Here’s our first look at how Battlefront II crates tie in with Star Cards

The Battlefront II loot crate system has been mostly shrouded in mystery—until now. Thanks to Elliot of BattlefrontUpdates, we got our first glimpse of how this crate system will work.

You can check it out in embedded video; I’ve made some notes below that. Because what’s shown in the video is pre-release footage, things may change by the game’s final release. Also note that while the footage says “Closed Alpha”, the recording is an extension of the build at EA PLAY, not of the game’s official Alpha (whenever it may be).

Here’s what I’ve noted:

• Crates come in three varieties: Common, Uncommon and Rare. There are also daily crates you can earn just for logging in each day. There is also a special crate titled “Alpha Celebration Crate” which was likely just for this build.
• Crates can be purchased with credits. Credits are awarded at the end of matches based on your performance, just like EA’s first Battlefront.
• Unlockable items include Star Cards, Crafting Parts and Credits. We don’t know for sure just yet if weapons and weapon attachments will be included in crates, but I wouldn’t be shocked if that was the case.
• You’ll be able to spend Crafting Parts in order to manually unlock and upgrade items you haven’t earned through loot crates. This will allow you to customize classes to your liking.
• If a crate gives you an item you already own, it’ll be converted into Crafting Parts.

Elliot also made a video on the Star Card system, which I’ve made further notes on below:

Here are my notes:

• There are five tiers of Star Cards: Common (white), Uncommon (green), Rare (blue), Epic (purple) and Legendary (gold). The first four we already knew about and their effects differences are shown on each trooper description page.
• The Legendary cards are super rare and provide an extra effect outside of the card’s normal ability. For instance, the Legendary version of the heavy trooper’s Sentry Star Card (the Z-6 rotary blaster cannon), has an active time of 16 seconds, which is the same as the Epic version. However, the Legendary card provides a Damage Received Reduction of 5-percent, whereas the normal tiers provide no damage reduction bonuses. This extra bonus isn’t shown on the trooper description page until you unlock the Legendary card.
• I’m unsure if Legendary cards can be crafted using Crafting Parts. Edit: In a later video, Elliot confirmed that Legendary cards won’t be craftable, which isn’t too surprising and should add to the excitement of unlocking them.
• Each class will start with four base Star Cards that are automatically of the Common variety when you first boot up the game. There’ll then be extra Star Cards that you’ll need to unlock.

All in all, pretty cool! While EA hasn’t said how you’ll be able to purchase crates with real-world money (my guess is that real-world money will purchase in-game credits), it looks like they’ll be pretty easy to unlock just by playing the game. Hopefully this means it won’t turn into a pay-to-win system.

Oh one last thing to note: the videos includes a UI screen that seems to indicate there’ll only be six heroes besides the four that were playable at EA PLAY. However, we just don’t know the final hero count until EA actually confirms it. Anyone stating that the game will have 10 playable heroes at launch is purely speculating right now—that screen may simply be a placeholder. Of course, it’s a real possibility that we’ll only see 10 launch heroes, but I wouldn’t be shocked if we got at least 12 or 14.

Battlefront II sets down November 17 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. Follow SWGO on Facebook or Twitter for all the latest Battlefront II news.