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28 January 2012 4 Comments

Datacrons, Matrix Shards and What To Do With Them

Unlike many other MMOs, SWTOR has hidden rewards for exploration and experimentation scattered all throughout its planets and game mechanics. One of the most popular of these rewards is the mighty Datacron.

Datacrons

Datacrons are small cubes hidden all over the game; they give off a coloured glow, and getting to most of them usually requires some tricky exploration, or platforming and pipe-jumping the likes of which nobody’s done since playing Mario Brothers. (A couple of them involve forcefields and similar shenanigans and you’ll need to take a friend.)

When you find a datacron it has the glowing quest triangle icon above it, though that doesn’t show up on the minimap, and using it will give you one of two things: either a small permanent bonus to one of your stats, or a matrix shard. Every planet has at least three datacrons; some have as many as five. Discovering a datacron also unlocks a new lore entry for your codex.

If you’re interested in chasing down all the datacrons and want to find them for yourself, I recommend a few things:

  • Play with game sound turned up – datacrons make an ambient sound that’s hard to describe, but very recognisable. It’s sort of an echoey “fizzing” sound. Kind of.
  • Whenever you enter a new area, pan the camera around a lot and look up on ledges. Even if you can’t see the datacron itself, its associated coloured glow is often very visible from a long way away.
  • If you see things that look climbable, or jumpable-on, or run-up-able, try climbing them, jumping on them or running up them. I’ve found more than one datacron just by thinking “hmm, this looks suspiciously datacronny” and running up a ramp, following a ledge, jumping through a hole and so on.

Alternatively, if you’re not an explorer type, you can use Reddit’s Big Ol’ Datacron List, or SWTOR-Spy’s Datacrons List & Walkthroughs, but this will pretty much take all the fun out of it if you’re an explorer. (There’s still plenty of challenge left in actually getting to most of them, though.)

In addition, although it’s not listed in the guides, the Republic Fleet has a +10 All Stats datacron, and I’m assuming the Imperial Fleet does as well.

Matrix Shards and Making Relics

About 20% of the datacrons will give you a matrix shard, rather than a stat boost. The matrix shards can be found in your Mission Items inventory, and come in Red, Blue, Yellow and Green flavours. They’re no use for anything until you get three of them; then, you can combine them in a special machine to create a relic item.

This machine, the Matrix Shard Assembler, can be found in the special assembly chamber available to each faction. For the Republic, the chamber is inside the ruined Jedi Temple complex on Coruscant; for the Sith Empire, it’s in the Dark Temple Approach area on Dromund Kaas. Inside the chamber, there’s the aforementioned Matrix Shard Assembler, as well as three Shard Input Panels and a Matrix Cube Disassembler.

Creating a Relic

To make a relic, go to each Shard Input Panel and click on it; you’ll get a dialogue box to select a color shard. Pick one shard for each input panel; the shard ‘recipes’ are listed below, so make sure you’re using the right combination of shards for the relic that you want. It doesn’t matter which order you input the crystal colours, only that you’re using the right ones.

Once you’ve entered all three matrix shards into the input panels, go to the Matrix Shard Assembler, and use it. Confirm that you want to initiate the assembly sequence on the dialogue that follows, and you’ll see the machine making your Matrix Cube. Once it’s all complete, click on the cube and you’ll receive your shiny new relic. (Note that when you collect it, it goes into your Mission Items inventory, like the matrix shards.)

This is a video guide to the process:

(If the embedding doesn’t work for you, you can watch the video on YouTube instead.)

Disassembling a Relic

There are only a limited number of Matrix Shards available – see the list below for where you can find them – and if you’ve already used some of them to make a relic, you’ll need to break that relic down into shards again if you want to make another.

You can disassemble a relic in this same chamber, using the Matrix Shard Disassembler. However, you’ll need one extra item to do this – a Reconfigured Disassembler Core, sold by a Jawa vendor on Tatooine. (It’s not BoP, so low-level characters without ships can get their cores from higher-level characters.) The Core costs 8,000 credits; Republic players can buy it from Kitpth, the Stims Vendor at the sandcrawler just north of Anchorhead, while Imperials can buy it from Pitkth, a vendor just near the exit of Mos Ila.

To disassemble your relic, make sure you have a Reconfigured Disassembler Core in your inventory, along with the Matrix Cube. Inside the assembly chamber, all you have to do is go to the Matrix Shard Disassembler, click on it, and pick “Yes” when it asks you to choose your input. The machine will do its thing, using up the disassembler core and leaving you with a burned-out core in your inventory, and returning the matrix shards to your Mission Items. From there, you can make yourself another cube with a different recipe.

Note that the Reconfigured Disassembler Core is used up in the process; every time you want to break down a Matrix Cube, you’ll need to buy a new core from Tatooine.

Matrix Cube Recipes

The following recipes can be used to make various relics. Note that you can only have one Matrix Cube at a time, so if you want to make a new recipe you’ll need to disassemble your previous one first.

NB: Ignore the Augment slots on the tooltips. Sadly, Matrix Cubes don’t have Augment slots in-game.
NB2: Some of these recipes appear to double up on stats; it may be that some of the cubes haven’t been re-itemised since the beta. I don’t yet have all the shards myself, so I can’t test out every recipe. I’ll correct this and note any updates as more correct info comes to hand.

Level 15 Matrix Cubes: 3 different shards

(Note there are no Cunning matrix cubes at this level.)

Level 24 Matrix Cubes: 2 Yellow/Blue shards, 1 of another colour

(Note that the two Strength cubes appear to be duplicates; the stats may have since been changed.)

Level 32 Matrix Cubes: 2 Red/Green shards, 1 of another colour

(Note that the two Strength cubes appear to be duplicates; the stats may have since been changed.)

Level 50 Matrix Cubes: 3 of one colour
Force Users

(Note that the all-blue cube appears to be an Aim cube even for Force users.)

Tech Users

(Note that the all-green cube appears to be a Strength cube even for Tech users.)

Where To Get Matrix Shards

These are the planets where you can find the different Matrix shards you’ll need. Note there’s only three of each colour, so you don’t have much choice about skipping the shards you need. If you want to know exactly where to get each one, check the Reddit and SWTOR-Spy links in the Datacrons section above.

Red

  • Ord Mantell (Republic) or Korriban (Imperial)
  • Hoth
  • Ilum

Green

  • Taris (Republic) or Balmorra (Imperial)
  • Corellia
  • Belsavis

Blue

  • Hutta (Imperial) or Tython (Republic)
  • Tatooine
  • Corellia

Yellow

  • Coruscant (Republic) or Dromund Kaas (Imperial)
  • Nar Shaddaa
  • Ilum
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