System Requirements

Background Information

The Forums

Downloading and Installing the Game

Server Selection

The Factions

Classes

Species

Gender. Character Creation and Naming

Cutscenes and Conversations

Movement

Outpost Speeders

Quick Travel

Quests

The Codex

Basic Combat

Special Abilities and Ability Types

Enemy and Damage Types

Loot

Armor Values and Stats

Leveling up and Class Trainers

Armor Slots, Cosmetic Options, and Comparative Tooltips

Credits, Commendations, Vendors, and Repairs

Death and Dying

Alignment Points

Chat

Galactic Starfighter

Guilds

Heroic Missions and Instanced Areas

Companion Basics

Modifiable Gear

Finishing Your First Planet

The Fleet

Companion Affection, Gifts, and Conversations

Advanced Classes

Skill Trees and Skill Points

Crew Skills and Crafting

The Galactic Trade Network

The Cartel Market

Roleplaying

PvP

Flashpoints and Groupfinder

Group Etiquette and Roles

The Legacy System

Your Ship

Space Missions

Speeders

Bonus Series, World Bosses, and Few Other Things about Leveling

After the Class Story

Dailies

Hard Mode Flashpoints, Operations, and Ranked Warzones

What Now?

Appendices

These are copy-pasted from the official FAQs, and represent the minimum computer hardware required to run the game. If you’re not sure if your system meets these requirements, see if you can get a more computer-savvy friend to help you out.

Processor:

• AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4000+ or better
  
• Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz or better
  

Operating System:

• Windows XP Service Pack 3 or later
  [/List]
   
  RAM:
   
  
  • Windows XP: 1.5GB RAM
    
  • Windows Vista and Windows 7: 2GB RAM
    

   

  Note: PCs using a built-in graphical chipset are recommended to have 2GB of RAM.

   

  Star Wars: The Old Republic requires a video card that has a minimum of 256MB of on-board RAM as well as support for Shader 3.0 or better. Examples include:

   

  • ATI X1800 or better
    
  • nVidia 7800 or better
    
  • Intel 4100 Integrated Graphics or better
    

   

  DVD-ROM drive – 8x speed or better (required for installation from physical editions only)

  Internet connection required to play.

   

  Unfortunately, if you don’t meet these standards, your only way to play is to upgrade your computer

Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) is an MMO. This stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Game. In practicality, this means that this is a game that can have hundreds or thousands of players online at the same time, all theoretically able to interact with each other. It is also a roleplaying game (RPG), which means that the player controls an individual character that is part of an imaginary world. Some other popular MMO-RPGs include World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy XIV, and The Secret World.

The game is produced by BioWare, a gaming company owned by Electronic Arts (EA).

SWTOR is set in the Star Wars universe. It takes place approximately 3,000 years before Star Wars: Episode IV- A New Hope. Apart from the movies, the heaviest inspiration comes from a pair of RPGs released in the early 2000s, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR), and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II- The Sith Lords (KOTOR2), both of which take place about 300 years before this game. Again, it’s not required for you to play these games to enjoy SWTOR, but it certainly enhances your game experience. There are many subtle in-game references to them, and even a couple of quests that are directly based off the aftermath of these two games.

KOTOR is available for Xbox (and Xbox 360 via backwards compatibility), Windows, Mac OS X, iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. KOTOR2 is only for Xbox/Xbox 360 and Windows. You can buy them or through Steam. If you don’t want to play them (and you should, they’re great games, though a bit out of date, and not very hard), then here’s a link to plot summaries for KOTOR and KOTOR2.

Now for the lore of this game itself. Return explains how the Sith Empire came out of hiding, and how this war started in the first place.

If you are reading this, then congratulations, you’ve already discovered the SWTOR official forums! These are hosted by the official game site and moderated by a few community representatives. There are many sub-forums:

• Developer Tracker shows all posts made by developers and forum mods
  
• New Player Help is where you are now. It features advice for new players, and is a great place to ask for help if you’re not sure about something basic. Its sub-forum is Introductions, which doesn’t get used a whole lot, but is a place for you to introduce yourself to the community.
  
• PVP is a place to discuss all player-versus-player content.
  
• Crew Skills is the place to discuss crafting and gathering, searchable by skill (though I’m not sure how well the search function works)
  
• Story and Lore is the place to discuss things that happen in the game’s story, whether in class-specific storylines, flashpoints, or the general game itself. The Spoilers sub-forum is for things that will likely contain a large number of or very major spoilers.
  
• Star Wars Discussion is for talking about Star Wars lore that isn’t directly related to the game
  
• Server Forums has a sub-forum for each server to discuss server-specific events, pvp high scores, etc. There’s also a sub-sub-forum that is a place for guilds to recruit.
  
• Galactic Starfighter is a place to discuss the new galactic starfighter minigame/expansion
  
• Customer Service is for reporting problems with your game experience, such as things not loading, missing items, etc. Note that customer support is also available by phone (not sure of hours) and, if you’re a subscriber, in-game.
  
• Classes has sub-forums for each class, with a sub-sub-forum for each advanced class. Things that cover multiple classes can go into the general “Classes” area. There’s also an area for discussing roles: tanks, healers, and damage.
  
• Flashpoint, Operations, and Heroic Missions contains discussion about group content.
  
• Community is for general community stuff, often overlapping with general. The real shine of the community section comes from its four sub-forums: Check-ins, to find players who are like-minded or share geographical similarity; Fan Fiction, to share stories, poetry, etc. based on the game; Fan Art, for art and videos inspired by the game; and Roleplaying (with sub-sub-forum Post-By-Post for text-based roleplaying) for roleplay discussion.
  
• General Discussion is for anything game-related that doesn’t fit anywhere else. Sub-forums are the Suggestion Box (for things to add to the game or change), Cartel Market Suggestions (as above, but specific to the Cartel Market Cash Shop), Bug Reports, and Off Topic (for non-game related things like other video games, movies/tv shows, real life events, etc.)
  
• Public Test Server is for things that happen on the game’s live test server.
  
• Fan Site Forum is for promoting fan sites
  

Enjoy the forums, but watch out for trolls! (They’re people who try to upset other posters by being overly negative or posting inflammatory or ridiculous things)

By now, you’re probably getting tired of listening to me yack and want to actually start playing the game. To start with, you’ll have to create an account, which will call for an e-mail address (don’t use a disposable one, because you’ll get important stuff there later), username (which is also your forum name, so make sure it’s something you don’t mind being called by), password, and security questions. You have three options when it comes to playing:

• Subscribing- the most expensive option, but also the simplest. No restrictions, no extra fees to access certain parts of the game (though you can always utilize the cash shop for extra shiny stuff). As part of your subscription, you also get 500 cash shop coins per month, as well as getting a lot of things cheaper and easier. They’re also the only ones who can post on the forums.
  
• Free-to-play costs nothing, and you can play the entire game to level 50. However, there are caveats. First, you can’t access the last 5 levels of the game without paying. In addition, you are without a lot of convenience items and level much more slowly. You can’t do endgame raids without purchasing a pass and your warzone and flashpoint use is limited. You may have to wait longer to access new expansions as well. Still, if money is tight or you’re not sure if you’ll like the game, this is the way to test it out without paying anything.
  
• Preferred is a compromise between full subscribing and pure free-to-play. Some of the restrictions are lifted, and others are loosened, and it’s generally more fun. To reach preferred status, all you have to do is make one game-related purchase of at least five US dollars; either of cash shop coins or subscription time. After this, your account will automatically switch to Preferred (or subscription if you bought time), whether you buy anything else or not. Once you are a preferred status player, you can never go back to plain old free-to-play.

I’m currently subscribed, but bounce back and forth between preferred and subscribed according to how much money I have and how much time I have to play.

This link will explain some of the differences between the different levels of gameplay and this one is where you buy subscription time and cash shop coins. There are two additional things available for purchase here too: a digital upgrade pack, which mostly gives you cosmetic items, and a physical security key. This key provides a code that you can use when you log in every time you hit the button. This provides additional account security (no one can log into your account unless they have the doohickey) and grants you 100 extra cash shop coins each month. Additionally, you don’t have to deal with the annoying one-time passwords that everyone else needs to log in with. It’s also available as an app (for Droid and iPhone, if I remember right). If you decide to remain playing, you should definitely think about getting one.

After creating your account and buying anything you intend to, you should be ready to actually download the game. This will take a while, depending on your internet connection, so be sure to set aside many hours for it during which the computer can be left alone to do its thing. All but the fastest internet connections will be severely impaired by downloading the game, so don’t try to do anything else while it’s going.

Recently, a new system has been introduced that allows new players to start playing before the game is finished downloading, by prioritizing things they will use right away. This blog post explains who should use this feature and who shouldn’t.

Once the game finishes downloading, you log in using your username, password, and security key if you have one. If you don’t, then the game automatically sends an e-mail to the address you used when you made your account. It will contain a code which you use to finish your log-in. Sometimes, on future log-ins, you will have to download a patch. These vary in size and contain additional content and bug fixes. Patches almost always happen on Tuesdays.

The first decision you have to make once you’re in the game is what server you want to play on. Each server holds one copy of the in-game world and everyone on a particular server is theoretically able to interact with each other. You can’t interact with anybody on another server, however, and it costs real money to move to another one. So, if you’re playing with friends your choice is primarily about what server they’re on.

If you don’t have any friends that play, your decision is a little more complicated. Here is a list of all the servers. You should select one in your preferred language (English, French , or German) and/or time zone. You don’t have to use a server from the same time zone as you, but it should tell you when people are on (if you live on the east coast and use a west coast server, you may find that people are all on later in the day than you would prefer, for example). I’ve also heard unconfirmed reports that the game runs slightly smoother on servers closer to your home.

The other major consideration is server type. The two main types are player-versus-player (PvP) and player-versus-environment (PvE) servers. On a PvP server, you can attack any player of an opposing faction that you come across, though they can also attack you if they feel like it. PvE servers have an option to turn this feature on and off. That’s the only real difference.

Some servers have RP in front of them. This stands for roleplay, and means that some people act in-character on this server. More on this later, but if you might be interested in roleplaying, you should consider going to the appropriate RP server. You don’t have to roleplay there, but etiquette demands that you are at least respectful of those who do.

After you’ve chosen your server, the real fun begins! Now you have to pick a faction for your first character. Even as free-to-play, you get two characters (preferred and subs get more), so you can try both out eventually.

The Galactic Republic has existed for over 20,000 years, governed by the Galactic Senate and supported by the Jedi Order. They are the default “good guys” in the game, though that doesn’t mean you can’t play an evil character. In my opinion, the storylines are generally less morally ambiguous, with fewer bad decision vs. worse decision choices, but they aren’t generally as well written. Your opinion may differ, however.

The origins of the Sith Empire are mysterious, but it is ruled by the Sith, led by an Emperor and the Dark Council. They appeared several years ago from the obscurity of the Unknown Regions to challenge the Republic. They are the default “bad guys” in the game, though by no means is everyone there evil. In my opinion, the storylines are better writing and more engaging, but many people are turned off by the bad vs. really bad decisions and moral ambiguity you sometimes face. They also tend to be darker, though the Republic has its moments too.

All in all, both factions can be fun and engaging to play, and I would suggest that you give both a shot to see which one you like better. And no, you can’t defect to the other faction.

After you pick your faction, you’ll have to pick your class. Many people don’t care so much about faction anyway, but are desperate to play as a Jedi or a Bounty Hunter. Class is probably the most important thing about your character creation, as it will determine nearly everything about how you play the game afterwards, including what storyline you follow, what your character sounds like (different voice actors) and the combat role you can fill (tank, healer, ranged damage, or short range/melee damage). The links give the official page for them, as well as a video and some typical outfits. Note: many of these options (such as combat roles) depend on other choices made later in the game.

• Jedi Consulars are the teachers, diplomats, and healers of the Jedi Order. They are allied with the Republic. The first arc of their story revolves around finding the cause of a plague turning Jedi Masters across the galaxy into homicidal maniacs. They wear light armor, wield either a lightsaber or a double-bladed lightsaber, and can fulfill any of the four major roles.
  
• Jedi Knights are the more militaristic side of the Jedi, who fight to defend the Order and the Republic. The first arc of their story revolves around tracking down Republic superweapons that have been captured by the Empire. They wear medium or heavy armor, wield either one or two single-bladed lightsabers, and can fulfill the roles of melee damage or tanks.
  
• Smugglers are allied with the Republic, and specialize in moving cargo, both legal and illegal, all over the galaxy. The first arc of their story revolves around tracking down their stolen starship. They wear medium armor, wield either two blaster pistols or one blaster pistol and one shotgun, and can fulfill either damage role or heal.
  
• Troopers are the Republic’s elite Special Forces (and not clones, by the way). The first arc of their story revolves around tracking down some fellow soldiers who have defected to the Empire. They wear heavy armor, wield either a rifle or a massive autocannon, and can fulfill any of the four roles.
  
• Sith Inquisitors are the Sith Empire’s shadow killers and political schemers, the Sith more interested in finding out the dark secrets of the Force and building their power base than outright lightsaber destruction. The first arc of their story revolves around making your way from an unknown slave to the apprentice of a well-known Sith Lord. Their outfitting and roles are the same as a Jedi Consular’s.
  
• Sith Warriors are the hack-and-slash Sith, channeling their hatred into pure lightsaber fury. The first arc of their story revolves around finding and eliminating a Jedi apprentice who presents a threat to you and your master. Their outfitting and roles are the same as a Jedi Knight’s.
  
• Imperial Agents work for the shadowy Imperial Intelligence as secret agents, nudging important political decisions in the right direction, suppressing insurrections, doing reconnaissance, and even assassinating dissenters. The first arc of their story revolves around destroying various terrorist cells throughout the galaxy. Their armor and roles are the same as a Smuggler’s, but instead of pistols, their wield rifles.
  
• Bounty Hunters work for the Empire, chasing down anyone unlucky to get a price on their head, and bringing them back, dead or alive. The first arc of their story revolves around The Great Hunt, a massive contest for bounty hunters and assassins to prove their superiority. Their armor and roles are the same as a Trooper’s, but instead of rifles and autocannons, they wield one or two blaster pistols.

There are, obviously, differences between the classes, and I won’t pretend that some don’t have better stories; others are easier to play or better at their chosen roles. However, each story is worth seeing, and every class can perform satisfactorily at all but the absolute highest levels of the game. If there is something you are particularly interested in, say, PvP healing, it’s worth checking out which classes are better at it, but generally, all classes can be fun to play and have their own diehard fans. Also, the gameplay varies significantly between classes, so if one isn’t particularly fun for you, try making a new character.

The next thing you can choose about your character is the species. Species affects very little besides aesthetics in this game, apart from a few isolated lines of dialogue. Each species has a special ability, but it can’t be used in combat and is just for looks, so choose whatever appeals to you most. Take note that at the outset, not all species are available to all classes, so if you have your heart set on a certain species, make sure to look around for them. Also, not all options are default for all classes within a species. For example, each class’s cybernetic implants are different, red twi’leks are exclusive to the Sith Inquisitor, and Republic and Imperial Zabraks are totally different.

The default species are Human, Chiss (blue skin and red eyes, think Grand Admiral Thrawn), Cyborg (has mechanical/computer implants), Miraluka (has no eyes, sees with the Force, think Visas Marr from KOTOR2), Mirialan (green or yellow skin and geometric tattoos), Rattataki (white skin, blue tattoos, and no hair, like Asaj Ventress from The Clone Wars), Sith Pureblood (red skin with dark hair and facial ridges, like the Sith master in the Return trailer), Twi’lek (brightly colored skin, no hair, and headtails, think Ayla Secura or Jabba’s palace dancer), and Zabrak (horns and tattoos, think Darth Maul). Cathar (Kind of like catpeople with fur and kitty eyes, but no tails) are also available, but you need to spend cash shop coins to unlock them.

You can lift most of these restrictions by purchasing “legacy unlocks” for each species. These can be obtained by purchasing them in the cash shop, paying a ton of in-game currency, or leveling a character of that species to level 50 or above. For example, if I wanted to make a Chiss Jedi Knight or a Cyborg Smuggler with Sith Warrior implants (not normally options), then you could either shell out about $6 US for the cash-shop unlock, OR pay 1.5 million in-game currency for the same thing, OR level a Chiss or Cyborg character to level 50 to get the unlock automatically. Yes, it’s complicated. For now, you can just stick with the default species if you want.

Unfortunately, free-to-play and preferred players can only use Human, Zabrak, and Cyborg as options without earning the unlocks in one of the other ways, though if you already have a character of another race when you stop paying, you can still use them later, you just can’t create any more.

Gender is the next thing you can pick. It has more effect on your gameplay than species, though it’s still cosmetic for most things. There are a few female-only and male-only armor sets, and a few more sets (mostly for sith) that fit differently between the genders, but for the most part they can wear the same things.

The other effects gender has are voice (the male and female voice actors are different, obviously) and story. Both male and female follow basically the same storylines, but some things are slightly different. For example, an NPC (non-player character) might fall in love with you if you’re a male, but not if you’re a female, or vice versa. The section this shows up the most in is companion storylines, which I’ll get to later.

Finally, you’ve decided enough to just play around with your character. Use the sliders to change body type, hairstyle, scars, and more. Once you have something you like, hit the lock button on the far right so you don’t change it accidentally. If you can’t think of ideas, hitting “random” will randomize all non-locked sliders. One thing to note is that “complexion” will not only change the complexion, but also the eyebrows and a little bit about the face highlighting, so if you don’t like a particular face shape, play around with the complexion slider a bit and see if that helps.

Names can be a bit tricky. Here’s the official list of prohibited names (which is also in the terms of service, which you have to agree to in order to play):

• Anything hateful, defamatory, racist, ethnically offensive, obscene, vulgar, sexually explicit, harassing, defamatory or otherwise offensive.

• The names of EA or BioWare employees or copyrighted or trademarked things.

• Names from popular culture or media, or that are religiously or historically significant e.g. Lady Gaga, Jesus, or Winston Churchill

• Proper names of areas within Star Wars for character names. Guild names, however, MAY use the proper names of specific areas to help promote role-playing and realm pride, e.g. Defenders of Tython or Protectors of Hutta.

• The names of Star Wars characters, whether they appear in the game or not.

• Names containing titles or ranks within them (Captainbradley)

• Names that refer to drugs or that are drug related.

• Names that contain an inappropriate phrase, sentence or any fragment of a sentence or Leet speak

• Misspellings or alternative spellings of names that violate any of the above rules

• Gibberish names, e.g. ajsdu, rifndsw, qweszs.

While there is no special name enforcement for RP servers, all the roleplayers appreciate it if players confine themselves to “real” names, like Zeta and Almedian, rather than things like Awesomesauce or Ilikecake. I believe that names must be at least four characters long, and can contain apostrophes. I also believe that any other form of punctuation and special characters/accent marks requires using the number code for it, but you would have to find answers to that elsewhere. Again, if you’re stuck, try hitting “random”. If your name is taken, try alternate spellings (adding/dropping double consonants, substituting similar vowels), accent marks, etc.

I would only use a first name, because you have an opportunity to get a last name later, and you can’t use spaces in your name anyway, so they’d end up crammed together. Also, be sure you’re happy with both the name you picked and everything else about your character before you click “enter”, because that starts your game!

As soon as the classic Star Wars crawl starts coming up the screen, you’re in a cutscene. There are basically mini-movies inside the game, so all you have to do is sit back and enjoy. Cutscenes aren’t particularly common, but you’ll see a fair number of them throughout your adventure.

More common are conversations (sometimes abbreviated to convo). These allow you the opportunity to control what your character says and does. The first cutscene will soon turn into a conversation. Subtitles are automatic for any dialogue not in whatever language the server is (for example, droid language or Huttese). You can toggle subtitles for the rest of the dialogue on or off later. If you ever want to skip dialogue, hit spacebar to go to the next subtitle.

Soon, you’ll be given an opportunity to choose your own response. This will appear as a little wheel with two or three options on it. Select whichever one you want by clicking on it or using the number keys on your keyboard (1 for the top one, 2 for the one below it, etc.). Note that the blurb on the options is only the basic gist of what you say, not the words itself. Occasionally there will be something in brackets next to an option, which means that selecting it will also do that action (for example “I hate you" [attack])

If at any point you want to abort and/or restart a conversation or cutscene (if you don’t like a dialogue choice, for instance, or someone in the room was talking and you couldn’t hear), hit the Esc key.

There are two ways to control your movement. The first is to use the arrow keys, and the second is to use W to move forward, S to move back, A right, D left, and Q and E to strafe (move sideways without changing the camera angle) this is called WASD movement. You can use either one you prefer. The default key for jumping is spacebar, but you won’t use this very often.

Somewhere near where you started, there’s probably a droid standing around with a double-ended arrow icon inside a circle. This means that there’s a speeder here for you to unlock. Outpost speeders are a way for you to move fairly quickly from one set point to another. Some of them are free, but most cost a credit fee, which increases to keep pace with the level of the planet you’re on. (On my first playthrough, I failed to notice this until I started to wonder where all my credits were going )

You’ll find a speeder in almost every town you stop at on your journey, and they’re a great way to travel long distances quickly. However, you can’t use them unless you “discover” them, and all the stops between where you are and where you want to go have to be discovered. For example, to go from point A to point C, you have to have not only the speeders at A and C unlocked, but also the one at point B, which is between them. Fortunately, the speeders are quick and easy to discover: all you have to do is right-click on the droid with the icon over his head! Once it’s unlocked, the circle around the icon will disappear.

To use the speeder, simply right-click on one of the droids. A map will pop up, showing all the destinations you’ve unlocked. Click on the one you want to go too, and it will charge you the shown amount of credits and take you there. It’s not instant, but it’s way faster than walking. On some planets, taking the speeder is the only way to get to a new area. In this case, some of the speeders might be unlocked when you arrive.

Besides the outpost speeder system, there’s another way to move throughout the world quickly. It’s called quick travel (frequently abbreviated to QT). Quick travel works similar to the speeders in some ways. You can’t go to a quick travel point unless you’ve discovered it, but once you have, you can use it to quickly go to any of the fixed points on the world. You discover it the same way you discover a speeder junction, by right-clicking on it. The map icon for an undiscovered quick travel point is a broken circle around a padlock. After you discover the point (sometimes called binding), the lock changes into an upward-pointing arrow. You can bind to an unlimited number of points, so be sure to discover every console you come to.

There are some differences from speeders, too, though. First of all, quick travel is completely free! Also, it’s even faster than taking the speeder, instead teleporting you back to the console you select in just the time it takes to load the new environment. Finally, while you can only return to designated points, you can activate it anywhere, which is great when you’re deep in the forest and don’t want to run all the way back to town. The caveat to all this is that you can’t use quick travel very often. Subscribers can only use it every 25 minutes, and it’s longer for free-to-play and preferred.

One of the first things you’ll notice is that some of the people standing around have three orange lines in the shape of a triangle over their head (if the lines are grey, that means that they can’t talk to you right now because you’re too low level or the quest resets at intervals, and hasn’t since the last time you did it). These people all want to talk to you, usually to have you do something for them. To talk to them, right click on them. The conversation will explain what they want. If you don’t want to do it, there’s usually an option to refuse the quest at some point in the conversation.

Once you take on their problem (this is called a quest, or sometimes a mission), the name of the quest and your instructions will appear in your mission tracker, which is in the top right corner of your screen. These instructions will update automatically, so make sure to keep checking them. Typical quests involve finding lost items, killing enemies, or destroying and/or capturing stuff. Oftentimes, items that you need to pick up or interact with for a quest will glow blue. Other times, you can pick up things you need from defeated enemies.

A mission icon with a bright green center means that the person or thing is the next part of a mission you’re already on. When you’ve finished up whatever the main point of the mission is, you’ll usually have to return to whoever sent you out in the first place (the mission tracker will remind you to do this). This is called turning in the quest, and it’s important that you do it in order to get the experience points and rewards.

Once you turn in the quest, a window will pop up showing the rewards you get. If you accidentally click out of the window, you can access your rewards again from the little bar at the top of your mission tracker. You’ll always get experience points from quests, and virtually always get money as well. Other common rewards include lockboxes, credit cases, gear, experience boosts, and commendations. We’ll talk about all of these in a little while. Sometimes you’ll have to select one reward out of several.

There are several main types of quests you’ll encounter:

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• Class missions are the first quests you’ll get, and won’t go away until you finish your class story. They’ll guide you from planet to planet and are one more-or-less continuous story from level 1 to about level 50. Typically, they have the most complex story, and the most creative of mission steps. A class mission is only available to your class, and is usually the top mission in your mission tracker.
   
  
• World missions usually refer to the main storyline for a planet. These are unique to the factions, but can be done by every class of that faction. Like class missions, they will take you from area to area in a planet, but end before you move to the next one. It’s usually the second mission in your mission tracker. You start getting these on the second planet you visit, but they become more noticeable by the fifth.
   
  
• Side quests are missions that are in addition to the first two. Usually, they take place in a single area only, and have only a few steps.
   
  
• Bonus quests are quests that trigger as add-ons to regular quests of any type. They give you extra experience and credits. Sometimes there are multiple stages to a bonus quest, giving even greater rewards. Bonus quests are a great way to level, especially since you can sometimes get them done without really trying. Just remember that they disappear after you complete the mission, or sometimes just one stage of it, so don’t wait till the end!
   
  
• Heroic missions (Either +2 or +4) require a group of either two or four players to finish. There are typically about three of these per planet. If you can get a group together and have the time, they usually have great rewards. If you want, you can try to do them alone, particularly the +2s, but be prepared to die a lot.

If you have too many quests active at once, the mission tracker will only show some of them. If this happens, or if you just want more clarification or can’t remember what a mission was about, you have a mission log with more info. You access it from the long toolbar at the top of the screen. The icon for it is the same as for a quest, three lines forming a triangle. From here, you can see all of your current quests, grouped by type. The colors of the quest names correspond to how close to your level the quest is. Red means that it’s so far above your level that you probably shouldn’t attempt it, and then in descending order, you have orange, yellow, green, and grey. When a quest reaches grey, you no longer get any experience from it, and it’s probably so easy you could do it in your sleep. If you’re getting grey quests from mission givers, it’s probably time to move on.

The other things you can do from the mission log include: reset quests (undoes all the progress you’ve made with a quest, taking you back to the first stage of it), abandon quests (make it so that you’re no longer on a mission. Sometimes you can get it again, sometimes you can’t, so be careful), track/untrack quests (toggles whether a particular mission is shown in the tracker), and share quests (let other people you’re grouped with in on the same quest). Not all of these will be available for every quest, for example, you can’t (or at least shouldn’t be able to) abandon your class story quest, and they can’t be shared either.

At this point, you’ve probably already got at least one “codex entry”. You’re notified of these by a popup near the top of your screen with the name of the entry. You can view them by clicking on the popup, or access them from the “codex” tab at the bottom of your mission log.

The codex is made up of short (usually 3-5 paragraphs) text entries about things you discover in the game. Nearly all of them are game lore, but a few have more information about game play. They also give you a few experience points apiece. Reading the codex is completely optional, but it can be interesting, and if you decide to roleplay, it can be a great source for information and lore.

You can’t predict when you’ll get a codex entry, but they frequently come when you enter a new area for the first time, after you meet an important person, and after defeating a new kind of animal for the first time. The one definite time you get them is when you click on a “lore object”. These items glow blue and will give you a codex entry when you click on them, but they can be very hard to spot. Just be careful, and make sure it’s actually a lore object before you click (in at least one place, there’s something that looks like a lore object at first glance, but actually summons a powerful enemy that you can’t defeat alone).

By now, you should be ready to jump into your first fight. There are enemies hanging around the area where you first appear, so go ahead and jump in. Combat is basic in the idea, but rather complicated in execution. To put it simply, you activate an ability and the computer will do the rest for you, including aiming.

In practice, there’s a lot more to it. Target an enemy by clicking on them or pressing tab. If you have someone targeted, they will show a nameplate above their head, giving their name/designation (like Flesh Raider Goon). You can use the tab key to cycle through targets until you find the one you want.

All the abilities, both combat and non-combat, that you ever earn, will, by default, go on your quickbars. These are the rows of little square icons (called slots) that are located at the bottom of your screen, and possibly the right and left sides as well. Abilities can be activated in one of two ways: clicking on them with the mouse, or using the keybind for it. Keybinding is the word for attaching a particular key on your keyboard to a slot on your quickbar.

When you press that key, your character will do whatever is in that slot (or nothing, if nothing’s there). You can add or change bindings from the preferences menu, which you get to from the gears icon on the bar at the top of the screen. Just click on the slot you’d like to fill and press the key (or combination of keys) that you’d like to be bound to that slot, then press “apply”.

As you get more abilities, you may start to run out of space on your quickbars. Free-to-play players get two, preferred get four, and subscribers get six. You can move different abilities around by drag-and-drop, and should try to configure them in a way that’s convenient. Once you have everything the way you want, you can click the padlock icon next to your main two quickbars to keep them from moving them around accidentally. To change the locations again, simply unlock it with the same icon.

You can’t exit combat until all the enemies are dead or you’re a sufficient distance away from them. Generally, killing them is a better option than running away (you’re likely to just run into another group of enemies if you do), but it can work if you’re determined, especially once you get some speed boosts later on.

Right above your quickbar is a portrait of your character that will turn red if you’re currently in combat. Next to it is a red bar with your health (which goes away when enemies hit you). If you run out of it, you’re dead. Below your health is a resource bar, which is usually yellow. This is what you use to perform more powerful attacks. How it’s used varies by class, and the name of it is different across classes too:

• Jedi Consulars and Sith Inquisitors are the simplest, consuming force, which regenerates over time.
  
• Jedi Knights build up focus doing some attacks and consume it with others.
  
• Smugglers and Imperial Agents consume energy, which regenerates over time
  
• Troopers consume ammo, which regenerates over time.
  
• Sith Warriors build up rage doing some attacks and consume it with others.
  
• Bounty Hunters build up heat, which releases over time.

In any case, if you deplete (or in the case of a bounty hunter, fill up) your resource bar, you’ll be limited to only a few basic attacks until you can find a way to refill it.

You start out with only a few abilities, but you add more as you level up. Most of your abilities at the start are self-explanatory, but there are a lot later on that merit more discussion, which I’ll talk about in the next section. However, it would take way too long and be way too complicated to provide specific combat guides for each class (due to choices you can make later, I’d be writing 24 guides, at least several pages long apiece), not to mention the fact that I haven’t tried out every single class and option, and am no expert even on the ones I have tried.

While there are a ton of abilities in SWTOR, most of which seem indistinguishable at first glance, you can easily figure out what all of them do if you know some of the lingo. Not all classes get one of everything, and some get more than one of certain things.

• Damage abilities, usually called attacks, take away health points from your enemy. Some of them do other things as well. Example: The basic attacks everyone gets
  
• Heals give you and your allies health points back. Example: Some Jedi Consulars get Force Mend, which will heal them for a specified amount of health instantly.
  
• Cast abilities have a delay (usually 1-3 seconds) between the time you activate them and the time that they actually perform their damage and heal. During this cast time, you can’t move or do anything else without canceling the ability (a bar will show you how much time you have left). While it sounds bad, casted abilities are usually much more powerful than instant ones. Example: Sith Inquisitors get Crushing Darkness, which, after a 2 second cast, will deal damage by crushing the target.
  
• Channeled abilities are similar to cast ones, but the ability is constantly working. Example: Jedi Knights get Force Stasis, which does damage and keeps the target from acting for about 3 seconds or until the Jedi moves or does something else.
  
• Areas of Effect (usually abbreviated to AoEs) abilities are attacks or heals that affect multiple targets in the same area. Some AoEs act around you or the the enemy you have targeted, while others require you to choose an area using a circle on the ground before the attack will start. When using this second type of aoe, either double-click or double-tap your keybind to have the ability activate centered on your current target. Examples: The Sith Warrior’s Smash is an example of the first type, doing damage to up to five targets within five meters, while the Smuggler’s X-S Freighter Flyby is the second.
  
• Stuns are abilities which stop the person they’re used on from acting until the stun expires. Often, stuns have a bit of damage attached to them as well, but usually the main point of the attack is the stun. As an addendum, there are also roots/snares and slows, the former keeping the target standing in one spot, and the latter slowing their movement speed. Example: Imperial Agent’s Debilitate, which does a bit of damage and stuns the target for 4 seconds.
  
• Crowd Control (one of the two things regularly abbreviated to cc)/Mezzes are a little fuzzy, and if you ask different people, you’ll get different answers. However, if someone asks you to cc or mezz a target, they almost always mean to use an ability that stuns the target, usually for a lot longer than normal stuns, but that breaks if you hit that target with any sort of damage, including AoE damage. Example: Some Troopers get Concussive Round, which stuns the target for a full minute or until someone hits the target for damage.
  
• Buffs are abilities that, rather than directly attacking or healing, do something nice for the person who is targeted by them. Obviously, you can only use them on friendly targets. All active buffs will show up as little icons above your health bar on the left. FYI, if you want to remove a buff, right-click on the icon. Example: Bounty Hunters get Hunter’s Boon, which provides a 5% boost to the target’s endurance stat for 60 minutes.
  
• Debuffs are, as you would expect, the opposite of buffs, and show up as little icons above the right side of your health bar. They do something bad to the person who is targeted by them. It’s pretty rare that a debuff will appear by itself, but they’re frequently tacked on to other attacks. Unfortunately, you can’t remove them like you can for buffs, though there is sometimes a way to take them off (see below) Example: Jedi Consulars get Telekinetic Throw, which in addition to doing damage, also slows the target’s movement speed by 50%.
  
• Cleanses are abilities that remove debuffs and poison effects. However, not all cleanses will take care of all possible types of debuffs, so make sure to check. Example: Some Sith Inquisitors get Expunge, which removes two debuffs of mental or force type.
  
• Damage Over Time abilities (usually called DOTs) are attacks that continue to do damage after you use them. Often, their initial damage is fairly low, but they will continue to work until they expire or the target cleanses them. You CAN use other abilities while a DOT is working. HOTs are the same, but they heal instead of damaging. Example: Some Jedi Knights get Cauterize, which does a small amount of damage initially, but continues burning the target over the next 6 seconds, resulting in about seven times the initial damage in total.
  
• Interrupts are abilities that stop your opponent from casting or channeling a particular ability. This is super useful, especially later on, when the enemies you fight get smarter and start to use more abilities of their own. Hint: if you need to interrupt something and your interrupt isn’t available, you can stun the enemy instead. Example: Sith Warriors get Disruption, which interrupts the targets current action and prevents it from being used again for 4 seconds.
  
• Resource recovery abilities give you back some of your resource (or, in the case of bounty hunters, get rid of heat). Example: Smugglers get Cool Head, which recovers 50 energy over three seconds.
  
• To counter being stunned yourself, you eventually get a stun breaker, which will remove all stuns, roots, and slows applied to your character. It will not cleanse DOTs, however. Use it carefully, and make sure it’s really worth it! Example: Imperial Agent’s Escape
  
• An ability specially worth mentioning is the out-of-combat recovery. As it sounds like, this ability can only be used out of combat, and it gives you back all of your health and resource over 15 seconds. Be sure to use this after every fight to keep yourself in tip-top fighting shape! Example: Trooper’s Reload

Some abilities have what’s called a cool-down (sometimes abbreviated to CD), which means that after you use it, you can’t use it again for a certain amount of time. This is to keep you from just using your most powerful ability over and over again. A light blue screen will appear over that ability’s icon, and when it disappears, you can use it again. Also, if you mouse over the icon, it will show you how much time is left.

Almost all abilities are on what’s called the “global cool down (GCD)”, which means that once you use any ability, nearly everything will be on a very short cool down. It’s about what abilities you pick, not how fast you can press buttons.

Sorry, we’re not done with combat yet, but almost, I promise!

First, there many types of damage that can be done, both by and to you. Examples include force, tech, mental, kinetic, weapon, and elemental. Each attack falls into one or more of the categories, and different stats work on different things. In practice, they all hurt you, but there are some abilities that are relevant to specific types, such as the Bounty Hunter’s Death From Above, which does kinetic damage.

Second, as you’re fighting enemies, you may see that they don’t have real names (usually). Instead, they’ll have a designation that tells you what their story function is, for example “Exchange Mercenary” or “Sith Trooper”. Also, under their name in the target area (that shows their portrait, it’s across from yours), there will be a class name for example “nemesis”, “anti-armor sentry”, or “blood medic”. These work just like your class does, telling you what kind of abilities the enemy has. If you pay attention, you’ll often be able to figure out what an enemy is going to do before it attacks you, just by looking at its class.

Finally, not all enemies are created equal. Some are specially designed to give you more of a challenge. There are several difficulties, and you should generally try to kill them in this order when attacked by groups:

• Weak enemies (weaks) are the easiest to defeat. Usually, they are found in combination with other types of enemies, but sometimes there’s just a big pack of them.
  
• Normal enemies (normals) are the most common.
  
• Strong enemies (strongs or silvers) are harder than normals, and have a silver star next to their character portrait when you target them, as well as next to their nameplate.
  
• Elite enemies (elites or golds) are the hardest enemies you’re usually expected to take on your own, and they have a gold star next to their character portrait and nameplate.
  
• Champion enemies (champs) are almost always meant to be done in a group. They have a gold and silver start next to their character portrait and nameplate, and almost always have individual names, as opposed to just designations.

Loot is all the stuff you get from your dead enemies. You collect it by right-clicking on the bodies of enemies who have a big vertical beam of light coming up from them. Note that unless you’re grouped with them, you can’t pick up loot from other people’s kills. Once you’ve right-clicked, a window will pop up, showing you what the enemy is carrying, and asking you if you want to pick it up. Unless you’re running very short on inventory space, you should always pick up everything from your kills. If you agree to pick the loot up, it will be transferred to your inventory and the chat box on the upper left of your screen will tell you again what you got.

Now, obviously this all takes some time, so there are two things that make looting easier, both of which are accessible from the preferences menu (the same place you change your keybindings). The first is called area loot, and it makes it so that you pick up everything from your immediate area, not just the enemy you clicked on. The second is auto-loot, which basically skips the confirmation step of looting, making it so that you just pick up everything when you right-click. Unless there’s some reason to have them off, I would recommend having both of these on all the time.

There are many different kinds of loot that you can pick up, and often you have at least a slight clue what you’re getting from the color of the beam over the enemy’s body.

• A light blue beam means that the enemy only drops white/grey items, medpacks, and credits (in fact, nearly every enemy drops credits). Credits are the basic currency of the galaxy, and they will be useful everywhere you go on your travels. White/grey items come in two forms. The first, commonly called junk or vendor trash, is random bits of stuff that your enemies were carrying. You can’t use any of this, but you can sell it for more credits. The other is basic gear that only provides more armor, not more of any other stat. While this is better than nothing, you should try to replace it as soon as you can, and there’s no reason to wear it after level 10.
  
• A green beam means that the enemy has dropped either premium/green items or commendations. I’ll talk about commendations more later, but suffice it to say that they’re another form of currency. Premium/green items are better than grey items, with better stats. This is also usually the color of beam you’ll see when you get a moddable/orange item later.
  
• A dark blue beam means that the enemy has dropped prototype/blue items. These are nicer than green items and have better stats.
  
• A purple beam means that the enemy was carrying artifact/purple items. These are the nicest type of items, with the best stats. This type of item can’t usually be used by free-to-play or preferred players without a special unlock.

These color designations sound a little meaningless until you open up your inventory. You can do this with the inventory button (it’s the second from the left on the little bar at the top of the screen). There’s also a hotkey for it; the default is “i”. In your inventory, you’ll see a lot of little squares, some of which will have things in them. The color designation of items comes from the colors of the boarders around the boxes.

To use an item in your inventory, you right-click on it. If the item is a piece of armor or a weapon you can wear, it will go on you. If it’s something that has another use, it will do whatever the use is. Left-click and drag items to move them around. Also, items of the same type often stack on top of each other to save bag space (the limit in a single stack is 99), so if you hear someone referencing stacks of an item, they probably mean how many there are. For example “I want to buy a fifty-stack of pants” means that they want to buy 50 pairs of pants (though why anyone would want that many pairs is beyond me...). To split a stack into smaller ones, press “shift” and click on it, then select how many you want in the new stack.

Of particular interest at this point are medpacks. These look like little black, grey, and red boxes in your inventory, and they will heal you for the specified amount when you right click on them, but they can only be used once per fight, and they are consumed on use. You can bind them to a key just like your abilities, just left-click and drag to a quickbar slot.

Stims are something else you’ll find later on. Like medpacks, you can keybind them and they are consumed when you use them, but instead of giving you more health, they increase the amount of a certain stat that you have. These can help you beat close fights, and are a great resource to keep around. Their effects usually last for around an hour and go away if you die while you have one active.

Boost items increase the rate at which you gain whatever they boost. Experience point boosts are the most common, but you can also find them for valor and social points. Some of them are specific to a particular type of experience, though, so pay attention.

Lockboxes and credit cases are items that you frequently find as quest rewards. To use them, just right click and it will give you credits (in the case of credit cases) or an item (in the case of a lockbox), that is a random selection from a range appropriate to the level of the box.

Among your first loot, there may be some clothing or weapon items. Despite my mother’s joking that SWTOR must be a fashion show game, given the emphasis on getting new outfits, the truth is that new gear is the primary way to upgrade your character’s abilities. But not all gear can be worn by everyone.

• Light armor can be worn by any class. Most frequently, it’s represented by long skirt-type bottoms and robe-like tops. Jedi Consulars and Sith Inquisitors can only wear light armor, and it’s usually made to suit these two classes.
  
• Medium armor can be worn by all classes except Consular and Inquisitors. Usually, it takes the form of tight pants with a jacket, trench coat, or robe on top. It is primarily meant for Smugglers, Imperial Agents, and some Jedi Knights and Sith Warriors.
  
• Heavy armor can only be worn by Troopers, Bounty Hunters, and some Jedi Knights and Sith Warriors. It generally looks like plate armor.
  
• Adaptive armor is a special type of armor that adapts to the highest level of armor that the equipping character can wear. For example, a Jedi Consular who put on adaptive armor would find it offering the same armor value as light armor, while a Bounty Hunter who wore the exact same set would get heavy armor value out of it.

Note that while you can wear armor that has a lighter armor value than your max, you can’t wear anything heavier. Also, while nothing says you have to wear, say, medium armor as an Agent, your gameplay will probably suffer if you choose light instead.

Additionally, each class has a main stat that most directly improves their abilities. You should prioritize getting these stats on your armor above all else:

• Jedi Consulars and Sith Inquisitors use Willpower.
  
• Jedi Knights and Sith Warriors use Strength.
  
• Smugglers and Imperial Agents use Cunning.
  
• Troopers and Bounty Hunters use Aim.

In addition to each class’s main stat, there are plenty other things you might see on armor:

• Endurance is great for everybody, but has particular merit for tanks (I’ll get to them later). After your main stat, endurance should be your primary goal. It boosts your health.
  
• Presence affects how well your companions do their tasks (fighting, crafting, etc.). Presence-based gear is very rare, and isn’t really that effective.
  
• Expertise is important for PVP players, but pretty much useless for PVE players. You probably won’t see any expertise stuff until level 55. (you won’t see any of the following stats until at least level 10, as a matter of fact)
  
• Alacrity speeds up your cast times and resource regeneration. It’s particularly useful for healers, but good for anyone who casts frequently.
  
• Absorption increases how much damage your shields soak up if you’re playing a class that uses shields.
  
• Defense helps you avoid attacks, also good for tanks.
  
• Power (not to be confused with willpower) increases the effectiveness of all your abilities, however, it’s not as effective as main stat.
  
• Critical rating (Crit) increases the chance that you’ll get a critical hit (often called criting), which is an extra, bonus bit of damage or healing that is determined by random roll.
  
• Surge increases the amount of bonus damage/healing done by your critical hits.

I will repeat the very important fact that every class should focus on getting their own main stat, not trying to get all of them to build a “well-rounded” character. The classes’ abilities are balanced around their main stat, and improving the others will do little or nothing.

When you first try to equip a piece of armor, it will often warn you that doing so will “bind” it to you. Bound items can’t be sold on the GTN or traded to another player. They can, however, be sold to a vendor for credits, destroyed, or reverse engineered (more on reverse engineering later).

As you take damage and generally run around, your armor will sustain damage. When it hits 100% damage, it’s considered broken and will be useless until you repair it. Dying does a large amount of damage to your armor. You can tell when your armor is especially in need of repair by an orange icon of an armor chest plate over your character’s portrait.

As you kill enemies, discover new areas, finish quests, and find codex entries, you’ll get experience points. When you accumulate enough of these, you level up. At first this will happen fairly quickly, but is will slow down a lot later on. Leveling up means that you get more abilities, improvements on the ones you already have, and access to better and nicer gear. As of this writing, there are 55 levels in the game.

Virtually all gear is level gated. For example, a headpiece might say “requires level 15”. Obviously, you can’t use this until you’re level 15, though you can still usually buy, sell, and trade it.

To get new abilities and improve your current ones, visit your class trainer every time you level up. They’re usually standing around the main marketplace area of whatever planet you’re on, and they’ll have an orange arrow above their head. If you have an ability or improvement to train, the arrow will have a green plus sign under it. To train something, just right click on it like you would to buy an item. This does charge a credit fee, which can get pretty hefty later on. You should always keep some credits on hand for this and other reasons, but if you have to choose what to train, I’d take new skills first, then improvements to your current ones, in approximate order of how often you use them. New skills go on your quickbar by default, but you can move them around however you like.

You obviously can’t just pick up any piece of gear and stick it anywhere. That would be like wearing pants on your head or socks on your hands. Instead, each piece of gear you find will tell you what slot it should go in:

• Head (helmets, hats, circlets, etc.)
  
• Chest (shirts, armor chest plates, coats, bikini tops, etc. Cloaks and half-skirt/ “butt flaps” are attached to them too)
  
• Hands (gloves)
  
• Wrists (bracers, gauntlets, etc.)
  
• Waist (belts)
  
• Legs (Pants, armor leg plates, skirts, bikini bottoms)
  
• Feet (boots, shoes, sandals)
  
• Earpiece (has no visual effect on your character)
  
• Implant (2) (have no visual effect on your character)
  
• Relics (2) (have no visual effect on your character, but frequently do things other than provide stats that have to be triggered manually)
  
• Main hand weapon (lightsabers, double-bladed lightsabers, rifles, pistols, autocannons, etc.)
  
• Off-hand weapon (lightsabers, pistols, scatterguns, vibroknives, generators, focuses, shields)
  
• Some lightsabers, vibroblades, and pistols can be used in either the main or offhand slot
  

Now, obviously, you won’t get all of these right away. You start out, I believe, with chest, leg, feet, and main hand pieces, adding more as you level. For example, you won’t get an off-hand weapon until level 10, and probably won’t find an earpiece until close to 20. Lots of people make it to 55 without ever getting relics, though they’re available much earlier.

Obviously, you should only equip a piece of armor if its stats are better than your own. You can view all your currently equipped gear from the character sheet, which is on the far left of the toolbar at the top of the screen. But it can be kind of a pain to do all the comparisons yourself, so there’s a function called “comparative tooltips”. A tooltip is basically a box of text that appears when you put your cursor over something. In this case, when you mouse over the armor’s icon, it will show you not only the stats that that piece carries, but also how it compares to the piece presently equipped in that slot. Later on, this function is available for your companion's gear too. You might have to enable these features from the preferences menu.

Of course, there’s a ton of armor styles and colors in the game, and not everything goes with everything else. Additionally, this game shares a problem with many other games, namely, that a lot of the hat options are hideous! That’s what the appearance tab is for. It should be a little icon on the middle right of your character sheet. From there, you can choose to toggle dark side corruption on or off (if it’s on, enough dark side points will result in your character looking rather like this), make whatever helmet/hat you’re wearing invisible (subscriber only), and unify everything you’re wearing to the color scheme of your chest piece (also sub only). As an example, if I’m wearing a shirt that’s red and black, then if I unify colors, my pants will also become red and black.

In addition to each class’s main stat, there are plenty other things you might see on armor:

• Endurance is great for everybody, but has particular merit for tanks (I’ll explain what they are later). After your main stat, endurance should be your primary goal. It boosts your health.
  
• Presence affects how well your companions do their tasks (fighting, crafting, etc.). Presence-based gear is very rare, and isn’t really that effective.
  
• Expertise is important for PVP players, but pretty much useless for PVE players. You probably won’t see any expertise stuff until level 55. (you won’t see any of the following stats until at least level 10, as a matter of fact)
  
• Alacrity speeds up your cast times and resource regeneration. It’s particularly useful for healers, but good for anyone who casts frequently.
  
• Absorption increases how much damage your shields soak up if you’re playing a class that uses shields.
  
• Defense helps you avoid attacks, also good for tanks.
  
• Power (not to be confused with willpower) increases the effectiveness of all your abilities, however, it’s not as effective as your main stat.
  
• Critical rating (Crit) increases the chance that you’ll get a critical hit (often called criting), which is an extra, bonus bit of damage or healing that is determined by random roll.
  
• Surge increases the amount of bonus damage/healing done by your critical hits.
  
• Accuracy decreases the chance that your enemies will avoid your attacks. Not a good stat for healers.
  

As for which of these secondary stats is most important/best, that varies highly by class, so I would suggest checking for guides in your classes section of the forums when the time comes. I’ll try to add links to good ones if I find them.

When you finish up the first few quests, you’ll probably head back to the place where you first got them to turn them in for rewards. Whenever you visit a town, you should visit a vendor. The icon for these is what looks like the number 7 with a couple of lines through it. Usually, there’s a big group of vendors somewhere near where you start a particular world, with individuals scattered throughout the environment.

Nearly all vendors deal in credits, which are the basic in-game currency. You pick credits up from defeated enemies, as quest rewards, and from selling stuff. Some vendors, however, will only take commendations. These are items that look like little badges, and they can be traded for extra-powerful gear at commendation vendors. There are many types, but the only ones that are relevant below level 50 or so are planetary and fleet commendations. Planetary commendations are picked up from defeated enemies and given as quest rewards on planets and during flashpoints. Fleet commendations are rewards for doing space missions.

After right-clicking on a vendor, your inventory will pop up, along with a menu showing what the vendor sells. The most common vendors are medical droids, which sell medpacks, basic stims, and the like. Other vendors sell anything from weapons to bounty contracts, so shop around when you’re in a market area. Two buttons that you should know about are both located on the bottom of the vendor’s menu. The first is called “sell junk”, and will automatically sell all of your items with no use to the vendor. You should also sell anything that you can’t use or is less powerful than what you have on. The second is called “repair”, and it will fix your armor.

So, you probably won’t die right off, but it’s bound to happen eventually, so I might as well talk about it now. You die when you lose all your health points. When you die, you are given two options. You can either go back to the medcenter or revive right there (often called rezing). Going to the medcenter will take you back to the nearest Republic or Imperial medical service droid. You should repair your armor while you’re there, then you can go back to your questing.

Field reviving will summon a medical probe to your location, bringing you back to life and rendering you invisible for ten seconds (to give you time to get to safety). However, your gear still takes damage, and the cool-down for this ability goes up every time you use it. Not to mention the fact that non-subscribers only get five probes before they have to shell out cartel coins (meaning real money) to buy more. Still, when you’re deep in enemy territory, and you almost beat that really tough enemy, the ability to revive right there can be invaluable.

On one of your first few quests, you’ll eventually reach a conversation that allows you to choose between two options. One of these will be labeled (either by default or on mouseover) with a blue, seven-pointed star, while the other will have a red upside-down triangle. The star stands for light side, and the triangle for dark side. If you choose, for example, the light side option, your character will gain an allotment of lightside points (the most common increments are 50, 100, and 150). These translate into earning levels of light or darkness (I through V of each). In between them is neutral. You can only be at one level at once (you can’t, for example, be Dark II and Light III simultaneously). Instead, the side with fewer points subtracts from the one with higher to get your level. Continuing the previous example, your darkside points will subtract from your lightside points, probably resulting in your being somewhere around Light I.

An additional hiccup to the system is that once you get to level V of either side, further points accumulated to that side will subtract from your points of the opposite alignment. If you get to Dark V, further darkside gains will erase any lightside points you’ve gained up to this point.

There is no gameplay advantage to picking one side over the other, and very little advantage over remaining neutral. There a few items (most notably relics), that are restricted by alignment as you level, but all of the nicest stuff at level cap has no such restrictions on it. Originally, a large amount of color crystals for lightsabers had alignment restrictions, but this was lifted shortly after launch. Some people find darkside corruption unattractive, but even free-to-players can turn it on or off at will. So, basically, play the game however you want, and don’t worry too much about maxing out light or dark points.

By now, you should have noticed that the box on the upper left of your screen is full of chat messages from other players. This is fairly self-explanatory, but a few things might not be. First, you click in the blank section at the bottom and type what you want to say, and then press enter to send it. Fairly standard instant messenger protocol, as far as I know. If you decide not to send a message, hit escape and the message will disappear (as I’ve found out the hard way, make sure you do this, because you use the same letter keys to move and use abilities, you’ll end up typing 1 over and over again and wondering why you aren’t attacking).

Sometimes people in chat (particularly on the fleet and the first two planets) can be pretty foul. There’s a couple of ways to deal with this. First off, there’s a profanity filter available from the Preferences menu under Chat. This isn’t 100% perfect, but it will help. Second is the report function. Normally, there’s just the option to report spam (constant advertising for guilds, advertising for sites that sell credits (which is against the terms of service, not to mention being illegal), etc.). However, if you’re close enough to the message sender, you can also report harassment, inappropriate character, legacy, or guild names, and real-life violence or suicide threats. The final thing you can do is to place the character on ignore. Right click on their name in chat (or their character portrait if you have them targeted), and select “Ignore player”. After this, you will no longer see chat messages from them.

Chat is divided into channels. Messages from different channels are all in the same box, but different colors. There are plenty of channels, but the most common are:

• General chat is light blue, and can be seen by everyone of the same faction on the same planet as you. It’s for anything, including guild recruitment, group/help requests, general discussion, etc.
  
• PvP chat is also light blue, and it’s for talking about pvp stuff. I’m not sure if it’s cross-faction or not, but it’s not used very often, at least on the two servers I have experience with.
  
• Trade chat is for advertising items for sale or trade, as well as items you want to buy. Light blue and most often used on the fleet.
  
• Say is also light blue, but have an additional bit on the tag. Most chat comes in the form [channel] [name] message, but say is in the form [name] says: message. It’s used to talk to players in your general area, is cross-faction, and is often considered “in-character” on roleplay servers.
  
• Yell is virtually never used; being basically the same as general, but its text is red.
  
• Group chat is medium purple, and only goes to players that you’re grouped with.
  
• Guild chat is green, and goes to players in your guild.
  
• Whispers are messages that only go to the person you address them to. To whisper someone, either right-click their name in chat, or type /whisper name.
  

You can also create custom channels, which have to be joined manually. Most likely, you won’t want to create one, but a lot of guilds (particularly roleplay guilds) have them. To join a custom channel, type /cjoin channelname, and to leave it, type /cleave channelname.

Free-to-play restrictions show up here too. Free-to-play and preferred players can’t post in general chat or send /whisper messages at all until level 10 (I think), and after that, have restrictions on how frequently they can post. Unless you’re spamming (posting super often, usually to troll or to try and sell things), this shouldn’t really be an issue, plus all the other channels aren’t restricted.

Galactic Star Fighter, or GSF, is the space pvp that came out as a digital expansion (meaning you just downloaded it, you didn’t have to go buy it at a store) in December 2013. By now, it’s free for everyone who plays, though the rewards are limited for preferred and free-to-play.

I’ll have to admit, I haven’t spent much time trying out GSF, since that sort of thing doesn’t really appeal to me much. However, Dulfy.net (a great resource for new and experienced players!) has a guide, which I’ll link to.

At some point, you’ll probably be asked to join a guild. A guild is “A group of like minded players” (according to the game’s website), who all get together for some specific in-game purpose, whether that be end-game raiding, pvping, roleplaying, or just socializing. To join a guild, you’ll have to be invited by a member of that guild (and usually one with a bit of seniority as well). To leave one, you type /gquit.

Guilds are as different as the players that make them up, but there a few things that hold true for most of them. Many guilds (3 out of the 4 I’ve been in) have their own websites, often using a guild site-hosting service like Enjin. Some have voice servers (the three most common services for this are called Teamspeak, Ventrillo/Vent, and Mumble, and I’ve heard of people using Skype too) that they use for raid coordination or hanging out. Most have some sort of requirements or at least a code of conduct.

Basically, my best advice is to check out any guilds before joining to make sure they’re a good fit for you, and to be suspicious of guilds that cold-invite without knowing anything about you. If you want to find a guild, check your server’s forums and try asking in general chat, either on the fleet or one of the lower level worlds. Also, if you click with a group member who’s in a guild, you can ask them if it’s recruiting.

To create your own guild, you need four players in a group and 5,000 credits. You then go to the guild registrar on the fleet or your capitol world (Coruscant or Dromund Kaas), pick a name for your guild, and pay the fee. The leader of the group will become the leader of the new guild.

Once you join a guild, a marker of how many people (including yourself) are active at the moment will appear above your chat window. Click on it to see who’s active, along with other stuff about the guild. You can only join one guild per character, and many guilds don’t like you to have other characters in different guilds, but there's nothing stopping you from having different characters in different guilds.

Before you leave your starter planet, you’ll probably pick up a heroic mission. We’ve discussed these under missions, but now it’s time to actually do one. If you see someone in chat saying “LFG”, this stands for “looking for group” (LF2M, means “looking for 2 more”). This is the standard procedure for finding groups for heroic missions. Rather than typing out the name of the mission over and over, people frequently link the mission’s name by shift-clicking on its name in the mission tracker. (You can also do this with items you’re trying to trade).

To invite someone to your group, right click their name in chat or their portrait if you have them targeted and click “invite to group”. They can then accept or decline. By default, the person who started the group becomes the leader, who has the power to add more people to the group or to remove current members. To remove someone (or promote them to leader), right-click on their portrait and select the appropriate option.

Once your group is together, you can start your heroic mission. Generally, the same common courtesy applies as when you’re just running around. Be polite, and you should get along just fine.

A lot of heroic missions take place in instanced areas. You might have already seen these as you wander around questing. They’re some sort of entrance, such as a doorway, the opening of a cave, or a gap in some rocks, with a glowy field across them. If the field is green, that means that you can go in. If it’s red, you can’t, and if it’s purple, there’s nothing for you to do in there, but a group member has a quest inside and you can go with them.

Inside an instanced area, you basically have your own little area of the world, just you and your group members. No one who’s not grouped with you can come in. Your class quests usually take place in an instance, as well as at least one stage of most heroic missions. Once you’re inside an instance, there should be some popup text that says “entering story area. Owner: name” The owner is the person who’s quest is officially progressing in the instance. HOWEVER, in nearly every case, everyone who has the quest at the appropriate stage can progress inside the instance, even if someone else owns it. The exception to this is class story quests, which have to be done individually for everyone in the group.

The instance owner is also the only person who can “reset” an instance, thereby nullifying everything that’s happened inside. Times when this happens are few and far between, but it does happen. To do this, the owner right-clicks on their portrait and selects "reset instance"

Before you leave your starter world, you’ll acquire a companion. These are similar to the pets found in many other games: computer-controlled (mostly) characters who follow you around, assist you in combat, and, later, can build you armor and weapons. In SWTOR, your companions are more than just pets, however. They’re characters who have their own stories that tie into yours, and you can find out more about them as you gain their trust.

Companions will follow you automatically, and attack when you attack. They will never start fights themselves, unless you tell them to. You can control their actions through their quickbar, which is by default on the bottom left of your screen. However, it's in a collapsed form, so if you want to see the rest of it, click on the little "+" symbol on the top right of it. The keybinds for their abilities are ctrl + 1, ctrl + 2, etc. Obviously, you can change these just like any other keybinds, but your companions have at least decent AI, so you shouldn’t need to micromanage them too much.

Sometimes your companions shout things as they’re fighting, so don’t be surprised by this. Eventually, you’ll have more than one companion (as of this writing you can acquire a maximum of 8), but you can only use one at a time. To change which companion is with you, open the companion window by using the “N” key or from the bar at the top of the screen (it’s near the middle, with an icon of a diamond). From there, you can summon any of the companions you currently have with you, as well as manage your crew skills (which we’ll talk about later). You can do this in most places, but there are a few missions later on where you have to have one companion in particular with you, and the game will tell you if that’s the case.

To dismiss your companion, right click on their portrait next to their quickbar. From there, select “dismiss companion” This will send them away till you call them back. While this can be useful on occasion, the game is designed around you having your companion with you, so you probably should have them with you unless you’re craving a challenge. Another option available when you right-click is “sell junk”. This will tell your companion to sell all the useless items you’re carrying with you. However, you can’t use the companion or summon another one until they come back (it takes around a minute). Still, it’s great if you’re in the middle of an enemy base and your inventory is full.

One thing that may not be immediately obvious is that your companions need gear just like you do. You can check their codex entry to find out what exactly they need (special mention goes to droids, who take a completely different set of armor than players, with the exception of weapons) and what their main stat is (it will be aim, cunning, strength, or willpower), but you need to keep up with it to function at peak efficiency. You can get companion gear the same way you get your own, but a lot of quests also reward companion-specific gear.

It’s really hard to keep all of your companions geared, though you’re certainly welcome to try. I’d recommend focusing on the one or two you use most often. A special note is that some companions use the same armor weight and mainstat as you, so they can wear your hand-me-downs. Items that are bound to you can also be used by your companions.

Lots of people (quite possibly yourself included), have a specific look in mind for your character. Maybe in your mind, your Consular should wear a fancy dress with shoulder-length gloves. Or, maybe, your Inquisitor needs a crop top and a lot of pointy accessories. In any case, you might think this is a lost cause. After all, you have to keep your gear up to date, and not everything you find will look like your dream outfit. That’s where modifiable (usually called moddable) gear comes in. This is the stuff that can be improved to keep up with your level. You can also dye it to a color scheme that you prefer.

You get your first moddable item around level 10. (It should be a main hand weapon. Jedi and Sith, this is where you get your lightsabers!) Along with it, you’ll get some modifications (mods) to put into it. You can do this using a mod table or simply ctrl + right-clicking on the item. Just click on the mod to swap it in or out. When you’re finished, hit apply to save what you did. Note that there is a credit fee to pull modifications out of gear. If you don’t do this, the mod is destroyed when you overwrite it with another one. However, unless you plan to use the mod for something else, you don’t need to pull it out just to put in a better one.

There are many different types of modifications for your gear, and I’m not going to bother typing out a long explanation when I’ve found an absolutely amazing one (with pictures!). Here’s a link to the article. The sight that posted it, tor-fashion.com, is also a great resource, showing off all the adaptive and modifiable armors currently available in the game, as well as having sections for speeders, weapons, and mini-pets (little animals or droids that follow you along and passively observe your adventures). The site curators do an amazing job, and I’d suggest you check it out.

The most important part about modifying gear is that you need to keep your mods current! You should be replacing them pretty frequently, and if they’re more than five levels out of date, you’ve got a problem. You can get mods of all types except dyes from quest rewards, commendation vendors, removing them from other moddable armor, and crafting (which we’ll get to in a minute).

You should be almost finished with your first planet by now. The official level to do this is 10, but I’ve seen it done as low as 8 (not that this is necessarily recommended). By now, you’ll have a modifiable weapon, a companion, an intro to your story, and hopefully some idea of how to play your class. You’ll be given a quest to hop on a shuttle to your faction’s fleet on your way to their capitol world. Wave goodbye as you go. From here, things get even more complicated- and interesting.

The shuttle will drop you off on your faction’s fleet. This is the most common area for max level characters to hang out, since you can get just about everything there. The main level of the station where you arrive has four quadrants with the widest variety of vendors and services you’ll find anywhere in the game. At the center is a cantina with an elevator to the VIP lounge. This is an area exclusive to players who bought the collectors’ edition of the game or saved up the million (yes, I said a million) credits to buy a wristband.

There are also elevators to hangers for players that have ships, the cartel bazaar, which is another place to hang out, mission areas, and a speeder you can take to the other two ships on the fleet. These aren’t nearly as impressive, though. One is a launching place for endgame operations, while the other has a couple of higher-level flashpoint missions. They’re both interesting to explore, though, a lot less crowded than the main fleet, and there’s even a museum hidden on one.

One thing to realize is that the fleet is one of the few places where I don’t encourage you to take every quest available to you. There’s a ton of them, and a lot of them come up daily or weekly, making it so that you’d quickly go crazy trying to do all of them every time they’re there. Not to say you shouldn’t do any of them, just pick and choose ones that grant rewards for stuff you actually want to do.

By now, you’ve probably noticed that some conversation options reward you with something called “affection” with your companions, while others deduct it. Affection is simply how much your companion likes you, measured in points, of which you can have up to ten thousand. You can figure out what kinds of conversation choices they like by observation and by checking their codex entry.

If you don't use a particular companion much or if they just don't agree with you most of the time, you can still raise their affection by giving them gifts. Companion gifts are a specific item type, that come in green, blue, and purple qualities, have five levels, and many different categories. As with most items, green is the least effective, while purple is the rarest and most effective. Rank one companion gifts are designed to be used on companions between 0 and 2,000 affection, rank two between 2,000 and 4,000, etc. After you leave these ranges, you encounter diminishing returns until the affection stops entirely. Additionally, each companion will only like certain categories. For example, a militaristic companion might like weapons, a patriotic one would prefer the appropriate faction's memorabilia, and a rascal might like underworld goods. You can see your summoned companion's reaction to a gift in the gift's tooltip, and you can get general guidelines in the codex and in numerous guides. It's really less complicated than it sounds.

What benefits does having high affection give you? First, it makes your companions more efficient and likely to succeed in crafting and crew skills, which I’ll get to later. The second is that it unlocks bonus quests that revolve around that companion and their personal storyline. (There are also achievements and small bonuses for reaching ten thousand affection and completing the storylines)

The quests usually just take the form of conversations in a cantina or on your personal starship. Occasionally they’ll take you to a planet for a quest. They are gated both by level/story progression and affection, so you have to be high enough in both to unlock them.

Assuming you’re level ten when you hit the fleet (and you should be), one of the first quests you see will direct you to your advanced class trainer. There’s also one of these on the next planet you visit, so if you miss them, don’t worry. Your advanced class trainer is used once and once only during the game: when you select your advanced class.

Advanced classes are the gateway to everything combat related after level ten. Around a third of the abilities you gain after now will be specific to your advanced class, the combat roles you can fulfill are different, your weapons might change, and in one case, even the armor weight you can wear changes. However, your story and companions are identical. Your trainer will give you more details about your options.

• Jedi Consulars can become either Jedi Sages (healer or ranged damage, single lightsaber and focus, light armor) or Jedi Shadows (tank or melee/short range damage, double-bladed lightsaber and generator [damage] or shield generator [tank], light armor)
  
• Sith Inquisitors can become either Sith Sorcerers (mirror to Sage) or Sith Assassins (mirror to Shadow)
  
• Jedi Knights can become either Jedi Sentinels (melee damage, two lightsabers, medium armor) or Jedi Guardians (tank or melee damage, single lightsaber and generator [damage] or shield generator [tank], heavy armor)
  
• Sith Warriors can become either Sith Marauders (mirror to Sentinel) or Sith Juggernauts (mirror to Guardian)
  
• Smugglers can become either Gunslingers (ranged damage, two pistols, medium armor) or Scoundrels (healer or melee/short range damage, pistol and scattergun, medium armor)
  
• Imperial Agents can become either Snipers (mirror to Gunslinger, but use a sniper rifle and vibroknife) or Operatives (Mirror to Scoundrel, but use a rifle and vibroknife)
  
• Troopers can become either Commandos (healer or ranged damage, auto cannon and generator, heavy armor) or Vanguards (tank or melee/short range damage, rifle and generator [damage] or shield generator [tank], heavy armor)
  
• Bounty Hunters can become Mercenaries (mirror to Commando, but use dual pistols) or Powertechs (mirror to Vanguard, but use a pistol instead of a rifle)

YOUR ADVANCED CLASS IS PERMANENT. You cannot go back and change it later.

As soon as you select your advanced class, you should see a little icon on your utility bar at the top of the screen start flashing. The icon is of what looks like an upside-down family tree, and when you click on it, you’ll see a ton of icons arranged into three columns/groups. Each column is a different “skill tree”, with every icon representing a skill or talent. A few of them are actual abilities, but most are improvements or changes to abilities you train as normal. For advanced classes able to fill more than one role, two of them will be for damage and the other will be for the other role.

You’ll notice at the bottom right that you’ve been allotted “skill points”. To use them, simply click on the icon you’d like to allot them to. You get one skill point for every level after level 10. In the beginning, you’ll only be able to allot points to the items in the bottom row of each tree. Every time you put five points into a particular tree, the next row of skills will unlock. You should get the top-tier ability at level 45 if you stick all your skill points into one tree until then (though after this, most people start picking a few abilities from other trees). The way you’ve chosen to allot your skill points is often called your build. While hybrid builds that incorporate large amounts from multiple trees do exist, for beginners it’s best if you just choose one tree, at least until you get the feel of it.

Once you’ve decided how to spend your points, hit the “commit” button to apply your choices. Once you’ve committed, the only way to change your skill point decisions is to respec. Respecing is available from a vendor on the fleet, and there’s also a purchasable ability that allows you to do it anywhere (on a cooldown). Subscribers get this for free, but preferred and free-to-play have to pay credits if they want to do it more often than once per week.

So, I’ve mentioned several times that your companions can make stuff for you, so by now you’re probably wondering how to do this. Go to the “crew skills” area of the fleet and take a look at the trainers around there. Each one will have a different skill for your companion to learn. These skills are divided into three categories: crafting skills, which are for the actual making of stuff, mission skills, which are things you send your companions out to do, and gathering skills, which are for picking up stuff on your way around the galaxy and usually also have a mission option.

You can take any skill(s) you want (three for subs, two for preferred, and one for f2p, with the latter two having options to buy more), with the stipulation that you can only have one crafting skill at a time.

The crafting skills are Armormech (for armor for non-force-using characters), Armstech (for guns and non-lightsaber melee weapons), Artifice (for lightsabers and various non-weapon off-hands), Synthweaving (for armor for force-users), cybertech (for earpieces, implants, and the like), and Biochem (for stims, medpacks, and the like). Everyone can also craft one or more types of item modification. The different mission and gathering skills support different crafting skills. The codex entry that you get from interacting with each trainer for the first time will tell you what is suitable.

Every time your companions gather a resource, go on a mission, or craft something, their level of that skill will increase, to a maximum of 400. After that, you can pay a credit fee and level up to 450. (The original cap was 400, but the additional fifty levels came with the Makeb expansion, if you're wondering why)You can order crafting and send companions on missions from the same window you use to summon them. Just click on the icon for the skill you want to utilize and decide what you want to do. To gather a resource in the field (recognizable by a star-like icon on your map), right-click it while you have a companion active. A third way to get crafting resources is to reverse engineer items that you already have, which also has the chance to grant you the ability to craft the item.

The Galactic Trade Network (GTN) is the in-game equivalent of e-bay. You can find nearly anything that isn’t Bind on Pickup here. There are kiosks on the fleet and some of the worlds, though not most. To buy an item, right-click on the kiosk. A window will pop up and you can start looking. If there’s something specific you want, you can just type in the name of it, but if you’d prefer to browse, you can use the filters. At the time I’m writing, however, the “usable by” filter is broken. When your results come up, you can sort them by item name, seller, price, or price per unit by clicking the top of the appropriate column. To buy something, just hit the button on the far right. Your item will arrive in the mail almost immediately.

If you want to sell an item, open up the GTN interface and click on the “sell” tab at the bottom. Click and drag the item you want to sell, then set the price and auction length. You’ll have to pay a small deposit to list it, and there are limits on how many items you can have listed at a time (I believe it’s five for Preferred and F2P, and 50 for subs, though you can buy extra slots from the Cartel Market). If your item doesn’t sell, you’ll get it returned to you, along with your deposit. If it does sell, you’ll get your asking price, minus a commission, in a few hours.

A great deal of the things you’ll see listed on the GTN come from the Cartel Market. You can buy them there, of course, but at some point, they were bought from the Cartel Market (CM). You can always tell if something was originally from the CM by its icon. CM items always have a little silver or gold symbol on their icon that looks like two vertical lines with horizontal curvy ones on top and bottom.

The currency for the CM is Cartel Coins (often called cc, yes, I know it’s another cc), which you buy from the SWTOR website. The exact price-per-unit varies depending on how many you buy at a time, but as a rule of thumb, figure on about 1 USD per 100 cc. Subscribers get at least 500cc free for every month they’re subbed (more if you pay for your sub in larger chunks), and security key users also get a bonus 100.

The shiny gold button that’s probably near the top left of your UI will open the CM. Along the left side of this window are the different categories, which you can browse. Note that items are being added, discounted, and removed all the time, so it pays to check frequently. Among the items sold include unlocks to lift some of the non-sub restrictions, XP boosts, modifiable armor sets (most sets sold on the CM don't have any stats at all til you mod them, and those that do won't have better stats than those you find elsewhere, unless your character is geared poorly) to enhance your character’s appearance, dyes to change your armor’s color, vanity items/fluff, and legacy unlocks (which you can also buy for credits or unlock in other ways if you’re so inclined). Nothing in the CM is necessary to play the game, unless you’re F2P or preferred, in which case you need passes to do operations.

But the most commonly bought item from the CM is the packs. These are gambling packs, which contain a random experience boost, a random rank 5 companion gift, a random rare crafting material, and at least one random rare item not available anywhere else. The more expensive packs will give you more rare items and a better chance at getting a “super rare”. These items run the gamut from simple things like emotes and minipets (which follow you around and passively observe your adventures, activate them by right-clicking their icon in your inventory, then going to the pets tab in your abilities panel) to super-high demand armors that can sell for millions if you don’t want to wear them yourself. These packs can have great stuff in them, but remember, they’re random. You never know what you’ll get. You can always sell stuff you don’t want (after its temporary bind expires), or sell the whole pack itself and use the money to buy what it is you’re after.

But what is in the packs to begin with? How do you keep track of what you have? And now that you’ve bought a ton of packs or saved up 5 million credits to get Reven’s armor (which is actually a conservative estimate, I’ve seen the mask alone go for more than that), do you have to do it again for every other character? To answer these questions, there’s a system called collections. To get to collections, you open up the CM and click on the “collections” button in the upper right. This will open a new window with a ton of categories for all weapons, armor, pets, speeders, and toys on the CM and the packs, as well as a couple of others.

What can you do here? First, you can look at the contents of packs and preview everything but the toys and emotes by clicking “view details”, then opting to preview them. (Incidentally, you can also preview other items you find by ctrl + left-clicking on the item’s icon.) Second, you can see what armor sets you’ve already collected (hence the name). To collect an item or set, you need to have it bound to you. If it’s an armor set, you need to have the entire set bound to one character. Once you’ve collected a set, the coolest/most useful part of collections shows up.

On the character that initially collected that item, you can get unlimited copies of it (bound on pickup) for free! This is great if you need to sell things to make extra room in your inventory, if you want to dress your companion up too, or if you lose something by mistake. Far more useful, however, is that another character of yours can pay a cartel coin fee to unlock that item or set for your entire legacy/account (haven't been able to figure out which, yet), which give every character involved the same unlimited access.

As an example, I have the Classic Preceptor’s set for my sage. Since I have the entire set, I’ve collected it, therefore enabling my sage to get a copy for her companion too. But if I decide I want my assassin to wear the set instead, I can pay the fee to let her get copies of it too, as well as all my other characters.

Roleplaying is pretty much only found on RP servers. The gist of it is that you talk like your character would talk and act like your character would act, rather than how you would talk and act. Not everyone is this sort of thing, but if you are, it’s a ton of fun. FYI, I love roleplay, so sorry if I get a little carried away here

The how-tos of making a compelling character and interesting stories are a little beyond the scope of this guide, but there are a few basics that everyone who plans to attempt rp should know.

First, the most popular places to RP in the game are the main cantinas on each faction’s fleet, in and around the promenade on Nar Shadda, and various places on each of the starter worlds. However, to truly find consistent RP with the same people over and over again, you should probably try to find an rp guild. Check on the fleet general chat or ask other roleplayers if their guilds are recruiting.

Second, roleplay in this game is generally conducted in the /say channel, as well as with emotes. Some things your character does will be covered by the included emotes (click on the waving man next to the chat window), but for a lot of things, you’ll need to customize them. To make a custom emote, type /e thing you want to do. It will automatically insert your character’s name in place of /e. For example if Joe Sith types /e takes a sip of his drink, then chat would read “Joe takes a sip of his drink.” Obviously, custom emotes aren’t animated. If you rp cross-faction, note that while /say goes cross-faction, emotes don’t. If you need to say something out of character during roleplay, enclose what you’re saying in double parenthesis ((like this)).

Third, there are a couple of major no-nos in rp. As long as you don’t do these, the rest should be able to come on its own. Avoid metagaming. This is when you use information that you know out of character (OOC) to inform what you do in-character (IC). For example, you as a player may know that the person you’re walking up to is named Jane Jedi because it says so on her nameplate. But nameplates are a game mechanic, so there’s no way for Joe Sith to know what Jane’s name is, or for him to know for sure that she’s a Jedi. Another example of metagaming is acting like lower level characters are weaker than you in-character, just because they’re lower level.

Godmodding is another major rp sin. This is when you give your character ridiculous levels of power, such as being invincible, instant-death abilities, etc. A subtler form is refusing to allow your character to ever be attacked, get hurt, or lose (though you should always retain control of your character, and you are under no obligation to let your character get hurt if you don’t want to). Example: Joe Sith manages to dodge, block, or outright ignore every attack that comes his way, and completely wipes the floor with anyone who tries to stand up to him, even those who should be much more powerful than him in-character.

Akin to godmodding is powerplaying, which is where you take control of another player’s character. This includes attacks that automatically hit, character reactions that are assumed, and anything else that doesn’t take into account that there are other people roleplaying with you. Example: “Joe Sith grabs Jane Jedi and starts kissing her. Though at first she resists, she soon relaxes in his embrace.” If Joe wants to kiss Jane, his player has two options. The more common method is to say something like “Joe Sith tries to grab Jane Jedi and kiss her”. This leaves Jane’s player open to decide how Jane will react. Another option is for Joe’s player to send Jane’s an out of character /whisper to ask if it’s ok for him to kiss her.

There are a couple of buttons near the minimap that were probably faded out until level ten. One of these has a symbol of your faction on it, and this button puts you in que for player vs. player (PvP). When you click on it, you’ll be prompted to select warzones or arenas.

Warzones take place between two teams of eight, usually of opposing factions, but if only one side is queing, sometimes you’ll hear the narration announce that this is a tactical simulation, and face off against your own faction.

There are five different warzone maps:

• Novare Coast is based on capturing guns. Right-click on the console to capture it for your team, then the guns will fire at the enemy team’s bunker. You need to have at least two guns captured to do any damage, and obviously it goes faster if you have all three. More than one person can work on capturing a gun to speed it up. Usually, people refer to the three objectives as east, west, and south.
  
• Alderaan Civil War is also based on capturing guns. Right-click on the consoles to capture them for your team. You start doing damage to the enemy team’s ship as soon as you have one, but to win, you’ll usually have to have two of the three captured for most of the round. Usually people refer to the three guns as grass, snow, and mid. Snow obviously is the one with more snow.
  
• Huttball is based on grabbing the ball from the center of the playing field and getting it through the various obstacles to the other team’s goal for a point. The first team to reach 6 points (or the team with the most points at the end of 15 minutes) wins. If you have the hutball, you have to walk pretty slowly, but you can throw it to another player using an ability that becomes available the first time you do hutball. It acts like an aoe, just select the area you want to throw it to and click. As of update 2.7, there are two maps for it, each with different hazards, including acid pits, flame jets, and multiple levels.
  
• Voidstar is done in two phases, which can happen in either order, depending on which side your team ends up on. In the attack phase, you try to plant bombs on a series of doors, leading up to a datacore your team is trying to hack into. In the defense phase, you try to keep the opposing team from planting the bombs, and defuse them if they manage to do so. The team that gets the furthest during their attack phase wins, and if both teams make it to the datacore, then it’s whoever did it the fastest.
  
• Ancient Hypergate also has two parts: there are two hypergates for the teams to capture, but they also have to power them with orbs from a bunker in the center. Doing both gives points, and whoever fills up their points meter first wins. To make things even crazier, periodically the hypergates will give off an energy surge. If you’re not inside the shielded bunker when this happens, you die. The surge also resets the portal possession.

If you die during a warzone, you’ll revive back inside a safe area. Frequently a forcefield will prevent you from leaving, but when it goes down, you can head back out and fight. Repair costs from PVP warzone activity are virtually non-existent, so don’t be afraid to attack away. Also, while normal medpacks and stims do work in warzones, they’re not as efficient as the tailor-made ones you can buy from the pvp vendor.

Arenas are a good bit simpler. Though there are several maps, the rules are the same for all of them: 4 versus 4, three rounds. Once you die, you remain dead for the rest of the round, but can participate in the next one. Last team standing wins each round, best two out of three.

You’ve probably done at least one heroic mission on your starting planet, but the majority of grouping up you’ll be doing will probably come in the form of flashpoints. Flashpoints are designed for four players (except the first one, which can be done with as few as two) and done in instanced areas. With a few exceptions, all the flashpoints can be accessed from your faction’s fleet.

Flashpoints are repeatable an unlimited number of times, with no reset time. However, if you’re free-to-play or preferred, you can only do three per week. Generally, they’re structured such that your group fights a large number of easy-ish enemies (often called trash) before meeting up with a boss. Boss fights are harder than trash fights, and many bosses have particular abilities or quirks, usually called mechanics. An example would be a boss that stands in the center of a large room and periodically engulfs one quadrant or another of the room in flames. There are usually anywhere from three to six bosses in a flashpoint. Many flashpoints also have one or more bonus missions, which sometimes culminate in a bonus boss, which is just like normal bosses, except completely optional.

Apart from fun and to get more xp, the main reason to do flashpoints is gear drops. Nearly every flashpoint has a set of gear associated with it. Much of this gear is moddable, and the pieces that are come equipped with very good stats, so doing flashpoints is a great way to improve your gear. The gear usually drops off of the boss fights, and certain pieces may only drop off specific fights. Check out TorHead.com for more info.

You can look for flashpoint groups the same way you look for heroic mission groups, but most people use the group finder (GF). GF is a tool that will match a group for you, will all the appropriate roles filled, while you do something else, then allows you to transport there from wherever you are.

GF is activated by clicking on the icon of people next to your minimap. Select your role at the left of the window (which I’ll talk about in the next section, but is irrelevant in the first flashpoint you encounter). It will automatically search for groups for all flashpoints you’re eligible for, but you can uncheck some manually if you want. However, you do get bonus commendations for leaving them all checked. If you only want to do the flashpoint all the way through, uncheck the “match with in-progress groups” button (this does not carry any sort of penalty, but you may find a group faster if you leave it on).

Once you hit “join queue”, you’ll be placed in line for a group. Sometimes the wait is hours, sometimes it’s instant, and it all depends on what role you fill and how many people want to do a flashpoint right then. You can do other things while you’re queued, but you can’t queue for PvP, and if the queue pops while you’re in some sort of interface (like a space mission), you may miss it, causing you to be removed from the que and have to start again at the back. Once you have a group matched, hit “accept” to join the group. You can either travel to the flashpoint instantly, or travel later. If you opt for the later, you can still use the instant travel by going back to the GF window.

So, you’ve been matched with a group, and you’re in the flashpoint. You may be wondering “What the heck do I do now?” There’s a certain etiquette to doing group content, which can be confusing if you’re not familiar with them. By the way, all of these apply to doing heroics too.

First off, and if you can get this one down, most other things will be easy: COMMUNICATE! Let people know if you’re new to that flashpoint, if you’re new to your role, if you want to spacebar through conversations, if you have to leave your computer for a brief amount of time (called going AFK [away from keyboard]). Be polite, too.

Other things that are generally expected include keeping pace with the group, not doing group content if you don’t have enough time to finish it, not standing in enemy AoEs (if it wasn’t on the floor when the fight started, don’t stand in it), not breaking crowd controls (a good group should tell you if they’re going to cc someone) having at least a basic knowledge of how to perform your role, and respecting the loot conventions.

The last two require a bit of explanation. In SWTOR (and many other MMOs, as well as a modified version in some single-player games), there is what’s often referred to as the “holy trinity” system, which consists of tank, healer, and damage.

• The tank is the default leader of the group, though by no means the only person who can lead, particularly if someone else is more experienced. Their job can be briefly described as ‘damage taker’. Their job is to get the enemies to attack them (called aggroing) by building up threat, and to keep them off the other players. Threat is exactly what it sounds like, a measure of how much of a threat your character poses to the NPCs. The easiest way to build threat is to attack an enemy, but there are a couple of abilities that tank classes get, called taunts, that will give large bursts of threat. Your tooltips should tell you what attacks build the most threat.
  
• Healers are usually the most fragile group members, and often end up leading if the tank can’t or doesn’t want to. Their job is simple: keep everyone alive. They use their heals to replenish the health of the other players, and themselves too if they need it. They usually stand a little apart from the rest of the group to avoid AoEs and have a clearer vision of everyone else, though there a few fights later on where this technique doesn’t work. A healer’s priority is to keep themselves alive (though not necessarily at full health) first, then heal the tank, then heal the damage dealers, then top themselves off. As a healer, you should also make an effort to avoid aggroing enemies, since it makes the tank’s job harder, though this isn’t always avoidable.
  
• Damage dealers are frequently called DPS, though this is a misnomer, since DPS actually stands for Damage per Second, which is a way of measuring a damage dealer’s performance. Regardless, people still call them DPS (maybe because it’s shorter?). They’re usually the lowest tier of respect in flashpoint groups, partially because they’re so easy to replace (a lot of people play dps), and partially because of the truly bad/rude players, the perception is that a high proportion play dps. Not that people will automatically be rude to you, you just might have to work a bit harder to earn respect. Anyway, the damage dealer’s job is even simpler than the healer’s: hit the enemies till they die. The same kill order you follow solo applies here, too. First kill the weaks, then the standards, then the strongs/silvers, then the elites/golds, then the champs/bosses. If there’s more than one option, go for the one the tank or another dps is hitting.

Generally, the groupfinder will match up a tank, a healer, and two damage dealers, which is standard. As of update 2.6, there are also Tactical Flashpoints that can be done successfully with any group composition.

When plain loot (credits and junk items) drops when you’re in a group, anyone can collect it, and the stuff is spread around the group. If the loot is more valuable than that, however, you’ll have to roll for it. A small window will pop up, allowing you to look at the item and select your preference, which goes in this order of priority:

1. Need is for items that you need, for you, right now. Need is not for companion items, stuff for alts, stuff you can use in a few levels, stuff you want to sell, etc. It carries the highest priority, and if more than one person needs, random number generators will decide who gets it.

2. Greed is for items that you want for almost any other purpose: selling, giving to companions or alts, etc. Disassemble shares a priority with greed, and if you win a roll on disassemble, the item will be destroyed and you’ll get crafting materials instead.

3. You can pass by clicking out of the window. If this is the case, you won’t get the item unless everyone else hits pass too.

If something that you would normally greed for catches your eye, you can always ask if the group minds if you need, but ask before you do it! If you constantly need on items you don’t actually need, you’ll be branded a “loot ninja”, possibly get kicked from groups, and probably be put on people’s ignore lists.

At level 15, you’ll get a message that announces that you’ve unlocked something called legacy. The first thing it will prompt you to do is pick a legacy name. This functions as a last name/surname for all your characters on that server. As long as it doesn’t violate any of the naming rules (copyrighted, defamatory, drug references, etc.), then you can use anything you want, since legacy names aren’t unique to players. If you’re F2P or preferred, no one can see your legacy name unless you purchase an unlock, but if you do (or if you’re a subscriber), you have three options. You can display it as a surname, for example “Bob Smith”. Or, you can display it as a legacy title, which goes under your character’s name, for example “Bob”, then underneath that “The Smith Legacy”. Or you can do both at once.

If you look on the bar at the top of your screen, you’ll see that there’s another button lit up, that wasn’t there before. It’s in the shape of a shield, with what looks like a family tree on it. You guessed right, this is the legacy window. If you open it up, you’ll see a blank field with all your current characters on the left. Drag and drop them into the field to form a family tree if you feel like it. In the first few months of the game, this is all legacy did. But in update 1.2, they added a ton of new features, and have been contributing to them ever since.

One of these features is legacy unlocks. These are bonuses that you can get for every character by getting so far with a particular one. For example, getting a Jedi Knight to the end of their class story unlocks an extra-powerful version of their Force Sweep ability that all your current and future characters in that legacy can now use during their heroic moment.

Another major legacy unlock is for species, by leveling a character of a particular species to 50. An example would be that after reaching level 50 with a Sith Pureblood Warrior, you would now be able to make any future character, of any class, a Pureblood if you want to. This is one of the few unlocks that you can buy with cartel coins, and there’s a credit option as well.

A third major kind of legacy unlock relates to companions. Completing all available conversations with a particular companion gives all your characters a permanent boost to your presence stat, as well as other things.

Character Perks are different from legacy unlocks in that they only apply to the character you buy them on. They’re usually convenience items, almost all of them have a cartel coin or credit option, and they’re definitely worth a look. Permanent experience boosts and unlocks that allow you to move faster at earlier levels are some of the most popular.

Achievements are the last and largest category you’ll find in legacy. You’ve probably gotten some achievements already. These work like achievements in any other game, tracking what you’ve done. You can inspect other people’s achievements by targeting them, right-clicking on their portrait, selecting other, and then choosing “inspect achievements”. Some of the achievements you’d have to try extremely hard not to get, while others are very difficult, and there are even a few hidden ones. Most just carry bragging rights, but there are a few that reward legacy titles (which display under your character name and over your guild name, in addition to regular titles) or other things.

When you finish up your class missions on your second planet, you’ll get your own ship. No longer will you have to rely on shuttles to get where you want to go: you’ll be able to travel to any planet at will. Also, a lot of future companion conversations will happen on your ship. There are a few limits, namely that you have to pay a fee to travel to any planet except the starter worlds or your faction’s fleet, and that just because you can travel to a planet doesn’t mean you should. The enemies will still be the appropriate level for the planet, so you probably shouldn’t jump around to planets that are way ahead of your level.

You also get a new companion! Your ship droid is the same for all players on your faction, and though he isn’t combat capable, he can be used as a healer companion. I’ve never tried this, so I can’t testify to how well it works, but I’ve heard that it’s reasonably well. He can also be used as an extra crafter or mission runner for your crew skills.

Occasionally, a mission will tell you to use your ship’s holoterminal, which in lore functions kind of like Skype, or the intercom, which will gather all your companions for some sort of on-ship meeting. These are only accessible when a mission tells you to use them.

Subscribers and preferred players (although not f2p) can also access their cargo hold from here. The cargo hold is basically a ton of extra inventory slots for you to store all the stuff you’re not using. You can’t pull it out in the field, but you can access it from your ship and the fleet, as well as a couple of the planets. (Also, you can get to the cargo hold from the fleet even before you have your ship). It’s a great place to store extra orange gear, stuff for your alts, etc. One thing to note is that you can still craft with supplies from your cargo hold, so you don’t have to carry all your materials with you all the time.

To actually go somewhere in your ship, find the cockpit and click on the galaxy map. This will open up a map of all the places you can go, as well as telling a bit about each place, the recommended level range, and cost to travel there. Just click and go. The galaxy awaits!

Another terminal you’ll see in the cockpit, near the galaxy map, is a space mission terminal. This is for the solo pve space missions. They’re done on a rail, which means that your ship keeps moving forward, and you move from side to side and shoot. It’s pretty fun in my opinion, but try it out and see for yourself.

To do a space mission, first pick up the mission from the fleet command terminal in your ship. You can actually do the space mission without it, but it will reward pitiful XP, so it’s worth it. Then, go to the galaxy map and find the right mission. Once you’re inside, move your ship by moving your mouse cursor, shoot by left-clicking the target, and launch missiles by right-clicking. You only have a limited number of missiles, so be careful.

You can buy upgrades for your ship for credits from vendors in the spaceport on many of the worlds. These include shields, armoring, extra missiles, etc. The fanciest stuff is only available from a vendor on the fleet for fleet commendations (which you earn from doing space missions). Note that while the earliest space missions can be done without any upgrades whatsoever, most of the later ones will need some upgrades. The mission request or the screen to travel to the mission itself should let you know what’s necessary.

Eventually, when you go to your class trainer to get your new skills, you’ll see something called “speeder piloting rank 1” there. This should be at level 15 if you’re a subscriber (though you can buy a character perk to make it 10) and 25 if you’re preferred or f2p. It’s kind of expensive, but don’t be put off. Buy it if you can swing the credits and I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that I’ve never met anyone who regretted it.

Speeder piloting allows you to do just that. You’ll still have to buy a speeder from a vendor on the fleet or a planet (I believe there’s vendors on Nar Shadda, Tattooine, Quesh, Hoth, and probably a few others). You can also buy them from the Cartel Market or the GTN and occasionally BioWare sends them to subscribers as rewards for being a paying customer. At first, you can only use Rank 1 speeders, which increase your movement speed by 90%. Later, you can buy two more ranks, bringing your movement speed increase to 110%.

Once you have a speeder, you need to learn it by right-clicking on it in your inventory. After this, you can use it like an ability, and the speeder itself will disappear from your invantory.

As you continue on your leveling path, there a few things worth noting. The first is that as you level, everything (repair costs, training new skills, using the outpost speeders, etc.) gets more expensive. Fortunately, the enemies and missions start to pay more too, but it’s still worth noting.

Second, starting on the first planet after you get your ship, there’s something called a bonus series. Bonus series usually show up as a mission in a spaceport when you’re leaving the planet after you’ve finished the class story and world missions. It’s not clear exactly what triggers the quest to start, but it’s probably level. Anyway, the bonus series is anywhere from half to three-quarters as long as the main planetary quest line, and has its own side missions and heroics. You don’t have to do the bonus series any more than you have to do anything else besides the class story, but it’s there if you’re still underleveled when you’re leaving the planet. Most bonus series start immediately after the main planet stories, but a few (Alderaan and Nar Shadda come to mind) are meant to be done several levels later.

Third, sometimes you’ll encounter a super powerful, very large enemy in the middle of the world. Almost always, this is in the form of a giant droid or creature of some sort. This is called a world boss, will be labeled as such, and is designed to be taken with a group. If you feel like taking one, check the level, and then if you’re high enough, look around the fleet or the world for a group.

Fourth, you can work out your own ideas of how leveled you want to be before you leave a planet. If you find yourself not ready to go on to the next one, you can do bonus series, flashpoints, pvp, GSF, regular space missions, or whatever else gives you xp. Some people will even ditch world missions entirely and just do their class missions and one or more of the other options. Level however is fun for you!

Unless you do something unusual, you’ll probably finish your class story sometime after level 48, with 50 being the recommended level. After this, the progression of the main game story is somewhat unclear, but most places will tell you to head to Ilum, followed by the Black Hole on Corillia, followed by Section X on Belsavis, then Makeb, then CZ-198, and finally to Oricon. Although your class story ends pretty much after level fifty (and Bioware has currently stated that there are no plans to add any more individual class stories, though we can always hope), the story of your faction continues. Also, there are plenty of other things to do after you hit 55: pvp, flashpoints, operations, dailies, GSF, datacron hunting, roleplay…

Daily quests are the bread and butter of post-55 content. These are quests that reset every day, similar to heroic missions. For example, if I do the quest “Countering Eco-Terrorism” and turn it in on Monday, then on Tuesday, I can do it again. The quests don’t reset if you’re currently on them, though, so if I only got halfway through “Countering Eco-Terrorism”, then I don’t have to start over the next day. There are daily areas on Corellia (take the shuttle to the right of the spaceport to the Black Hole), Ilum, Belsavis (both in the world itself and in “Section X”, which you can reach from the orbital station), Makeb, CZ-198, and Oricon.

Why do the same missions over and over, you ask? The main reason is for money. Daily quests give out lovely credit rewards, as well as endgame commendations (which you use to buy endgame gear) and gear drops, which you can use or sell. Most daily areas also have a weekly quest associated with them that asks you to complete a list of dailies for extra rewards. Once you’ve done an area’s set of dailies a couple of times, you should be able to make decent credits in not much time. Then you can use them to buy all those cool looking pets, gear, speeders, and toys that you’ve been coveting for the last 45 levels.

The three main types of group content that you encounter post fifty are PvP, Hard Mode Flashpoints, and Operations. PvP at 55 is divided into unranked and ranked ques. Unranked is basically the same as leveling PvP, except instead of bolstering your stats to the same level as everyone else, it bolsters you to a base level of gear. Eventually, you should save up enough PvP commendations to buy armor that is better than the bolster.

Ranked PvP is functionally the same as unranked, except that the game keeps track of your win-loss ratio and calculates a rating based on that. Leaving a match before it’s completed counts as a loss. Having a high rating doesn’t do much except give you bragging rights, but recently it’s been announced that people who have attained certain ratings will get various rewards at the end of the current season (ranging from titles to exclusive mounts), so there may be even more incentives in the future.

Hard Mode Flashpoints are basically the leveling flashpoints rebalanced for max level players. This is accomplished by increasing the HP and damage of the enemies and adding additional mechanics to boss fights. The ones added before update 2.0 are designed to be done any time after level 50, while the more recent ones are definitely for level 55. All of them have a minimum recommended gear rating, which you can calculate by checking the rating on each individual piece and averaging it. (For those of you who are a little rusty on the math, add up the rating on all pieces of armor you’re currently wearing, and then divide by the number of pieces). Hard mode flashpoints are available in the group finder.

Operations (called raids by a lot of people, especially veterans of World of Warcraft) are the same basic idea as flashpoints, except that they’re done with larger groups (there are eight-person and sixteen-person options), they’re harder, they require better gear, and they generally take longer to complete. Most also have Hard and Nightmare modes available, which are, as you expect, harder, and even harder. The eight-person modes of the more basic operations are available in the groupfinder, but for the more advanced ones, you’ll have to find a group yourself. If you intend to do a lot of operations, you’d be wise to find a guild that does a lot of PvE, since it’s way easier to manage the sort of coordination they require with voice chat and teambuilding.

One thing to note about operations is that they have a weekly lockout. This means that once you’ve defeated a particular boss of a particular operation on a particular difficulty, you’re not allowed to do it again until the lockout ends. I think it resets on Tuesdays.

Now that you’ve gotten to level 55, tried out some endgame stuff, maybe joined a guild, maybe not, what do you do?

If you’re having fun with your character just doing endgame stuff, then by all means, go ahead doing just that. But one of the things that many, many people just love to do in this game is create alternate characters. I’d actually urge you to give every class at least a try. And if you want to replay a class story that you loved, you can often get a completely different experience by doing opposite gender, opposite advanced class, and opposite alignment. For example, if your first Smuggler was a Light-Sided male Scoundrel, try a Dark-Sided female Gunslinger.

Whether you’re in the “got one 55 and I’m done” group or the “stick around for years” group, you’ll probably be ready to move on to a different game eventually. That day may be near or far, but whenever it is, I hope you’ve had a positive experience with SWTOR, and that you can use what you’ve learned in-game and from this guide to help you in your future gaming.