate
  • Guild list whisper: Wall of Crazy, like to incorporate
  • Priority mission terminals to fleet: Wall of Crazy, like to incorporate (not sure why this would be wall of crazy so he may have just been using that to mean not ruled out, but not coming soon)
  • Cross-faction chat channels: Only for guild chat, No ETA (this was the closest to an affirmative. He stressed no ETA, but said you can credit him saying this is something coming)
• Terg also provided the following:

• The Friends of SWTOR program is being temporarily suspended, coming back in August in a new form.
• Player housing in any form isn’t coming soon.
• Cory Butler has confirmed that the Primordial Blaster from the new Archon’s Contraband Pack, which is currently useable in the main hand only, will be changed in Game Update 2.2.1 to be dual-wieldable.

5. Community

If you are looking for some serious Star Wars roleplaying, we once again recommend Clan Epsis, a Mandalorian bounty hunter guild on the Jung Ma server (RP-PvP, US east coast).

For those interested in joining Ootini Fight Club for some endgame PvP, please contact Chong by email (empiredivider@gmail.com).

6. Force Feedback

We discuss tweets from @madmar_sith (be sure to follow him back to join the #swtorfamily!), @Ben_b55, @joseph_foran, @ForceChuckle, @Justin_the_Nerd, @HawtRepublic (Njessi), @DarthPops (Marshall Carr Jr.), @Jayconnell, @EmpireDivider (Moff Chong), @bytorsnowdog (Snowy), @DaynarofSWTOR (Daynar), @GregCarter78, @rbleamon (Ray Leamon), @Geldarion (Drew of Corellian Run Radio), @voyak and @Lawilc0 (Laurie M), an email from Quaza Impsbane, and a comment from Hagu.

Here’s Chong’s Cathar, who snipes like a boss:

Snowy provided the following for our amusement:

Snowy’s tattoo, a glorious mixture of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings:

7. Sarlacc Digest

This week, Redna continues his discussion on offensive stats, covering accuracy and alacrity.

8. Outro

Thanks to Redna (@R3DN4) and Hyp (@Hypknotoad) for joining us this week.

Information about our guilds on The Harbinger, Ootini Knights (Republic) and Ootini Rage (Empire), can be found here.

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.