Everything we know about Legacy of the Sith, which launches on December 14, 2021!

Hello everyone! I’m so excited to announce we finally have a date for the upcoming expansion for Star Wars: The Old Republic! The 7.0 expansion will be called Legacy of the Sith, and will be coming out December 14, 2021. This expansion will be free to all subscribers – that means you don’t need to pre-order it in anyway, you just need to be subscribed on or after Tuesday December 14th to gain access to the expansion. This expansion is bringing some of the largest changes the game has seen in its lifetime, in celebration of its tenth anniversary.

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The Legacy of the Sith expansion will be bringing the standard new storyline, new daily area, new flashpoint, and new operation shortly after its launch – but more interestingly, there are going to be some major changes coming to the way your character plays in combat, how you choose a class, an entirely new gearing system, and some fantastic upgrades to the user interface. I’m very interested in many of these changes and I’m looking forward to seeing more when the expansion launches.

Story

Let’s start off with what we know about the new storyline!

The main story of Legacy of the Sith will be set on Manaan – there will be two separate stories, one for each faction.

Manaan has already been seen in the game as a neutral world that holds a vital resource called Kolto, used in healing medicines across the galaxy. The pristine ocean world we’ve seen in previous expansions is now shattered by war, invaded by with Sith Empire who is attemtping to seize this resource.

Imperial-side, players will be recruited to re-enforce the invasion forces by Major Anri, a fan-favorite Twi’lek character introduced in the previous expansion, and Republic players will called to aid the cause by newly-knighted Jedi Knight Arn Peralun.

On Manaan you’ll be able to explore surface structures, underwater facilities, and the ocean floor as well as a new daily area that becomes accessible once the storyline is complete. You’ll also be meeting some new characters, including the Selkath people who know that neither faction is truly there to help the besieged world of Manaan.

(We managed to sneak onto Manaan early!)

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Flashpoint

The expansion will also be introducing a new story-focused Flashpoint called Ruins of Nul, set on a remote planet new to the game called Elom, deep in Sith territory. Both factions will be drawn here to recover a mysterious Sith Relic, hidden in the ruins by a previously-unknown dark lord of the Sith, Darth Nul.

Although Elom has already existed in lore, it’s never been fleshed out visually, and players have already had a preview of the hauntingly beautiful highland steppe, shrouded by the fog and overlooked by an eclipse. The ruins her have been erased from all record, and theories abound about who exactly Darth Nul was. You’ll be able to play Elom either as a solo player or with a group.

Operation

The next operation coming to the game will be called the R-4 Anomaly Operation. This Operation will be coming out about a month after the expansion is released, and will be available in story and veteran 8-person mode at its launch.

If you enjoy the more difficult high-level group content in the game, you’ll need to gather your allies in deep space where obscure Sith cult is harvesting technology from an ancient weapon of terrifying power. In the new r-4 anomaly operation players will need to to take down this galactic threat in deep space. A new faction has appeared for this in this space-horror themed operation called The Maskless, a group so willing to delve into strange arts that even the Sith don’t want them to continue their work on their secret research facility. If you enjoy the intersection of technology and the dark side of force, or creepy cosmic horror, this operation seems to have an intriguing story and I’m looking forward to seeing more of the bosses

This new operation is the key to earning the best gear in the game near the expansion’s launch – the gearing system is in for a huge change for players at max-level compared to the previous expansion.

Gearing

In the Onslaught expansion, gearing up at max-level was pretty simple – gear dropped from pretty much any type of content in the game, and what dropped was based on your current item-rating. Solo and group players could gear up just by equipping any higher item-rating pieces they picked up, with players doing group or difficult content gearing up much quicker. Skilled players had completely geared up within the first two weeks of the Onslaught expansion – and even a casual solo player could get a full set of gear fairly quickly of the course of a few months if they were playing efficiently.

In the upcoming expansion, Legacy of the Sith, gearing and the philosophy behind it is changing dramatically. The first big change is that there will be four different gearing tracks – Conquest, which is also the solo player path, Flashpoints, Operations and PvP. You’ll get a piece of gear from that content, then you’ll be able to continue upgrading it slowly over time with materials and currencies from that same type of content. Higher item-rating gear will be locked initially behind the hardest content in the game – at launch, the highest item-rating gear will be 330, which will only drop from Master Mode operations. After the new operation launches, you’ll be able to get the next-highest item-rating only from the new operation. This means, at least initially, solo players won’t be able to get the best gear in the game. Where it gets interesting is that this will change over the course of the expansion’s lifetime – in a later patch, the item-rating you can get from solo missions or flashpoints will go up. This raising of the gear floor is something the game’s never tried, and should be interesting to experience first-hand. If you’re planning to play PvP, don’t worry, PvP will have a gear ceiling, which means players who have gotten the “best” gear from operations won’t be able to roll in with anything better than you can get through the PvP track. Renown is going away entirely.

Another major change that’s happening is that most gear for level 80 won’t be moddable – it sounds like the developers mostly want to phase out moddable gear, instead focusing on having your 14 pieces with stats as your equipment, then using the updated outfit designer to choose how your outfit looks. Amplifiers are going away, but augments are sticking around so you’ll be able to min-max your stats with them even at the launch of the expansion.

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I’ve had a couple people ask me about gearing at a low level – as far as I understand you don’t need to worry about these changes and should be able to continue gearing up with gear from quests. We did however do some testing of the new level scaling system – it’s a little all over the place, you may find it easier or more difficult to fight the same normal enemies than you did before the expansion at a low level.

Class Changes

Another major change that’s coming is changes to classes. Actually, the concept of classes are going away completely! The goal of the change is to separate story from gameplay – so you can choose a story to play, like Trooper or Imperial Agent, and then separately choose a Combat Style to fight with – previously called an Advanced Class. For example, until the Legacy of the Sith is released, if you choose to play the Trooper class, you can only choose the Vanguard or Commando fighting advanced classes. In the expansion, you can choose the Trooper origin story, but then you can also choose from all eight tech combat style – for example you could be a Trooper Sniper, or a Trooper Powertech! It’s pretty cool and we’ve seen lots of cool stuff related to it popping up on the test server before the expansion.

If you’re playing a Force User character, you can choose from the four advanced classes attached to your faction – for example, as a Sith Warrior origin story, you could choose between Juggernaut, Marauder, Assassin or Sorcerer as your combat style. Exact details beyond that are still a bit muddy and I don’t want to make any exact claims until we see the expansion – but it sounds like you’ll even be able to “flip” over to the dark or the light side, for example a Sith Warrior Juggernaut could flip their combat style to be a Sith Warrior Guardian – drawing on the light side of the force for their attack animations and ability names. The flip seems to be based on your Dark V and Light V achievements – they are not based specifically on the character you want to flip.

In addition to all these new options, subscribers are also going to be allowed to add a SECOND combat style to their characters, allowing you to easily flip back and forth between them. For example, on my Trooper Vanguard, I plan on picking up the Operative playstyle as my second combat style. That way, I can tank as a Vanguard for one Flashpoint, then switch to an Operative Healer for the second, without ever having to switch characters.

There is a lot of misconceptions about this new combat style system though. First off, no you can’t actually mix two combat style together in any way – you won’t be able to use Force Choke and Force Lightning on the same character. This is also not a change to the way weapons work – you won’t be able to be a Marauder with a double-bladed lightsaber – instead, you pick a Combat Style, and you will need to use whatever weapon is attached to that combat style. This does kind of change what type of characters can wield what type of weapons though – for example, if you were a Trooper before the expansion, you could not wield two blaster pistols, since neither of the Trooper advanced classes, the Vanguard or the Commando, could wield pistols. With the new update, as a Trooper you could choose the Gunslinger or Mercenary combat style, and duel-wield while playing those combat styles! Another misconception is the idea that you can be a pistol-wielding Jedi – the lines are drawn, and Force Users and Tech Users won’t be able to cross their combat style paths.

Where things get murky is for existing characters – some questions I feel haven’t been fully clarified include whether or not we’ll be able to choose both of our combat styles on an existing character, or if we’ll only be able to choose one and be stuck with our old one as our second. I’m also not sure when and where and if you’ll be able to do the light/dark “flip” on existing force characters. I also don’t know exactly how a second combat style will work for free-to-play and preferred players. We’ll be able to test this out really quick when the expansion launches though! For now, have fun daydreaming about what types of characters you’d like to make.

(We got a sneak peak of the unfinished creator and flipping on the test server!)

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Combat Changes

The separation of origin story and combat style is not the only big change coming to classes. The combat system has gone through a major rework, and when you log into your character after the expansion releases, things may look very different, depending on your class.

The first biggest change is that the developers have set a goal to simplify the relationship between your abilities, passives, and utilities. The first change is that you’ll notice is you’ll have atl east a few less abilities than you did before. Some will have been worked into your combat style or other abilities so they are applied automatically, like your class buff. Others are now part of a choice that you can make – for example, choosing between three abilities, or three passives, at various different levels. So if you’re a more casual player, and your favorite ability is missing, you may just need to re-choose it from the combat styles menu. Some abilities have also been renamed and have different icons now, so it might have just gone missing from your bars too, and you just need to find it in your abilities list and drag it back on. For more experienced players who are used to using all of their abilities, you may find yourself frustrated by the feeling of missing abilities instead of having them all at once – you’ll need to play your class and test it out and see if it’s something you still enjoy after the expansion, as encounters are supposed to be balanced to accommodate the new changes.

Combat Tree

(unfinished UI)

The second big change is that Utilities are gone now. They have been worked into the new combat styles system – it’s kind of like a tree, and every five to ten levels you get to make a choice. Many of the little boosts you could get from utilities in the previous expansions are now shuffled into this new ability tree. This tree is customized for your Combat Style Discipline, for example a Sorcerer who is playing the Lightning discipline will have a different tree than a Sorcerer who is playing Madness. At early levels, you’ll get some interesting choices that can drastically change the way one of your Discipline’s main abilities works. For example, at level 15, as a Lightning Sorcerer, you’ll get to choose from three options that change the way your Chain Lightning works – allowing you to heal yourself better, changing Chain lightning to a single-target attack, or causing all enemies who get hit by Chain Lightning to take extra damage if they later get hit by Force Storm. While experienced players should be able to pick out the ideal options based on what their next fight will look like, the options seem like they’ll be especially fun for casual play. Later choices in the tree are instead choices between actual abilities – for example, at Level 70, the Sorcerer will need to choose between Extricate which allows them to pull a friendly target, Volt Rush which is an attack ability, and Force Barrier, a strong defensive ability. Players taking on challenging content will need to be strategic with their choices.

Loadouts

With two combat styles to switch between, and the new combat tree choices, we’re finally getting a way to save our combat settings for our characters! This new system will be called Loadouts, which are kind of like saved settings, and for each loadout you make you’ll be able to save these settings: the location of each of your ability on your ability bar, your cosmetic outfit, your equipped gear, your combat style, your discipline, and your ability tree choices. Wow!

This means if I do choose Vanguard and Operative for my trooper, I should be able to switch from tanking to healing pretty seamlessly! This also means I could create a loadout for PvP, and another for Operations, and switch between them when I want to play different types of content. In the current expansion, I find this process so difficult that I either switch characters just to keep my settings saved, or just don’t bother switching at all even if it’s really suboptimal, so I’m really looking forward to the Loadout system.

I’m waiting till the expansion’s launch to confirm exactly where you can switch combat style, disciplines or loadouts – but the devs have confirmed you can’t hop into a flashpoint or a pvp match as a healer then switch your role the second you get in there, screwing over your team. If you’re in an operation and your team wants to shuffle roles, you may just need to step outside the operation to swap combat styles first, but it looks like changing your discipline or ability tree on the fly might be pretty easy.

Interface

When you go to check out these new features including the combat styles and loadouts, you’ll notice the interface has been given a face lift. This is a bunch of small changes rolled into the new interface – the most noticeable one is much clearer and larger fonts. The second are faster loading interfaces – for example, since I had a ton of mounts nad pets, it could take almost thirty seconds for my ability list to load, but on the updated interface it loaded almost instantly. While we’re not seeing a full graphical remake with the expansion as many players have hoped for, we are seeing some great player experience improvements like the UI changes – not to mention the new Elom flashpoint is looking gorgeous from what I’ve seen.

Weapons in Outfit Designer

Gearing up isn’t the only thing changing – you’ll be able to look really good while doing it with an updated outfit designer. The biggest change is that you’ll be able to add your weapon to the outfit designer! Right now, you can’t “save” your weapon, so if you want to use a different pistol, you’d have to take all the mods out of your old one, and put them in your new one… not to mention, you get screwed over if either of those pistols isn’t moddable. Now you’ll be able to put that sparkly pistol in the outfit designer, just like you can any other piece of armor, and save your outfit. Just a heads up, no, it doesn’t mean you can switch weapons, you won’t be able to suddenly dual-wield autocannons or slap a double-bladed lightsaber in your single lightsaber spot as a warrior. Sorry.

PvP

While no new PvP maps are being added at the launch of the expansion, all chaos will be unleashed in the PvP scene as the new combat and gearing changes are put to the test. We do have a new tidbit about the PvP revamp coming in 2022 though, and the developers have said, “For those who are already looking ahead to the next season, we have big changes for PvP coming next year in Game Update 7.2. Stay tuned for more details!” So we should be learning more about that after the expansion launch. Since this is the game’s tenth anniversary, it does seem they want to space their big updates out across the anniversary year.

Ranked PvP

If you are competing in Ranked PvP, be aware that Season 14 is ending on December 14, same day as the expansion launches, so you’ll want to grab your tiers before the expansion. Don’t forget, tokens are no longer season specific. This Season’s reward includes the Unrivaled Guardsman Weapon Set. This new Weapon Set from Season 14 will be offered at a discounted price until the end of the next Ranked Season – so you’ll be able to get it at the discounted price with your rewards granted at the end of Season 14.

Galactic Seasons, Season 2

If you enjoyed Galactic Seasons’s first season, the second one is starting with the launch of the expansion on December 14th. This will include a whole new set of rewards including a Duros companion, and those of you who are trying to earn the older retired companions, you’ll be able to earn a new round of Galactic Season tokens to buy them with. Heads up, Galactic Seasons is undergoing a huge change in how it works – objectives will be moving towards weeklies rather than dailies, and you won’t be expected to do them all, so it sounds like you can prettily easily choose to skip the ones you don’t like.

Lots of Other Changes

And that’s just everything that’s been featured! There’s also a ton of other changes to the game, including the social points system becoming a part of the legacy system, a new character creator, not to mention a slew of small updates – half I haven’t even been able to keep track of, and the other half we probably haven’t even seen yet and won’t know about until the expansion launches!

Conclusion

I’m most excited about the upcoming story and exploring Manaan, and eventually checking out the new Operation, as this is the first time I’ll be have my boots ready on the ground for when it comes out.

I’m a little worried about the major combat changes but I’m more than willing to give it a try and learn some new combat styles. I have a feeling I probably will go a little crazy trying to figure out my favorite character when it first launches, but won’t mind it once I get used to it.

I’m also really excited about the quality of life changes like the interface updates and the ability to switch up combat styles – both of these mean I can spend more time playing my favorite content, and less timing switching characters or waiting!

I hope you enjoyed this in-depth look at what we’ve got coming in the Legacy of the Sith expansion and everything there is to be excited about! I’m about to go full ham and try and cover as much about the expansion as I can – it’ll be a while before I can get videos out, so keep your eyes on swtorista.com for the written guides first and on twitter.com/swtorista for breaking news and fast tips and tricks as we figure them out!

If you were ever planning to support the Swtorista project, now’s the time to do it! Visit swtorista.com/support and help ensure the future of these guides – I can’t express how excited I am to be making these guides and videos for you all!

See you in the expansion, and May the Force be with you!