Knights of the Old Republic’s Hints

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WARNING: this is a very old article I wrote for an old website of mine; I merely adjusted the formating to adapt it to this WordPress blog, but I have not updated its content (not even eventual grammatical and logic errors — English is not my main language 😀 ).
Introduction
I hope you can find this mini-guide useful. It just contains some hints and tips about KOTOR and it isn’t a full walkthrough. Also I am not trying to illustrate the best ways to create your character and play the game, since I’m still not experienced enough on KOTOR and also because the best character/game play depends on your taste. 🙂 If you have any comment, corrections, and suggestions, don’t hesitate to comment. The mini-guide is divided in section:

  • “Character creation and development” gives you some hint on how to develop your character;
  • “Other party members” gives you some hint on how to develop the other members of your team;
  • “Get credits and items” gives you some hint on how to get money and useful items;
  • “Planets order” gives you just a possible order to visit the planets;
  • “Side quests” gives you some hint on how to handle the side quests;
  • “Mini games” gives you some hint on how to handle the mini games;
  • “Links” gives you some link where you can get more info about KOTOR;
  • “Spoilers” (that as precaution is placed after the “To do” and “Change Log” sections) gives you some hint that can be considered spoiler; within the spoiler section, the hints are mixed together and they are not categorized like the sections above.

Character creation and development
When you start the game, you can choose between three not-Jedi classes: “Scoundrel”, “Scout”, “Soldier”. Later, while you get trained to become a Jedi, you will choose a second class between “Consular”, “Guardian”, and “Sentinel”. Since it would take too long to describe the differences between the classes, I suggest you to check the following link: https://www.gamebanshee.com/starwarskotor/classes.php.
After you have chosen the class you can set your “Attributes”, “Skills”, “Feats”, and when you became a Jedi also the “Force Powers”. In each category there are several characteristics to set. It would take too long to describe all of them, so I suggest you to check the “Links Section” for more info.
During the game, depending on your actions, conversations, and choices, you will accumulate “Experience Points” (marked as “XP”) that, of course, will indicate how much experienced player you have become. Once a while, when you have accumulated enough “XP” points, the game gives you the option to “Level Up”, that means you can upgrade your “Attributes”, “Skills”, “Feats”, and “Force powers”. For each “Level Up” you have a limited amount of points to use to upgrade the characteristic of your character (each category has independent amount of points), so you have to choose which characteristic upgrade first, and which procrastinate to the next “Level Ups”. Of course during the whole game, you will NOT get enough point to upgrade all the characteristics of your character, so it would be better if you decide (even better at the beginning of the game) which characteristics will be upgraded at the max value, which characteristics will be upgraded only partially, and than which characteristics will be disregarded. It is better to focus and specialize on few characteristics, rather than have a little bit of everything (since, toward the end, the characteristics would be too low to be any help). Every time you “Level Up”, you grow by 1 level in your classes; before becoming a Jedi, it will be the not-Jedi class to grow, and after than it will be the Jedi class to grow. There is a limit in how many times you can “Level Up” that is when the sum of the not-Jedi class level and Jedi class level is 20.
During the game you can align yourself to either the light or dark side of the force; to align to either side you have to get either LS (light side) or DS (dark side) points; you can get these points depending on your decisions and actions. It is recommended that you choose one side as early as possible and stick with it; this is because some “Force Powers” cost (in term of force points) less and give you more bonuses if you are aligned to the associated side rather than it would cost if you keep staying in a neutral or opposite side. If you decided to run for a side, but you see that you are falling to the opposite side, you may be still in time to “recover”, but that depend on which point of the game you are got to (that mean, of course, that more toward the end you are in the game and less chances you have). During the game there are several occasions to get either LS or DS point, so just pay attention. Of course, like always in Star Wars and real life, it is easier to fall to the dark side rather than to grow in the light side.
Other party members
During the game you will meet the following NPC that will join your quest (between parenthesis there is the planet where you can “get” that party member)

  • Carth Onasi (Endar Spire/Taris)
  • Bastila Shan (Taris)
  • Mission Vao (Taris)
  • Zaalbar (Taris)
  • Canderous Ordo (Taris)
  • T3-M4 (Taris)
  • Juhani (Dantooine)
  • HK-47 (Tatooine)
  • Jolee Bindo (Kashyyyk)

All of them will join your team “obligatorily”, except two that you have to “earn” (see “Spoiler” section). As you do for your character, you can level up these party members to be more powerful. Since you can’t level up you character to the maximum for each attribute, skill, feat, and Force Power, it is a good idea level up the party members to be complementary to your character. You can check this page https://www.gamebanshee.com/starwarskotor/npcs.php to see the starting stats for each member (you can also check when you get him/her/it) and then, basing on these starting stats, plan on how to grow the characters.
Get credits and items
As you know, credits are the Star Wars equivalent of money and of course you need them to buy items you need, bet on Pazaak (if you want to play it), pay the introductory fee for swoop races (if you want to play it), and eventually donate some of them to who is in need, if you want.
In KOTOR there are also many items you can use during the game, like med packs, armors, stamina sticks, etc. You can get many items for free all around the game, but eventually you can buy them (either in case you run out of an item you need it really fast or you are looking for a particularly rare item).
There are different ways to earn both treasures:

  • Look inside footlockers, crates, etc.; you can find often either useful items for free or credits (or both);
  • Once a while you can sell the items on your inventory that you don’t use; it seems (I have yet to try) that if you sell any item to the Yavin 4’s merchant, you can get more credits than from other merchants.
  • “Milk” your party members: on the Ebon Hawk, o Zaalbar makes Adhesive, Concussion, and Ion grenades; o T3-M4 makes Computer Spikes; o Jolee makes Life Support Packs; o Mission makes Security Spike Tunnelers; o Canderous makes Adrenal Strength, Alacrity, and Stamina stimulants.
  • Not only you can take all the “milked” items for free, but also you can sell them for credits and keep “milking”. The only limitation is that they stop producing if you get to 10 copies of these items in your inventory (but if you keep selling, you can keep asking).
  • If you do the side quests, you can often receive either credits or items (or both); in some case you can Persuade/Force Persuade for more.
  • In some case if you use either “Persuade” and/or “Force Persuade”, you can either pay less or earn more (depending on the situation);
  • If you are a good player you can win on either Pazaak or swoop races.

Planets order
Perhaps it is a little spoiler, but I do not think it is too much. Also this is a suggestion base on my personal “taste” of the planets and as a (preliminary and so not perfect) attempt to consolidate and minimize inter-planet travels for complete side quests. Only the first and third groups are obligatory in that order (you have no choice), while for the second group you are free to choose your own order and you can travel back to anyone of them at anytime (with some exception that you can find in the spoiler section).
My suggestion to the order of visits:

  • Endar Spire;
  • Taris;
  • Dantooine;
  • Yavin 4;
  • Tatooine;
  • Manaan;
  • Dantooine;
  • Yavin 4;
  • Koriban;
  • Kashyyyk;
  • Manaan;
  • Tatooine;
  • Yavin 4;
  • Unknown world;
  • Star Forge.

Side quests
During the game you can engage in many side quests; I can’t write here down how to solve them because either they are too many and also because someone may consider it spoiler. Eventually you can search around the net for some walkthrough (the Game Banshee, see links, is a good one). The hints I can give you are:

  • If you decide to play them while you play the main game, once a while stop to check how many side quest you have started and eventually dedicate time to complete them before continuing the game;
  • Some side quests are neutral, other can be complete either in a DS way or LS way, and other either only DS or LS; so check your path;
  • Many side quests can give you either items or credits (or both). In some case you can try to Persuade/Force Persuade for more; at this moment I do not recall any side quest that give you less if you attempt to get more, so (unless I am forgetting anyone like that) you lose nothing by asking for more;
  • If you check the spoiler section, you can find some more hints (but they are spoilers of course).

Mini games
There are three mini games in KOTOR: Pazaak, the swoop races, and the Ebon Hawk Gunner. The first is a card game, the second is short (solo) racing challenge, and the third involve defending the Ebon Hawk from other ships who attack you.
For Pazaak you can find opponents in almost any planet; the swoop races are located on Taris, Tatooine, and Manaan; the Ebon Hawk Gunner happens occasionally while you travel between planets.
I can’t give much details about how to win the games because I am not a pro by my own (not that I tried to much, to be honest), but I can give you a general advice: save before you play and after every time you win; for Pazaak and the swoop races you have to pay to engage the game, so by losing you waste credits, while if you lose the Ebon Hawk Gunner, you will restart from the last saved game (so if you haven’t been saving for a while…). For Pazaak, other than gain credits, there is another possible advantage: if you beat the merchant on Yavin 4 for 10 times in a row, you get 10% discount on his products; I have yet to understand (since I didn’t tried by my own) if the discount is valid only for that visit, or if it still apply in potential future visits. You can eventually play with Mission for free on the Ebon Hawk (good for exercise). For the swoop races, it seems that there is no way to make any upgrade/modification on the swoop bike you have on board of the Ebon Hawk even if you keep hearing about it from other swoop players; according some net theory, BioWare originally intended to offer this functionality, but eventually drop it. For the Ebon Hawk Gunner you can’t directly choose to engage or no) them, but I think (I may be wrong) I found a way to engage them more often (if you like them) or avoid them (if you don’t like them). It seems that the only two obligatory confrontations are after Taris and after the Leviathan. In my personal experience I have noticed that the other confrontations seems to be engaged only if I tried to skip the cinematic of the inter-planets travel (not every time, but very often), while if I let the cinematic play I never had to deal with those attacks (as far as I can remember).
For more information, you can check this page: https://www.gamebanshee.com/starwarskotor/minigames.php.
Links
Here some links you can visit for more info and help for KOTOR:
BioWare

Game Banshee:

To do (I’m leaving this section for legacy, but probably I’ll never do it)
Here something I have to do to complete this small guide. If you want to help me out, you are welcomed to post a comment.

  • Add more hints;
  • Grammar and logic revision (English is not my main language);
  • Give more links;

Change Log
Ver. 1.1 – 04/11/2008 Formated it to post it on WordPress;
Ver. 1.0 – 08/16/2007Rewrote the HTML code to make the page compatible with the new template of my site;
Ver. 0.90 – 9/1/2004

  • Completed first draft;
  • Corrected some spelling error in names;
  • Added the “Planet order” section to the “Introduction” section;
  • Upgraded the “Get credits” section to “Get credits and items”;
  • Several links added.

Ver. 0.40 -8/28/2004 [never published] – Partially wrote the first draft.
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Spoilers
As I said in the introduction, these spoiler hints are grouped all together and they are not categorized like any other hint above:
The Endar Spire will be destroyed as soon as you escape it, so collect as many (free) items as you can before leave it (check about the Galaxy Droid below);
Taris will be destroyed as soon as you will leave it, so collect as many (free) items as you can and finish as much side quest as you want before leave it (check about the Galaxy Droid below);
Dantooine will be destroyed as soon as you get the fourth Star Map, so collect as many (free) as items you can and finish as much side quest as you want before leave it (consider that there is some side quest that start on Dantooine and finish on other planets and vice versa – check about the Galaxy Droid below);
For get Juhani in your party, you have to meet her on Dantooine and convince her to return to the Light Side of the Force (you will meet her later on the Jedi enclave where she tell you she want to join your party);
For HK-47, you have to buy it on a merchant on Tatooine.
On some forum I read about a sort of “Easter Egg” that gives you a so called “Galaxy Droid” that should let you visit back the Endar Spire, Taris, and Dantooine, even if they had been destroyed;I have yet to understand if you can interact with the people (like you did before the destruction) or just walk around. A link to how get the “Galaxy Droid” is: https://www.gamebanshee.com/starwarskotor/strategies/bugsandworkarounds.php;
In some forum I read about people experiencing a glitch where they got Zaalbar that keep multiplying in number on the “Ebon Hawk” and they lose T3-M4; some of them noticed that this glitch started soon after using the “Galaxy Droid”. I have yet to understand if it is related or if it is just a coincidence.
You get (forced) to the Leviathan while you are leaving the planet where you found the fourth “Star Map; until you don’t get it (the 4th “Star Map”), you are free to go to any place you want including Dantooine that would be yet to be destroyed (actually you can still travel free after the Leviathan, but then you can no longer go to Dantooine since it has been destroyed);
When you decide to lead to the Unknown World/Star Forge, you can’t go back to any other planet; so before that it would be best to complete all side quest, sell any items you don’t need, and buy items you may need (you will still find some free stuff on the Unknown World/Star Forge, but since the amount of credit you have accumulated will not change the final, it is best to invest them in getting as much useful items as you can).
In the “Unknown World”, if you have definitely fallen to the DS and you decide to align your self with Bastila for get control of the “Star Forge”, when you will approach back the “Ebon Hawk” you get a discussion with Carth and he eventually run away from you (with apparent no way to stop him); so it would be better that, before that time, you switch control to Carth and “confiscate” him any valuable item (IHMO since I do not take him around in the “Unknown World”, I directly “confiscate” him everything before that planet). Also Mission would try to run away, but you can kill her (and so get back anything); Zaalbar is ambiguous: depending on how you manage the conversation, you may either convince him to stay on your side or get a confrontation (and kill him), so in both way you will keep the item he is carrying.