Leveling your new character. A new player asks; a veteran replies.

This week's Friday Feature comes to us from one of our many dedicated players of SWG: Melvar, a member of the Rebel Faction and from the Eclipse Galaxy. I have noticed many of his posts regarding helping new players as well as returning vets on how to level a new character. I have used many of these techniques lately and have found them to be very helpful. For the veterans that have returned after being away, this may be helpful to you as well.

Melvar shared this with us recently:

About me and why I wrote this guide
I've played SWG since 2004 and I have gone through all of the major changes in the game since. In that time, I have leveled up more combat characters than I care to disclose, but it has been a while. To give some perspective, I think the last character I leveled up was when Restuss was first destroyed. Had I not already leveled so many characters, I most likely wouldn't have employed this technique because it really sets you up with a disadvantage as a player to "power level". But since it was the last character that I needed to level up, I used it. To be clear though, this is NOT a power leveling guide.

A friend of mine was upset that after quickly achieving combat level 30, it became increasingly difficult to level his character. To help my friend, I decided to level yet another character and within 48 hours, I had my character up to level 45. To help others that may be having difficulties leveling, I decided to write down what I have done to level my characters in SWG.

If this is your first character, I would encourage you to try to read everything and take the "level grind" at your own pace. There is something to be said for people trying to motivate you to progress up to level 90, but don't let ANYONE push you to grind. Parts of this guide will help you to level your character(s) quickly and you may miss certain features of the game that you wouldn't otherwise.

Tansarii Station
If you are a new player and want to get into the whole storyline of the game, I strongly suggest you do the tutorial mission on Tansarii station and skip the next part. If you are in a hurry to get past the training session and into the real game, then this section is for you. The first thing you'll need to do is get off of Tansarii station. The easiest way to do this is to go down to the lowest level and kill the malfunctioning droids. Just keep killing them as long as you can stand it. You only need to get to level 5, but theoretically you could use this to grind much further.

I personally employed a simple macro to do this. Macros are an in-game scripting language that allows you to perform multiple tasks at the click of a button. People write macros for a variety of reasons ranging from a simple "stay online" macro to very complex macros that allow you to do actual high end AFK combat grinding. In-game macros are allowed under SOE's terms of service (ToS) agreement, but third party programs that perform menial in-game tasks are not.

Here is a simple semi-AFK combat macro (take note that if you do not type this EXACTLY as it appears, it will most likely not work as intended. Capitalization, spacing and semicolons are all very important):

/ui action cycleTargetOutward;
/pause .05;
/ui action toolbarSlot00;
/pause .05;
/ui action toolbarSlot01;
/pause .05;
/ui action untarget;
/macro autoKill;

This macro targets the closest enemy and fires specials placed in the first two slots on your toolbar. If you want to get really fancy you can hit <CTRL> + <ALT> + S and this will make your screen spin around. You can add more lines as you acquire more skills, but this will get you started. I will caution you though; using this macro improperly may result in your characters death by causing too many NPC's to attack you at one time. Okay, so once you have reached level 5, you can talk to Han Solo and run a mission for him to get off the station.

You've made it to Mos Eisley, Tatooine. Congratulations! You've taken your first step into a much larger "world".

Setting up your Key Map and Macros
First things first, we need to change your key map. Hit the "O" button to pull up your Options screen. This is what I use:

Click Thumbnails for larger images

And these are a few of the standard macros that I write for all of my characters. Each of these is just a one line macro. I map these to a specific key as shown below:

Each of these macros are second nature to me now and hopefully you will find them as useful as I do. The first one, CallForPickup, will call your Instant Transport Vehicle (ITV) when you get one. If you already have one, then each one has a different command to call it. You can only use these if you actually have the ability to call the various ITVs.

They are as follows:
X-Wing or Tie Fighter = /callforpickup;
Shuttle = /callforprivateer;
Nabooian = /callforroyal;
Rattletrap = /callforrattletrap;

Throughout this guide, I will refer to this key map and the macros that I use so it would be advantageous for you to use them (or at least know what I use), so that you can follow along.

Getting around the Galaxy
Okay, first things first: you will need to join a pilot squad. Here are the locations of the Rebel and Neutral squads. If you intend to go Imperial, you are on your own since I am a Rebel and my experience is with the Rebel Faction. I'm sure someone has the Imperial Squadrons listed somewhere. A good place to read topics about factions is on the SWG forums and I have provided a link at the end of this guide.

Arkon's Havok Squad: Captain Kreezo, Tyrena, Corellia (-5177, -2281) * My pick for new players

Vortex Squadron: V3-FX {droid} (right across the bridge) Moenia, Naboo

Crimson Phoenix Squadron: Commander Da'la Socuna (back room of the cantina) Mos Espa, Tatooine

Smuggler's Alliance: Dravis, Mos Eisley, Tatooine, Back room of cantina (3429,-4788)

RSF Squadron: Captain Dinge, Theed Naboo (-5497,4575)

Corsec Squadron: Sergeant Rhea, Coronet Corellia (-275,-4730)

Alright, you may be saying "But Mel, I don't have any interest in being a pilot, why do I need to do this?" The answer is simple: you need a ship. Whether or not you ever launch into space, joining any pilot squad will allow you to travel from star port to star port quickly and without any cost. I would recommend that you do eventually master AT LEAST one pilot squad, but that will not be covered in this guide. Make sure to drop the mission your pilot trainer gives you for the time being. To do this, hit the "K" key and select "data". Look for the space mission and delete it. Remember which squad you joined and just talk to your trainer later and he will re-issue the mission to you when you are ready.

Now that you have joined a squad, I strongly recommend doing the "What a piece of Junk" collection:
/way Tatooine 3568 -4813 What a Piece of Junk #1
/way Tatooine -1324 -3572 What a Piece of Junk #2
/way Naboo 5243 6660 What a Piece of Junk #3
/way Corellia -103 -4739 What a Piece of Junk #4
/way Tatooine -2877 2097 What a Piece of Junk #5
/way talus 295 -2919 What a Piece of Junk #6
/way talus 4474 5313 What a Piece of Junk #7
/way Naboo -4771 4190 What a Piece of Junk #8

If you used my key map found earlier in this guide, you should be able to copy this list from this article using your copy command in Windows (or whatever OS you use) and then paste it into a macro in-game using <CTRL> + <ALT> + V.

All of these waypoints are located inside star ports and now that you can jump from one star port to the next, this shouldn't take you more than about 5-10 minutes to complete. When you finish, you will have a "deed" in your inventory. When you use the deed, it will give you the "call for rattletrap" skill. If you followed my key map/macro guide above, just hit the "Y" key to call your Instant Transport Vehicle (ITV) when you are outside city limits. This will allow you to travel to any shuttle port, star port or camp with a homing beacon on the current planet.

Preparations
Okay, now you are ready. Head back to Mos Eisley on Tatooine and go to the Mos Eisley cantina. Look for an entertainer and use the radial menu (hit the tilde ~ key to bring up the radial menu) to either watch them if they are dancing or listen to them if they are playing music. If you see entertainers doing both, watch one and listen to the other. This will make your "tick" go up faster.

Number one rule when dealing with an entertainer: be polite. As you are a brand new player, most entertainers will not mind if you do not tip them the first few times, but if you have the money, take care of your entertainers. This is their content in the game and without compensation, fewer entertainers will hang out in the cantinas. So when you have a few "ticks" built up or when you max out your buff, send your entertainer a /tell. Type this:
/tell <entertainer's first name> May I please have an ene/kin and XP buff?

You may also want to let them know that you are a brand new player and you don't have any money, but assure them that you will remember them and /tip them later. Make sure that if you do this, you follow through. The standard tip for a buff is between 15,000 and 100,000 credits; this depends on your server and you may want to ask entertainers what a good tip is until you get a feel for it. The reason you need an XP buff is that it gives you a huge increase in your experience gain, to help you level faster. The ene/kin part of the buff will make your character stronger and able to resist some damage.

The Grind
At this point, we can start questing. Your first quest is "A speeder for me". This will give you your first vehicle. It's a XP-38 Landspeeder and not very fast, but it will do until you can pick up a Swoop bike or something even better. For the time being, I want you to do the legacy quests. They are repetitive and difficult at first, but once you get into them, they will fly by. One big tip that will help you: make sure you turn on "Show all object names" in your options, under miscellaneous, while you are questing.

The legacy quests will take you several days to complete, but by the time you complete them, you will be in your mid 40s-60s. Make sure that every day you take a break from your legacy grind and do 10 missions from a mission terminal. These will give you bonus experience for the first 10 that you do per day. Just doing terminal missions with an entertainer buff should get you one to two levels per day up until around level 60.

If you have the Kashyyyk expansion, when you get to level 40 or so, you can start questing there. Some of these missions require a group, but most give decent rewards and grant a LOT of experience. The same for Mustafar if you have that expansion, but these missions start around level 60. Also, there is the Rebel Theme park (starts around level 80?) and the Meatlump Theme Park (level 50-60). These will all help you to level up faster.

With the character I'm currently leveling, I'm "banking" my experience by not hitting the complete button when I finish a mission. Instead I hit the "X" in the top-right hand corner. Then when I can't stand it any longer, I complete a bunch of missions at once. Believe it or not, this has helped me to keep my sanity during the grind and I think it makes sense as well from a XP standpoint, as the lower level you are when you kill a NPC, the more XP you get from them.

Expertise
As soon as you reach level 10, you will be able to start allocating your Expertise points. To get to the Expertise screen, hit the "U" key by default. There are several Expertise Calculators available.
Here are links to a few of them:

[OFFICIAL]: http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/expertisecalculators/index.vm
Oekevo: http://www.oekevo.org/expertisecalculator/
Cohav / MajorXP: http://www.golegend.com/swg/expertise/index.php

Final Thoughts
By using the above techniques I was able to easily grind from 5-45 in less than 2 days. I'm taking it slowly now as I have passed my friend up in levels. If you follow my guidelines above, I will guarantee you will level up quickly and before you know it you will be a level 90.

Resources:
GCW (Galactic Civil War) Links and Guides Thread
SWG Wiki à http://swg.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Note from Draakull: I would like to thank Melvar for this guide and all of the work he put into it for the community. If you have a guide that you would like to share with your fellow players, send me a Private Message on the forums and maybe we can get your guide featured soon as well.