Level 50 Sith Warrior DPS Gearing Part 2

Next up in gearing a level 50 Sith Warrior DPS, is the relic slot. One of these can be filled using a purchased relic from the dark side vendor in the Imperial Fleet. However, there is a nice relic available with 58 Strength, 50 Endurance and 24 Critical if you want to travel the galaxy in search of matrix shards. Which I did.

First up you need 3 Green Matrix shards. Luckily NotCasuals have posted a great video showing you how to get them, almost.



They did miss out the section on how to get Rakata Cubes on Belsavis. Luckily this video shows you how to do it:



It took me around 30 minutes to get my Rataka Cubes, so not bad really.

Once the three Green Matrix shards are in your possession, head to Drummond Khaas to the Ancient Assembly Chamber. This is the instanced cave to the left as you head up the outside stairs on the approach to the Dark Temple. Simply slap a cube into each slot and press the button on the console and you receive a new relic.

Level 50 Sith Warrior DPS Gearing Part 1

Given my Sith Warrior Juggernaut has hit level 50, I have begun the gearing process. The spec of the toon is DPS in the Vengeance tree, but the gear is the same for any old DPS Jugg.

Dailies
First up is to hit the dailies to gain a couple of things. One is the daily commendations which are traded for two implants (Rakata Weaponmaster's Pakage) and a ear piece (Rakata Weaponmaster's Device). This runs to 120 x 3 = 360 daily commendations, a lot. However, the implants are bind on equip, so you can grind them on an alt, get a friend to buy them or get them off the GTN. Buy the items from a vendor in the first area on Belsavis.

Secondly is that 3 of the dailies give armoring, modifications and enhancements for any moddable gear you have. Now I have 5 armor items and a light sabre which can be modded. Alas these dailies are the group quest dailies, so cannot generally be soloed. They are:

Old Enemies - Belsavis
Freeing The Fallen - Belsavis
Poisonous Strategy - Illum

Get these done 5 times, plus Freeing The Fallen and Poisonous Strategy again for another mod and enhancement for your light sabre.

Accessing Dailies
To get the Belsavis dailies, do the Belsavis bonus quests starting at level 49, from the Imperial Fleet, or just go to Belsavis and you will get them from the landing port.

To get the Illum dailies, complete your class quest and then take the Illum quest from the Imperial Fleet, do a first set of quests and a lot of them turn into dailies.

Level 50 Now What?

I dinged level 50 on Eveaider, Sith Warrior, handing in the final quest of the Belsavis bonus quest series. When I hit level 49 I skipped over to Belsavis and, in the orbital space station, accepted the start of the bonus series.

Why? Because the quests on Belsavis turn into dailies which give daily commendations and mods. Plus doing 1 set of the quests got me to level 50!

So what now? Now to finish the class quest back on Corellia, plus do some side quests for commendations to get my gear upgraded. Then off to Belsavis to do those dailies for mods and commendations.

Once I complete my class quest, dailies open up on Illum, so I'll be able to do those for commendations too. Eventually I can buy some nice gear with these commendations which will see me ready for heroic flashpoints and raids.

However there is a wrinkle, and that is the lack of group finding and dungeon finding features. The daily quests which give mods and armour for gear all require a group of various sizes. This means lurking around waiting for people to answer a LFM message, or put out such a message themselves. Now thus waiting can be done while doing the other soloable dailies, but for those without a large play time, not finding groups can become annoying.

The lack of a dungeon finder is why I've run so few flash points. When the choice is hanging around the space fleet for an hour, or going to quest some more, I always choose questing. Now at level 50 the class quest is gone, I am left with dailies or hanging around the fleet looking for a group.

Roll on 1.3 and it's promised Flash point finder!

Life At 50: A Player's Perspective, Sith Edition

Yes, I have another forum post from the guild describing life at level 50, this time from the Sith point of view. There are some spoilers in here.

**SPOILER ALERT** There is some reference to the level 50 Flashpoints with clips of their stories, do not read this section if you do not wish to learn what these Flashpoints have in store for you.

So your class quest is now at an end… is that the end of the story for you?

For me it definitely wasn’t. I had more to do at level 50 than when I was actually levelling the character.

The biggest one for me was my dailies. Grinding may not be your favourite thing in the world, but it is a necessary evil. Dailies gave me 250k credits per day, epic mods for my gear to bring my character up to raiding standards so I did not need much from Hardmode Flashpoints.

Starting in Belsavis having collected the Bonus Series quest from the Bulletin Board at The Fleet near the Sith Inquisitor Airlock entrance called “Inner Power” (available from level 48 about) where a droid stood called T9-M6; I headed to Belsavis Spaceport and handed it in to a man called Agent Brandis and took the shuttle to the surface.

Belsavis is an ancient prison planet, the republic’s dirtiest kept secret. Having done your missions whilst levelling and causing chaos its time to cause even more chaos as you progress to dailies and their rewards. Rewards are : Companion moddable weapons, blue “surprise” boxes, 3 commendation badges for heroic missions, 2 out of the three epic mods for your gear and 13k credits each or one commendation badge and 7k credits each. I personally get Affection for Telos Drellik or Ashara Zavros companions if they are out when I take the missions (so if you need this affection don’t accept the missions from another player collect them yourself) if they are out when the missions are collected.

Upon reaching the surface I headed to Imperial Domination Outpost Speeder point that was given to me and collected the quests. I had four missions to do here. “Invisible Threat,” “Unintended Consequences” “Heroic 4 Lights Out” “Heroic 4 Old Enemies.”

As a stealthing Asssassin tank, there is only one of those dailies I needed a group for. “Old Enemies” requires you to kill a boss at the end, which has far too much health for you to take down alone even with your healer companion. However, with a stealthing player in the group, you do not have to kill the preceding 2 groups of trash before the boss. Go stealth, use blackout to avoid the first set of mobs, then stealth to the back of the boss. Hit him which exposes you. He will attack. Use Force Cloak to go back into stealth. The boss will then ignore you and head for the other three players at the entrance, without aggroing any of the other mobs you have skilfully passed. Then you have to return to the group at the entrance as quickly, but as carefully as possible in order that you do not pull any more mobs for the group to deal with. Having returned, I then taunt the boss back onto me that one of the more hard-wearing armour wearers have been tanking for me, and tank it myself. We proceed to kill the boss. This method in total takes literally five minutes, then I am free to do the rest of my Belsavis dailies alone.

“Lights Out.” For an assassin is totally soloable. I dismiss my companion. I can stand taking hits from packs of mobs, but for those of you who cannot, use the companion to distract them as you stealth to each console, deactivate it and use Force Cloak to return to stealth. If your cloak bugs and does not drop the mobs, then a skilled player can force speed run out of the entrance to drop them, as the dungeon area is only small. The other option is to go naked, as naked players and companions do not take repair costs at the time of composing this, and die twice, using your medical probe to revive yourself. The rewards for this as well as the Daily Commendation Badges is moddable gear for your companions, or a blue box with some random goodie item in.

“Old Enemies” gives you one of the mods for your gear, so is important. The other two missions are soloable anyway, but done with a group makes quick work of them.

Having handed these in, I head through the Rakatta Transporter to the northern part of the planet. At the Deep Launchpoint Transporter section I pick up three missions. “Found in Translation” “Invisible Threat” “Ancient Transmissions”

“Found in Translation” has bonus kills attached. I always do these, for my legacy experience. Legacy currently has no rewards, but it takes me but a few minutes to kill those extra mobs, and when it eventually does, I will have a nice legacy to purchase them with. My legacy from doing this and levelling alts currently stands at level 37. Some of you may have it a lot higher.

“Reluctant Volunteers” has “Trying To Impress” as a bonus. This elite is shown as a huge green and gold marker on the map. He doesn’t spawn often and people are there often waiting to tag him. You can solo him but if you see people waiting group with them so you both get the kill. Try not to finish him off you need to use the mission item on him at low health. This turns him green and completes the bonus mission. There is also a bonus to kill the trash around there too.

Having done “Found in Translation” and “Invisible Threat” I head back to Deep Launchpoint Transporter area and hand them in. This part is VERY IMPORTANT. Don’t head north thinking you should hand them in later.

So having done this I then head north to the last mission point, The Tomb Warlord’s Deep. Here I pick up three missions. “Heroic 2 Freeing the Fallen” “The Carriers of Xenovirus Prime” and one from the broken droid SD-9. However SD-9 will ONLY give you his mission IF you handed in the 2 missions above I advised you to hand in before progressing further North.

Whilst doing these missions, you encounter another terminal in a nearby tunnel where a droid gives you a final mission “Deadly Mutations.”

“Freeing the Fallen.” Again as a stealthier I can solo this misson totally. I jump up the sloping pillars in stealth to get past the first pack of mobs. The next pack after avoiding the patrolling mob, I use Blackout to sneak past the small gap on the left side of the group then on the final group I run into these, aggro them and pull them to the boss, then Force Cloak. The boss will go for the mobs. If the mobs kill the boss you get the kill as if you did it. If they don’t it’s a simple matter with your healer companion or however you play to take off his remaining health, but beware of his AOE it does huge damage so I kite him a lot. After he dies go to the very back and disengage the prisons. Mission complete. If you cannot manage the skill of aggroing the previous pack of mobs then go past it up the slope of the pillar to the right and take the boss down yourself. His health is pretty poor doesn’t take long. This mission gives you the second epic mod for your gear.

So 1.5 hours later and having completed 10 daily missions, I Quick Travel to Imperial Lodgement where you came in on the very South-East corner of the map and depart the planet. I head to Illum.

The missions for Illum the frozen contested world are available on completion of your Class mission that has been with you from the start. It sends you to The Fleet to T9-M6 the little droid. He gives you the bonus series for Illum and you need to complete this to gain all of the daily missions. Notice now for the first time ever, you have lost that Class mission that has been with you from level one. You no longer need it though.

I arrive on Illum through the spaceport and head to the surface. I land in Imperial Base Camp a bunker in this frozen waste-land with a lift to a basement where two level 50 Flashpoints “Battle of Illum” and “False Emperor” reside. Here I pick up four missions. “A Tightened Grip” “Defend the Shipment” “Operation Shatterstorm” “Heroic 2 Poisonous Strategy” These missions give 10k each mission for solo missions and the group mission gives you the final epic mod for your gear, and 16k credits.

“Defend the Shipment.” At the time of composing this, this mission is bugged. If you are in “Illum 1” when clicking on the crates it states “This is already in use” and won’t spawn the mobs to defend the shipment from. Due to this I re-locate to “Illum 2” where normally I have better luck. To re-locate, press your “M” key for map, on the bottom right corner is a drop down menu saying “Illum 1” or the current version of Illum you are on, just click on the other Illum version and it will go through the options to transport you there. However, if you do this, I would highly recommend doing your group for “Poisonous Strategy” first where the most players probably are to group with. General chat is where to make groups from.

“Poisonous Strategy” it says it is a 2 player mission. Yes it is doable with 2 players, provided they are either highly skilled at pulling the 2 Jedi elites from their AOE as it does a lot of damage, or, my preference is to go for a full group of four, with tank and healer and 2 DPS. Sure-fire way of not failing and doing the mission fast.

Next I travel from the Imperial Base Camp West to Imperial Waystation. Here I pick up a further two missions. “Rightful Owner” “Sabotage” both solo missions and easy to do.

So about one hour later I leave Illum, having completed six missions.

The dailies take me a total of 2.5 hours per day to do, or 2 hours if I do them with just one other person. If you do not have this amount of time priorities the Illum dailies. The commendation badges do give epic mods out too, but the gear from the commendations is amazing quality so they are better spent on gear really.

SPEEDER - 110%

This is another thing that awaits you. Why do I want a speeder that is only 10% faster than the one I bought at level 40? Well, for me the biggest answer is the chance to dismount is nearly nill. I can wade through packs of mobs and not get dismounted. Maybe the dismount rate is reduced if you’re a DPS without the avoidances of a tank, but its still very high. This means you do not have to spend half your life killing mobs that have dismounted you and makes the whole mission experience a lot easier. You’re making all that cash on dailies now, so it is easily affordable, even if you have to purchase the Rank 2 and Rank 3 speeder training to achieve this. Yes, sadly you cannot jump from rank 1 speeder training straight to rank 3, you have to buy rank 2, which is why when I levelled I did not spend my cash on crew skills and used it on speeders instead. I have to have rank 2 speeder training so I made use of it and levelled my last 10 levels fast on the 100% speeder.

Quesh has some really nice level 40 speeders, some skins look like some of the level 50 ones. They are available at the first base you land at. I bought my speeder there before I was level 40 so I did not have to return to the planet to purchase it. The Fleet has a very small selection also.

Your level 50 speeder can be purchased from Voss has a wide selection, or The Fleet has a very small selection. On Voss the speeders are in The Market area.

BATTLE OF ILLUM AND FALSE EMPEROR FLASHPOINTS.

Your level 50 Flashpoints. You may be able to access normal mode at level 48. There are dailies on The Fleet from the Supplies section on Bulletin Boards, with mission drop-box attached to hand them in to. As you level the other daily missions also give you huge XP rewards.

A Darth has become mad with power, and has taken over the Imperial fleet of Proto-type Stealth fighters. However you learn of one stealth-fighter has been put in a base alone so you go to the base as a group and capture the fighter.

In False Emperor you are flown on this stealth fighter to the Darth’s space station where you end up putting an end to his miserable existence.

As you leave Spacedock in the stealth fighter, the cinematic shows you flying out and the ship stealthing, The whole animation and experience is amazing.

WORLD PVP.

In Illum each day you will see in general chat “invite to Ops.” These are players asking to be invited to the ops group for the two remaining speeder points on the planet that take you to PVP lakes where you do dailies from The Fleet and the area for PVP epic gear. You have fun killing Republic players.

So you’re level 50. Still lots to do, maybe not as varied but it certainly is a full experience. So, go out there, buy that new speeder, get that lovely epic gear, and become operations-ready all from the Dailies. Yes, eventually money is no longer a problem for levelling alts or whatever you want. Already I know a friend who joined Star Wars on release and is sat on 8.5 million credits, its that easy to make them. He has bought everything he could possibly want. Its all waiting for you, just find a friend to do the monotonous dailies with to chat to, and a group to run the Flashpoints with so you end up running them fast without wipes. Yes you do need all the mods from dailies to do False Emperor on Hardmode, but the easier Hardmode Black Talon can be done in half blue gear half epic gear as it is a lot easier.

Have fun and good luck to you new level 50’s.

 And a response describing more:

Good detailed post. You do the quests in pretty much same order I used to although as a non stealther I usually do the heroics grouped. The lights out quests can be solo'd as a non stealther too but does involve suiciding in to click the panels. I think (but not verified) that its just one prereq quest to unlock the SD9 one, but even so I'd still do what you suggest.

I'd also add that it is worth trying to do a daily hard mode (and weekly hard mode) quests - BT is good enough and should only take 30 mins, these give tokens towards tier items which are pretty nice. A quick note about the gear:

All the vendors are in the supplies area of the fleet.

- Tionesse: Tionesse is the lower level stuff that require Tionesse crystals and Tionesse commendations.
- Columi: This is the next up which require either Columi commendations or a token (a token is matched to a particular item type, e.g. "unnassembled columi Boundy Hunter boots" which can be handed in for one of the set peices for mercs (healer or dps set) or powertech (dps or tank specs ones)).
- Rataka: This is the highest level gear and can only be obtained with rataka tokens (same concept as columi tokens)

How to obtain the crystals/commendations/tokens:
- Hard mode FP, each boss/mini boss drops tionesse crystals (2 usually). Completing the flashpoint awards you 1 tionesse commendation. Some bosses in hardmodes (typically the end boss and sometimes one of the others) drop unassembled columi tokens which can be handed in directly for an item. Bosses can also drop some columi (normally the harder bosses) or tionesse level gear. Doing the daily awards you 2 (i think) tionesse commendations and 1 columi commendation. Doing the weekly (complete 3 hard modes) gives you 6 Tionesse commendations and 3 Columi commendations.
- Opertions (Normal): These drop Columi commendations on each boss (2 i think) as well as Columi tokens and other Columi level items.
- Operations (Hard): I think these drop the same number of Columi commendations and Columi tokens but the bosses also drop some rataka tokens
- Operations (Nightmare): These drop a higher ratio of rataka tokens to columi tokens, but other than that feels the same as hard modes.

Pretty nice, I look forward to grinding out 2 hours when I hit 50. I mean not... maybe I'll level an alt!

Life At 50: A Player's Perspective

Recently an informative post went up on our guild forums, about life at 50. This was written before Illum was ruined in patch 1.1, mind. From a Jedi Consular (so Republic side):

So you're all trying to get your characters to level 50 - can't decide which class to do, finding the adventure long. Well, to spur you along, I thought I'd give you a taster of what awaits you.

220,000 credits per day - no joke from dailies
Flashpoints that have some truly fascinating story lines. Imagine, flying in a prototype stealth fighter, killing Sith Lords...

Illum. A level 50 planet. Big Snowball. On here there is 2/3 of the playable area as a PVP warzone. The other part is dailies. You need to do the pre-chain that follows on from your class quest that you pick up from a well-rounded Twil'ek on The Fleet.

I take five dailies here - each giving just over 10k credits each.  I do an additional 2 person heroic daily giving just over 16k credits with epic Mod gear enhancements to choose from for your upgradeable gear.

Belsavis. Big Snowball with green bits - designated a prison planet. This is a lower level planet and as such the dailies here are available from level 47, but I can't say that the credits reward is going to be what I say here as they will probably reduce them in favor of giving you some XP for them.

To get access to these dailies, its done from a "Bonus" section. Go to The Fleet. There is a bulletin board box thingy that will give you a quest "Quarantine Failure." This takes you to Agent Moritt at Belsavis Spaceport near the shuttle that takes you to the surface. This then takes you to the Belsavis Bonus Series. Complete this pre-chain to gain access to the dailies. This pre-chain actually encorporates your first day's worth of dailies.

Meltwater Outpost. 3 dailies giving 7,175 credits each. One 2 person heroic daily giving epic Mod augments for your gear and 9,330 credits. One four player heroic daily giving about 10k credits. This one gives upgradeable weapons for your companions. There is an optional "lucky dip" box for when you've got all the items from the heroics on Illum and Belsavis.

Frozen Transport Center & Oasis Republic Post. 4 dailies, one as you enter from the teleporter and the other three from the blue holo transmitters in the Oasis Center. The Four Person heroic daily you picked up at the previous outpost is done in this section too. Also at the entrance to one of the tunnels you pick up a fifth daily to seal in a beast. If you fail to seal the beast in which is by no means hard - run - he can't be solo'd. There is also a second four player heroic quest picked up at the entrance to a tunnel in this area. This gives you the armoring enhancement for your gear. So in summary, these heroic dailies from both areas give you full epic mods for your gear and moddable weapons for your companions.

You also get a lot of Daily Commendation awards - 3 from four player heroic missions, 2 from 2 player heroic missions and 1 from single player missions. These can be traded in for epic gear.

Most of this area is done off story areas so you'll be going up against some rather poor level 50 gold elites. In both areas make sure you have your healer companion available (not out on a solo mission) and plenty of level 44 Exceptional Medpacs. Cheap things, and with the amount of credits you'll be making practically free.

In both areas do the bonuses that come up too - they give XP either for your levelling or for your Legacy. They haven't said what legacy rewards we are going to get yet, but they should be good.

Soloing heroic missions. Yes I do solo them, totally. I have stealth, the ability to stun mobs that haven't got the yellow buff that says they are immune to stuns, and can force cloak out of situations where I have to come out and let them hit me whilst attacking some console or disabling a console. All consoles you find on quests can be killed or disabled in combat and I would do this in combat. Frequently I've been clearing trash and someone has come up and killed the bonus objective whilst I was clearing until I learnt. I have died soloing heroic missions due to me not timing when I should force cloak or leaving the companion to attack which broke the stealth. If this happens I just run out of the story area and the aggro resets as they are only small. Companions in Heroics should be left on passive. Be aware though you're going to have to take boss aggro for a few seconds so if you're a healer with hots, make sure they are on. However, not all of you have stealth so no ability to solo these. Eventually my healer is going to be 50 too. He can't solo them. Killing is more fun anyway and a lot faster than my stealth runs. Taking any of you through is easy, and will make the dailies for those who have done the ground work to gain access turn from being a couple of hours to half the time.  However I wouldn't recommend using a companion in leveling gear as a player replacement until they have a bit of Flashpoint gear on them at least.  I tried doing a four player quest with a tank a few days ago on my healer and the healing was quite intense due to the low gear of my companion tank pet who was taking the aggro and his companion was dead mostly. We did our quest Jawa's Concern though.

Also if you've only half hour to log on and do something - prioritize the Illium soloable dailies. They give more than the Belsavis one so its a good bit of cash to put towards your character.

You're probably thinking now... I'm no mathematician but how can those few quests equate to 320k of credits? Well, what about all the cash you pick up off mobs, and the trash and maybe even unwanted greens you vendor? Keep your bags empty and when you're doing a minute's traveling time between quests send the companion off to vendor the grey's.

I used mine to do those Crew Skills that I didn't do whilst leveling my first. With this level of cash I upgraded his from nothing to max in a matter of hours play time. I did it whilst I was AFK and put the speakers on loud as the companions say things when they have finished their missions. This really is an AFK task as the end missions can take one hour each to complete. Doing it this way I had all the speeders at the various speeds to level with and this made me level up a lot faster.  In fact I am now spending my credits on the crew skills of my second character so he can level and do the skills whilst he levels as my level 50 is feeding him credits to do it this way with.

Speeder. Yes your level 50 speeder awaits! You may think this costly, or is it now you've all these dailies? Why do I need another speeder when this other one is only a bit slower? Its not about speed increase for me really. The max level speeder has a very low dismount rate if you hit mobs which means you're not constantly getting knocked off and having to waste time killing unwanted mobs. Great time saver. I also go between outposts in Illum on mine so again, no spending on taxis. I used a total of two taxi rides all on Belsavis and died only about three times, mainly due to my own stupidity doing the heroics during the whole exercise.

Flashpoints. Very intense compared to the lower level ones. Bosses have now got tactics that have to be done, and the storylines are so much better. Just to wet your appetite - the first one on Illum you are a team that has gone to capture a proto-type stealth fighter from the Imperial's. The second mission you infiltrate a Sith ship with the new Proto-type Stealth fighter. You see it leave your space dock and stealth and yes  its amazing. You finish off by killing the Lord Sith from the pre-chain.

The gear from Flashpoints is mostly moddable items, and what a player doesn't need your companions can use. Companions that are geared as well as you can be used in place of a player for when you're short. So, like me I'm a tank so my first I'm working on is the healer as that is a useful companion then I will work on gear for my ranged DPS companion. Healers could work on their tank companion.... Remember though, with companions the more affection they have for you the better they fight for you, so consider getting gifts for them if you're going to use it in raids. Also the more presence you have the better they work for you as well. So in the end you can have a whole team ready and waiting to fill up a group's slot.

So now you're 50... Life has only just begun. My alts get very little attention now.

So there is grind!