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.
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