Galactic Seasons 2

I've been recording and editing and uploading more videos from my SWTOR playthroughs. I'm getting better at making better cuts and better videos overall. But it still won't look as good as some folks, because my hardware just isn't up to snuff for lots of video editing. 

In the meantime, I've finished the Season. Sorta. I finished the rewards track, anyway, and got all of the rewards that it will offer me. However, there's still a bit more to do here. I need to get my Shadow Syndicate reputation all the way up to Legend, which will take me a few more weeks of grinding the seasonal objectives. This will also have the side-effect of giving me (most likely; I haven't done the math, but I'll make sure that I hit it if I'm a bit short) all of the seasonal achievements, which gives me a Fen Zeil customization that has a bit of a Cad Bane look. No doubt on purpose after Cad Bane was briefly the Star Wars hotness in the Book of Boba Fett show, before everyone decided that that show wasn't worth it.

Another side effect of it was the season tokens, which let me buy some stuff that I'd always kind of wanted, but didn't get back when they were available. I still didn't get everything that I would have wanted, although I'm now out of tokens, so I guess I got what I got, though. I got a pretty nifty Chiss speeder, and I got a pet or two, and two companions. All of this is in my collections.

In fact, when I start play with a new character, I now have access to six companions pretty quickly; Paxton Rall and Nico Okarr being the ones that I just bought. I already had the Shae Viszla reward and the Fen Zeil reward. If I send my new character money, I can buy HK-51 right off (part of my starting process) and as soon as I hit level 10 and/or can travel to the fleet, I also get Treek. I'm honestly not sure what to do with all of these companions, but I guess collecting them is worth something. At least one is nice at the beginning when you don't normally have a companion yet, and it's also nice to have one if the only one available to you is one that you don't really like. (Like Kaliyo.) But I didn't need to buy Nico or Paxton, when all of my starting characters already get Shae Viszla, and with a million credits (which is no longer a big deal for me) I can have HK-51 too. But sometimes I just like those two new ones better. It's nice to have lots of companions for crafting, but I don't have any reason to create new crafting characters. One of each type is enough, and I've already got those from my initial playthroughs a long time ago. Having another Armstech or Synthweaving or whatever crafter just dilutes my efforts to consolidate schematics and crafting materials in one go-to place.

Let me make a list (because I love lists) of my current crop of characters and what they are and what they do and why I still have them in my roster (as opposed to deleted. I've deleted a few characters that I finished and didn't have any reason to keep.)

First, my original characters, made during 6.x game, or even earlier.

• J'ohhn Level 80 Sniper Agent. My original agent playthrough, human. He's my cybertech crafter, and my "banker" and "broker"; i.e., the majority of my credits sit with him, so he's the one who buys on the GTN for everyone. The cybertech crafting is one of my main money-makers, although I'm very junior level on this front still, siting at about a quarter billion in credits. I use him for a lot of basic grinding of reputation and events and stuff. He also crafts mods and enhancement for my "younger" characters. I do occasionally still do post-Corellia missions with him, although I'm not even quite to Rise of the Hutt Cartel yet.
• M'aar'k Level 80 Guardian Jedi Knight. Human. My original Knight playthrough, and really my original character in many ways. The only character who's caught up completely on the expansion stories (well, I'm still waiting on the newest Legacy of the Sith stuff until the bugs are fixed and maybe more content is available) and my synthweaving crafter. Because of his position, he's also the guy who turns in Heroic crates for unlocking. That's not as cool as it used to be since you can't sell the remnant armor pieces anymore, but I still do Heroics from time to time.
• Phillip'pion Level 77 Commando Trooper. Human. My original trooper. Of my "original" characters, he's the only one who I haven't yet hit level 80 with, because I don't use him for much anymore. He is my sliced tech parts gatherer, though. That's not true crafting, but there is one gathering skill that doesn't map directly to any of the crafting skills, and someone has to be dedicated to that gathering skill for higher level crafting.
• M'at Thew Level 80 Marauder Sith Warrior. Human. My original Sith Warrior. He's also my Artifice crafter, so he makes lightsabers, hilts, and dye modules for all kinds of other characters. He's my second most advanced character in terms of expansion story, and he's ready to do Ziost and then start the two big expansion chapters. But I haven't quite pulled the trigger on those yet.
• Lu'ukke Level 80 Gunslinger Smuggler, human. My original smuggler. Also, my Armstech crafter, so he makes barrels and blasters. As soon as the weapons in outfit designer feature goes live, which is supposed to be very shortly, I'll probably make some cosmetic weapons for some characters out of the crafting pool. He's also slowly advancing through the expansion stories, like the rest of them, and he's on Makeb when I get back to that.
• Galat'ion Level 80 Powertech Bounty Hunter (Pyrotech), human. My original Bounty Hunter playthrough. He's also my Biochem crafter. I don't have a lot of interest in this particular crafting skill, but sometimes you need it for something.
• Graggory Level 80 Powertech Bounty Hunter (Advanced Prototype), human. My original original Bounty Hunter playthrough, which I stopped when I thought I'd screwed it up, but picked it up and finished it after I realized that actually I hadn't. I'd also maxed him out as my Armormech, so I'm stuck with two Powertechs from my legacy characters, I guess, unless I bring someone else up to speed on crafting Biochem or something. No big deal; I'm sure I'll just keep them both. After playing around with a lot of both specs, I've decided that I prefer the direct damage Advanced Prototype spec to the Damage Over Time pyrotech spec after all. I do still use both for some grinding of some stuff too.

The second group of characters was made in the last few months of 6.x for recording purposes, although a few of them haven't actually been recorded much, and at least one of them I actually stopped recording when I had played a bit of the story while forgetting to turn on my screen recorder. Whoops. Most of them use the other advanced class as above within the same story class, and most of them are aliens or other non-human characters. None of them have finished the story, and none of them have hit max level. I'm still actually playing these, although in some cases, very slowly. At least one I haven't done anything with at all yet except the introduction. But I'll eventually get through them all. The levels are, therefore, merely point in time and next time you were to ask me, these would mostly be at a higher level than they are now.

• Hutran Thanatos, Level 37 Operative Agent, Mirialan. Took me a while to warm up to this class, but I now quite enjoy it. I'm on the fourth planet, Nar Shaddaa. I recorded some of his early stuff, but I'm no longer recording his progress.
• Vant Galaide, Level 30 Mercenary Bounty Hunter, Human. Probably my favorite of the characters I'm actually playing right now. Love this guy. Love the class. It—again—took a while to get going on the class abilities, but I think that that's now just a feature of the 7.x environment. He's on Dromund Kaas, but almost finished there.
• Anstal Tane, Level 33 Scoundrel Smuggler, Sith Pureblood. Just finished Coruscant and is on to Taris. This is my other favorite current playthrough. I didn't think that I liked this class, but as I got into the upper 20s in terms of level, he got good enough to be fun. I like him a lot now.
• Revecca Arden, Level 11 Sith Sorcerer, Human (and girl. Currently, my only girl character.) I was a little hesitant, because I didn't love playing my assassin, but I like the sorcerer quite a bit better. Looks like I made the wrong choice with my assassin, which is now deleted. Still on Korriban, but I'm warming up to her quite a bit, and I'm thinking I want to hurry and finish her and play her a little more aggressively. Or at least make sure that she doesn't lag too far behind the wave that she's part of, ie, Anstal and Vant and the Knights below.
• Elemer Kell, Level 32 Sentinel Jedi Knight, zabrak (Imperial type.) My main Jedi Knight class story playthrough for recording. A bit of an aggressive jerk who refuses to pick the obvious "light side" choices unless they really do make the most sense. Which often, they do not, because BioWare's morality is stupid beyond all reason.
• Taul Kajak, Level 25 Sentinel Jedi Knight, Mirialan. I actually started doing the recordings on this character, but I wasn't happy with the quality, so I started with Elemer. I didn't stop recording this guy, though... although he is admittedly a little bit lower priority, since he's now kind of a backup.
• Embric Stane, Level 1 Mercenary Bounty Hunter, cyborg. I actually superseded this guy with Vant Galaide, as my recordable Mercenary playthrough. So, I haven't played him at all. However... I couldn't completely bring myself to delete him either, so he's here on the back burner, and maybe I'll play him yet. Someday.

The third group is characters I've created since the launch of 7.x, and all of them have a "mismatch" between the story class and the mechanical class, i.e., most of them have atypical weapons and mechanics. All are human males, and most haven't really been played or recorded much yet (although I did do some initial grinding to get them eligible to use Level 10 weapons or armor, which were always part of their concept.)

• Haul Romund, Level 11 Mercenary Smuggler.
• Wulf Hengest, Level 11 Vanguard Bounty Hunter.
• Vash Galaide, Level 26 Powertech Agent (I've played Hutta with this guy and am now running him through repeats of the Black Talon flashpoint before starting Dromund Kaas. The Flashpoint is a seasonal objective, but it's also nice for grinding XP for this character while I'm at it. Plus, since I screwed up the recording of Hutran Thanatos, I really wanted to get an Agent on the recording schedule, so he got "pulled ahead", so to speak. Not sure that I think he's supposed to be "related" to Vant Galaide or not, or if I just wanted a very similar name because it was easier.

Of characters that I don't have but will likely still make for recording purposes, I guess I need a new Sith Warrior, Jedi Consular, and Trooper. I'm much more excited about doing the former than the latter two, but I've got enough to do already, so I'll probably defer until some of the other recording projects get wrapped up a bit.

When I get around to these, I anticipate my Sith Warrior will be a Juggernaut, my Consular will be a Sorcerer, and my trooper will be a sniper.