Hi there,

 

I am new to SWTOR and MMOs in general but have played a lot of KOTOR - have lots of questions and learning a lot while leveling in game and on the forums with my current level 37 sith assassin. There is one thing that is bothering me though:

 

I am playing through the class missions on chapter 1 and am currently on Alderaan. I have always played the bonus missions on planets such as Balmorra/Nar Shaddaa/Tatooine. Even when some of them were too higher a level for me, I battled through and completed each planet and all the heroics before moving on. This has made me fairly high level for the class quests which I am completing, they are always coloured green in my mission list. I am just finished the class quests on Alderaan now and am at level 37 - no doubt the bons series is about to start and that will take me at least another couple of levels higher when im finally finished the whole planet. My worry is that I will end up going to the next class quests (presumably to fight Zash but no spoilers please!) when I am too high level and they will be below me! - be grey in the mission screen - and therefore I will get no XP etc - the old +6 xp for the missions.

 

Is this the case? Shall I play some more class quests before doing the bonus series??? Is it normal? I don't really want to slow down my leveling by doing the class quests for +6 xp when i could return to my bonus series on Alderaan later...

 

Opinions?? Thanks for your help

Edited January 3, 2013 by jayperringo

Hi there,

 

I am new to SWTOR and MMOs in general but have played a lot of KOTOR - have lots of questions and learning a lot while leveling in game and on the forums with my current level 37 sith assassin. There is one thing that is bothering me though:

 

I am playing through the class missions on chapter 1 and am currently on Alderaan. I have always played the bonus missions on planets such as Balmorra/Nar Shaddaa/Tatooine. Even when some of them were too higher a level for me, I battled through and completed each planet and all the heroics before moving on. This has made me fairly high level for the class quests which I am completing, they are always coloured green in my mission list. I am just finished the class quests on Alderaan now and am at level 37 - no doubt the bons series is about to start and that will take me at least another couple of levels higher when im finally finished the whole planet. My worry is that I will end up going to the next class quests (presumably to fight Zash but no spoilers please!) when I am too high level and they will be below me! - be grey in the mission screen - and therefore I will get no XP etc - the old +6 xp for the missions.

 

Is this the case? Shall I play some more class quests before doing the bonus series??? Is it normal? I don't really want to slow down my leveling by doing the class quests for +6 xp when i could return to my bonus series on Alderaan later...

 

Opinions?? Thanks for your help

 

I personally would skip the bonus quests from here out. There is no benefit to being that overleveled. 2-3 levels over makes things easy, 6-7 just means you're missing out on a lot of potential xp by doing severely underleveled quests when you could be doing ones closer to your level.

 

Alderaan's bonus quests are also above the level one would normally finish the class quests on Alderaan. I forget but I think they're around L35 missions.

Had the same problem with my first 50. Did all quests I could find and some pvp too, so most quests were grey-green to me.

 

The Alderaan bonus series starts with lvl 40 quests though - normally you are supposed to visit the planet later again cause there's quite a level gap between the normal quests and the bonus series. I'd recommend doing all the normal quests first and the bonus series later - so you get your companions and progress in the class story faster.

Easy way to tell the difficulty is to notice what color the quests are in your log.

 

Red indicates really hard and most likely you're not meant to do that yet. A lot of the times a story quest branches off into two quests; one red, one yellow. You would do the yellow one/planet first.

 

Orange is still pretty hard but do-able

 

Yellow is on target level

 

Green is easy but you'll still get XP

 

Grey means you won't get any XP because it's way under your level (I believe it's 6 levels under but don't quote me).

 

If you're poor and don't mind grinding out missions for no XP I would say go ahead and breeze through all those grey quests quickly. You can still make some decent credits. That's what I do, I'm usually over leveled and poor from pvp so I don't mind taking an hour or so and blowing through them.

If you want the missions to be hard, make sure you're going to the next planet when you reach the minimum level for that planet. For instance, if the next planet says it's for levels 38-42, when you hit 38 skip all non-story missions and head for that next planet.

 

Of course, that means you'll be skipping content. So you'll have to decide what is more important to you: seeing all the content, or providing yourself a challenge.

Time to start skipping the bonus series. It's a tough call for a completionist, I know, but if you do all the bonus series you will be overlevelled like you are. The bonus series are really there for people who skipped earlier content and need to play catch up, being underlevelled for the next world. You can take consolation in the fact that, as you've probably noticed, the bonus series quests are nearly all horrible grind quests of the "kill X/collect X whatevers" variety, so you're not really missing out much in terms of story.

 

FYI, as was noted above, the Alderaan bonus series does not kick in until after Hoth at level 40+, much the same way that the Nar Shadaa bonus series does not kick in straight away.

Just do your class quest and eventually you will get caught up and get decent exp from it again.

Hi there,

 

I am new to SWTOR and MMOs in general but have played a lot of KOTOR - have lots of questions and learning a lot while leveling in game and on the forums with my current level 37 sith assassin. There is one thing that is bothering me though:

 

I am playing through the class missions on chapter 1 and am currently on Alderaan. I have always played the bonus missions on planets such as Balmorra/Nar Shaddaa/Tatooine. Even when some of them were too higher a level for me, I battled through and completed each planet and all the heroics before moving on. This has made me fairly high level for the class quests which I am completing, they are always coloured green in my mission list. I am just finished the class quests on Alderaan now and am at level 37 - no doubt the bons series is about to start and that will take me at least another couple of levels higher when im finally finished the whole planet. My worry is that I will end up going to the next class quests (presumably to fight Zash but no spoilers please!) when I am too high level and they will be below me! - be grey in the mission screen - and therefore I will get no XP etc - the old +6 xp for the missions.

 

Is this the case? Shall I play some more class quests before doing the bonus series??? Is it normal? I don't really want to slow down my leveling by doing the class quests for +6 xp when i could return to my bonus series on Alderaan later...

 

Opinions?? Thanks for your help

 

The bonus quests for Alderaan don't start until lvl 40, so you have some time for other things if you want to come back to it later. If I were in your position, I would just carry on to the end of Act 1 and then head to Taris. Good luck!

The bonus quests for Alderaan don't start until lvl 40, so you have some time for other things if you want to come back to it later. If I were in your position, I would just carry on to the end of Act 1 and then head to Taris. Good luck!

 

Not only level 40, but the "breadcrumb" mission giver doesn't appear until you finish Chapter 1 and get sent to the Fleet for random no dialog mission turn in/reward.

 

That being said, if you do out level missions, just do the story and move on to the next planet until things even out again. Or blow through a few heroics for the loot rewards if you want also. Either way, if you sub and do most/all content, you're gonna be over leveled but there's ways to have things catch back up. Also, I don't see too much problem with grey class missions... If I'm such a high level that they're grey, I probably don't care much about the experience from those story/heroic missions anyways.

I know it's tempting to do all the quests and see all the story, but I prefer doing it a bit different, first remember that this is MMO and you'll likely be leveling couple of toons, so after the first to planets (starting and capital) do one planet as a whole with all the bonuses and another one only class and main planet quest (or even only a class quest), I realize this way you'll make less money and get less gear but the game will run much faster and will still be challenging, and on the second tour around on the same side, switch planets you do as a whole with those that you already did.

For example:

starting planet (full) -> dromund kaas (full) -> balmora (full) -> nar shada (only class) -> tatooin (full) -> alderan (only class)

and so on and so forth and on another play

starting planet (full) -> dromund kaas (full) -> balmora (only class) -> nar shada (full) -> tatooin (only class) -> alderan (full)

and don't take Quesh into the equation, it's just too short doesn't matter if you do it full or only class on any occasion, it won't make too much difference.

Im sort of in the same boat with my Scoundrel. Im not that over leveled. Im questing with some friends and have just finished outpost Selara which is the second outpost you get too on the Republic side and we are level 31.

 

I always aim to be at least 4 levels over the planets ideal levels. So for Tatooine its usually 24-28.

 

All my missions are green, but I find with the XP Boost that have now been introduced my XP doesnt seem as gimped as it normally would.

If you want the missions to be hard, make sure you're going to the next planet when you reach the minimum level for that planet.

 

alternatively, you could chose to equip crappy gear to make it more challenging, rather than the best gear you've gotten in loot. This will allow you to do all quests. E.g. you could equip yourself with gear 10 levels below your current level

When you finish the story line there are still some level 50 missions on planets but you'll be settling in the gear grind replaying missions and flashpoints. Skip some of the bonus missions and come back to them later for a change of scenery.

 

You're not getting XP anyway, it's already too easy and you're beyond the loot drop level already, just use them to fill out the stiry when you're bored of running the same daily mission for the 100th time.

Plus you can always help the noobs you come across, especially if you're on a PvP server and they're getting ganked by the enemy or if they need a high level to anchor their attack on a World Boss.

On my first character we (my wife and I) did a lot of the bonus quests and were over-leveled most of the time.

 

Since then I have skipped the bonus ones entirely as they really are not very interesting to me. Now I only do the quests I like and I am routinely a couple of levels lower than I was before. I'll usually be 1 level below the recommended level of the planet when I start the next planet.

 

It makes it a bit more of a challenge and I don't have to repeat all of the quests.

On my most recent character, I would play through the planet story quest and class quest.I would also check the gear commendation vendor to see what gear would be useful to me here and count how many comms I would need for them. Once I got the right amount of comms for everything I wanted, I would stop the single quests and focus on the story quests instead. I would also be doing the daily flashpoints and pvp matches. I would get my gear from the comms dropped from the flashpoints and from the quests on planet. I usually end up right at the end of the recommended level for the planet or 1-2 levels above what it mentions with pretty good gear.