Lord Vivicar's End

Normally, my husband and I run all our SWTOR quests together.  Not only do we gain social points in the process, but we have the opportunity to see each other's class quests without having to raise a character of that class.

But when the time came for our climactic adventures at the end of Chapter 1, we decided to run those separately.

We knew we could, if we wanted to do so, board each other's ships and help out.  But when we discussed it, we decided it would be more epic if we did these particular quests with only our companions.  (After all, between the two of us and our companions, we routinely succeed at green Heroic 4 quests.  It might take away some of the joy of achievement if we found ourselves rolling over these quests--the culmination of all our class quests to this point.)  We were higher level than many players tend to be when they finish their Chapter 1 adventures, so we figured it would be no big deal, even if our gear was a few steps lower than our levels.  What's more, we did no research beforehand, to experience all the fun of meeting an obstacle without prior knowledge of the challenges.

Accordingly, I set out to defeat Lord Vivicar accompanied only by Qyzen Fess and armed with my lightsaber and the "persists through death" stim I had in my backpack.  My husband sat in a nearby chair to watch the proceedings.

Clearing the hanger upon boarding the ship was not a problem.  Step by step, Qyzen and I worked our way around the room, pulling and defeating groups.  ("You play like a rabbit," my husband said.  "Like you're frightened all the time that something is going to attack you."  Well . . . it might . . .)  Finally, the hanger was cleared, and we were on our way.

Everything went fine until I had to shut off a force field on the way.  It must have set off some kind of alarm, because suddenly, a huge group of mobs ran down the hall, over Qyzen and me, and before I could do much more than try to heal and Force Wave some of them off me, I was dead.

I laughed, shaking my head, then rezzed.  "Ok, seems I've got a gauntlet here," I commented to my husband.  "Not sure how I can handle quite that many mobs at once."

When I returned to look at the situation, however, I found the mobs lined in neat rows, ready for controlled pulling.  "Well," I thought, "Perhaps it was worth dying, if this is what I find afterward."

The first pull went without a hitch, although I was surprised it didn't end up pulling two groups, as they seemed to be very close to each other.  The second pull consisted of one strong droid and a couple more mobs.  I pointed Qyzen toward the strong droid and prepared to hit one of the other mobs.  To my surprise, he walked completely past the row before attacking something which seemed to be in the far distance.  It was the droid.  Although it had been displayed in the second row, it was in reality a couple rows beyond that.  This meant we ended up with three rows' worth of mobs beating the two of us up, which, of course, resulted in another death.

I sighed and made some sort of comment about bugs, then rezzed again.  This time, the droid was showing up in its proper spot, and the rest of the pulls went without a hitch.

Qyzen and I continued our slow progress until the next time a large group of mobs appeared and lined themselves up for neat pulls.  As we rushed out of the room to face them, I found to my horror that Qyzen ran down the hall and around the corner.  "Qyzen!  What are you doing?!"  Sure enough, he ended up pulling everything in the entire zone . . . . which ended up being Death #3.  (I had never been so happy for a preponderance of medical droids.)

I was about to beat my head against my keyboard.  With this many deaths, I would have considered myself something of a failed Sage, except for the fact I recognized much of my trouble was due to bugs of one sort or another, about which I could do little or nothing.  My husband had abandoned me, deciding to go start clearing his own trash, commenting as he went that he'd most likely take much less time than I was on my quest.  (Thanks, Hon . . .)

Qyzen and I rezzed, cleared the remaining trash, and managed to make it to Lord Vivicar's presence without further trouble.  And after the opening conversation with said Lord, we were one-shotted in very short order.

Great.  After all the wiping due to bugs, I was wiping to my main challenge, which as far as I could tell, was working as intended.  I was tired and annoyed, and I wondered if I should just walk away and come back later.  How could I hope to fight something which could one-shot me with an ability about which I knew nothing?

By this point, my husband was watching again, and we realized Vivicar's success had been due entirely to a single attack which had a cast time.  Even if it was an attack which could be dodged, there was no way I could get Qyzen to dodge anything.  Perhaps it could be interrupted.

Yet again, Qyzen and I rezzed and stared at Lord Vivicar.  (Thank goodness my stim was one which lasted two hours and persisted through death . . .)  With a sigh, I sent Qyzen in to start tanking and my husband kept an eye on Lord Vivicar's casting bar.

Yes!!  It was called Force Crush, and it could be interrupted.  At last, there was hope!

Eventually, there came a moment when I lost Qyzen.  Desperately, I kept myself alive while keeping DoTs and some other damage on Vivicar.  It was a very slow process, but if I could keep it up, never missing an interrupt, I knew I would succeed.  The question, as I stared at my Force bar with some concern, was whether or not I could keep it up . . .

As I watched the relative lengths of my and Vivicar's health bars, while also watching out for that Force Crush with the power to one-shot me, it became more iffy.  Finally, my husband pointed to a med pack on my right bar and said, "Hit this."  I did.

To our great amazement, out of nowhere Qyzen showed up with a small amount of health, ready to tank.  I stared at him, wondering what on earth happened, as I let him take the aggro and worked to keep him alive.  Together we defeated Lord Vivicar and proceeded on the course of redemption for Parkanas Tark.

In the calm after the battle, I took a look again at that med pack.  It was not an ordinary med pack; it was a med unit, which would restore health to both the player and the companion.  Somehow, although Qyzen had been defeated, using this med unit had brought him back to life.  (I'm not sure it was supposed to do that, but you know what they say about gift horses.)

All in all, this questing adventure was definitely a memorable experience, made even more so by the bugs encountered along the way.  While I wholeheartedly support tests of skill, especially at pivotal moments along the class story chain, and while I enjoyed the actual encounter with Lord Vivicar, I hope the developers take a minute or three to correct a few of the unintended challenges of this quest.

(Oh, and by the way, my husband's Trooper ran his class story quest with nary a problem.  Made me want to scowl in his general direction . . .)