Let It Snow

Happy 2017! As you may have noticed, I took an unscheduled week off blogging last week. Why? Things were just a bit too hectic for me with real-life goings-on combined with the usual in-game activities, but now they're settling down a fair bit so back to blogging. Huzzah!

Anyway.

The Life Day Event comes to a close tomorrow, and it may or may not have escaped your attention that this provides a quick, easy, and completely legitimate (provided you don't use a macro, which is against the Terms of Service) way of farming Command Experience Points; throwing a Snowball - or using the somewhat-controversial Snowball Cannon - and winning a Snow-Covered parcel earns you a quick 20 CXP.

This is of course doubled if you hit one of the Overheated Life Day Droids on Coruscant, Dromund Kaas, or Nar Shaddaa given that they reward you with the Decorations and not just the Parcel.

Because I still needed a number of items which were being sold on the vendor (list further down), I decided to indulge in snowball-throwing on one particularly slow weekend (AKA Christmas Eve through to Boxing Day) whilst also turning it into an experiment; just how much CXP could be earned simply through this one simple activity?

The answer? Quite a lot. The method I was using involved having Shae Vizla as an unwilling target, pummelling her alternately with the Snowball Cannon and the traditional Snowball whenever they came off cooldown, clicking off her Dusted with Snowflakes debuff all the while.

Slow, methodical, but at least somewhat controllable.

I can't remember the exact number of Parcels I started with, but let's say it was roughly twenty. I have since bought the following items:

• Life Day Tinsel Bomb - hadn't bought it before, so just thought it would be nice to complete the Collection - 20 Parcels
• Sleigh I - I actually did own this mount beforehand, but only on Ziodus, so now it was Calph's turn to get hers - 20 Parcels
• Life Day Vestments, Lower Robe, and Boots - I hadn't bought any of the gear or mounts from the Cartel Market before this year (because who can resist a Festive Tauntaun with a mildly-glowing red nose?) so these were again just to complete the Collection - 30 Parcels for each piece, so 90 Parcels for the whole set
• Life Day Holo-Tree (Green) - Centerpiece Decoration, bugged and inaccessible in previous years - 40 Parcels
• Life Day Holo-Tree - this is the item which enables you to place a Holo-Tree at a specific location, similar to the Holo-Dancer or the Galactic Party Bomb, and again I did not purchase it previously - 50 Parcels
• Czerka LD-1 Celebrator - again, simply because I hadn't bought it before, mainly because I just really dislike the blasted thing, but at least I now have the Achievement for it..? - 100 Parcels
• Vectron J0-1Y - I really dislike this completionist nature I have sometimes... - 100 Parcels 

In total, I was able to spend 420 parcels this year. Subtracting the original hypothesised twenty parcels, this means I earned roughly 400 Parcels which were then used to purchase the items with the original parcels.

It doesn't stop there, though.

Because I'm a sucker for the Cyan Sphere, but only have it on one character, I resolved to earn enough parcels to purchase this one as well, but obviously only once I've got enough Gray Helix Components to do so, of course. This requires 16 Helix Components and 36 Parcels, or the standard 48 Helix Components as an alternative price.

So 436 Parcels earned. That's still ludicrously high, but at least each of these had a use so not 'wasted' or over-indulgent.

About that.

I found I got slightly addicted to this one simple activity. So much so that I actually have an extra 214 Parcels sitting in my Legacy bank, resulting in a total of 250 as-of-yet unused Parcels.

Adding this all up together, this comes to 650 snow-covered parcels earned this year. I'll spare you from having to do the maths; this is 13,000 CXP. This is just shy of three Command Ranks when you get into Tier II, which I was comfortably in by the time I decided to indulge in this little experiment. 

~~~

So, feel free to laugh at my insanity. I'm really not proud of this sheer amount of snowball-throwing I've done, but it has been an interesting experiment nonetheless.

Whilst obviously my case is a very extreme example (although I wouldn't be surprised if there are those who have done even more), it is nice to see BioWare 'include' CXP in this, since it's very amusing to see a huge increase in the amount of snowballs being thrown, and it gives a semblance of a little holiday fun.

Even if you can spin it as being a way of negating more painful Command Grind. At least it's moderately silly and harmless compared to what else is going on at the moment...

Still, we've only got a day left of this snowball-throwing CXP fest before Life Day retires for yet another year, so in the meanwhile, fetch your snowballs; it's time for a last-minute pummelling of your friends and guildies!