Leveling Plateau

The hardest part about playing the Agent is trying not to write blog posts with spoilers.  As a matter of fact, it's almost undoable, because the story line is just so cool!  (Yes, yes, Cipher Agent Targeter, I know you're grinning . . .)

I find myself taking screenshots from cut scenes, hoping to blog about them, but, recognizing that most people really don't want to hear about the story line, setting them aside. It's probably better, anyway, to let them just go make their own Agent and experience it all for themselves.

Luckily for me, I have my eldest daughter to whom I can gush about the story.  (The daughter who, the other day, laughed at me and said, "Mom, you're such a teenager!" Wait, what? Is that a good thing? /looks at daughter suspiciously.)  She smiles, shakes her head at me, says, "Glad you're having fun, Mom," and watches bemusedly as I walk back to my computer.  I guess teenagers can be good for something.  ;)

This last weekend, I had the chance to progress through the story line on Nar Shaddaa, thanks to a nasty cold I think I picked up on that return flight from London keeping me at my computer desk instead of doing landscaping outside in the wind, which meant I found myself on Tatooine at level 23.

Level 23 on Tatooine is not impossible, but it is slightly difficult.

Because I had skipped all the Heroic quests, not wanting to try to find people to run them on a server where I was one of 7 on the entire planet, I had missed out on a substantial amount of leveling potential along the way.  Running daily PVP quests helped, but the xp gained from two warzones plus the completion of a quest wasn't terribly significant.  (Oh!  Interestingly enough, running both rounds of Voidstar apparently completes this quest all by itself.  It counts as two warzones.  Go figure.)  So I found myself staring at the bright desert sands, wondering how to gain at least another level and turn those starting quests from orange to yellow.

Checking my quest log revealed there were a couple of normal quests on Nar Shaddaa I had not completed, so I turned around and flew back to that haven of depraved behavior.

/sigh

Unfortunately, after completing the quests, my poor little Agent is still at level 23.

Sooner or later, in every character I've tried to level solo so far, I've found myself at a leveling plateau.  These are situations where I find myself needing level, but not having soloable quests, and they can be rather annoying.  With my Inquisitor, it was mostly my own fault, as I had a difficult time connecting with her situation and kept refusing quests, but I found I was not motivated sufficiently by her main story line to push through by chaining warzones.  (Why would I want to sacrifice myself for the sake of a completely unlikeable and untrustworthy Sith master?)  My Smuggler, while not strictly on the same kind of plateau, also didn't have a story line compelling enough to inspire me to push through the sheer boredom of doing Republic Nar Shaddaa quests for the second time, playing a style I found less enjoyable.  (Ho, hum . . . treasure hunting.)

But here is where playing an Agent is working to my advantage.  While I am frustrated at this leveling plateau, the story line is intriguing enough, and I've developed enough of a relationship with the main characters involved, I am willing to do what it takes to persevere through this minor difficulty.  If chaining warzones is what it takes, then chaining warzones is what I will do!

So tonight, Hikarinoko will either have a date with warzones, or she will be checking out her ability to run green Heroic quests on earlier planetary zones.  (Unless of course, in the unlikely event my husband has created a character on the same server and wants some help leveling.  He asked me this morning, most mysteriously, upon which server I was playing . . .)

One way or another, the story must go on.