Posted by Momus | 4 Comments

Official Site Update: Kaon Under Siege and New Screenshots from 1.1!

Well, it appears Friday Updates aren’t as dead as they seemed!

First we have an update on the new Flashpoint, Kaon Under Siege, which includes some of the story about it in addition to the video from yesterday:

Kaon, a small world in the Tion Hegemony, is under siege. An outbreak of the Rakghoul plague has killed countless citizens while turning others into twisted monsters. In the midst of this chaos a small group of survivors have been able to fend off the Rakghouls, but their time is running out. Watch as a Republic assault team makes their way through Kaon, fighting waves of Rakghouls to find the survivors and learn the cause of the outbreak.

Additionally, we were able to secure some new screenshots of the flashpoint! See them below; the flashpoint definitely has a haunting feel, and I, for one, cannot wait to play it.

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Posted by Momus | 1 Comment

Stephen Reid Updates Community Weighs In On Hi-Resolution Textures

As outlined in his initial post, forum user Adelbert put together a lengthy post to ask the question: why do our characters look better in cutscenes than in normal gameplay? After drawing a lot of attention, Stephen Reid promised an answer, and today he delivered.

We will quote it in its entirety below, but to give the general gist: the decision was made to not have ultra-high settings because it adversely affected the gameplay even on high-end gaming machines, due to the texture and processor demands of loading characters. As anyone who has played MMOs knows, loading a large number of players into the client can cause issues and force good machines to run slowly. Due to that, they reduced the texture demand when out of conversations, but left the high-end textures for those conversations.

However, there is hope: he also promised that the team is looking into ways to allow us to use those high-end textures if we so choose. Read on for his full post!

Hey everyone, thanks for bearing with us as we investigated the concerns raised here.

After investigation, it seems that the confusion here is a combination of a UI issue that’s been resolved and a feature that’s working as intended, but the reason why it’s ‘working as intended’ needs explanation.

First, the UI issue. The preferences menu as it is seen on the Public Test Server for version 1.1 of the game is correct – there are only supposed to be two texture choices, ‘Low’ and ‘High’. This replaces the original three-choice preference of Low/Medium/High because in reality, there was never supposed to be a ‘Medium’ choice – that was a bug.

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Posted by Momus | 5 Comments

Your Guide To The Chase For The Magenta Crystal!

As some may be aware (and certainly the mention of it in my latest Blasters, Beggars & Credits post generated more than a few comments), the method to get the fabled Magenta Adegan Crystal has finally been revealed. A group of Redditors (and it’s unclear to whom exactly receives credit, so why not just give it to r/swtor as a whole) unraveled the mystery and shared it around the evening of the sixth – we feel confident that the secret is out!

Before starting the text guide, here’s a handy video (thanks Oawa!) of the run we did to get it done the other night. Before anyone gets uppity, we went as a group and did everything sequentially because it was easiest to do it that way, and not because Jaro from Jen’Jidai might be out there.

This sleuthing was based off of Georg Zoeller’s hint: “273.15.” Based on that, they figured out the exact steps to acquiring the crystal. So we figured we’d post a guide for those that want to embark on the journey. Be warned, some spoilers follow, and if you like figuring out puzzles, you may want to skip this one! For those that don’t know, 273.15 is the temperature (in Kelvins) at which water freezes.

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Posted by Momus | 8 Comments

Blasters, Beggars & Credits: Missions, Gathering and Crafting!

Some players do it for glory. Some do it for infamy. Some like to accumulate the most points, or explore the far reaches of the worlds they inhabit. This, however, is not a column for those people. This is a column for those people who, quietly or not, enjoy making money so that their digital avatar can sleep on large piles of cash.

Today is a day where we talk about relative value. I will actually use some basic math, so if that turns you off, let me get you hot and bothered in another way: some people do not think things through when pricing their sales on the GTN.

Some of that has to do with not understanding how things work. In the interest of promoting a healthy server economy, let me show you something us robber barons have known for some time.

Underworld Trading produces, without a doubt, the highest demand items on the GTN. The reason? Three professions (Cybertech, Armormech, and Synthweaving) pull from its materials, and all three use the Underworld Trading metals. So the metals are used by three of the six main professions, and it serves all the crafted armor and the crafted armoring and mods to everyone.

That’s a lot of people it’s going to need to go to. Unsurprisingly, the material demand is quite high. There are two metals in particular, the artifact-quality of the 300 and 340 level, that you should pay attention to – these are Promethium and Mandalorian Iron.

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Posted by Momus | 13 Comments

Companion Remote Desktop – Anathema To Your Social Life

If Star Wars: The Old Republic didn’t already interfere enough with your social life, there’s a new app on the Android Market that’s sure to slay whatever meager amount of personal relationships you might have left. It should also make your inner-crafter leap for joy at the prospect!

The Companion Remote Desktop, or CRD, has been released on the Android Market. With a whopping price tag of just $2.99, it’s sure to be one of the best purchases for you hardcore crafting-types. With this app, you can work, attend family gatherings, bowling nights, or go on dates all while not leaving your crew idle and doing nothing!

I can safely say that later stages of crafting make this app even more worthwhile, as hour-long missions tend to find you doing other things elsewhere.

Here’s a little video demonstration that hopefully shows how it works (ingenious, as Tharan Cedrax might say).

We also got to sit down with Hypercane Studios, the creators of this wonderful app, and they answered our queries.

Ask A Jedi: Can you tell us about how the idea for your app came about?

HyperCane Studios: Well, the idea was pretty obvious, I think that most everyone that plays SWTOR has thought of controlling their companions via mobile. We had the idea back before we got into the beta simply from reading about the companion system.

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