Trooper Log #8: Blood feud on Alderaan and the paladin of House Organa

This Trooper Log series is posted simultaneously and in full on both my personal blog, Twilight Lynk, and StarWarsMMO.net. Enjoy!

Leaving the harsh environment of Tatooine, Havoc Squad continues their mission, taking them to a planet of great beauty, Alderaan.

Warning: This entry contains spoilers from Star Wars: The Old Republic.

BEGIN TROOPER LOG //

Mission Log

From the burning hot sands of Tatooine to the chilled mountains of Alderaan, the hunt for the defectors continued. This time our target is Gearbox, the former technician of Havoc Squad. His skills would allow the Empire to create machines of death with Alderaan as their testing ground. However, to get to Gearbox we’d have to go through the Alderaanian nobles and play their political games.

House Organa, supporters of the Republic and our allies on the planet, had captured a man by the name of Markus Thul who was trying to assassinate one of House Organa’s nobles. He also happens to be our best lead into finding the location of Gearbox on Alderaan and taking him down. Unfortunately, his cooperation will have to come at a price. However, after hearing the man out, the deal involved reuniting him with his wife and daughter and ensuring their safety if he were to help us.

The nobles of House Organa didn’t like it and it ended up causing some friction between the Republic and its ally, however if the defectors of Havoc Squad aren’t taken down it could spell trouble for a lot more people than just a few disgruntled noblemen. We did everything Markus Thul asked within reason and reunited him with his wife and daughter. Keeping to his word, he revealed the location and plans relating to Gearbox.

We’ve managed to dismantle quite a lot of what Tavus has been building up since the former members of Havoc Squad defected to the Empire, as we stormed the secret Imperial base on Alderaan and faced Gearbox, I knew that this would be the final step before facing the former Havoc Squad leader himself. When I first met Gearbox, he was leagues ahead of me, now with his experimental mech in ruins and Gearbox himself dead at my feet, it brings into perspective just how far I’ve come and just how powerful the new Havoc Squad has become.

Personal Log

I have to say my mission on Alderaan tested my patience in terms of dealing with the locals dignitaries. As much as General Garza tried to drill into me that I needed to be diplomatic, diplomacy isn’t my strong suite. It’s probably best that I chose Elara to join me on Alderaan, Mr. Cat has even less patience than I do and 4X would have been spouting his usual duty and honour thing which I got enough from the Alderaan nobles already.

The scenery was great but having to deal with the nobles constantly gave me a headache with their long-winded speeches, of course not all of the Alderaanians were so bad, though to be perfectly honest I’d rather deal with Jawa’s on Tatooine… at least they have a sense of humour.

Computer Log

Alderaan is one hell of a beautiful environment in TOR and the becomes immediately obvious as soon as you set foot outside of the space port. Of course, the planet runs pretty well now with no performance issues but it didn’t used to be like that. During my time on Alderaan I had to tackle quite a few instances where the game’s frame-rate would drop to unplayable levels. Thankfully, BioWare have fixed these issues and everything is smooth and awesome.

Speaking of issues that are now fixed in later versions of the game, I came across a nightmare situation while playing through the Trooper class quest on Alderaan. It was the escort mission involving Markus Thul’s wife and daughter. The mission works properly now, but back then it was a total pain in the ass since the ladies would both die so easily and were unable to defend themselves at all. The mission was practically impossible to complete because any confrontation with any enemies would lead to the ladies’ deaths and you having to go back to restart the mission.

It took me several tries but I finally found a very devious and stealthy way to complete that damned mission which involved avoiding any confrontation by doing a bit of rock climbing near the mission marker to end that horrible mission. After finally completing it I felt a great amount of satisfaction for outsmarting the broken game, but I did happen to tag along on the mission while a friend was playing with his Trooper after the mission was fixed and felt silly at how stupidly easy the mission is now.

On a different note, you can tell by the screenshots that the armour matching wasn’t going all that well for me while on my mission on Alderaan. Thankfully once version 1.2 is released in early April, none of you will have to go through the pain we earlier generation Troopers had to go through with your newfangled armour matching options. It’s nice to play a game that constantly improves itself with constant updates, but you still wish you had all of these great options and improvements the first time around.

// STATUS REPORT //

• Name: Lynk
  Class: Trooper Vanguard
  Level: 30

It really wasn’t easy to find time to write this and I’ve rushed my way through it… there’s just not enough time to do any of the things I want like this or playing TOR with all of these uni assignments.

// END LOG ENTRY