SWTOR Character updates

I had a busy week last week, and if anything I'll have an even busier one this week. On my docket for personal things that need to happen:

1. Income tax filing.

2. Paperwork to rollover my 401(k) savings, modest though they are.

3. We need to buy another car, and I need to pursue loan paperwork.

All of those paperwork tasks are hours long, I imagine, with the possible exception of 2. I'm hopeful that with less than half an hour or so on the phone, I can get the final form that I need forwarded to me.

4. Travel with my wife and some friends across the state to see Les Miserables on stage. Yeah, I'm not worrying about vowel diacritics there. This will probably mean leaving a little bit early from work on Friday, and being home late on Saturday, so most of my weekend is gone before it even starts. Not to say that I don't want to go, to support my wife who loves the show, and to get out of the house for a bit, and to hang our with our friends, and do the other stuff that we'll be doing on Saturday... but sometimes even fun things aren't fun anymore when you're too busy, and I'm kind of feeling that this week, even more than last week. So I'll make a SWTOR progress report now, because I doubt I'll have tons of progress to report at this same time in another week, sadly.

First off, my son-in-law, who's played around in the game before, has expressed some interest in jumping in after seeing my SWTOR videos that I've watched pop on on the TV on the Youtube app. I'm considering telling him he can create a character on my account, although because I have a security key, he'll probably have to do it over here. He can project the laptop to the TV and we can all watch it together, though. My oldest son and his wife might actually rather enjoy that, if he doesn't take too long doing it. Anyway, stay tuned; not sure what the development is really going to be there yet.

Secondly, for whatever reason, I've had better luck with lag, and it's been more like it used to be before I updated the game more recently. I've played around with Taul Kajak, my Jedi Sentinel, on Voss, the second to last "normal" planet before the official ending of the class storyline. I hit max level with him not too long ago, so I've stopped doing exploration and bonus missions, because there's little point, but I am still playing the faction story for the planet with him, and I am planning on doing the bonus series too. This is because I just haven't seen those in a long time, and usually by the time I got to the last three planets or so, my characters were already pretty high level, and I wasn't in the mood to play those anymore because they had gotten repetitive and tedious. I'm thinking that I'll do Voss with Kajak, but save Corellia's Republic faction story for Anstal Tane when he gets there. But we'll see. Maybe when I get to Corellia, I'll feel like just going ahead and doing it anyway. I barely remember the Corellia missions at all, because I hardly ever have played them on either faction. Corellia doesn't have a normal bonus series, but it does have the Black Hole, which kind of serves like a bonus series on steroids, I suppose.

Thirdly, the rakghoul event starts tomorrow. I've already got max reputation with THORN, but I wouldn't mind picking up some more rakghoul currency to spend on stuff later, and getting some video down in the rakghoul tunnels. Curiously, this time around it's going to be on Corellia, so it's a good time for Taul Kajak to try and finish up Voss as reasonably quickly as possible and spend some time there, if I can make some time for it. Later in the month will be the Gree event, so maybe I can finish up Corellia by that time and have him on Ilum, along with a lot of other of my characters in semi-retirement who are at about that same stage of post-story story. Even Johhn still hasn't finished the Ilum missions, and Hutran Thanatos still needs to do the two back to back flashpoints to be done with the planet himself.Luuke, Maark and Mat Thew, on the other hand, are all well past it, but can always return to sport their winter gear some more. 

Fourth, Vant Galaide just finished Act I of his story, i.e., the Great Hunt itself. I created a new Mandalorian-esque armor suit for him to finish in, although it's also unique, of course, and he's wearing it now.

That puts him in the same place in the story as Anstal Tane, so the two of them can leapfrog each other a little bit when Taul Kajak is done. Both are level 64, so they're in decent shape as long as they keep doing the faction stories, without having to grind heroics or flashpoints or anything with them. Although both are also high enough level that they could do Directive 7 just for the XP, and since it doesn't really fit in the story anywhere, well why not, I guess? We'll see if I feel motivated to do that in the next couple of week. I doubt I'll have time or motivation to do it this week.

If I do do any grinding, it'll be some modest grinding of rakghoul events for the currency, or Ruhnuk events with Maark for the reputation. I haven't felt motivated to do any of that this last week, although if I really want to get access to that new Mandalorian armor set, I better get on it. I'm only still at Newcomer status, I think, so I've got a long way to go to get the Legendary and finish it off where the chestpiece and helmet are available. But those are the only two pieces that I actually care about; the rest of it, I can make do with something else. In fact, I'd rather do so.

Retroactively, let's call that discussion of reputation grinding our fifth point. The sixth and final one is to think about who to start advancing in a more focused manner once Taul Kajak is done with the story. I've got a lot of choices to slot into his position once he's done. Elemer Kell might be an obvious one, but I actually think I want to wait on him, since he'll be repeating the same Jedi Knight storyline. Just in terms of who I haven't seen in a while, one of my two secret agent-style troopers, Codon Veile the Chiss sniper, or Mirabeau Tane, the cyborg gunslinger makes a lot of sense, but from another perspective, one of the three outstanding force-using characters I have who's not a Jedi Knight makes sense too; the Sith Warrior, the Sith Inquisitor or the Jedi Consular. Regardless of whether I focus on them or not, I think it makes sense to advance both of the Sith, at least, at least one more planet. I think they're both about to start Balmorra, which is where most of my Imperial characters other than Vant are currently waiting. I'm quite positive that both of the Sith as well as Vash Galaide and Embric Stane are at that same point, and Wulf Hengest is actually on Balmorra waiting in the cantina, having picked up a few minor missions, but still needing to actually run them, if I remember correctly. Breaking up the logjam means focusing on some of the characters that are all in the same place and getting them out of the same place, even if it's just for a planet or two, and not all the way to a stopping point like the end of Act I, which I did with Anstal and Vant.

In any case, that's thought for a little bit further ahead. Like I said, I'll be lucky if I can finish my plans with Taul Kajak this week, given all of the things that I have going on. And I don't want to put Anstal and Vant on the backburner while I'm doing this either, so I'm looking to keep them going while just replacing Taul in the rotations.

The chestpiece here is the Contractor's (I also have the slightly less detailed Classic Contractors) but it is also just a color-swapped version of one of the CZ-198 Czerka reputation chestpieces. It's dyed with a crafted Dark Blue and gray dye, but because it's not a weird Czerka green base color, but rather a metallic gunmetal gray, I could use a secondary dye module in its place, like black, dark gray or even the easily and cheaply crafted medium gray, and it might look just as good if not even better. I might tweak the color just a bit over time. We'll see.

UPDATE: I was mistaken. It's not Wulf Hengest that's walked out of the spaceport on Balmorra and picked up a mission or two, it was actually Mirabeau Tane who did it on Tatooine. Given that he's ahead of the curve a bit, I think he's the next obvious one to work on, clearly, maybe even before Taul Kajak is done. If I can get Mirabeau to the same place that Anstal and Vant are, that leaves me room to get either Revecca Arden, Sith Inquisitor story or Phovos Maledict Sith Warrior story out of the pack on Balmorra. I'll have four characters that I'm actively moving forward at that point.

Elemer Kell is also a bit ahead, having already finished Taris (the Republic equivalent of Balmorra, at least in the place in the story) but because he's basically another Taul Kajak, or at least playing the same story with the same mechanics, he's staying on the bench a little longer.