Friday Feature – The Best of Tips and Hints - 11/14/2008
Over the course of the last year, we have been putting tips and hints on the official Star Wars Galaxies forums for new, current, and returning players. Players have also contributed some of their best tips and game hints, to help make the experience a little bit easier for their fellow galactic travelers.
Below is a compilation of some of the best tips and hints we've uncovered so far. This is by no means an exhaustive list. Please visit the thread in the official forums to add your own and find all the other great tips from players like you and from members of the Star Wars Galaxies team!
Star Wars Galaxies Team Tips
Each planet's in-game day takes real-time hours. Tatooine, Naboo, and Corellia are on a 3 hour cycle. Dantooine, Yavin 4, Talus, and Endor are on a two hour cycle. Dathomir, Lok, and Rori are on a 1.5 hour, 1 hour, and 30 minute cycle, respectively.
You can copy and paste text in game. Press "O" for the Options window, press Keymap, click the All tab, and find the Chat Edit Cut, Chat Edit Copy and Chat Edit Paste commands and assign them a key. You can now paste in text from out of game into spatial chat and macros.
You can create an alias to create a custom abbreviation for a game command. Two letter acronyms can help you remember the alias you create. For example, create the alias / alias mb / mount Speederbike Swoop , and then type /mb to get on your bike.
By default use CTRL and Mouse Wheel to change the size of icons or text when hovering the cursor over your inventory, datapad or chat window.
Want to become a Beast Master? Open the Expertise window by pressing U on the keyboard, select the Beast Mastery tab, and choose the Incubation expertise at the top to begin wrangling wild beasts.
Don't want to duel anyone? Simply enter /autoDeclineDuelRequests. This will automatically reject any duel requests sent to you from another player.
Star Wars Galaxies servers are restarted on a regular basis. The current schedule is:
Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 4 AM PST for US based servers
Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 8 PM PST for European based servers (Wednesday, Friday and Sunday at 3 AM GMT)
Normal restarts can take as much as 2 hours to complete.
When maintenance or a game update is scheduled to be deployed, all servers (US and European) will be brought down at the same time. As these are scheduled, notes for the downtime and update are released on the web site and official forums. This Knowledge Base article is also updated with information about scheduled downtimes.
Can't remember where your house or other installation is located? Try the locate structure command! A new /locateStructure command has been added to search the galaxy for unpacked structures and installations owned by the character. This command can only be used once every 24 hours per character.
Most buffs can be removed by right-clicking the buff under your status window. Debuffs can't be removed.
If you're looking for more ways to gain experience, try the Mission Terminals. You can do up to ten missions a day from the Mission Terminals which go a long way in increasing your daily xp.
Creature missions generally take longer but also have more xp rewarded due to the fact that you're killing numerous creatures over and over. So if you're looking for new ways to gain levels, be sure to try the 10 missions a day from the Mission Terminals!
Press "Y" to turn on Auto-Aim. Your main attack will always attack your intended target (the enemy in the green brackets), and it will be easy to attack the right target in a crowd.
-Christopher "Dotanuki" Field, Producer
Hitting F1 causes you to self-target which allows you to check out your character name, title, faction standing, and any other accompanying information that other player's can see.
-James "Millbarge" Michener, Associate Designer
You can hotkey your beast master commands by assigning them to appropriate slots in the options menu. Doing so makes controlling your beast's functions much easier and saves a lot of time and trouble when trying control yourself and your beast while in combat. The "pets toolbar" key binding can be found under the ui tab in the keymap portion of the options menu.
-Jesse "Loche" Benjamin, Lead Designer
If you need to target an NPC and a large group of players are hanging around, making it difficult to click on the NPC with your mouse, use the /tar <insertNpcName> command. This is the same as clicking on the NPC and doesn't require you to target them with your reticule, making it much easier to access the NPC.
-Travis "Shadowbrak" Hicks, Game Designer
Best of User Submitted
Miscellaneous Tips
Want to throw an event but need some help moving your props around? Create a storyteller alias to make it easier on yourself! Here's an example:
/alias rsl /rotateStorytellerObject left
/alias rsr /rotateStorytellerObject right
/alias msu /moveStorytellerObject up
/alias msd /moveStorytellerObject down
/alias msf /moveStorytellerObject forward
/alias msb /moveStorytellerObject back
-Submitted by LonaValamari
So now you have all these tips and want to access them in-game? Maybe you also want to store tips for quests, waypoints or how to make an alias without leaving the game?
There is a pretty handy command for it: /notepad or just /no.
Type /no and an empty file will open. Now you can type or copy and paste all text you want into that file, when you are done just close the notepad, it will autosafe. To access it again just type /no and all your information is there.
When you first start the game, the default notepad file is notes.txt. You can now change the file by typing /notepad <filename>, and it will remain <filename> until you change it again with /notepad <another filename>. It will revert back to notes.txt the next time you start your client, but you can easily override that with /notepad <filename>. The title bar of the /notepad window displays the name of the file currently being editted, so there should never be any confusion over what file you are currently editting.
I find this very handy, mainly if you play 2 or more different characters, one being a combat profession, the other an entertainer/trader for example, my combat character doesn´t really need to know which instrument sounds best with which song or what resources my trader needs to make a good rifle.
So using different notepad files with the surename of each character as filename helps. The default one can be used for information that both characters share, like starship stuff.
One more tip, i have written a macro with just /no in it and bound it to the N key, so to open the current notepad file i just have to press N.
- Submitted by ArinDarcast
When you are using the bazaar, find the tab named Vendor Location. This screen lists the player owned vendors that are located all over the galaxy. The bazaar itself has a price limit of 20,000 credits while the better quality items, armor, weapons, and everything else crafted by players is sold at vendors.
You can sort each one column and use the filter to limit prices both up and down.
Notice that items that are sold in crates (for example food and drink buffs, etc.) are found under Misc >> Factory Crates.
Notice which planet the vendor you finally choose is found at, get a waypoint, and travel to the location.
Some players have spent months decorating their malls and workshops into stunning sites, please take the moment and look around and possibly steal some ideas for your own house
Bonus tip: Prices vary from galaxy to galaxy and if you have a hard time find something at a decent price, try mailing the seller (the name is at the item's examine screen) and ask for a better price possibly at some lower quality. Or ask if you may trade something, a large quantity of hide or some stacks of junk loot (stacks of junk loot useful in RE bigger than 100 items is worth several 100k credits).
- Submitted by Zimoon
If you don't have a watch, clock, cell phone, or anything else that tells you the time in the real world near your computer. You can type this handy command to see the time, it shows it in 24-hour format....
/earthtime , /earth, or /ear
- Submitted by LordBarok
Travel Tips
Let's say you have a mount…Well if you want it to go faster type /gallop to make it run its fastest!
- Submitted by Skodus
Let's say you just bought your shuttle ticket and run to the ticket droid only to watch the shuttle fly off without you.
Supposedly, the next shuttle will depart in 57 seconds.
We know this really means more like 90. What you can do is drag your ticket onto a toolbar slot and type /pause 90; /ui action toolbarSlot00 (or where ever you put the ticket).
You are now free to run afk for a second, tab out to the forums or whatever and when you come back you'll be at your new destination.
It's possible to set up a macro to take your toon from anywhere in space to the ground starport of your choice.
You want to jump to the right system, closest to the landing station, use /esc yes, comm the stations and use the appropriate conversation responses to get you to your starport. Mine to land at Rori Rebel base looks like this.
/hyperspace space_naboo_2;
/pause 60;
/escapepod yes;
/pause 30;
/comm;
/pause 5;
/ui action conversationResponse0;
/pause 1;
/ui action conversationResponse2;
/pause 1;
/ui action conversationResponse0;
Add in an alias like /home and you're set.
-Submitted by Zin
In space, the command /escape yes (or simply, /esc yes) coincides with your escape pod as opposed to the eject button that pops up when you are damaged. The difference is that /esc yes fully repairs your ship at no cost to you.
- Submitted by Lasod
Want to make a quick, temporary, reusable waypoint to the spot you are standing on?
Use /findFriend on yourself! It will move the friend waypoint to your current location (and remove the old one) each time you do it. Perfect for a temporary waypoint that won't sit in your datapad until you have to manually delete it later.
I find this particularly useful for crafters looking for a good resource spawn. For example, if JoeBob Crafter is sitting on an 80% spawn, but thinks there might be a 90% over the next hill, he types /findFriend JoeBob and goes off to survey. If he doesn't find anything better, he can go straight back to his first spot again. He can do this as many times as necessary without cluttering up his datapad.
To make it even easier, you can use an alias for it: /alias fjb /findFriend JoeBob for example. Then you could just type /fjb at any time to create a temporary reusable waypoint!
- Submitted by GreenSean
If your are in an NPC city and you want to find a junk dealer then use /find vendor:junk and a glowing path will direct you to the nearest Junk Dealer. You can also find buildings this way by using /find guild:theater for example. With the versatile /find command you need never be lost again!
-Submitted by Icobacca
