Digital Tabletop: Tips for 12x your way to 55 (Star Wars The Old Republic)

dt500swtor12xtipsWith the new Shadow of Revan expansion coming to Star Wars The Old Republic, there’s a new offer out there if you pre-order where you get a significant experience boost to your characters while you’re leveling up, at least tied directly to your characters anyway. The boost is only good if you’re a subscriber when you pre-order the expansion which does have a couple of other perks for pre-ordering which you won’t see until release, but that experience boost is good right off the bat as soon as you pre-order and hits all your class quests all the way through the Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion which caps you at level 55. This is important as the new expansion takes you from 55 up to level 60 which will be the new cap. There are a few pitfalls with leveling this way so I thought I’d whip up a quick guide for what to expect as you level and what to watch out for.

Class Quests Only
While you’re leveling and playing this boost, which is a little over twelve times the experience for a quest, is only hitting your class quests. This means you don’t have to do side quests at all as you’re going to quickly out-level every planet as you play through the various points of the class quest on each of them. It’s a great way to experience the story tied directly to your class without having to do side quests you’ve done already with other characters while still getting another toon up to cap for the release of Revan. In this case this early on, as the bonus is good through the first of December, a whole grouping of max level toons to have at your disposal. With this boost you can easily get a toon of each class and of each faction up to cap before the cut-off. In about seven hours, including a stop to re-gear and do some PVP, I saw a level twenty hit level thirty and was still on Tattoine on the Republic side which starts at twenty-four and they had only done the first leg of the quests there.

2014-08-14_10-56-35Out-Pacing Gear
Leveling up just doing your class quests means that you are going to outpace your gear level and quickly. This will be a problem as gear is so important to your stats in the different levels and it’s going to get expensive. The good news is that getting your skills won’t cost you anything right now while you level. The bad news is that gear is still prohibitively expensive, so unless you have a lot of credits saved up on another toon you’re going to be perpetually broke. Not to fear, there are a number of a solutions for this problem including moddable gear that’s not level dependent, crafting your own, random drops, and of course visiting the Galactic Trade Network.

Gear Mods and Moddable Gear
Getting moddable gear and weapons is the route I’d go with the gear issue, but it’s not the only way. I recommend finding some crafted armor and weapons on the GTN with mod slots or getting a guild member to craft some moddable gear for you. If you have your starfighter gear for your toons from that addition to the game, good news, it’s all moddable from head to toe and looks moderately decent. I opted to pick up a different chest piece off the auction house for my Jedi Guardian but kept just about everything else and statted the toon out using mods from planetary commendations. As far as gear mods go, those planetary commendations come in very useful for keeping pace with your level and your gear. Now you won’t be getting them as much not doing side quests, but once you get to the main station for your faction, another few ways to get them open up including PVP and flashpoints. One of the fastest ways to replenish your commendations is to do the daily and the weekly missions for both PVP and flashpoints. With PVP you get a nice chunk of warzone commendations that can be converted over to planetary commendations that you can then buy mods for your armor at the station. Flashpoints you’ll get commendations you don’t have to convert but they take a little longer to do, but you also get a shot at gear drops there as well.

Galactic Trade Network
If you don’t want to go the commendations route, you can hit up the GTN and buy some crated green items off there that can help you out and simply level off of those as you go. There’s usually items you can buy off there with a decent credit price that’ll do the job for you and not hit your meager earnings too much. The flip side of that is you’ll be eating into your credit reserve and if you’re playing on a new server this can lead to cash flow problems which leads to doing something other than class quests.

2014-10-14_11-12-46First Toon On A Server
You will have problems doing this if this is your first toon on a server if you don’t have a crafter or you’re buying items off the GTN. You may have to hit the brakes and do some of the other quests on the planet for cash or gear or better yet hit up the heroic quests to grind out some gear to use as the rarer gear that drops from those is generally good for awhile. In this case it might just be a few hours, but that’s a few hours where you have something that’s at least working for you and not against you that you don’t have to grind to get again. I realize that doing the 12x boost is supposed to take the grind out of the game, but with so much time before December 1st you can afford to take a few hours to get the gear you need with a minimum of fuss.

Crafting Options
If you do want to go the crafting route, I’d recommend Cybertech and Scavenging for your two big crafting skills. This gets you materials you need quickly from just about anything, especially droids which you end up fighting everywhere you go and lets you make some mods fairly early on and as you go. You can also use the one Cybertech character to make mods for others if you’re looking to level up more than one character.

Legacy Experience
That experience boost isn’t going to hit your Legacy levels like it does your class levels. This may lead to some legacy grinding down the road. Going from twenty to thirty only garnered one full Legacy level and a good chunk into the second as you don’t have all those other quests adding to your Legacy grind. Not that it’s a crucial thing as you go as you do gain experience otherwise at cap to level up your Legacy, it can put a need to grind that out later if you’re looking to actually unlock more things for other characters.

Overall it’s a really fast way to level up a toon to 55 and is as close to hitting the Easy button as Bioware could have made it without simply letting you create a level 55 toon. At least this way I’ll finally get through all my class quests so I can finally see all of them. Happy hunting!

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