The Glade 4.0

I finished ziost on my powertech.

I think I've already got 8 level 60s... Or maybe one or two might be 50-55.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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I've been leveling a new character from 1 and I noticed a change that didn't seem mentioned: gathering now nets you both types of items. For example if you are a crafter that uses metals and compounds, in the old system you'd find a metal cluster and you'd only get metal from it. Now you get both metals and compounds from a gathering node. You seem to get slightly more of the the node you're actually looting, but it's made crafting that much easier.

The other thing I really like is that companion gear is cosmetic only. Companions already max out in power per level. No more of this spending time and money to keep each companion geared-up. I loathed that grind.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

It was mentioned in one of the dev blogs prior to launch...

http://dulfy.net/2015/10/06/swtor-craft ... en-empire/

To answer Taly's question.

Apparently a one month subscription is the price of admission to Knights of the Fallen Empire.

One month should be plenty to run through the content on a couple of your characters to see if you like where it's going.

Chapter 10+ is due to be released in January (normally they re releasing chapters every month, but are skipping December to avoid conflicts with the movie launch).

are the planet vendors still on the fleet for while one is levelling 1-50?

(Seriously, I love levelling in this game. I can't imagine intentionally creating a fresh level 60 to experience the new content. Oh, I would take my existing 60 powertech to the new content, sure, but that's it.)

What about Treek/HK-51? Do you lose the benefit of having acquired them when you lose all your companions? You no longer have 2 extra companions, it sounds like...

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

They changed a lot of the vendors, but yes, there are still vendors who well mods, armorings, and enhancements for leveling. The mods are green (used to be blue), but they are actually just about the same stats wise as the old stuff. The best part is, the pieces are all 2 common crystals (formerly basic comms).

The common crystals are rewarded and drop like candy, so yes, keeping up with your gear is a) not as necessary now that companions are so powerful, and b) much less grindy.

The grind comes later (after 65) when you are trying to figure out how to get 50 levels of Influence on all of your companions across all of your alts.

FWIW, crafting is somewhat more viable at low levels too. If you are so inclined to take the time to do it, it's a lot easier to craft yourself gear as you level than it used to be (but it's still a time and money sink, I don't care what they say).

Edit to add:
They also changed the Heroic Missions (mostly because they are part of the endgame now). They can all be obtained from a console at the spaceport for each planet, and are auto completed (you don't need to travel to turn them in). There is also a QT button attached to the mission description that will send you to the nearest safe place. And they best part is, they are all Heroic 2+ now, and if you have decent gear and companion influence, mostly soloable. They are a decent source of gear and commendations as well.

They have changed the temporary "12x XP for class missions" to 6x XP for all class and planetary story arc missions. These missions are not purple in your quest log. You can skip the gold 'exploration' missions and still have more than enough XP to level. In fact many people are complaining that they are leveling too fast for the planet... although with the new level sync, it doesn't really matter.. if you out level a planet, you will just be scaled down (and continue to get experience).

You don't lose treek or hk 51, you can summon them any time you want during the new story stuff, as long as you're at a part that allows companions.

I wish you could turn off level scaling. At max level I won't get exp either way, so I'd just like to annihilate everything I see

I don't mind level scaling. It makes sense to me in the star wars universe. Han never says "These troopers on Endor are pretty tough, but I could go back to Tattooine and lay waste to battalions of them."

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

The Empire's Wrath should have nothing to fear from any number of troopers anywhere...