Game Update 7.4

The Road to 344 - Live!!!

12/5/23 - We go live with 7.4 today.  It is upgrade time!

7.4 Day One

Here we are, day one, and we hope to hit the ground running with more upgrades to our gear.  The Dev team told us we would continue to feel more powerful in the 7.x expansion, and here is another example of that unfolding.  In my opinion, operations are already very under tuned to our (previously) current gear score.   336 with Gold Augs feels about where Master Mode Operations are balanced for.  The unfortunate disconnect with SWTOR is that there is no mention of a recommended gear score when heading into its operations.  It would be far more beneficial to the player, and the community to have listed, what the Devs recommended gear score is for each operation, in the game...but enough on that tangent, it is upgrade day!

For weeks now we have been doing some prework (or not?).  We have been banking missions to collect tech fragments with on alts.  We have been filling our bags with operations gear to deconstruct for tech fragments and farming R-4 for more blue tokens to upgrade our gear.

If you missed the PreWork phase of this, not to worry.  If you are upgrading your R-4 gear, you will need to farm for:

If you do not have any Purple R-4 Gear, check out the Guide here.

The plan once you have your upgrade materials listed above.

Here's the short version:

1) Remove Your Augments
4) ST4-RK - Upgrade Legendary Implants to 340 (and equip them)
3) R-4 Veteran Vendor - Upgrade Purple R-4 to Purple Rakata with Blue R-4 Tokens
4) Ops Vendor - Finish upgrading ALL Purple 342 Rakata to 344 Rakata
5) Inventory - Open Master Mode Ops Boxes (only after all other steps have been completed, be patient, or you will create more work for yourself)
 A)The Boxes will have given you replacements for any Blue R-4 Gear you still had.
6) Ops Vendor - Upgrade your replacements (342 Rakata) to 344 Rakata.

Here is the expanded version:

Step one, Take OUT any AUGMENTS from ANY GEAR you are UPGRADING!  Do not make it a sad day losing your hard-earned Gold Augments.

If you have everything you need in front of you and know your full gear set is getting an overhaul, rip out all of your augments.  Grab 14 new MK-11 Augment kits and let's get started

2) And this can be done in parallel to anything else you are working on, begin upgrading your legendary implants.  I imagine it will cost another 6500 Tech Fragments a Pop, with 100 Conquest comms and some credits as it has in the past.  When I start my process later today, I will update that information here.  Good news, our discounts remained and upgrades are only 2500 Tech Frags and 60 Conquest comms!  Further update, it seems that the first upgrade to 336 was 2500, then the subsequent upgrades to 338 and 340 were 6500.

Hopefully you were able to get an army of alts conquest over the last few weeks and have some pending mission reward to continue to pull from to keep upgrading those legendary Implants to 340.  Here is where I would slowly collect mission rewards, being careful not to hit the 11,000 tech fragment cap each time.  Claim enough for an upgrade, swap over and upgrade, rinse...repeat.

3) Upgrading the Core Gear.  Assuming you are in a mix of Blue/Prototype and Purple/Artifact R-4 gear now, we are heading to the R-4 vendor to trade our Purple R-4 Gear for 342 Rakata.  We will need one Blue R-4 as well as about 80 OP-1s to get each Purple R-4 to 342 Rakata.  Fill your inventory up with the R-4 Blue Tokens and any extra gear you managed to store away and begin the upgrade process (again, make sure your augments are out!).  Go down through your gear and upgrade all of your Purple Veteran R-4 Gear to 342 Raktaa.  As you run out of OP-1s, deconstruct gear to rebuild your coffers.  It will take about 1040 OP-1s to fully upgrade an entire set of Purple Veteran R-4 Gear to 342 Rakata.  Be sure to have a bankroll of credits with you as well, as they are required for the upgrades as well (and they are not cheap).

4) Once you have upgraded all of your 342 Gear, next we will head over to the Operations Upgrade Vendor.  Any gear still at 342 can be taken to 344 with more OP-1s and credits.  Keep upgrade until you are either 344, or out of materials.  You will want to keep farming for OP-1s until all of your Rakata gear is at 344 before proceeding with opening Master Mode Upgrade Boxes.

5) Once you have all of your Rakata gear to 344 and your implants to at least 338, it is time to use any Master Mode Operations weekly upgrade boxes you have collected (or have held in a mission to turn in).  Remember that if you have these held in pending mission collection to account for the 175 OP-1s you will receive when collecting it.

5a) If you have Rakata Boxes to turn in from completing Master Mode Operations, those boxes are bound to the character that earned them.  (Rather annoying seeing as how the rest of the boxes in the game are legacy bound.)  This means that you will need to be able to send your gear to your alts to open the boxes.  This can be a challenge if that character cannot equip the items that you had chosen to upgrade to 344/implants to 340.  It may mean being even more patient and getting additional gear to 344 to ensure the correct gear item is baited.

Be sure to set your loot discipline when cashing these boxes in.  You do not want to end up with tank gear if you are working on a DPS toon after all.  With all of your Gear Equipped, use the Box.  It will drop an upgrade for your lowest level item, assuming a replacement for any Blue R-4 gear you have on.  Equip the upgrade and continue in this fashion until you have used all of your Master Mode upgrade boxes.  Remember to always equip the upgraded item before opening the next box, or you may receive duplicates.

6) Head back to the Ops Vendor to finish upgrading your new 342 Rakata gear to 344.

Re-augment, you are all set!

I have updated the "gearing to 336" page, to "gearing to 340" for those new raiders starting up around the 7.4 launch window, or really for anyone that has not gotten into the R-4 gearing path.  Follow the link to get started on that journey.

Version 2 of my Stat Planner has launched for the site's supporters to test out and will be released with 7.4 alongside the new recommendations for gearing to 344 and 344, as both will be easily obtainable.  Below is a screenshot of the planner.  This tool will allow the user to input what gear they have and be able to manipulate it to see what options are available.  I have also cooked up a "Recommended gear for 344" that is set to replace the existing "Recommended gear for 336" Page.  This new tool will be user selectable.

Update - Recommended gear has launched and is out of the Exclusive Content section.  Thank you to all those that helped support this project!  See it here.

The Road beyond Day 1

My excitement for this gear progression lies in what happens when we hit 344.  Once we get one toon to 344, Rakata gear we obtain on that toon will be 344 as well.  Right now, I would be that most of us either have one - two sets of gear that we are transferring from toon to toon to toon as we play (which is VERY annoying).  At best, we have made up sets for our alts with the 336 Hide and Zeek Vendor.  Who wants substandard gear for their alts, though, right?  Though it will take some time, all of our toons will be able to obtain 344 gear as we complete content dropping Rakata Gear.  Personally, this will be my favorite part.  I hate gear swapping, so having an easy way to get all of my toons in 344, I am all for it!

Happy Upgrade Day!