Now you know how to move and navigate the maps, so what do you do? Your story missions and side missions. Completing missions progresses your character’s story and advances their development as a character.
When you see a triangle icon above a character’s head, this means they have a mission for you to pick up.
Right-click on that character to start a conversation to learn more about a mission or grab a written mission task.
** SIDE NOTE: Some missions may require content access before allowing you to accept the mission.
These will have a triangle icon with a Cartel Coin symbol.
There are a lot of types of missions. So let me explain them in more detail.
These are the path and story line of your Origin Story, the core of the game. In order to progress your character and be able to do all the expansion content later, you need to complete your Story Missions.
For Story Missions, look for the 
symbol. You will find those on the direct Origin Story lines.
Once you have picked up the story mission and completed it, you sometimes need to return to someone to complete that mission. For that, you will look for the 
symbol to show it is the person you need to see or the place you need to be.
BONUS MISSIONS: Along with some of your Origin Story and other missions you pick up, there may be some Bonus Objectives. These will give extra loot or credits and experience points for doing them alongside the main mission. Be sure to complete the Bonus Objectives BEFORE you finish your main mission or it may not count.
Planetary Arcs are more optional missions that can be done at any time during your time playing the story part of the game. They are not necessary to the overall main story, but do provide some nice background and more information for some of the story lines so it is a good idea to do them.
*These missions can be completed only once per character.
All other missions that carry the 
symbol are considered Side Quests. These missions are voluntary and can be done at any time while you are playing, whether during your story or coming back to them later. To turn these in, look for the 
symbol on your map.
Exploration Missions 
are more optional missions that can be done at any time during your time playing the game. You must enable them on your map to see them. These missions will give you additional quests to help you level up, get new side stories, or just more interesting stuff to do in the game.
*These missions can be completed only once per character.
Bonus Series Missions 
are missions that are meant to be completed after you have finished the main story missions on each planet. They are optional, and can be repeated for conquest points and Alliance crates that can be turned in for cosmetic gear after Chapter 9 of Knights of the Fallen Empire.
These can be picked up in five different places: Fleet, on planet while exploring, Odessen (once you reach chapters), Heroic Stations on each planet and your Conquest tab (default L) by clicking the Planet: Heroic Mission and using the “Mission Board” button at the bottom of the right panel.
Heroic Missions are daily repeatable and can help you get new gear, credits, conquest commendations and Alliance crates. Many people use “Heroics” to level up and earn credits and currency to get higher gear.
Galactic Encounters are a variety of repeatable activities that rotate availability over time. When you open your Galaxy Map and choose a planet, you will see if there are Galactic Encounters there. There are three types of Encounters:
Hidden Chain Encounters – These appear once per hour and kills are shared with all in the vicinity, but loot is not shared.
Harder Encounters – These encounters have several steps, harder steps, or boss fights that require a bit more skill or time. As with the Hidden Chain ones, the kills are shared with players in the vicinity, but loot is not.
Easier Encounters – These encounters are relatively simple and some don’t even have combat. This one is group shared meaning only those in your group will progress. Again, kills are shared but loot is not.
PvP Missions are those that require you to do player vs player combat. There are not many of these in the game, and most are during expansions or part of achievements and not true “missions” or marked with the 
icon.
The other way to do PvP is via the Groupfinder, where you will see the list to the left. You can then choose what kind of PvP you would like to do and be put in a queue to enter.
These missions will automatically be added to your list when you enter their area.
Companion missions are conversations you have with your companions that give more story and influence with that companion.
Crew Skill missions are missions you will send your companions on to gather materials needed for crafting and the raise your influence with that companion.
Your accepted missions will appear, by default, in the upper right corner of your screen. For Heroics, Planetary Arcs, and Exploration Missions, Yellow bold is the title of the mission and the light-blue text is the task you need to do to complete or move to the next portion of that mission. For your Story Missions, the Purple-Pink is the title of the mission and the light-blue text is the task you need to do to complete or move to the next portion of that mission. All types of missions will list a secondary Bonus*** mission in Yellow text with its task listed under the main mission it is a bonus to.
Any missions you have that don’t fit in the mission window will be listed under as “Additional Missions”. You can click that title and it will open your missions log.
*** Side note on Bonus Missions, to get credit for them, you must complete them before the objective of the Main Mission is completed.
As you play, there will be times that you have what is called “instances” that your character will enter to further their story. You can bring friends into these with you to observe and, in some cases, fight enemies with you.
The entrances are marked with either a red, blue or green barrier. If red, it means you do not have access. If blue, you have accepted the mission and someone else has entered first and you can follow into the instance. If green, you have been given permission to enter and can proceed into the instance.
You can run your cursor over the barrier to see a tooltip that tells you which of the above scenarios you are facing and have permission to enter.
If you find your group members cannot enter, you and them need to check in your Preferences menu Social tab to see if you need to select “Allow same class” to allow others into your instance. This will not progress their class stories, even if they share the same story.