Basic gameplay advice for young padawans.

This is basically an update from my mistakes and many questions from first play through on Jedi Knight, to more than halfway through my current run on Jedi Master, on how prepared one can be prior to taking on tougher bosses and legendary beasts.

My first play through on Jedi Knight had some frustrating moments. I not only lacked knowledge of how prepared you could be with stim and life/force essence upgrades, but also didn't even know how to use the map to considerably narrow down the search to find them. Trust me, even if you are a bit on the clumsy side of managing things like consistent Evasive Kicks, prefect parries, etc, just knowing the basics of upgrade prep makes a HUGE difference.

Here's what I found. 

Key skills that complete progress

Double Jump and Force Pull are the two skills that take basic preparedness to being nearly a fully stacked Jedi. You should only be lacking a couple stims after those skills are acquired. You'll be missing about five of the life and force skill upgrades, and saber mastery when doing the first real battle with 2nd Sister, but you'll have I think 6 stims, and plenty skills to take her on, as that is just sort of a preamble fight to the real one.

Easy skill farming on Dathomir

Here's a key tip, before heading to get Pull and Double Jump, both of which involve the aforementioned 2nd Sister, Ninth Sister, and the Arena battle, you can use an area on Dathomir to easily farm skill points enough so that you have all the available skills you have access to at that point, plus a cache of enough skill points to get the vital ones before taking on Ninth Sister, including Lightsaber Mastery.

If you go up the central path in Dathomir, just after encountering a couple enemies and a double rope swing, there's a Meditation Circle you can use to save game, and respawn enemies. It's basically just quick rinse and repeat rounds of taking on 4 mace wielding Dathomirians, and 2 archers. I typically stand out until visible to the archer coming down the stairs, deflect his shot back to him, then Grasp Pull/Stab the mace guy coming down with him as he runs past him. This is key because Grasp/Pull Stab won't work on archers, the mace guy needs to be in front of him. Then one more deflect to kill the archer, and 2 more to kill the one atop and to the right of the stairs. 

I then continue on the path to the right until the arched doorway, then dash backward as another mace guy appears, grasp pulling/stabbing him. Then I backtrack down to beyond the Med Circle go back across the double swing (which can be down with flow  if you force pull the 2nd rope), then sprint past the two guys there, and grasp  pull/stab them one at a time. By the time you get back to the Med Circle, you'll have spent less than a min or so, which nets a skill point about every 5 min, it's very quick to level up this way.

Easy skill farming on Bogano

There's also a spot in Bogano to farm skill points early on to get the beginning skills. Right above a Oggdo Bogdo (big frog), there's a Med Circle in a big round structure with vines and wall run marks inside, with a few Bog Rats inside it. There are also a few Bog Rats outside near where the Oggdo Bogdo is. You can air strike the Oggdo Bogdo from above and take your chances dodging and striking it on the narrow, cliff edged area it's on (which can result in accidentally falling to your death), or, you can walk out on the railing like I do, face the Med Circle, position yourself just above it's side nearest the vine wall, then drop down to a hang position, and do a drop airstrike then immediately run and jump/climb up the vines. Once he goes out of his aggro and turns sideways, he's ripe for another air strike, which kills him. Pretty much all but maybe one Bog Rat can be insta killed with a Dash Strike, or air strike.

Benefits of skill farming, and taking on legendary beasts

It really doesn't take much skill farming in these two spots, and combined with knowing how to find secrets on the map, which include life/force essence, and stim locations, it makes handling tougher bosses and legendary beasts MUCH easier. Admittedly though, I did kinda take on the legendary Oggdo Bogdo located elsewhere on Bogano in a cave earlier than I could have, but with mindful dodging and dash strikes timed after it's attacks, it was doable. There are also tricks for taking on the Albino Spider, and Rabid Jotaz. With the spider you want to make sure the regular spiders are killed first, preferably outside after the Stormtroopers wear them down. There is a small slot in the forest wall up where a lone Stormtrooper stands by a crate above the Spider/Stormtrooper fight below. That takes you to an ledge above the Albino Spider pit that is inaccessible to it. It's a great place to get in air attacks and let it cool down out of aggro. The Rabid Jotaz is much trickier, but if you carefully stand directly opposite of the huge fan shaft from  it, it cannot attack you, and it will cool down, which is key because that thing swings it's claws viciously when enraged.

How to find secrets with the holomap

The way to find missed secrets using the map is to highlight each area, which takes placing the cursor on it and selecting level height until it glows blue, then looking at the lower left of the screen. There are 2 icons there, the chest icon shows missed chests (not including stim chests), the icon that looks like a vertically elongated asterisk (*), shows missed secrets, which includes stims and life/force essence. All 3 of these improve your combat effectiveness and chance of survival.

How much preparation you can achieve before Ninth Sister

After my first run through fight with Ninth Sister on Jedi Knight taking several tries, I was worried on Jedi Master it would be even harder. With 8 Stims, which is the max you can have before taking on Ninth Sister, and The Power of Friendship skill, which completely refills your Force meter with each stim, you will never lack force attack ability. That combined with Lightsaber Mastery, makes the odds WAY more even. Note you can basically get ALL skills before taking on Ninth Sister, but I highly recommend having at the very least 7 spare skill points before getting Double Jump, which is too close to the Ninth Sister fight to afford any skill farming in that area. Those 7 skill points will allow you to get Lighsaber Mastery and the final two Force and Life capacity skills.

How preparation makes a difference

Despite having all this, I wasn't sure if I could beat her first try. I had like 25 min before needing to go to an appointment, and was going to save the fight for later. Temptation got the better of me as I sat looking at the gigantic friendly bird, which I call the Viking Turkey. She seemed to be coaxing me to jump in and fight, so there I went. Turns out I wore her down rather quickly, and when my force was drained (still having not taken any damage), knowing I could just pop a stim and replenish it, I was able to take a bit of risk (and needed damage to use a stim). I never had to pop more than one stim, and it was mostly just to replenish force. I still had 80% of the next stim when finishing her off. It was over in under 5 min. She only got in one saber toss and one ground ripple attack, both of which I blocked/dodged.

Encouragement and replay value

This gives me far more confidence in being able to beat Jedi Grand Master level. The takeaway is, even if you aren't the most skilled at timing counters, the game still gives you ways to beat it. Just prepare well young padawans, and the force will be with you!