Hello everyone,
I recently had the opportunity to talk with Blinks, the first Star Wars The Old Republic player to get 100% achievements in the game! Here is what he had to say about accomplishment including what his motives were, what achievements were the most frustrating to get and what achievements he’d like to see in the future.
Clarification/Correction: Blinks is technically not the first to get 100% achievements, a couple of players did that pre-Tyth (5.2). Blinks is, however, the first to get 100% on Steam and 100% in SWTOR.
Introduce yourself!
Hello, I’m Blinks. I’m a Satele Shan (Server) player who recently completed collecting every achievement point in the MMORPG Star Wars the Old Republic. This personal goal of mine took me 7 years to complete and is the first time anyone has collected all the Steam SWTOR achievements and in-game SWTOR achievement points. It was quite the journey and am happy to answer some questions about the achievement hunting hobby.
What made you start achievement hunting in SWTOR? Do you achievement hunt in other MMO’s?
I think achievement hunting naturally draws people with completionist personalities in. For me, it started with picking some random achievements to do with friends to pass the time. Simple things like completing Korriban, Tython, and collecting the Datacrons. Over time, your progress kind of builds on itself and you start looking for what else is available.
Additionally, I think it’s the achievement hunting communities that form and really make the hobby enjoyable. Some are large communities that undertake big achievements like 50 people in your stronghold or the world PVP achievements. Others are just small groups of friends looking for more things to do in the game they love. Playing with friends is what really motivated me to keep going.
What was the hardest and/or most frustrating achievement to get?
There are a few contenders for the hardest/most frustrating achievements. I’ll go into detail because I think it’s interesting for those unfamiliar with some of the craziness in this game.
Number one is probably the unranked PVP achievements due to the massive lengths you must go through to obtain them all. Three separate achievements of 10 solo kills, 20 Killing blows, and 55 kills in each of the seven battlegrounds. You must do them each 50 times for a total of 1050 scenarios where everything goes perfectly. To complicate things, the match lengths are shorter than they used to be, matches can end early due to objectives, and your teammates healing/helping you will often prevent your solo kill/killing blows. You must actively work against your team to obtain these achievements by ignoring objectives, avoiding your teammates, and dragging the matches on long enough to earn achievement points. This also doesn’t make you very popular person to play with. There are players who only focus on PVP and after years of playing they have fewer than 100 of the 1050 points required. There’s also no real reward for completing these other than the achievements themselves. Some alternate methods of farming them are also very risky. You could let your friends feed you kills, make premade teams to farm kills, or play multiple accounts on your own. But all these options risk Terms of Service suspensions. So in my opinion, these are the hardest and rarest achievements in the game to get for those reasons.
Log in achievements are also a bit frustrating. Every 28 days you complete a calendar; though which calendar you get is random. With 3 calendars needing to be completed 10 times, you need to log in 840 days (or 2 years, 110 days) to complete these achievements. While there is a method of using server transfers to complete multiple calendars at once, you’ll still have two more log in achievements to content with. First is a different achievement for logging in 500 days. And second is the new Czerka crate that has an approximate 2% chance to drop every 28 days. RNG layered on top of time consumption results in a lot of frustration.
Finally, the 1800 swoop races and Seeker droid 100 Special Treasures achievements are grindy and time-consuming in their own right. I’d estimate it’ll take most players between 150 and 300 hours to complete either one.
What was the most fun achievement to get?
I had the most fun with the operations achievements. I’m a raider at heart and would be doing that regardless of achievement points. The rush of working on a boss with your teammates for weeks or months and finally breaking through is amazing. The Timed Master Mode Gods ops achievement (Destruction Incarnate) is probably the most coveted achievement in the game.
Though if you’re looking for fun solo achievements that are off the beaten path, completing the Fallen Empire and Eternal Throne Chapters on master mode will push you to your limits. Side quests like the Space ship missions, the collections, and the companion side quest achievements were some of my favorites.
What kinds of achievements do you wish were in the game (maybe some you’ve seen in other games)?
I really liked the idea of “Mark of Mastery Achievements” that was implemented in Dxun. I think they could apply it to flashpoints to give people an extra challenge. World of Warcraft had something similar all the way back in the Wrath expansion which rewarded a special colored mount. We even saw a little bit of this in SWOTR with the uprising miscellaneous achievements.
There might be a list of 20-30 creative challenges to do across multiple flashpoints. These challenges might be things like defeat all the Mandolorian boarding party members within 4 seconds of each other. Or defeat 20 adds along with Captain Grimyk in Cademimu. Or defeat the Enhanced Vrblther in Czerka Meltdown with only using 3 flowers. Little added challenges like that would give a fresh spin on fights and added challenge to existing content that most players would be able to access.
Final Thoughts?
I don’t think 100% achievements shouldn’t be the end goal for most players. The last 5% is a lot of work and the time/resources required are intensive. But there’s so much Star Wars content and lore hidden in the game that makes it worth exploring the achievements. I recommend players looking to get more out of SWTOR to seek out and join achievement hunting communities. They’re a great group of people and the challenges involved will send you to the far corners of the game. Play for fun.
And here is Blinks contemplating how he could have better used his time instead of hunting arbitrary internet points.
Thank you, Blinks for taking the time to chat with me about your incredible accomplishment!
