SWTOR 5/12/2022 Tracker

I normally wouldn't do another tracker so soon, but I decided to go ahead and add a trooper storyline. Codon Veile, shown below in a black ops armored uniform (although hatless. He's not actually hatless, I just hid his hat for now, until I decide for sure which one I want him to wear.)

In the past, almost everything about this guy wouldn't have been playable. He's:

—a Chiss, an Imperial only race. Although unlocking races across factions has been available for a long time, and I've personally had it unlocked for most races for a long time myself. But it's still not available from the default when you start the game.

—a sniper. Until the 7.0 update, you could only play troopers as commandos (big slung autocannon as weapon; think Jesse Ventura from Predator) or vanguards, who used a blaster rifle and played like a big bruiser bounty hunter type. Snipers are, of course, an agent class by default and somehow seem "lighter."

—using blaster rather than sniper rifles on all outfits. Since 7.0.2 (I think I got that notation right) we have cosmetic weapons in the outfit designer, or outfitter. This means that you can have one weapon equipped for its stats, and another weapon displayed on the screen. Now, snipers could always equip blaster rifles instead of their default option of sniper rifles, although it wasn't advisable to do so because it did less damage to use the wrong weapon. This was the only case in which a class could use a weapon other than its default. Because of this, you can now equip blaster rifles in the cosmetic-only outfitter, while still having a sniper rifle equipped in your non-visual statistical gear.

—the ironic thing here is that although I'm using an unusual class to play the trooper story, because I have cosmetic blaster rifles, it looks like I'm a vanguard, an "old fashioned" trooper type. The sniper plays significantly different to the vanguard, however.

Anyway, let's go through the characters that I'm actively playing and note their progress. Note that I have other active characters, but most of them I consider "semi-retired" and they do grinding of seasons, events, they do crafting, and occasionally I advance them a little at a time in the post-story story (Ilum, or Rise of the Hutt Cartel, or wherever it may be that they are. Few of them have advanced very far on this track; in fact, I only have one character eligible to play Legacy of the Sith story material right now.) I'm also going to make a footnote of my characters that I'm no longer recording, although still playing, which makes up the last group of characters that I still have on my roster.

Wait; that's not true. I do have one other character who doesn't fit in any of those categories. However, since I'm not actually playing him at all, he's just there for now and I'll ignore him from this point on forever, until such time as I actually decide to play him, if I do.

Republic Stories

• Anstal Tane: level 40 sith pureblood smuggler scoundrel. Just finished Taris and hopped back on his ship. Can't remember off hand if there is an in-between mini-module or not I'll need to do, but either way, he's on his way towards Nar Shaddaa. He's also, for what its worth, the farthest advanced in his story of the classes that I'm still recording.
• Haul Romund: level 31 human smuggler mercenary. Just finished the Esseles flashpoint as the more complicated (yet story-heavy and XP friendly) alternative to zipping to Coruscant from Ord Mantell. He hasn't really started doing anything on Coruscant yet, though. Still just standing right where I got off the shuttle.
• Elemer Kell: level 33 Imperial style zabrak Jedi knight sentinel. On Taris. I'm not just sitting there in the hangar, but at the same time, I haven't done a lot yet on the planet either.
• Codon Veile level 17 chiss trooper sniper. As mentioned above. I've actually played all the way through Ord Mantell with him, and he's on the Republic fleet, waiting to do the Black Talon. He's the newest created; I actually just created him yesterday and already played this far with him. He's the least far advanced; every other character has at least done the first flashpoint and arrived on their capitol planet.

You may think it odd that I have two smugglers, and I claim to not even love that class. I'm finding, however, that with a bit more judicious use of dialogue (i.e., you don't need to pick the [flirt] option all of the time to romance your romanceable character, because most of those are cringy beta lines anyway) that you can fix some of my problems with it. I'm sometimes annoyed that the game calls my choices "dark side" especially when I have little patience with entitled, demanding bratty little princesses in exploration missions, or that I expect people to honor their commitments and agreements rather than letting them do whatever they want just because they're a girl, or whatever. Anyway, I've ranted about that nonsense from the writers plenty of times before, so I'll let it go. But the point is that I've found that the smuggler story isn't as bad as I thought it was after my first playthrough if I handle things just a little bit differently, and both the scoundrel and the mercenary play significantly differently than the gunslinger which I played through as my first time with the smuggler story.

Imperial Stories

• Vant Galaide: level 33 human bounty hunter mercenary. My first attempt at playing the mercenary (although as noted above, I later used the class for a smuggler too). He's finished Dromund Kaas and is chilling on his ship, ready to head off to Balmorra.
• Wulf Hengest: level 26 human bounty hunter vanguard. Another bounty hunter, although using what used to be a trooper advanced class. He just finished Black Talon flashpoint and arrived on Dromund Kaas.
• Revecca Arden: level 32 human Sith inquisitor sorcerer. I started her prior to the dropping of the Legacy of the Sith expansion, but I hadn't actually played her until more recently. She's now chilling on her ship, after finishing Dromund Kaas, so Balmorra will be next for her too. 
• Phovos Maledict: level 25 human Sith warrior juggernaut. Just finished Black Talon and arrived on Dromund Kaas. I actually started him with a slightly different name prior to the launch of the expansion, but I deleted him and recreated him as a different race and with a slightly improved name just in time for the double XP event last week. (Which is why his level is so high compared to his story progress.)
• Vash Galaide: level 33 human agent powertech. Just finished Black Talon also and is in the spaceport on Dromund Kaas. Three of my Imperial characters are at this same point in their story, and the other two are one planet further along on their ships. In Vash's case, his high level isn't based on the double XP event; I grinded him up to 10th level before starting the story, and I played Black Talon eight times back to back to back (ugh) to get a seasons reward. Admittedly I planned that fairly poorly, and I could have gone with another option where I wasn't grinding one flashpoint so many times, but I got pretty fast at it, and I got about another level's worth of XP every time I played it. 

Nine characters total. There's a few patterns. First off, I'm mirroring what I'm doing across Imperial and Republic stories; two of my favorite archetype in each case; the smuggler and the bounty hunter. For those, I have one that's playing an advanced class associated with the story, and one that's not. And I don't have a mirrored version of the sorcerer, because I'm just not in the mood for a consular and don't like that story as much anyway.

I'd said earlier that I'm mostly trying to keep them traveling as a pack, so that nobody gets too far ahead, and nobody falls too far behind—although I don't want everyone to be at exactly the same place either, because I'll get really burned out doing the same planet over and over again if I do. The farthest ahead of any characters is Anstal Tane who just finished his third planet and is chillin' on his ship. I just did that in the last few days, so he's going to go into "rest" mode for a while so most other characters can catch up to him a little. Elemer Kell is the next farthest, and he's on Taris (planet 3 for Republic characters.) I like to have characters at break points rather than in the middle of something, so I'll probably go finish his Taris content off as my next stuff to play today and tomorrow.

Later this weekend I'll want to switch back to the Imperial side. This weekend and early next week, I believe that I'll play a planet's-worth of content for Vash, Phovos and Vant. This will mean I still have one lingering Imperial character who needs to do planet two, and one that's finished planet three; everyone else will be in between; waiting to start planet three. 

And with most of my Imperial characters at the same exact place in the story, it'll make sense to bounce back early to middle of next week to the Republic side. Of course, I'll be in the limited time bounty hunting event at this point, so I'll probably grind a fair bit of that so I can buy at least one character the monster speeder bike associated with that event, and at least one character the HK customization. This will slow down my story playthroughs because I'll be using my time in game to do some other things this week. But when I come back, or do a bit here and there regardless, I'll be back on the Republic side and probably focus on the lingerers. At this point, that means Elemer and Anstal are still on hold and Codon and Haul will catch up and do Coruscant.

That's probably far enough to project my plans, and gets me all the way to planet three or four with every character. 

I should probably also mention my two characters that I no longer record: Hutran Thanatos level 43 Mirialan agent operative partway through Nar Shaddaa and Taul Kajak level 28 Mirialan Jedi knight sentinel halfway (or so) through Coruscant. I don't have any specific plans for them, but I like that they're out there when I want to play yet feel kind of relaxed about it. When I'm recording I have to pay attention to that a bit, so it's not like I can just turn off and play; I have to have other things in the back of my mind still. I'd like to finish Taul's Coruscant section just so I can get him a ship and have a bit more flexibility to use him in events and stuff. After that, who knows? I'll keep playing them a bit here and there, but not much. The story-recorded characters will almost certainly pass them up before too long. Taul Kajak, who ironically was the first character I started recording back when I was still recording him, is already about to fall behind all of the story characters, although Hutran Thanatos is for now out in front of all of them.

So my next week or two of playing will be, in loosely if not exactly this order: 

• Elemer will finish Taris
• Vash will do Dromund Kaas
• Vant will do Balmorra
• If it's still not Tuesday, Phovos will do Dromund Kaas
• The next week of Galactic Seasons weekly activities (almost done with all achievements here! I won't quite finish next week, though; I'll have 98 weeklies done, out of 100 needed, and I'll probably be a week or two short of reaching Legendary reputation status too.)
• Bounties, bounties and more bounties. I have more characters who can do them this time than I did last time it came around. I'll probably get burned out before the week is over, but I'll keep going until that happens, and this will almost certainly bring my story content to a temporary halt.
• In between doing bounties or when I'm done, back to Haul to do Coruscant.
• Then back to Revecca to do Balmorra
• Then back to Codon to do Esseles and Coruscant. 
• And finally Wulf on to Dromund Kaas. And then we get back to Anstal on Nar Shaddaa and start over, in a similar order again, after that.