14 Ways to Enjoy SWTOR With Little or No Combat

14 Ways to Enjoy SWTOR with Low/No CombatTo anyone who has followed my tweets or blog posts here, you’ll be aware that gaming and Fibromyalgia can be a tough mix. Multi-tasking, button mashing, intense fight scenes and stressful timed missions can all make it harder to enjoy a game – even a game you love. Since my post on Fibromyalgia and SWTOR I have had time think about this. I also thought about the ways that LOTRO is relaxing and wondered if some of their principles could be applied to SWTOR. So here are some ways you can enjoy SWTOR with minimal combat!

Skip to Specific Ideas

This post on low-combat SWTOR gaming is likely to get long! To help you, I’ve put links to the individual sections in the drop-down list below.

1. Exploration Achievements and Datacrons

There is more to do on each of the pre-KotFE/KotET planets than just completing missions. There are achievements to be unlocked for defeating a certain number of enemies or finding Codex Entries. There is also the Explorer Of… achievement for each planet in SWTOR – and this has to be completed on one character, so offers a bit of a challenge too.

On top of that there are datacrons to be found – some of which may need another player, or a few players – but many are Solo-able. Finding datacrons adds to the stats of all your legacy characters so is worth investing time in!

2. Stealth Your Way Through Heroics!

My thanks to @rebelrealcanon for this item and for compiling this list! If you’re a stealth-class (Shadow, Assassin, Operative and Scoundrel) you can stealth your way through some heroics. Some may require a bit of combat, but stealth reduces the amount quite drastically!

Note: you may need to use your class’ stealth stun ability if a foe is guarding a mission objective so just make sure your get your objective before your target wakes up!

Republic Heroics

  • Buying Loyalty (Ord Mantell starters only)
  • Trouble in Deed (Coruscant)
  • Shadow Extraction (Nar Shaddaa)
  • Breaking the Code (Tatooine)
  • Tech Diagrams (Hoth)
  • Signal Jam (Hoth)
  • Jungle Flight (Belsavis)
  • Concierge (Corellia)

Imperial Heroics

  • The Man With The Steel Voice (Hutta starters only)
  • Comrades in Arms (Balmorra)
  • Project Hexapod (Balmorra)
  • Highway to Destruction (Taris)
  • Pirated Lockbox (Hoth)
  • Static (Hoth)

3. Galactic Solutions Industries (GSI) Missions

Weekly only grants 75CXP but as the Weekly is made up of 10 Dailies, but means each week you can earn 825CXP (10 × Daily + 1 × Weekly). GSI missions can be found on Alderaan, Tatooine, Makeb and Hoth. I’ve done guides to two of the four planets, but the others are underway!

As most of GSI mission are about exploration, they usually involve little combat. Hoth has a nasty timed mission but other than that they are pretty much stress-free. So you can enjoy SWTOR in a slow, relaxed fashion while earning reputation along the way!

4. The Shroud and Dread Seed Story Arcs

Once you hit Level 50 you can start two separate story arcs: The Shroud arc and one involving the Dread Masters and the Dread Seeds. The quest-givers for these can be found on Fleet, Dromund Kaas, Coruscant and Makeb. Both these arcs see you planet-hopping around the galaxy (the “vanilla” planets). With The Shroud, you’re looking at solving puzzles which conclude with H4s you have to group up for, but the rest is solo-able. The Dread Seeds have to be dug up from “dread-seeded” areas. While you can find these with your seeker droid without incident, the mobs in these areas are tougher than usual. So if you do cross one, you have been warned!

5. Bounty Contract Week

One of the frequent events in SWTOR is Bounty Contract Week. The aim of this is to collect special bounties across the galaxy to earn Completed Bounty Contracts, a barter currency you can use to buy event-related gear, mounts and pets on fleet. The reason this is mostly relaxing is that the vast majority of it is travelling. You have to question people (nicely or with torture, your choice!) to find the location of your Bounty. Once located you clearly have to fight them! But once killed or frozen in Carbonite, you head back to fleet to turn in the contract.

As you can only do one Bounty a day (plus any weekly Kingpins you have unlocked) you can change character to hunt another target down. Although you have a lot of logging/re-logging to do, if you just want short-burst missions with little combat, then this one is a pretty rewarding way to enjoy SWTOR.

6. Obtain HK-51 The Long Way!

HK-51 is one of many assassin droids that are discovered on Belsavis (in Section X). You can rebuild one for yourself to make a permanent companion. If you’ve done this once you can unlock him on further characters in your legacy panel. But that’s cheating! In a similar vein to Seeker Droid missions you have to find parts of HK-51 across the galaxy. Sadly you can’t use you seeker droid as that would give you extra information when finding the part.

But, aside from clearing our nearby mobs (which will attack you, thank you Level Sync!) you don’t need to fight much. You also get the mission at the abandoned ship The Theoretika which is mostly puzzle-solving.

7. Crafting Materials Gathering

Thanks to @BornToEatBacon and @4SmallMangos for this one!

Given that making things for your other characters, or making decoration or conquest items eat up a lot of crafting materials, you need to restock sometimes! I know I often don’t want to gather while questing if I just want to focus on story content. But you can have a lower-intensity gaming session by wandering planets and picking up crafting nodes. Whether it’s the Zakuul Swamp or Darvannis for Grade 9 materials, or Iokath for Grade 10s, you can enjoy the scenery in SWTOR but only fighting mobs near your nodes.

And if you’re a slicer, Yavin IV is full of terminals to retrieve credits from! In fact Yavin IV is crammed with gathering nodes for all professions!

8. Trading on Galactic Trade Network (GTN)

If you find making money relaxing, then you can trade on GTN. Whether it’s buying and selling crafting materials, taking gear bundles and selling the component parts or crafting and selling your own wares, you can whittle away a long time here. But make sure you perform another random action at some point – you can still be marked as AFK and timed out if you’re just at the GTN Kiosk!

If you have an Artificer you can also craft dyes, either for yourself or for resale on GTN. You may need to couple this with gathering to get the colour crystals you need for ‘free’ (as travel to planets is a cost, but that’s much cheaper than using Crew Skills for the task).

9. Crafting Armour for Cosmetic Appearance or for Sale

Levelling in SWTOR is so fast now that crafting armour for yourself is unlikely to be useful from a statistical perspective (until you need Augments anyway). However, up to around Grade 7, Synthweaving and Armormech give class-appropriate cosmetic appearances for Outfit Designer

10. Decorate a Stronghold

Strongholds are not just stepping stones to make conquest easier. They are your-home-from-home, when not onboard your starship. There is a good selection of planets to start your stronghold on too: Coruscant, Dromund Kaas, Nar Shadaa, Yavin 4, Manaan and Umbara. Challenge yourself and don’t just cram decoraations in to hit 100% completion – give rooms a purpose, as you would a home here on planet Earth.

Look inside my Manaan Stronghold to see how and why I decorate mine the way I do.

11. Wandering and Enjoy SWTOR’s Worlds

SWTOR/Bioware have created beautiful worlds for us to explore. Instead of chasing achievements, credits or gear, why not simply enjoy time catching screenshots and enjoying the view? It’s what I call enjoying “Stop and Stare” moments. It’s doing just that which enabled me to put together my Free SWTOR Desktops and my Aerial Screenshots posts.

12. Finding Exploration Missions and Bonus Series for Later

Many of the original class story planets have bonus series – stories that follow the original planet’s story arc. Ones that come to mind are: Taris, Nar Shadaa, Tatooine, Alderaan, Hoth, Balmorra Belsavis and Voss. Some can be picked up in the Spaceport, but not all of them. Imperial side on Alderaan is picked up in House Thul’s palace for example. Simply roam the galaxy and add these to your mission tracker so that when you think ‘What should I do next?’ you have some options!

You may also have left out the “Exploration Mission” by not realising you had this checkbox on your world map unticked. I have found tons of extra content this way too!

13. Catch Up With Your Companions

Thanks to @rebelrealcanon for this one. Since the Quality of Life change with the Galaxy map you can easily miss companion conversations. Each has their own story and opportunity to increase your influence with them. So make a brew and chat to your crew! As a bonus, if you’re L70 then each conversation gives you some CXP!

14. Low-Combat Alliance Recruitment Missions

If your character is doing Knights of the Fallen Empire or Knights of the Eternal Throne then you likely have Recruitment Missions not completed. While some of these require varying degrees of combat some are minimal, or easy combat. A few that come to mind are below (I’ll add more when I next load such a character!)

TL;DR Enjoy SWTOR with Little or No Combat?

Despite most games revolving around combat, you can take a break from constant fighting. SWTOR offers multiple different ways of playing when you want to enjoy the game but not fight. For some of you, combat will be relaxing and that’s fine too! But it can be great to break from the gear/credits/levelling grind as well. Above all – have fun!

And if you know of other aspects of SWTOR which are ‘low impact’, feel free to share them in the comments!


About the Author

Fibro Jedi
Fibro Jedi

I have been playing MMOs for about ten years and began writing guides to The Lord of the Rings Online in 2017. I've only been creating content about Final Fantasy XIV since 2022, but I am glad for the mix. My current games include LOTRO, FFXIV and the occasional Palia session too.

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