A little under three years ago, I created a formal bucket-listof things I would like to do in SWTOR before it reaches its end. It had
always sort-of existed in-theory, but the completion of Big Game Hunter
by killing 10-stack Dreadtooth prompted me to make it a real thing.
To provide a recap so that people do not need to delve into
the previous post, the list I drew up was as follows:
- Completing I Mean It! No More Bormu!
- Getting the Heroic Space Mission Reputation track to Legend and subsequently purchasing the Tirsa Champion to unlock Gearhead.
- Completing Lord of the Raklings.
- Romping around Iokath with a bunch of guildies as the five Godkin.
- Naturally discovering a Czerka Crate-O-Matic.
- Killing all Operation Bosses in the game.
Since it is coming up to three years since I created the
list, I thought it would be a nice idea to look at each of these and provide an
update on where things stand; how many have been completed, how much progress
has been made on others, and whether any other goals have been added in later
years.
~~~
Old Goals
~
I Mean It! No More Bormu! - Completed 02 / 05 /2021
Aggravatingly, I did not make note of how many Bormu I had
left to kill in the last post so I have no clue just how much progress I have
made on this over the past couple of years. I would wager not a lot.
I am not much of a kill-grinder, at least not when I am by
myself. I will happily pitch in and help someone else grind but if there is one
person who I have absolutely no patience with, it is yours truly. As a
result, kill achievements like this which do not come naturally when doing stories
or Heroics are something which I rarely pursue unless I realise that I am a lot
closer than I feel I am.
Regardless of how much progress I may or may not have made, BioWare's introduction of the Rampage Achievement Boost made it much easier to kill the remaining 344 I still needed as that meant I only needed 177. I still resent the idea of having to kill Bormu. What have they ever done to deserve such a cruel fate?
I'm just glad it's done...
~
Heroic Space Mission Reputation and Gearhead –
Completed 12 / 02 / 2021
The Heroic Space Mission Reputation track has been my bane ever
since Reputation was introduced on the 12th of February 2013. I had
already tried my hand at the Heroic Space Missions when they were introduced
with 1.6 – admittedly thanks to the Grade 7 components temporarily being sold
via the Cartel Market – and had sworn them off pretty much immediately.
It took me some time to get started with Reputation itself
so I did not immediately know how long it would take me to get this done. As
far as I was concerned back then, Reputation did not interest me in the slightest,
and the first Reputation track I believe I completed was the Contraband Resale
Corporation which came with the second shipment of Cartel Packs.
I have something of a spending problem in MMOs.
While I did of course eventually get going with the other
Reputation factions, to the extent that I now get all new ones done as soon as
possible, the Heroic Space Mission track remained mainly untouched. Sure, I did
the Operation mission which gave a green Rep trophy a couple of times, but I never even completed the first tier!
Then, in 5.0, Galactic Command launched. The Command
Crates rightfully earned a lot of ire, but the ‘extra’ stuff they included
besides actual gear was useful at times. There was some great-looking cosmetic gear
and weapons included therein, as well as Reputation trophies for all pre-Iokath
tracks. As a result of this, I had managed to collect enough Space Mission
trophies to get all the way up to completing Champion and just over halfway
through Legend.
Not bad for just relying on RNG!
In early 2021, I turned my attention back to this. It was
really bugging me that I was so close and my occasionally doing The
Impossible Sector for the green trophy for Conquest reasons had lit a fire
that incentivised me to push further. It got to the point where I was busy
making calculations; if I do this mission on the four characters who have Grade
7 components, how many days will it take me to get the missing 8,000 I still
need…?
I then tried another Heroic Space Mission. Bear in mind, I
had tried these on and off throughout the years since I first tried without
much success so I was not expecting much. It seems that this absence was all I
needed; I completed that mission on the first try. Awesome! Several
hours (and much swearing) later, I finally turned in my last blue trophy and completed
the Legend tier at long last.
I then went and bought that infernal Tirsa Champion speeder.
Job done.
It was not intentional in the slightest that I
completed this track exactly eight years after it was first introduced.
~
Lord of the Raklings – Completed 02 / 06
/ 2018
Lord of the Raklings is an achievement which I had
highlighted a few times on this blog prior to the bucket-list. I would churn
out a series of posts titled Rakghouls, Rakghouls, Rakghouls and would pretty
much without fail mention the Symbiote Rakling as I was determined to hunt it
down.
Eventually, I got into a guild-run of Eyeless when it
dropped and the winner happened to be somebody who already had the achievement.
He very kindly agreed to give it to me, and so I promptly went to kill the
Lurker and get this achievement done. Yee.
~
Divine Demolition – Completed 15 / 06 / 2020
While I was not entirely optimistic that I would get to see us
romp around Iokath as the Godkin anytime soon at the time of publishing the
post in 2018, the idea had successfully planted itself in both my head and that
of Shintar of Going Commando. I am not taking credit for this, as I believe
the idea had come about naturally to both of us.
While things lay dormant for a couple of years, the idea
resurfaced again in June 2020. Enough
interest was garnered within our guild to make a full ops team out of it, and with
five Gods at their side the group roamed around the PvP instance. We killed one of the Colossal Droids before moving onto the Imperial base – we also had a
handful of guildies on Imperial-aligned characters so we were in for more of a
fight than just against the base defences.
It was a bizarre experience. Primarily, the thing that stood
out to me most was seeing TYTH, the God of Rage, exhibit all sorts of
animations which the other four droids could not. Case in point, TYTH,
this big rage-fuelled droid, would kneel to loot stuff. Obviously, this was
because he has as ‘normal’ an animation cycle as you can get, compared to AIVELA,
ESNE, and SCYVA who all float off the ground and NAHUT who
uses the Rakghoul animations.
Still bizarre to see, though!
It was good fun controlling ESNE, even though I was
the first of the Godkin to fall. Something to do again another time with
different players controlling the droids!
~
The Astronomical Odds – Completed 30 / 11 / 2019
This was my goal to find the Czerka Crate-O-Matic via loot.
I of course had already traded with someone to get the achievement several
years prior, but I wanted to find it naturally just to say that I had done so.
My Powertech was still on Belsavis in her story when 5.0
ended, so I used that planet to level her up to 75 when 6.0 launched. As part of this I did all
the quests as usual, started the bonus series, and did all the Heroics.
It was during the Lights Out Heroic that the Czerka
Crate-O-Matic dropped. Yee.
Now I just need to find the Prototype C8-O-M4T…
~
Fully Operational – Incomplete
At the time I was writing this post, I only had two Operations
that I had not yet cleared in at least one variation of all difficulties.
First was Ravagers, which I had cleared in
sixteen-person in quite a cheating manner; I was one of two people invited to an
eight-person-turned-sixteen-person run at the last boss as the guild in
question already had that achievement. Due to not knowing the fight at all, I
basically ended up being a corpse for a good portion of it. Thus, I was not
considering this as a “clear” for this Operation.
Second was Gods from the Machine. At the time of publishing,
this Operation only existed in Story and Veteran mode with Master (then) having
been recently cancelled. My team was still working on clearing Sisters at the
time, although we never succeeded in their original incarnation. The release of
Gods Master mode meant two things; first, that this bucket list now had
a new Operation to consider, and second that Veteran mode became easier.
Indeed, my team promptly cleared Sisters after the nerf and killed IZAX relatively
early into the new year.
I was on a break from Operations, something which I feel I
am about to take again at some point soon, at the time they cleared it so I
missed out on this kill at that time. We moved onto Ravagers a while
after I cam back from my break so even though I missed out on IZAX I did
at least get to see my goal of killing Cora and Ruugar ‘properly’ fulfilled.
While I have since seen IZAX die in Onslaught, as well as completing Nature of Progress in Veteran, I do not imagine that I will see Master Gods or Nature anytime soon. Then there will be the new Operations which BioWare will doubtless release in the coming years...
Still, always
better to have something to come back to.
~~~
New Goals
~
Story Catch-Up – Completed 22 / 05 / 2020
Ever since the pandemic and lockdown hit, I have been
playing various characters far more than I already was. The end-result was that
in May I finally managed to get my eighth and final character caught up to the
then most-recent story update. At long last, all my characters were caught up
to one another again, and with each subsequent story update I am relishing
being able to just do it regardless of character.
I am especially glad to not have to ever contend with Fallen
Empire et al. again unless I for some reason feel some desire to
roll another character. I am beginning to run out of things to do slowly but
surely with all of them having done the HK-51 questline, and only one more
needing to finish the Shroud and Macrobinocular questlines and Star Fortresses…
~
Renown Goals – Completed 23 / 04 / 2020,
04 / 06 / 2020, 05 / 01 / 2021, and 02 / 02 / 2021
A multi-tiered goal, this one!
I set myself two immediate goals with Renown:
completing Renowned All Around and Limitless. The first of these
is for getting all eight Classes to Renown 100 and the second is for
getting a character to Renown 999. My Gunslinger Cal used the double-rewards month-and-a-bit to quickly grind up the remaining ranks between 600-odd and 999 and got there in early June. Huzzah!
Once these were done, I found myself setting additional
goals: first, get all eight classes to Renown 300, and then see if I can
get any others to 999. The first is simply because Command 300 was the ‘final’
rank in 5.0 and I just quite fancied getting all my characters to the same rank
just because. My Juggernaut was the last character to hit this rank in January 2021,
which is quite fitting given that her class was also my last to reach 100.
Finally, my second 999 character came about in February. My Sage
had always been quite prolific in acquiring ranks, technically more so than Cal who used double-rewards to get there, so it was only a matter of time before she got
to that rank as well. For context, my next-highest character is merely Renown
490.
Unlike in 5.0, I do not keep a list of where both Cal and
Vihala are above 999. I keep telling myself that the only reason why I did so
for Command 300+ is because I was curious to see how high I could get
before Command 301 – 400 came in. This never happened, of course, but I kept
going with the count regardless.
I do not have any goal set to get a third character to 999.
I think two is more than plenty, and I am just content with everyone else being
above 300.
~~~
I was not sure how I would fare with completing any of these
goals when I created this list. I have to say that I am quite impressed with
myself that most of the goals I had set when I created this list have been
completed, with only the Operation-difficulty completions left
outstanding.
I chalk it up to the level at which I am content with SWTOR
that I only added two new goals to the list. I am sure that
there are many things which I could add if I really thought about it, but I am in no real rush to find more. If I get both of the current outstanding ones completed, great, but I
also would not mind if SWTOR ended with these still incomplete.
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