Tips for incoming WoW players.

[Littleshashi]

I just finished leveling from 1 to 10 on a Republic and Imperial character with my friend. We are WoW veterans and leveled as a team here in SWTOR. We would both rate our experience above a 90 out of 100. We thought it might be helpful for someone who's just starting TOR, or considering trying it, to list a few tips for a smoother transition to TOR:

---

1) Spend some time creating your character's look. You will be looking at it A LOT in hundreds of voice acted cut scenes. It's not like WoW where you mostly just stare at your character's back.

2) Resist the urge to spacebar through the dialogue. You are playing through a story, and it adds a great deal to the immersion.

3) Combat will probably feel uncomfortable at first. With no auto-attack, you will be mashing buttons frequently, even in caster classes. Set your keybinds to be comfortable for your fingers. That sounds "duh," but I ended up abandoning my WoW keybind conventions to accommodate the fact that there is no auto-attack, and my fingers thank me for it.

4) Give your brain time to adjust. If you are a WoW veteran, you probably have deep muscle memory for how to play your class(es). You will need anywhere from several hours to several days to feel comfortable with TOR combat.

5) Watch your health. It is easy to get swept away in combat and forget to recharge. TOR's UI is not as colorful or immediately apparent as WoW, but it IS legible and effective once you get used to it. Like the combat system, it just takes time.

6) Think about your pulls, even just for a second. You get a good number of CC, usually built into some attack, early in the game. It does add a bit of depth to combat, and it is a pleasure to use them with a bit of forethought. If you don't, things can feel either hectic or pointless.

7) Dialogue choices do matter eventually. When noted, your dialogue choices influence your equipped companion's affection for you, and Light Side versus Dark Side choices give you "rep" that you can later use to buy vendor items or equip certain drops. If you want to re-do your dialogue before it's over, just hit escape.

8) Keep your skills trained up and always keep a few medpacs handy. It's more like vanilla WoW. It's common to pull a pack of "trash" to find that a couple of them are one rank above trash (but not elite) and take a bit longer to kill. Kill the weaker mobs first.

9) Don't forget to bind to "hearthstone points" when you arrive at a new quest hub. This is in addition to talking to the taxi drivers. There is no limit to how many bind points you can hearth to on a planet.

10) Check your mail. NPC's can send you gifts or commendations after a quest. Don't get caught with old mail containing badges for an out-leveled zone.

11) It's worth it to play in a group! This is a full-fledged MMO and the game is very good at handling groups. Grouping will NOT slow you down, it's how you earn the Social Point currency, and group combat is a blast. You can even turn in group quests from a distance via a holo-projector if one group member gets to the NPC before the rest.

12) You can travel to the other starting planet on your faction. You can do this at any level as far as I know, just find the shuttle to the Republic or Imperial Fleet and the other shuttle in the hangar at your destination will take you there. You can NOT complete your class quest line on the other starting planet.

13) Planets (zones) are instanced. If your friend is in another instance of the zone, simply switch to her instance using the mini map.

14) Use your companion (pet) how it's fun for you. You can have one with you at a time. If they make combat too easy, dismiss them. If you hate pet management, send them away to craft or farm. Send them to sell the gray trash in your bags. They aren't there to annoy you. As long as they aren't on an errand, you can summon and dismiss them at your pleasure. Use them how you want.

---

Groups are 4 players.

Raids are 8 players.

General Lingo: Mod (Gem, enchant), Medpack (Potion), Stim (Scroll), Companion (Pet...and much more), Flashpoint (Dungeon), Operation (Raid), Planet (Zone)

Items: Cheap, Standard, Premium, Prototype, Custom, and Artifact.

Loot Indicators (on dead mobs): Light Blue (Trash), Yellow (Quest item), Green, Blue, Purple (Loot)

---

Stats: Strength (Warrior, Knight) Willpower (Consular, Inquisitor) Aim (Trooper, Bounty Hunter) Cunning (Agent, Smuggler)

---

Tips for customizing your controls:

- Turn on Area Loot in Options

- Turn on "Click ground to deselect target" in Options if you are used to this functionality in WoW.

- Action slot 1 is defaulted to execute on mouse right-click, if you feel like spamming your basic ability that way. I found this more trouble than it's worth, it would cause me to loot mobs while fighting as melee.

- Change the Ability Queue to .25 seconds. It's defaulted to .5 seconds and may seem disorienting to WoW players who do not play with a long ability queue window.

- Key bindings have an extensive menu in their own separate tab at the bottom of the Preferences screen.

- If you use Vent in Windows 7 and your Push to Talk key stops working when TOR is maximized, run Vent as Administrator.

- Turn on Enemy NPC nameplates. Makes targeting more manageable.

---

Much more at this link (thanks Tsimp): http://www.torhead.com/guides/swtor-for-the-wow-player

[Deleted]

I'd like to add one to this list :

Take some time to learn how to use your Companion in combat. They are NPC that come with you after some storytelling (every classe get one in the starting area).
They work just like pets, and they add a bit of depth in the combat, e.g. they can be used as a tank if you're a ranged classe, some of them also have cc and some heals (I'm not sure, need to be verified)

Anyway, great list !

[Tsimp]

This should be a sticky! Nice work, this is pretty useful if you're heading in from wow!

[Littleshashi]

Thanks for the thumbs up. I updated it with some tips on setting controls.

---------- Post added 2011-12-18 at 06:47 PM ----------

Link to an excellent new player guide here: http://www.torhead.com/guides/swtor-for-the-wow-player

[Tsimp]

I'm not sure how things get stickied, but I think this is good enough for it.

[akaTheDude]

This should be a sticky! Nice work, this is pretty useful if you're heading in from wow!

Agree!! This was a great post!! Good Job OP

[Fevyz]

Very nice tips! sticky please ^^

[ZeroWashu]

Two more tips.

If you decide you didn't like your companions reaction to a quest choice hit escape quickly before the conversation ends and you get a do over. Same for light/dark points if you weren't paying attention.

[Littleshashi]

Updated to add your tip.

[JustTed]

Someone else may know exactly what I'm talking about and how to give this tip in a better way, but if you go into your User Interface, there's an Auto Loot and an Auto Loot Area features. Choose both. They will show you what is on the creature prior to looting. Light blue beam--vendor trash or credits, green beam--green item; yellow beam--quest item; dark blue beam--blue, etc.

[Tsimp]

Someone else may know exactly what I'm talking about and how to give this tip in a better way, but if you go into your User Interface, there's an Auto Loot and an Auto Loot Area features. Choose both. They will show you what is on the creature prior to looting. Light blue beam--vendor trash or credits, green beam--green item; yellow beam--quest item; dark blue beam--blue, etc.

I have to say that this is absolutely amazing. They took one of the things that I liked about RIFT (AoE looting), and improved it even more! I really wish WoW would pick this up, but this late in the games life-cycle I don't think it would be worth it if its very hard to implement. Basically if something has loot on it you get a beam of light coming up from the corpse, and the color of the beam depends on the quality of loot. I don't know how many times I worried about missing the handle drop in the ICC heroics because people didn't loot corpses. 10/10 for innovation!

[Prag]

Here's mine:

Grouping is good. Shared objectives and drop items for quests drop for EVERYONE. You also get bonus xp for grouping. Look for a friend, maybe a DPS and Healer 2-person party and rock out. It's a lot of fun.

[Gemini Soul]

I'd like to add one to this list :

Take some time to learn how to use your Companion in combat. They are NPC that come with you after some storytelling (every classe get one in the starting area).
They work just like pets, and they add a bit of depth in the combat, e.g. they can be used as a tank if you're a ranged classe, some of them also have cc and some heals (I'm not sure, need to be verified)

Anyway, great list !

Exactly, when i see a pull of many mobs split up but linked i send my companion after the left side and i leap into the right side.

[Deleted]

The only tip, and most important tip i can give is, just have an open mind. Dont judge the game when you are lvl5 and have played it for 1 hour. Give it some time, im sure it will grow on you.

[Krotchrot]

Don't bring Chuck Norris Jokes into my SWTOR!

[Temeluchus]

To add a little to your dialogue choices matter section, not only for the things you highlighted but some choices you make can come back to haunt you or benefit you. You might see this 10 minutes down the line or not until you reach endgame.

[Saigon86]

Yeah #6 is a good one. I really like the style of the questing. You most often pull a small group, and there are more elite mobs around as well. Especially as a JK, I need to make sure I can survive every pull, and check the mobs around me. Its awesome! I can't even level in WoW anymore its so faceroll.

EDIT: /sign for sticky

[Deleted]

If you're coming from wow you can uninstall world of warcraft cos after playing swtor you won't want to come back.

[Svifnymr]

Pay attention to the mobs before you pull. They all have a "type" and you can see what to expect.

Some mobs are tougher than others with a silver-rank, as opposed to the "elite" of gold.
Some mobs are melee, some are tech guys, et cetera.
Some powers do stuns or whatever against the shlubs while not slowing down a Strong, so be aware.

Most of that info is there at a glance. If you pound on the tough guy while his glass cannons shoot you, you might die, where taking the others out first might win the day. In addition, knowing which ones are melee might help if you're ranged. (I like to hit the melee guys with the sticky grenade so they stand there for a few seconds while I target someone nearby.

[Deleted]

If you're coming from wow you can uninstall world of warcraft cos after playing swtor you won't want to come back.

Unless you like PvP. Yes huttbal is fun with 3v3 arena partners, but gets boring really fast with no challenge (go to 4-0 with ridiculously easy passing to ledges (and you have knockbacks, wooo...) or over the pits and get no points for an outstanding match win.............................. and then farm noobs for actual rewards, whoa... and you can't even farm with your teams, because solo kills award more, yay......).