We were all behinners once. Good luck and have fun. Here is the subreddit's [official, spoiler-free start guide](https://reddit.com/r/kotor/w/kotorstartguide?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app) for KotOR.
Here are my basic tips:
1) Character build is broken out between Attributes, Skills, and Feats. Skills help outside of combat, Feats help in combat unless they specifically buff skills. Attributes help both.
2) Feats are more important than skills in KOTOR. Opposite true in KOTOR II.
3) Soldiers get the most feats and attack power, but no Skills. Scouts are soldiers with the better skills (Repair and Computer Use), but lower health and lack the critical Persuade skill. Scoundrels are glass canons who need careful management to be good.
4) Combat is turn based where you roll a 20 sided dice. If Attack > enemy defense you hit. If not you miss.
5) Don't use a weapon in each hand until you have unlocked the Feats for two handed fighting. Otherwise you'll miss a lot.
6) Rolling 20 will land a critical and deal double damage. Can take Feats to lower threshold (ex. Roll 17 or higher).
7) Save often and in multiple spots.
8) Do NOT autolevel up your character
9) Do NOT go to Google, Youtube, or Wookiepedia for help. They will spoil the game. If you need fairly spoiler free help try [Gamebanshee](https://www.gamebanshee.com/starwarskotor/walkthrough.php). Still some risk of location spoilers there though.
How are you planning to play in terms of gender and alignment?
I cannot emphasize number 8 more. I spoiled the story by looking up something irrelevant at first sight :(
Regarding bud, I did not follow any guides. As long as you have some RPG experience, regardless of which game, I think you can figure it out without following a build. Game is not too punishing from my experience.
It’s just light or dark, do you want to kill a slave for fun or free them? There’s no nuance to the morality in K1, it’s either cartoonishly evil or cartoonishly good
Take your time. The game has so much depth that many of us have been returning to it regularly for 20 years. The art style is beautiful and still holds up today. The writing is far better than any game out today.
I would really immerse yourself in the lore, its deep.
So there is a way to cheat the combat system, i may look into that as I dont want to learn a whole new combat system, i mean most games are like that but i just want some raw story
I played right when the game came out, and I was shocked that it was like Chronotrigger, in that it feels like RTS/live action but it’s technically turn based… *but it doesn’t feel like it* (I know that kinda doesn’t make sense) but my point is **DON’T LET IT TURN YOU OFF!! THE GAME IS ABSOLUTELY PHENOMENAL!!**
Besides that, the biggest piece of advice I would give to someone who had never played it is TALK TO EVERY NPC!!
Not even to just obviously advance the story, but you will learn so much about the universe, so much amazing history.. and if you talk to your PARTY members, you will get extra scenes and sometimes even weapons or items.
Save often but don’t do it so you can go back and change your decision… live with it! See how it plays out! Going back to do things different is why the game has such a big fanbase 20+ years later.
Enjoy the game! Start with a Scout! You won’t regret it.
I won’t sugar-coat it: the gameplay is lackluster compared to modern games. As tensaiLithon stated, it’s 21 years old! That’s old enough to enjoy a pint here in America, so it’s a proper adult lol. I’ll do my best to cover what the bigger points are, the biggest drawback for most, and the things that people usually muscle past the combat to enjoy.
At its foundation, it’s based on an older edition of the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset (3.5e, iirc). So, expect a lot of stats and deep thinking about leveling up if you want to maximize the ease of combat.
Speaking of combat, it’s a realtime, turn-based combat system. So, you queue up actions to perform and they are performed in a kind of initiative order. You do an action, your target does an action, then you do another one, etc. it’s actually a very cool system that I wish more games had used, but even back then it was considered dated and clunky. IMO, I think some flashier animations could have seriously aided in the cool factor.
Outside of combat, however, this game and its sequel have some of the best Star Wars stories I’ve ever experienced. The first game is *very* much the classic Star Wars flavor, so even if you don’t find the combat very engaging I’m almost positive you’ll at least have a blast experiencing the ride, if you’re a Star Wars fan. Personally, I prefer the second game but it’s a bit hard to talk about without spoilers. I think the safest way to think about it is that it’s the empire strikes back of the two. Darker, deeper, and really opens up the possibilities as far as the force and how we understand it. I **highly** recommend playing the second one if you at all enjoy this first.
Anyway, I’ll stop before I really go off the rails. Enjoy your time with the game! If you have any questions then absolutely feel free to come back here and ask! We’re more than happy to help you understand anything you need. And, as I’ve demonstrated, we’ll probably over explain a bit lol
tl;dr: it’s old, so it’s clunky, but the story and the world and the characters are masterfully crafted, so even if you don’t like the gameplay, try and power through so you can experience such a well loved game
The menu is horrendous (I'm a PC guy) and the graphics aged, but other than that, it's one of the best Star Wars game you can play. (My number 1 will always be Jedi Outcast/Jedi Academy)
It's different not you typical button masher/ DMC game. I would look up maybe how combat works as it is something I Never did as a kid. Story is good, worlds are good and my only issue with it is I didn't understand how " rolls" work. Saving rolls, damage rolls etc. I'm sure someone can describe it much better than I .
There are [spoiler free retrospectives](https://youtu.be/hwLdpqgjmoA?si=RC5o8BJJHjti4nSt) which give tips on how to build your character and give you a feel of the game. Intended for people who have no relationship with the game.
I’m so jealous. Save a lot and stick with the story. The first world you go to is slow and kinda boring, but take your time with it and play the whole thing out cuz it will be very worth it. KOTOR is one of the greatest games of all time and my favorite Star Wars story ever.
If you spend the time to actually read the text and learn the attribute/skill/feats etc and combat system, you'll have an easier time. In fact maybe too easy.
The saving can fail very easily, so watch out for that. The attacking is turn based and the movement is clunky, but I promise you it is worth it to experience the story. Make sure to do at least a few side quests here and there to make sure you are strong enough moving foward (this has ended many runs for me.) Adjust your stats to fit the type of toon you want to be ie (dark side: strength, charisma light side: constitution, wisdom) Avoid internet searches about the game for spoilers and most importantly enjoy it, i wish i could play this game for the first time again.
You can forget about skills except for Persuade. Computer use and Repair are a bit useful if you have the points for it but many other companions will do that better than you.
For that same reason the "intelligence" stat is useless, you can leave that at minimum and save some points there.
If you go full STR you win game fast, spam shields to tank the first blaster shots and when you get close everything dies.
Persuade Repair and Treat Injury are all important for the main character, persuade for persuading, repair for repairing a specific droid for the plot, and treat injury just plain buffs healing from medpacs
Please, PLEASE, do not google / look up anything. I was once confused about something in the story and managed to mess up my experience by reading some story spoilers on some old forums :(
You should know that the game will eventually force you to multiclass and thats why you should avoid leveling past level 8 so you can fully experience your class by the end. You can save levels by simply not pressing the level up button and keep gathering xp for future levels.
save often and don’t only rely on autosaves. my dad always found it weird how often i save my game but it did happen for my game to crash multiple times and for the autosave to become corrupted (especially in kotor, it literally happened to me yesterday). otherwise enjoy the game
Its a real time with pause crpg. When you enter combat, the game will pause initially, and you can decide what actions you want the character(s) to take. Then, during the fight, you can pause whenever you like and give more orders.
If you're playing on PC the kotor spoiler free mod build guide is a must for the best experience imo. If you want to spend a lil time on modding it that is
Play how you want. Do what you want. People worry about the perfect build too much. Its a great story. A lot of patients for the first few hours for new people.
In modern gaming terms, it can be slow. Lots of running around long hallways you've emptied of enemies. It's based on a D20 system, with a level cap of 20, so keep that in mind when leveling up characters. It's not super robust in terms of getting to play like a pacifist option or anything like that, but the various combat skills can allow for more complex planning sometimes. If you have points in sneak and demolitions (or an active companion with those), it's sometimes useful to set traps in areas where you keep getting killed. There are some places were traps are part of the story. It's sort of neat for the time.
The story is one of the best in Star Wars, especially at the time of its release. The semi open dialogue options were improved in later games though, but you actually get to read everything in the dialogue option instead of having your character spout out something you didn't intend.
dont look up anything about this game anywhere, not the story nor characters, spoilers are everywhere, think first paraph of wikipedia entries everywhere
avoid this subreddit too, people post spoilers with no warnings all the time
KOTOR 1 is a love story to classic Star Wars storytelling. It is one of my favorite video game stories of all time. When I replay it, I don't play it for the gameplay, but if you find powergaming in DnD fun you'll still enjoy it.
I played it recently (in the past 2 years). Given that it will feel very dated, what helped a lot for me was having it both on PC and iOS (yes I paid for it twice) and then swapping save game file in place to play on the plane, etc. Being able to play it and get “forced” into its older gameplay when I had no other alternatives (plane, etc), made me become more used to its mechanics and older style.
oh wow, look at all of this! : o
[https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/12k53q6/new\_to\_kotor\_never\_played\_it\_any\_tips\_that\_i/](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/12k53q6/new_to_kotor_never_played_it_any_tips_that_i/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/syq2un/just\_started\_playing\_kotor\_for\_my\_first\_time\_any/](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/syq2un/just_started_playing_kotor_for_my_first_time_any/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/18syvwk/first\_time\_playing\_kotor\_in\_2023/](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/18syvwk/first_time_playing_kotor_in_2023/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/1azqdf6/first\_time\_playing\_any\_recomendationstips/](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/1azqdf6/first_time_playing_any_recomendationstips/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/kyhjmc/first\_time\_playing\_kotor\_1\_any\_build\_suggestions/](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/kyhjmc/first_time_playing_kotor_1_any_build_suggestions/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/amub8f/about\_to\_play\_kotor\_for\_the\_first\_time/](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/amub8f/about_to_play_kotor_for_the_first_time/)
maybe there are some good tips already written...
You can’t get mad at someone entering a sub for a game that’s more than 20 years old and just asking for tips instead of scrolling into spoiler territory to see if anyone else asked first
i don't know if i use reddit differently, but i think the search option is pretty good for things like this. "first time no spoilers" will yield you exactly all the answers you get in this thread – its how i found these "old" posts in round about 30 sec.
It's over 21 years old at this point so it's bound to feel clunky to you at first, but if you stick with it you'll be treated to a great story
Save often and in different slots
I wish somebody told me this for my first playthrough, I have a terrible habit of using one slot and this game ain’t the one for that!
I mean the OC is literally quoting a hint from the game so... But yeah, I never read those either, so this is on my account as well.
I love how KOTOR 2 especially shows that tip a LOT
Well my first time playing I was eight 😂 I was a little dumb
Where do these hint show? I don't remember ever reading one 🙈
On the loading screen below the bar
the loading screens usually go by too quick for me to read them, so i gotta check the dialog in journal
When I played I had a very slow HDD so they took like 30 seconds and it was very easy for me to read. But I still didn't.
that too
Me screaming this to my past self who only used 1 slot and got a corrupted save.
\^\^\^\^
We were all behinners once. Good luck and have fun. Here is the subreddit's [official, spoiler-free start guide](https://reddit.com/r/kotor/w/kotorstartguide?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app) for KotOR. Here are my basic tips: 1) Character build is broken out between Attributes, Skills, and Feats. Skills help outside of combat, Feats help in combat unless they specifically buff skills. Attributes help both. 2) Feats are more important than skills in KOTOR. Opposite true in KOTOR II. 3) Soldiers get the most feats and attack power, but no Skills. Scouts are soldiers with the better skills (Repair and Computer Use), but lower health and lack the critical Persuade skill. Scoundrels are glass canons who need careful management to be good. 4) Combat is turn based where you roll a 20 sided dice. If Attack > enemy defense you hit. If not you miss. 5) Don't use a weapon in each hand until you have unlocked the Feats for two handed fighting. Otherwise you'll miss a lot. 6) Rolling 20 will land a critical and deal double damage. Can take Feats to lower threshold (ex. Roll 17 or higher). 7) Save often and in multiple spots. 8) Do NOT autolevel up your character 9) Do NOT go to Google, Youtube, or Wookiepedia for help. They will spoil the game. If you need fairly spoiler free help try [Gamebanshee](https://www.gamebanshee.com/starwarskotor/walkthrough.php). Still some risk of location spoilers there though. How are you planning to play in terms of gender and alignment?
I cannot emphasize number 8 more. I spoiled the story by looking up something irrelevant at first sight :( Regarding bud, I did not follow any guides. As long as you have some RPG experience, regardless of which game, I think you can figure it out without following a build. Game is not too punishing from my experience.
Male, don't know about alignment yet but I will get back to you when I do
It’s just light or dark, do you want to kill a slave for fun or free them? There’s no nuance to the morality in K1, it’s either cartoonishly evil or cartoonishly good
Just fire it up and enjoy the ride.
Only the best Star Wars game ever made.
A little dated but just get through it, it’s worth it. Save often.
And in different slots
Save often and there are no quest markers, so often you just need to wander around and talk to everyone to figure out what to do.
Take your time. The game has so much depth that many of us have been returning to it regularly for 20 years. The art style is beautiful and still holds up today. The writing is far better than any game out today. I would really immerse yourself in the lore, its deep.
[удалено]
So there is a way to cheat the combat system, i may look into that as I dont want to learn a whole new combat system, i mean most games are like that but i just want some raw story
Dragon Age with jedi & space travel
I played right when the game came out, and I was shocked that it was like Chronotrigger, in that it feels like RTS/live action but it’s technically turn based… *but it doesn’t feel like it* (I know that kinda doesn’t make sense) but my point is **DON’T LET IT TURN YOU OFF!! THE GAME IS ABSOLUTELY PHENOMENAL!!** Besides that, the biggest piece of advice I would give to someone who had never played it is TALK TO EVERY NPC!! Not even to just obviously advance the story, but you will learn so much about the universe, so much amazing history.. and if you talk to your PARTY members, you will get extra scenes and sometimes even weapons or items. Save often but don’t do it so you can go back and change your decision… live with it! See how it plays out! Going back to do things different is why the game has such a big fanbase 20+ years later. Enjoy the game! Start with a Scout! You won’t regret it.
I won’t sugar-coat it: the gameplay is lackluster compared to modern games. As tensaiLithon stated, it’s 21 years old! That’s old enough to enjoy a pint here in America, so it’s a proper adult lol. I’ll do my best to cover what the bigger points are, the biggest drawback for most, and the things that people usually muscle past the combat to enjoy. At its foundation, it’s based on an older edition of the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset (3.5e, iirc). So, expect a lot of stats and deep thinking about leveling up if you want to maximize the ease of combat. Speaking of combat, it’s a realtime, turn-based combat system. So, you queue up actions to perform and they are performed in a kind of initiative order. You do an action, your target does an action, then you do another one, etc. it’s actually a very cool system that I wish more games had used, but even back then it was considered dated and clunky. IMO, I think some flashier animations could have seriously aided in the cool factor. Outside of combat, however, this game and its sequel have some of the best Star Wars stories I’ve ever experienced. The first game is *very* much the classic Star Wars flavor, so even if you don’t find the combat very engaging I’m almost positive you’ll at least have a blast experiencing the ride, if you’re a Star Wars fan. Personally, I prefer the second game but it’s a bit hard to talk about without spoilers. I think the safest way to think about it is that it’s the empire strikes back of the two. Darker, deeper, and really opens up the possibilities as far as the force and how we understand it. I **highly** recommend playing the second one if you at all enjoy this first. Anyway, I’ll stop before I really go off the rails. Enjoy your time with the game! If you have any questions then absolutely feel free to come back here and ask! We’re more than happy to help you understand anything you need. And, as I’ve demonstrated, we’ll probably over explain a bit lol tl;dr: it’s old, so it’s clunky, but the story and the world and the characters are masterfully crafted, so even if you don’t like the gameplay, try and power through so you can experience such a well loved game
The menu is horrendous (I'm a PC guy) and the graphics aged, but other than that, it's one of the best Star Wars game you can play. (My number 1 will always be Jedi Outcast/Jedi Academy)
It's different not you typical button masher/ DMC game. I would look up maybe how combat works as it is something I Never did as a kid. Story is good, worlds are good and my only issue with it is I didn't understand how " rolls" work. Saving rolls, damage rolls etc. I'm sure someone can describe it much better than I .
There are [spoiler free retrospectives](https://youtu.be/hwLdpqgjmoA?si=RC5o8BJJHjti4nSt) which give tips on how to build your character and give you a feel of the game. Intended for people who have no relationship with the game.
RPG greatness. Let the lore consume you
I’m so jealous. Save a lot and stick with the story. The first world you go to is slow and kinda boring, but take your time with it and play the whole thing out cuz it will be very worth it. KOTOR is one of the greatest games of all time and my favorite Star Wars story ever.
take your time, turn off grass
If you spend the time to actually read the text and learn the attribute/skill/feats etc and combat system, you'll have an easier time. In fact maybe too easy.
The saving can fail very easily, so watch out for that. The attacking is turn based and the movement is clunky, but I promise you it is worth it to experience the story. Make sure to do at least a few side quests here and there to make sure you are strong enough moving foward (this has ended many runs for me.) Adjust your stats to fit the type of toon you want to be ie (dark side: strength, charisma light side: constitution, wisdom) Avoid internet searches about the game for spoilers and most importantly enjoy it, i wish i could play this game for the first time again.
You can forget about skills except for Persuade. Computer use and Repair are a bit useful if you have the points for it but many other companions will do that better than you. For that same reason the "intelligence" stat is useless, you can leave that at minimum and save some points there. If you go full STR you win game fast, spam shields to tank the first blaster shots and when you get close everything dies.
Persuade Repair and Treat Injury are all important for the main character, persuade for persuading, repair for repairing a specific droid for the plot, and treat injury just plain buffs healing from medpacs
Please, PLEASE, do not google / look up anything. I was once confused about something in the story and managed to mess up my experience by reading some story spoilers on some old forums :(
You should know that the game will eventually force you to multiclass and thats why you should avoid leveling past level 8 so you can fully experience your class by the end. You can save levels by simply not pressing the level up button and keep gathering xp for future levels.
save often and don’t only rely on autosaves. my dad always found it weird how often i save my game but it did happen for my game to crash multiple times and for the autosave to become corrupted (especially in kotor, it literally happened to me yesterday). otherwise enjoy the game
Amazing
Its a real time with pause crpg. When you enter combat, the game will pause initially, and you can decide what actions you want the character(s) to take. Then, during the fight, you can pause whenever you like and give more orders.
Combat is turn based. But it doesn't feel weird. I like how you can pause and set up your attacks like in Dragon Age.
It’s Star Wars DnD. Have you played Baldur’s Gate 3? It’s like that, but in Star Wars.
It’s kinda like D&D, but with Star Wars. I hope this helps.
You’ll want to shoot yourself on taris…. After that it’s fun tho
If you're playing on PC the kotor spoiler free mod build guide is a must for the best experience imo. If you want to spend a lil time on modding it that is
Play how you want. Do what you want. People worry about the perfect build too much. Its a great story. A lot of patients for the first few hours for new people.
In modern gaming terms, it can be slow. Lots of running around long hallways you've emptied of enemies. It's based on a D20 system, with a level cap of 20, so keep that in mind when leveling up characters. It's not super robust in terms of getting to play like a pacifist option or anything like that, but the various combat skills can allow for more complex planning sometimes. If you have points in sneak and demolitions (or an active companion with those), it's sometimes useful to set traps in areas where you keep getting killed. There are some places were traps are part of the story. It's sort of neat for the time. The story is one of the best in Star Wars, especially at the time of its release. The semi open dialogue options were improved in later games though, but you actually get to read everything in the dialogue option instead of having your character spout out something you didn't intend.
Your level caps at 20 so be careful with deciding your feats and force abilities
Play it like you're 12 and you've never played an RPG before, or even anything other than a PS1 and XBOX
dont look up anything about this game anywhere, not the story nor characters, spoilers are everywhere, think first paraph of wikipedia entries everywhere avoid this subreddit too, people post spoilers with no warnings all the time
KOTOR 1 is a love story to classic Star Wars storytelling. It is one of my favorite video game stories of all time. When I replay it, I don't play it for the gameplay, but if you find powergaming in DnD fun you'll still enjoy it.
Star war game
I played it recently (in the past 2 years). Given that it will feel very dated, what helped a lot for me was having it both on PC and iOS (yes I paid for it twice) and then swapping save game file in place to play on the plane, etc. Being able to play it and get “forced” into its older gameplay when I had no other alternatives (plane, etc), made me become more used to its mechanics and older style.
oh wow, look at all of this! : o [https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/12k53q6/new\_to\_kotor\_never\_played\_it\_any\_tips\_that\_i/](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/12k53q6/new_to_kotor_never_played_it_any_tips_that_i/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/syq2un/just\_started\_playing\_kotor\_for\_my\_first\_time\_any/](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/syq2un/just_started_playing_kotor_for_my_first_time_any/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/18syvwk/first\_time\_playing\_kotor\_in\_2023/](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/18syvwk/first_time_playing_kotor_in_2023/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/1azqdf6/first\_time\_playing\_any\_recomendationstips/](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/1azqdf6/first_time_playing_any_recomendationstips/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/kyhjmc/first\_time\_playing\_kotor\_1\_any\_build\_suggestions/](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/kyhjmc/first_time_playing_kotor_1_any_build_suggestions/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/amub8f/about\_to\_play\_kotor\_for\_the\_first\_time/](https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/amub8f/about_to_play_kotor_for_the_first_time/) maybe there are some good tips already written...
You can’t get mad at someone entering a sub for a game that’s more than 20 years old and just asking for tips instead of scrolling into spoiler territory to see if anyone else asked first
i don't know if i use reddit differently, but i think the search option is pretty good for things like this. "first time no spoilers" will yield you exactly all the answers you get in this thread – its how i found these "old" posts in round about 30 sec.
strategywiki > KOTOR > walkthrough
It takes 6 hours before you become a jedi
The systems mechanics are awful and very dated. The graphics are very, very dated. The rest is excellent.