For the better part of a year I’ve mainly focused on leveling toons and experiencing the various class stories. I have six level 50’s with only the Jedi Counselor and Smuggler stories left to complete. I’ve been “flying casually” so to speak.
Lately I’ve been jumping into the elder game and running Operations in a newly formed progression group in my guild. Go Team MXC! We’ll be jumping into Terror From Beyond next week.
My guild is an Imperial guild, and with four level 50’s I had to choose one that I was going to progress with. I chose my Arsenal Spec’d Mercenary (A main toon with the word “Hunter” in the class. Shocking I know.)
So as I begin researching how stats and gear worked in this game I was surprised to learn that with enough credits, and perhaps and army of alts, one could buy their way into a full set of gear that was practically BiS. That’s right, the best stats without ever setting foot in the Ops that drop that quality of gear. I know a couple of Auction House barons in WoW that would love to buy their way into hard mode raid gear.
The way that this work is, crafters can make level 63 (27) armoring, mods and enhancements and sell them on the GTN (If you’re looking for a good introduction into how the gear levels are structured in SWTOR take a look at this article at Force Junkies.) This is the same level stats that come with the Dreadguard gear, only with you in control of optimizing the numbers beyond what comes with the armor. It’s min/max nirvana. The only pieces that you can’t buy with the best stats are the Dreadguard armoring with set bonuses. To get set bonuses without running Ops you would need to purchase the Campaign armoring with Black Hole comms.
Now granted this is an expensive proposition with mods costing 500K credits on the low end and upwards of a million on the high end. That said, if you’re willing to sell items on the GTN and, say, run half a doze alts through dailies, it’s entirely doable. Whether or not it’s worth doing with Rise of the Hutt Cartel coming is another matter.
If you factor in the Cartel Market and the ability to buy coins with real money, and then buy items with coins, and then sell said items on the GTN, you now have way of turning real money into credits and using those credits to buy the best gear. Is it practical? No. Is it possible? Yes.
I haven’t decided yet if I want to pursue getting all the level 63 mods from the GTN. I may grind to get a few here and there, and then just get what I can from Ops. I suspect that come the expansion a pile of credits will be much more valuable then a near BiS set of gear that I’ll replace at level 55.
As someone who is just exploring the elder game I find this to be an interesting concept. How do you feel about high-end mods being available on the GTN? A good thing, a bad thing or a non-issue? Just curious.
May the Force Be With You!
