Archives

Ways to know you’re overdoing it:

Sep15

When your dream is completely about the new operation and what secrets it could have šŸ˜

I went to bed a little bit earlier than usual due to reasons, but ended up waking up for a bit anyway (thirsty). Regardless, the craziness of my head did make me think a lot about it and part of me wondered if there was more to it.

I mean, what if there’s a buff when you finish HM 16-man or something that if you go back to the cave with it, something happens?

Just makes me think there may be more to the instance itself. Hopefully when it does come over though (and thus, people have all their gear), we can try and explore the instance some more itself for anything.

Continuing testing

Sep15

So, continuing with the cave theories, I found a nice person (Xivioke) to let me check out their story mode instance! 8-man story mode yields nothing, but going to explore a bit before checking out 16-man story mode.

Will also stream for a bit :3 Stream closed now :3 But recording up as per usual~

Edit: 16-man Story mode also has no message. It looks to be 16-man HM only. Very interesting.

An interesting cave

Sep14

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 šŸ˜› 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.

————————————–

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 šŸ™

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.

Story vs. Hard/Nightmare

Sep14

If there is one thing that has come up a lot, it is people skipping story mode to go right into HM or Nightmare (or even a whole new tier) to get geared. I just…hate when people do that. I also dislike when I am personally dragged into a harder difficulty if I have not finished a lower difficulty of something. Getting dragged into HM False Emperor before I finished normal FE and Battle of Ilum was frustrating and it took us hours to find people to do the normal versions with us (in the end, we actually did most of Battle of Ilum with a companion before another friend got on and helped us out).

I don’t understand why people skip around. Sure, it may not be any of my business, but it is annoying. I don’t care if you can be carried through a harder difficulty and get geared faster. What about the differences? The chances? Do you not want to experience it?

I’ve already mentioned how I wouldn’t even do HM or NM if it wasn’t for codexes or some vanity stuff. However, some completely new experiences would make me curious–the main difference is I wouldn’t feel like I HAVE to do it or like I’m being forced to.

And honestly, I feel it is better to learn the original fights and then adjust to new mechanics rather than going in and killing yourself trying to learn the fight with a bit more difficulty added to it. There’s a reason most people start learning to ride a bike with training wheels. It doesn’t help that most people aren’t even running in because they need to hurry and gear for some reason. It is because they feel they’re too good for story mode and that makes me sad. And feel very bad for story mode. šŸ™

(and really, the fact that I prefer to go in order should surprise nobody if you look at how many lists and things I make. Planet order, quest order, etc. Having to backtrack annoys me quite a bit and I’d rather pause and wait and get something done in the order it should be than skip ahead unless I’ve done it before.)

The Endgame Problem

Sep12

Due to lots of discussion with my boyfriend about various things today–the issue came up with how the endgame system essentially copied WoW and has the whole “YOU NEED TO DO ALL THIS TO GET THIS GEAR TO MAKE IT SO YOU ARE ABLE TO DO THE FIRST PART OF THIS STUFF” when it is all level 50 content.

It is level 50 content.

And you need to go over the river, through the woods, and down a mountain to even hit the first part of it. And honestly? He’s right–that’s stupid. We hit level 50, why do we have to do all this repetitive stupidity to actually be able to do the content we should be “looking forward” to?

While Iā€™m actually more or less completely geared out until 1.4 officially hits, I will say it is kind of annoying. I wasnā€™t able to play WoW long (it got boring for me fast) so I canā€™t comment on their End-game personally, but it seems silly that after you hit level 50, you have to go on some long silly journey to actually do something new at level 50.

HM Flashpoints are barely any different. I would say the biggest change between normal and hard (and this is probably why it has its own tier in Group Finder) is in Lost Island where many mechanics are excluded completely (Droid has no fire come up from the floor, Dr. Lorickā€™s second phase doesnā€™t even exist, etc.). HM and NM Operations do have some mechanic differences (though, some you can more or less skipā€”like Fabricatorā€™s), but I think other than EC, none are really too big of a deal (unless you didnā€™t blow up the Lightning balls in SM Soa).

I donā€™t understand why end-game content canā€™t be special full group things without it being ā€œYOU NEED ALL THIS GEAR OMG.ā€

It wouldnā€™t even be such a big deal if only HM and NM did that and those were solely just for a challenge. Kind of like how Ranked was supposed to be. Just a challenge for those who wanted it but they had to go and make all this special ranked requirement gear which really ruins it for me (Iā€™m not good enough for Ranked. Nobody wants me unless they are desperate and Iā€™m not skilled enough to ever get a 2200 rating for that speeder).

I could care less about the harder difficulties in anything. Not because Iā€™m lazy or am looking for something easy, but because I hate repetition. If it wasnā€™t for the codexes and certain speeders and pets, I wouldnā€™t bother with different difficulties because gear isnā€™t my priority. I already have the outfit I plan to wear forever. But yet, I have to bother with gear because I have to. Because Iā€™d be unable to do the content otherwiseā€”not because it is an upgrade and would just help me kill things faster.

Itā€™s level 50 content FOR level 50ā€™s, yes? And yet, thereā€™s so much farming and annoyances we have to do. And before people are all ā€œbut then weā€™d run out of content too fast!!!ā€ Iā€™m sure if they werenā€™t busy making different difficulties of the same stupid content and just made level 50 content without all the ā€œgearing upā€ and mountains you need to climb to do so, we could get plenty of normal, story-driven, level 50 content and maybe thereā€™d be stuff like Heroic 8ā€™s which would be all raid-y and operationish. And then that gap wouldnā€™t be there in the first place. Not to mention then there wouldn’t even need to be different gear for PVP either and expertise could be kicked to the curb already.

Terror from Beyond

Sep11

Been watching some videos. It does look really interesting. Have seen up to Kephess in SM and just the first boss in HM. Kephess is SUPER creepy. X___x Looking forward to seeing someone get the final boss down.

Also, Puzzle Boss = amazing.

There is at least one lore object in there so yay for new codexes. Will have to update my list–but need to get names of all the codexes first.

(Also, a new codex about Resolve was adding too in Game Rules…shall have to see how t get that one)

Test server + 1.4 Patch Notes are up!

Sep10

For the patch notes šŸ™‚ Currently patching on my computer and downloading on my laptop as we speak. Only disappointment is it looks like no character transfers…which is really depressing T__T (Also, looks like no new pets officially mentioned…however, that doesn’t mean much. I kind of hope not though as we have enough mysteries on our hands with the Wonderous/Wondrous Egg/Orochick and who knows what with the Lobelode)

Regardless, some highlights and things I found interesting from the patch notes:
-Obviously Terror from Beyond is out. The new gear is “Dread Guard” (it sounds silly)

-The ground targeting reticule is no longer cleared when a channeled ability completes channeling. (Very nice. This was always a bit frustrating/confusing in PVP)

-Players no longer receive the error message “You cannot cast while moving” when moving, stopping, and then immediately using a ground-targeted ability. (Yay!)

Continue reading →

A possible Terror from Beyond drop?

Sep9

Okay, so I was browsing around and had this pointed out to me:


(Screenshot credit to scifigamers)

That definitely looks like a Black-Cyan crystal to me. Since there are two color options available through EC (Black-Orange and Black-Purple), I wonder (if the Black-Cyan is true of course) if there will be another crystal and if so, what?

The crystals without a black core version are, besides the previously mentioned Cyan, Magenta and White. They are the only ones left without a black version. Heck, the White isn’t even out at all. Maybe, for all we know, it could be Black-Cyan and White. However, I believe White was mentioned to be gotten in a similar way as Magenta and still a far way off, so I’d probably put a Black-Magenta over Black-White/Normal White. It’d be neat though, wouldn’t it?

Besides that, the pink and gold armor that sentinel is wearing… I wish I knew what it was šŸ™ If you recognize it, let me know please?

Preparing for new gear

Sep5

So, as we know, HM Terror from Beyond will have new gear. Apparently, according to this interview, the gear will be split between Hard Mode Terror from Beyond and Nightmare EC. I’m a bit nervous honestly. HM EC is evil enough so I’m scared about Nightmare (not that I can think of anytime I’ll ever end up getting to do it…) and I mean, HM Terror from Beyond is supposed to be pretty hard too so that scares me a bit as well. It’ll be interesting to see anyway–and at least the mount Kephess drops will be able to be gotten more then so yay.

Also looks like the January event is still going as expected.. I really need to work on my PVP then šŸ™ but PVP just makes me so sad.

Lockouts are evil

Sep4

I really hate lockouts. I get it that the point is so people can’t run out of content so easily/get everyone geared super fast/etc.

But I think it’d be nice. Maybe loot just can’t drop for that person or something or maybe it’s restricted for once a day.

I just wish I could help as many people as I can without being restricted all the time. Makes me sad. (plus 7-14 times a week > 1-2 times a week for a drop forever)