Tipping At SWTOR: Stats

At a glance, the stats in Star Wars: The Old Republic are simple. There are 4-7 primary stats (depending on how you view it) and they are fairly easy to understand. You view your character in the game and see those stats, and can mouse over them to see what effects they have. Simple enough.

Except that, for one, there are 4 to 7 stats, depending on how you view it. And then there are ... many more that are not listed at all in the character profile. This post is to talk about all of those, and why the primary stats are weird.

Tipping at SWTOR - Augments

Another tip for Star Wars: The Old Republic. As I find this, I'll keep posting. Because why not?

I've been leveling the crap out of Slicing lately, because it is made of pure money, something I'll post about in the future. With Slicing, you send your companions on missions to acquire one of two things: Augments or Lockboxes. It took me a while to figure out what Augments are any good for, so I share with you here.

Tipping at SWTOR - Crafting Materials

Quick post while I'm thinking of it.

I was going through various SWTOR websites to pass the time before Early Access, and the workday that prevents me from enjoying it like a true geek, when I came across a useful piece of information, which I will share with you now. It's even related to my recent binge of posts about crafting.

As mentioned so many times, you go forth into the world/galaxy, gather materials and go make stuff. Aside from the usual reasons for crafting - I Want To Make The Things and I Want To Level The Skills - there's the third and in some ways most important reason to craft: I Want My Inventory Space Back. You build up various materials in hopes of making things but eventually have to stop and either craft or store them in your bank, just so you have space for anything new.

Now, being able to send companions off to craft while questing is valuable for this, but not as valuable as this little tidbit:

You can craft items with materials that are in your bank.


Yes, that's right. You don't need to have it on you to use it. You can stow your hundreds of Desh and then, with no Desh on your person at all, craft with it. This, this is brilliant. I can see myself wishing for this in so many other games.

Making Crafting Fun: What Works (For Me)

The Subject At Hand


As I've mentioned before, crafting is something I find to be a significant draw in an MMO. If the crafting system is boring, the rest of the game will have to strain itself to keep my interest. Only WoW has been able to survive under the weight of having a bland crafting system, thanks in part to my guild and some undetermined something that WoW has that keeps me.

Today, I will define aspects of successful, interesting crafting systems. On its own, crafting can be fun in its own right, but these features, when added, can improve the overall experience greatly.

Crafting In The Old Republic

The Subject At Hand


I love crafting. It wasn't always so, but somewhere during my long career playing MMOs, I came to realize that crafting was something that was vital to my enjoyment of a game. I don't know what it is, but the mini-game within the game has always been able to make or break an MMO.

Today, I'll take a look at the crafting system in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and see how it draws me in.

Item Modifications in the Old Republic

The Subject At Hand

Recently, World of Warcraft instituted a system in which you could take the graphical skin of an existing item and overlay it on another, so that the second item would then look like the first. This answered the prayers of many people who retain the belief that some of the earliest skins for armor in WoW were the best. They can now get awesome new items, pay some cash and make those items look like something they obtained in 2005.


In Star Wars: the Old Republic, they are instituting a system that, at its most basic, might allow for this kind of thing. But it is so much more. This is the Item Modification system. While the end result, if you choose to view it as such, is to allow you to keep the same look as you level up, while still keeping armor up to date and competitive, the details are more complicated than that.

I'm here to examine some of those details.

Obligatory, Introductory, Definitory, Vague

I have been considering creating a blog for some time now, because I like to write and I don't do it enough. I have plenty of topics I could conceivably write about. For the moment, they will all go here.

The initial purpose of this depository of miscellany is to describe and, to a very limited degree, analyze various systems I find in the games I play, read about, explore, hear people talk about, etc. I am not a game designer. I play many games. My word is not law. It is hardly definitive, it is unlikely to be consistent from one moment to the next, and it is almost certainly uninformed in some capacity. I am not an expert, and I am capable of changing my opinions very quickly.

That said, I love games, of all kinds. I enjoy video games. I enjoy table-top RPGs. I have been know to play LARPs. I read tabletop RPG systems for amusement. I watch videos, read articles and listen to pointless conversations about games I don't intend to play. For games that I do play, I enjoy researching how best to play them, optimal character builds, shortcuts, etc. In short, I am a game nerd, with no particular focus.

So the point here is that this will be a repository of opinions and examinations of such things, because I like to do that. I will try to be concise. I will be clear when my statements are my opinion or guesses and whether they are fact - though you should not expect too much by way of sources. That sounds like work.

This won't be regular. It won't be Expert Level Commentary. It'll just be me writing stuff about things I'm interested, and hopefully I will be able to entertain and inform with it.

If I don't, well, that happens, too.