Once you get control of your character, first thing you should do is go into your options and start looking at them, and changing what needs to be changed. Here are my suggestions:
-Turn on a lot of the features, such as AoE looting, auto looting, name plates, etc.
-Turn off profanity filter.
-Bind keys. Bioware almost made a point to not copy any of WoW bindings, so unless you don’t mind relearning 30 different hotkeys, switch them to what your use to (ie, changing talents to “n”, companion to “p”, etc).
-Fix chat colors. Just like the keys, Bioware made a point to go against the color convention of other mmos. Whispers are blue, and party chat is purple, for example. Fix that.
•Start questing. Listen to the epic story that is going on, engage in the conversation.
-As you go through making your decisions, you highlight choices (by mouse, can't keyboard highlight) and there may be a black triangle or a white star, that means your decision is going to cause dark or light side points, keep that in mind, they start right away.
-If you are power leveling and don’t care about story you can press the SPACEBAR to skip a scene. Don’t press ESC, as you’ll have to repeat the story dialog.
-Anything that you want (such as companions, battleships, etc) comes from doing your main storyline quest. So, instead of asking how or when, just do your quest line, everything will come to you through it.
-Use your map for quest. Unlike wow, going back and reading where things are is going to be pretty useless, as they hardly ever tell you directions (ie WoW would say “south of goldshire, SWTOR might just say at the unfinished statue). Watch your map closely, if you are having a hard time figuring out where to go because of mountains etc, look for a dotted line path.
Tips and tricks
-Notice that you have tabs in almost all of your sheets, such as character sheet has a tab for your companion where you can change out gear. When you reach level 10 and pick your Advance Class (AC), there is a tab to get your new AC abilities. These tabs get over looked by a LOT of people at first.
-Phasing is real big in SWTOR, so figure out how it works pretty quickly. By opening up your map at the bottom of your screen you’ll see your planet name and a number, that is your “Phase ID”, and if your group members are in a different ID then they can’t see you. You can change it but only once per 30 minutes.
-PVP is a lot different in SWTOR. There is not level brackets like in WoW, rift, etc. There is one PVP que and it rotates through the three maps, so you can’t pick your BG either. First one is always the AB type map, where you have to control 3 points, the second one is always Hutt Ball which is basically soccer or Blitz from FF10. The third one is like Strands of the Ancient or BF3 Rush games, where you have to go through three doors and touch the main objective. One team attacks one defends, then the defending team has to attack faster.
-You can que for PVP at level 10. There is an icon at the bottom right of your map, you click on it to que. After you finish a match there is a checkmark before you leave that says to reque (turned on by default). If you are in a group it will not que you up again as a group, just an individual, so if you and your group leader are on a different rotation (ie group leader is ready for map 3 next and you are ready for map 1 next) then you’ll go into different maps. If you’re in a group it will follow the group leaders rotation.
-Use the zoom feature on your map. When you get to the first big city it can get pretty overwhelming figuring out where everything is, and unlike WoW you can’t ask a guard for directions. There is a little zoom button (typical magnifying glass) and once that’s selected you can scroll through the map to figure out where trainers and vendors are.
-Get your trade skills early and use them while you explore. Your companions do all of your professions for you, whether that’s crafting or gathering. They can be gone anywhere from 1m-20m, depending on what you are having them do. Use time when you won’t be using them (such as when you are PVPing or doing an instance or just going in and out of afk) to work up professions. It’s all about micro managing!
-The game, whether you’re in Beta or live, is still early. There a lot of bugs. Use the /bug or post on the forums so that it can get fixed. The game will only get better if people put in effort to make it better instead of just complain about it.
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