Master Chapters: First Opinions

Master Mode Chapters are out, and with them comes the opportunity to spend a good amount of time repeating story content all over again but this time with even more death opportunity.

So far, though, from what I've seen, Master Mode isn't that bad, especially in comparison to Veteran Mode. Okay, there are exceptions which I'll get to in a minute, but otherwise things aren't as bad as I was dreading.

The most interesting thing, to me, is that Companions get an Influence Boost. One of my guildies commented that his Darth Marr was 35 when he could've sworn he was only 2 or 3, and voiced his guess that Marr had been boosted. When I received my own Marr, I found that rather than the quite nice 28 I'd left him at for the Veteran KotFE run that he'd been boosted to Influence 39.

I did actually have enough Imperial Memorabilia Gifts to get him to 50 from 28 anyway (I maaaaaaay have spent a fair bit of credits in getting all of Calph's currently-accessible Story Companions - so Acina, Kaliyo, Marr, SCORPIO, and Torian missed out originally - who weren't already 50 to the max-level in preparation for Master Mode), but it was still nice to get something of this sort for free, particularly when it was a relatively substantial boost.

Anyway.

For me, there were five Chapters which had moments that I was wary of after seeing them in Veteran Mode. These are Chapter II in both expansions, Chapters VI and X in Fallen Empire, and Chapter IV in Eternal Throne.

So far, having started from Chapter I: The Hunt and going in order (currently at Chapter V), I've only come across one of these Chapters in Master Mode, which is Chapter II: A Dream of Empire, which had one of the hardest Fallen Empire fights - if not the hardest. It came to a massive surprise to me that the Monolith in Master Mode Chapter II not only died on the first try but actually seems substantially easier than it did in Veteran Mode in general.

Provided you don't get hit by his Terrible Shout, which reportedly hits for 400k. Credit to a guildie who died to it due to forgetting that it could be interrupted for discovering this number.

I'm intrigued by this in several ways, because it raises several pertinent questions. Was it genuinely easier? Was my slightly higher Gear-level a factor? Did it just seem easier because I did the Veteran Mode, knew how painful it was, and managed to adjust accordingly?

I don't know the actual answer to these questions, but they're still good questions about the experience. As a Gunslinger, I don't have access to anything like a truly substantial self-heal (outside of passive healing in-Cover, which is risky in the Monolith fight in the first place, the most I have is 10% every 18 seconds on Hightail It), so it wasn't as if I was running away and healing back up half the time.

Of course, it also helps that he managed to knock me onto a piece of cliff and subsequently spent about fifteen seconds standing still and contemplating the meaning of life before getting a grip on reality and resuming his pursuit.

Or non-reality, as it may have been.

So whilst my own experiences have been fairly straightforward for the time being, this is nothing next to another one of my Guildies, who 'mains' a Sage for Story stuff. At time of writing, he's trying out Chapter II: Run for the Shadows because he was inspired by his own "this was easy!" reaction to the Monolith fight and just decided to gun it.

Interestingly, his Acina - who was previously Influence Rank 28 - was boosted immediately to Influence 50.

Basically, the Vine Cat tore him to shreds a few times (basic attack dealing 20-30k damage) before he was able to just burst everything down with both him and Acina as DPS, the GenoHaradan scout hit so hard alongside its adds that I was pulled in just so he could see how another class handled the damage (spoiler: I still melted, but my intervention allowed him to kill the boss), and he still hasn't managed to kill the end bosses even with multiple stuns and Focus Target modifiers being used to their full advantage.

All in all, he's had about a 500,000 Credit repair bill from this Chapter alone.

~~~

So, yeah. Master Mode is interesting from what I and my guildies have seen so far. I haven't seen enough to say whether it makes for a 'decent' challenge (I'm still shocked at how quickly the Monolith died in Chapter II), whilst again it seems that certain fights are conversely too challenging for any Class to do effectively. I'll be able to gauge more effectively when I see the remaining fights and Chapters.

I find it particularly interesting how - despite the Mission Tracker saying it gives 400 CXP - the actual mission reward itself grants over 1,000 CXP, which makes Master Mode Chapters a very good source of solo-play CXP. Sure, it's not as quick as a PvP match or an Uprising, but at least the Chapters aren't dependent on other people.

At least this way, if you die you've only got yourself and your slave Companion to blame.