Helpful hints for the SWTOR Newbies: Help Stop General Spam!

A list of the little tips and techniques people have found to improve your experience!

- You have a once a day warp to the Fleet! Called your Emergency Fleet Pass, it's under your Abilities -> General

- Compaion want to talk to you? Head to the nearest cantina

- Commendations stacking up? Every commendation vendor has a shop at the Fleet, Korriban, Nar Shadaa, etc. Don't worry about having to the respective planet.

- Reverse Engineering? Use it to discover Blue and Purple levels of the item you are reverse engineering. Just be careful, if you click on a stack, it consumes the entire thing!

- Companion affection does alot to help your crafting and improves critical results. Know your companion (look in the codex) and give gifts that they respond to. It's not just roleplaying fluff to increase your affection.

- Speeder training is 40k, with another 8k for the actual speeder. Be prepared to have 55kish ready for 25, your ability training gets expensive too!

Please add yours, be nice to compile a list of the "No way!"s and "No duh"s.

You get companions by progressing the story, not at a given level

You get off the starting planet by progressing the story, not at a given level

You get your ship by progressing the story, not at a given level.

You get sent to new planets on quests by progressing the story, not at a given level.

These 4 alone are really common on my server.

You dont need to be specced for healing to use a heal. it can mean the difference between doing a heroic quest and sitting on your hands waiting.

your job trainer teaches you your advanced class skills too, theres a tab that switched between them on his list.<had a guildy get to 40 without realizing this.... i have no idea how he leveled>

you can que up more than 1 crafting item on the companions bar, up to 5. just tell them to build it and they will.

Don't steal quest objectives that someone is currently fighting for, this is about being decent more than anything else.

dont feed the trolls.

save up money, the things you need drain it fast at certain points so dont think that 100k is going to last forever and buy stupid things.

i could of swore i saw a quesh vendor on the fleet but maybe he just doesnt like you, darn sneaky npcs.

Don't forget to buff people when you get into a group.

Every time you die, make sure you check your buffs when you res. Everyone has a class buff and Sprint that will need to be reapplied; some classes have more (for example, a Jedi Guardian's Guard).

Keep your medpacks up to date - they heal for around 40% of my max health as a tank stacking endurance to high heaven. Same thing with stims.

If you've got the cash, orange (moddable) gear is excellent. A piece modded with all level 32 blues will be as good as or better than a blue level 32 piece of that same slot. Pick up mods with commendations or by buying new pieces of orange gear from specialty vendors and taking out the mods. There is a very appreciable difference between three levels of gear, and most of us will go 8+ levels before we remember to check for upgrades.

For those who've played WoW, a quick rundown on orange gear: it's like gem sockets, except the base stats are 0 because your "gems" make up the entirety of the item's stats.

Each piece of moddable gear has a "critical" slot (armoring for armor pieces, hilt for lightsabers, barrel for blasters, etc). This piece not only provides bonus stats (+strength, +critical, etc), but because it determines the armor rating/weapon damage of the item in question.

Most moddable items also take a "mod" upgrade or an "enhancement" upgrade. You can't mix them - i.e. a mod only goes in a mod slot, a hilt only goes in a hilt slot, etc. Weapons will also take a color crystal. There's some cool colors out there beyond the normal blue/green/red/yellow, but you usually have to work for them.

Weapons, chest pieces, and leg pieces are the most important slots you have. Weapons get four upgrade slots and chest and leg pieces get three.

Some quests will let you choose between a blue item and three commendations as a reward. Unless the blue is a fairly big upgrade, go for the commendations.

Keeping your gear up to date means you can solo Heroic 2+ quests and maybe even Heroic 4+ quests.

Do your PvP dailies (gotten in the combat training portion of your fleet) - PvP gear is some of the best in the game at level 50, and the PvP itself is pretty rewarding (in terms of fun, experience, commendations, and valor). Space Battle dailies (which you get in your ship) also give a good amount of experience and credits.

If you're short on money, don't be afraid to drop a crew skill for Slicing. You can level slicing to 400 as soon as you get it, and while profiting off it is less than intuitive, there are guides to help you out.

Armond436 said: "Most moddable items also take a "mod" upgrade or an "enhancement" upgrade. You can't mix them - i.e. a mod only goes in a mod slot, a hilt only goes in a hilt slot, etc. Weapons will also take a color crystal. There's some cool colors out there beyond the normal blue/green/red/yellow, but you usually have to work for them.

Weapons, chest pieces, and leg pieces are the most important slots you have. Weapons get four upgrade slots and chest and leg pieces get three."

Actually, ALL Custom items (Orange border/name) can take Mod and Enhancement (Mod is the one that looks kind of like a studded bracelet, while Enhancement looks like a computer chip). Additionally, ALL weapons can take a Color crystal and a specialized Item Modification (barrel for blasters, Hilt for Lightsabers), and ALL armor can take Armoring.

So, all weapons get 4 Item Modification slots, and all armor pieces get 3 Item Modification slots. The only exception to this is some of the crafted gear that has 1 of these slots locked (such as an armor piece that only has 2 Item Modification slots available. The third one is locked/hard coded into the item).

Crafted gear (The jury is still out on if Custom crafted gear can do this) also CAN contain one more slot. On a critical success during crafting, an Augment slot is added. Augments come from Slicing missions, and nowhere else. You can buy them from other players, but no one "made" the augments.

More tips

- Space combat is fun and easy! It's almost a small mini game that takes only 5 minutes to complete. The rewards for xp and credits are worth it, especially as you you get your ship around 17-18ish. There are 3 that can be completed very quickly, try it.

- Understand what Crowd Control, Mez'ing, etc your character and others have. Communicate in groups to say "don't touch this guy and don't use any Area of Effect spells near it!"

- Do the bonus quests! They sometimes lead to other bonus quests that follow the main quest you are on. You can knock out 3-4 quests in one area as oposed to just the one main. It's worth it to go out of your way to kill an extra mob or two.

WhiteWoof said: "So, all weapons get 4 Item Modification slots, and all armor pieces get 3 Item Modification slots."

I have a copy of Jedi Myrmidon's Belt that has no augment slot. Why? That's a mystery for a not-newbie thread! Thanks for letting me know - I'll have to find a proper version of the belt.