Hyperspace Beacon: Five tips for making SWTOR conquests work for smaller guilds

In my last column, I explained the shortcomings of the conquest system in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Despite the issues I have with the system, I still think it's a great way to encourage players to revisit older content, and most importantly, to build guild unity. I know there are some guilds on my server in which members don't even have to participate at all in conquests for that guild to appear on the top ten. But what about those guilds who don't have hundreds of members? What about those guilds who have maybe 20 or so members? Can they even compete?

My guild has about 20 people who log in on raid nights; when the raid is done, maybe five or six will stick around. Now, I'm not saying that this is a healthy state for a guild (we are looking for more members!), but the few dedicated members pulled us ahead. For the last two weeks, our guild was in the top 10, and not barely in the top 10 either. This week we hit number seven, and the week before we were six.

Here are my tips for how your small guild can get ahead in conquests, too.

In a small guild, it shouldn't be too difficult to know what your other guildies are good at. I know that I am willing to do missions and questing content efficiently; I know that Mike and D'xun will craft and that Lee will PvP. So we see which planets are available and keep in mind the strengths of those in the guild.

The hardest part of choosing a planet is having to go to a planet that some guild members will not like. And although I advocate listening all guild members, as a guild leader, you have to know that the priority is for the guild's overall success, not necessarily catering to majority of voices.

For instance, this past week, we chose Voss as our planet to conquer, but Voss gave no bonuses to PvP. Our PvPers were upset that we didn't choose Makeb. However, our PvPers as a whole were not churning out as many conquest points as our crafters and heroic grinders. So we had to side against the PvPers this week.

It's easy to think of members by their main characters, but they have alts, too -- my guild especially. I have about 10 characters above level 50, and one player has over 15 level 55s. Most regulars in my guild have about four 55s, or so. However, the level-55s aren't the only characters to keep in mind when choosing a planet to invade.

For instance, during the second week of conquests, we could have taken Corellia. The PvP rewards were nice, and the heroics on the planet would be fun to do, too. However, more of the guild -- more importantly, those actually participating in conquests -- had characters that were lower levels. This meant that we could run more heroics on the level 15 Balmorra as opposed to the level 47 Corellia. Besides the fact there was the potential that fewer guilds would compete overall because Balmorra was Imperial-only, Balmorra also made running heroics faster and more plentiful.

With a few exceptions, crafting conquest missions are repeatable. This means that if you have multiple crafters on your account, you can earn multiple sets of conquest points at the same time. For instance, in the upcoming Titans of Industry conquest, the Black Hole gives a 3x bonus to crafting biochem war supplies, but CZ-198 and Quesh grant 2x to any war supply. That could mean that it'd be more beneficial to invade CZ or Quesh if any of your crafters is not Biochem.

On top of playing to the crafting strengths, some players like to hide their crafting on alts that aren't max level. So it's possible that some players will be able to gain conquest points on multiple characters at the same time. The big thing to remember, however, is that conquest points from crafting are not added to a character until that character is logged in. If you happen to craft on an alt, be sure to log in that alt before the close of the conquest, or else you will kick yourself on Monday morning.

My guild will probably kill me for giving away this secret, but if you want to be in the top 10 without showing all your cards at once -- which is a good strategy if the planet is hotly contested -- hold out on logging in your crafters. If you know that you are on your last bit of materials and you are at a ranking that people are fighting for (maybe you're just below rank 10), log in your crafters who have finished crafting in the 11th hour. The competition will not be able to make up those points. But also make sure your calculations are correct, or else you won't have time to recover either.

Another risky maneuver that might pay off is to follow a high-scoring guild. By this time, players know which guilds will be the top scorers. On Harbinger, you can count on Despair placing high; on my server, you can count on Veritas. These guilds invite competition at the high levels. Ranks one, two, and three will likely be far out of your reach, but last I counted, there were seven more ranks in the top 10. However, many guilds will not compete with the top guilds because they believe, rightly, that they will be stomped into the ground. However, in conquests, all but the rank-one guilds gain the same prizes. It might be worth the risk to follow behind the big guilds.

Ultimately, the conquests do no good unless players can meet the goal. Each person in your guild who can meet the conquest point goal will gain the material and credit prizes, but more importantly, he will gain the encryption code that can lead to opening another level of the capital ship. So the more characters that can hit the personal conquest goal, the beneficial it is for the guild as a whole.

I hope this helps your smaller guild out. The metagame has by far been my favorite part of conquests so far. Let me know if these tips help you out, and if you've had success, what are your strategies? Let me know in the comments.

The Hyperspace Beacon by Larry Everett is your biweekly guide to the vast galaxy of BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic. If you have comments or suggestions for the column, send a transmission to larry@massively.com. Now strap yourself in, kid -- we gotta make the jump to hyperspace!