Even after ten years, Star Wars: The Old Republic maintains its status of active MMORPG. The most recent attempt to further boost its player base came in the form of Galactic Seasons. After the first hiccups and fixing some bugs (as was to be expected), the system is now up and running. How does it actually work? What rewards can a player get from it, and how to get them?
The Basics
There is a 100-tier system of Galactic Seasons rewards. For advancing one tier (regardless of whether it is from 1 to 2 or from 99 to 100), a player needs to accumulate 8 points. The points are acquired by completing daily and weekly Galactic Seasons objectives. The objectives differ from day to day (weekly ones from week to week) and also from player to player. That means you and your friend may have the same or completely different tasks, or one that is the same and another that is different.
Every week, you get two weekly objectives and every day you get two new daily objectives. The type of goals depending on the type of Conquest that is going on that week. For instance, if the conquest for the week is “Scum and Villainy”, where the conquest goals are planets like Nar Shaddaa or Voss, the Galactic Seasons objectives may include completing Heroic missions or killing enemies on these planets.
Altuur zok Adon, the companion awarded to anyone who participates in the first Galactic Season.
What Objectives Can I Get?
The weekly objectives (worth 12 points for subscribers and 8 points for preferred or free-to-play players) are always two of the following four: completing an Operation (set in the conquest region), completing 3 Veteran mode flashpoints, completing 3 Warzone matches or completing 4 Starfighter matches. Clearly, the idea is to make the more rewarding objectives related to group activities, which is probably a good move if Bioware wants to support their players socialising.
Daily objectives (worth 3 points each for subscribers and 2 points for everyone else) are at this time always two of the following eight:
- Defeating enemies across the set of specified planets (depending on the conquest goal, for example Hutt Space planets, Outer Rim planets, Coreward planets…).
- Defeating non-player opponents across a different set of planets from the same space.
- Defeating insectoids (Killiks, Colicoids, Geonosians, Shaclaws…) across the specified planets.
- Completing Heroic missions on said planets.
- Completing repeatable Daily missions from high-end planets in said territory (places like Section X, Black Hole, Makeb, CZ-198, Oricon, Rishi, Yavin 4, Ziost, Ossus, Onderon, Iokath).
- Defeating non-player opponents across Coruscant/Dromund Kaas.
- Completing at least one Warzone match.
- Completing at least one Starfighter match.
One feature I like a lot is that if you don’t like the objectives you got, you can change one of them once per day (weekly once per week) by clicking a small arrow in its description box. This means that even if you for example don’t do PvP and get two PvP-related objectives, you are basically guaranteed to get at least one that is related to something else.
The Galactic Seasons rewards system is also connected to the login rewards system. If you log in four times per week, you’ll automatically get 8 points as a subscriber or 4 if you are not a subscriber.
It is possible to move up the rewards track also by unlocking the levels, but it costs 100 Cartel Coins to move up a level. (This is again regardless of whether you unlock it from level 1 to 2 or from 99 to 100.)
The Rewards Track
And what are the rewards you get? Most of them are related to the new companion, Altuur zok Adon. Everyone will get him as a reward on level 1 of the Galactic Seasons track. You can either recruit him via Alliance Alerts from Chapter 9 of Knights of the Fallen Empire onward or call him via a holocommunicator like it was possible with Nico Okarr and other special companions.
Further rewards include various items usable both by this companion and the player character, companion gifts for this companion and related decorations. Subscribers get a reward on each level, other players will get one only about every fifth level. Subscribers also get cartel coins roughly once or twice per ten levels.
The progress on the Galactic Rewards track is Legacy-wide (i.e. the objectives and points you earn on any character count for everyone). Rewards, on the other hand, can be claimed only once. However, when you have unlocked a reward for one character in your Legacy, you can unlock it Legacy-wide for ten Cartel coins in your Collections.
One of the rooms (unfurnished) in the stronghold on the Imperial Fleet.
Season Tokens And Rewards
The last type of reward is the Galactic Seasons tokens. These allow the player to buy specific rewards from new Galactic Seasons vendors on the Fleet. This currency is at the moment extremely rare, as the only way to get it is from the Seasons rewards track. Everyone gets one token on level 5 and later only on levels 42, 69, 89 and 100. Subscribers get extra tokens on levels 8, 24, 34, 46, 62, 72, 76, 82, 86 and 92. That means non-subscribers can get a maximum of 5 tokens per season and subscribers up to 15.
The rewards you can buy for them includes several decorations as well as items that were given as subscriber rewards during the previous years: pets (like the mini-droids or Tauntaun Ram, worth 1 token each), weapons and armours (Nico Okarr’s or HK-55’s, for 2 tokens each), mounts (like Chiss Talon Interceptor, Rapid Recon Walker or HK-55 Jetpack, worth 3 tokens each), companions (Nico Okarr, Shae Vizsla and Paxton Rall worth 5 tokens each and Dazh Ranos worth 6 tokens). It is also possible to buy the new Imperial or Republic Fleet strongholds for 8 tokens. (This makes it obvious that it is not possible to buy both strongholds even as a subscriber during just one season, these are clearly meant to be long-term rewards.)
It is worth noting that if you are a non-subscriber and subscribe while the Season is on, you will retroactively get access to all the subscriber-exclusive rewards from the track that you missed.
The first Galactic Season should last about half a year. Hopefully, this will be enough time to let us connect all the rewards we want to have.
