Best Gear in the Game – Ossus 252 & 258 Gear Guide

With the introduction of Ossus, two new tiers of gear have been released for level 70 characters, and players attempting to gain the best gear in the game should set their flight course to the ancient Jedi homeworld.

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Ossus

Before you start earning this gear, I highly recommend playing through the storylines at your leisure at least once, rather than rushing it to get to the best gear in the game. Once you start Ossus, if you have not completed the previous storylines, it will auto-complete them for you and you will not be able to go back and make your own choices. For the most part, if you choose to auto-complete your stories, Republic characters are assumed to make light side choices, and Imperial characters are assumed to make dark side choices. These are the quests that will be auto-completed:

• Your Class storyline
• Companion conversations
• the Shadow of Revan expansion
• the planet of Ziost
• the Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion
• and its sequel the Knights of the Eternal Throne
• and the War for Iokath storyline which includes
  • the planet of Iokath
  • the Crisis on Umbara Flashpoint,
  • the Traitor Among the Chiss flashpoint
  • and the Nathema Conspiracy flashpoint

Once you’ve gotten a chance to play through these storylines and head to Ossus, most players recommend that you not worry about gearing up through the previous tiers of gear or methods, and instead start right at the item-rating 252 threshold, earned mainly through quests on Ossus – consider any other gear you happen to get along the way a bonus to give you a boost as you work towards 252. You can actually get a basic set of green-bordered 236 gear shortly after you start the Jedi Under Siege storyline, it’s automatically granted as a quest reward and placed in a backpack in your inventory.

Before I jump in to the rest of this video about how to earn the best gear in the game, I want to let you know that the gearing system is going to be changing dramatically when the expansion launches in September of 2019. We don’t know exactly how the new system will work yet, but I think it’s safe to say you’ll likely want to earn that new gear over whatever you’ve earned on Ossus. So if you’re watching this video close to September 2019, I definitely do recommend checking out Ossus and doing all the quests at least once, but be aware if you decide to grind for gear your work might be undone once the expansion comes out. With that said, let’s jump in to gearing on Ossus!

Buying Gear with Masterwork and Monumental Data Crystals

Currency earned through Ossus quests can be used to buy gear from Ossus vendors. To find the Vendors, near where you load in to Ossus, press M for map and make sure “Vendors” is checked on the left – then look for the vendor symbol on the map – it will be a cluster of four vendors. The two key types of currency you will earn are yellow Masterwork Data crystals and blue Monumental Data Crystals. You can always check to see how many you have through the Currency tab in your inventory.

Masterwork Data crystals can be used to purchase 252 gear from the Equipment Vendor on Ossus. Once you have a piece of the Experimental 252 gear from the vendor, you can combine it and some Masterwork Data Crystals to upgrade the piece to a 258 piece from the Masterwork Vendor, which also requires Champion to Legacy Standing with Ossus Reputation to wear. Reputation with Ossus is earned through the various Ossus daily and weekly quests, and players working hard on completing their reputation track can get it done in a few weeks on multiple characters. To check your reputation level, you can go to your legacy panel, and choose reputation. As you can see, I clearly do not have a high enough reputation for anything. To upgrade your gear, you must have the original item rating 252 “shell” of the armor – so don’t throw it away, even if you pull out the mods and enhancements!

Monumental Data Crystals can be used to upgrade you 252 experimental weapons and offhands to 258, along with some Masterwork Data Crystals.

When choosing gear, it’s important to pick the 252 pieces that will eventually lead to the 258 pieces – you can not buy a 252 piece with one combination of stats and upgrade it to a 258 piece with a different combination of stats. For example, you can’t trade an item rating 252 accuracy implant for an alacrity or crit one. You also should be aware that enhancemments are bound to the type of item they come in – for example, you can not put an enhancement you got from a pair of ossus boots in to a pair of gloves, you can only put it in to another pair of boots. For tanks and healers, there’s no real choices and you just pick the tanking or healing pieces, but for DPS you have some choices for how to gear. I’ve included some info in a link in the description if you are working towards best in slot stats. Advice from Jae About Choosing DPS psieces

The two other vendors in this room sell cosmetic items like armor and decorations, which cost credits and Relics of Ossus, which are earned through doing the Ossus quests, and require different reputation levels. A few items from the decoration vendors near the gear vendors also require masterwork crystals, so be very careful to double check before buying anything! If you enjoy stronghold decorations, some of these decorations are pretty cool and a great side reward for working on your gear.

Masterwork Gear Costs

• Lord Fural / Major Pucenisco on Ossus – 252 Gear
  • Requires Ossus Reputation rank between Outsider and Hero, depending on gear piece
  • Each piece costs 2 Masterwork Data Crystals
• Lord Bay’lor / Captain Anfel on Ossus – 258 Gear
  • Requires Ossus Reputation rank of Champion or Legend, depending on gear piece
  • Each piece costs 3-4 Masterwork Data Crystals and a matching piece of 252 gear

Gearing Quests

To start earning 252 and 258 gear, after you have completed the Ossus storyline, head to the glowing blue mission board near where you load in on the planet, and pick up all the quests – there are quite a few, so you may need to clear your mission log. There are also a few quests from quest givers spread around Ossus, near the speeder points. Daily quests can be done once per day, and weekly quests can be done once per week. The daily quests and heroic 2+ quests can mostly be done alone, while the Heroic +4 one is best to do with two or more players in a group.

The [WEEKLY] Daily area: Ossus quest, which requires you to complete 10 Ossus daily missions, will allow you to choose one of three rewards which will get you a randomized piece of gear – you can choose from the “lower body” randomized box, the “tech” box, or the “upper body” box for your current discipline

The one-time Flesh and Steel quest to defeat the two open world bosses, R8-X8 the droid and Kil’Cik the mutated geonosian will let you choose one artifact-level 252 reward – you can choose either a main hand or offhand for your class. Players are often forming up groups to fight the world bosses as it is not a solo quest, so keep your eyes on general chat for large groups forming up – they are often shortened to WBs in chat, short for world bosses. These fights are rather intensive – so make sure to bring your own medpacs, and turn down your graphics settings and turn off nameplates for the least amount of lag.

For R8-X8, the droid, make sure you are standing behind the boss to take less damage. If you get a red circle around your feet, run away to an area with no other players and wait there until it drops off of you and on to the ground – bonus points if you can drop it on a fuel cell!

You can also help your group by using your interrupt ability when you see the boss cast Incinerate.

For Kil’Cik the bug boss, the fight is pretty simple… just try to stay out of the red circles and the nasty slime circles on the floor.

If you die while the droid boss has more than 15% health, return to medcenter and run back to rejoin the fight- the nearest speeder is the Ancient Ruins Outpost, and the nearest quick travel point is Dead Forest. If the droid boss is under 15%, just stay dead where you fell until the fight is over so you get credit. For the bug boss, due to the fight being so fast, it’s recommended that you just stay dead where you feel no matter the boss’s health percentage.

On top of that one-time quest, there is also a [Weekly] Masterwork Data Crystal quest which has two options and grants a Masterwork Data crystal when completed – you can  defeat R8-X8 the droid and Kil’Cik the geonosian, or earn 50 Group Ranked Arena Points. The Ranked Arena points option is for players who are confident in their PvP abilities and have a 4-person group to go in to PvP with.

The [Weekly] Monumental Data crystal quest is one of the harder quests to complete, but has an awesome reward of a Monumental Data Crystal, which you can use to upgrade your weapons and offhands to the highest tier of gear. This quest requires you to complete one of two things – to defeat the mutated Geonosian Queen on Veteran Mode, or to earn 50 Solo Ranked Arena Points. Defeating the queen is a mini-operation that should be taken on by players confident in how to use their class, and requires a full operation group – it can not be done alone. Much like the world bosses, players are often forming up in chat, but usually only for the easier story mode version of the Geonosian Queen fight – for more difficult operations, players are more likely to form groups within their guild or friends circle. I’ve seen suggestions that players facing the queen in Veteran mode should have an item rating between 242 and 252, so she’s no pushover, and groups will want to face her in story mode before jumping in to veteran mode.

For the Arena points, Unlike the Group Ranked Arena quest, Solo Ranked Arena points can be earned by queueing solo – but players should not jump in to Ranked PvP until they have gotten a good hold on normal pvp and have a great understanding of their class.

There is also a droid on Ossus that will give you a time-limited quest. This quest rotates between different PvE and PvP content, and rewards a Masterwork Data Crystal. You are not limited to completing the quest within a week, instead if you do not complete the quest within the weekly cycle, you will not be able to pick up next week’s cycling quest until you drop it – you will no be able to complete two of these time-limited quests per week. If you only like a specific type of content but know you don’t have a lot of time to play this week, you can always pick up the quest and complete it next week. Note that the quests sometimes do reset during major patches.

There’s one more way to get Masterwork Crystals. If you have Unassembled Components, earned through PvP, Master mode Operations, Daily Rewards for Flashpoints, Uprisings and Operations, Galactic Starfighter, and from disintegrating gear with stats from Command Crates, you can turn them in for Masterwork Crystals each week through a quest giver near where you land on Ossus. This smuggler will sell you the first crystal for 500 Unassembled Components, and will then sell you a second one for 1,000 components.

Summary

In short, do the quests on Ossus, earned Masterwork Data crystals to buy and upgrade your gear to 252 and 258 to get the best gear in the game!