Knights of the Old Republic EP13: Save Scums

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Sep 30, 2015

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 160 comments

Link (YouTube)

In this episode, Rutskarn proposes going through the planets in the order of Tatooine, Kashyyyk….

Hang on…

“Kashyyyk”? Really, Expanded Universe? Really? The Wookiee homeworld has THREE vowels in a row? And all of them are the letter “Y”? And nobody had a problem with this? Not even Georgeee Lucaaas? What are you doing with your proper nouns? This is madness.


In this episode, Rutskarn proposes going through the planets in the order of Tatooine, Kashyyyk, Manaan, and then Korriban. You’re free to do the planets in any order you like, but I’m willing to bet Zalbaar’s freedom that this is the order that most people favor for subsequent play-throughs. I suppose you could make a pretty good case for swapping Tatooine and Kashyyyk, but otherwise this seems like objectively the best order.

  1. Tatooine and Kashyyyk each have a party member for you to recruit: HK-47 and Jolee Bindo, respectively. They’re two of the most popular characters in the game, and both are very powerful, so it makes sense to want to get them as soon as possible. The only question is which one you like best.
  2. Manaan has nobody for you to recruit, so there’s no harm in delaying this planet.
  3. Korriban is the one place where apparently people will recognize Bastila on sight, so she stays on the ship. But Bastila leaves the party after the third planet anyway, so by saving Korriban for last you make it so that you can have Bastila available on the other three worlds.

Basically, this ordering will maximize your choices with regards to party composition.

For those of you who played KOTOR more than once: What’s your preferred order?


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160 thoughts on “Knights of the Old Republic EP13: Save Scums

  1. This appears to be in the wrong category. The ‘previous update’ button links to your post on audio formats.

  2. Chefsbrian says:

    Another advantage to pushing Korriban back is just how much of the tedium you can skip with some good skill checks. Its been a while, but I recall skipping many of the more tedious things through the skill checks.

    Good to see this back, by the way. Always a shame when we have a bum week for a series.

    1. Supahewok says:

      Plus I think there’s 2 Terentaks to fight in Sadow’s tomb that your character has to solo, and I don’t know if they scale with level or not. Another reason to do it last, when you’re at a high level.

      1. John says:

        You don’t actually need to fight the tarentateks. You can sneak past them. You can also just run away. Or, if you’re in the mood for cheese, you can stand in the room with the special grenades–they won’t follow you in for some reason–and snipe them. (I find the last option a little tedious, but it made my six-year-old laugh like a loon last Sunday.)

        1. Sabrdance (MatthewH) says:

          You can sneak past them?

          My characters must never have had enough sneak ability. I always got dragged into a fight.

          1. John says:

            I only did it once. It’s the only place in the game I know where the player character might actually want to use Stealth–but Stealth is generally so useless that I never put points into it any more.

            1. Jeff says:

              Didn’t we have to use Stealth against the rancor? Or am I thinking of KotOR2?

              1. sofawall says:

                If you do need to use Stealth, you can do it with 0 points and a 0 Dex mod, so it’s trivial. If I remember correctly, however, you don’t actually need to Stealth if you’re careful about where you stand.

      2. Chefsbrian says:

        Even if they do scale, the player is so spectacularly powerful by the end of the game (If you doing Josh’s strat, anyhow) that they can’t do much to you.

    2. John says:

      Tedious? Korriban is my favorite planet! Among other things, it’s very compact. You don’t have to jog nearly as far or backtrack nearly as often on Korriban.

      Incidentally, what skill checks give you trouble?

      1. Alex says:

        It’s also a great opportunity to be a dick and still be light side, since pretty much everyone on that planet deserves it.

    3. Felblood says:

      I agree with Shamus and Co. This is pretty much optimal.

      1. Tatooine: Collect HK47, early
      2. Kashyyk: Collect Jolee before going to Manaan.
      3. Manaan: Do Jolee’s sidequest and Collect Darth Bandon’s Lightsaber
      4. Go to Korriban and give the bouncer your name.

      1. Wide And Nerdy says:

        For further potential optimization, there’s nothing stopping you from going straight to buy HK-47 then leave immediately for Kashyyyk without first completing Tatooine. You can then run through Kashyyyk and come back for Tatooine, further maximizing your time with both HK-47 and Jolee Bindo.

        1. Michael says:

          Nothing preventing you, but if I remember the idiosyncrasies of KOTOR’s level scaling, I think there’s some specific reason to finish Tatooine first, I just can’t remember what it is.

          1. Felblood says:

            The Taresian Ale quest?

            You have to get it from Mission’s brother before you extinct the gland monkeys.

            1. Michael says:

              No, I think it actually does have something to do with the level scaling on the enemies somewhere.

      2. Wide And Nerdy says:

        Regarding 4

        Are you talking about giving them your real name?

        1. Felblood says:

          Of Course!

          It is the Way of the Cuftbert.

      3. Benjamin Hilton says:

        The only problem for saving Manaan for later is that it precludes you from doing one of the assassination quests because by the time to meet the guy on Manaan Dantooine (where the target is) will be a crater.

      4. The Specktre says:

        Yep. This is pretty much my order of operations too. Sometimes I would mix up Tatooine and Kashyyyk, but this is what I’ve more or less settled on. Manaan and Korriban are best saved for last, without question, for reasons stated above (not to mention Wide and Nerdy’s suggestions below. Also, I think you can get more shopping options maybe at the very end if you know you are Revan?

  3. James says:

    Also visiting Korriban last also means that the PC knows (s)he is Revan and it unlocks some additional dialogue with the characters there

    1. Viktor says:

      Yeah, this. Do Korriban last for the unique dialogue that was too silly for me to ever pick. I want to see Josh pick it.

      1. Sabrdance (MatthewH) says:

        Yes. Definitely. Especially a lightside PC.

    2. Thomas says:

      This is why I tended to put Korriban last, even without the dialogue, it’s more fun knowing that your character knows

      1. The Specktre says:

        The cool thing about Master Uthar is that you can reveal to him that you are Revan and he will pledge his allegiance to you, even if you are Light Side.* There aren’t any gameplay rewards, but I think it’s a nice touch because it says something about both the character and you as well.

        *That’s bust, however, if you were planning to bring Yuthera to the Light as you are required to double cross and kill her first.

  4. Warclam says:

    I am now definitely tired of the alien voices.

    Man, Carth won’t let you murder civilians for no gain whatsoever? What a buzzkill! You’d think he wasn’t a murderous psychopath.

    1. Felblood says:

      Thankfully we can get HK-47 for that.

    2. Keeshhound says:

      I wouldn’t mind him whining about it (much) but having him yank control from the player is a pretty poor design decision.

      1. Felblood says:

        This is one area where the Influence System in KOTOR 2 was a marked improvement. It gave party members a way to police your actions without actually taking away your free will whenever they were in the party.

        If Kreia’s constant cheating didn’t ruin it, it would have been a great minigame.

  5. wswordsmen says:

    I always did it in that order. HK-47 is just too god a character to not get immediately.

    Yes that typo is supposed to be there.

    1. Supahewok says:

      I switch Kashyyyk and Tatooine. I’m not sure why, at the moment. I THINK that Kashyyyk is the overall easiest planet, and it gives some time to save up money for HK. I tend to spend it as I get it for gear. I think that on my very first play-through as a lad I never even picked up HK because I didn’t have the money for it at the time, and I didn’t remember to go back for him later.

      Maybe I wanted to pick up Jolee first, because any sort of Jedi outguns HK. But I simply can’t think of a definite reason why I prioritize Kashyyyk first. I’m sure this is going to bug me all night. Maybe its just become tradition for me. Or maybe I just don’t like Tatooine because its all samey looking.

      Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, I think Tatooine might have several money hurdles. You need to buy HK, you can give some money to some stranded lady I think, I think you need to buy a hunting license, a couple other things. And after spending money at Dantooine (whose shop-keepers won’t be around forever and who actually have a few pieces of high-end gear I like), I’m probably usually broke. There’s not much to buy that’s of any significance on Kashyyyk that I can recall, but you still get loot to sell, so its a good place to soak up some cash.

      I mean, you could just buy stuff on Dantooine later, after Tatooine, but I think that’s just how I prefer to play the game.

      1. Blovsk says:

        Yeah but you can get crazy monies from the swoop races on Tatooine. In my last run I went Kashyyk->Manaan->Tatooine->Korriban. I think Korriban and Tatooine are the hardest planets in terms of combat.

        1. Supahewok says:

          That’s if you’re any good at the swoop races. Me as a kid, wasn’t so great. My last playthrough a couple years ago though, the races were pretty trivialy easy. But the habit of what order I do the planet is already sunken in.

      2. John says:

        I had this problem on one of my early play-throughs. I couldn’t afford HK-47 and I had to grind for wraid plates for a stupidly long time. Fortunately, large, presumably herbivorous quadrupeds are a renewable resource on Tattooine. In the Dune Sea, no less. Go figure.

        After a while, I figured out the secret to money management in the Old Republic. Don’t buy stuff. If there’s something you really want, wait until you’ve done a planet or two and built up your cash reserves. Ideally, wait until you’ve done all four planets and Suvam’s best stuff unlocks. If you see something in a store–a Mandalorians heavy blaster pistol, say–just wait. You’ll get two later on when you kill a boss. In general, you’ll get all the weapons and armor you need from containers you find and enemies you kill.

        1. Supahewok says:

          Oh, I know that now. 10 year old me, not so much.

          Besides, there’s still some nice stuff to buy at shops other than Suvam Tam’s. On Dantooine, I think the best Utility Belt is sold by the Rodian that also sells maps. Or somebody. He also has Fett’s armor, which has some nice bonuses that I can’t recall. There’s also the black market shop on Korriban that’s got some real nice stuff.

          But yeah, most of the best stuff that you can’t get anywhere else is at Tam’s, once you’ve fought off the Trandoshans. The Trandoshans also drop like 30 Thermal Detonators, and selling those is probably the single biggest chunk of cash in the whole game, right when you need it most.

          Probably selling your stuff only at Tam’s helps, too. I read in the comments here that he gives you the most for sold items, which is a fact I hadn’t known in any of my past playthroughs.

        2. Michael says:

          The exception is the stuff the Yavin 4 vendor sells. Those things you can’t get anywhere else. The two lightsaber crystals are practically must haves, just for novelty value, because they give every other focusing crystal in the game to new stats while they’re equipped.

        3. Atarlost says:

          Actually, those Mandalorian pistols are an important ordering consideration: You don’t get them if you do the planets in the wrong order. I think you have to do either Tatoine or Korriban first to get them. And you’ll really want them. Carth needs one or two depending on if you shell out for Whoosit Fett’s pistol and Mission needs one until the Doomgiver fight. No, that’s the one in Jedi Outcast. The Invisible Hand. No, that’s Saruman’s ship. That stupid looking ship where you fight Saul Kilrathi. And even his gun isn’t really better than the Mandalorian Heavy Pistol, it just has a wider crit range and a stun chance that people always save against. And crit stacking actually isn’t the path to power in this game.

          Or maybe it’s that Kashyk doesn’t drop the pistols and Manaan doesn’t drop the armor? Whatever, the only options for the first map are Tatoine and Korrriban. And I’m not entirely sure about Korrrriban because you can’t pick up an assassin droid there. I know you get the good guns and the armor doing Tatoine first.

      3. Sabrdance (MatthewH) says:

        I did this as well. First, completing Zalbar’s story is an early win. Second, Jolee has a lot to say on future planets. Does HK have much to add to Kashyyyk?

        I feel someone should note, though, assuming Zahn named the planet, the Wookiee homeworld is first name-dropped in Heir to the Empire where it is, by far, the second easiest planet to pronounce, after Bpfassh, Nkllon, and ahead of Dagobah.

        And that’s just in chapter 14…

        1. Felblood says:

          Have I mentioned lately how much I hate what the Thrawn Trilogy did to the EU?

          –because this feels like a great place to bring it up again.

          A special hate goes out to Timothy Zahn every time I attempt to pronounce Noghri. –or any time I think about them at all, really. They are a race of Ewok knockoffs, who also happen to be unstoppable ninjas. “Khabarakh of clan Khim’bar was a Noghri, from Honoghr.”

          Then he brings out the evil clone of Luke, Luuke.


          So. much. hate.

          Apparently, there are just a lot of extra vowels in SpAAaaaa~ce!

          1. Thomas says:

            Wait, people weren’t saying Luuke as a joke? That’s an actual thing that a writer who was paid wrote?

            1. Daemian Lucifer says:

              Oh yes.There is luuke,and then there is also luuuke.

              1. Mike S. says:

                To be fair, Luuuke was a joke.

                1. Supahewok says:

                  Oh God, thank you for that. I haven’t laughed that hard from something on the internet in a long time.

          2. Corsair says:

            Ewok knockoffs because…they’re small. They have literally nothing to do with Ewoks other than they’re not terribly tall. I mean, that’s a pretty petulant complaint, as is the ‘Aliens have alien names, as do their planets’ I mean, yes, it’d be easier to pronounce if all the Aliens came from Reno and Detroit, but that’s kind of why they’re -Alien-, because they’re not from Reno or Detroit.

            For the most part, anyway.

            1. Felblood says:

              Ewok knockoffs becasue they are small, furry tribals who can defeat Imperial Stormtroopers by striking them from ambush, and become enamored with Leia.

              The furry part got scrubbed out of a lot of later works, but when Zahn introduced them it was pretty transparent.

              For the record, I don’t hate the Ewoks, conceptually.

              What I hate is a now long standing precedent this started started.

              Superficial aping of iconic moments, came to be an acceptable substitute for actually respecting the themes of the original trilogy.

              An EU novel can take as many craps as it wants on the themes, characters and conclusions that fans fell in love with, so long as there is a sidekick named Foo-bacca the Wookie around to pay lip service to that sense of childlike wonder and excitement. Why? Because that’s what we settled for, in the critically acclaimed Thrawn Trilogy.

              We were so hungry for more Star Wars stories that we made excuses for this drek. –Excuses that, in hindsight look weak and unnecessary. This established cannon of apologists provided a smoke screen for a lot of further BS, which led to the glut of under-edited, over-hyped fanfics we were expected to settle for in the mid 00’s.

              The Thrawn Trilogy is the Episode I of the ABY EU. It’s so loudly revisiting fan-favorite locations, crayon scribbling on every unexplored corner of the map, and giving stupid answers to questions nobody asked, that we were all completely distracted from the fact that it was setting up everything that came after for inevitable deficiency.

              Nothing built on that foundation can aspire to be more then mediocre.

              Before the best we could hope for was something like the Sunrider comics, which carefully skirted around in the cracks between the decades of crayon scribbles on the timeline to create stories that defied the visual aesthetics of Star Wars, while upholding the ideals of exploration, fantastical mysticism, action and adventure.

              Now we finally have a splinter of hope that it could all be wiped away, and we could get a fresh start, with guiding editors who are more interested in the long-term health of the franchise, rather than making a quick buck by handing the reins to some golden-boy-of-the-moment creator, to boost short term sales.

              I know my hopes are going to get dashed to nothing, but until the curtain rises, I am going to burn with that passionate hope of a better future.

          3. Blackbird71 says:

            You “hate what the Thrawn Trilogy did to the EU”? What it did, as in, revitalize interest in an amazing franchise which was otherwise on its way to being forgotten?

            Heck, without the Thrawn trilogy, we probably never would have had the prequel movies…

            Oh. I see now. Yeah, “hate” works.

            1. Felblood says:

              This attitude is the thing that Thrawn did to the EU, and the thing that I hate.

              If it says Star Wars on the cover we should forgive whatever faults it might have, just by virtue of it even existing.

              As if the Bantam Spectra of 1991 couldn’t have taken their pick from dozens of drafts from mobs of established science fiction writers. A license to print Star Wars books was both a license to print money and a license to mint Sci-Fi author celebrities.

              I’ve read pre-Thrawn Zahn. The guy had a lot of talent. The ambition and scope of Asimov, but without that crippling, myopic affection for his own creations that makes Asimov such a chore to actually read. Heir to the Empire was his Sell-Out Moment.

              He was writing well outside his comfort zone of Hard Sci-Fi stories that span the lifetimes of civilizations, which only superficially resembles Space Opera Fantasy. So often he trotted out Space Opera cliches, apparently for no other reason that he thought it was what he was supposed to do. He had to know how badly he was messing up, even if he couldn’t pinpoint the exact blunders at the time. The only reason that I can reserve my hate for the books, and not extend it to the man who wrote them is that he seems to acknowledge these failings gracefully, with the benefit of the intervening decades of hindsight.

              This is like if Christine Feehan died, and her estate hired George R.R. Martin to write some sequels (or vice versa). They contain a lot of superficially similar elements, but both of those writers are good enough to know that the other one’s style is outside their wheelhouse.

              For a time, fans might content themselves, saying that it was close enough, but it wouldn’t capture the same magic that draws different people to those specific authors. Some might even find the fusion style more to their liking than either original, but it wouldn’t really be the same. Eventually, there would come a time when the graceful path would be to acknowledge the rough seams, between the two bodies of work.

              If you like the Thrawn Trilogy, that’s great. Good For you.

              –but don’t expect me to pretend that it isn’t an ugly, disjointed weld, holding together two parts that don’t really fit.

              It wasn’t good enough, but we accepted it, because it was all we had. Now we have a glut of mediocre cash-in books, built up over years of accepting, and even praising, the inadequate. We should have had the foresight to demand more and better at the outset.

              1. Corsair says:


                What are you even talking about? What fan-favorite location is revisited in the Thrawn Trilogy? Kashyyyk? It had only previously appeared in the -Holiday Special-. Scribbling on unexplored corners of the map? At the time Zahn wrote it the map of the Star Wars galaxy didn’t even exist, and the whole series takes place within ‘known space’. And what stupid answers? What are you talking about? Nothing you’re saying makes any sense.

                Zahn is one of the few EU writers who -got- Star Wars. Who had the ability to capture even a fraction of the magic of the original trilogy. Admittedly this is, for the most part, limited to his first five books in Star Wars, the Thrawn Trilogy and Hand of Thrawn duology. The failing of the EU was the failure of other writers to even make a serious attempt to follow Zahn’s direction.

        2. Rick says:

          Zahn didn’t name Kashyyyk, which first appeared (and was named) in the Holiday Special. Zahn wanted to name it “Rwookrrorro” before finding out it already had a name, then wanted that to be the Wookiee name for the planet, and ended up using it as a city on the planet.

          1. Thomas says:

            I still can’t tell when anyone in this thread is joking! Rwookrrorro?

        3. Ivan says:

          Wait, is Bpfassh the name of a planet, or did you just blow a raspberry at me?

    2. Smiley_Face says:

      I sort of do it in that order – I go to Tatooine, get HK, then immediately leave the planet, do Kashyyyk, then Manaan, then return to Tatooine, then hit Korriban. Tatooine’s just all desert all the time, I like splitting it up. Also, it gets more levels in before I hit any of the big fights, makes the whole run smoother.

  6. Daemian Lucifer says:

    The Wookiee homeworld has THREE vowels in a row? And all of them are the letter “Y”?

    Well,when you see a race is named wookiee,you just go “how much more silly can I make this?”,and there you go,whywhywhy.

    1. djw says:

      Also, judging from the noises they make their spoken language is all vowels, all the time

      1. Neil W says:

        Yes. This. Chewbacca has a “k” sound, as does Wookie and Kashyyyk. Yet no wookie has been heard to make a “k” sound. What’s that about?

        1. Michael says:

          That’s because Chewbacca is a slurred portmanteau of Chewing Tobacco.

    2. Ledel says:

      Also, the Wookiees had worked out the secrets of blacksmithing in the past. Despite the fact that the live at the tops of highly flammable trees, and have a somewhat healthy fear of what lives at the forest floor.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:


        Unless I remember something wrong,those are tropical trees.Meaning they are full of water and not that flammable.

        1. Ledel says:

          Not typically, but once you start getting into the 1500-2000F range I’m pretty sure even tropical trees will dry out and ignite fairly quickly.

      2. 4th Dimension says:

        If you want to nitpick that, the problem aren’t the forges. The problem is where do they mine the ore to forge, because you can’t do mining through raiding, you would need to establish a mine somewhere and guard it and guard the convoys carrying the ore.

      3. Nidokoenig says:

        Human tribes that want to make fire in raised huts, attached to trees or not, will suspend the fire over a hole on a platform held up by a rope. If the fire gets out of control, the rope burns and the fire drops down, leaving you with a small piece of burning rope to deal with, the fire is more a problem for the guy downstairs. This could possibly be extended to having an isolated hut for metalwork, but like the other guy says, the problem becomes more about what the hell you’re smelting and where you got it from.

        Although, isn’t the total tree cover a recent thing, kinda? Some terraforming gubbins gone awry?

    3. Henson says:

      I assumed the three ‘y’s are there to show that it’s pronounced ka-SHEEEK. Which I ignore anyway.

      1. Thomas says:

        I always assumed it was two Y’s. Which would have made sense to me as a spelling for some reason.

      2. Neil D says:

        I first assumed it was pronounced Kashy-Yik. That would at least make sense of the three Ys together. When I heard it pronounced Kasheek I was… not surprised at all, actually.

        Forget it, Jake. It’s Star Wars.

    4. Metal C0Mmander says:

      At one point you have to stop caring about the inherent silliness of its names. That point is probably when you learn that the name of the kind of music heard in the Mos-Eisley cantina is the Lucas approved word “Jizz”. I mean do you want to live in a world where this isn’t a thing? I don’t because this is far too dumb and funny.

      1. Matt Downie says:

        On the other hand, I think Mos-Eisley Cantina is a pretty great name for a place. It feels like something from an exotic culture. Sometimes George Lucas seemed to have a pretty good feel for language.

      2. Daemian Lucifer says:

        So its like jazz but with i instead of a.I dont see whats the problem with that.


  7. djw says:

    That’s my order too.

    I’m not sure that I agree that HK is at all powerful though. He gets a spot in my group through virtue of good dialogue, but ranged is kind of weak in kotor 1.

    1. Viktor says:

      Depends on your main. If you can hit the repair 17(iirc) to unlock his memory, you get good dialogue AND he gets a bunch of useful bonuses. Still probably not worth a slot, but only because you need a skillmonkey and all the good ones of those are ranged.

      1. Sleeping Dragon says:

        See, this is one of the reasons I tend to play these games on easiest difficulty possible, I can pick suboptimal companions whose dialogue I enjoy.

        In case of KOTORs my problem was always more the fact that droids do not benefit from force powers, especially healing.

        1. djw says:

          I play on hard and still use HK-47. He’s suboptimal, but if you build your own character properly you more than make up for it with sabre smacking or lightning bolts.

          1. Sleeping Dragon says:

            Sure you can, but it’s more punishing and can cause more frustration. Also, I never claimed I played my character optimally either.

        2. djw says:

          You can get away with a sub optimal party on hard too.

  8. Ledel says:

    So, oddly enough, my playthrough of the game actually is progressing through the same order listed above (with Kashyyyk first and Tatooine second). As I’ve stated before, I’ve never played this game in the past. I’ve tried to avoid spoilers, but was slammed in the face by that when I checked out the history of Taris on the Wiki. Fair warning, they spoil the twist of this game about 4-5 times talking about the starting planet of the game that, as far as I know, doesn’t play much of a role anywhere else in the EU.

    Oh well, at least I had made it far enough through the game to where I was figuring it out anyway.

  9. Majere says:

    I continue to be baffled by Josh not just using Zaalbar as his main for the entirety of Taris like I do every time because at that point in the game he’s just monstrously overpowered compared to everyone else and he makes the whole “No leveling” strategy so much more bearable.

    1. Henson says:


  10. Daemian Lucifer says:

    As someone suggested in an earlier thread,going to tatooine just to get hk47,then immediately to kashyyyk,and only when you finish it back to tatooine is the best way to do it.

  11. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Oh,you didnt get named Shamuuus in the credits?A missed opportunity.

    And now I wonder how Chris earned that new nickname.

  12. StashAugustine says:

    Kashyyyk has too many vowels? It’s too bad Luuke Skywalker never went there.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Not to be confused with luuuke skywalker.

      1. Retsam says:

        I was just coming here to post about Luuke/Luuuke… can’t believe I was beaten to the punch on both accounts.

      2. Ledel says:

        The force is very strong in the Skyyywalker family.

  13. Dev Null says:

    I… haven’t the foggiest idea what order I did them in. How old is this game again? It’s been that long.

    Three y’s is perfectly justifiable in fantasy or sci-fi. All proper nouns in F/SF are required by law to have a double letter by default, so a triple is just like a double in the real world.

  14. Hermocrates says:


    Are you describing yourself, Rutskarn?

    Chris, you know you’re only giving fuel to the shippers with comments like that, right?

  15. Blovsk says:

    Answer at 12:02, yes, the game has difficulties. I don’t think it’s an old school slider but I don’t remember. Squatting at a level below 5 will impact the rest of the party’s XP gain because bug and Josh is *so* low-level that it’s making his life unusually hard here.

    1. John says:

      The game has three difficult levels: Easy, Normal, and Hard. The more difficult the setting, the more health and the more health-packs enemies have.

      1. Nidokoenig says:

        *twitch* They have an RPG ruleset that allows them to give enemies different builds and skills and be vastly different in terms of combat efficiency and they just do that? What the hell…

        1. John says:

          Well, those are the only differences that I’ve ever noticed in the course of ordinary gameplay.

          I suppose that it’s possible that enemies have better stats on the harder difficulty levels. To find out, you’d need to play the same encounter on two different difficulty settings. You can get enemies’ armor class and saving throws by checking the combat log as you play. I’ve never bothered to do so–in fact, I only thought of it just now–but maybe I’ll try it tonight.

        2. Michael says:

          Well, I remember with Neverwinter Nights (which used the same engine) the bottom two difficulties turned off Attacks of Opportunity (free attacks on characters in melee that decided now was the best time to use a healing item, or run away) and friendly fire.

          I thought KOTOR had 4, and on the bottom one you took a -10% XP penalty, with then three above that, with no XP modifiers. But, it’s been years since I fired the game up, so I’m honestly not sure.

        3. Supahewok says:

          Time. Money. Etc. You have to draw the line somewhere, and as strange as it may be to realize, Bioware games have never been very deep on the tactics side. Its not their skillset, or their priority. DA:O is the closest they’ve ever come to a tactics game and I don’t think the AI scripts changed with difficulty there either.

          1. Nidokoenig says:

            I guess the cost is non-zero, but simply having different feats or unassigned or dumped stat points in a system where the AI has to look at its available options and make a decision already seems like it would be easy enough. They’ve got a tool to do this job and they just haven’t bothered doing it.

            1. Supahewok says:

              Whether you possess tools matters not a whit if you haven’t got the time and material resources to use them.

              We don’t know how pressed the devs were for time as the game was being readied for launch, and we don’t know how efficient or costly the QA testing was. Setting new scripts and new builds means that you’re creating much more work that needs to be balanced than slapping a 1.5x multiplier on the health bar. Not to mention, for all we know the builds were tied to the enemy types on a fundamental level. Maybe they couldn’t attach more than one build to an enemy type. Copying and pasting the model onto a new enemy type introduces more points for the code to go wrong.

              I’m just saying, there’s a reason why devs take short-cuts, and those reasons aren’t always obvious to us outsiders. Its generally a more complicated question than whether they’re lazy or not.

  16. Henson says:

    I actually prefer to NOT do Korriban last, rather leave either Manaan or Tatooine for the end (I always pick up HK-47 first, but often leave the planet immediately afterwards.). The reason for this is that a) I actually prefer doing Korriban without the characters knowing any spoilers. It gives a different feel to being in enemy territory. and b) if you turn Yuthura Ban to the light side, you can visit her later on Dantooine. I really, really like this character moment, but getting the Korriban star map last (or even third) makes this impossible.

    1. Felblood says:

      If you are actually playing this game for real, for you first time, do Korriban early.

      If you are doing a web show where the PC is named Regina Cuftbert, absolutely do it last.

      Doing Korriban at low levels is pretty hard and very, very tense. The temptation to cheat to get ahead and kill slaves for XP is a lot more real when you can’t just solve all your problems with Bandon’s Saber.

  17. I’ve always tended to do Kashyyyk and Mannan (in no set order) first, with a stop at Mos Eisley to pick up HK and win at Swoop Racing somewhere in the mix. Korriban is normally the last pick still, because I love telling everyone that I’m Revan

  18. @Chris: Yeah, it’s called Galactic Basic (usually just referred to as ‘Basic’) in the expanded universe.

    If I recall correctly, the idea was inspired by Basic English (Wikipedia).

  19. Viktor says:

    I generally do the order listed for the reasons listed. One time I did Kashyyyk-Korriban-Tattooine-Manaan purely because that way I find out what happened in the Great Hunt(the 2 K planets have the remains of the 3 Jedi and you can kill the 4 Terentaleks that killed them) in time to return to intact Dantooine and tell the Jedi historian what I discovered. Of course there’s no dialogue option for this because of course there isn’t. Why let the player actually do anything with the worldbuilding they discovered?

  20. John says:

    In my current run through the game, I did Tattooine, then Korriban, then Kashyyyk, and still have Manaan left to go. That’s fairly typical for me, though I often do Kashyyyk second and Korriban third, too. I tend to let companion quests influence my destination. I did Tattooine first mostly because I got the quest for Mission while I was still on Dantooine. I got Carth’s just after I finished Tattooine, so I told him we’d go to Korriban. After that, I did Kashyyk to get Jolee.

  21. Gravebound says:

    I always go: Tatooine (for HK), Manaan (for the assassin missions), Korriban then Kashyyyk last (least favorite, don’t care about Jolee).

  22. Thomas says:

    Holy crud, you guys are still on Taris? Not even finished with the Sith base by the end of the episode?

    I never realised Taris was so long. I really hope people are right that the other worlds are much shorter in comparison, otherwise this might take a year

    1. Zombie says:

      Taris has the stupid swoop bike quest arc thing that takes hours for you to do, and you still are stuck on Taris. We probably get off of Taris by the end of the week I’m guessing.

      The other planets (save Manaan, I think that ones kinda long) are pretty short “Go here, do a thing to open the gate, get thing, leave” type quests. Dantooine, which is up next, is also a little on the long side, just because there’s the whole “You’re a Jedi, Regina” thing going on, and they make you do a couple of the side quests to get off planet IIRC.

      Manaan is just long because you have to find a way into a Sith base, murder the base, find the dead alien kids (no I’m not joking), get a thing from the dead kids, get arrested, go on trial (again, not kidding) and then you get to open a gate with a shitty puzzle to get the thing you’re after.

      1. Michael says:

        I cannot express how much I fucking hate the trial.

        It’s all one dialog sequence, that never ends.

        1. Viktor says:

          You can skip both the trials if you pick the right choices and do things properly beforehand. No specifics because I’m mobile, but it’s pretty easy.

  23. Zombie says:

    I think when I played I went Kashyyyk, Tatooine, Korriban, and then Manaan.

    I like Kashyyyk mainly because Jolee is amazing, and I love him. HK-47 is pretty good to, but I endorse going Kashyyyk, Tatooine, Manaan, and then Korriban because Jolee is the best.

    The Sith base is weird. Like, I understand why its important to bring us back to the main bad guys after spending hours dealing with swoop gangs and zombies, but its just so weirdly placed, cause we’re going to go and kill a bunch of mercs and stuff after this point in the game.

    I never understood why the game decided that its important to give a bunch of stupid info while you’re in the middle of doing things. It kinda gets annoying.

    Davik’s mansion is annoying. You basically run around his house for half an hour, and get a boss fight with an unkillable boss, then have a minigame. Its a fitting way to leave Taris though.

    Why do a bunch of RPGs make finding medpacks (or whatever they call their healing items) so hard? Like, in Dragon Age there is a finate amount of healing potions in the world, and if you buy all of a merchants health potions, they don’t restock them. Its just super annoying.

    1. Michael says:

      Then you use Liliana’s skill points to learn herbalism and produce so many of the things you break the nation’s economy forever.

      And, the answer to that question is, “to make the game harder.” It doesn’t actually make the game harder, just more time consuming and tedious, but that’s the theory.

      Same thing with games like Inquisition that give you rationed health potions, but then don’t respawn their enemies every time you refresh your stockpile.

      Which reminds me: Would you guys please unload on Inquisition? I’m dying to hear your hatred for it.

  24. Hector says:

    For me, it’s not the order you finesh so much as the order you unlock. I like to run around to each planet to start certain things, then come back later to finish the worlds. While Manaan doesn’t have anything super-cool, it does have one of the most interesting sidequests. It also means I won’t accidentally skip some of the quest triggers.

  25. Mike S. says:

    Anyone who’s read Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy knows that the spelling must mean that Kashyyyk was cloned from a clone of the original planet Kashyk.

    (Zahn is one of the better EU authors, though I prefer his earlier straight SF. But his naming convention for clones was… not one of his better ideas.)

    [Whoops– I see I was anticipated above. Oh well.]

  26. Dt3r says:

    I’m amazed that somehow Carth is more of a stick-up-the-ass than the Jedi.

  27. Anthony says:

    Did Chris imply that BB-8 wasn’t practical?


    It’s a practical effect!

    You can own one!


    1. 4th Dimension says:

      Okay am I wierd that I’m more interested in how does that thing work than that it’s a Star Wars bot? The only way I can see of the head staying attached is if somehow it’s stuck on by magnets, but how the friction doesn’t tear it away is a mystery. Maybe that is why when it’s moving it tilts forward to maintain balance?

      1. This is the toy version. The one used in the movie is far more complicated. Think “someone made a robot out of a Segway.”

        1. 4th Dimension says:

          I’m not interested in the movie version. It’s the movie so it might as well be a bucket with a basketball that late is replaced with CGI. But this thing actually seems to work, and how it controls and moves and maintains the stability is interesting. And all packed in such a small case.Of course even more interesting is what are it’s limitations which they are of course not telling.

          1. Sagretti says:

            The movie robot is definitely a full-size practical effect and not CGI. They’ve brought one of them out for fan events already.


      2. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Them be some strong magnets.The only trouble I can see with it is when it rolls outside for a while,the dirt it picks up may scratch the top part enough for it to fall off.

        1. 4th Dimension says:

          That is why I’m curious since even the friction with the ball should scrape him off.
          Hmmm. What if they have a ball bearing on the bottom of that “head”. That would reduce the friction and enable him to jump over any dirt that was small enough. Also if you do it right you can use the ball as the anchor for the magnet.

          And all this from a battery.

        2. From what I’ve read, while the droid is a real, working prop, just like R2D2, they composite into the desert scenes where sand getting into the workings would be an issue.

      3. Anthony says:

        This is basically the way it works:


        1. 4th Dimension says:

          Now if Randal was a corp, it would be suing time I guess.

  28. Lachlan the Mad says:

    Another good (and particularly Cuftbertian) reason to do Korriban last; it means you’re high enough level to kill both of the Masters of the Sith Academy at once!

    1. Gruhunchously says:

      And then you go ahead and murder the entire academy itself. Very cathartic after what happens to Dantooine.

      1. Matt Downie says:

        Yeah, that was how I did it. “I’ve had enough of you guys. Could I have your attention, please? I’ve decided to kill everyone on this planet, and there’s nothing any of you can do to stop me.” Very satisfying after hours of trying to do the right thing without drawing attention to myself.

  29. stratigo says:

    I dunno why zalbaar is disliked. He is legitimately the strongest NPC you get pretty much.

    1. Josh says:

      He has virtually no characterization, his personal quest is generic and obvious (which makes it all the more puzzling that it’s one of only two companion quests directly interwoven into a planet-wide plotline) and he never talks to you about anything either before or after his quest is completed.

      In a word, he’s boring.

      Sure he may be more powerful than most of the other characters early on, but there are other characters that are way more fun to have around.

    2. Destrustor says:

      In that same vein, I don’t get why T3 is disliked either.
      The little guy is pretty nice, and much more tolerable than Carth. I always kicked Carth out of the party to make room for him, since they both use the same weapons and T3 has a whole bunch of useful skills Carth doesn’t have.

      1. Thomas says:

        In KotoR1 T3 literally doesn’t have an opinion about anything. For some reason, despite trying to copy the original trilogy scene for scene in places, KotoR1 actually makes a point of the fact that T3 is just a robot and robots don’t have personalities.

        I know you’d need a long time without memory wipes to build up personality, but given R2-D2 was a complete punk, you’d have thought they’d have contrived it so that T3 had gone a long time without a wipe. Luckily he’s a punk in KOTOR2 and I love him

        His skills are fine, but you can’t Force Heal robots which makes them weak in the long run.
        Incidentally, as more examples of why I hate The Old Republic trying to touch KOTOR2 canon (Calling the Exile “Meetra Surik” being the prime example), I’ve just learned that T3 canonically dies fighting a Sith Emperor. Wtf?

        1. Zekiel says:

          T3 is *awesome* in KOTOR2

          1. The Specktre says:

            T3 goes from having no personality in KotOR 1 to having ALL THE PERSONALITY in KotOR 2, and it’s great, yes.

        2. Supahewok says:

          And the Exile dies immediately after, being stabbed in the back by the Sith that enabled her to sneak inside.

          And also everything special about the Exile (Force black hole, bonds) was completely forgotten about for that story never being mentioned within it or after it.

          Also when Revan comes out of Stasis in a couple hundred years he yet again turns to the Dark Side for no particularly good reason and is killed dead twice, with the release and death of such a legendary Sith/Jedi having no real effect on the galaxy at large.

          Yeah, the character writing for TOR might be decent but it takes a major crap on the lore.

          1. John says:

            I for one would prefer it if “Force black hole” and “bonds” were stricken from the historical record.

  30. Gareth says:

    Obviously the Wookiee language has three length distinctions in the vowels, like Estonian.

    1. 4th Dimension says:

      Except I’m not certain they even have a written language, so the spelling of the name is what original explorers named the planet.

      1. MichaelGC says:

        Aye – I think they were going for that very Wookieey ululation. Not in any way successfully, but I think that was the idea.

      2. Dev Null says:

        So what you’re saying is; they’re Welsh. Perfectly understandable language, translated into gibberish by foreign interlopers who were the only ones writing it down for posterity, and who the actual language-speakers were deliberately screwing with at the time.

        I have a whole new respect for Wookies. Thank you.

        1. 4th Dimension says:

          Actually my idea was that original explorer were idiots/aliens or both who named the planet in such a silly way without consulting the wild walking carpets, but I kind of like your interpretation better so let’s go with it.

  31. LibertarianSDR says:

    The loot drops from some of the bosses are different if you take the planets in a different order. Specifically the bosses that you deal with on any planet on the first and third planet choices. Calo Nord and Darth Bandon I use Carth a lot, so choosing Tatooine first means that you consistently get 2 Mandalorian Heavy Pistols in addition to the Heavy armor you get from the boss.

    A number of my playthroughs are done from your prescribed list. But one of my most interesting playthroughs was done with Korriban as one of the first 2 worlds as a lightsider. Preaching that Jedi gospel you get to meet some of the people you flip on Dantooine and talk to them. At least before it blows up.

    1. John says:

      The sequence of bosses is planet-invariant. Calo Nord always shows up first and it doesn’t matter what planet you go to.

      1. LibertarianSDR says:

        I know that, but his loot isn’t, you always get his armor. His guns not so much. On other planets his loot is randomized.

        1. John says:

          Huh. I’ve always gotten both the armor and the guns on both Tatooine and Kashyyyk–and I have played the game many, many times. I don’t think I’ve ever fought him on Korriban or Manaan.

  32. Chris, I feel sorry for you. You’re going to get SO much mail about how BB-8 (the ball droid) is a prop, not CGI, bringing the use of the word “feasible” into question.

    It’s pretty amazing how they got it to actually work. I’m dubious of the utility of such a droid, but they stick all kinds of dumb stuff inside R2D2, so…

    1. Dev Null says:

      The “D” in R2D2 stands for Deus Ex Machina (pun intended, no doubt.) R2D2 is clearly the most powerful being in the Star Wars world, since he can magically control all technology at will, and their entire society is built on tech. The only reason he doesn’t take control of the entire Death Star and crown himself Emperor is that he doesn’t really like humans much and doesn’t want them following him around asking for help any more than they already do.

      1. Well, he is the main character of the entire Star Wars saga thus far. He’s appeared in every movie. C3P0 has made a similar showing, but since he’s obviously the comic relief of this duo, he doesn’t count as a protagonist.

  33. lurkey says:

    Tattooine, grab HK, go to Korriban because it’s short, easy and I vaguely recalled you can find a really good Jedi robe there – and yes you can indeed, but it’s for good-aligned people only (on Korriban of all places!). So I picked up Carth, went and did that thing that effectively ends his romance, killed everyone on Korriban, went back to Tattooine, killed everyone killable there as well, ditto on Manaan, ditto on Kashyyyk, which was the last and that’s not just because I hate Jolee and feel grim satisfaction from not doing his personal quest. I also like how, if you go to Kashyyyyyyyk last, the McGuffin on it basically goes “Oh. It’s you.” instead of asking stupid questions.

    It’s damn good to be bad in this game. It sucks to be anything else.

    1. Sleeping Dragon says:

      RE robe: it makes sense, everything that’s even vaguely useful for darksiders has been long looted.

      Personally I like going Korriban last but that’s because I’d thematically like to enter it at the peak of my power, both as a lightsider (in case things go wrong and I’d have to fight my way out) and as a darksider (because Sith respect nothing but strength).

  34. hborrgg says:

    Yeah, I accidentally killed the Duros prisoner too when I played. It really does feel like you are supposed to make all those buttons green, not red. But that blows him up.

    1. Peter H. Coffin says:

      That reminds me of a fun cultural thing. Lotta places in east Asia, red is a more positive color than green. Circles are more positive than crosses. (ObTopical: which means for a lot of untranslated console games, pressing the red O selects stuff and the blue X goes back.) A big red fat zero on a school paper is exactly what you WANT to see.

  35. Interesting trivia:
    Bastila won’t go with you as a squadmate on Korriban, but with a mod this can be made possible.
    Bastila actually has dialog for stuff on Korriban, this dialog and the scripts are in the game data files.
    I can’t recall if a official reason was ever given for it, it’s most likely due to story/plot reasons (the same point that Shamus pointed out).

  36. Chris says:

    The question of a game detecting save scumming came up at the end of the video. KotOR itself detects save scumming in Pazaak. If you have a long winning streak (maybe 6 games in a row?) the other player will say he knows you’re cheating and refuse to play anymore. So your save scumming has to include some losses, too.

  37. Annikai says:

    Based on what I could find online Kashyyyk spelling and all is a George Lucas invention. It was supposed to be the planet the Death Star revolved around in Return of the Jedi but got scraped for Endor. Then it’s first appearance was the Holiday Special so blame Lucas for that one.

    1. The Specktre says:

      Yeah, I heard the Ewoks were originally supposed to be Wookiees but they didn’t have enough budget for all the hair, I think? So they, um, down-scaled.

      Maaaaaan, RotJ would’ve been fantastic with Wookiees.

      1. The version I heard says they didn’t want to be a village of people from the same species than a main character’s, that since Chewbacca knows of modern technology they didn’t feel right to make wookiees primitive. Though the lower cost of smaller suits sounds more likely, plus in the end, Kashyyyk.

        1. Blackbird71 says:

          More or less. The way I heard George Lucas tell it (on some documentary or behind the scenes interview, I don’t recall), “Star Wars” was originally envisioned as a single movie, with a plot spanning what we now know as the full original trilogy. However, at some point in the early development, Lucas had determined that he had too much material for one movie, so he broke it up into three parts. He decided to make the first part as “Star Wars” (later to be referred to as “A New Hope”) so he could at least get that part of the story out, and then just hoped he would have the opportunity to make the rest of the story later.

          In the original single-movie plot, there was only one Death Star, and it did orbit the Wookie home world. When Lucas had to split up the story, he didn’t want to leave out his furry alien race in case he never got the chance to make the rest of the movies. He created the character of Chewbacca so that he could have a Wookie in the first movie.

          However, this early introduction changed the original concept of Wookies as a primitive race, as it instead made them a race familiar with space travel and technology. So when Lucas did get the chance to make “Return of the Jedi”, he created the Ewoks as a replacement for the Wookies, and the forest moon of Endor as a stand-in for Kashyyyk.

          I can’t say that I’ve ever heard that the cost of the size of the suits or the “hair budget” played a factor in any of this.

        2. Mike S. says:

          Sure– imagine a single species that included villages of hunter-gatherers with spears and spacecraft pilots. No one would believe it.

          (The ground battle on Endor breaks my suspension of disbelief if I bother to think about it and would still if the guys with sticks and rocks were seven feet tall. But if you wanted a group that’s implacably hostile to invaders and evidently willing to fight gunships with bows, you could do worse than model them on the Sentinelese.)

  38. In my first play through I went first to Tatooine, then I went to Kashyyyk (it’s an euphemism of how the explorers ended frustrated trying to transliterate how the Wookiees pronounce their planet’s name. Just kidding), then Korriban and finally Manaan, because for some reason I thought that seemed to be the difficulty order of them. Afterwards I usually do Kashyyyk first so I get Jolee, who’s my favourite character, then Tatooine, where I pick HK 47 just to let him rot in the ship (I loved him at first, towards the end of the first play I began to tire of his single note humour and in the second I turned to hate him more than Bastila), second because it was the first I used and I though it’d be easier so as not to be overpowered when I go there and not underpowered when going to one of the others, then Manaan, which is my least favourite planet, and finally Korriban, where I never got to turn anyone to the light and just now I find it’s possible.

    “How long lasted the honeymooon? Four, five weeks?” Not a minute, you were saying how bad this is from the first chapter. The four to five weeks that saying something good lasted. But I never ended a chapter with the impression the talk about the good had been more than the talk about the bad. Not saying it seemed like you hated the game, but more like you liked some things enough to grind over all the bad things.

    I don’t get the confusion with the death device. Of course green is to kill him; green is active and red inactive, and it’s an execution device, it’s perfectly logical that green will kill and red not kill. I would’ve been disappointed and maybe a bit angry at the game if that broke into OOC there like that by swapping the colours from what ICly makes sense to what the player might think OOCly. Immersion break.

    1. Supahewok says:

      “I don't get the confusion with the death device. Of course green is to kill him; green is active and red inactive, and it's an execution device, it's perfectly logical that green will kill and red not kill. I would've been disappointed and maybe a bit angry at the game if that broke into OOC there like that by swapping the colours from what ICly makes sense to what the player might think OOCly. Immersion break.”

      Your immersion isn’t already broken by the fact that the Sith have set up a grade school puzzle to control their prison cell, rather than a light switch?

  39. squiddlefits says:

    Why would you do a full planet? My take: go to tatooine, grab HK, immediately go to vowel planet to grab Jolee Bindo. This sequence because getting Jolee is iirc a bit more involved than HK-47. Put those two snarks in the party, never remove them.

    Then go finish Kashyyyk or Tatooine first, doesn’t really matter. I’m not a fan of the tree planet (too dark visually, not very interested in the planet-plot) so I try to get it out of the way first, then go to Manaan (stupid underwater segment bullshit), then Tatooine and finally Korriban. Get the ugly out of the way first.

  40. GloatingSwine says:

    As flat as he is as a character, Zaalbar is the best character to have for the sith base, because a strong physical damager ruins the sentry droid at the end.

  41. Kelhim says:

    Oh, we’re on Taris now, what a pleasant change of scene! ;) I’m lokking forward to Kashyyyk, if only for Jolee Bindo. He has a very interesting personality and background story.

  42. By the way: the first conversation with Canderous will be a big craker. XD

  43. Zaxares says:

    Yep, I did the same thing. Went to Tatooine, then Kashyyyk, then Manaan, then Korriban, for exactly all the reasons you mentioned. Technically, as others have said, I could just go to each planet to pick up HK-47 and Jolee first and then go do the other planets, but that just “illogical” to me. Like, why would your character just go to a planet and then leave without having finished his/her business there? That just makes no sense.

  44. Ardis Meade says:

    I remember Chiasaur11’s X-com Let’s Plays on Giantitp. Those were some of the first Let’s Play’s I’d ever read.


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