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.
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