Thank you so much this is the answer that I needed. At least it will be worth my time to level up slicing on an alt. Good to know the isotopes can become the bottleneck as well. Much appreciated.

Specifically the premium data spikes, but anything else needed for grade 11 crafting parts as well? I just can’t seem to find a definitive answer and I want to know before I level up slicing on an alt. Any help much appreciated thank you.

I am getting the feeling that while they are a great experience if ops are what you are interested in, it might not be the best use of my time or necessary to actually go through and do all the ops just to watch a few cutscenes (which seem to be already compiled in at least one YouTube video I found). I’m leaning pretty heavily towards just watching the ops parts on YouTube and playing the other parts (basically just oricon section x and the Belsavis imp storyline which I was going to do with my warrior anyway). Seems like I’ll be able to get the story experience I want but not have to dedicate time and effort to getting into a group and doing the ops that could’ve been spent doing other parts of the game I’m more interested in.

I am about to finish up Ilum and wanted to experience the full dread masters story. However, I don’t know anyone else that plays the game and am a little nervous about jumping into operations. I’m not an overly shy person or anything, but I’ve just never been the type to just randomly ask people for to ask random people on video games if they want to group up with me or whatever. I have read a few conflicting reports, but most of what I’ve seen leans towards the ops being pretty important (ie you can’t just play Oricon and get the idea) but I was hoping to get a few more opinions. I also usually only get a few hours to play on weeknights, so I’d hate to wait until it’s on the group finder just to not be able get into a group. Also, am I missing anything by playing other stuff like Hutt Cartel and Revan and then maybe coming back to it? Or should it really be started right after Ilum.