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 or Juneteenth 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.

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.

SOX Outfits using SWTOR

Just another video. I like making these. These aren't entirely serious, as especially the fifth one shows.

Also, I said in the last post that I was going to Hoth with Anstal Tane. I was wrong; although that's what it told me, the next mission was the detour to Quesh, which I totally forgot about. D'oh! Anyway, I played Quesh with Anstal, so now he's going to Hoth. He's pulling ahead of Vant Galaide a fair bit, but that's OK. I'm also tooling around with quite a few of my other characters in the meantime here and there, and that's been kinda fun for me to get some variety.

I've also created a few alternates for Anstal in terms of look. He's been one character that has consistently had the same look for his same play through, but I thought about making a hazard look for Quesh. I ended up not liking it very much, so I just stuck a rebreather on his normal outfit, and then hid it again when I finished Quesh. I also have a Hoth outfit, but I don't think I'm going to use it either. His alternate outfit slots won't be for play through anyway, I'll just use them to create outfits for its own sake.

I currently have two open slots for new characters. Although it's hardly the thing I need right now when I have lots of characters to finish, I kind of want to start two more. Sigh. Anyway, I'm going to refrain until I have at least two more characters into the max level and semi-retired phase. Anstal Tane and Vant Galaide are the two that are closest to this point; Anstal Tane is about to do Hoth at level 75, and Vant Galaide is on Balmorra at level 69, IIRC.

Seasons flubs my plans

The Galactic Seasons keeps flubbing my plans. I played a fair bit with Revecca Arden last night, because one of the Seasons Goals was to play 15 repeatable missions with a consular or inquisitor. I didn't advance her story, but I did advance her level, and I think I've done enough of the explorations and crap on Balmorra to be done with it.

Near the end, because it was taking so long, I took her to the fleet, picked up some Heroics on Korriban and Dromund Kaas and finished the Seasons objective there. When I get back to Balmorra, I won't need to do much except the two story quests; I can ignore the exploration and Heroics, because I've already done enough of them.

I also have seasons goals to play Directive 7 (or a few other flashpoints, but that's the only solo one—cue once again my lament that all of the Flashpoints don't have a solo mode) twice and two flashpoints from the Revan series that you do in Act II. After Balmorra for Republic and after Taris for Imperial. Anstal Tane was actually halfway through those; he had done the first one. Vant Galaide is on Taris, but he's just starting it. I decided that I'd do Anstal Tane's second one and get him ready to move on to Hoth when I pick him up again, and I also decided to do Vant Galaide out of order; just have him do it anyway, and come back and finish Taris afterwards. I swapped him out of his grungy jungle fatigues and into a slick, professional boarding action suit (see below) and took the mission right there on Taris, since that's where it's located. 

I said earlier that I was quite enjoying Taris on the Republic side with Gael Heckett, and that's true. The Imperial side looks very similar, but it's not identical; the daytime lighting has been replaced with nighttime lighting. 

In SOX, I have my own pseudo-Taris, called Vorli VI, which is now a Desai world, run by one of the Dhangetan cartel iconoclasts. This makes for a very different vibe than Taris, as well as the conflict being largely between Revanchists and everyone else (especially the Monarchy). The Seraean Empire is my kinda sorta Sith Empire analog, and it's not a major player on the system; the Monarchy and the Republic being two forces that vie for claiming the mantle of the old Marian Empire. One, however, is like Tidewater noblesse oblige elitists and the other is like the worst of woke totalitarians from today. In reality, the people of the Colonies have little interest in either; although they are largely loyal to the Monarchy and I see any of the Revanchists as villains who are even worse than the Imperials, they are also happy that the Monarch of the Monarchy and most of his hierarchy of nobles, is far away and have little to do with life in the Colonies. I see the Colonies as the American Colonies in the early to mid-1700s—fairly prosperous and established, and only just beginning to question their loyalty to the Monarchy. The Space Revolutionary War which seems obvious, is still at least a few generations away from happening, I think.

Anyway, the point of all of this is that I'm having to change my plans on what exactly I'm playing because of the Seasons objectives. Which is OK. As long as I'm making progress on both the seasons and my characters, I can't complain.

Vant Galaide's "Slick Professional" look

UPDATE: I kind of forgot how stupid the Imperial planetary story is on Taris, though. It just feels childish to even play through it. Sigh.

Yeah, I finished my weekly Galactic Seasons by doing the two higher value options that I had identified, which were both Flashpoint ones. I had to play an extra flashpoint, The Foundry, with Vant Galaide to get him back to Taris, but that's OK. And I played a team-up flashpoint twice, and sadly got the same one both times, Cademimu. Which is fine, but it would have been nice to do that one once and whatever the other one was too. Also, because I put a filter on it, I didn't get any credit towards my social achievement, which I'm still short on. Sigh again.

Anyway, so Vant is back on Taris, and I'll be going back and forth between him and Gael Heckett, who's also a bounty hunter class, but being played as a Republic smuggler on Taris at the same time. Vant is now nearly level 70 (Anstal is a bit higher, at 72, but Anstal has finished both Taris and the two flashpoints, so that's OK.) I'll be glad to hit max level with these two and be able to skip missions that I'm only doing for the XP.

Vant's jungle camo gear for Taris. I'd probably also break it out on Yavin IV.

Powertechs

I saw that the Incinerator tuning was fairly cheap on the GTN; at least 100M less than it was when I looked at it a couple of weeks ago, so I sprung for it. I don't have enough cartel coins to unlock it across the legacy yet, so I decided I needed to send it to the character who would use it the most. I did the same with the rakghoul tuning; I sent it to my Lethality Operative, because he has all kinds of poison attacks that are the exact same green drippy weirdness as the rakghoul weapon tuning. So I decided that my pyrotech would make the most sense for an Incinerator tuning, which makes your weapon look like a flamethrower. However... it turns out I don't have a pyrotech anymore; I guess Galation was my pyrotech! All three of my remaining powertech characters, Graggory, Gael Heckett and Vash Galaide, were all Advanced Prototype. What?!

I decided to turn my old hoary character Graggory into a Shield spec, since I'd never used that. After switching him, I played around a bit on the Operations dummy on my ship. It's a nice spec. And I turned Gael Heckett into the pyrotech, and loaded up the next few outfits of his, at least, with the incinerator tuning. I've also played a bit of him the last little bit on Taris. I don't remember really liking Taris that much as a planet, but I am this time. 

Although I'm also amused by the ridiculous light/dark choices. It's a dark side choice, and you get a major guilt trip if you take the rakghoul serum from the pirates, because they'll die of the rakghoul plague! But, I killed at least fifty pirates to get to that point, another twenty just leaving their base, and even had bonus missions to kill healthy pirates. You're supposed to do that. But killing the pirates who have a terminal and incredibly dangerous and contagious disease? That's bad.

Also, the rakghoul vaccine that saved the pirates no longer saves anyone else because it's 300 years old. But it worked just fine on the pirates! What the heck kind of crazy science is that?

The writers of this game are silly. Except I don't see it as harmless silliness anymore; I see it as dangerous, subversive and even treasonous. 

As a related aside, I heard the old 80s Camouflage song "Neighbors" this morning while driving my daughter and son-in-law to the airport. I used to think that was pretty harmless, if a bit pretentious. Now, it kind of ticks me off to listen to it. I might delete the mp3 from my micro-SD card that holds all my music, and from my computer hard drive too.

Anyway, here's Gael Heckett in the cantina on Taris, showing off his flaming gun and his Taris duds. I haven't messed with Corso since sometime shortly after I got him on Ord Mantell, so he still looks the same.

I'm not 100% sure still on the facemask. Nobody else on Taris wears one, but it is supposed to be toxic on the surface all the time. Whatever. I don't have enough excuses to wear facemask type things, and there are a lot of them in game. I can't just only ever load it up on characters when they're on Quesh, after all!

Psionic Knights

As an aside, before I begin, I'm going to move a lot of my SWTOR discussion from my main blog, where I've been doing way too much of it, to this blog, where it fits a little better, since SWTOR is often the conceptual art tool that I use for Space Opera X, as well as an informant in general for how to make a good space opera setting. That means I'll have more posts here in general, although many will be about SWTOR and my progress therein, and less at my main blog, https://dark-fantasy-x.blogspot.com/, but that's probably a good thing anyway. The main blog can move back to its focus on fantasy stuff and pop culture, while this blog will be my source for space opera... and related pop culture a bit too. 

Anyway, that said, I've played a lot of stuff that I didn't anticipate, really. Trying to meet seasonal goals has had me diversifying what I expected to be playing to a large degree. I played a bunch of exploration and repeatable missions with Revecca Arden on Balmorra last week (although this doesn't actually advance her story, and the missions will still be available again, I presume, when I log back in with her.) I finished Coruscant with Gael Heckett and moved him to Taris, including putting on his Taris outfit. Which I immediately didn't like. I'm not sure what I thought when I created it, but I'm probably going to rework that. Not that the "space Barbie" is really the point, but I do like to have looks that I like if I'm going to be looking at my character a lot, and this one will almost certainly bug me over a very short amount of time.

I also made a slight change to my iconic space biker Anstal Tane; I gave him a new gun with his main outfit; a world drop that looks a lot like a 1911. I also have struggled a bit, I admit, with pants for him that don't look funky or just not quite right. I've had some that I was getting more and more unhappy with (they're some of my favorite pants in general, but they didn't fit the space biker look quite right) so I have some new ones now that look an awful lot like blue jeans. This turns space biker into maybe 50s space greaser, so maybe I should turn on a few more hot-rod looking speeders for him, since greasers were more into hot rods than motorcycles. There does seem to be a lot of overlap between bikers and greasers in terms of look and attitude though.

I looked up greaser on Infogalactic, and for the heckuvit, I also switched to Wikipedia. Infogalactic uses the accepted etymology that I've heard my whole life, that greaser as a term came about because of the grease used in their iconic hair styles, with maybe a double entendre that because they tinkered with hot rods, they got automotive grease on their clothes too. Wikipedia, of course, spent several paragraphs trying to claim, without evidence, that greaser was an ethnic slur against Italians or Hispanics, and then at the very end in one simple sentence, they say that basically, or maybe it was because they iconically used a ton of grease in their hair. Unbelievable. Thanks, Wikipedia, for the woke lies guilt trip that nobody asked for. 

I don't have a new image of Anstal with his new gun and new pants, but no doubt I will soon. I also will need to come up with a new Gael Heckett Taris outfit, since once I switched to what I'd created months ago, I immediately didn't like what I was looking at. Great.

I also played around quite a bit with The Black Hole with both Hutran Thanatos and with Anstal Tane, because I could use sneak on both and get through the Heroic (which is really big and feels more like a tedious flashpoint almost). I think that means that I can now skip The Black Hole on any other character both Imperial and Republic that I want to, unless I just feel like I want to do it again in a few months. But even then, it's repeatable as much as I want.

Finally, in order to get the daily conquest points rolling, which is needed for the Galactic Seasons stuff, I've been doing Heroics and killing bad guys all over the place, because they give you enough that it is worth doing. It also is a chance to grind XP on my early guys who are waiting to "start" their stories. So, I've been doing that in particular with Karr Tanus on Ord Mantell, and Saxon Hettar and Beorn Hengest on Hutta, and Gael Heckett just a bit on Coruscant too. But then I thought; why aren't I doing that with Gandalf Greyhame on Tython? Well, the reason is because Tython only has one Heroic on the Heroic mission box, but I did that, and then decided to just play him a while since I had him. I did think it was a bit funny to run around with an old man in as close to a Gandalf robe as I could get in SWTOR acting like a somewhat cocky young Jedi, but whatever. I'm sure I'll get over that joke long before I'm done with the character. Maybe I need another consular at some point again too. Or even a councilor or counselor. Sigh. Pet peeve, I know.

Well, I had an idea for a new Tarisian outfit for Gael, and while I was updating this post, I popped over and made it. I might yet tinker with it, but I kind of like it, and it's sufficiently different from most of what I do with outfits, that I'll keep it as an outlier in terms of look, I think. Besides, I'm on Taris now; it'll be a moot point if I alter it after I'm done with the planet, because I'll rarely switch to it again.

I saw Backseat Gamers use this same Zayne Carrick tunic, also undyed, for a forest recon scout, where he put the TD-07A Scorpion or one of the lookalikes, but with my cyborg sunglasses, I get basically the same look with just the Outlander Fixer facemask. It's kind of nice; I don't often play up the supposed toxic nature of Taris, and few of the NPCs wear masks either. But, they probably should.

And, using SWTOR as conceptual design, here's a concept art piece for the Nebula Corsairs, mysterious pirates of the Takach Nebula, possibly in the Zorga system with their base, who are careful to conceal everything about themselves, even their ethnicity.

Unfortunately, the image got a little bit of clipping.

Hutran Thanatos is an operative with the poisonous damage over time spec (Lethality, I think it's called), which spreads a greenish poison in a lot of his attack moves. So, I spent some of my dwindling horde of credits on the rakghoul tuning, which makes my weapons drip a green poison that exactly matches the color and and look of the lethality graphics. Voila! He'll wear that on most of his outfits now, along with a green weapon color crystal, because of course he will!

UPDATE: Finally, I also finished with Taul Kajak. One more semi-retired character, who's now on the Republic Fleet waiting to take the Ilum missions. But time for that later. In the meantime, I'm just ready to have one more checked off into semi-retirement. Maark, Mat Thew, Luukke, Johhn, Phillippion, Hutran Thanatos, Graggory and now Taul Kajak (and departed heroes Actsion, Galation and Corinthion) Westu Taul Kajak hál!

Taul's final moments in the main story were in the same digs as he started. Full circle!

A few archetypes; do be discussed later

For now, just uploading the images.

Space Cowboy

Dark Hunter

The Professional

Armored Agent

Dark Agent

Swashbuckling Gunfighter

Black Ops

Aliens

It's curious to me that while Star Wars prominently has many aliens, of course, the story is almost exclusively about regular humans, with few and very modern exceptions. In fact, other than Chewbacca, whom George Lucas loves to throw in for gratuitous cameos every chance he gets (and Yoda, maybe, to a lesser extent) very few aliens play a prominent role in the story at all.

In SWTOR there are lots of aliens, and you can play as alien characters even, although I haven't really done much of that. Perhaps more annoyingly, many of the aliens speak in their alien language, which probably saved a ton on voice acting, which is why they have much more of it than I'd like. 

I always kind of laughed a bit at how SWTOR used very few alien face models, and how closely their face models conformed to original trilogy stuff. Every single Devaronian looks exactly like that one guy in the cantina scene, for instance. Every single Hutt looks exactly like Jabba from the original trilogy. Hutts got a lot more variety, at least in some media, like the Clone Wars TV show. Then again, those may have been cartoonish exaggerations. In live action, the Hutts all look considerably more like Jabba from the original trilogy. Curiously, Jabba's scene in the Special Edition of the first Star Wars movie maybe looks like the least like Jabba of the original trilogy; when he later makes an appearance in The Phantom Menace with Gardulla the Hutt, both of them are considerably better CGI and look considerably more like what you expect Hutts to look like. When the Twins show up in the ridiculous Book of Boba Fett, they at least look an awful lot like Hutts, and in fact look an awful lot like Jabba. They look a little too CGI for my taste, but still the direction of the visual design is very clear. So, that's actually one where SWTOR's lack of visual variety ended up coincidentally being a winner. Their variation on Hutts amounts to palette swapping the colors of the models and occasionally putting something like an efficiency scanner on the face. One of them even has a cyborg robot arm, if I remember right.

Not that I care all that much about Hutts. As behind the scenes movers and manipulators, they're more like plot devices than like characters anyway.

I bring this up, because Youtube has been recommending some Dune lore videos to me lately, and while I'm not really a huge Dune fan, I have enjoyed the more recent movie and am looking forward to seeing part 2 later this week. I've also watched the Sci-Fi channel Dune miniseries that came out about twenty years ago, and years ago I listened to the audio-book while commuting to work. Only the first book; I didn't really love it, so I didn't go on, but I can still recognize its prominence as a benchmark in the genre nonetheless. Regardless, the Dune series is an interesting benchmark, because it's certainly very prominent and influential. Dune, of course, rather famously doesn't have any aliens at all. All of the "aliens" are just highly derived and evolved or bred forms of humans; the mentats, the Tleilaxu, the Navigators, etc. were developed/bred/evolved to replace things like computers. I've been giving some thought to how humano-centric I want SOX to be, relative to some of its "competitors" and the answer is quite a lot. I fudge the definition a bit, with my various races of xenohumans; completely, genetically human, but not originating on Earth, nor sharing Earth-like phenotypal features. Y'know, blue people, red people, etc. Kind of like Dune in that way, although less radical. A blue-skinned person is less radical than one of the Navigators.

Frankly, I think even this is a reversion to an older form. My xenohumans are much more like the various races of Barsoom than they are like aliens. And ERB didn't quibble about human-ness; Dejah Thoris laid an egg for Carthoris to be hatched from, for instance, but other than gratuitous weirdness like that every once in a while, the Red Men, the Yellow Men, even the Therns and the First Born are all treated in pretty much every way exactly like humans. Just with exotic cultures and phenotype details, like the Therns being bald and the Red Men being, well... red.

Vant Galaide

For the heckuvit, I made some Hero Forge models that are meant to hearken back to one of my SWTOR characters, a bounty hunter mercenary. First, without an outfit, meant to represent him chilling on his spaceship, and showing off what he looks like when you can see him clearly.

Now, four of his outfits, interpreted, such as they can be, into Hero Forge. They actually turned out reasonably close to the SWTOR original look. I'm happy with them. There's even some elements (like the hairstyle) that I like better in Hero Forge. That mohawk with the spirals is really stupid looking in SWTOR.

Powertech Custom Outfits #1

I decided to take my outfit screenshots and outfit videos and combine them. The screenshots were higher quality (usually) than the videos. Why not just do them as slide shows where I can get shots in various more interesting places, in higher resolution, and have them show up on screen for about 5 seconds; 8-10 per outfit. Seemed like a better way to do the project than what I was trying. 

Anyway, I'm starting over without reference to what I did earlier anyway; this is Graggory showing off not only his deep spacer tan, but also a variety of concept outfits.

To be fair, while this is all one character in SWTOR modeling these concepts, realistically each outfit is kind of a separate character concept. It's not like we see Han Solo wearing literally the exact same outfit every time we see him in the movies, but it's also not like he's wearing something so completely different that you struggle to tell that it's him. The only exception is when he was a heavy coat on on Hoth, for understandable reasons. 

New characters

I probably have too many characters. I find that I'm enjoying playing the characters that I don't have to worry about recording more than the ones that I am recording, so I've been making a fair bit of progress with them. A few notes:

Based on how many I'm playing, clearly the bounty hunter, smuggler and agent are my favorite stories. I already knew that, but still. Based on what I like playing, clearly the gunslinger, sniper, vanguard and powertech are my favorite mechanics. Also not surprising. 

I decided that I needed one character for each spec for sniper and gunslinger in particular, since all three combat specs are variations on the DPS idea (I don't really care for tanks or heal in a solo player mode.) John (J'ohhn) and Luke (Lu'ukke) my originals from my first playthrough with each class in the Onslaught update, are a sniper and a gunslinger respectively, and they were both burst damage; a Marksman and a Sharpshooter. The other two specs are sufficiently different that I want one of my newer characters to represent each of them. I found that I had three snipers, although some of the new ones weren't set up as the correct specs. Because they were new, I could change them without missing out on much of using the new spec. 

I needed to start one more character, a gunslinger agent, to get the last gunslinger spec (dirty fighting, for the curious). That brings my total of characters up to 24; although keep in mind that many of them are either brand new or nearly so. I have 7 original "old" characters, who are full 700-level crafters, so I can't delete them even if I want to, without losing access to crafting skills. I have about 4-5 or so that I'm playing through but which are not being recorded, and a bunch that I am recording. To be honest, the new gunslinger agent that I started, I may well not record, because I'm in the middle of recording a pretty new powertech agent already, and playing an operative too. How many videos do I really need, anyway?

Anyway, it's a moot point. I'll play up to 10th level, fast travel to the fleet where I'll pull stuff out of the legacy bank, and then go back and start the story. I hit <esc> during the intro movie, so I'll get it all over again anyway. I guess that means I can welcome Saxon Hettar to the mix too.

I have a character named Gael (sadly, it occurred to me later that it's pronounced like the woman's name Gayle, but whatever) and now Saxon. If I were making even more characters, I'd need a Norman and maybe a Cumbric as names too.

Here's Saxon in his combat suit, which mostly obscures his face. Yes, he's a Sith—of the species, not the order—and yes, I picked one of the two options that doesn't have bone spurs or dangly fleshy tendrils. Sadly, BioWare have not offered us (yet) the opportunity to just use the Sith, Chiss, Mirialan and Rattattaki colors with just human faces, so we're stuff with weird eyes, tattoos, appendages or baldness. If I could make a human character, but mix in the Sith hair and skin colors, I'd have great Psarians, and if I could have Chiss but without the weird orange eyes, I'd have great Altairans. And if I could have Rattattaki without obligatory tattoos and with hair options on the white, gray and black side (and maybe the died options too) I could make my own Saraeans.

Note that my old Ad Astra file, which will eventually migrate into the new Space Opera X file, has 30 listed races, but most of them are too local or generally unimportant to be more than some color that would pop up here and there, if at all. Really only about half of them are ones that are "major" enough to really merit discussion.

SWTOR to Space Opera X again

I've got 35 raw video files to go through and edit. Seven of them I recorded without sound. Sigh. I finally changed the hardware settings on OBS so that if I forget to put my headphones on, I still get sound on the recording too, not just in real life. In fact, now I have to specifically set OBS to headphones if I want to use them, which means that most likely I won't very often.

That's really frustrating, though. I've got a lot of video for several characters without sound; one of Codon Veile doing the last fourth of Coruscant, all of Mirabeau Tane on Ord Mantell, Anstal Tane doing the bonus series on Taris and some of Elemer Kell on Taris too. Really frustrating. 

And to think that I stopped recording Taul Kajak and Hutran Thanatos for less problems with audio than I have now. I probably really should just not even start with Mirabeau Tane and make him be another non-recorded character like the two Mirialan. I haven't edited even the first video of his. In fact, the more I think about that, the more I think that's a great idea that I should totally embrace. Not quite sure why I need to record two trooper stories at once anyway.

And I'm even—not for the first time—wondering if it's even worth it to record these playthroughs anyway, although I do find them fun in some ways.

But I'm going to give serious thought to ditching the Mirabeau recordings and just playing him as a more casual character that I don't have to stress about recording.

Anyway, what I'm really showcasing today is a few pictures I grabbed from torf, or TOR Fashion, a site that archives elements you can get in this game. It also allows for registered users to post screenshots of their custom character creations. In this case, the characters fade in to the background just a bit, though—I actually really like the way that he customized his Tatooine Stronghold to look like a rough and tumble market in a frontier town, or maybe a black market place ridden with scum and villainy. 

It really almost doesn't look like Tatooine either, but that's just because the main planet is on a strong daylight lighting scheme and this is a darker dusk lighting scheme.

I've always got too many things on my plate from a hobby perspective, but I'm still giving thought to some minor revisions to the Space Opera X setting; mostly just to get rid of names that I now realize that I either consciously (and then forgot) or subconsciously stole from somewhere else.

Not that that's the worst thing. As I may have mentioned about a year or so ago last Thanksgiving, more or less, when reading H. Beam Piper's Space Viking I discovered that Hoth was a throwaway reference to a space viking world. Lucas himself either subconsciously or consciously stole it himself.

Fringer bounty hunter

I created a new outfit for one of my Powertechs, although I also have an almost identical one for one of my older gunslingers, and I'm leaning towards making this a kind of "fringer uniform" for some of my characters, where many of them would have a similar outfit that they'd use on occasion.

Because I have a lot of junk in my collections, I used a variety of different items, but realistically many of them don't matter too much. You could build this with only three outfits if you didn't care much about what boots, belt or gloves you used. 

Anyway, the specific items I have are:

• Kingpin's Blaster Pistol (available from the recently concluded Nightlife event) with a green color crystal. I have a variety of greens available from the cartel market, but it'd work just fine with a crafted green crystal too. The gun isn't quite as important to the outfit; I rather think guns match well to class. I generally like bigger, chunkier guns for both bounty hunter classes, but that's especially true for the Powertech who's only got one of them. I (sometimes) prefer the slightly smaller guns for the smuggler classes. The Kingpin gun is actually a little on the small side for what I use for Powertechs. 
• Expert Outlaw's Visor. I have it color matched here, but I tried it without color matching, and it looks pretty good there too. It'll match the pants, because by default, it's black.
• Impulsive Adventurer Bracers. I use these a lot, because they're invisible, and don't show.
• Impulsive Adventurer Chestplate. It's not really a chestplate, obviously. It's a Han Solo looking rolled up sleeves and vest, with a bandolier. It's a great piece, actually, and kind of a unique color. 
• Secret Agent's Gloves. The Impulsive Adventurer would be fine if you don't want to buy another outfit just for gloves. I do have some more crocodile-leather looking gloves, but I can't remember off-hand which outfit they belong to, and fingerless biker gloves are fingerless biker gloves. You're not going to see that level of detail very well most of the time anyway.
• Furious Gladiator legs. This is a very important part of the outfit. In a pinch, you could build this with just three outfits; the Furious Gladiator, the Impulsive Adventurer and the Expert Outlaw. Those are the most important components. The gloves, belt and boots you can swap out to whatever you have, and it won't make a huge difference to the overall appearance.
• RV-06 Speedsuit Belt. I used this because it was handy through collections and looks pretty good; the more I think about it, the more I think that the Czerka Security Armor belt might look even a little bit better, although very similar.
• Winter Outlaw Boots. I like these a lot for a variety of uses, actually. The Winter Outlaw is a good outfit in general.  

Lu'uke Update

I'd made that gay bare midriff outfit on a whim, and was surprised at how... well, how gay it looked in retrospect. So I decided not to keep it, even though I'm not really playing that character much. In fact, when I am playing him, I just finished Ilum, so maybe this is an outfit that isn't really going to be much use for me on him... My next thing to do, after I finish the last of the Makeb stuff (I need to double check. I may have already) is Rakata Prime on the beach, followed by Rishi, the beach/jungle pirate world. So, of course, I made a winter outfit that would look good on Hoth or Ilum. It's nice to have one of these in your back pocket, though, in case you need to go do anything on a cold planet and want to look like you belong there...

The gloves and headpiece are taken from the Calo Nord outfit, a character from the very first Knights of the Old Republic game. The coat is crafted, and only available to level 50 or higher characters. The boots and pants from from other cartel market outfits, and the guns are Grit, a cartel market pistol. And that glowy belt is a world drop from somewhere.