I've played SWTOR on and off since 2011 release. Last time I played was in 2022 before they created dual class system and allowed people to play any class for any origin story. As an example that means you can choose Bounty Hunter class story and play it as stealth class for gameplay itself.

If you have beaten Jedi/Sith path once on a specific server you can choose to be a Sith on Republic side and vice versa. The classes are mirrored.

Combat classes that are not force sensitive have access without the unlock requirement.

Assassin - Sith Stealth Class (default story Sith Inquisitor)
Operative - Imperial non-force fighter (default story Imperial Agent)
Shadow - Jedi Stealth Class (default story Jedi Consular)
Scoundrel - Republic non-force fighter (default story Smuggler)

Scoundrel/Operative and Assassin/Shadow are mirror classes. That means they play virtually the same but have different animations and abilities.

When looking to play SWTOR in Stealth you should pick one of these 4 classes for gameplay and now you can do so for any story you want to experience. Which makes it much easier and faster in Stealth. Also much more fun in my opinion because doing the objectives feels differently in Stealth, I will cover it in the guide. You feel rewarded for being "smart". And you skip prolonged unnecessary combat too!





Out of all the time SWTOR has been out now is the best time to experience it.

Additionally, Stealth also works in many Flashpoints, most heroics and most solo content. (Except in KOTFE and KOTET there are too many scripted encounters that break it)

Before I get into Stealth Tactics, I need to tell you what abilities are there for you to use.

These abilities are similar between all stealth characters but since I love Dark Side I will focus on those. Even Sith Assassin has similar stealth related abilities as Operative or Smuggler. They have similar descriptions in-game, icons and they work the same.

Most important ability for stealth is stealth itself. You get it at level 10.

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I suggest you go into keybinds and remap it to something you can quickly press without thinking. I have it at shift+F. It can be paramount to be able to press stealth abilities quickly in game! If you wanna avoid fighting that is.


Next one that is important is putting 1 enemy to sleep from stealth. Unfortunately, non force users get that ability rather late at level 35 while Jedi/Sith get it at level 19. It is extremely useful.
Mind Trap = Force Users. Sleep Dart = Non Force Users.

But do not think that being Jedi/Sith is the best stealth class overall. I prefer using non-force sensitive classes for stealth as I find them to be able to achieve more gameplay wise, they have more useful abilities, however their best abilities unlock rather late compared to Force users. Makes sense since they have to do it the hard way. Bear with me and I will explain why they are better. (Both Stealth classes are one of the best classes in the game however)

Force Cloak for Force Users and Cloaking Screen for Non Force Users.

This ability allows you to disappear before enemy eyes effectively losing all agro (aggression) and evading, resetting combat. Really nice when you do an objective get swarmed by enemeis but it doesn't say you need to kill them all so you just do this, go to a save spot and fast travel away.







Rocket Boost is very important for gaining speed in stealth and inside buildings where you can't use a vehicle or a mount. It counts as being mounted by game and stores away your companion while active but it allows movement in doors. A strong speed boost.

It is found in Legacy tab "Y". Under Global Unlocks > Perks > Right Hand Side figure on red flying with flames behind them.

It costs Cartel Coins to unlock which means you have to spend real cash but it is absolutely worth it. One of the few things that is. The higher the tier the faster the cooldown. Eventually it becomes so fast you can mix it with other character speed boosting abilities which make traversal really fast in stealth and indoors!

Doesn't work in combat.

Both abilities can be used in combat. They are movement abilities.

Force speed unlocks early for Force users. Allows you to start mixing it up with Rocket Boost early on and saving you a lot of time. You press it once and it gives you a speed boost for the duration. Works in stealth too. You can run past enemies collecting them and using this abilty along with defensive abiltiies to just trigger evade once they leash back.

Exfiltrate is my favorite ability in the entire game. It unlocks extremely late but it is what makes Operative my favorite class combined with Stealth. Doing all end game content and Expansions and new story content, flashpoints whatever with this ability, questing, doing planet arcs with this ability is absolutely amazing. It has uses in combat, and for travel.

You see, it is a simple dodge roll like in Dark Souls. It has 2 charges. It means it gives you two rolls. It rolls pretty far and it does so almost instantly, does so which ever direction your camera is facing even if you are looking behind your character it will go there.

You can catch up to people in PvP using it. You can avoid any floor damage indicators in PvE. You can just quickly travel around with it like with Force Speed and it coolsdown faster than Force Speed. You don't need to wait for 2 stacks to complete you can just spam it.

In Stealth it allows you to roll past enemy cones of vision without ever hitting them. And you can leap of ledges using it too!

It is the most versatile and fun ability to use in game and I have to tell you that playing without it is rather boring. I just can't wait to dodge roll again.

I Hold down right mouse button and camera follows my vision and I am playing a third person shooting rolling everywhere.

There are some choices in ability tree, combat ability section that you can choose to make your stealth better. I usually pick them unless really make my class weak. For Force Sensitive it is 3 abilities. For Non Force Users it is just 1 because one of them is a choice between 2 stealth abilities i.e. faster Cloak CD or overall faster stealth movement and less detection.





Infiltrator is for Operative (Scoundrel) and Obfuscating Speed is for Assassin (Shadow)

Plain bonuses to stealth speed and detection



Only for force users. Improves CD for stun (Jolt) and Force Speed. Really nice.



Again for Jedi/Sith reduces CD for Cloaking


Quick Countermeasure on Direct Damage Operatives/Smugglers also provide you with a 4 second Force Speed like ability. It unlocks at lvl 27. Very useful as leveling is preferred on Direct Damage but End Game is better on Lethality DOT set up when you unlock tacticals. Toxin spreading one in particular that provides AoE within Haze.



This is a bonus Operative ability that allows you to stealth your entire group that is useful inside FPs when your friends don't have stealth and you want to skip fights but I don't usually run with it, it is not extremely useful because a lot of group content is scripted and gets you in combat anyway. So usually it is a waste of a choice.

Stealth is a game of its own in SWTOR. To avoid detection and skip combat try using the following:

Keep to the side of their line of sight

Enemies have a line of sight. Better to avoid walking directly in front of them and linger around them as little as possible.



Better yet fly past them



If they start becoming suspicious there is an icon above their head. Get out of the way asap or combat starts. But the icon is not always there.



The way stealth works is NPCs spot you with a line of sight. That means if you exit stealth behind cover. Behind an obstacle. Behind a mission objective console they do not always see you if it has appropriate height. What's more if you blow up that object for NPCs it will still be the same as if it was there full height. They won't see you so wait for stealth to return and simply walk away. Or fast travel away.

Stay behind cover when you uncloak it won't start combat if they can't see you





You can reach objectives from behind anything. Even something directly behind you that you are not looking at. If you can click on it and reach it then you can fulfill that objective.



Hide behind, corners huddle in corners, break line of sight



Big bad boss doesn't see me in the corner and I click on the console and do the objective. Only bad thing that can sometimes happen is a cutscene that will bring me where the boss is after its over but you can always just run away or use cloak. If you are inside a green forcefield zone i.e. heroic or story quest exiting it will reset all enemies inside. But you can't enter a new green zone if you have enemies tailing you.



Reach from anywhere, be imaginative, stay out of sight



Putting the enemy to sleep

Dart them, Mind Trap them.



Then do the objective and simply cloak again. No combat will be started. Sometimes you can dart one enemy that will spot you and then hide in a deadzone for the other enemy nearby and do the objective. Like one enemy is too close to the corner. You put them to sleep. And hide there from the other one. Click on the console and stealth away again.



Dealing with Duos



You can't really put a droid to sleep but imagine they were organics. A real situation in game. One of them is usually a boss or an elite that takes a while to kill. You put them to sleep from stealth. Kill the weak enemy then the fight still keeps going because the sleeping enemy is agro'ed. You use Cloaking ability and evade combat. Put the boss/elite enemy to sleep again, do the objective, stealth and get away without spending time fighting the boss sponge enemy.

Doing the objective while being behind the column hiding from Nexu Cats on Voss, Agent storyline

See how far you can turn your camera? Use left click to turn it.







And here is an example of sleeping elite enemy that I just put to sleep for a cutscene

All the not killed enemies appear in cutscenes sometimes leading to hilarious moments like you doing an objective in a room full of waiting/patrolling enemies who pay no attention to you. It is immersion breaking but to me it is hilarious. Like for example on Makeb during bunker tremor missions you can encounter this phenomenon if you stealth them.

There is an enemy in the game that requires a bit of patience but can be stealthed. They are not forcing a scripted stealth break.

Probe Droids (their mother unit) will summon a bunch of smaller probe droids from the sky. They begin their scan with a teal wave. Freeze immediately when you see it. Sometimes it will de-cloak you outside of their AGRO range and you have time to cloak back and/or back away without combat starting.



They will appear looking for a little bit.





Once they are done scanning they will fly up into the sky and disappear. Wait one more second because there is a delay and you can be spotted and then simply walk past the probe droids. They are not scary once you know how they work and they do not force you to break stealth.



And even if stealth is broken sometimes combat doesn't start because it breaks on the fringe. So be careful, be attentive when you see them appear on the map and you will be fine.

Completing Objective from Death

A trick you can do if you just don't feel like fighting but there is no way to do the objective because there are too many enemies or your level is below 8 of the enemy and you do 0 damage.

You can get incapacitated near the objective and then choose to be revived on the spot. While the 10 second revive timer is going click on the objective it will complete itself and play a cutscene or move onto the next objective. You may get killed again but you won't have to fight and fighting might take longer. You might even have time to stealth if all goes well.

Mind the NPCs

Sometimes temporary ally NPCs will agro mobs while you are in stealth. Like during an old Korriban Flashpoint there is a droid that you can recruit. Sometimes I felt like the FP story difficulty bot had bad stealth. You can just die and not resummon it.

Instantly enter Stealth after cutscene

If you can quickly enter stealth via a keyboard shortcut after a cutscene plays often enough you will find that enemies didn't have time to react to you and will not see you. If there is no objective to slay them you can simply walk away. Well it is actually around 1 second that you have time to hide like that.

Flashpoint enemies who are walking towards their position do not see you

While NPCs are on their route to take their place, for the initial first time they do not see anyone, even if you are not in stealth. Use this to your advantage quickly.

Sometimes dying or jumping into an abyss will teleport you to the start of a location or its exit

which is useful on Manaan during Legacy of the Sith, you can completely skip a lot of unnecessary walking and fighting

Beware of interactive speeders or consoles

They can often teleport you to the start of the location or somewhere entirely different like an outpost in case of speeders.

Scripted forced combat

Some encounters have scripted combat that you can't stealth by. Very annoying. That includes some flashpoint bosses that have "TRUE SIGHT" and will see you whenever you cross an invisible line on the map, that includes a lot of KOTFE and KOTET encounters. That also includes enemy spawn bases and their guards to deter griefing.

Scripted forced agro

Similar to above except sometimes it is impossible to lose agro even if you use Cloaking ability. Usually happens in flashpoints or story dungeons.

Objectives can be completed in combat

Some objectives in the game can be done during active combat. That sometimes includes clicking on consoles, mostly it is destroying something like crates or cameras or anything that has attack animation going and looting something. That means you can fire of some of your tanking abilities, heroic moment, use a stimpack and do those with a force run or exfilrtate and then once all of them are done and you have a whole lot of enemies behind you, simply cloak away.

How LEASHING works

Comes from dog leash. Meaning every NPC in game is on a leash. I.e. do not stray away from their spawn point too far. Easiest way to observe this is in general game world where everyone can play together i.e. on any planet. There you can drive past NPCs on a speeder and eventually it will show in big white letters EVADE and they return to their position. That is useful as you can do objectives and outrun them without needing to fight.

Also to get them to leash faster it is nice to click on passive ability on your companion hotbar so they stop fighting them and teleport to you. Don't forget to re-enable. Additionally, when running past crowds of enemies when companion is not passive they will agro all the enemies. Once you get away press Passive before they die so they teleport to you. You can play around with that to manage enemy agro and leashing.

However, in story dungeons and flashpoints enemies never leash. Sometimes they keep fighting you even if you push them off the floor onto a different floor below. You will be locked in combat but in situations like this you can try to cloak maybe they will leave you alone. Or send your companion to sell trash items if you can.

Green entry forcefield

You can't enter them while in combat but once inside if you agro anyone and step out they will leash instantly. They can't leave those areas.

Instead of Fast Travel using "M" Galaxy map you can use SOLO Activity Finder. Once having done a planet you unlock its Heroics or if you have skipped to a high level everything should be unlocked by default.



Click on Heroic Missions for a planet you are going to or on Daily Missions and they will conveniently teleport you to the planet.



You will appear standing in front of mission terminal.



Only thing you will have to do is to remove the mission from your quest log "L" by clicking abandon at the bottom of the screen.

The reason to do this is because it saves you time walking in the airlock and space station and shuttling down before you are allowed to use regular fast travel between points and outposts on a planet using the map "M".

And it is free.

Stealth helps a lot here if you do what I said you will encounter minimal combat.

Other than that you need to buy up Class and Exploration EXP Bonuses in Legacy for any character that you want to run with. That together is upwards of 1 million credits.

Rocket boost will save time. Buying speeder speed increase in legacy will save time.

Space combat EXP (not Starfighter) is also nice when you need to catch up exp/level wise. Especially useful for Quesh which you need to be at least level 33 to get the inoculation. |
Once you start doing Space buy level appropriate ship upgrades on star fleet at NPC vendor they are cheap.

You can do damage up to 7 levels above your level. That means at level 3 you can kill a level 10 but you can't kill a level 11. And so on.

Use Large EXP boost you get from missions. Once every 3 hours use a new one.

Subbing gives you a large exp bonus.

Rested exp bonus you get if you log out in your spaceship, fleet or cantina.

You get a bonus from a guild as well. Look for one that gives 15%.

Make sure you talk to all of your companions. If you can recruit HK-51 then do so because he will also offer EXP conversations. You only need to do his quest once and then you can re-buy him for 1 million credits for every character. He is also useful because he stays with you every time other companions are not available.

Make sure you do your companion quests because if you don't you will not progress with that companion and will stop getting new conversations and that means no easy EXP. Mostly it is just 1 quest in campaign but sometimes it is upwards of 3. They give nice exp.

Following these things you should be able to just run the MAIN STORY of your character without any interruptions except to talk to companions who are related to story anyway and if you do fall behind then you do a few space missions to catch up to Quesh entry level or within 7 levels to do damage. I usually finish story on Corellia at level 43. All zones and quests usually level scale. So do their rewards.

There are some quests in the main story that are actually side quests but they will be labeled as Class Quest. You will know what those are from experience of playing you can skip them and complete the story anyway. Usually they offer a little extra exp and insight into the story.

But they actually have all traits of a secondary quest because they often lack any cutscenes and have grindy tasks like kill 4 targets for Bounty Hunter on Belsavis or Collect 4 Intel Fragments for Imp Agent on Hoth and so on so forth.

Resize Mouse Cursor

For me I lose mine a lot in SWTOR. I looked for in-game options to customize its color or size but they weren't there.

I went into windows and pinned the cursor size change menu to windows start menu. Now I quickly do it when I start playing. That is overall useful for many MMOs.

PoE has some amazing things you can do to cursors. It would be nice if all games let you customize them.

Write mou in win search bar



then pin it to start



and access it further by clicking on it in start menu



this is windows 10 btw. Default size is 1 for SWTOR I like to set it to 2. Sometimes to 3 when I am very tired.

Swap abilities around to gain extra mount speed



Just press "K" to open your ability skill tree and click one ability to somewhere else and then back and you will gain speed increase if you have "Sprint" ability enabled. However, you have to do that every time you mount. It is 30% increase or so I believe. Very nice. You have to travel a lot in this game. Vast distances.

If you die from fall damage you can't revive on spot you will have to travel to medical station

Sometimes it saves time but most of the time it actually takes you time away. For example, on Quesh instead of waiting for elevator to arrive you can jump down and revive near the mission objective but in other places like a dungeon you think you could save time by jumping down the shaft and revive there instead of waiting for the elevator. But in reality it will spawn you back on base.

I don't know why. It just is this way. Doesn't matter if you subscribe or not.

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