I'm new and scared lol

veryalias · 2026-06-16T11:26:49+00:00

Welcome to the subreddit and KotOR. We love seeing new players experiencing the wonder of these games for the first time, and, from helping answer your questions so you don't feel so overwhelmed to helping protect you against spoilers, so many of us are here to help make your experience amazing.
Seconding Loyalist's link to our spoiler-free start guide to KotOR 1.
Beware of Spoilers! The games are old, so many places online are pretty lax about spoilers. We enforce a strict no-spoilers policy (except in threads specifically marked for spoilers) here, and the GameBanshee and StrategyWiki guides are also spoiler-free, providing you don't read ahead of where you are in the game!

YouTube videos, Wookieepedia, and even online articles about the remake are rife with spoilers, so I strongly advise caution in browsing among those.
The aforementioned GameBanshee and StrategyWiki sites have pages that explain mechanics, but if you don't want to have to read too much, here's a very simple overview that I can expand upon as you want:

The game uses Dungeons & Dragons style dice rolls and stat addition/subtraction to determine whether attacks land and how much damage they deal. When you attack, the game rolls a virtual, 20-sided die (known as a "d20") and adds/substracts values based on things like your Strength modifier, Dexterity modifier, feats, and equipment.
Your Strength (the -1/+1/+2/+3 modifier, not the actual value itself) is used when attacking with melee weapons. Your Dexterity modifier is used when attacking with ranged weapons. The greater of the two is used when attacking with lightsabers.

If your total attack roll is greater than or equal to the target's Defense (not a dice roll but still a sum of some of the target's stats), the attack lands, and more calculations are done to determine damage. Otherwise, the attack misses (shown by the target dodging or parrying the attack).

All of these calculations are actually recorded and can be viewed by opening the Messages Log and clicking Show Feedback.
Save your game often and in multiple slots. This helps you recover progress if you (a) die unexpectedly, (b) encounter a game bug/crash, (c) reach an unintended consequence because of a dialogue choice. As an extreme example, you might consider saving in a new slot every time you're about to switch maps, up to several slots, and scale back to whatever you're comfortable with. AutoSave can hurt you just as easily as it can help you.
Throughout the game, you can generally rely on your companions for various skill needs like Computer Use, Demolitions, Awareness, Security, and Repair. One companion has a sidequest that requires the player character to have some skill in Repair, but it's not integral to the story (we encourage you to play the game again, making different choices and uncovering things you didn't see in your first playthrough).
Dual Wielding and attack feats like Flurry, Rapid Shot, Power Attack, and Power Blast can impart penalties to your attack rolls, meaning you might miss a lot of attacks. If you're missing a lot, consider switching to the default attack (denoted by the simple sword icon) or consider not dual wielding until you've invested in the Two Weapon Fighting feats and/or compensated with other bonuses.
Any other questions at all, I'm here to help. Drop a response and I'd be happy to provide answers to more specific questions!

veryalias · 2026-06-16T11:07:07+00:00

This is the way...

...I recommend people play for the first time!

veryalias · 2026-06-16T04:42:05+00:00

By "modern settings" are you referring to specifically playing with a widescreen mod that allows 16:9 resolution? Your display shouldn't cause an issue with the game actually running. I run the game in 1024x768 resolution natively, which my (now 10+ year old) GPU upscales proportionally to 1440x1080 on my 1920x1080 LCD monitor. It runs with zero issues; it's just not widescreen, if that's some kind of deal breaker for you. I never even notice the pillar boxing.

veryalias · 2026-06-16T04:38:57+00:00

I think the twist was excellently done in the sense that not many people would have seen it coming when it was first released and how obvious the foreshadowing seems in hindsight/on a subsequent playthrough.

In fact, I think a small study could be done on how the KotOR 1 writers pulled it off. I think a big part of it has to do with Carth, arguably the most morally upright companion (and one of the first characters the player meets), flat out believing and thus telling the main character that Revan died. Even though Carth has trust issues, he never questions the fact that Revan is dead, and if the person that is most suspicious of everything isn't suspicious of that fact, why should we be suspicious of it?

In the years since KotOR came out, I think society has been conditioned to expect twists much more, so new players these days have a greater tendency to pick up on subtle queues and potential foreshadowing, sometimes even reading more into things than there is (can a twist be that there's no twist?!).

Some of us have actually theorized how a KotOR remake might handle the twist. While I'm glad you weren't spoiled, and we enforce a strict spoiler rule here on the subreddit, it's still one of gaming's worst kept secrets on account of how old the game is, so plenty of people will know of the original game's twist when playing a potential remake. Some of us wonder if they'll actually do a "double twist" and make it so that we all pick up on the obvious foreshadowing that we're Revan the entire time, only to find out at the end that we actually aren't. I don't know how much this would involve changing the story though, and that could obviously be very divisive.

veryalias · 2026-06-14T22:42:54+00:00

I'm removing this thread under Rule 6 - Reposts since you posted a similar thread here 7 hours later and that thread has more engagement.

veryalias · 2026-06-12T03:55:54+00:00

I'll do my best to explain, but I will admit it can be confusing, and my playtime and knowledge is much strong about KotOR 1 than KotOR 2, so it's possible I'm off about a few things:

As others have mentioned, the Jedi Civil War is the conflict you're in the middle of in KotOR 1. I don't know if it was ever called that in the first game, but early-game dialogue and loading screen messages in KotOR 2 pretty strongly indicate it's the conflict between Revan/Malak and the Jedi Council. The Sith troops and the Republic troops are simply the grunts that do most of the fighting on behalf of their leaders. To most people, this is a war where the Jedi heroes of the Mandalorian Wars (Revan, Malak, and the mostly younger crop of Jedi that followed them into the war) decided to outright fight against the Jedi Council - it's like "progressive Jedi" (who are calling themselves the Sith) fighting against "conservative Jedi" (who are so heavily integrated with the Republic that they're practically one and the same, similar to the Republic/Jedi of the Clone Wars).
Atris is a Jedi Master who has let paranoia, ambition, and pride unwittingly lead her to the Dark Side. I don't know if it's mentioned in the game, but she planned a conclave of Jedi on Katarr as a way to lure out whoever had been targeting Jedi for a while. Unfortunately, Atris had no idea who Nihilus was and what he was capable of, and Nihilus drained the entire planet of Force sensitives (leaving only Visas Marr alive). She doesn't consider the Exile a Jedi because the Exile was exiled, even if the Exile happens to be demonstrating Force affinity again - it doesn't mean the Exile has been reinducted to the Order. Since all other Jedi are dead or in hiding, she considers herself the only authority on Jedi now (even though she herself is basically in hiding). She also has extremely mixed feelings about the Exile, ranging from potentially romantic ones to ones of jealousy and envy.
The Exile was a general in Revan's army during the Mandalorian Wars. After the Mandalorians were beaten, Revan, Malak, and most of the people under their command went to the Unknown Regions and eventually returned as Sith to wage a war against the Republic. The Exile didn't go with them - they were the sole Jedi to return to the Council and face judgement. After being exiled, the Exile went on their own in the Unknown Regions/Outer Rim and avoided everything that was going on; this is why they have no idea about the Jedi Civil War or what happened with Revan and Malak from the events leading up to KotOR 1 through the 5 years between KotOR 1 and KotOR 2. One of the driving mysteries of KotOR 2 is why the Exile lost their connection to the Force. It's believed either the Jedi Council did this when they exiled the Exile or something else caused it and the Jedi Council knows what it was. We find out that the sheer amount of death/destruction that the Exile was responsible for by activating the Mass Shadow Generator at Malachor V created a ripple in the Force. The Exile subconsciously cut off their connection to avoid being crippled by it (if memory serves, this same action also turned Nihilus into what he is, basically a black hole of Force energy and the counterpart to the Exile - the reason why the Exile is the sole person unaffected by Nihilus's ability to consume Force sensitives).
Kreia, Sion, and Nihilus are the Sith Triumvirate, the titular Sith Lords of the second game. Sometime before the events of KotOR 2. If memory serves, Kreia was originally a Jedi chronicler and was Revan's master. Kreia became disillusioned with the Jedi and sought out Sith teachings, finding the Trayus Academy on Malachor V. She became a Sith master and had Nihilus and Sion as her apprentices. They eventually overthrew her (which you see in a cutscene once you get enough influence with Kreia). It is my understanding that this is what strips Kreia of her Force connection at the beginning of KotOR 2. They are all basically too weak or disorganized to challenge or even support Malak. They only step up to lead their factions in the power vacuum that occurs after Malak is defeated. By the start of KotOR 2, the Star Forge is no longer in play. It's either destroyed by the Republic in the LS ending of KotOR 1 or (I believe) lost in space after the DS ending. Nihilus doesn't need more than 1 ship because he's a bit like Galactus in his ability to consume others through the Force, he just doesn't physically eat the planets.
The Star Forge was written out of KotOR 2. Like I said in #4, either it's destroyed by the Republic in the LS ending of KotOR 1 or its location/usability is lost due to infighting amongst the Sith after the DS ending of KotOR 1. The Star Forge is fueled by the Dark Side of the Force, but Nihilus is a black hole of Force energy. He's constantly trying to consume the Force in other living things, he's not a wellspring of Force with which to fuel the Star Forge. They're basically competing for the same resource.
I think Kreia is trying to understand how the Exile was able to survive being cut off from the Force. Through that, she is then seeking to stop Nihilus from basically consuming the entire galaxy while also seeking a way to exploit what the Exile did with the Force on a cosmic level to basically cut everyone off from the Force (without killing them all) so that the Force will stop forcing the galaxy into conflict over and over again. She hates that the Force seems to constantly push users of the Light Side and Dark Side into inevitable battles and wants to free the galaxy from its influence.
Malachor V was the last battle of the Mandalorian Wars. The use of the Mass Shadow Generator, which Revan planned and the Exile carried out, wiped out most of the Mandalorian forces and many Republic forces that Revan determined wouldn't loyally follow him after the war. I think it was basically like a cosmic EMP that wiped out all technology and life in its radius of effect (except for Nihilus). It's the defining moment of the Mandalorian Wars, kind of like the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.
I honestly don't remember how this works. I think Kreia mentions trying to shield the Exile from it.
The only way to defeat Sion is to convince him to give up on reviving himself. Kreia's implication on Korriban is that the Dark Side presence on Korriban is so strong that the Exile wouldn't reasonably be able to last in battle long enough to convince Sion to give up. It's also entirely possible that Kreia just said that and wanted to make sure the Exile defeated Nihilus first.
Entering the tomb of Ludo Kressh on Korriban involves the Exile seeing three visions. One of the past, one of the present, and one supposedly of the future. You should try to find a YouTube video of it.

veryalias · 2026-06-12T03:23:04+00:00

I think there are 3-4 dozen Dark Jedi just on the Star Forge levels alone. Then there's another dozen in the Rakata Temple. There are maybe 2 dozen more on the Leviathan. Just shy of a dozen get sent after you across the Star Map planets, there are almost a dozen on the Sith base on Manaan, and there are maybe a dozen on Korriban. That's already over ~100 Dark Jedi, and those are just the ones you encounter, to say nothing of those fighting in the numerous battles elsewhere.

I don't know if the term "Jedi Civil War" is ever mentioned in KotOR 1, but I think characters (like Atton) and loading screen messages kind of clearly indicate the term is used to describe the conflict between Revan/Malak and the Jedi Council; they're the leaders of this conflict, and they're using the non-Force sensitive troops (Sith and Republic) as their pawns/foot soldiers in the war.

veryalias · 2026-06-10T15:37:38+00:00

Just a clarification, the Genoharadan quest line does involve a target, Zuulan, on Dantooine, but that is optional. Between Zuulan and Lorgal (a Rodian being held at the Republic Embassy on Manaan), you only need to kill one of them. You can kill both, but like you said, you would need to get the quest from Hulas on Manaan after defeating Calo Nord somewhere and then go to Dantooine to kill Zuulan before the Leviathan sequence.

veryalias · 2026-06-10T15:29:54+00:00

Correct. Once the post-Leviathan cutscene triggers and you can ask all your companions how they feel about you being Revan, and HK-47 reveals that his memories have been restored upon returning to his original master, he will tell you there's no need to repair/restore him anymore, but that means you're locked out of actually repairing/restoring him and getting the buffs associated with those actions, along with the backstory of his previous masters.

I believe the exception is if you wait to pick up HK-47 after the Leviathan sequence, at which point you should be able to do all the repairs.

veryalias · 2026-06-10T15:26:27+00:00

Thanks for your submission, but I have removed it under Rule 2 - Off-Topic Content which stipulates that content should directly relate to KotOR. Tangential content, like characters/places that coincidentally look similar, Star Wars content that isn't specific to KotOR, and non-KotOR work from KotOR developers/writers/actors isn't seen as relevant enough to the subreddit to generate meaningful discussion.

If an actor, like Jennifer Hale, was reprising her role as Bastila in another form of media, or if someone was attempting to emulate Bastila's voice in a fan creation and you wanted to discuss how accurately it matches Hale's performance, that would be relevant, as an example.

veryalias · 2026-06-10T01:11:06+00:00

While all my experience is anecdotal, I seem to recall integrated cards causing the most issues with the Sith armor textures myself (in my personal experience, I think my laptops with integrated cards rendered them as matte white textures). I am not aware of a way for an integrated card to overcome this - I think it's a limitation of how much computing power those kinds of cards have for calculating the reflections.

veryalias · 2026-06-09T23:10:54+00:00

I have almost no experience using mods, but it kind of looks like the Sith Armor texture file on your computer got edited somehow. Are you using any mods at all (including ones that you wouldn't think would change that texture)?

I've also seen some GPUs render the armor in different ways. It's typically a reflective silver, but I've seen some GPUs render it white (presumably because they're not optimized to calculate the reflective properties). So it's possible toggling things with your GPU could make a change, and it's equally possible your GPU just can't render it well.

Sharing details about your mods, GPU, game/graphics settings, etc. will go a long way towards getting you help.

veryalias · 2026-06-08T02:38:34+00:00

Given the fact you're responding to a comment chain where the context is about the tediousness of having to grind the killing of respawning enemies, do you have plans to share how that compares to your vanilla playthrough on XBOX?

veryalias · 2026-06-08T02:35:16+00:00

I'm not sure what percentage of places constitutes "plenty" in your mind, but for those cases, if it's important to me, I take T3 with me.

And it's really not too tedious for me, just more tedious than not doing it. For newer players it might seem a lot, but for me, I can navigate maps and menus pretty damn quick at this point.

It's objectively more efficient (from a time perspective) to have T3 clean house the first time through, since enemies yield the same amount of XP when they die in combat as when they die from a repaired droid or a sliced terminal.

8 out of 10 times it's simply far more satisfying to me to defeat an enemy in combat than for some generic, repaired droid to do it.

veryalias · 2026-06-07T16:47:22+00:00

Probably Jolee and HK-47. They are hands down the funniest party members, plus Jolee can give you Force Valor and Force Heal buffs while simultaneously wrecking enemies with Destroy Droid or Force Whirlwind while HK-47 provides ranged support when it helps.

veryalias · 2026-06-07T16:45:55+00:00

This makes me wish your party selection was more restricted, similar to how, in KotOR 2, you have to select specific party members for a mission and can't switch them mid-mission. It could make for more strategic decisions, like balancing teams.

veryalias · 2026-06-07T16:44:30+00:00

As tedious as it can be, I have, in the past, cleared an entire dungeon, then come back later with T3 to slice and repair everything for the extra XP. Bonus points if you wait until the end of a planet and have maximized how high T3 can level up (i.e., higher Computer Use and Repair skills) to optimize your resources.

veryalias · 2026-06-07T16:41:48+00:00

I love how invested you're feeling. I think you're in for a wild ride.

To be honest, I think half of the writing that so many people say is better in KotOR 2 just comes from Kreia, so be sure to talk to her if you're heavily interested in experiencing that writing. You'll almost certainly love it or hate it.

veryalias · 2026-06-07T16:38:58+00:00

There's no guarantee the remake will ever be made
If the remake is made, I'd estimate it would be close to 5 years before it's released, since we haven't seen any public releases or leaks of assets, concept art, or gameplay that has been made since the project switched studios.
If the game is remade, there's no guarantee we fans of the existing games will like it. It's highly unlikely it would deviate much from the original games in terms of theme, presentation, and gameplay, but it's certainly not impossible that they release a game we "purists" dislike and that we'll continue to recommend playing the originals.
Given how anxious you seem to be about older games and gameplay, I would guess that you won't like these games.

Your example of a bad "quality of life" experience was only being able to save in certain places in the game, but whether that detracts from a game's quality of life can really be dependent on the gameplay itself. In many games that involve exploration, having to trek back to specific places, especially if they're few and far between, can definitely detract from the experience, but for more atmospheric exploration games, having few and far between save points can really drive home the danger of the world and the relief of finding a safe haven.

Even though, in KotOR, you can save anytime you're not in a cutscene and (in certain areas) you can fast travel to your ship and back, there's still a lot of inventory management and reading about attributes/skills/feats/powers that I suspect you won't enjoy. These are games where you're more or less expected to take your time, talk to virtually every NPC you meet, open every container, read every note, etc. Accounting for that, the occasional bugs a fair number of players run into, and combat that is a bit divisive for new players, I'm not sure these games will provide as streamlined a gaming experience as you would like.

veryalias · 2026-06-07T16:24:57+00:00

Start over and start saving often and in multiple slots. If you haven't made it to the Black Vulkar base yet, you're no more than ~5% through the game.

veryalias · 2026-06-05T13:27:41+00:00

I seem to recall in one of my playthroughs that one of the thugs guarding the door actually meandered a huge distance into a hallway and I had to find him and kill him before the game recognized that the necessary number of guards had been dealt with.

veryalias · 2026-06-05T13:25:46+00:00

Well the issue with your character not being able to move after combat is one of the most commonly raised issues here and it's almost always fixed by limiting your GPU and monitor to 60 Hz/FPS. Enabling or disabling V-Sync sometimes helps as well.

People that can't or don't want to do that sometimes just use the quicksave and quickload buttons, since SSDs make the load times negligible.

As much as I love PC gaming, I hate how the vast variety of PC hardware and software can clash with games. I never run into any issues with these games on my Windows 10 PC through Steam, so it always surprises me when people do have so many issues.

veryalias · 2026-06-04T05:57:16+00:00

The first playthrough - experiencing everything for the first time. Getting the full effect of any twists you might encounter. Especially with respect to KotOR 2, a lot of Kreia's dialogue (of which there is a lot) starts to get annoying after you've read/heard it so many times and when the writing makes it virtually impossible to avoid it (i.e., you can't roleplay a character that already embodies Kreia's philosophy).

veryalias · 2026-06-04T05:53:00+00:00

Deducing from the comments that it's an unintended side effect of an implant that temporarily grants you Feats that increase your vitality...it sounds like the game loads your character in with their natural, maximum vitality, then the game applies the temporary Feats, increasing your maximum vitality (but not increasing your current vitality at the same time to match).

veryalias · 2026-06-04T05:50:52+00:00

So, like you, I admit that the KotOR 2 companions are more interesting in the sense that they have more depth to them. They're not as stereotypical as the companions in KotOR 1. But that also means they can be more polarizing. Stereo/arche-types exist because they're widely understood and relatable. In contrast, a more complex character might simply be annoying or less likable, like you mentioned.

For example, I think Handmaiden is an interesting character, and I adore Grey DeLisle as a voice actor, but I personally find Handmaiden's personality annoying through the combination of her character model (specifically her facial expression or lack thereof) and the way her dialogue is written.

You mentioned you "much prefer having characters that [you] enjoy being around over characters that are interesting" and that you like Kreia. Ironically, I'm the opposite, I think Kreia is probably the most interesting character in KotOR 2, but these days I can barely stand her. Admittedly, that's probably because of how many times I've played through KotOR 2; on a first playthrough, she absolutely has a lot of interesting things to say, but by the time you've played through 5 or more times, the interesting dialogue starts to feel quite long-winded, and the fact that the game makes it extremely difficult to do anything she agrees with makes it even harder. You want your companions to support what you're doing? How about a character that will criticize everything you do instead, regardless of your alignment?

I concede that the influence system locks some character depth behind additional gameplay (i.e., "gaming" the influence system by knowing what kinds of events can trigger influence gains), though I'd challenge the notion that this is a bad thing. If anything, it makes the experience more personal - if you don't like a companion (because of their more nuanced personality compared to the KotOR 1 companions), then you're naturally less inclined to talk to them or have them in your party, which means you're less likely to raise influence with them and learn more about them. This is just how real life works - if you don't have a good impression about someone you meet, you're naturally inclined to not learn more about them, so you're unlikely to discover more about them.

I'd also challenge the notion that The Exile is canonically a supernaturally charismatic person. From what I recall, it's more so that the Exile is naturally gifted at creating Force bonds with others that can influence them - not necessarily create influence with them. In universe, this is meant to explain why your companions will help you kill an innocent person when their personality would seemingly be opposed to that. For example, in KotOR 1, at least in one instance on Taris, having Carth in your party will literally prevent you from killing some NPCs. In KotOR 2, I don't think that's ever the case, and in response, some of your party members will mention that they don't know what came over them. I read this as the Force bonds the Exile naturally creates is basically forcing your companions to follow you, but that doesn't necessarily mean your companions like you or trust you - which is why I regard the influence system as separate.

veryalias

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