Rise of the Rakghouls, Patch 1.1 Overview

Patch 1.1, Rise of the Rakghouls update will be going live on Tuesday, January 17th and if you’re like us, you probably want to know exactly what’s coming. This is the first big update for SWTOR and there are several different official interviews and other occasions where BioWare staff has spoken out and given us details of what we can expect. They’ve also told us that we can expect to have more regular updates and patches like this to come in the future.

So here’s a look at some snippets of those sources and whatthey say we can expect on Tuesday:

Rise of the Rakghouls – James Ohlen

Rise of the Rakghouls is our first content release. It includes an extension toKaragga’s Palace, which is one of the operations in our release game. It’squite a huge extension. In the initial release of Karagga’s Palace, we only hada single boss monster. It was a relatively short operation. Now we’ve expandedthat by four boss monsters–it’s significantly bigger, a lot more epic. We’veadded cinematics to it; it’s an entirely different experience now.

We’ve added [Kaon Under Siege], which is actually part one of a two-part epicstory that takes place in the galaxy. The second part’s going to come out withour release in March. Those are the two content releases that we’re giving.We’re doing a few small tweaks to the system. We’ve added anti-aliasing withthis first game update, and a few tweaks to PVP, but we’ve got a lot more gamesystem changes and additions in the second update which comes in March. Andthen every single update after that will have in addition to new content, newgame systems.

Then there is Karragga’s place which will get some newbosses.

Tower’s of Hanoi – Gabe Amatangelo

We also paid homage to old-schoolBioWare. We have a tower of Hanoi-type mechanic. (We like to have a puzzle inoperations, like we did in Eternity Vault.) The “tower of Hanoi” isin the Hutt factory where droids are being made. You’re fighting one ofKaragga’s sentinel droids, and you can’t take it out unless you use the conveyorbelt. Of course, the conveyor belt and the power circuits have to be alignedlike the towers of Hanoi to pour molten lava on it to make it vulnerable.

A big topic for many who are playing SWTOR today is PvP.There are some bugs and issues in PvP that will likely get patched as well assome other additions. Here are some words from the source on that:

PvP Changes – Bioware

·       Level 50 playersnow participate in their own Warzone bracket and will not be matched withlower-level players.

·       Battlemaster GearTokens have been converted into Battlemaster Commendations, which can be usedto purchase any Battlemaster gear. This allows players to purchase any piece ofgear instead of requiring them to purchase the piece indicated by the token.

·       Battlemaster Bagsnow contain Battlemaster Commendations instead of Battlemaster Gear Tokens.They still also contain Champion Commendations.

·       The Bolstertooltip now more accurately represents the buff’s effects.

·       The PvP item“Heal Consumable” is now named “Warzone Medpac.” Its cooldown has been reducedfrom 5 minutes to 3 minutes and it now shares the 1.5-minute cooldown withother medpacs. This item can be used effectively over time, but now cannot bestacked beyond what is intended.

·       The PvP item“Overcharge Consumable” is now named “Warzone Expertise Adrenal.” Its cooldownhas been reduced from 5 minutes to 3 minutes and it now shares a cooldown withother adrenals. It (and other adrenals) no longer stack with the PvP Power-Upthat increases Expertise to prevent Expertise values from increasing beyondintended levels.

·       Warzone Medpacsand Warzone Expertise Adrenals no longer share a cooldown with each other.

·       A new line of high-endPvP relics with appropriate PvP stats have been added to PvP vendors.

·       The Outlaws’ Den(Tatooine) chests containing Mercenary Commendations are now available again inthe Outlaw’s Den.

More changes and updates are coming to Ilum as well:

About Illum and Open-World PvP -Gabe Amatangelo

The objectives on Ilum were supposed to be on timers, and the timers weresupposed to be locked down. But in the 11th hour, the timers weren’t working.So we knew what kind of behavior was going to evolve there. It’s not like wewere going to delay launch to fix that. But with 1.1, we are going to behandling a lot of those issue with a bunch of improvements there, like focusingon killing players. The objectives give you buffs, but ultimately you have tokill the players to get the rewards. We’ve included new spawn points as well assome optimization with the turrets.

We do have longer-term plans for open-world PvP. It is open-world PvP; it’s notan RvR system. I kept trying to throw that out there. I’m not saying that it’snot something we don’t want to do.

IIum Changes – Bioware

·       The daily andweekly mission objectives in Ilum now require defeating enemy players and/orcollecting armaments from the center objective.

·       Players now gainincreased Valor from player kills in Ilum.

·       Players now gainincreased bonus Valor for kills based on the number of objectives controlled bytheir faction.

·       Increased bonusValor is now granted for player kills when defending an objective your factionowns.

·       A notification isnow displayed when a player gains Valor.

·       Three new respawnpoints have been added for each faction.

·       Companions arenow restricted from the PvP objective area on Ilum.

·       Notifications arenow displayed when enemy players are close to an objective.

·       Mountable turretsin Ilum no longer deal damage to targets behind them or outside their range.

·       Turrets no longerimmediately dismount the player after use.

·       Automated defenseturrets have been added to Empire and Republic taxi spawn points.

·       Particle Cannonsaround the Empire and Republic bases now activate more reliably.

Other bugs andfixes include:

Learn more herefrom BioWare.

What changes or additionsare you looking forward to the most from the new Patch Rise of theRakghouls?