Congratulations, you are 50, it's a major milestone in your SWTOR career, but the game is far from over for this character. There are ton of content that is meant for max level characters and as many people say "The game starts at max level". To be able to experience much of this endgame content, you will need better gear than you have at this point. Hard mode Flashpoints are very challenging without proper gear and Operations simply can't be done without it. So how do you get that much needed equipment upgrades?
There are 2 main ways to start gearing up your characters, FP and dailies. You can also get some nice PVE upgrades through PVP, an epic (purple) level 50 PVP item is almost certainly better than green, blue or even custom quality level 50 item. There is also the PVE trinket you can get from PVP which I mentioned at my last post.
There are 2 daily quest hubs, one on Belsavis and another on Ilum. The game does a good job directing you there when you hit 50, it's your job to take advantage of it. With the daily commendations which you get for completing daily quests you can by epic ear piece and implants. As well as various mods (think gems from WOW) that can make your simple custom item from around blue quality to as good as some epic quality or even better. There are many specific daily guides around, if you are interested in exact numbers. Many of the quests in the area also reward you with epic mods the first time you complete them. Personally I'm not a fan of dailies, I wasn't doing them in WOW and I'm not running dailies here either. It's great to complete them once and enjoy the quests, but I get bored repeating the same quests over and over again. This brings us to the second main gearing option.
Flashpoints, as you hit 50 you can hit the HM FP or the regular level 50 FP. The regular FP are very nice to get some better equipment to be able to run HM more efficiently, not to mention the FP themselves are very interesting and fun to experience. HM can be done with a very capable group of fresh level 50 characters, or if you are lucky enough to have more experienced and geared friends or groups, you can quickly catch up by joining them. This is my favorite gearing up option and probably the most effective one if you have groups that are able to progress through the content in reasonable speed without too many wipes. One thing to keep in mind is that the HM FP which has normal versions before level 50, require you to complete the normal version before you can do the HM. So if you haven't done these while leveling, you will need to do it now to be able to run the HM. You will also get daily HM quest to complete any HM FP, giving you additional commendation to buy gear as well as weekly quest to complete any 3 HM, for even more commendations.
In addition each boss and miniboss in HM also drop crystals, which are also needed for many of the epic vendor items, these have no WOW equivalent. Don't forget to pick these from any boss you kill, as unlike the items which get an automatic group roll, these has to be pick up by each character.
Another thing many people tend to miss, is that if you get a gear token for another class, because the right class wasn't present at the run or didn't need that item, which are tokens that can be redeemed at the vendors for high level epic and are dropped by each HM boss. You can look for an item that has mods which doesn't include the primary attribute you don't need and get very nice mod upgrade by taking out the mod from the item you aren't going to use. This is a bit costly, with mode I've seen ranging from 22k to 27k credits to remove from the item, but the upgrades can be very well worth it if you can afford it.
Once you are geared enough and brave enough it's time to move on to Operation, the real challenging and rewarding endgame PVE content.
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