Vant and Anstal are max level

Well, like it says. Vant Galaide, my bounty hunter mercenary (I created him before you could be any tech class playing the hunter story) and Anstal Tane, my smuggler scoundrel (likewise) are now both at max level, although they're either just finished or just finishing Hoth. The remaining planets, I can breeze through, just doing the class stories and ignoring or playing, as I please, any other missions. 

However, I'm in the process of relocating and starting another job. This means that I'll be very busy. My subscription, which I always buy in the 2 month increments, because I never know when I'm going to step away from it for a while, expires in just over a week, and I think I'm going to go ahead and let it lapse until I'm set up again. I've determined two things:

1) I'm pretty sure that I can finish the galactic season 6 level 100 before my subscription lapses, so I'll go ahead and do so, and pocket all of the benefits, the last of which I'll pick up in the next couple of days of the new week, I believe. If for some reason I come up short and can't finish it, I'll decide at that point what to do.

2) I figured out why Voss was so laggy after coming back; as part of 7.3, they redrew the assets. So now, Voss doesn't look as good as it used to, and it's laggy, at least on my computer. They're already signaled that they're doing the same thing for Hutta for 7.5, whenever it launches. If Hutta becomes too laggy to be fun to play, I'm pretty about done with the game, honestly, until I can upgrade or replace my rig. That's disappointing, but I'm starting to lean into addressing some of my other hobbies and letting SWTOR rest for a while. That will for sure make that a reality.

In any case, here's the slightly updated Vant Galaide Hoth look. Then space opera in general will probably take a back seat to sword & sorcery.

EDIT: What I think I'll do, actually, is go ahead and do Saxon Hettar's Hutta stuff sooner rather than later. That way, in case Hutta turns out really laggy after the graphical "upgrade", I don't have to spend much time there unless I want to. I've already moved Beorn Hengest off Hutta; he finished it a month or so ago and is waiting to continue his story on the Fleet.

Meanwhile, like I said, I'm going to grind to the end of seasons in the next day or two, and then I may not play for a few weeks, my subscription will lapse, and I'll be relocated in a new place when I start again. We'll see if the break becomes a discontinuity that makes me not play nearly as much when it's over or not (I suspect that maybe it will be, because I'm already revisiting DFX, my fantasy setting, and thinking about new things to do there). Also, the double XP and half priced collection unlock sale is still ongoing, although I'm not sure what I want to unlock right now. There are some pretty pricey things I've got my eye on on the GTN, but it seems unlikely that I'll get them so soon. We'll see. I'll have 1200 or so cartel coins just from the Seasons rewards that I'll get today or tomorrow. But that doesn't mean that I'll have anything meaningful to spend them on right now that I really want.

Anyway, here's Graggory, which even though it's one of my earliest names is actually one of my favorites because it's got that Star Warsian "not quite a real name, but almost" feel to it like Han Solo or Lando Calrissian, sporting a 50s spaceman suit.

UPDATE: Finished the season. I think I'll do a little bit when I have time of some other stuff, put not much. I'll come back to SWTOR at some point after my relocation.

Who said Hoth was no fun?

Why do characters always complain about Hoth and Tatooine? Those are two of my favorite planets, and yeah; if I were a real live space traveler, I'd go to both for sightseeing.

Here's Vant Galaide taking Mako, who despite her bold protestations really is just a pretty sidekick, on vacation to see the volcanos and crazy ice crystals on Hoth in the Molten Rift section of the Crystal Wastes.

Vant is about to hit level 80, but I think I'll finish the Hoth planetary story with him anyway before I retire that aspect of his game. Then I'll turn to Mirabeau Tane and have him finish Tatooine. Now that the swoop bikers are gone, it'll feel quiet and natural again. Then we'll see. Maybe I should finish someone else's earlier planet while the double XP is still running so I get ahead in the game. Also, I've got seasons objectives to do, including GSI (again; I'm already legendary reputation) and a bunch of Nar Shaddaa Heroics, and some Alderaan champion-level guys to kill. I'll figure out who benefits the most from doing those, so they can grind some 200% XP.

However, I have some very busy days ahead of me, with less free time than I'm used to (although I already don't have as much as I'd like) so it may actually be hard to finish everything that I want to this week, and the next several weeks may all be kind of quiet in terms of SWTOR progress. In fact, it could be so bad, that when my subscription expires in a little under two weeks, I may let it linger for another couple of weeks or so before I try to restart it. I might just be too busy to play much at all for the next month or so.

Sigh. We'll see. TBD on if this is really going to be a problem or not, but I suspect that it will.

I think it's curious that ice plants seem to be quite commonplace. More than half of the planetary (or lunar, actually, although I'm lumping them together for purposes here) bodies in our solar system are icy. But they're not like Hoth, which is like Antarctica across a whole planet. If the atmosphere is breathable rather than sitting in lakes and ponds of liquid or even frozen nitrogen, hydrogen, etc. then it's a pretty tame ice planet. That's why all of the "oh noez, Hoth is so cold" stuff makes me laugh. Europa? Triton? Pluto? C'mon, Hoth is tame.

May the Fourth be with you

May the Fourth is obviously a fake holiday. Nobody thinks this is a real holiday just like nobody thinks National Talk Like a Pirate Day is a real holiday. It's just kind of fun as a pun on the iconic phrase, and an excuse to do something Star Wars related if you're a fan in any capacity.

I'm not really a fan of the modern franchise much at all. I do still like the older, 12+ year old content (and some of the more recent content) from the game SWTOR, obviously, since I still play it a fair bit. I'm still a fan of the original trilogy, although not as much as I used to be, as I now see them with more jaded and cynical eyes.

I actually saw this recently. It's not very accurate, even though these are guys that I otherwise often appreciate their commentary. Nobody hits every pitch, I guess.

To celebrate May the 4th we should all appreciate what a Boomer institution Star Wars is:

• Luke forsook his rural upbringing to take part in a political campaign he had no place in. 

• Leah was a strong independent feminist. 

• Obi-Wan was a childless hippie who devoted his life to eastern mysticism. 

• Han is a wandering deadbeat who lives with his dog and is obsessed with his car. 

• Darth Vader abandoned his family to pursue his career. 

• The robots are in an openly gay relationship. 

• Everyone treats the empire like the great evil while fully enjoying the comforts and protections it provides.

Well, George Lucas is a Boomer, and he's a "shy, sensitive" Boomer who went to film school in the late 60s early 70s and he's from California. Even Modesto isn't exactly normal anymore. Maybe it was when he lived there as a kid and teenager.

That said:

• This is a fair point. I do get tired of the trope of the bored starry-eyed young person who is unappreciative of his idyllic rural life. It's worse in Disney's Beauty & the Beast, but it's pretty bad here too. Of course, Tatooine isn't quite as idyllic as a romanticized interpretation of rural Medieval France, but still. I'm one of those guys who really appreciates the desert. If I could live in the relatively empty western Utah desert, I would.
• Leah (sic) was no such thing. She was sassy and that occasionally bordered on unlikeable and obnoxious, and she did have a leadership role in the organization that I presume was based on name recognition (although she did seem to grow into the talent to manage it), but she was neither a feminist nor very independent, at least until Jar Jar Abrams took over in the sequel trilogy.
• Yeah, I'm with you there. I have less regard for the Jedi than I did. I don't think Lucas meant to ruin the reputation of the Jedi with the prequel trilogy, but that's what ended up happening anyway because he simply didn't have the wherewithal to write an honest to goodness hero, being completely unacquainted with what makes one. In retrospect, even Obiwan's (and Yoda's) behavior in the originals is pretty contemptible.
• Han was a criminal. Not sure what he was smuggling, but it was illegal. He's a gunrunner or a drugdealer at best. They didn't focus on that, because it's the classic case of the anti-hero with a heart of gold trope. Not sure if that's a trope that rose up via the Boomers, but I've certainly seen it in other works that are older than they are.
• Well, that's pushing it. No doubt that was thrown in there more as a joke than something to be taken seriously.
• I do wonder why everyone is so eager to make regular guy friends out to be gay. Of course, C-3PO's voice doesn't help. But it's a trope too; the overly fussy, neurotic butler type. I actually thought that Anthony Daniels was himself gay, but turns out he's married to a wife and all that, so it seems unlikely.
• We don't see much in the way of what comforts and protections it does provide, so that's another handwavey attempt to make it current. I do think that it's curious that they're all celebrating in the redone end scene of Return of the Jedi (Special Edition) on Tatooine, where Tatooine wasn't exactly an Imperial world, I thought. Luke himself mentions early on that of course he hates the Empire but it's so far away. And the Stormtroopers looking for the droids by canvasing the streets and killing Jawas and farmers is hardly what I'd call comfort or protection.

Anyway, I'm probably taking this too seriously by even responding and rebutting some of this stuff. No doubt it was just meant to be silly. But still.

The other fake holiday this weekend, of course, was Cinco de Mayo. This is clearly not an American holiday, but ironically, it's not really a Mexican holiday either—my Google search AI seems to suggest that Mexican immigrants as early as the late 19th century celebrated it, but it was actually a bigger holiday in America than in Mexico, at least until recently. Nobody seems to know exactly why or how it became a thing, especially in America, but I think it mostly was just an excuse to eat Mexican food and drink Mexican beer or something. Because I avoid shopping on Sundays if I can (when I was a kid in Texas, most places still weren't open on Sundays) I ate out Mexican (by myself, because I got back in town earlier than my wife) and played some SWTOR to get both "holidays" taken care of. Honestly, in some ways I think even though these aren't real holidays, that was a more significant celebration than most Americans do for Memorial Day or Veterans Day, for instance, which are real holidays. And everyone seems to have forgotten all about Presidents' Day in the wake of the federal government trying to push the fake holiday of Martin Luther King Jr. Day on us, which nobody celebrates either; it's just a free day off work.

Anyway, because of May the Fourth, we're in a collections sale (50%) so I spent just a few bucks to get some cartel coins so I could unlock my collections before the event ends. I'll get a bunch of free cartel coins soon from the last part of the Seasons, but I don't think it'll happen in time for me to spend it during the sale, so I'll squirrel them away for something else. It's also double XP for two weeks, I think, although now we're already halfway over that. I grinded a bunch of heroics with Gael Heckett so I could get him from level 58 to 66 so I could equip my newly revised Corellia outfit idea on him. I also played Hoth with Anstal Tane and got him to max level without having to do the bonus series or spill over into Belsavis. I'm doing the same now with Vant Galaide, and I did a bit of the same with Mirabeau Tane.

On the last, I'm going to wait until the swoop bikes event is over tomorrow to really do the Dune Sea section with him, because it looks ridiculous, and I prefer to take my story playthroughs a little more seriously than that, or at least straight and not farce. Shouldn't have any trouble getting Vant to max level either (he's just shy of level 78 right now, and he still has 3/4 of Hoth to go, more or less) but if for some reason I don't quite make it, I'm still not doing the Bonus Series or the planetary faction stories on Belsavis or beyond with him. No need; I'll hit max level just with the basics easy enough shortly after if I'm going to be that close.

In any case, it's satisfying to see level go up faster than normal, although at these high levels, it still seems to take some effort to get there. But getting them done is nice, because then it's one less thing to worry about, and I can just concentrate on the story without feeling like I'm grinding because I have to; I can just do whatever I want to of the missions (minus the story stuff, which I have to do, of course, in order to move forward).

Anyway, here's Vant on Hoth. I've also included his "cheap cowboy" outfit too, because I happened to have a handy screenshot of it, but I didn't really create this specifically to play anywhere.

SWTOR Updates

Well, my playable schedule continues to be fluid, yet heavy. I’m playing quite a lot for various reasons right now. I feel like the seasonal objectives this week were pretty time consuming compared to what we’ve had in the past. It’s fairly easy and quick to kill a world boss with a dozen or so other players; less so to do a weekly area like The Black Hole or GSI. Of course, nothing says that I have to do the maximum amount of objectives every week. I’m not exactly worried about reaching the max level and unlocking all of the “stuff”, but it’d be nice to be done with it and go back to not worrying about it, and just progressing characters like normal again. I estimate that within three more weeks (Tuesday to Tuesday, since that's when the week's reset) I should be done with the season completely.

That said, I’m taking advantage of some of these things to get stealth extra grind done on some characters. There’s no reason Anstal Tane, for instance, can’t go do the Black Hole stuff, get extra XP for doing it, and accomplish a seasonal goal at the same time. In fact, because Anstal (and Hutran) have stealth, they are by far my first choices to do these long, tedious weekly type multipronged objectives, because skipping the trash mobs greatly increases the speed of accomplishing them. Anstal is on Hoth and is at level 78, so if this bumps him a level, it makes it all the more likely that he’ll hit max level before finishing Hoth. (Truthfully, if he doesn’t for some reason, I may put him on the bench and just grind some old heroics with him anyway. I think normally I’ve been hitting max level on Belsavis with the last two Mirialan characters I did; Hutran Thanatos and Taul Kajak. But because I’ve added some local heroics back into the rotation, I want to get it done sooner.) For whatever reason, Hoth is the last planet that I really enjoy playing; Belsavis is just kind of tedious for whatever reason, Voss has been giving me lag issues since the server updates and Corellia  is a pain to navigate. Maybe I really need to get to work on updating my rig so the lag isn’t an issue at least anymore.

So anyway, I hope to finish Anstal and Vant on Hoth here within the next week or so, and I’m also running around with Mirabeau on Tatooine. Gael is also due to go to Tatooine, and I’ve been enjoying him too much to stop, I think, so I may yet continue with him. I’m also grinding Heroics on Hutta and Ord Mantell with the characters that I haven’t really started with yet; some of them, who’ve been waiting their turn for a long time, are now getting ridiculously high level. Saxon Hettar is level 21, I believe, and he hasn’t even done his opening cinematic yet. At the rate he’s going, he won’t do it until he’s nearly level 30, and he may hit max level on Nar Shaddaa or something equally ridiculous. Not that I’ll complain. The level-setting that the game does means that playing any planet at any level is usually pretty fun, and it’s nice to have more abilities to choose from. I enjoy going back and doing old heroics on Ord Mantell or Hutta with higher level bounty hunters, agents, smugglers and troopers.

I’ve said before and I need to make a point of it, but I haven’t played my force classes much (other than Taul Kajak, who’s now in semi-retirement) so I should do a full planet with either Gandalf Grayhame (consular), Elemer Kell (guardian), Phovos Maledict (warrior) or Revecca (inquisitor) within the next week or two too. And I feel a little “guilty” that some characters that I quite like I haven’t played since I got back into the game, like Codon Veile, Vash Galaide, Wulf Hengest, and Haul Romund especially.

I don’t particularly care about how fast or when I get around to playing Embric Stane, my big boy mercenary, since I like Vant Galaide my normal mercenary enough. I’d get rid of Embric entirely, except that he’s my only body type 3 character, so I think it’s worth keeping him around. I just don’t care much about how fast I play him. I also don’t care much about Elemer Kell. I created him initially when Taul Kajak’s video recording was having problems, so he’s kind of a replacement for him. But I kept Taul Kajak anyway, and in fact just finished the game with him recently, and now I’m not recording with anyone. Elemer feels a bit redundant, except that he has a unique look (for my characters, anyway) so he’s also a keeper. Just one that I don’t care much about his progress. The reality is that I have too many open characters at once. I shouldn’t have created so many until I needed them, except that creating characters is sometimes more fun than finishing them, and I do tend to like the first act of everyone’s story better than the second and  third. (Keep in mind that the first act and prologue is considerably more than half of the actual story, and the second and third acts are only about half the length of the first.)

How to resolve? I think that realistically I can’t move everyone forward at once, but I am doing a bit more of that rather than simply focusing on one or two characters to exclusion. I do focus on three or so characters, but I take “breaks” by doing a few missions or a planet with another character who’s not my focus character. Right now doing Mirabeau on Tatooine is kind of my break, while Anstal and Vant are my focus characters. Gael has come from nowhere to become effectively a focus character too, but I’ll focus on him even more strongly when Anstal is done. I think I need to rotate and do one planet with a few out of focus characters. Like I said, I’m doing Mirabeau, a gunslinger trooper on Tatooine right now and I’m thinking I’d like to do Gandalf on Corscuant, Revecca on Balmorra, Phovos on Balmorra and Haul Romund on Taris as part of this rotation too, although not necessarily in that order. When Vant and Anstal finish up their stories relatively soon, I’ll probably move Wulf and maybe Vash in to their place as focus characters. Although maybe that’s too much Imperial; but I’ll still have Gael going on, and Mirabeau, Haul and Codon can all move into slightly tighter focus too to keep some more Republic stories going.

Realistically, I can make these plans, but what I’ll end up doing in a few weeks is anyone’s guess, because I may change my mind and my mood by the time it comes around. And that’s still too many characters to focus on at once. Three to four with a few others getting off and on attention seems to be doable, more than that isn’t.

Anyway, after that long prologue, what I really want to talk about briefly are my favorite planets. Favorite can mean a lot of different things; which planets do think have the most interesting premise or look, for instance, isn’t the same as which planets I think are my favorite to play. Alderaan is a pretty planet, for instance, but for various reasons I don’t really like doing Alderaan very much. I feel the same to a lesser degree about Voss. If I were just going on “where would I want to settle down and retire to, assuming that all the monsters and enemies weren’t actually there” then Voss and Tython, and maybe Ossus, Ruhnuk, or Odessen would be my favorite planets easy. The beaches of Ord Mantell and Rakata Prime would be nice vacation home locations too, and hitting Nar Shaddaa from time to time for a night on the town wouldn’t be completely remiss. The peaceful Great Plains of Dantooine are also really my speed, especially in the cliffy rock formations parts.

In terms of my favorites to play, however, I think Hutta, Ord Mantell, Nar Shaddaa, Tatooine and maybe Hoth are among my favorites.

I also think that Quesh and Hutta in particular have an interesting look. I know that they're supposed to be ugly planets, polluted and dirty, but conceptually, I find them very interesting. Ziost, Korriban, Vandin, and Elom are also planets that I quite like even though they aren't all normal planets in the usual sense, being just flashpoint destinations or ones in chapters, etc.

If I could create my own planetary environments with more of a lower level feel, I’d do Elom from the flashpoint, with its constant solar eclipse, and I think Onderon palette swapped to look more red instead of purple and green vegetation, and with Nar Shaddaa’s sky, would  make a great looking Dathomir. It’s kind of a shame that there are some great environments that are only late game editions or only available on flashpoints or operations. Copero is another nice one that has a kind of Lake Como feel to it, but until recently you could only get it in flashpoints. (Now there’s a stronghold there, but that’s not really playable either.)

Anyway, for today’s image, here’s Gael Heckett’s Tatooine outfit, since he’s about to start Tatooine as soon as I just do it. Although he’s already got cyborg “sunglasses” eyes, I like these goggles for Tatooine, as they evoke the bright nature of the desert planet. I do have one outfit that I’m completely redoing, but I have to wait until he gets to level 66, because it’s based on a chestpiece that you can’t equip until you’re that level. Luckily 1) he’s already level 58, and 2) the outfit is for Corellia anyway, which is many planets away still. Once I can equip it, I might consider going and just making his walk around and show off his outfit videos for the rest of the series. He’s already done Ord Mantell, Coruscant, Taris and Nar Shaddaa, and he’s wearing Tatooine, so I can do that at any time too. But Alderaan, Balmorra, Quesh, Hoth, Belsavis, Voss and Corellia (almost) are all ready to go; I just need to fly to those planets and make my outfit videos for them.

Agent companions :thumbsdown:

I've been watching an excellent playthrough playlist slowly by Blueflaime Studios of the Agent class. He's done a great job of editing the videos, and building cool looking looks for the character so that it's reasonably fun to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSI_BbY-Qcxjce73Vyngvy8ZxwBTLiFcp

However... he flirts somewhat with Kaliyo. I expect most agent playthroughs do. I do not. I talked to her giving her the benefit of the doubt with my first agent character, Johhn, but Hutran Thanatos and Vash Galaide have shut down everything she's tried to do hard. If I could have killed her on Hutta and never made her a companion at all, I would have in a heartbeat.

I don't use her as a companion, I shut down all of her overtures at conversation in as insulting and clear manner as the game allows me, and I try to act like she's not actually my companion as best as I can. In fact, in my own head-canon, I dropped her off at Lord Grathan's with his experiments while on Dromund Kaas, and had her lobotomized, her body replaced with an artificial body, and turned into a drone. That's the only way that I would have actually accepted her on my ship if I were actually playing this as a TTRPG instead of a CRPG.

That may sound harsh, but she's the worst. She's a narcissistic sociopath and a constant liability to the mission and the crew of the agent. How in the world we're supposed to believe that he really tolerates her, much less romances her, is just absurd. I know that the point of Robocop movies is the humanity of the cyborgs comes through in spite of everything, for better and for worse, but honestly that's kind of stupid. Kaliyo has been Robocopped, and she's not going to reappear, she's going to remain a lobotomized drone.

Even Raina Temple, who after being customization swapped with a prettier white girl with girl hair isn't that wonderful. She's reasonably cute, but she also threw her father under the bus for saving her life, which is—needless to say—an unlikeable trait. Then again, this is an Imperial character, and the Empire isn't supposed to be the good guys. On a whim, I turned on the "show dark side corruption" toggle for Johhn just now, and he looks pretty ragged, indicating that I've not really made a lot of "nice" choices, I guess, while playing him.

SWTOR Updates

I've been playing a fair bit. I haven't done any of the bounty week this week, and now it ends tonight. Seasons has, on the other hand, messed up my normal progress plans a bit, but I'm still making pretty good progress. Here's what I've done since I last made a progress report:

Anstal Tane: Has finished Quesh and is ready to go to Hoth. Although I have cold weather outfits for Anstal, I think I won't use them. He's been consistently wearing the biker outfit the entire game, and because it does include a black leather jacket, I think it's still good enough for being out in the snow. 

I have tinkered slightly with his outfit, though, to try and get it to look more like what I want. I swapped his pants for some that look like blue jeans, and I swapped his gun for a world drop that looks like a 1911, sorta. I actually also got two world drop sniper rifles that have this same look, and they're short for sniper rifles. They're really good-looking rifles. They dropped for Vant Galaide, my mercenary, though, which is strange. I think I'm going to send one each to Codon Veile and J'ohhn and figure out where I want to use them. They're too good to get rid of.

Vant Galaide: Has also just finished Quesh, and is ready to go to Hoth. Both of these two characters are level 75 so I hope that while on Hoth they'll reach level 80, and then I can stop playing exploration missions, Heroics, the planetary stories, etc. I've actually been getting back into Heroics with most of my players as they play through the planets. I find that most Heroics aren't nearly as tedious as, say, a Flashpoint would be, and other than on the first few planets, I don't know or remember many of them very well. Some of them I've only rarely played. Also, if I throw in most of the Heroics I'll hit max level earlier, which means that I can "relax" after that and just play what I want to without worrying about grinding.

Anyway, with the Heroics thrown in on Hoth, that makes it even more likely that I'll hit level 80 before leaving Hoth, and when I go to Belsavis afterwards, I won't have to grind anything that I don't want to. For the up and coming characters, who aren't as far along, that'll happen even sooner. Speaking of which...

Gael Heckett: My latest favorite character to play is Gael Heckett, a "sunglasses" cyborg pyrotech playing the smuggler story. I just finished Nar Shaddaa with him, minus the bonus series, and he's somewhere in the mid-50s for level. I'll probably do the bonus series when I'm not working later today and then rest him for a little while so I can play someone else. I played around with his Nar Shaddaa outfit (he's one of the ones who has a separate outfit for each mainline planet), changing his helmet (because his hair clipped through in the back) before eventually deciding to mostly just hide his helmet anyway. Because he's a powertech, this is an armored outfit, but most of his others to date have been more typical smuggler looking ones. His Coruscant outfit is a particular favorite. I actually will need to go back to Coruscant to do stupid Corso's stupid cousin mission too, and I'm picking up the seeker droid and macrobinoculars while I'm there. Not that I intend to play through those missions, necessarily, but I do think it's worth picking them up so you have the equipment, and then untracking the missions so that they're not in the way. Although given that Tatooine would be his next planet, and Alderaan after that, maybe it'd be worth it to do them while I'm there anyway. We'll see.

Mirabeau Tane: Although I didn't take that name super seriously when I created it, I do kind of regret it now. Oh, well. It's not worth spending cartel coins to change your name, appearance or any of that jazz; so whatever you pick at character creation I'm stuck with. If nothing else, it reminds me of my Texas background. (Mirabeau Lamar, the second president of the Republic of Texas and namesake of the 5th grade school I went to, not the French Revolutionary scandalous figure. As an aside, Mirabeau Lamar had a cousin named Gazaway Bugg Lamar. That's even weirder.) Mirabeau is a gunslinger cyborg playing the trooper story as a kind of special agent rather than an army guy; more of a Republic James Bond. He's just starting Tatooine, and I haven't played much of him since coming back to the game, but I like his mechanics pretty well. 

Vandal Guent: A new character I just created, but won't play with for some time. He's a vanguard, but playing the smuggler story. I also have Kar Tanus (a powertech playing trooper) and Saxon Hettar (a gunslinger playing agent) that haven't started the game really at all, although I'm still doing random killing and heroics to grind them up a bit before starting them. I also have Beorn Hengest, a sniper playing bounty hunter who was in the same boat, but I actually did play him just a bit on Hutta, so he's not literally at the very beginning, just close to it. Pretty much all of these are not ready to play yet; I refuse to advance them in the story until I finish off someone else playing the same story, so Anstal for Vandal, Mirabeau for Kar and Vant for Beorn. Saxon I could play, since I did recently finish an agent story with Hutran Thanatos, but I haven't gotten around to it yet, and I've got other things to do so that's fine. I'll probably do Vash Galaide first anyway.

Others: You'll notice that I don't have any of my force-using characters in this rotation. I should think about getting some of them moving again too; I did just finish Taul Kajak not that long ago, my Jedi Sentinel playing the Knight story. I also have Elemer Kell, a Darth Maul like Jedi Sentinel playing the Knight story. Because I just finished the Knight, he's probably the one I'm the least interested in advancing right now. I also have Gandalf the sorcerer playing the consular story, Phovos Maledict, the sith juggernaut playing the warrior story and Revecca Arden, a sorceress playing the Inquisitor story. And I think I'll take my last character slot to create a male inquisitor using the assassin class.

But I've also got a lot of other characters I haven't played much of sitting there waiting for their turn too; a powertech agent, a vanguard hunter, the big boy mercenary, a sniper trooper and a mercenary smuggler. I think my goal will be to finish up Anstal, Vant and Gael (and maybe Mirabeau too) and when I finish one, slot someone else into that place, and keep about four characters in pretty ready rotation. However, when I need a break from my regular rotation characters, maybe I'll play a bit with one of the others so they don't feel too stale. Eventually, they'll all get slotted in, but I have too many characters, so it may not exactly be super fast.

I imagine, just because I know myself, that I'll prioritize the tech class stories first, because I tend to like them better, and I like playing them better too. So even the newest created tech class guys who haven't even done their opening cinematic yet might pull ahead of my force users, maybe. While I know that I should finish, or at least slot one or two of those force users in to replace my tech characters as they finish the story, I'm more excited about going back to Codon Veile, Wulf Hengest and Vash Galaide instead as the next batch.

The other thing that's still lingering out there is what happens to characters when they finish the original story? Maark is the farthest along, having finished pretty much all of the story to date, I think. I'm occasionally grinding reputation on Ruhnuk, not because I really enjoy it, but because I want those reputation armor pieces. Mat Thew is ready to go to Ziost. Most of the rest of the finished characters still have story missions on Ilum or Makeb to complete. Luuke is almost done with Makeb and could start the Shadow of Revan stuff on Rishi and elsewhere. He's actually done the flashpoints on Manaan more than once, because it's one that you can do for Seasons credit a lot, but not in order and not part of a story playthrough. He still needs to wrap up the last few missions on Makeb and then play the four back to back (to back to back) flashpoints so he can officially go to Rishi. 

To be honest with you, though, once I finish the main stories and have the characters at max level, they go into semi-retirement and I don't really care about their post-story stories much anymore. I do eventually want to play through much of that stuff, but it isn't nearly as engaging as the main stories are. I don't like what it does to your companions and interface, and because most of those characters are pretty regular crafters for me, I don't really want to lost access to their heavily leveled up companions for a time.

Anyway, here's Elemer Kell in a "vacation mode" outfit, and Maark in a "Jedi commander" pseudo-military look. I've said many times before that I don't really like the look that Lucas settled on for Jedi starting with the prequels, which before that point had been Obiwan in disguise on Tatooine, wearing typical Tatooine peasant clothes, not any different than what Uncle Owen wore. Few of my force-using classes dress like Star Wars Jedi or Sith, because I don't much like their cloistered Buddhist temple monk look.

Credits in SWTOR, money in SOX?

I've used credits in SOX, not because I think it's a great name for a currency, but because it's generic enough that you know what it means without thinking about it. It's also what Star Wars uses, of course, but then again, it's not unique. For what it's worth, I checked because I couldn't remember, but Star Frontiers and Traveller also use credits as the unit of currency. I also checked Star*Drive, and the currency there is the Concord dollar. OK. Although something like a Concord dollar maybe sounds a little bit more realistic, it also requires you to notice it, whereas credit is unnoticeable. You just accept it without thinking about it. I think I prefer that.

But I had to think about it. In the real world, currency always had names. And if you drop the Concord in actual practice, most of the time, and just say dollar, then it works. We do that here; technically our currency isn't the dollar, because other nations also use dollars that they print and which have different values, like Canada or New Zealand. Its the United States dollar, and it trades on the currency market as USD, United States Dollar. And, in Star*Drive, I presume you just quote things in dollars, you don't go out of your way to say Concord dollars all of the time. 

But I still think I'll stick with credits.

Credits are a big deal in SWTOR, of course, although there's all kinds of drama about inflation and an oversupply of credits in the system. In my experience, the best way to consistently make decent credits is to craft Advanced V-9 Seismic Grenades and sell them at market price, which usually ends up being about 200,000 Cr each, more or less. I've managed to sell them for up to 350,000 a pop, but not frequently.

You can take about two to three hours, just checking in a few times to send people out on different gathering missions, and you can craft 50-60 or so of them, and put them up. At 60 units for 200,000 each, we're talking a cool 12 million credits, minus the listing fee on the market. It's a little bit of a hassle, but it works pretty well.

Johhn wearing a scary mask and supervising the work of shifty alien Fen Zeil in his manufacture of advanced V-9 seismic grenades. You need to keep an eye on those guys!

I've tried selling other things you can craft, but that seems to be the most consistent money-maker that I've found. The other advanced V-9 grenades can sell for more each, but the demand seems to be considerably weaker, so it's harder to move them. Armormech and Armstech, etc. and other crafting haven't (yet) proven to generate a substantial amount of money for any product. There are other things you can sell for even more money, but you won't have supply very often

Of course, it costs some money to run the gathering missions that build these, but Advanced V-9 Seismic Grenades are still very profitable. I'm only spilling the beans because nobody reads my blog, thankfully. I sometimes get undercut on the price too often as it is.

Also; I had created Kar Tanus as a Scoundrel, meaning to try the other Scoundrel spec that isn't a healing spec. I presume it operates very similarly to Hutran Thanatos' Lethality Operative spec. But... I decided that I doubted I'd really want to play him after all. I like Anstal Tane and Hutran well enough, but like my two Jedi and Sith double-bladed guys, I found that the sneak ability was cool when I wasn't in the mood to fight trash mobs, but otherwise the combat spec wasn't my favorite. 

But all was not lost with Kar Tanus! He could train a second spec, and I could use that second one most of the time! I decided to go with a shield specialist powertech, because it'll use the same one pistol set-up that the scoundrel does, which is convenient. Also, although I switched Graggory to the shield spec, let's be honest; I've finished with Graggory a long time ago and he's been in semi-retirement where he does very little for a long time. It'd be nice to get used to the shield spec by playing someone through it. I'm actually kind of excited to play him now, whereas with the Scoundrel spec, I felt it was more dutiful rather than that I was really looking forward to it. Oh, well.