How to Prepare for the 7.0 Expansion

With the Legacy of the Sith 7.0 Expansion coming out on December 14th, 2021 for Star Wars: The Old Republic, many players have been asking me how they can prepare for the upcoming expansion. While there’s still a lot of unanswered questions revolving around the expansion, especially when it comes to Combat Styles and the new gearing system, there are few tips you can take advantage of when it comes to getting ready in the last few weeks before the expansion.

UPDATE: The expansion has been delayed until February 15, 2022. As far as I can tell all these tips still apply!

0. Download the Game

If you aren’t a current player, for example you took a break or haven’t play in a while and are jumping back in for the expansion, it would be really smart, to download the game early before the expansion comes out – this is because when the expansion launches, everyone will be trying to download the update at once, and lots of new and returning players will be trying to download the game from scratch all at once, which clogs up the system, and makes the download go slower during that time period. If you don’t already have the game downloaded, I recommend picking it up on Steam instead of swtor.com, as Steam allows you to turn on automatic updates. If you already have the game downloaded, but you haven’t updated it in a while, log in and update it as much as you can before the expansion so you only have a little bit to update and download the day of.

1. Level Your Characters

Most expansion require that your character be the correct level before you can start there. There’s a high chance that to start Legacy of the Sith, your character will need to be level 75 or higher. For any characters you want to play the expansion on, and eventually level up to 80, you can save some time by pre-levelling them all to 75.

2. Catch Up on Story

You may also want to catch up on the storyline for all your characters you want to jump into the new expansion on. Ideally, you’ll have completed Ossus, the Onslaught expansion, Echoes of Oblivion, Spirit of Vengeance, the Dantooine Flashpoint, and then the final short story quest is Whispers in the Force which is a hint towards what is coming in the expansion.

3. Renown Achievements

Renown is a system for gearing in the current expansion – it’s not the main way to gear up, but it’s a way of passively getting gear no matter what you are doing in the game at level 75. In the 7.0 expansion, we’ll be getting a new gearing system, and Renown is being retired. Along with it, two special achievements are also becoming unavailable to earn. The first is called Limitless, it requires you earn 999 Renown on one character, it’s a pretty crazy achievement, but if you get it you earn the title Limitless for all your characters on your server as a Legacy title. The second is called Renowned all Around and this one requires you get 100 Renown on 8 different classes, and will give you the legacy title Everybody Knows My Name. So if you want those two achievements or titles, you’ll need to finish grinding them out before the expansion drops.

To see where you’re at, you can go into your Legacy Achievements, in Legacy, Advancement, Renown at the top.

4. Tech Frags & Spoils of War Achievements

Tech Fragments, the level 75 currency for endgame in the current expansion, are not going away in the 7.0 Legacy of the Sith expansion. However, they will not be a major part of the level 80 gearing system as there will be some new currencies introduced in the expansion for level 80 gear.

Tech Fragments, according to the developers, are now going to be used for: Tacticals, Cosmetics, Augment Components, and Kai Zykken’s offerings.

Galactic Command Gear

One cool thing that we know will be purchaseable with Tech Fragments in the upcoming expansion is the old gear from the previous expansion, sometimes known as Galactic Command cosmetic gear – it used to come out of the 5.0 gearing crates, and was just for looks. When that old system retired, the cosmetic gear became very hard to find for newer players, so if there was any of those sets you wanted to buy, you might want to hoard up some Tech Fragments before the expansion, so you can buy them right away. The developers said before the expansion, Command Crates shells will be available for purchase on a vendor with 7.0’s launch for 3,500 Tech Fragments and 500,000 Credits.

https://www.swtorista.com/armor/galactic-command

Tech Fragments

UPDATE:

SWTOR Pre-Expansion – Should I Deconstruct my gear? Should I open boxes?

Spoils of War Achievements & New Titles

In the current expansion, there are a set of achievements called Spoils of War that encourage you to collect all 68 different Set Bonus armors available in the game – there’s currently not reward or prize for doing so, but in the expansion, you will be able to get 68 different titles – one for each set bonus you have unlocked in collections in the Spoils of War tab. If you pre-collect these, you’ll get the titles as soon as the expansion launches. These achievements are going to be moved to the Feats of Strength category, which is normally for retired achievements, but these Spoils of war achievements are not fully retiring – so you will be able to continue getting them after the expansion launches. The catch is that you will no longer be able to buy pieces directly from the 6.0 vendors – instead, you will only be able to get these sets from Kai Zykken as part of his randomized box of gear. So if there’s a set you want to complete, OR you want to get one of the 68 new titles, you might want to purchase the set now directly from the vendors before the expansion hits, that way, you won’t have to rely on the randomness of the boxes, after the expansion launches.

I’ve put together a spreadsheet that shows the list of titles you can get and where that gear comes from so you can try and get one or all of the titles!

PS there is a bug related to Spoils of War achievements for both tacticals and armor sets – when it first came out, there were some bugs, and some of the items may not have activated the achievements. For example, a lot of tacticals were not triggering the achievements if you bought them from a vendor. To fix this, take your armor or tactical, and simply mail it to your Imperial character. Once you mail it and pick it up into your inventory, it should properly trigger the achievement! Hurray! I tested this out and it worked for me!

5. Social Points

The Social Points system is also changing dramatically. Instead of there being points that you earn on individual characters, your Social Rank will be tied to your legacy-wide achievements and will be for all your characters on your server. However we don’t know exactly how the new system will work, just that it will be tied to the group finder. So if you’re getting close to Social 10, might be smart to finish that off and then you don’t have to figure out how it will work in the new system. This might be especially important for players who like to do social point activities like Flashpoints outside of the groupfinder – for example just two friends who like to run together. You get more social points for each player in your group that makes a decision, so try and get a full group of 4 and run Esselles or Black Talon!

Social Points and Rewards Guide

6. Dark vs Light Tokens

Another system that’s going away is the Dark vs Light galactic system. This is NOT the same as the Dark and Light meter on your character sheet that changes when you make decisions in cutscenes. This is the one that rewards Dark and Light tokens based on the weird meter on the galaxy map. This system was a bit of a mess, so they are retiring it with the expansion. If you do have any dark or light tokens, these are not being taken away, and the vendors will remain, but you won’t be able to earn any new Dark or Light tokens after the expansion launches. They’re looking to reintroduce the rewards in some way but haven’t said or decided how yet. So, go take a look at the Galactic Command dark and light side vendors in the Supplies section of the Imperial or Republic fleet, and see if there are any items you really want. If there are, you might want to earn tokens and buy them before the expansion launches. There are some really cool armors, some really cool weapons, some pretty neat mounts with a mount flourish, some pets, and two companion customization skins. Dark and light tokens are awkward to earn though – they are per character, and basically you get one when you level up Renown on a character whose alignment matches the currently winning alignment on the galaxy map, so it can be hard to control whether or not you even earn Dark or Light tokens. The rewards themselves also have alignment requirements so make sure to check that before deciding what to get.

7. Dark and Light Alignment

One thing that was added to the game as part of the Dark vs Light system was the Dark and Light toggle that shows up near your minimap – it looks like a Dark and Light system right beside eachother and you could flip between which one you wanted to support. With this new toggle, any time you did pretty much anything, including crafting, you would gain dark or light points based on your toggle, even if it wasn’t very thematic. This meant you could earn dark and light points from more sources than you could before, because before you could only really earn dark and light points through the story and through the Diplomacy crew skill. With the Dark vs Light system being removed, to compensate for the loss of constant alignment gain, character alignment levels and thresholds will revert to pre-Dark vs. Light system totals. This means that to level up your character’s Dark or Light alignment, you’ll need less points total, but it will be harder to get points. I recommend, if you want to boost your character to Dark 5 or Light 5 it might be easier to do it with the current system compared to after the expansion. I actually have a whole guide, about how to do this! I could be wrong though, it may be way easier after the expansion.

Dark Side Corruption in SWTOR

What’s really cool is that in the expansion, having the Dark 5 and Light 5 achievements is what will toggle ability to flip a Force-user’s class from the light-side version to the dark-side version. While we’re still waiting on exact details about what characters will be able to flip, the developers have confirmed the flip is tied to the achievements.  So if you want that option available in the expansion, you might want to work on reaching Dark 5 and Light 5 on any of your characters on your server to unlock the achievement.

8. Crafting Augment Kits

Although crafting is not being updated immediately at the launch of the expansion, players who play higher-end content quickly will want to craft or buy new augment kits, so they can use their previous augments on their new gear sets which will not be immediately moddable. So if you’re a player who wants the best of the best, you can save some time be pre-preparing 14 MK-11 augment kits for yourself for each character you plan to bring into higher end content like Master mode operations once you’ve gotten the gear pieces you want to augment. If you don’t care about augments, you might be able to make some credits by pre-crafting MK-11 kits and selling them when people need them during the expansion.

9. Clean Your Inventory and Quest List

Before each expansion I like to “clean” my inventory out and “clean” out my quest list of all quests I don’t plan on completing, that way when I start a new expansion, I don’t have to do as much maintenance while actually playing and enjoying the new content.

Many of you have asked, should I break down my old gear. I don’t know the exact answer to this, as we don’t know exactly what Tech Fragments will be useful for in the future. What I plan to do is keep a set of gear for each of my characters so they have something to wear going into the expansion, keep all the tacticals I’ve picked up incase they are useful in the future, and lastly I plan to break pretty much everything else down except I’m keeping one piece of every type of armor for cosmetic reasons and I’m just throwing those in one of my character’s banks so I can have them in the future if I want to make an outfit from that set bonus look or from that Renown Crate gear that looks like it came form Onderon.

10. Stockpile Credits

While we don’t know exactly what making credits or spending credits will look like in the expansion, we do know one source of a constant flow of credits is being removed – you’ll no longer get credits for every small conquest objective you complete. So if you’ve got some extra time, maybe go complete conquest on a few extra characters and stockpile some credits for the expansion.

11. Daydream About Characters

With the ability to pick up a second combat style, and being able to make new level 1 characters with different advanced classes than we could in the past, now is a great time to daydream up new characters you will make in the expansion. For example, if you want to make a Trooper who is also a Sniper, that’s something you’ll be able to do in the expansion – or a Jedi Knight who wields a double-bladed lightsaber as a Shadow. You can work on how they might look, if they might be light or dark, what their backstory might be or what their personality might be like, or even start collecting some cool cosmetic armor and weapons for them before the expansion launches.