Space Cowboy

Speaking of space cowboys, like I was in the Lazy Laser post earlier today, here's Vant Galaide showing off a space cowboy outfit on Yavin IV. I deliberately made this one out of mostly adaptive vendor pieces, so anyone could get it.

There is one exception, though; the weapon I use (noted below) is from the cosmetic vendor, and costs half a million credits and 3,500 tech fragments, a high level currency. It's legacy bound, so once you buy it, anyone on your server that's one of your characters can use it, but it's not easy to get. The adaptive vendor pistol is terrible, so I don't recommend it, but you'll find tons of world drops on your first planet that will work quite well. And if you're playing—or have played—a bounty hunter, the Hunter's Blaster which drops near the end of the first planet and which is legacy bound is a great alternative, and is free to boot. However, you can't start with it.

Normally, of course, you can't get any of the adaptive gear until you go to the fleet, and normally you don't go to the fleet until you're done with your first planet, so that shouldn't be a problem, however. The craftable Custom-built Blaster Pistol, which you can equip at Level 20 or higher is another good alternative, as is the craftable Carbo-plas pistol which you can equip at level 10, or the Plastifiber that you can equip at level 16. They don't necessarily have a similar look, although they're mostly in the same size and chunkiness range, and because you can craft them pretty cheap at low level, they're great alternatives, and of course, since they're craftable, you don't actually have to buy them.

The pants on this outfit are also technically free, but they're hard to get, requiring grinding Heroics, being lucky in your RNG output, and generally unless you've somehow already got them, it's probably not worth going for. There I recommend some pants from either world drops or the adaptive vendor to replace them. The Sith Annihilator, TD-07A Blackguard and TD-07A Scorpion all offer interesting leggings options to replace the ones I used. They don't look the same, but I picked the ones I did because they're kind of unique.

Also, although the dye module I use is crafted and technically free if you have someone who can craft it, it's a high level dye module and you may not have access to anything like it. The Black and Light Gray is a suitable lower level alternative. But even then you may not have access to the color that you want. You could also buy the Primary Black Dye on the fleet, but it also requires special currency and isn't super cheap.

What are some other changes you could make while still staying out of cartel market items?

I like the Han Solo style vest, but if you wanted something else, the Republic side Scout with the same dye module would look pretty interesting. If you can find the schematic, smugglers can wear the old fashioned Drelliad jacket starting at level 11 or something like that. The Remnant Resurrected Smuggler is a great alternative if you have it, although like my pants above, it's hard to get if you don't have it already. Although at least its free. On the other hand, although not very cheap, some of the planetary pieces are at least easy to get if you have a character that can afford them, and they're legacy bound so you can easily pass them around. The Tarisian and Nar Shaddaa smugglers have a classic SWTOR look.

UPDATE: I almost forgot! Although the Republic Squadron Commander Pilot set is free for me, it may not be for everyone if you don't have access to the code that gave it to me. Which I can no longer find, so I presume it's no longer active. There is a belt that looks very similar in the Adaptive vendor, and of course, since the gloves cover up the bracers, it doesn't matter very much which ones you replace them with.

Also; not sure why I went to Yavin IV, actually. On second thought, it doesn't seem like a really cowboyish planet. But Tatooine... y'know, you get tired of doing everything there sometimes.

Some Vash Galaide screenshots

My current favorite agent, played by a Powertech. Here's a few screenshots from his earlier recorded time on Hutta, both in his really cool initial agent uniform, and in disguise as the Red Blade. Remember, I don't think making the Red Blade look like the actual Red Blade is necessary, since the whole premise is that nobody knows what he looks like. You're not supposed to just copy his outfit and pretend to be him, you have to create your own Red Blade persona. 

Anyway, my only requirements for a Red Blade be that the outfit be mostly red and that it look kinda piratey. I used the Secret Agent jacket, which in reflection, looks just a little bit gay on a man. These little croptop vests and jackets look like they were designed for teenaged girls, or at least borderline. This one isn't as terrible as some on a guy, but it's no longer one of my favorites. Curiously, when turned black to match the under layer, it looks mostly OK.

Lazy Laser

I discovered the perfect SOX soundtrack; a self-described fusion of spaghetti western music and synthwave. The artist is Lazy Laser. He has a full album called Ride On Space Cowboy and then an unassociated single called "Lost in a Trippy Desert." Perfect synthesis of what I'm going for in most respects with SOX. That said, most of my videos have Xurious synthwave sounds, and he's more a political right-wing synthwave. Not that you can tell, listening to instrumental music. But if you look at the titles, it's pretty obvious. I don't have permission to use music from either in my my videos, so I may well revert to royalty free stuff, of which there's a lot available.

But I highly recommend checking out Lazy Laser on either YouTube or Spotify.

Here's some older screenshots, where I've done the obvious thing that I should have done ages ago, opened them in an image app and changed the brightness and contrast. You'll have to forgive the occasional appearance of a scantily dressed girlfriend companion character, because when I took these I guess I hadn't completely gotten tired of the joke of dressing my girlfriends like Return of the Jedi slave girl Leia. I'm over it now and I only have a handful of lingering weird free characters that might still have a dancer outfit on. I think I found a "Master Ranos" dressed like that lingering on somebody, and I actually thought it'd be funny to keep that one as it is since you never see that character looking like that.

The other guy, part II

I found the site archives where Dash Starbreaker was posted, and it does indeed call him both a Scoundrel and a Gunslinger, which explains why there are images of him with one gun and with two. Of course, this doesn't mean that there are two characters; one of the changes launched in 7.x was the ability to toggle between two class mechanics, and most likely, the player has a scoundrel and a gunslinger spec on the same character. I kind of forget this, because I almost never use it, even when I've got it set up. More recently, I'm not even bothering to set it up on my newer characters. Turns out this feature, which sounded kind of interesting before it launched, was a bit of a dud for me.

Anyway, here's just a few more images. If I post them here, I can clear out where I've archived them on in my screenshots folder.

Weekend update

As usual, I played a fair bit of SWTOR over the weekend. Vant Galaide finished Tatooine, including the bonus series. I didn't like the bonus series, exploration missions or planetary faction missions as much as I remember (I last played with with a Republic character) because they're too Imperial, frankly, and I don't imagine my characters as being super patriotic or loyal to the Empire; they have their own agendas and goals, and this is especially true of the bounty hunter, more than any other Imperial class in the game. But, it's done, and Vant is in the upper 50s for level and heading on towards Alderaan.

I played just a bit with Taul Kajak on Voss, thinking that I'd get him to level 80s. I still haven't managed that yet, but I was really disappointed in how laggy Voss was for me. Maybe I needed to reboot at the time I did it, but I think Alderaan and especially Voss have just become laggy in the course of the updates to the game, at least on my rig, which as I've said before, lacks a graphics card for dumb reasons. I'm tempted to work with my son-in-law to get an improved rig, but we'll see. Neither of those planets gave me much grief when I was playing nearly a year ago on this same computer, but they're consistently being rough on me now.

Curiously, the other major thing that I did was spend some time on Ruhnuk with Maark, doing the story and unlocking the daily area so I can get up to Legendary Reputation status and buy the really cool Mandalorian armor there. However, even Ruhnuk, which is much higher resolution and prettier graphically than Voss isn't giving me lag very much. I don't know what the deal with Voss is. It's just a tough planet for my computer. Alderaan too, to a lesser extent. The daily grind is kind of tedious, but I think it'll be worth it, because the armors are really pretty cool. Less important now that I've bought a few Boba Fett style armors, and more are available in the game than ever before. But I kind of like this one probably the best as Boba Fett-like. The coat from the Infamous Bounty Hunter, the first real Boba Fett or The Mandalorian looking look is probably the most generally useful, but the cool caped armor chestpiece of the Ruhnuk piece looks really good.

I like Ruhnuk graphically, but it's kind of a pain to play. The enemies have a lot of health, so it's tedious and time-consuming to fight against them, although not really more dangerous. It just takes longer. To fight... wild dewbacks? The scaling is clearly an artifact of the game, rather than something that makes any sense from a meta perspective.

I also really disliked the story on Ruhnuk. The story was more cutscene than gameplay. While this was kind of nice in the sense that it shows that the engine could be used with its existing assets to make a great animated show if we could have a good writer and a couple of animators, it wasn't the most fun to play at all, and the cutscenes weren't really all that likeable. Competently done, but paired with a crappy story.

Shae Viszla is a companion character who I send on errands to craft little things as part of my business. I also used her for several characters early on before I had actual story companions. Now, seeing them treat her like she's more important than the former Alliance Commander, and she can send me on those types of errands, is ridiculous. She's a terrible girlboss Karen, and nothing about seeing her is fun. Sadly, the whole story is about the interaction of terrible, unlikeable girlboss Karens; Shae, Heta, her Mandalorian rival, and the green Jedi girl all take on that role, while your character just sits around watching and being, as some of the Mandalorians say, Shae's lapdog. Ugh. Terrible story. But mercifully short. And frankly, I'm only doing it because I want the reputation stuff. I'm pretty ambivalent about the new story stuff for 7.x, or even older. I'm more interesting in replaying the original stories than I am in advancing into the expansions. Even Rise of the Hutt Cartel doesn't do that much for me. Even most of my original characters haven't done it yet, much less my newer ones.

Anyway, here's a few new screenshots.

I really like winter looks, and I now have enough options that almost every character could have a different one. Here's me experimenting with one on Johhn

I played the Showdown on Ruhnuk with Maark looking like this. I basically copied it from someone else, although they used a different mouthpiece that was bulkier than mine. I've got several options of my own, but this is my favorite.

A new update to Vant, using some pieces that I just unlocked from the Wastelander Tech armor, replacing the Triumphant Predator chestpiece and... I don't know, some other leg pieces which I can't remember now.

That other guy

A few more images of that same other guy from my last post in different outfits. The interesting thing to me is that I could essentially build most of these outfits, or at least some very close to them. I have most of the same armor components and weaponry available to me, or very close lookalikes, with few exceptions.

I do also notice that this guys' character sometimes has one pistol and sometimes two. I presume that there's actually two characters that look alike, but one of them is either a gunslinger or mercenary and the other is either a scoundrel or powertech.