SWTOR Patch 2.9 Galactic Stronghold PTS Patch notes

Dulfy 67 Comments Jul 24, 2014

SWTOR PTS will be coming up tomorrow but here are the PTS patch notes for the Galactic Strongholds Patch 2.9.

Highlights
Galactic Strongholds Subscriber Early Access! Subscribers who have reached level 15 can now purchase a Galactic Stronghold on Nar Shaddaa, Tatooine, Dromund Kaas, and Coruscant by visiting the Stronghold Directory on the Fleet or on the Stronghold’s planet.
New Flashpoint: Depths of Manaan! Continue the Forged Alliances storyline with a new Level 55 Tactical Flashpoint set on the water-covered planet of Manaan.
General

The GSI Satellite Support Service is now in open beta testing on Makeb. Once registered with the GSI support satellites, GSI will track your every move and provide you with the following support services:[line]
Gear is now bolstered to a 156 rating while on Makeb, increasing all stats!
When combat is detected, a Medical Probe will be deployed to administer long-lasting, refreshing Kolto, healing you for 2% every 3 seconds while you remain in combat.
There is now a 250% boost to exploration Experience while on Makeb.[/line]
Pets now occasionally make noises.

Galactic Strongholds

Galactic Strongholds on Nar Shaddaa, Tatooine, Dromund Kaas and Coruscant are now available to players who have reached Level 15 and have enough credits to purchase the Stronghold.
Strongholds can be purchased by going to the Stronghold Directory on either Fleet or on the respective Stronghold planet.
An introductory Mission that grants a set of starter Decorations is offered by the Stronghold Commissioner, who can be found on either Fleet or on either Capital planet.
Guildmasters can purchase a Guild Headquarters at any Stronghold Directory. This purchase requires a Guild Bank with enough credits. (PTS prices are not final.)
New Schematics are available on all Crew Skill trainers:
- Industrial Prefabs can be crafted by Armormechs, Armstechs, and Cybertechs.
- Synthetic Prefabs can be crafted by Artificers, Biochems, Synthweavers.
- Universal Prefabs can be crafted by any profession.
- Prefabs are divided into three tiers: MK-1, MK-2, and MK-3.
Prefabs may be exchanged at the Fabricator Droids in the Strongholds & Crew Skills quadrant of either Fleet for a wide variety of Decorations.
Decorations now drop from every Flashpoint and Operation.
Many Flashpoint and Operation Achievements now provide special Trophy Decorations that can be placed on the walls of your Stronghold. You can view them in the Achievement Reward Window. These Decorations will be automatically unlocked when the Achievement is earned. You can also you can right-click the item icon to unlock it once the Achievement is earned.
Decorations may be purchased for Warzone Commendations and Fleet Commendations at the Starfighter & PvP Decorations Vendor on either Fleet.

Missions + NPCs

The density of enemies on Makeb has been reduced.
Group scaling has been removed from the following Missions, and the difficulty of the boss encounter no longer scales based on the number of players in the group:
- Stealing Thunder (Imperial)
- Revenge of the Archon (Imperial)
- Hitting the Hutts (Republic)
- Taking on Toborro (Republic)

Source: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=753413

Going into the PTS, there are a few bugs that we aware of and are looking to get fixed prior to the live implementation of 2.9.
Known Issues

Players can get stuck in an infinite loading screen if the "Return to Space" option is used when exiting a Stronghold. This option appears if the Player just completed a Warzone or a Galactic Starfighter battle.
Deactivating a Stronghold with Decorations placed inside causes the Decorations to vanish.
Legacy Cargo doesn’t properly display purchased Bays.
A Party can’t be converted to an Ops group if any members are in a Stronghold.
Companions of the opposing Faction are hostile towards the Player and can be killed for Experience.
You are unable to travel to a Stronghold after deleting every character on an account and then creating a new character.
Players invited through General invite or Public Listing don’t see the Stronghold Name banner.
Players will not receive an Invitation if they are invited from the "Open Invite Dialog" button, found in the Stronghold Toolbar.
The "Rotation" Axis doesn’t reset to default (0) when pressing "Reset Changes" after using "Apply Changes" and modifying the position again.
"<br>" text appears in the Area name in multiple locations.
Strongholds and Decorations are lost when the purchasing character is deleted.
The timer for "/stuck" should be reduced while in Strongholds.
The Cartel Coin option for Stronghold purchase is not grayed out, but is not available on PTS. Clicking this option will present an infinitely spinning "Requesting Data" pop up.

Thanks for helping us test out Galactic Strongholds!

vendrimair

New Flashpoint: Depths of Manaan! Continue the Forged Alliances storyline with a new Level 55 Tactical Flashpoint set on the water-covered planet of Manaan.

Really? Another tactical fp?
- Dulfy
  
  Yes, it seems tactical flashpoints are the norm these days to make them more accessible.
  - Sivis
    
    I do prefer tacticals, less queue time as it doesn’t need tanks/healers. I just hope this one has a bit more “about it” compared to the others.
    - RidDler2435
      
      The problem is they don’t give us veterans that require a bit more difficult content any options. There is no reason for Nightmare geared people to do tactical flashpoints as there’s no incentives or challenge.
      - Arby
        
        And there’s no sense in queuing for a flashpoint if you have to stand around for 45 minutes just to find a healer and/or tank. Go do ops elitist
        
        vendrimair
        
        If there were more non-tactical fps maybe tanks and healers would have more of an incentive to queue up
        
        Arby
        
        There are… they don’t
        
        Vendrimair
        
        There aren’t any new non-tacticals, the last non-tactical fps were back when CZ-198 came out, and the HMs of Corporate Labs and Core Meltdown added to HM fps. And i myself, would indeed queue for more non-tacticals if they were released.
        
        Vendrimair
        
        I forgot to include that my main toon is a tank
        
        RidDler2435
        
        Make an incentive for us tanks and healers to actually queue up for flashpoints. With the tactical flashpoints Bioware scares new players away from tanking and healing. Why bother going tank and doing less dps if you can just faceroll through the content as dps?
        This could also easily have been fixed by adding 5 player flashpoints.
        
        This has nothing to do with elitist, as it is far from only nightmare/hardmode geared players that have this issue. What’s the problem with ramping up the difficulty on the flashpoints to hardmode and nightmare difficulties? Should be little work for a lot of gain. Meaning more gameplay.
        
        vendrimair
        
        Exactly
        
        Estranged
        
        Ops are not really elitist. They are fun and somewhat challenging in spots.
- Aureliuss
  
  Makes sense. Most people do not do regular flashpoints because of the lack of tank/healers (in many servers).
  
  However, i do expect them to start making Hardmode versions
- Sean Varsho
  
  I feel as if they are pushing these tacticals so we have a “full array” of hm FPs upon the release of the new “cartel-sized” expansion
  - Vendrimair
    
    Ill admit, i didnt thino about that. Hopefully it happens (:
Aeletheus

Not sure what the GSI satellite support service is, or the point of the bolster to Makeb (bolster kinda feels like it takes out any point to the planet)
Also, curious to see what the kolto probe is gonna be and where it can be used. Could be cool or it could be kinda weird
- rippled
  
  sounds like the conquest event bonuses test
Arby

Sooo…. at some point Makeb got a lot harder than when I did it with all my toons? GSI satellite support sounds useless and stupid.
- Picker
  
  Agreed. With all those tacticals, bolsters, and now a flying medpack i wonder where the chalenge will be besides NiM ops…
- vendrimair
  
  I agree, most of the fun of leveling through makeb was from having to apply personal strategy in difficult situations.
  - Trogdor
    
    What difficult situations? I found everything on makeb to be a breeze. The enemies have very low hp. Now they’re making it even easier? The only change I’m happy with is the reduced enemy density.
    - vendrimair
      
      Mainly the fights against the Iso droid and the Archon, i suppose my word choice of difficult wasnt great, but at least it wasnt over simplified
      - vendrimair
        
        By over simplified i was referring to the enemies, not my word choice..
    - Iron-Clad
      
      While I generally agree with you, I recall the final fight on the imperial side being rather difficult if you weren’t geared. Sure, it was easy with my raid-geared toons when it first came out, but it was a challenge on new toons in natural questing gear ~134 or less. Having taken 6 char’s through makeb, that’s the only encounter I ever found remotely challenging (no remotely challenging fights on pub side).
      - Arby
        
        So you gear up properly first? And maybe read a guide? I did the first time, solo, with a pyro merc, wearing all lvl 53 blue mods I got with planetary comms and I didn’t even die once. It just gets easier the more times you do it. Does not need bolster and constant healing to be completed solo, and if a group can’t do it without these “features” then they should change games.
        
        Estranged
        
        Some of us prefer to fight a battle and figure it out on our own. Anyone can read a guide.
        
        Arby
        
        Still don’t need bolstered and consta-healed to figure it out on your own… it’s not that hard
- Yourmom
  
  They are probably just trying to speed up the process of leveling and finishing the makeb story before 3.0 comes out.
- Y-Yorle?
  
  The main problem I had with Makeb was the mob density, apart from that I loved it and would have done the dailies more is it wasn’t for that density. And they’ve reduced that now, so I’m happy 🙂
Picker

OH God, another tactical…
- y2z
  
  You sound surprised, yet they already said this arc would comprise of a series of FPs. That was confirmed months ago.
New Wave Fan

Thank god for the xp boost on Makeb. I guarentee the bolstering to Makeb was done to pre-empt the inevitable level cap raise to 60/65 that will probably be happening in the next patch or so after this. Either way, I’m not complaining; anything to quicken the tedium to get to the endgame is welcome from me.
- Rikal
  
  If you want to level to cap fast, you shouldn’t be bothering (much) with Makeb anyway.
Doubious

I would love to know if, with the Legacy Storage, it applied to only BOP or if Bound BOE items were also excluded. I can’t seem to find that anywhere.
- Yourmom
  
  You will not be able to store bound items in the legacy cargo hold. Any item that is unbound or bound to legacy can be stored in the legacy cargo hold. There will also be no storage of credits in the legacy cargo hold.
  - Doubious
    
    That’s a cryin’ shame. Ah well!
Meetra Actual

Well, what did I say? Tactical FP for Manaan.
The Makeb nerf will cause a lot of whining, I have no doubt; but the fact that I could not really speeder trhough it was a pain, so in the interests of just completing the blasted story, I’m glad they did it.

And, the list of “known bugs”…..man that’s a long one. How many more that they are not telling us about?

~Meet.
P.S. Killing comps for XP? Does this mean I can throttle Tharan Cedrax on my warrior? YEAH!
P.P.S Level cap rise? I’m against it; I only have two 55s. Now, if they bumped my lvl 10s to 55 before that rise, yeah, sure, but this is getting tiresome.
- Yourmom
  
  I’m all for a cap raise. All my toons are 55 already. But what I am really hoping for is a new player class. I have one of each and have learned them all, so something new would be great. 3.0 will bring us one or the other, and in a perfect world, it will bring both.
  - TJWoo
    
    I really think a new class is about the last thing we’ll get in this game. Way too much work with rebalancing the other classes and a completely new story, voiceovers etc. etc. I would be extremely surprised if you ever see a new class. However, the cap will be raised to 60 with the next expansion.
    - Meetra Actual
      
      src?
    - Battlemaster Nersos Wylan
      
      Oh no, then they would have to remove almost all the l55 gears, they would have to make a new commendations system, another story planet and daily areas, new crafting schematics, mods, ops, ops gear and skills. It will be a long time to do this. They can make more money with less effort if they stick to improving l55 endgame and i’d support it. There’s no need for new crappy storyline and skills. We only need new ops and flashpoints for some challenge and better gear and the thing we REALLY need is a GOOD server engine that is able to handle open world pvp and warzones. They have never improved open world pvp with new areas and quests for pvp missions for fighting players of the same level there and doing quests similar to the gree event pvp missions. It’s time to do that before any other expansion.
  - Meetra Actual
    
    Sure, why not!
    /sarcasm.
    We have, imo, maxed the universe-relevant classes. We have stealth tahnks, stealth DPS, stealth hlears. We have Melee tanks, we have ranged tanks. We have Melee DPS, we have Ranged DPS. What more could we want?
    
    Personally, I would like two things: a healertank combo where you can tank effectively, and slap around HOTs and AOE heals, (Say a cross between a Shadow and Sage, but with less castbars), and I’d like a mixed DPS class (so both ranged and melee) where you could switch stances when you need to, say shoot at range, then when someone runs up to you, shoulder your rifle and pull out the vibroaxe.
    
    Both would be fun, but would disrupt the current class balance. Too much work.
    - RidDler2435
      
      It’s very obvious that the two 55’s you have are dps and you’re in love with Treek. Tanks should be tanking and healers should be healing. They shouldn’t be doing both. Especially considering a lot of the bosses require moving and full focus from a tanking perspective and full focus on healing from a healers perspective.
      - Meetra Actual
        
        Actually, I have two tanks (Vanguard and Shadow) and I’m talking PvP.
        
        RidDler2435
        
        Even more ridiculous. You want a tank that heals in PvP??? You haven’t thought this through at all have you.
        
        Meetra Actual
        
        Bingo! I haven’t.
        
        I never said this was the best idea, this was the first thing that came to mind, and what is “cool” is not always “practicle”.
        
        Heist 101
        
        Pls no trolling guys
Rikal

Makeb is going to be shortened and bolstered? Obviously the data must show that nobody plays Makeb, but I’m not sure this is a good solution. Just like getting bolstered in TFPs, won’t this lead to people paying even less attention to their gear, and less attention to learning their class and role?
- TJWoo
  
  Yes and yes.
- Havik79
  
  Maybe, I know my classes, I craft my own level 53 armourings, I just do not do Makeb because it was too slow an annoying having to constantly fight every 2 seconds so I skipped it.
  I hope they do more of it, make more end game stuff accessible to those of us not in huge guilds and don’t have the time to do ops everyday to get better gear.
- Argaria
  
  Makeb has one big issue. It’s ZERO replayablity value. One, 100% linear planetary story, always the same, doesn’t really matter if you go there with smuggler or jedi. Me, and most of my guildies, we did Makeb once each side, it’s a good story and worth it. But no more than once.
  
  And then they dealt a final blow to Makeb – a KDY glorified heroic, with sky-high XP rewards between 50-55, which can be completed faster than “Dissonance wave” quest in Makeb’s storyline.
  
  Bolster is being used as wonderful cure for everything… Ok, now Makeb bolstered with auto-healing, then what next? Drop lazy players without any gear to Oricon? Oricon which is scaled to lvl 55 and gives lvl 53 rewards, btw. Bolster Oricon? And give 156 rewards? The same as bolster level of “tactical” operations? They won’t notice any stat increase and they’ll complain again. Drop auto-healing everywhere so there will be only DPS classes left in the game?
  
  There are not enough good healers in the game. They should encourage folks to go for healing, make it easier, give healing classes some auto-healing capabilities (like always-active healing probe). Making healers useless by adding area-wide auto-healing and Kolto stations everywhere is wrong for endgame. Finally Bioware won’t have any choice but do “tactical” stuff only, because of their own wrong design decisions.
  
  I am little scared tbh, it seems to be totally chaotic at BW now, they doesn’t seem to have idea what to do about the game now…
  - Fabulous
    
    As a good healer myself, since I’ve never played a dps class in the entire gameplay time but I’ve leveled 4 healers I agree with you. But there’s a problem. Not anyone can be a healer. If somebody’s not a healer by default he/she needs alot of practice, stat knowledge and use of their skills + I always recommend watching raiding and pvp videos on youtube to kinda get to know the healing environment. And makeb was hard for me. Not because of gear. It is soo damn boring and annoying that a story quest is more than enough. Anyways this bolster thing won’t make much difference. Did you notice that they’re bolstering almost EVERYTHING last month? I’m guessing that’s because of the certain level of gear that will be required for trying out the new planet (i hope) or a flashpoint or whatever. Newbies can get gear and slowly learn their path to being a hardmode raider or join ranked wz’s. I think that’s nice. I remember the time when I was a newbie. Btw swtor is still my first and only played mmo. I didn’t know what mods are, forget it about stats (I’ve learned that when I was lvl 30 sth). But now I’m joining ranked, even doing some hardmode ops. + I’m against increasing level cap for now since I haven’t put all my toons to 55 yet :/ To wrap it all up: I don’t think it’s wrong about what they’re doing. Because it’s VERY HARD to catch up to players that’ve been to the game since launch. If they put 2 years into gameplay, that means a newbie has to put 2 years as well when the other game population will be 2-3 new operations ahead? NO.
  - prdc
    
    Problem is, since BioWare refuses to make more class-unique storylines, that’s how things are going to be from now on: new stories with zero replay value, a single same story for each faction.
Fabulous

“Pets now occasionally make noises.” I’m gonna party like never before yeeey
Darth Vader

“Now his failure is complete.”

-Darth Vader on Bioware and Makeb
Random

Can Preffered Accounts go on PTS? If so when does the server come online? Please answer!
- Ansician
  
  as far as I know, no.
Kylmc

How does this GSI support thing work? Same thing for the Medical Droid.
prdc

What the heck is a Prefab?
Vendrimair

I’m on the PTS right now, and there’s a new set of CPs to check out.
Jerry

Anyone know how much guild headquarters cost yet?
- Vendrimair
  
  100k for DK/Coruscant, 25M for Nar/Tat
  - Vendrimair
    
    *2.5M
  - Jerry
    
    Ah the forum post about cost has been updated now, but so far it just says 13 mil for Coruscant,
Mike

NOOOOO!!! my life is coming to an end, not another crappy tactical fp (one that posed a challenge would be good), im so disappointed that a brand new operation hasn’t been released by this stage instead of just new difficulties of already existing ones :(.
Khepra

Ugh really? “Some decorations will be crafted!! 😀 :D” turns out to mean everyone will be making THREE items for sale? Does Bioware not even look at its own GTN data? 100 pages of prefabs, all flooding the market by nimrods who don’t understand the basics of “don’t sell something for less than the mats cost,” and just mindlessly undercut whatever they see. Another race to the bottom. Instead of new schematics to make actual items, like Artificing holocrons or Armsteching weapon lockers, or something that would take an effort, everyone just basically makes…. currency tokens. HOW EXCITING. At least you non-crafters get to look forward to the price crashing down to nothing.
Balinus

R we goin to get new legacy sets forthis new FP? Like the tython nad korriban ones?

SWTOR Patch 2.9 Galactic Stronghold PTS Patch notes

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