Illuminating Ilum
Ilum in Star Wars: The Old Republic is where the personal business of the class stories gives way to something larger: a cold, blue‑white frontline where the Republic and Empire are openly at war, and where the consequences of Darth Malgus’s ambitions come to a head. It’s a harsh planet to look at as well as to fight on—wide open snowfields, jagged ice ridges and deep crevasses, all wrapped in blizzards and low visibility that make even simple travel feel a little precarious. The palette is almost monochrome, punctuated by weapons fire, crashed vehicles and field fortifications, which does a good job of selling the idea that this is less a place to live than a resource to be fought over.
The resource in question is Ilum’s Adegan crystal deposits, long associated with lightsaber construction and, in SWTOR’s timeframe, valuable enough to draw both factions into a protracted fight for control. The main quest lines send you across key sub‑zones like the Western Ice Shelf and the Ilum battlefield, into fortified bases and out across no‑man’s‑land to secure artillery, disable enemy emplacements and push back opposing advances. The ancient crystal caves sit slightly apart from that chaos, lit by the eerie glow of their crystal formations and sprinkled with relics that hint at Ilum’s older significance to Force sensitives. Structurally, the planet combines open‑world questing with what was originally intended as a high‑level open PvP area; early patches struggled with balance and base‑camping issues there, prompting design changes after players found ways to farm Valor and lock each other into one‑sided battles.
Story-wise, Ilum is the launch point for Malgus’s attempted break with the old order. What begins as a straightforward resource war between Republic and Empire twists when Malgus declares himself Emperor of a “new Empire”, seizes a stealth fleet built using Ilum’s crystals, and calls on other Sith to join him. The two flashpoints tied to the planet—The Battle of Ilum and The False Emperor—cover that turn. In Battle of Ilum you fight through Malgus’s forces on the ground, securing a command ship from his invading stealth armada so you can track him to his base. The False Emperor then takes you aboard the Emperor’s former cloaked space station, now Malgus’s throne, to bring down his new regime before he can field an unstoppable stealth fleet. Both Republic and Imperial characters run versions of this arc, with different framing but the same end point: a showdown that ends with Malgus falling from his platform into the station’s depths and his “new Empire” collapsing around him.
Ilum’s art direction reinforces everything the story is trying to say. The landscape is littered with wrecked walkers, shattered turrets, crashed fighters and patchwork bunkers dug into the ice, all of which make it clear that the current engagements are only the latest in a chain of battles. Out in the open, the weather and the sheer emptiness make the fighting feel exposed and vulnerable; down in the crystal caves, the glow and echoing sound design give you a brief reminder that this world has more to it than fortifications and kill zones. That contrast between stark battlefield and strange, beautiful interior mirrors Ilum’s dual nature as both sacred ground and strategic asset.
In terms of the broader game, Ilum forms part of the bridge into SWTOR’s first full expansion, Rise of the Hutt Cartel. With Malgus removed from the stage and the crystal war effectively stalemated, the focus shifts in that expansion to Makeb: a resource‑rich world caught between Republic, Empire and an opportunistic Hutt Cartel looking to turn the ongoing galactic chaos to its own advantage. Rise of the Hutt Cartel, released on 14 April 2013, raised the level cap from 50 to 55, added Makeb as a new story planet, and introduced the Makeb reputation track—Citizens of Makeb for Republic players and Makeb Imperial Forces for Imperials—as part of a broader Galactic Reputation system. The Republic and Imperial storylines on Makeb diverge in tone and objectives, but both build on the idea that the power vacuum and uncertainty left by earlier conflicts, including Malgus’s failed coup, have opened the door for third parties like the Hutts to make their own grab at prominence.
Looked at together, Ilum and Rise of the Hutt Cartel show SWTOR stitching personal class narratives into a wider arc of shifting alliances, resource wars and new threats. Ilum’s unforgiving terrain, its crystal‑driven strategic logic and the twin flashpoints that close out the Malgus storyline give a sense of closure to the launch story while also setting up the idea that the galaxy will not settle down just because one would‑be Emperor has been thrown down a reactor shaft. Makeb then picks up that thread and runs with it, widening the frame to take in Hutts, corporate interests and a war that has become as much about who can exploit the chaos as about simple Republic versus Empire.
