So, last night as I watched some friends do 8-Man Terror from Beyond HM, they stumbled upon a cave while looking out for chests. In the cave was absolutely nothing, however, I mentioned it was “too nice looking to not do anything”. It turns out my suspicions may have been correct.

I received an e-mail this evening from a fairly well-known guild which caught me by surprise letting me know about the message they saw and how they hadn’t been able to figure it out, but hoped I’d be able to help.

And considering I love mysteries, I have hopped on that train immediately. First thing I did was bug one of my friends to see if I could look around his instance. After some begging and a promise I wouldn’t take as long as EC, he said yes 😛 So I began my journey and for those who can’t watch or due to the fact that the text sucks (because procaster isn’t the best quality and X-Split hates me…), well, I shall tell you anyway!

I went ahead and explored TfB a bit and also grabbed the codex entry because I kind of forgot about the speeder >> Umm…anyway… so I got to the cave and nothing. So, I asked him to change it to 16-man HM and exited. Headed back (and remembered the speeder this time) and the message I was told about successfully pops up: “You feel a strange and chilling presence.”

This will appear every single time you exit and enter the cave on 16-man HM. The question now is if it also appears on Story Mode…and if so, both 8-man and 16-man or just one? Due to it not showing on 8-man HM, I’m leaning towards 16-man only or just 16-man HM, but still best to test to see.

They did try bringing an ice scrabbler jerky buff into the cave and nothing happened. Some ideas I’ve thought up is bringing the Water Vaporator Buff in there and/or an Orobird egg in there and see what may happen, if anything.

My best ideas over to what it could possibly be is either a pet (afterall, there seem to be a lot upcoming) or some kind of lightsaber crystal. I kind of have mixed feelings on the latter (White is still a ways off last I heard and a black-core saber has never been gotten like this. Sure, a new color is possible, but I’m really up in the air with this), but it’s still something to keep in mind.

What do you think it could be? Considering the 8 hour maintenance next Tuesday, I’m expecting 1.4 soon so hopefully more research can go into it then. …too bad I don’t think I’ll get to do 16-man HM anytime soon (if ever), but I can hopefully just borrow some instances again. In the meantime, I’m going to research into some of the possible upcoming pets (and maybe try and get a hold of an Orobird Egg and/or the Water buff and see if I can borrow the instance again) plus some items also mentioned in the data dump (and stalk databases for possible images and more organized information) and will edit this with anything I find out.

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Edit: Random speculation:
To be honest, the first thing I think of when I heard “strange and chilling presence” is a ghost. Part of me wonders if it could be like a Force Ghost that you either need to battle for something and/or could be a bonus boss for extra gear that is only in 16-man HM.

Another idea is maybe a pet itself could trigger it. Unfortunately, I didn’t think of switching around pets while I was there 🙁

The Lylek would usually go deep into caves. Considering what it says about it, that sure would be a chilling presence.

Flutterplume’s eat rotting flesh. Chilling indeed.

There is a giant Lobel miniboss inbetween the first and second bosses in the instance and Lobel’s like marshy lands. Maybe something with him?

The supposed Gree Larvae that was listed in the data dump has a high possibility–afterall, this Operation has a lot to do with the Gree.

Shall continue to update as I think of more stuff and/or try out things~

Edit 2: For those wondering, they did try all going in the cave at once so everyone being in may mean nothing. (I say “may” as maybe everyone needs something, but I don’t know if they’d actually go that far)

Having the Moisture/Water Buff (Frozen and not frozen) from the Vaporators does nothing. Going in with an Orobird Egg and both the Egg and Buff still needs to be tried.

Fire at the beginning of the Operation does nothing besides kill you pretty fast.

They tried some vanity pets–going to get full details on this :3

TfB is practically made inside a bunch of exhaustion zones making outside exploration hard. There is, of course, a chance it may involve an exhaustion zone in some way (Datacron on Ilum, Orobird Egg with Water Buff), but that will cost a lot of repairs to check in detail. There are quite a few enemies pretty much in exhaustion zone territory too which is a bit suspicious.