It looks like I’ll be pulling a three-way main change, due to a game-breaking bug related to group questing.

Drop Quests Bugged

Our static group consists of my wife and I, as well as a friend of ours. We use a companion to fill the fourth slot.

Our friend plays a Bounty Hunter tank. My wife and I both play Sith Sorcerers, with her taking up healing, while I play DPS (currently Madness, which plays similarly to a WoW Mage/Lock hybrid).

Frequently, quests will involve collecting X number of item Y, dropped by mob type Z. For example early on Balmorra, there’s a quest to retrieve 5 Cyborg parts from (surprise, surprise!) Cyborg-type enemies. You go out, kill those enemies, and some of them drop the quest item. This is denoted by a yellow glowing beam emanating from the corpse. (Regular loot is similarly denoted by a cyan beam, good loot by a green one, and really, really good loot by a dark blue one which I’ve only seen a couple times).

Not every mob will drop the quest item, but in solo play, the drops are generally fairly frequent (a group of 3-4 generally producing 1-2 drops).

What we’re seeing, on most of these sorts of quests, is that one of us will finish the quest, and then the others will simply stop seeing the quest items drop, no matter how many are killed. It goes well beyond the case of simple bad luck - when groups of 3-4 usually drop 1-2, but you kill 15 groups with nothing, that’s a significant difference, and an indicator that something’s wrong.

We’ve sometimes been able to work around this by various combinations of:

• Members leaving the party
• Logging out/in
• Changing “phases/shards”
• Trying to “standardize” how many of a given quest item each player picks up, and only allowing any party member to finish the quest when all party members can see their final pickup.
• Trying to control who “taps” the mobs

…but these don’t always work either. Last week, for example, the problem started for my wife before any of us had finished the pickups. Both our BH tank and I had ~3 after two groups, while my wife saw no drops whatsoever. This persisted through all of us leaving the party, logging out and back in again (into a different phase/shard as well), and killing 15-20 groups of mobs with no quest drops for my wife whatsoever.

She got frustrated, and stopped playing as a result. She’s actively considering quitting the game entirely. She’s upset, and understandably so.

This is infuriating and disruptive. It means in the best case that it takes 2-3 times as long to finish these sorts of quests - or in the worst case not finishing them at all and getting frustrated enough to stop playing entirely.

We’re not entirely certain, but suspect that this is caused in part by both my wife and I playing the “same” class. We can’t prove there’s a connection yet

Group play in an MMO should be the standard. It should “just work”. This should be the highest priority. Group questing being broken is a huge problem that needs to be fixed sooner rather than later.

Main Change Roulette

Since the only real “problem” with our play that we can see is that both my wife and I are playing Sith Sorcerers, the only way for us to affect this and reclaim “fun” group play is for one of us to change mains. That, of course, would be me.

Since this is a Star Wars game, I want to play a lightsabre-wielding class. It’s just a matter of flavor for me. With us being unsure of how multiple party members of the same base class will work out (our current issue may be two of the same advanced class, but we can’t be sure), that leaves a single choice: Sith Warrior.

I’ve been soloing my Sith Warrior/Juggernaut, who’s now level 25, and about halfway through Nar Shaada. He’s fun to play, but is currently Tank-specced. We already have a Tank, and he’s a bit too far ahead. I can respec him to DPS without a problem, but I can’t pull him back to level 20, nor un-finish Balmorra. So while he’s the obvious choice, he won’t work out currently.

So, the weekend was spent getting another alt caught up, with the intention to be played in-group until everyone is caught up to my Juggernaut. With Inquisitor out, Bounty Hunter taken, and Warrior waiting in the wings, there’s only one base class left: Imperial Agent. Going Sniper with him. Being pure ranged DPS, he’s about as close to my Sorc as I can get as far as gameplay is concerned. I’m not really all that happy with the cover/gunplay mechanics, but this is just a stopgap to hold me over until we’re caught up to my Juggernaut, so I’ll deal with it.

I really, really like the design of his ship, though. The Sith ship is cool, but the Agent’s ship is very slick.

Making Money

With all of these characters approaching their mid-twenties, money becomes an issue. You see, at level 25, the ability to use a Speeder becomes available. The Collector’s Edition comes with a free level 25 Speeder, so you don’t have to shell out for that - but you do need to pay for training. 40,000 credits. Per character. Ouch.

This is especially difficult when it’s your first time through, and you’re trying to balance trade skills, gathering skills, equipment upgrades, and all the other “cool” stuff you’re finding. There are a lot of low-level money sinks in this game. Avoiding them seems to be the best option, even if it’s not the most “fun”.

There’s an easy way out of this, though. Assuming you’re mainly playing on weekends, with short spurts during the week, you probably won’t be leveling 20-25 in a couple days. More likely it’ll take a week or two. This gives you plenty of chances to complete the daily space missions.

Space missions become available once you receive your ship around level 15-16. The first quests you get are to do single missions, of which there are three available. Completing these three single quests opens up two dailies, which require you to complete all three a second time. If you do all of these when you first get your ship, you’ll very likely gain a level just from the quest experience, as well as a decent chunk of credits.

At level 20, two more space missions become available - again with single completion quests to start, followed by a daily that requires completion of both.

Just remember to invest in ship upgrades first. The level one upgrade set is pretty cheap, and will easily carry you through the first two tiers of missions. You buy these at the Fleet, from the vendor next to the Speeder salesman. You don’t strictly need these for the first tier, but the second tier will be very difficult without them.

Additionally, the upgrades allow completion of at least one “hidden” objective in the Cartel Listening Post mission, worth 2.5kxp and credits once daily. I won’t spoil it for you, but i’ll give a hint: Look for something targetable that doesn’t seem to be able to be destroyed. Then hit it with missiles every time you can.

Completing all three dailies (5 missions total), along with the bonus objectives in the missions themselves, will net you 8-12k credits a day, along with a good bit of XP. Averaging 10k/day, you’ll have the 40k for Speeder training in four days. Assuming you complete the dailies on work nights, you’ll have an extra 10k on top of that by the weekend. That should help to fund the other big moneysink - skill ups.