The Star Wars movies are known for their incredible battle sequences; from the slow onslaught of the AT-ATs through the snowfields of Hoth to the multi-layered battle on and above Starkiller Base, the whole saga is filled with conflicts that gamers love to play their own part in.
The newly released Star Wars Battlefront II promised to bring those battles, from across the three eras of the onscreen saga, to life like never before, allowing us to play as ground troops, starfighters, and even legendary heroes like Yoda and Kylo Ren.
Unfortunately, the release of this game has been mired in controversy, with fans rightfully in uproar over publisher EA’s insistence on microtransactions, turning the game into something that you could pay to win. Thankfully, EA have relented on that front – for now, at least – and removed microtransactions from Battlefront II.
Though the game is still flawed, there is a lot of fun to be had, and its developers DICE have done an impressive job of recreating locations and characters from Star Wars. There are lots of neat Easter Eggs, as well as combat tricks and means of progression that may not be obvious when first playing.
We’ve gone hunting for these details you may not know about – so here are 15 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do In Star Wars Battlefront II.
Watch The Mos Eisley Cantina Band
Battlefront II’s Tatooine map sees Rebel and Imperial forces fighting it out in the streets of Mos Eisley. A trip to this infamous wretched hive of scum and villainy wouldn’t be complete without the cantina, and the cantina wouldn’t be complete without its band.
At first it may seem that Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes aren’t present, but that isn’t quite the case. If you pass the bar and enter the band’s alcove, there’s a button to activate a hologram of the bulbous-headed musicians.
Of course, this isn’t quite the real thing, but we can’t blame the band – as well as all the cantina’s customers – for not being around, given the whole battle going on. It’s still a neat touch.
Make A Tauntaun Headbutt Enemies
Tauntauns are seriously useful creatures – you can speedily scout out snowy landscapes with them, you can use them as a sleeping bag when it gets too cold, and now you can even bring them into combat.
Adding an extra level of fun to the Battlefront series staple that is the Battle of Hoth, soldiers from both sides can jump onto any Tauntaun they find wandering around. They come with their own set of abilities, including grenade launchers (not built into the Tauntaun, the soldier carries it) and headbutting.
Knocking snowtroopers to the ground with a powerful bash from your mount’s horns is as enjoyable as it sounds. Sure, the Tauntauns may be a bit more indestructible than they probably should be, but that’s all part of the fun.
Tricks To Earn Battle Points Quickly
In order to be a Battlefront II pro, you need to rack up the battle points so you can bring in hero units. Some simple tricks will help you do that much quicker.
For a start, always play the objective rather than treating every game like a deathmatch – the game rewards you for sticking to your aims. Stick with your squad too, as you points will double, triple, or even quadruple if you achieve objectives alongside your spawn buddies.
But killing enemies does get you points too, and one trick is to go after the AI enemies – in both Starfighter and Galactic Assault – who are easier to take on than players but also give you points. Finally, don’t forget to equip the Bounty Hunter Star Card, which increases the amount of points you get for every player kill.
Change The Viewpoint In A Starfighter
It may seem obvious once you know it, but the starfighter controls in Battlefront II can be complex at first and aren’t explained brilliantly in game; these extra tricks will help you fly like a Skywalker.
If you hold down left on the d-pad, you can look behind your ship, which is a useful trick when you need to know who’s chasing you or how far you need to turn back to get to that objective you’ve passed. Just don’t hold it for too long or you won’t see what’s in front of you.
Also, you can switch into first-person mode by pressing down on the d-pad, just like when playing as a trooper. Admittedly, first-person flying can be a little tricky, but it’s worth having a go and seeing which mode suits you best.
Levelling Up Classes, Explained
The levelling system of Battlefront II can seem complicated. Understanding it helps you to build up your units, so let’s try to explain...
Firstly, there’s your overall player level; that’s the one you see rise at the end of every game. But the Star Levels that are what's important; each of your classes, ships, and heroes has its own Star Level.
Star Level is not increased through gaining XP but by collecting Star Cards. A common Star Card will add 1 point to a unit’s Star Level, uncommon will add two, rare will add three, and epic will add four. You can craft Star Cards or collect them via crates.
It’s useful to do this, because once a unit has a Star Level of five, you’ll be able to equip two Cards at a time, and once they reach ten, you can have three.
Things To Find on Starkiller Base
Battlefront II is the first time we’ve been able to visit locations from the new sequel movies, and its developers have put a lot of work into faithfully recreating locations such as Starkiller Base – including some neat details.
In three rooms just off from one corridor inside the First Order’s compound, you can find torture chairs like the one Kylo Ren kept Rey shackled to in The Force Awakens. However, they’re not interactive, so there’s no Force-torturing your opponents.
In addition, some smart players have found that a little hacking reveals Snoke’s throne room – from the scene where Kylo converses with the giant hologram of the Supreme Leader – hidden outside the boundaries of the map. It’s not clear if this will ever be accessible without hacks, though.
Tricks To Earn Credits Quickly
We’ve detailed how to earn Battle Points, but you’ll also want to be building up a solid stash of credits in order to splash out on heroes, ships, and loot crates. You’ll be rich in no time with these tips...
As with Battle Points, you get credits for playing well, and particularly for sticking to the objective. You’re also rewarded credits for completing milestone challenges, so check your Career tab regularly and keep an eye on what tasks you’re approaching completion on. Plus, remember to open your daily loot crate every day – free money just for signing in!
Don’t just stick to multiplayer, though. Playing through the campaign, even just once, will lump you with a nice 5,000 credits, and that increases if you find all the collectibles. More can be earned in the Arcade mode, too.
Turn Bossk Into An Unstoppable Predator
When choosing which heroes or villains to play as first in Battlefront II, you probably immediately went for Kylo Ren, Yoda, or one of the other lightsaber-wielding badasses with cool Force abilities.
But Bossk, the reptilian bounty hunter who barely cameos in Empire Strikes Back, is a bit of a dark horse, and surprisingly can be one of the most powerful heroes if used correctly. His Predator Instincts ability, which gives him heat vision, enhanced strength, and high-damage micro-grenades is not only really useful but can be improved using Star Cards.
Ultimate Predator extends the power’s use after every kill, Predator Resilience makes Bossk harder to kill during Instincts, and Unrelenting Predator adds the side effect that other abilities charge faster. Combine all of these and Bossk can take out Rebels like he’s shooting womp rats.
Easter Eggs In Maz's Castle
Maz Kanata’s castle is another map carefully replicating a location from The Force Awakens, and there are some great details to be found, such as all the flags outside the entrance and a hidden portrait of Clone Wars character Hondo Ohnaka.
One particularly interesting aspect of this map, though, is the "artifact" that teams battle over in Strike mode. Though the game never tells us what it is, looking at it close up reveals that your objective is in fact the box which, in the film, contains Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber – a pretty cool thing to be fighting over.
This links with another Easter egg that some players found in the beta but doesn’t seem to exist any more: in the downstairs corridor, when approaching the door behind which Rey found the lightsaber, players reported hearing strange voices, as if through the Force.
Unlock The Best Weapons
Another aspect of progression in Battlefront II is unlocking weapons, and again this will take a good bit of time and effort for you to unlock everything.
When you begin playing, each class will have the basic version of their weapon – a blaster for Assault, heavy blaster for Heavy, pistol for Officer, and sniper rifle for Specialist. You can, however, unlock three more weapons for each class, and this is done by hitting the 50, 200, and 500 kill milestones as those units.
Whereas with most classes, the final unlock gets you the best weapon, in this case, the second unlock for the Assault class – the CR-2 – is the one you really want to get your hands on. This is because it has incredibly good rate of fire and cooling times, getting rid of the pesky overheating problem all other weapons in this game seem to have.
Amidala’s Ship On Tatooine
Though the Tatooine map’s Galactic Assault mode is set in the original trilogy, there’s a nice little Easter egg which throws us back to the prequels.
Fly over Mos Eisley and you’ll be able to see this ship parked at the edge of town – a Naboo diplomatic cruiser. The temptation is to say that this is Queen Amidala’s ship from The Phantom Menace, which did land on Tatooine, but that isn’t quite right, for two reasons. Firstly, that ship landed outside Mos Espa, not Mos Eisley. And secondly, it had a different shape; this is more like the one Amidala used in Attack of the Clones.
It’s not quite clear what a Naboo senator’s barge is doing in Mos Eisley during the Galactic Civil War. Perhaps there’s a whole backstory. Or perhaps DICE just had the ship model built and needed something to put there.
Shoot Up The Wildlife
Of all the cool details to spot around the maps, we particularly enjoy the differing wildlife of all the planets. There are all sorts of weird and wonderful space creatures, as well as, for some reason, chickens. Normal Earth-style chickens. On Takodana.
Most of these animals are pretty ignorant of the battles going on around them, and won’t even react to being shot at. However, the colourful birds to be found hopping around Theed are, as YouTube user KingSgaming discovered, are a different story. The parrot-like birds will jump out of the way if you shoot at their feet, and be thrown across the street if you lob a grenade at them.
Of course, we don’t advocate going around shooting birds in real life. But as a quick bit of target practice before taking on the droid army, let ‘em have it.
Things To Spot On Naboo
As well as its avian wildlife, there’s a lot to spot when exploring Theed, which as a whole is a very faithful replication of the city streets and palace in which the final battle of The Phantom Menace raged.
For one, there’s a pretty cool collection of non-player droids and their captive clone troopers set up near the droid army’s spawning point. These "extras" add a lot to the feel of the whole map.
And then, if you explore the royal palace, there are some neat Easter eggs in the form of the paintings on the wall. As well as some pretty Naboo landscapes, you’ll be able to find the likenesses of Queen Amidala, her successor Queen Jamillia, and Governor Sio Bibble.
The best thing about this map, though? There’s not a Gungan in sight.
Explore The Parked Ships on Takodana
Perhaps unwisely for such a popular venue, Maz Kanata’s castle on Takodana doesn’t have a "car park" for all visiting spaceships, meaning smugglers have to find a suitable clearing among the trees and then make a trek to the entrance.
This does mean that, if you take the time to explore the Takodana forests, you’ll be able to spot a few interesting ships. There’s the Millennium Falcon, of course, which comes with a neat bit of faithfulness to the movie – the path from the Falcon to Maz’s castle is pretty much exactly as it appeared in The Force Awakens.
Elsewhere in the forest, there’s a Firespray-class ship – that’s the same model as Boba Fett’s Slave I, except this doesn’t seem to be Fett’s ship, as it’s painted differently. There’s also a First Order dropship – presumably for invasion purposes and not because Captain Phasma fancied a drink.
Fit into storylines from The Comics And Novels
The campaign mode of Battlefront II mostly takes place in the months immediately after Return of the Jedi; this is a period that the rebooted Star Wars canon has charted in detail, and Iden Versio’s story fits neatly in with several other tales.
A large section of the campaign revolves around Operation: Cinder, the Emperor’s last command to devastate several planets after his death. This scheme, and in particular the battle on and over Naboo, first appeared in the comic Shattered Empire.
The story also brings in Palpatine’s wannabe successor Gallius Rax and the Empire’s eventual downfall at the Battle of Jakku, both of which were detailed in Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath novel trilogy. And look out for references to recurring canon character Rae Sloane, the Uprising from the mobile game Uprising, and Thane Kyrell and Kendy Idele from the novel Lost Stars.
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Have you found any other cool tips and tricks in Star Wars Battlefront II? Let us know in the comments.
