Today saw the release of early access for Star Wars: The Old Republic’s Galactic Strongholds expansion. I have been playing around with it all day. It is pretty intuitive to get started placing objects, although it doesn’t seem quite as intuitive to get your initial stronghold going.

A few things I learned:

1. Carbonite people on my walls makes me happy! (buy them in the cartel bazaar for 1 completed bounty contract each with Hero standing with BBA, there are 3 types)
2. Images of Ops bosses I’ve killed hanging on my walls makes me happy!
3. Legacy storage and crafting from said storage makes me very happy!
4. 3 Legacy cargo tabs may not be enough for all the mats I need for making the kits that are used to buy nice things like personal cargo hold.
5. Go to the crafting and strongholds section of the fleet to pick up a starter quest. When you complete that quest you’ll get a bunch of decoration items, including the legacy storage unlock item.
6. If you had a sub by the deadline, click on the Nar Shaddaa terminal on the fleet in the strongholds area to buy your free stronghold. Both factions can visit this stronghold for free (it is 1000 credits to be smuggled cross faction, no cinematic, not worth it). Put your nice unlocks in Nar Shaddaa (or Tattooine if you are really rich).
7. It takes 3 universal MK2 prefab kits to buy a personal cargo hold item to place in a stronghold, or buy the pricey 1024 cartel coin bundle from the cartel market that has one, plus GTN Kiosks.
8. Training the schematics for the new strongholds kits is very expensive. Buy some on the GTN while people are being stupid and undercutting each other. They are selling for way less than the training + mats costs on my server, at least during this initial frenzy.
9. I didn’t stock nearly enough mats to make all of the prefab kits I want to make.
10. Having a guild ship or stronghold will make it easier to access things like consolidated GTN kiosks, various types of cargo bays, vendors, etc., so save some kits or unlock items to place with your guild.
11. Having new things to play around with makes me happy! Have fun decorating.