Things I wish I knew before (tips)
A few forum guys wrote this tip selection, and I thought it was quite useful:
SWTOR Knowledge
Economy and Gear
Orange items can be kept untill level 50 and still be viable by keeping the mods up to date.
You dont need modifying station to mod your gear!
Modable gear including weapons can be worn indefinitely. You can just keep swapping out current level modifications and the stats will always be level appropriate for you.
It gets super-expensive to pull item enhancements out of your gear (upwards of 3k to pull out a lvl 30 purple item).
You can just over-write it, but it destroys the current enhancement in the slot.
When you craft superior quality items (at least, implants and earpieces) they will gain an augment item modification slot.
This is probably a repost but USE the Galactic Trade Market to sell all the random blue/purple items you find can make a nice cash out of it.
Selling things on the auction house is always nice, but if you dont sell your item, you get your deposit back !
If you cancel the item (because you accidentially put it up for 1499 instead of 499 (damn "1" bug thing)), you will lose the deposit
The higher your buyout price is, the higher the deposit also
If you PvP before 20, enough to get at least a thousand commendations, get pvp gear from the fleet, its that good.
Mounts
Mount costs 48k credit t level 25 (skill 40k, mount 8k)
The mount vendor on your Fleet sells 2 level 25 mounts.
The mount vendors on Tatooine sell 6 different level 25 mounts that generally look nicer.
There's a speeder vendor at the first flightpath on tatooine. Make sure you buy a speeder before you start Tatooine, trust me... Tatooine is hot and big... and big
Ship
As soon as you get your ship, get all the upgrades you can and do all the missions asap, you should complete all of all of them, and the xp is good.
Space missions (quests) give fast experience, and are easy with inexpensive Tier 1 ship upgrades available at any spacedock. It's a good way to add variety to leveling when you get tired of missions on a given planet.
Companion
You can get your companions to go sell all your "Gray items" saves bag space while questing and instant creds
You can enable an option that allows you to compare gear not only to your own, but to that of your active companion's when you hover over the item.
If your companion comes with multiple stances like healing/dps, double-check a stance is actually active! My companions frequently lose their stance. Click the companion bar + plus sign to expand it and view stances. Unfortunately, companion abilities cannot be rearranged to put stances on the "short bar." The long bar clutters the screen so I close it again after checking the stance.
You can reassign your companions abilities to the left action bar which seems more natural. It makes it very easy to keep an eye on what is active or not.
Your companions can craft up to five items at a time, simply click the craft button over and over.
Companion that comes together with your first ship is actually a healer and can be summoned. (Your first dialog with him suggests his not suitable for combat.)
You can set some of your companion spell on an automatic use. You can only do that by using the extended companion bar and right clicking on the spell you want to "auto-use" (dos not work in the spellbook or the little companion bar)
Flashpoints and Parties
At the end a Flashpoint, you can exit the area by clicking the "Exit Area" button above the mini-map.
If everyone in your party picks the same speech option you actually get more social points.
Group bug: the tab that says: "Area Phases" and click "Reset Area Phase". Your problem will then be fixed and you can ask for a new invite. Winning.
When in a group, each person gets to make the choice how the conversation will progress. The game simply determines by random roll whose choice is used.
Your light side and dark side points are rewarded based on YOUR choice, not the winning choice. However the results of the encounter will progress along the path of the winning roll. This may grant you a title you would never willingly have chosen to get.
Was happy to find out you can create a comment in the LFG page.. This is an AMAZING feature IMO. Pick up a heroic area quest or a flashpoint quest.. hit the LFG and find out who is looking for that exact thing. No more spamming channels or finding people in a general LFG that are looking for entirely different groups, find exactly what you want and when you need.
Yes, this is info that more and more people seem to be figuring out. I'm seeing fewer and fewer people asking in general chat, and seeing more and more people running around flagged for LFG. Very handy feature! The first time I used it, it took me over an hour to get a group for a heroic...no biggie, I was busy questing anyway. The second and future times I used it, it took me less than 5 minutes.
Travel
Everyone has an ability in their "spellbook" general tab called EMERGENCY FLEET PASS.
the Emergency fleet pass, IS an emergency pass, you have an 18h cooldown on it
You do not have to return at your ship every time you leave a planet, your ship will follow you everywhere
You can bound yourself to unlimited locations, unlike WoW. You can't however, teleport yourself from planet to planet.
Jumping while moving results in you moving slower.
Alignment
You can also activate an option which allows you to see any light or dark gains during discussions.
Pick an option in a cut-scene which you hate, or was not quite what you expected your character to say? Press ESC to exit the convo, nothing is saved and you can start it again and pick another option without any consequences.
Misc
Character names can include 2 apostrophes, 1 dash and there is a 15 character limit
When your UI is frozen and you can't press any functions on it just press ctrl-u twice and it will fix it.
Being a completionist puts you 5 levels over content.
In SWTOR, you should not feel obligated to complete all the quests. Experience comes easily.
You can also change the music in the cantina by purchasing a jukebox token from the bartender and clicking on the jukebox.
You can turn on an option called "loot area" - this will loot all corpses in the near area when you loot the first one. So good.
Pressing ctrl + shift + f (I think) shows you your FPS in the lower left corner.
PVP
When playing Huttball, you can throw it. Really. Didn't take me long to figure out but it seems like no one knows.
Beware if you do Pvp a lot, you will be quickly capped with pvp marks (1000 maximum, at a rate of 50-60 per game)
There is no hot key for battleground ques, you need to click your faction icon on your mini-map on the bottom right side.
Combat
NPC enemies bumped from high heights will die, unlike wow
If you knock down an enemy from heights and it does not die, it tends to use pathing to get back to you instead of magically climbing the cliff - and also bring the nearby friends with it.
SWTOR Knowledge
Economy and Gear
Orange items can be kept untill level 50 and still be viable by keeping the mods up to date.
You dont need modifying station to mod your gear!
Modable gear including weapons can be worn indefinitely. You can just keep swapping out current level modifications and the stats will always be level appropriate for you.
It gets super-expensive to pull item enhancements out of your gear (upwards of 3k to pull out a lvl 30 purple item).
You can just over-write it, but it destroys the current enhancement in the slot.
When you craft superior quality items (at least, implants and earpieces) they will gain an augment item modification slot.
This is probably a repost but USE the Galactic Trade Market to sell all the random blue/purple items you find can make a nice cash out of it.
Selling things on the auction house is always nice, but if you dont sell your item, you get your deposit back !
If you cancel the item (because you accidentially put it up for 1499 instead of 499 (damn "1" bug thing)), you will lose the deposit
The higher your buyout price is, the higher the deposit also
If you PvP before 20, enough to get at least a thousand commendations, get pvp gear from the fleet, its that good.
Mounts
Mount costs 48k credit t level 25 (skill 40k, mount 8k)
The mount vendor on your Fleet sells 2 level 25 mounts.
The mount vendors on Tatooine sell 6 different level 25 mounts that generally look nicer.
There's a speeder vendor at the first flightpath on tatooine. Make sure you buy a speeder before you start Tatooine, trust me... Tatooine is hot and big... and big
Ship
As soon as you get your ship, get all the upgrades you can and do all the missions asap, you should complete all of all of them, and the xp is good.
Space missions (quests) give fast experience, and are easy with inexpensive Tier 1 ship upgrades available at any spacedock. It's a good way to add variety to leveling when you get tired of missions on a given planet.
Companion
You can get your companions to go sell all your "Gray items" saves bag space while questing and instant creds
You can enable an option that allows you to compare gear not only to your own, but to that of your active companion's when you hover over the item.
If your companion comes with multiple stances like healing/dps, double-check a stance is actually active! My companions frequently lose their stance. Click the companion bar + plus sign to expand it and view stances. Unfortunately, companion abilities cannot be rearranged to put stances on the "short bar." The long bar clutters the screen so I close it again after checking the stance.
You can reassign your companions abilities to the left action bar which seems more natural. It makes it very easy to keep an eye on what is active or not.
Your companions can craft up to five items at a time, simply click the craft button over and over.
Companion that comes together with your first ship is actually a healer and can be summoned. (Your first dialog with him suggests his not suitable for combat.)
You can set some of your companion spell on an automatic use. You can only do that by using the extended companion bar and right clicking on the spell you want to "auto-use" (dos not work in the spellbook or the little companion bar)
Flashpoints and Parties
At the end a Flashpoint, you can exit the area by clicking the "Exit Area" button above the mini-map.
If everyone in your party picks the same speech option you actually get more social points.
Group bug: the tab that says: "Area Phases" and click "Reset Area Phase". Your problem will then be fixed and you can ask for a new invite. Winning.
When in a group, each person gets to make the choice how the conversation will progress. The game simply determines by random roll whose choice is used.
Your light side and dark side points are rewarded based on YOUR choice, not the winning choice. However the results of the encounter will progress along the path of the winning roll. This may grant you a title you would never willingly have chosen to get.
Was happy to find out you can create a comment in the LFG page.. This is an AMAZING feature IMO. Pick up a heroic area quest or a flashpoint quest.. hit the LFG and find out who is looking for that exact thing. No more spamming channels or finding people in a general LFG that are looking for entirely different groups, find exactly what you want and when you need.
Yes, this is info that more and more people seem to be figuring out. I'm seeing fewer and fewer people asking in general chat, and seeing more and more people running around flagged for LFG. Very handy feature! The first time I used it, it took me over an hour to get a group for a heroic...no biggie, I was busy questing anyway. The second and future times I used it, it took me less than 5 minutes.
Travel
Everyone has an ability in their "spellbook" general tab called EMERGENCY FLEET PASS.
the Emergency fleet pass, IS an emergency pass, you have an 18h cooldown on it
You do not have to return at your ship every time you leave a planet, your ship will follow you everywhere
You can bound yourself to unlimited locations, unlike WoW. You can't however, teleport yourself from planet to planet.
Jumping while moving results in you moving slower.
Alignment
You can also activate an option which allows you to see any light or dark gains during discussions.
Pick an option in a cut-scene which you hate, or was not quite what you expected your character to say? Press ESC to exit the convo, nothing is saved and you can start it again and pick another option without any consequences.
Misc
Character names can include 2 apostrophes, 1 dash and there is a 15 character limit
When your UI is frozen and you can't press any functions on it just press ctrl-u twice and it will fix it.
Being a completionist puts you 5 levels over content.
In SWTOR, you should not feel obligated to complete all the quests. Experience comes easily.
You can also change the music in the cantina by purchasing a jukebox token from the bartender and clicking on the jukebox.
You can turn on an option called "loot area" - this will loot all corpses in the near area when you loot the first one. So good.
Pressing ctrl + shift + f (I think) shows you your FPS in the lower left corner.
PVP
When playing Huttball, you can throw it. Really. Didn't take me long to figure out but it seems like no one knows.
Beware if you do Pvp a lot, you will be quickly capped with pvp marks (1000 maximum, at a rate of 50-60 per game)
There is no hot key for battleground ques, you need to click your faction icon on your mini-map on the bottom right side.
Combat
NPC enemies bumped from high heights will die, unlike wow
If you knock down an enemy from heights and it does not die, it tends to use pathing to get back to you instead of magically climbing the cliff - and also bring the nearby friends with it.
