Tips for Returning SWTOR Players (2024) (2024)

If you’re returning to Star Wars: The Old Republic after a long break, welcome back! If you’re feeling a bit lost from all the changes in the game over the years, in this video I’ll be going over some short tips on how to jump back in to the game.

Video is for level 75 rather than 80, but covers a lot of the same topics! Written guide is up to date for 2024 / 7.4.

1. It’s normal to feel a bit overwhelmed.

Many returning players feel incredibly overwhelmed by the game when they jump back in – there are so many different systems, storylines and gear types that it feels like you may never catch up or know how things work. While this isn’t necessarily a tip, I always like to remind returning players that this game is over a decade old, and the idea is that they’ve kept adding new stuff so players who have been playing this whole time have different things to check out – you aren’t meant to immediately understand or play every system in the game, and they’re meant to be explored and learned over time. Don’t feel like you need to try them all at once – focus on your storyline in the game, and then start checking out the other systems one by one as they interest you.

1. Start a new character OR Find where you are in the story

New level 1 character: When players take a long break from the game, it’s often suggested that they try creating a brand new level 1 character, so they can learn about all the changes slowly from level 1. Whether you want to pick up your old character or start a brand new one is up to you. What’s neat is that since the most recent expansion, you’ll see some new Combat Style options that you didn’t have before in the character creator – for example, you can now make a Trooper who fights like a Sniper!

Find where you are in the story on your old character: If you instead want to continue playing your old character, you’ll want to figure out where you are in the story. The story is pretty linear, so you just need to find out what the last storyline you played was and continue from there. To find out where you were, the easiest way is usually to open your quest log and look for the purple quests. You can also check your ship if you don’t have any purple quests in your log. To find out what storyline is next, I’ve put a link to a player-made story order guide in the description of this video which includes where, how and when to start every storyline!

Once you figure out where you are in the storyline you can start questing! You’ll be able to peacefully work your way through the story until the new max-level of 80.

Level 70 token: As a returning player, you may notice that when you go to create a new character you may also have the option to make a Level 70 character in addition to making a level 1 character. All players who subscribed within the last few years receive one free high-level token. These tokens allow you to skip and auto-complete your class story and jump immediately in to the two newer expansion storylines. Most players recommend saving this token until you know exactly what you want to do with it, especially since this token will cut you out from being able to play and experience your class’s storyline. This token is most useful if you want a high-level character but you don’t want to go through the trouble and time of leveling it.

2. Questing has changed a lot!

If you’re returning to the game after a long break, you should know that questing has changed quite a bit since the launch of the game.

Overlay Map: One of my favorite additions to the game is the Overlay map – you can press ALT+M on your keyboard or click the “expanding” symbol near your minimap to make it show up, and by pressing ESC -> Interface Editor you can adjust both its size and transparency.

Main Quest vs Side Quests: Your main quests, which are your class quest, the planetary main story quest, or the main expansion story quest, are marked with purple markers on your map. All other missions are very optional – you do not have to do any of the side missions. Side missions are yellow and have different symbols like a dashed line for exploration quests or a rotating symbol for repeatable quests.

Quests Reset Timer: Many quests are now repeatable, and have a reset timer on them. Heroic quests, daily area quests, and the bonus series quests are all repeatable, and reset early each morning depending on your timezone. All weekly quests reset every Tuesday early morning, including daily area weeklies, Flashpoint weeklies, Operation weeklies and PvP weeklies – so if you don’t finish them before the reset time, they’ll get set back to zero progress for the next week. This is at 12 PM GMT noon London, 1 PM Germany and France, 4 AM Pacific (4 AM Pacific Daylight Savings), 7 AM Eastern (8 AM Daylight Savings), 11:00 PM Sydney Australia.

Quicktravel: Getting around is also easier than ever. When you walk past a quick travel point, you’ll automatically unlock it, and you can now click quick travel points from the main map, making it easier to get to your next quest marker. Just be aware quick travel now costs credits!

3. Set up your Interface, Graphic Settings, Quickbars and Keybinds

If you come back to the game after a long break, you may not have all your settings saved from the last time you played.

Quickbars: If you log in and notice you’re missing some of your quickbars, the easiest way to get them to show up is to press the very tiny cross symbol near your quickbars and choose “Extended Quickbars” from the list. Next you can press the very tiny lock symbol in the same area to unlock your quickbars, allow you to click and drag your abilities around to the different slots. Press P on your keyboard to open up your abilities, choose your class from the dropdown, and you can start dragging any missing abilities onto your bars. Just make sure to re-lock your quickbars when you’re done!

Interface: If you want to move things around, or hide parts of the interface, or change the way your quickbars are displayed, you can press ESC on your keyboard then choose Interface Editor and adjust things to your liking. One of the most recent additions is the “Welcome window” – you can’t turn it off, but there is a button the minimize it, you may need to adjust the windows in the Interface Editor before you can click it.

Graphic Settings: You may want to play with your graphical settings by pressing ESC -> Preferences and go to the Graphics tab. If you have a good computer, try bumping it up to Ultra if it isn’t already there on the dropdown. If you’re having lag, try moving it down to low graphics, and in the Nameplates section on the left, turn off nameplates for a performance boost.

Keybinds: If you’re used to playing with keybinds, you may need to set them back up again. You can get to them from ESC -> Preferences -> and go to the Key Bindings tab at the bottom. All your abilities will be keybindable in the Quickbar section. If you want to use the same keybinds across multiple characters, you can go to the “Keybinding Import/Export” tab, type in a name for your keybinds and press the save icon, then you’ll be able to apply it to your other characters next time you log in to them.

4. Gearing at Level 80

As soon as you hit level 80, the very first thing you should do is head to the Supplies section of the Fleet and speak to the big Blue Twi’lek quest giver twice, which will give you the Technological Advancements quest. This will eventually allow you to buy the best Implants for your character in the game. Legendary Implants Guide

Your next step is to earn some Conquest Commendations. If you open your inventory, and go to the currency tab, you may already have some – you’re looking to earn 200 total. If you don’t have any, your next step is to complete a Conquest while at Level 80. Conquest is a weekly set of rotating objectives, and your goal is to earn 100,000 points within the week. You can see the Conquest panel by opening your Missions windows and pressing the Conquest tab. Completing a Conquest at level 80 will give you enough endgame currency to buy your first basic level 80 gear set. Conquest Guide

Once you have 200 Conquest Commendations, go to the Supplies section of the fleet and look for the Conquest Gear Vendor and buy one of each armor piece, a main hand, and an offhand, two yellow implants, a yellow earpiece, and two different red relics. This will give you a full set of basic “324 green” gear which is more than enough for all basic quests, heroics, Flashpoints, and story mode Operations!

Once you’re ready to start working on upgrading your gear, be aware that the easiest method to do so changes roughly every update, so you’ll want to check out a guide online to get you on the right path! It’s way too much for me to cover in this quick guide. Updated 7.4 Gearing Guide

5. Learn to play your class at level 80

By the time you hit level 80, your class may be very different than when you first started playing. I’ve got an amazing set of beginner’s guides for every class, which also have links to more in-depth guides by other players when you’re ready to start learning at a higher skill level. Combine this with setting up your abilities on your quickbars to your liking and you’ll be on a great path to having fun fighting in-game!

Oh by the way, if you’ve already finished your Class story on at least one character, and are subscribed to the game, you’ll have a really neat option available to you now, that allows you to add a second combat style to your character. You can then swap between the first and the second when you are out of combat, for example from being a Commando to a Sniper. This permanent choice of a second combat style comes in the automatically-granted missions “Training in the Force” for force users, and “Training and Skills” for tech users, which is likely already available in your quest log. You can take a look at this quest by launching it, just make sure to ESC out of the cutscene before you make your choice if you aren’t ready to pick yet, as it’s a permanent choice.

6. Fashion Baby

Players have always been interested in dressing up in cool armors in the game, ever since its launch, but the options on how to do that have opened up a lot over the years. The first thing you’ll want to know is that the stats and power of your armor and weapons are now no longer tied directly to how they look – so you can have the appearance of one armor, and the look of another. The second is that armor is a lot less restrictive than it used to be when the game first came out – almost every type of character can wear any type of armor to get its appearance, as long as they are the correct level – you don’t need to worry about light medium or heavy anymore.

The way it works is you must first make sure you have the right type of weapon equipped in your equipment tab in your character sheet (C on your keyboard). This is also where you equip armor with stats on it, that makes you better in combat. Then you can go to your outfitter tab, and create an outfit – this is like a costume, and is what your character “looks” like in cutscenes – just make sure you use a matching weapon type! You can even set up multiple outfits and easily swap between them.

Oh by the way, your company gear doesn’t matter at all, and no longer has stats. Instead your companion’s strength is measured by their influence, which you can see by pressing N on your keyboard, and it can be raised through conversations, gathering, crafting and giving them companion gifts.

7. Storage and Items

Quite a bit has also changed about where all your “stuff” is in the game over the years. So when you open your inventory (with the I key on your keyboard), one of the coolest additions is the Materials bay. This is a legacy-wide storage bay that your crafting materials automatically go in to, and when you craft, all your characters can automatically withdraw materials for it. Crafting is in a weird state right now – you mostly only craft cosmetic stuff, and you can’t craft end-game level 80 gear, except for Augments and re-useable medpacs.

Second, in addition to the green cargo hold, there’s now a legacy bank. The legacy bank can store any items that are legacy-bound or not bound to your character. There are a ton of new cosmetic armors, as well as all end-game armors at level 80, that are legacy-bound which means you can transfer them between characters. The easiest place to store these is in your legacy bank. You can also easily share credits between your characters through the legacy bank by depositing credits on one character and withdrawing them on another.

Lastly, many things that were previous considered items have now been converted to currencies, which don’t take up inventory space. You can see these currencies in the currency tab of your inventory.

6. Play with Others

Level 80 is the most common entry point for players to start playing with others. You can try 4-person Flashpoints, Player-vs-player warzones, Operations, GSF, group questing, or more! The most common way to meet other players to play with, at level 80 or as you level, is to join a guild. We’ve put together a huge list of guilds who are accepting new players that you can sort through on the SWTOR Guild Finder.

If you’re looking just to run casual Flashpoints with other players through the groupfinder, I’ve got a groupfinder flashpoint guide that will help you avoid some common grouping and etiquette issues. I’ve also got a different guide about joining your first operation, a guide on How to join Player vs Player content, and how to play Galactic Starfighter with others.

Being a part of a guild is also one of the best ways to be able to ask question about the game or the new stuff that didn’t exist when you last played. Many guilds are happy to answer questions in in-game Guild chat, but even better, a majority of guilds now also use an online out-of-game chat system called Discord to communicate – so you can ask questions and even people who aren’t currently only can help answer them. Another friendly place to ask questions is the largest public SWTOR discord server, which you can join at discord.gg/swtor, or you can ask questions on the SWTOR subreddit at reddit.com/r/swtor – they even have weekly threads specifically for little or basic questions at the to of the page.

7. Dig in to all the content!

Even beyond playing the main storyline and playing group activites, there’s a ton of content to explore and enjoy solo or with friends. If you’re interest in any of these topics, – crafting, player housing called strongholds, fashion and armor, achievement and secret hunting, roleplay, reputation, dailies, limited-time events, companion recruiting, conquest, datacron hunting, exploration secrets, or any other facet of the game, you can view my What to do at Level 80 Guide or check out swtorista.com/2024 for an enormous list of guides about every type of content in the game!

I hope these tips helped you jump back in to the game, welcome back and may the force be with you!