Star Wars Day is nearly upon us again! Similar to most years the Awakening team has prepared two new paintings for the first character that logs in for each account and a badge for each character that logs in. We felt that we needed to go a step beyond predictable though, so we are also adding loot bonuses! Nearly every NPC in the galaxy will have the potential to drop rare loot - including some items that have never been seen on Awakening before. Endgame hunters and new players alike will have a chance to walk away with a server-first vehicle or house.

Following the scheduled reset on Friday May 3rd, and lasting throughout the weekend until the next reset on Monday May6th the following features will be enabled:

• Bonus XP
• Two new paintings per account
• May 4th 2019 badge
• Increased rare loot drops
• Increased Yellow / Exceptional / Legendary drop rates

May the 4th be with you!

During our sever restart this morning we applied a minor update to implement two of the most requested features. Nearly every player has had experience operating a vendor or trying to find one that has the item(s) they need. We're hoping these changes will take a lot of the frustration out of both.

Shoppers will now have the ability to filter their vendor searches based on keyword and price. Just look for your crate of blue milk for under 5000cr and save yourself the time of looking through thousands of items!

Shopkeepers that have trained the Novice Merchant skill will now have the "Restock Vendor" option available from the radial menu on their vendors. For a per item fee of 50 credits all expired items will be relisted at their original price. Bonus for mayors: if a vendor is within a city's borders a percentage of this fee will be deposited in the treasury.

Note: For the improved vendor search to be available players will need to have their Awakening files up to date. If the feature doesn't appear to be working restart your launcher and client.

We are just short of a month away from being the servers 4-year anniversary and we have some massive plans this year to ensure everyone has a fantastic time.

The anniversary will take place on Thursday 8th November and the plan for this year is the actual day will have lots of fun packed events for you all the enjoy,.

The day after on Friday 9th at reset until the Monday 12th at reset there will be double XP.

Below are the events that are planned for the day with the start times, below that I will explain how each event will work:

12pm BST: Gauntlet Arena
2pm BST: Costume Contest
4pm BST: Beast Wars
6pm BST: PvE Event
8pm BST: Race
10pm BST: PvP Tournaments
12am BST: Treasure Hunt
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Gauntlet Arena - 12pm BST

Location: Just Outside of Mos Eisley

The gauntlet arena will involve teams of 3-6 people, each team will enter the gauntlet, the gauntlet will consist of 8 rooms with a wide range of challenges awaiting them.

The team which gets through the most rooms with the quickest time will win this event. Multiple teams will run at once.

The winning team will play a dice of death game between members of their team to determine who wins a CSR token (all team members will also win a prize from the prize bag).

CSR buffs and cloner will be provided at the event.

If you have a team to enter please contact Heimdallr before the event so the correct number of arenas can be created, entry will stay open until 15 minutes before the event.
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Costume Contest -2pm BST

Location: Theatre Guild Hall in Theed

There will be 3 judges for this event Cyclone, a lucky community member and myself. To decide the community member judge, we will be holding a lottery droid entry opportunity 2 week before the event so anyone interested in being a judge on the day WHO WILL NOT be wanting to enter the contest to enter for a chance to be a judge.

There will be 3 prizes up for grabs:
1st Wins: A clothing piece from prize hall of their choice
2nd Wins: A prize from the prize bag
3rd Wins: 2million credits

The judges will judge which costumes they feel are the best from a wide range of criteria, try your luck and be creative.
There will be lots of seating for spectators who wish to attend the event.

We ask that the contestants speak about there design costume and there inspiration for it and we encourage them to put a sketch or a little act on to help further enhance there costume to the judges (this is not a requirement though we do encourage it).

If you wish to enter please contact Heimdallr before the event so he can plan the time slots accordingly, entry will stay open until 15 minutes before the event.
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Beast Wars -4pm BST

Location: Coronet

Contestants will be allowed 3 different pets to use in the ‘war’, they must defeat all 3 of their opponent’s pets to move on to the next round, you can use the same pet throughout all of your matches (if that pet dies during a match you will have to wait until your next match to use it again).

The last contestant remaining will win the event and the winner will then get a choice of any rare pet available in game as the reward.

Only pets can attack or defend during this event any participation from their owners will result in disqualification from the event.

The match pairings will be determined with a number given to the participants and a dice roll.

CSR buffs will be provided throughout the event if needed. Spectators are welcome.

If you wish to enter please contact Heimdallr before the event so he can plan the fixtures, entry will stay open until 15 minutes before the event.
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PvE Event - 6pm BST

Location: Revealed on the Anniversary

The PvE event will be a continuation of the story from the attack on Restuss in August, the aim will be to stop 4 bosses and clear all enemy presence to complete the event, for each boss killed the participants will get 1 dice of death game for a CSR token, so there is a possibility that there will be 4 CSR tokens up for grabs from this event (the dice of death games will occur at the end of the event).
There will also be 10 prize opportunities to be won throughout the event for people who can find the relevant things needed (what is needed will be revealed on the day).

This event is a turn up event you are not required to let us know if you are participating beforehand, if you wish to come as a spectator feel free to do so (don’t get too close though as there is sure to be much fury and mayhem!)

CSR buffs and cloner will be provided throughout the event.
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Death Race -8PM BST

Location: Revealed on the Anniversary

The death race will be a race to the finish line, all players are welcome to be a part of the race, you must be on a vehicle throughout the race to win, watch out for the perils of the race though as you undertake it.

The winner of the race, the first person across the finish line after getting all the waypoints will win themselves a new AV-21.

This event is a turn up event you are not required to let us know if you are participating beforehand, if you wish to come as a spectator feel free to do so (as with the PvE event, don’t get too close as there is sure to be much fury and mayhem!)

CSR buffs and cloner will be provided throughout the event.
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PvP Tournaments -10PM BST

Location: Ghorfas’ Ruin

There will be 2 PvP tournaments, 1 non-Jedi tournament and 1 Jedi vs Jedi tournament.

There is a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prizes for both tournaments, with a CSR token up for grabs for 1st place in each.

You may only enter 1 toon for each tournament, you may provide your own buffs if you wish (CSR buffs will be available for those who don’t wish to supply their own).

The match pairings will be determined by the amount of participant sign ups beforehand, the matches will proceed for 5 minutes before the participants’ armour is removed and then continued until there is a victor. Same for Jedi, they will remove their robes after 5 minutes.

If you wish to enter please contact Heimdallr before the event so he can plan the pairings, entry will stay open until 15 minutes before the event.

CSR buffs and cloner will be provided throughout the event.
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Treasure Hunt - 12am BST

Below are all the cities that will have 1 treasure chest to be found, the chests will hold 3 prizes in each, only 1 prize can be taken by one toon for every chest found, giving everyone a chance to get something so choose wisely what you want when you do find them. The chests will have an 8-hour timer on them once that timer is up they will go poof forever so make sure you are out there promptly looking for them. There are 2 CSR tokens in the chests up for grabs.

The chests will be a wide variety of different things so have your eyes wide open, they will have unique names.

Chest Locations:
Corellia:
- Coronet
- Vreni Island
- Bella Vista
- Kor Vella
- Tyrena
- Doaba Guerfel

Talus:
- Dearic
- Narshal
- Imperial Military Outpost

Naboo:
- Moenia
- Deeja Peak
- Keren
- Theed
- Kaadara

Rori:
- Restuss
- Narmle
- Rebel military outpost

Tatooine:
- Mos Eisley
- Wayfar
- Mos Espa
- Mos Entha
- Mos Taike
- Bestine
- Anchorhead

Lok:
- Nyms Stronghold
- Imperial Outpost

Dantooine:
- Mining Outpost
- Imperial Outpost
- Pirate Outpost

Endor:
- Research Outpost
- Smuggler Outpost

Dathomir:
- Science Outpost
- Trade Outpost
- A restrited Area

Yavin 4:
- Mining Outpost
- Labor Outpost
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Lottery Droids – Starting a week before the Anniversary

Location: Outside of Mos Eisley Starport

There will be 3 lottery droids located outside of Mos Eisley Starport a week before the anniversary and they will be named ‘First Place’, ‘Second Place’ and ‘Third Place’.

Everyone can enter each lottery with as many toons as they feel like, there is no limit on this, the lucky winners will be announced on the Anniversary, the prizes up for grabs are:


1st Place: Mustafarian Bunker
2nd Place: CSR Token
3rd Place: 5 Million Credits

The droids will determine the winners randomly.
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There are 10 CSR tokens as well as lots of incredible prizes up for grabs throughout the day.

First, we would like to thank everyone who donated this month to help us reach our goal - and all of those that have donated in the past. As most of our players know Awakening relies on those donations to cover operational costs and any shortfalls in funding ultimately falls on staff to cover. In August we saw quite a few first-time donors and hope to see that trend continue in the future. So, we decided to implement an incentive plan to try getting the donation meter consistently filled on a monthly basis while possibly expanding the donor pool.

Beginning in September, bonus xp will be turned on for the remainder of the month once the donation meter hits 100% on the following schedule:

• Occurs on or before the 15th of the month - 50%
• After the 15th but on or before the 20th - 25%
• After the 20th - 10%

To kick off this incentive we will be granting double xp for the Labor Day holiday weekend which will start at the time of this post.

Thank you all for making Awakening your SWG home!

About a month and a half ago we asked our players if automating the resource updates to Galaxy Harvester was something the players of Awakening would like to see implemented. We got a resounding "yes" from our community including those of you who put in many hours of your time over the past several years to keep resource information current.

We are pleased to announce that beginning at 9am Eastern on August 17th, resource updates will be uploaded to the site at 12 hour intervals. We got a huge assist by the GH team, who elevated the reputation of our new SwgAwakening account to prevent any issues with posting to the site. The update will include any new resources that have spawned and those that have despawned.

Thanks for playing Awakening and let us know if there are other features you would like to see by posting in suggestions.