Posted by Lethality in Blue Milk & Cereal | 19 Comments
Blue Milk & Cereal: Do You Stop For Datacrons?
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I think we’ve done a BM&C about datacrons once or twice, but I thought I’d take a slightly different spin on it this morning!
As you know, datacrons are placed all around the game world for players to not only find, but figure out how to acquire. Sometimes they’re in plain sight, but the act of getting to them is anything but plain. These evil awesome little mini-goals reward you with permanent stat boosts and codex entries.
Most of the players I’ve run into seem to be of the mindset that while, yes, they want to get all the datacrons, the treat it more like something on their list of chores to do. A common statement heard is “I usually wait until I out level a planet by a few levels, check out a video guide and go back to snap them up.”
Huh? Doesn’t that seem counterproductive to the reason for their existence – to encourage and reward exploration? When I ask about that, they usually say “it takes too long to stop what I am doing to go grab them.” While I may not agree with it, I do understand that statement. Questing and leveling is the main game, the datacrons are an optional sideshow.
However in the name of stopping to smell the roses, I think most players would end up appreciating not “rushing” things, take the time out to grab the datacrons, kill some beasts for the codex entries that you otherwise might skip, and so on. It makes your gameplay experience that much more whole when you don’t focus on the end, but rather what’s right in front of you.
Anyway, I’m just curious – how do you guys go about your datacron hunting? Do you stop immediately when you see one and work on getting it? Do you refer to guides, or do it the “right” way? Have you gotten them all yet?
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I went through a week-long fascination with datacron collection just after the new year. After spending way too long on acquiring the white datacron on Nar Shaddaa, I decided to put off the rest until I’m at level cap.
If I see one that is easy to get i’ll go after it but overall I don’t have any motivation to get them all at the moment. I am more focused on leveling my 3 alts then min/maxing one character.
I do want to collect them all, the little gifts of goodness that they are, so if I see one I’ll spend the time and try to get it. I even abstain from guides if I can help it. That said, if my exploration turns up nothing or I just can’t find the route (Taris, I’m looking at you); then I will move on.
After all there other goals I want to reach in a timely fashion, like finishing Act I and picking my Legacy name.
The datacrons aren’t going anywhere, so I can pick them up later.
If I see a Datacron, I check a list to see what stat it affects. If it’s something important, I try to get it. Otherwise I’m waiting until the level cap.
If I see one, I try to get it. If I’m solo, I’ll be pretty persistent about it. If I’m in my usual duo, I’m more likely to let it go and get on with questing. I will explore to look for them, but won’t worry about if if I’ve filled out the map and not found them all. I only look up how to get them if I’ve been trying and can’t figure it out.
*Harvest ALL the datacrons!*
My main gathered about 90% as he was leveling, then finished off all but 2 before hitting 50. My dps-alt has so far gathered 100%, but then again, I know where they are now :)
I tend to do a mixture of approaches. I generally try to sit back and do some exploration of a world before I even get into starting the quests.. Just to get a feel for the atmosphere of the planet.
Then as I go, if I notice a datacron as I quest, depending on my mood I’ll either see how possible it is to grab it then, or make a note of it for later.
Sometimes, I might take a break from questing, just to go on a datacron hunt and explore some more. Othertimes, I end up finishing off class-quests and world-quests without finding all of the datacrons on a world and I’ll see if I can do it then. Othertimes I’ll try coming back another time.
Heh, I did try the 40 minute balloon ride on Tattooine once, but it glitched and dumped me in the middle of the Dune Sea after half an hour.. and I’ve never managed to get in the appropriate mood to make the attempt again.
I work to get a datacron when I come across it but I’m not insane about it. If it frustrates me too much, I come back for it later. But those that I -can- get, I do; as soon as I can.
On my way back around to pick them up now, doing a few each day in any downtime I have. Currently at 50/67.
I didn’t pick up any during the levelling process, indeed, I didn’t even see any.
My guild (Old Republic Dads) did a datacron crawl New Years day that visitied and collected all the datacrons up to Alderaan. It was an epic 12+ hour adventure with at one point about 100 of us as a group all working to get them.
THE most fun I’ve ever had in an MMO.
I kind of do all of the above poll choices (with the exception of the last one). I try to get them when I see them and can figure them out. Sometimes if I know exactly where they are, I’ll wait till I’m done with the planet because some of them are just out of the way. And now, at level 50, I’m starting to go back to the ones I missed and I’m hunting them down when I get time.
I love trying to find and obtain datacrons, but after glitching out on the hot air balloon, I lost the flavour for it. I will pick up again at cap level on the fastest mount, though.
After my starter planet (Korriban) I don’t think I stumbled across any datacrons by luck. Maybe 1 or 2 it that many. I was engrossed with the story, however, and pushed forward in pursuit of that instead of stopping to hunt datacrons or codexes or to run warzones.
Now at 50 I’m working my way through the planets collecting them. I’m using guides and videos, but that’s simply because there is no way I’d spend the time to explore every nook and cranny, jump on everything around and look for other things to jump to and so on to find these insanely well hidden items. Last night I worked through Nar Shadaa (Empire side) and I think there was only one datacron that could possibly be noticed while exploring if you happened to look up – way, way up – in the right area.
Another factor is that it’s so much easier running them at higher levels since the mobs in the area become a non-issue. Either they totally ignore me or I can take them out with ease, but at the appropriate level if I’d tried this and fallen as often as I did on a few areas last night the combination of fall damage and multiple mob aggro would have made this extra painful.
While questing if I saw one I would try to get it, but not spend more than 10-15 minutes trying before moving on. I’m now 50 and going after them all planet by planet with guides. I have 3/4s currently.
I really focused on getting all the datacrons and enjoyed at first. But then they were so hard to obtain so after spending a few hours on tatooine I quit looking.
I believe they made the datacrons too hard to find. To many just looking at guides now instead.
I avoid looking up guides for them, except the shards if I want to make a relic. If I spot one as I’m running around I’ll spend a bit of time trying to work it out, but otherwise just move on. I’ll spend a bit more if I find a Presence datacron, since that stat is hard to find on gear.
The problem is that many of them are hidden behind terrible jumping puzzles, and jumping puzzles in MMOs are never anything but fiddly and frustrating. The challenge should be in figuring out how to get somewhere, not repeating the steps sixty times because the engine is unsure where the edge of a crate is and spazzes out. After I learned about some of the more arcane requirements (like you need to get datacron X before datacron Y) I have decided to save myself the pain and generally skip them.
Add to this that mobs tend to be around, and I’ll generally make sure to be quite overlevelled for the area if I do decide to go hunting. They can be frustrating enough without having to deal with random battles too.
I love getting them, feels like a genuine reward for trying something differant or getting to an area you wouldnt normally go to. In pre-cata WoW i was the guy that was forever trying to get to hard to reach places – the troll village in darkshore (that one was awesome btw) Old Ironforge, the Kara Crypts and many many failed attempts to get into Hyjal via winterspring.
In ToR it feels kinda like this, but you get a nice reward at the end of it. Sure I have to look up videos now and then, but its still fun. Climbing around a crashed spaceship on hoth, running around rafters and pipes after getting blasted up there on Taris…its all good to me.
I really like figuring out how to get to a datacron when I find one. On my main I deliberately decided tonot actively look for them, though, except the ones I had seen guides of (which were the 11 on Korriban, Hutta & Dromund Kaas). After that, I decided to only go for the ones I happened to run into, which weren’t that many. When I hit 50, I decided to look op the coordinates of the datacrons, but try to figure out the rest myself (where to start, which route, where to get items necessary to get to locked/frozen/etc. datacrons. Main reason I’m doing them is for the lore I get from them. After that, I’m gonna try and find all the missing entries on each planet.
I loathe datacrons and resent that I am gimped because I do not have the patience and/or twitch skills to get them past Hutta/Korriban. Every week or two I try to get one and quickly give up in disgust. Today was the click on two consoles within 3 seconds in the tunnel in Quesh. I hope to someday be wise enough to no longer try.